tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52714252005121391232024-03-13T08:33:57.486-07:00Reflections from the Other SideLeaving Christianity and Embracing SkepticismTimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.comBlogger217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-68916163447312551022016-05-14T13:12:00.003-07:002016-05-14T13:33:30.370-07:00Donald Trump, the Anti-Skeptic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rfxn-byySuM/VzeFbfAMw7I/AAAAAAAADK8/a7IKVv27cnoErYdM1r2C74OJD0CeUHNvgCLcB/s1600/trump2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rfxn-byySuM/VzeFbfAMw7I/AAAAAAAADK8/a7IKVv27cnoErYdM1r2C74OJD0CeUHNvgCLcB/s320/trump2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that last week Donald J. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States.<br />
<br />
In this post I'm going to leave aside his racism, his sexism, his violent and fascist rhetoric, his endless lies, and even his complete lack of relevant knowledge or qualifications. Instead, I want to highlight the fact that he is a raving conspiracy nut and a gullible fool.<br />
<br />
<b>Climate Change Denier</b><br />
Trump believes climate change is a deliberate hoax, and uses cold local weather as evidence.<br />
<ul>
<li>"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/428414113463955457">Source</a></li>
<li>"NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/427226424987385856">Source</a></li>
<li>"This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/418542137899491328">Source</a></li>
<li>"Any and all weather events are used by the GLOBAL WARMING HOAXSTERS to justify higher taxes to save our planet! They don't believe it $$$$!" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/427556692109574146">Source</a></li>
</ul>
Trump called global warming a conspiracy created by China and perpetrated by scientists.<br />
<ul>
<li>"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385">Source</a></li>
<li>Trump later claimed he was "being sarcastic" but also "a little bit serious." <a href="http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/06/28/donald-trump-on-cnns-state-of-the-union-im-in-it-to-win-it-i-will-make-our-country-great-again/">Source</a></li>
<li>"It's a hoax. I think the scientists are having a lot of fun." <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/01/06/fox-regular-donald-trump-decries-climate-change/197432">Source</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Anti-Vaxxer</b><br />
Trump believes that "massive vaccinations" cause autism and there’s a conspiracy to cover it up.<br />
<ul>
<li>"I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future." <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/507158574670573568">Source</a></li>
<li>"I'm not against vaccinations for your children, I'm against them in 1 massive dose. Spread them out over a period of time & autism will drop!" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/507546307620528129">Source</a></li>
<li>"No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses—one vaccine at a time, over time." <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/507158396051927041">Source</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Ebola Truther</b><br />
Trump alleged a CDC conspiracy to minimize the danger of Ebola.<br />
<ul>
<li>"Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting. Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/517613167359574016">Source</a></li>
<li>(Just 6 of Africa’s 54 countries had even a single Ebola case during the outbreak.) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_Ebola_virus_epidemic">Source</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Birther Movement Leader</b><br />
Trump was a leader in the Obama "birther" conspiracy theorist movement.<br />
<ul>
<li>Trump repeatedly suggested Obama was born in Kenya and pushed him to release his birth certificate: "Well I've been told very recently, Anderson, that the birth certificate is missing. I've been told that it's not there or it doesn't exist." <a href="http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/25/trump-claims-obama-birth-certificate-missing/">Source</a></li>
<li>He claimed to have sent investigators to Hawaii to look into his past. "I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding." Nothing came of the alleged investigation. <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/21/trump-says-hell-reveal-interesting-things-on-obama/">Source</a></li>
<li>He falsely suggested that Obama didn’t go to the schools he claimed to: "Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I'll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don't know who he is. It's crazy." <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/14/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-people-who-went-school-obama-nev/">Source</a></li>
<li>He falsely stated that Obama’s grandmother said he was born in Kenya: "His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth, okay?" <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/07/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-president-obamas-grandmother-cau/">Source</a></li>
<li>Once Obama released his birth certificate, Trump claimed it was a forgery: "An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud." <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/232572505238433794">Source</a></li>
<li>Asked in 2015 if Obama was born in the U.S., he responded: "No. I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, I don't know why he wouldn't release his records." <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1507/09/acd.01.html">Source</a></li>
</ul>
Trump has repeatedly implied that Obama is secretly a Muslim.<br />
<ul>
<li>"He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want that." <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-u-s-should-strongly-consider-shutting-down-mosques/">Source</a></li>
<li>On multiple occasions, he has not corrected supporters who claimed he is a Muslim. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-birther/">Source 1</a>, <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/01/06/trump_sarcastically_reprimands_man_for_calling_obama_a_muslim_how_dare_you.html">Source 2</a></li>
<li>When asked about a possible Muslim president, Trump said: "Some people have said it already happened, frankly. Of course, you wouldn’t agree with that." <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-on-possible-muslim-president-some-people-have-said-it-already-happened/">Source</a></li>
</ul>
<div>
Trump implied the Obama administration assassinated the woman who verified his birth certificate: </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>"How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s 'birth certificate' died in plane crash today. All others lived." <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/13/nation/la-na-hawaii-plane-crash-20131213">Source</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<b>JFK Conspiracist</b><br />
Trump bought into a <i>National Enquirer</i> story linking Ted Cruz's father to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination.<br />
<ul>
<li>"[Cruz’s] father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being, you know, shot. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right, prior to his being shot? And nobody even brings it up. What was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible." <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/03/donald-trump/donald-trumps-ridiculous-claim-linking-ted-cruzs-f/">Source</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Anti-Skeptic</b><br />
Conspiracies aside, Trump believes just about any ridiculous thing that supports his views.<br />
<ul>
<li>Trump retweeted an obvious hoax that spouted racist homicide statistics. Most egregiously, it claimed that 81% of homicides against whites are committed by blacks. (The true number is 15%.) <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/">Source</a></li>
<li>Trump tweeted a hoax video tying a protester to ISIS. When it was pointed out to him as a hoax, he doubled down: “He was dragging a flag along the ground and he was playing a certain type of music. And supposedly, there was chatter about ISIS. Now, I don't know. What do I know about it? All I know is what's on the internet.” <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-march-13-2016-n537476">Source</a></li>
</ul>
I think all of this makes it clear that Trump is no friend of the skeptical movement. In fact, he's nearly as far from a skeptic as it's possible to be.<br />
<br />
As president of the United States, Trump would have to make difficult, critical judgments based on complex information from a variety of sources. Sometimes the trustworthiness of those sources can be difficult to discern. Based on Trump's many credulous statements, he absolutely be entrusted with this crucial task.<br />
<br />
For this and countless other reasons, Donald Trump has no business getting anywhere close to the office of the presidency.Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-53700871460854855742014-06-11T19:40:00.000-07:002014-07-18T01:11:14.497-07:00Ever Tried, Ever Failed...<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OR3HpeVU9lA/U5kLQZtXDdI/AAAAAAAACNY/I4t3ZVNZZ8I/s1600/640px-Samuel_Beckett,_Pic,_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OR3HpeVU9lA/U5kLQZtXDdI/AAAAAAAACNY/I4t3ZVNZZ8I/s1600/640px-Samuel_Beckett,_Pic,_1.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The man himself.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a quote that's been bouncing around in my head for the past few weeks. It comes from Samuel Beckett's novella <i>Worstward Ho</i>, and it goes like this:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seems a bit gloomy at first, doesn't it? What a pessimistic outlook, to believe you're in a constant state of failure. The common saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"—the implication being that eventually, you will.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beckett's quote makes no such promise. If you try again, you'll fail again. But it's the last bit that's really stuck with me.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fail better.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That two-word sentence, to me, crystallizes the essence of what makes us human. We're such tremendous failures, the human race. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We still have no idea what we're doing, broadly speaking. We're puny, fragile, ignorant things. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yet we keep trundling along. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We make mistakes</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">... and eventually, we fail better.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's not just the human race. It's the essence of science, of how we unlock the world around us. Our understanding of the universe has been built up incrementally, painstakingly over millennia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was a time when we thought the seat of our consciousness was in the heart and not the brain. What a <i>spectacular</i> failure. Today we know the specific functions of most parts of the brain, yet we still don't have a clue how they come together to create a "self." We've failed again—but better. Success is not in the nature of science. We don't set out to prove things, but rather to create flawed yet increasingly accurate models of the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it's not just humanity or science. It's the essence of <i>me</i>. I fail constantly. I failed today. I'll fail tomorrow. And when I do, I will pick myself up, dust myself off and say:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.</i></blockquote>
Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-77891310399836579992013-05-06T19:36:00.000-07:002013-05-07T12:39:11.368-07:00A Friendly Conversation<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently my dad caught up with an old friend of his. I didn't ask to use his name, so I'll just call him Steve. He became a Christian a few years ago after having been raised Muslim and remaining so for most of his life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve wrote a short book about his experiences, and since copy-editing is on my list of potential career options, my dad volunteered me to read through it. It basically consisted of his life story, with a focus on his conversion to Christianity, as well as various arguments for his adopted religion and against other viewpoints.</span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hEtWUom4UCI/UYhmj-h3ZVI/AAAAAAAAAlU/hkOi4X6j7mo/s1600/Starbuckslogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hEtWUom4UCI/UYhmj-h3ZVI/AAAAAAAAAlU/hkOi4X6j7mo/s200/Starbuckslogo.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The universally accepted meeting<br />
place, for some reason.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After I sent the manuscript back to him, he asked about my own views, and upon learning I was an atheist, he suggested we meet for coffee so he could better understand my perspective.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So last Wednesday we spent thirty or forty minutes discussing atheism and related topics. I was a bit apprehensive going in, but thankfully it was a casual, friendly conversation, with an atmosphere of learning rather than debate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He asked whether I had been a Christian by "default" or whether it was something I actively believed, so I gave him a bit of my background and <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-conversion-story.html">conversion</a> to Christianity. And how I became curious in my college years of what the opposing evidence looked like, how my <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-history-with-young-earth-creationism_05.html">investigation</a> of creationism was the starting point for my eventual departure from the faith. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From there, Steve asked me for my definition of atheism—always a good start for a discussion on the topic. I was pleased to discover that he easily understood the distinction between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_and_weak_atheism">strong and weak atheism</a>. I explained the need for evidence in proportion to the extraordinary nature of the claims made, and how the idea of God represents such a departure from everything we know about the world that it has an incredibly high evidential bar to meet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve made a few of the standard points for Christianity, which I let go mostly unchallenged, to make sure we stayed in the realm of discussion rather than conflict. He asked what I think happens when we die, and pointed out that if that's true, it kinda sucks. No argument from me there, though it's <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-ultimate-significance.html">not</a> a total loss. He brought up <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/06/death-of-pascals-wager.html">Pascal's Wager</a>, although more out of curiosity as to how I approach belief than as an argument in favor of belief.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem of evil was mentioned as an example argument, to which free will was of course the vanilla reply. I brought up animal suffering, which it seemed he hadn't considered in that context before. Steve's response was that if animals were treated differently, people might notice and see it as evidence of divine intervention, thus violating free will. While I don't find that very convincing—even if biblical God <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/09/god-doesnt-care-about-free-will.html">cared</a> about free will, he could probably find a way to circumvent at least <i>some</i> of the suffering we see—for an improvised explanation, it wasn't terrible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve thanked me for my time and for what he was able to learn from our conversation. He would pray for me, and that my bar of evidence would be met. Despite my warning that I may not read it due to time constraints, he said he would send me <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_McDowell">Josh McDowell's</a> book <i>Evidence That Demands a Verdict.</i> And he expressed a hope that I would continue to research Christianity. It brought to mind a post I made a while back about my <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-pro-christian-bias.html">pro-Christian bias</a>: that I've already given Christianity so much more attention than I would give any other faith.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though I don't think any minds will be changed as a result of our conversation</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, I'm glad to have had the chance to talk with Steve. It's heartening to know there are religious people who are genuinely curious about atheism, and willing to engage in a good-natured dialogue to learn about a different way of thinking.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-11232295864860407322013-04-30T23:20:00.000-07:002013-05-01T07:37:32.283-07:00Rational Giving<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ahf8r8XunwI/UYCr-IKTzCI/AAAAAAAAAlE/cQjfG6BXU9E/s1600/GiveWell.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="106" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ahf8r8XunwI/UYCr-IKTzCI/AAAAAAAAAlE/cQjfG6BXU9E/s320/GiveWell.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few days ago I donated what was, for me, a hefty sum of money to three different charities. 70% of my donation went to the <a href="http://www.againstmalaria.com/">Against Malaria Foundation</a>, which provides insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. 20% went to <a href="http://www.givedirectly.org/">GiveDirectly</a>, which distributes cash straight to needy individuals in Kenya. 10% went to the <a href="http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/schisto/">Schistosomiasis Control Initiative</a>, which treats children in sub-Saharan Africa for parasite infections.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
And the entire sum was donated via <a href="http://www.givewell.org/">GiveWell</a>, an organization that researches charities to determine which are the most efficient at saving and improving lives.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Here's why I chose this particular donation strategy—and why you should, too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
As it turns out, <i>a lot</i> of charities suck. Maybe even most. They're either inefficient, ineffective, lack transparency or have unintended consequences like damaging the local economy. (See examples <a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2008/12/18/guest-post-proven-programs-are-the-exception-not-the-rule">here</a> and <a href="http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Accomplishing-Nothing">here</a>.) Some are actually <i>worse</i> than doing nothing at all. For instance, the "Scared Straight" program, which takes kids on tours of prisons to discourage criminal behavior, was <a href="http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work">found</a> to <i>increase</i> delinquency compared to doing nothing. Even the practices of <a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/28/celebrated-charities-that-we-dont-recommend">big-name charities</a> like Kiva, Smile Train and UNICEF have raised concerns.</span><br />
<div style="min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, many charities (intentionally or not) post misleading information about their own effectiveness. <a href="http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/cost-effectiveness#Charitiesfrequentlycitemisleadingcosteffectivenessfigures">For instance</a>, since malaria nets from Nothing But Nets cost $10 each to make and deliver, they claim an astounding rate of one child's life saved for every $10 given. But roughly 95% of kids would have survived even without nets, and it's not known what proportion of delivered nets are actually used. It's all too common for charities to exaggerate their impact and ignore hidden costs like this. And since most have never been independently evaluated, so we have no real way of knowing how effective they are.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
But for most people, none of that's really on the radar. They pick a charity based purely on how it resonates with them emotionally. They may see an ad featuring a starving child with sad puppy-dog eyes, skim a few anecdotal endorsements and start reaching for their pocketbook. All without doing any research. Sure, their hearts are in the right place, but isn't it more important to ensure that we're actually helping people? It's okay to let our emotions drive our generosity, but we need to let reason steer us toward options that will do the most good.</span><br />
<div style="min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's where GiveWell comes in. This group <a href="http://www.givewell.org/criteria">looks for</a> charities that:</span><br />
<ul>
<li style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Offer strong evidence of positive impact</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are extremely cost-effective</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will use added funding productively, without diminishing returns</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are highly transparent and accountable</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So why trust GiveWell? Well, they've been <a href="http://www.givewell.org/what-others-are-saying">endorsed</a> both by major media outlets and by experts in the field. They're fully <a href="http://www.givewell.org/about/transparency">transparent</a>: their research is publicly available, they record their board meetings for donor scrutiny, and much more. They've subjected themselves to intense external <a href="http://www.givewell.org/about/self-evaluation/external-reviews">evaluation</a>. And their three </span><a href="http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">top-recommended charities</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> have been thoroughly vetted, and are monitored via written reports as well as photo and video evidence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GiveWell's top-rated charities have the most positive impact of any they've evaluated thus far. Through AMF, it <a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2012/12/19/cost-effectiveness-of-nets-vs-deworming-vs-cash-transfers/">costs</a> about $1.36 per year to protect someone with a malaria net. Through SCI, it <a href="http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative#Whatdoyougetforyourdollar">costs</a> about $0.51 to treat someone for parasites. And through GiveDirectly, it <a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2012/12/19/cost-effectiveness-of-nets-vs-deworming-vs-cash-transfers/">costs</a> about $4.50 per year to keep a metal roof over someone's head. There are still some unknowns, as there would be for any charity. But right now, these three have the most powerful balance of efficiency and credibility.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly, why did I choose to give via GiveWell rather than to the charities directly? Because <a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2012/11/03/giving-to-givewells-recommended-charities-helps-givewell/">it helps GiveWell</a>. Not because they take any of the money—they don't—but for other important reasons. First, giving through GiveWell means they'll have more sway among charities. If their recommendations are shown to substantially impact people's giving habits, charities are more likely to cooperate with their investigations. And second, it gives more publicity both to GiveWell and to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism">effective altruism</a> movement as a whole, thereby influencing even more people to give effectively. You help the charities, and you help the meta-charity. It's essentially like making your donation count twice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You don't have to take my word for all this. I encourage you to do your own research. On the other hand, it's easy to get so overwhelmed with ideas and options that you succumb to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis">analysis paralysis</a> and end up doing nothing. So if I've convinced you that this approach to giving is worthwhile, please consider making a donation <a href="http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/donate">here</a>. Thank you.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-6709778343113832582013-04-15T19:08:00.004-07:002013-04-15T19:10:30.163-07:00My Evolution on Gay Marriage<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that the Supreme Court has heard arguments on two gay marriage cases, that the number of senators publicly supporting it has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/02/in-2011-only-15-senators-backed-same-sex-marriage-now-49-do/">jumped</a> to more than half, and that public opinion has now <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/how-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage-is-changing-and-what-it-means/">shifted</a> decisively in its favor, I thought it might be a good time to chronicle how my own views of gay marriage have changed.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For most of my life as a Christian, homosexuality wasn't even really on my radar. The concept was largely foreign to me. When it did finally trickle into my consciousness, I felt no animosity toward gay people; I just considered it a strange and sinful way of thinking and behaving.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I never held very strong opinions on gay marriage, but the issue came to a head in 2008 with the introduction of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8">Prop 8</a> in my home state of California. I remember that it was something I went back and forth on, but sadly I ultimately voted in favor. My rationale at the time was that gay people could still have civil unions and get the same benefits without taking on the title of marriage.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time, I thought that was enough. My vote on this issue was probably the last truly harmful action I took as a result of my religious beliefs. Though I no longer think that civil rights issues should be put to a majority vote, a small part of me wishes this one would be, just so I and others like me could redeem ourselves.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn't think much about the issue again until what was probably late 2010—after I had started questioning my faith, but before I became an atheist. I came across <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3aJVsASJY0">this video</a> by prominent atheist and LGBT blogger Zinnia Jones.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C3aJVsASJY0" width="480"></iframe><br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />In the first half of the video she rattles off a number of potential disadvantages associated with civil unions, but the second half (starting at 1:30) was what really struck me. If civil unions are identical to marriage in every way but in name, why is there a need to make a distinction at all? What does marriage offer straight couples that they need and gay couples can't have?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My views on gay marriage were already tenuously held, but that video was what solidified them decisively in its favor. At this point, I think it's clear that there are no decent arguments against gay marriage, and that most secular arguments have been propped up in order to disguise religiously-motivated concerns. I'm glad to see public opinion changing so rapidly, and look forward to seeing how each sect and denomination will respond to gay marriage's inevitable acceptance.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-39058216466363638482013-02-25T19:03:00.000-08:002013-02-25T19:06:19.157-08:00Life in the Open<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1Zi_P7I8JJM/UPTHrYMMj1I/AAAAAAAAAiY/xK28NYh0-3U/s1600/Christmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1Zi_P7I8JJM/UPTHrYMMj1I/AAAAAAAAAiY/xK28NYh0-3U/s320/Christmas.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In church for Christmas. Nice decor, but<br />it could maybe use a few more trees.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's been a little over a year since I <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/12/update-youve-been-waiting-for.html">came out</a> to my family as an atheist, and surprisingly little has changed. Certainly, they were upset at first. My mom asked me tearfully over lunch why I hadn't told them sooner. A little while later she asked me, not threateningly but solemnly, if I realized what happens if I'm wrong about Christianity. And my dad and I had a few brief, cordial lunchtime debates on religious topics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes my parents asked me if I wanted to go with them to church, which I politely turned down except for a few times when it seemed especially important to them—Christmas and Easter, for instance. And a couple of weeks before Christmas they got me </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evidence-God-Arguments-History-Philosophy/dp/0801072603" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a book</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of arguments for God, which I may work through here if it turns out to be worthwhile. (If so, I'm also thinking about formulating a version of my <a href="http://30questionsproject.weebly.com/">30 questions</a> for them to read in return.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what I listed above is basically the full extent of their reaction over the past fourteen months. Given that I spend time with them virtually every day, it's surprisingly subdued. For the most part</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, the topic of my atheism was barely touched after just a couple of weeks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have mixed feelings about my family's relative lack of interest in my unbelief. On the one hand, it's great. It's wonderful to be able to talk and have fun with them without feeling distant or uncomfortable. And to be clear, I certainly wouldn't trade this outcome for one where I'm constantly arguing. Still, part of me can't help but be amazed at what a small impact my coming out has had. Having grown up as a Christian, it's all too easy for me to think about my situation from the believer's perspective. If I were an ardent Christian and my sister told me she was an atheist, what would I do? Hmm...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My reaction is confusion, then horror. One of the people I love most in the entire world will be spending eternity weeping and gnashing her teeth in outer darkness! I have to do something, anything to convince her that she's strayed from the straight and narrow! I try to tread carefully around this sensitive topic, but I'm far too curious not to ask what changed her mind. Based on her response, I spend hours researching, steeped in books and articles from renowned apologists, training myself to make the perfect case for the Christian faith. Then, when the timing is right, I broach the subject as tactfully as I can and present my talking points.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given the seriousness of eternal punishment, the only response that makes sense to me is to expend every available resource in pursuit of saving the lives of my loved ones. Granted, it's important not to come on too strong and drive them further away, but neither will it work to skirt the issue almost entirely.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...So why is avoidance the response I'm seeing here?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's certainly not that my family is too selfish and unmotivated to come to my aid. They've demonstrated their affection in so many other ways that this holds no water at all. And it isn't that they don't believe what they claim to, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">just because their behavior doesn't perfectly match their beliefs</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. I </span><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/01/5-things-i-dont-believe-about-believers.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hate it</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> when people draw this conclusion about religious people. It could be that they're nervous about driving me away, just as I would be, but that's probably not the whole story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think the best explanation is that humans don't always think through the full consequences of their beliefs. Religious or not, we rarely make optimal decisions given the information available to us. In a way it's not strange to believe in a world of epic spiritual warfare, yet still fret more about what we're having for lunch tomorrow than about saving people from horrific eternal fates. After all, how much time and effort do we devote to worrying about trivial problems like morning rush hour, compared to serious ones like the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">millions of people suffering from starvation and disease</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">? It's the same basic principle, minus the eschatology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This may be the most important set of insights that leaving Christianity has taught me—is still teaching me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Humans are irrational. We make bad, short-sighted decisions. And </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if we want to bring about as much good as we can, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it's imperative that we improve our decision-making, both for our own sake and for others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I'm glad that I can live a life in the open, where I'm free to believe what I like without looking over my shoulder. But the next step is much more difficult. Can I live a life where I'm open with <i>myself</i>? Where I constantly challenge the mental weaknesses that keep me from achieving what really matters?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you?</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-33818606588784785792013-02-11T19:08:00.001-08:002013-02-11T19:09:37.445-08:00Bias Profile: The Just-World Fallacy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OF5kgqhUqCE/URBq1blKOOI/AAAAAAAAAkE/CP39YK9k5l4/s1600/Just+World.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OF5kgqhUqCE/URBq1blKOOI/AAAAAAAAAkE/CP39YK9k5l4/s320/Just+World.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do you believe in karma?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That what goes around comes around? That you reap what you sow?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you believe any of these holds true as a rule, you may be a victim of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis">just-world fallacy</a> (sometimes referred to more charitably as a "hypothesis").</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even other species of primates hold a sense of fairness as part of their core identity. In a <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries/2010/04/22/chimpanzees-prefer-fair-play-o/">2010 study</a>, chimpanzees were trained to exchange tokens for a food reward—either a piece of carrot (low reward) or a grape (high reward). When one chimp was given a grape and the other a carrot, the latter was more likely than in the "fair" control group to refuse the reward after seeing what the other received. Interesting, but maybe not too surprising. But here's what's really fascinating: In this highly competitive species, even <i>the chimp that received the grape</i> was significantly more likely to refuse their reward.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If such a powerful sense of justice exists in chimps, it's no wonder that this concept is integral to human society. The problem comes in when our sense of justice collides with our tendency to ascribe agency where it doesn't belong. What happens when tragedy strikes but there's no one to blame? Or when the bad guy gets away, figuratively or literally, with murder? That's when the just-world fallacy kicks in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If a natural disaster strikes a major city, fundamentalists are prone to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_disasters_as_divine_retribution">interpreting</a> it as divine punishment after the fact. Hurricane Katrina is a </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_as_divine_retribution" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">prime example</a>.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No less than five different motivations were offered for God's wrath: sexual immorality, abortion, racism, failure to support Israel, and (from al-Qaeda) America's attacks on al-Qaeda.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When human justice fails to punish evil deeds, religion offers a comfortable alternative: divine retribution in this life or the next. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism each have their own concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma">karma</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation">reincarnation</a>, which, while not always directly caused by God, generally involve the accumulation of positive or negative consequences depending on one's actions. And c</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ontrary to what some Christians believe, the Bible </span><a href="http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/faithalone.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">repeatedly states</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that believers will be judged according to their works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps most disturbingly, the just-world fallacy can cause people to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming">blame the victim</a> of a crime rather than the perpetrator, believing that they must have deserved it in some way since no visible justice was served. If a woman is raped, maybe she was "asking for it" by her choice of dress. In cases of spousal abuse, maybe she had done something wrong to warrant that treatment. It's a terrifying rationale, and one that we should be doing our best to eradicate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Religion is far from the sole factor here, but it certainly plays a role. When one believes that a god or other mystical force maintains perfect moral order in the universe, one has to explain injustices <i>somehow</i>. But by rationalizing horrible crimes and misfortunes, just-worlders throw a wrench into the already chaotic workings of <i>human</i> justice. Only when we realize that humanity alone is burdened with the task of punishing criminals and aiding victims can we hope to achieve a truly fair and equitable society.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-19858996935294041322013-01-14T19:02:00.001-08:002013-01-14T19:02:18.391-08:002012 in Review<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay, so 2012 wasn't exactly a banner year for Other Side Reflections in terms of activity—at least compared to the previous year, which is when I began blogging. 2011 had 170 posts while 2012 had only 39, and just eight of those came from the latter six months.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a number of reasons for that, including writing fatigue, lack of necessity, and moving on to other interests. Still, I do plan to update here now and then, and hopefully to at least match the level of activity I managed last year.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, here's an index of the posts I made in the last nine months of 2012, much as I've done <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/search/label/index">in the past</a>. Here are my posts from April:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/januarymarch-in-review.html">January–March in Review</a>: An index of the 20 posts from the year's first quarter</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/powerful-thoughts-vol-5.html">Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 5</a>: More skeptical quotes from great thinkers</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/born-at-wrong-time.html">Born at the Wrong Time</a>: Why is this the only time that God's not talking to us?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/uncertainty-of-intuition.html">The Uncertainty of Intuition</a>: This useful mental tool can also lead you astray</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-5-favorite-freethought-quotes.html">My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes</a>: Culled from my Powerful Thoughts series</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-ultimate-significance.html">On Ultimate Significance</a>: Does life still mean something if it will ultimately end?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/purpose-of-hell.html">The Purpose of Hell</a>: It fails to fulfill any of the various theories of justice</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From May through July:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/05/fun-with-memes.html">Fun With Memes</a>: They're silly, but can make their point in a concise, funny way</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/05/televangelists-con.html">The Televangelist's Con</a>: Analyzing a scammer I found while channel surfing</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/05/key-to-science.html">The Key to Science</a>: How a few simple steps can put the world at our fingertips</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/05/no-religious-test.html">No Religious Test</a>: 8 state constitutions discriminate against atheists holding office</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/07/shifting-focus.html">Shifting Focus</a>: Why I've been less active on the blog</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/07/political-sites-for-skeptics.html">Political Sites for Skeptics</a> (1/2): Fact-checkers, statisticians and other resources</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/07/but-its-not-hurting-anyone.html">But It's Not Hurting Anyone!</a>: 5 ways that snake oil harms our society</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And from the remainder of the year:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/08/political-sites-for-skeptics-part-2.html">Political Sites for Skeptics</a> (2/2): Informative voting databases, Snopes and more</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/10/while-were-young.html">While We're Young</a>: How Christianity is packaged into a slick production for kids</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/10/electoral-prediction-and-cognitive-bias.html">Electoral Prediction and Cognitive Bias</a>: Beware the rationalizations of politics</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/11/san-diego-new-atheists-agnostics-meetups.html">San Diego New Atheists & Agnostics Meetups</a>: Summary of two great events</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/12/problems-of-implementing-rationality.html">Problems of Implementing Rationality: Not Respecting Superstitions</a>: A guest post from Michael Caton of <a href="http://luckyatheist.blogspot.com/">The Lucky Atheist</a></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's not much, but what I did put out, I'm happy with.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-67269732548018556722012-12-15T17:56:00.000-08:002012-12-15T17:56:21.425-08:00Problems of Implementing Rationality: Not Respecting SuperstitionsIn my last post I <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/11/san-diego-new-atheists-agnostics-meetups.html">mentioned</a> that we might see a guest appearance from Mike of The Lucky Atheist, so without further ado, here it is. He expands on the ideas presented here in <a href="http://luckyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/12/sub-rationality-winning-when-other-game.html">this post</a> on his own blog.<br />
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<i>Thanks to Tim for letting me guest post. Here I'm posting about a particular problem of actually implementing rationality in your life. If this particular thought has crossed your mind before, I discuss a few others at my own blog, <a href="http://luckyatheist.blogspot.com/">The Lucky Atheist.</a></i><br />
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Atheism is one outcome of applying more rational thinking to everything in our lives. But humans are not pure rational creatures, and even though some of us see the practical, real benefits of applying good rationality habits to our own thinking, and trying to help others see those same benefits, there are coordination problems. We're not lone hunter-gatherers in the savannah, problem-solving our way to evading big cats or treating infections. Quite the contrary, the vast majority of your happiness and material well-being depends on other human beings, many of whom are irrational as all get-out! So the problem is how does an erstwhile rationalist optimize outcomes for her or himself, without being out of sync with the irrational human beings around them? (I call optimizing for the near-term for purposes of coordinating with irrational people "sub-rationality".)<br />
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Maybe the best example is how to handle particular superstitions. What if people that you depend on for a paycheck (or something) believe, or claim to believe, in God, or <a href="http://luckyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/12/fan-death-my-new-favorite-ridiculous.html">fan death</a>, or the evils of vaccinations? What do you do?<br />
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<li>Tell/show them why they're wrong.</li>
<li>Keep your mouth shut.</li>
<li>Say or do something to show loyalty to the idea even though you know it's BS.</li>
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To optimize your own outcome in the near term, it seems #2 or #3 should be the way to go; pay lip service to it or at least don't object, while not actually making decisions based on the belief. #1's risk ostracism, and even if convincing people of their folly is the goal, they may not even accomplish this. Granted, this may be a slippery slope, but it doesn't make the problems of implementing rationality disappear, and I'm posting these to look for solutions.<br />
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One problem is that if you do #1, and the superstition involves bad fortune, and something does happen to you, you know that superstitious people will all point to the superstition. "He walked under a ladder and got really sick that week. Well of course!" More generally though, it occurs in situations like these: you're hiking, and you knew damn well doesn't matter which trail you take, or you're working on some project and you know it doesn't matter which tool you use, which way you cook something, etc. But someone who thought s/he knew better (boss, friend, teacher, etc.) insisted that one of the two ways was superior. And you thought to yourself, "I have equal chances of success at this task with either method. And if I choose the method that the other person claims is inferior, and I fail, I will never ever hear the end of it. Since it doesn't matter, I'll just choose the method they prefer and be done with it." Rational in the near-term, but you just reinforced someone else's irrational belief about the task at hand.<br />
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Another point here is that of the three courses of action in the face of others' collective irrational beliefs, it seems that many or most of the #2's and 3's, i.e. people who don't object or even appear to go along with Superstition X, actually don't endorse it with their behavior, and in fact this often appears to be exactly the case. Do supposedly creationist Christians expect their insurance companies to give them a discount because more people are praying for them? Do they refuse to go to doctors trained in evolution? Do they refuse to invest their retirement money with mutual funds that buy shares of oil companies that operate based on secular old-Earth assumptions? (No doubt many of them do think they believe what they say they believe, but I'm sure there are plenty professing creationists who know it's nonsense and just like the benefits afforded by their church membership.)<br />
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The problem is that while you're optimizing for yourself in the near-term – and you really are – you're reinforcing the nonsense. Someone else who sees you mouthing the superstition in question thinks to him or herself, "Well, I better go along with it, because she just did too – and who am I to say it's not actually true?" Case in point: just last week I mentioned the difficulty with treating a patient who was ardently pro-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy">homeopathy</a>. The nurse sternly told me that so was she. (This, at UCSD!!!) Do you think I took this opportunity to lecture her on her irrationality? No. I'm a medical student, so I'm the lowest in the hierarchy anywhere I go. Not only would my #1 have not been received, I would have decreased my own utility in the process. So I did #2. Justification for my sub-rationality? So I can do a #1 when I'm an attending physician.Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-11264859447979883182012-11-28T23:58:00.002-08:002012-11-29T00:13:06.861-08:00San Diego New Atheists & Agnostics Meetups<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the past few weeks I've been to a couple of events hosted by the Meetup.com group <a href="http://www.meetup.com/san-diego-atheists-agnostics/">San Diego New Atheists and Agnostics</a>. One was earlier this evening: an informal five-on-five soccer match for which I was tragically unprepared. My lack of endurance running ability aside, though, I had a great time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nonbelievers of all stripes showed up, but what struck me about the meetup was how little about nonbelief it was. We had a short chat, warmed up a bit, and got right down to playing. In other contexts it might have been nice to talk at length about our common views on religion and theism. But in a way it was refreshing to see us come together, get some exercise and have some fun without having to frame it in terms of belief or lack thereof.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can read a summary of the other event, a presentation by Secular Coalition for America's executive director Edwina Rogers, in <a href="http://luckyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/11/wrap-up-edwina-rogers-from-sca-in-san.html">my guest post</a> over at The Lucky Atheist. I've written <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/07/two-rational-thought-sites.html">a bit</a> about this blog before, but to summarize, Mike Caton runs the only other active San Diego-based atheist/skeptic blog that I'm aware of, and he puts out good stuff. Hopefully we'll see a guest post from Mike over here at some point in the near future.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-21869415710703225302012-10-30T13:32:00.000-07:002012-11-29T00:10:01.460-08:00Electoral Prediction and Cognitive Bias<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the past couple of weeks, a startling number of pundits and commentators have been relentlessly attacking political statistician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver">Nate Silver</a> and his blog <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/">FiveThirtyEight</a>. Why? Because his electoral prediction model, which uses a mix of national polls, state polls, demographic information and economic data, calculates that Obama's chances of winning the election are slightly better than the convention wisdom suggests. At present, they're hovering at a little below 75 percent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nate has a great track record when it comes to predictions: In 2008, he called all 35 Senate races right, as well as 49 of 50 states for president. In 2010, he correctly called 34 of 37 Senate races and 36 of 37 governors' races. When he was wrong, the outcome was usually decided by a razor-thin margin. And his reasoning for this year's prediction is simple: Obama holds small leads in enough crucial swing states (e.g. Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa) to get him to the needed 270 electoral votes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the critics dismiss all that, declaring in a textbook case of 20–20 hindsight that those <i>other</i> predictions were a cakewalk, and <i>this</i> time is different. They <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/19/nate-silver-vs-the-world">whine</a> that Nate's biased because he's rooting for Obama (which never shows in his incredibly calm and even-handed commentary). They <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331192/nate-silver-s-flawed-model-josh-jordan">complain</a> that his poll weighting system is subjective and introduces bias (even though it's actually <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology">based</a> on objective measurements of poll recency, methodology and track record). And when all else fails, they <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/the-far-left-turns-to-nate-silver-for-wisdom-on-the-polls">mock him</a> as puny and effeminate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would be one thing if Nate was alone in making the forecast that he does... but he's not. The various prediction markets, which despite their flaws are usually pretty accurate, <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/oct-23-the-virtues-and-vices-of-election-prediction-markets">tend</a> to mirror his probability estimate very closely. And it turns out that his model is actually quite <i>generous</i> to Romney compared to <a href="http://election.princeton.edu/">other</a> <a href="http://votamatic.org/">competing</a> models of the same type.</span><br />
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So why have Nate's projections been subjected to such merciless criticism? For several reasons, none of which have anything to do with the merits of his model.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One is that the media has an incentive to portray elections as close—in this case, a virtual dead heat—so that people get excited and tune in for more coverage. So when someone comes along claiming that one candidate actually has a small but substantial lead, the public and the less-savvy pundits are naturally skeptical.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another reason comes down to the fact that people do a very poor job of grasping probabilities. Commentators hear Nate estimate a 75% chance of Obama winning and think, "Wow, he must be really sure of himself." That's certainly the impression Joe Scarborough gave when he <a href="http://gop12.thehill.com/2012/10/scarborough-fires-shot-at-nate-silvers.html">insisted</a> that Obama's chances were at 50.1%. But Nate's prediction isn't all that dramatic. What many fail to understand is that if you assign Event X a 75% probability of occurring, it means you <i>expect it to not happen</i> 25% of the time. In fact, if such events occur <i>more</i> often than three out of four times in the long run, you've made a very real error.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third and most glaring reason is a combination of wishful thinking and confirmation bias. Conservatives want very badly for Romney to win this election (or more to the point, for Obama to lose), so some will do anything to interpret the data as favorably as possible. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their most common defense is an allegation that the pollsters are (intentionally or not) oversampling Democrats—a claim based on the <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/poll-averages-have-no-history-of-consistent-partisan-bias">faulty assumption</a> that party identification is static, rather than fluid and subject to change in response to current events. Another is to hold polls favoring Obama to a higher methodological standard, while clinging uncritically to those favoring Romney, such as the <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-vs-the-world">overly volatile</a> Gallup tracking poll. Still another is to ignore polls altogether and point to less direct indicators, like an <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/gender-gap-near-historic-highs">alleged</a> closing of the gap between male and female voters or the candidates' favorability ratings. Yet one more is to claim, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/09/25/dick_morris_s_hilariously_dumb_misunderstanding_of_the_incumbent_rule_.html">baselessly</a>, that undecided voters break dramatically against the incumbent. Anything to keep the dream alive.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-88cV9coI-js/UJA3WBgM63I/AAAAAAAAAf0/vZ1AiAwU4Mg/s1600/Morris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-88cV9coI-js/UJA3WBgM63I/AAAAAAAAAf0/vZ1AiAwU4Mg/s1600/Morris.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meet the man who <a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2005/09/16/dick_morris_tells_hannity_and_colmes_why_katrina_is_a_happy_hurricane_for_bush.php">thought</a> Bush's response to Katrina</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">would be his crowning achievement.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, the more cynical conservative pundits may be consciously biasing their predictions. They have an incentive to tell their audience what they want to hear—Republicans who want to be reassured will look to them for certainty. Dick Morris, for instance, has such a <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/11/09/dick-morris-needs-a-new-crystal-ball/173089">catastrophic</a> track record of predicting GOP victories that it's hard to imagine he's anything but an opportunist looking to get more attention and sell more books.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, before any staunch liberals out there get too cocky about the follies of their counterparts across the aisle, I should point out that this mindset is by no means limited to one party or ideology. In 2004, Democrats were <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-blumenthal/unskewed-polls_b_1924293.html">guilty</a> of groundlessly criticizing poll oversampling just as Republicans are today. And a quick perusal of the comments on Nate's blog posts will reveal many left-leaning readers expressing far more confidence in Obama's chances than is warranted by the data. Many of his acolytes also seem to follow the blog just to pacify their anxieties rather than to follow the data wherever it leads. So no matter what your politics, beware of how your biases influence your views and expectations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now I leave you with one final prediction. If Romney wins, you can bet that all the critics will be crowing with triumph and declaring the demise of FiveThirtyEight. But if Nate turns out to be right, you can bet those same critics will brush it off as a fluke, blaming voter fraud or Hurricane Sandy or anything else they can think of to resolve their cognitive dissonance, in much the same way that a cult will <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/05/may-21-aftermath.html">rationalize</a> its failed doomsday predictions.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-53726598331695826732012-10-18T07:30:00.000-07:002012-10-20T22:46:15.774-07:00While We're Young<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was going through all the ancient stuff I had buried at the bottom of my desk drawers and came across this:</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sdsZ0103uUI/UH-cDPU0idI/AAAAAAAAAeY/M-nINZEpzXc/s1600/Envelope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sdsZ0103uUI/UH-cDPU0idI/AAAAAAAAAeY/M-nINZEpzXc/s400/Envelope.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's a letter from my former church congratulating me on <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-conversion-story.html">becoming a Christian</a>, from way back in July of '96. I was seven at the time.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seems so innocuous, doesn't it? They were so glad to welcome me into the fold. They assured me I had made the right choice, a vital choice, renewing the sense of relief I had from avoiding damnation. They invited me to the</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Clubhouse—the name has that enticing air of exclusiveness about it.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Actually, they didn't invite me: the subtle use of "when" made it a foregone conclusion that I would attend. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tell your parents what time you want to come, they suggested. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">H</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ave fun, watch puppet shows, sing songs. </span>And oh, by the way, bring your friends!</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It really was fun. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They put on an engaging production in the church auditorium, surprisingly polished for a kid's program. There were engrossing quiz games, props and puppets flying everywhere, funny voiceovers over the loudspeaker—more like watching an interactive play than attending a sermon. The stuff for older kids was considerably more dry and dull, but they really knew how to reel in the six-to-ten crowd. They understood the importance of grabbing our attention from a young age.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm probably making all this sound too sinister. I can only assume that these were genuinely nice people with pure intentions. The goal was not to snare hapless children in some nefarious trap. But when good people are misguided, when they're incredibly motivated, when they have years and decades and centuries to hone their sales pitch, when their target audience still believes in the tooth fairy... well, it's not exactly a fair fight.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-88765131463361017962012-08-28T07:31:00.000-07:002012-08-28T07:31:00.066-07:00Political Sites for Skeptics, Part 2<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I forgot a few key resources in <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/07/political-sites-for-skeptics.html">my previous post</a> about neutral and/or skeptical political sites. So, without further ado...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two of these sites are <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm">On The Issues</a> and <a href="http://procon.org/">ProCon.org</a>. These resources list the political stances of politicians and commentators in a simple and straightforward way. To do so, they use their legislative voting record as well as direct quotations from speeches and books. Here are On The Issues' pages for <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm">Obama</a>, <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/joe_biden.htm">Biden</a>, <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Mitt_Romney.htm">Romney</a>, his newly-selected VP candidate <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Ryan.htm/">Paul Ryan</a>, and the main third-party candidate, libertarian <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Gary_Johnson.htm">Gary Johnson</a>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ProCon compares six presidential candidates' answers to 61 questions in <a href="http://2012election.procon.org/view.source-summary-chart.php">this handy chart</a>. (They also have some good, even-handed information on other controversial issues at their <a href="http://www.procon.org/">main page</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there are the "transparency" sources. Most people lump politicians in with the likes of lawyers and used car salesmen in terms of honesty and integrity, but it's often hard to know exactly where their loyalties lie. </span><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OpenSecrets</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> goes a long way toward solving that problem by posting detailed information about what special interest groups are donating to whom—for example, SOPA author Lamar Smith's <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00001811&type=I">media-based donors</a>. Their side-by-side <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/head2head.php">comparison</a> of the two presidential candidates is also quite nice. <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/">GovTrack</a> is useful for keeping track of the voting records of various legislators—<a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/paul_ryan/400351">Paul Ryan's</a>, for instance. <a href="http://maplight.org/">MapLight</a> is another potentially useful site that combines the latter two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally—and I have no idea how I could forget this one—there's Snopes. Sure, they tackle every subject under the sun, but they have a <a href="http://snopes.com/politics/politics.asp">specific page</a> dedicated to politics, and even separate subsections for <a href="http://snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp">Obama</a> and <a href="http://snopes.com/politics/romney/romney.asp">Romney</a>. There are a ton of rumors about Obama that have bubbled up over the past five or so years, and the vast majority of the ones tackled here are exposed for the sensationalist nonsense they are. Barbara and David Mikkelson do a great job researching and running the site, and their work in these areas mainly serve to highlight how immensely unreliable political chain emails tend to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Politics today is so vicious and partisan that finding reliable, neutral information is nearly impossible. It's hard for me to form opinions when so many sources present their information through the lens of their personal worldviews. With the help of the sites I've covered here, though, I feel like I have a fighting chance of distinguishing vested narrative from objective truth.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-4290438267081217102012-07-24T18:43:00.001-07:002012-08-04T16:16:29.043-07:00But It's Not Hurting Anyone!<div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dtqRYVjX25E/UA4PzzkCr2I/AAAAAAAAAc0/rpP9NsYDbgg/s1600/Snake-oil.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dtqRYVjX25E/UA4PzzkCr2I/AAAAAAAAAc0/rpP9NsYDbgg/s1600/Snake-oil.png" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What we have here in the title is perhaps the most common objection skeptics receive when we criticize an scientifically unproven "alternative" treatment. Those who utter this treacherous phrase usually do so with the best of intentions. The only problem is, they're almost always wrong.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The harm caused by snake oil treatments isn't necessarily obvious in every case. Disasters happen now and again, but usually the effects are very subtle. Here are some reasons, in general, why buying treatments of unproven efficacy would be a bad thing.</span></div>
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<ol><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ineffective treatments <b>fail to prevent suffering</b>. While patients may still benefit from the placebo effect, that effect is also present for treatments that really work. Snake oil wastes precious time that could have been spent actually treating the patient's ailments.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The chance of <b>harmful side effects on the user</b>. <a href="http://whatstheharm.net/acupuncture.html">Acupuncture</a>, for example, can expose people to serious infections, while <a href="http://whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">detoxing</a> can cause severe malnutrition. Naturally, scientific treatments can have side effects as well, but those that are approved for public use are well documented, and their benefits have been conclusively shown to outweigh their risks.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The chance of <b>harmful side effects on the environment</b>. For example, many remedies in Traditional Chinese Medicine are made from the body parts of rare animals like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros#Horns">rhinoceros horns</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_penis">tiger penises</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_bile">bear bile</a>. This can cause these animals to suffer unnecessarily, or to be hunted to endangerment and even extinction. This has far-reaching consequences not just for an individual species, but potentially for an entire ecosystem. </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Money is being wasted</b> on companies who contribute nothing to society. Not only does this discourage the researchers and manufacturers from pursuing other more productive careers, but they will also use that money to market new brands of snake oil, perpetuating a cycle of medical ignorance.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conversely, <b>that money <i>isn't</i> going to more rigorous companies</b>. This is money that <i>could</i> have been used for new and even <i>more</i> effective treatments, advancing medical science to new heights. </span>And when science-based researchers and manufacturers are deprived of much-needed funding, they're that slight amount more likely to go out of business altogether.</li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again, the damage caused by the purchase of a single alternative supplement is usually very small. But just as the seemingly insignificant votes of individuals can decide the fate of entire nations, those purchases add up to create entire industries of harmful "alternative" treatments. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance">Power Balance</a> bracelet contributes to a culture of scientific illiteracy that we should be trying our utmost to break away from.</span></div>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-89667705343620952732012-07-17T07:37:00.000-07:002013-01-14T18:44:36.981-08:00Political Sites for Skeptics<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not going to delve <i>too</i> far into political issues with this blog. But since skepticism is a big part of what I write about here, I thought I'd take a few minutes to present some of the online resources I would recommend for skeptics to use when following politics.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If verifying political claims is your goal, both <a href="http://www.politifact.com/">PolitiFact</a> and <a href="http://factcheck.com/">FactCheck</a> are invaluable resources. I especially like PolitiFact for its quick Truth-O-Meter ratings. Both parties tend to champion the sites when it supports them or attack them as biased when it doesn't—in other words, politics as usual. I won't claim that these sources are "true neutral," as that's difficult if not impossible to come by, but if they have a secret plot to further one side over the other, they've done a great job hiding it. Unfortunately, the sites are far from comprehensive. Apparently thorough, balanced reporting actually takes some time and effort—who knew?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As far as political discussion forums go... well, there's <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/12/advanced-redditing.html">a subreddit</a> for everything these days. I generally steer clear of the hard-left sensationalism of r/politics, in favor of smaller and more thought-provoking places like <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/2012Elections/">r/2012elections</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion">r/PoliticalDiscussion</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics">r/ModeratePolitics</a> and <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics">r/NeutralPolitics</a>. The first is highly topical, while the second is an open space for talking about every political idea under the sun. Even if you're not a moderate, chances are you'll still enjoy the latter two, as the focus is on civil discussion instead of creating an echo chamber. I like to view these four in unison as <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/ModeratePolitics+NeutralPolitics+PoliticalDiscussion+2012Elections">a single multireddit</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Want predictions and polling numbers? <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html">RealClearPolitics</a> does a decent job of compiling the national figures, but <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/">FiveThirtyEight</a> is the best source for polling data and data-driven political analysis I've found. It's run by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver">Nate Silver</a>, a professional statistician with an amazing track record of correct election predictions—49 of 50 states in the 2008 elections, for example. His model for predicting the 2012 outcome pulls in (among other things) virtually every state poll in the country and even corrects for systemic biases (e.g. <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/notes-on-poll-watching-as-shift-toward-general-election-season-begins/">registered versus likely voters</a>). And his daily blog posts probe the nuances of political science in a completely detached, non-partisan tone. If you want to know who's going to without all the wishful thinking and daily gossip, this is your place.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, I'll end with a decidedly <i>partisan</i> source: <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/">RightWingWatch</a>. While there are unquestionably plenty of fringe wingnuts on the left (and let me know if you know of any reputable sites that compile madness on that side of the aisle), I'm including this one mainly due to its exemplary coverage of the extreme religious right. There are people in relatively influential positions who say <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beware-insidious-agenda-click-clack-moo-cows-type">things</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/creationists-warn-teaching-evolution-leads-homosexual-indoctrination">which</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-life-begins-before-conception">are</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rep-trent-franks-calls-marriage-equality-threat-nations-survival">absolutely</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pastor-dennis-terry-introduces-rick-santorum-tells-liberals-and-non-christians-get-out">bonkers</a>, but would fly under everyone's radar if RWW didn't cover it. They'll have a sensationalized headline now and then, but on the whole their reporting is an accurate portrayal of just how radical the fundamentalist faction of politics can be.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being a skeptic with regard to the supernatural is relatively straightforward—it's just a matter of waiting until some phenomenon with sufficient evidence comes along. With politics it's a lot harder. To take a proactive stance on positions that have real impacts on millions of people is no small task—especially when the few objective facts available, are massaged and twisted beyond recognition. It's such a vicious and insular culture that keeping up can be exhausting, but with the help of these resources, I can at least be confident that I'm not <i>completely</i> in the dark.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-32492094217536864612012-07-10T08:22:00.000-07:002012-07-10T08:22:00.257-07:00Shifting Focus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I haven't written anything here in a while now—seven weeks, to be precise. There are a few reasons for that. One is a reduction in free time now that I have a full-time job on my plate. Another, frankly, is laziness. I still have a decent amount of free time, but I spend far too much of it on television and internet browsing. But perhaps most importantly, the original purpose of this blog has been accomplished: I've laid out in some detail why I'm no longer a Christian, and I'm (partially) out as an atheist.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, what now?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, ever since I created this blog at the beginning of 2011, the subheading has been "My Reasons for Leaving Christianity." At the time I came up with it, I didn't yet consider myself an atheist yet—that happened <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-it-means-to-say-im-atheist.html">a few months later</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But at this point I have more than enough reasons for leaving the religion I was born into. Despite my lingering </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-pro-christian-bias.html">bias towards Christianity</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, I feel I should be shifting focus a bit now that I really have migrated fully to the other side. And just what </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>is</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> the other side, anyway? Well, that's now answered explicitly in my new blog tagline:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Leaving Christianity and Embracing Skepticism</b></i></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although I call myself an atheist, it doesn't mean very much in itself to "embrace" atheism. It's only a stance on a single question, so I wanted a more positive and encompassing term to describe myself. I would also consider myself a freethinker and possibly a humanist, but "skeptic" really captures the basis of what I think atheism should be rooted in: applying proper standards of evidence equally to <i>all</i> claims, not just theistic ones.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll still have plenty of criticism for Christianity here—after all, it makes sense to stick with what I know. But the harm religion causes is just a small part of the harm caused by credulity in general. Fundamentally, it's the notion that belief can be justified without sufficient evidence that opens the door to belief in everything from <a href="http://whatstheharm.net/vaccinedenial.html">vaccine denialism</a> to <a href="http://whatstheharm.net/faithhealing.html">faith healing</a> to <a href="http://whatstheharm.net/repressedmemories.html">repressed memory therapy</a>. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So sometimes I'll be delving into a skeptical topic that's unrelated to any religious theme. But it'll all be for the same basic purpose: to help, in my own small way, to build a more informed and rational world.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the past I've also tried to funnel my efforts into very detailed and involved posts. But that high bar has been a big part of my drop in motivation, and I'd rather have shorter, simpler posts than none at all. That doesn't necessarily mean a drop in quality; it just means that the deep analyses will be interspersed with pithier observations.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With these two changes, I hope to start posting a bit more often. Welcome to the next chapter of Reflections from the Other Side!</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-18078622827868636452012-05-29T21:12:00.002-07:002012-05-29T21:30:58.578-07:00No Religious Test<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8QvQh52Nrso/T8Wcdbzi5vI/AAAAAAAAAcA/UfqLdynEjR8/s1600/Constitution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8QvQh52Nrso/T8Wcdbzi5vI/AAAAAAAAAcA/UfqLdynEjR8/s200/Constitution.jpg" width="165" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Religious_Test_Clause">No Religious Test Clause</a> of the U.S. Constitution says that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Yet remarkably, no less than eight of our state constitutions either give theists preferential treatment or single out atheists to deny them the right to hold office:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arkansas – <a href="http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/Summary/ArkansasConstitution1874.pdf">Article 19, Sec. 1</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No person who <b>denies the being of a God</b> shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maryland – <a href="http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/00dec.html">Article 37</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of <b>belief in the existence of God</b>[.]</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mississippi – <a href="http://www.mscode.com/msconst/14/14-265.html">Article 14, Sec. 265</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No person who <b>denies the existence of a Supreme Being</b> shall hold any office in this state.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">North Carolina – <a href="http://www.ncleg.net/Legislation/constitution/article6.html">Article 6, Sec. 8</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following persons shall be disqualified for office: Any person who shall <b>deny the being of Almighty God</b>.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pennsylvania – <a href="http://sites.state.pa.us/PA_Constitution.html">Article 1, Sec. 4</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No person who <b>acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments</b> shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">South Carolina – <a href="http://www.scstatehouse.gov/scconstitution/a17.php">Article 17, Sec. 4</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No person who <b>denies the existence of a Supreme Being</b> shall hold any office under this Constitution.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tennessee – <a href="http://www.state.tn.us/sos/bluebook/05-06/46-tnconst.pdf">Article 9, Sec. 2</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No person who <b>denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments</b>, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Texas – <a href="http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm">Article 1, Sec. 4</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the <b>existence of a Supreme Being</b>.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a few things worth noting here. One is that Maryland and South Carolina have overturned their clauses (although they're still on the books). Another is the bias toward classical monotheism baked into the wording: in most of these clauses it's taken for granted that one god exists who's superior to all other beings. A third is that Pennsylvania and Tennessee also focus on belief in "a future state of rewards and punishments"—which throws deists out in the cold <a href="http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm">along with</a> Taoists, Shintoists and many Jews. Finally, Arkansas' constitution doesn't even allow atheists to testify as court witnesses. But this <i>is</i> Arkansas we're talking about, so maybe we're just lucky there's no law saying we need to be shot on sight.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As bigoted as these provisions are, they're thankfully superseded by the federal Constitution. But that doesn't mean they've never caused any harm. In 1961, Roy Torcaso's appointment as a notary public was revoked after he refused to declare a belief in God. The case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcaso_v._Watkins"><i>Torcaso v. Watkins</i></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> went all the way to the Supreme Court, which unanimously struck down Maryland's religious test clause. But that was 50 years ago. Surely we've grown as a nation since then, right? Well, virtually the same thing happened in 1992 when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverman_v._Campbell">Herb Silverman</a> crossed "so help me God" off of his oath to become a notary in South Carolina. And in 2009 </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Bothwell">Cecil Bothwell</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was elected to the city council in Asheville, North Carolina—but not without a group of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091208/NEWS01/912080327/Critics-Cecil-Bothwell-cite-N-C-bar-atheists">vocal opponents</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> trying to bar him from office and sending out fliers fearmongering over his unbelief.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's important to remember, too, that highly-publicized prejudice is not the only form of harm that can come from clauses like these. A</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">lthough they have no real legal weight, fundamentalists can still use them as ammunition to intimidate would-be public servants. For every atheist who runs for office, how many aspire to but decide against it due to a wall of opposition that's both institutional and societal? Striking these intolerant words from our governing documents wouldn't instantly erase the <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/05/whos-really-being-persecuted.html">deep-seated prejudice</a> that Americans have against atheists in politics—but it <i>would</i> be show that we're ready to give them a chance.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-7600002039957855662012-05-17T22:04:00.001-07:002012-07-09T00:35:50.992-07:00The Key to Science<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman">Richard Feynman</a> explaining science in 63 seconds:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/b240PGCMwV0" width="480"></iframe></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's so simple. It's so incredibly, impossibly simple. I liked Feynman's explanation so much that I converted it into flowchart form:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Using this unassuming little method is like following a compass when lost in the wilderness. Despite constant opportunities to veer off course, science keeps you on the right track by forcing your assumptions to adhere to objective reality.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Each step of the process is crucial. If you don't make any guesses, you live in a world devoid of any truth claims. If you don't make predictions, your truth claims are useless. If you don't test those predictions, you'll never know if they're wrong. And if they're wrong but you keep them anyway instead of starting afresh, you'll be operating on potentially harmful false assumptions—and any assumptions built on top of them will probably be false as well.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's such a remarkably simple heuristic, yet it seems so hard to instill into people as a fundamental value. Why is that? Maybe it's because it seems cold and harsh to unceremoniously toss our cherished ideas out the window when they turn out to be wrong. It's often easier to just go on believing what you've always believed, and sometimes false beliefs just <i>appeal</i> to us more than the truth.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is where a solid science education ought to come in, but things often go wrong at some point along the way. When I was in grade school, we learned about the scientific method and even used it to do experiments in class. But we were never really shown the deep significance behind the process—how it allows fields like aeronautics and genetics to flourish in just a few decades, while astrology and faith healing spin fruitlessly in circles for millennia. This basic system, carefully honed through advancements like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment">double-blinding</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing">significance testing</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review">peer review</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_(scientific_method)">replication</a>, ensures that the map of our knowledge matches the territory of reality. And once we can easily navigate the known world, we can set out for parts unknown, on a voyage to fill in the farthest reaches of the map.</span></div>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-27952808956929906142012-05-07T07:48:00.000-07:002012-05-07T13:08:41.324-07:00The Televangelist's Con<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s-4RFEdHja4/T6eVemeAD4I/AAAAAAAAAao/XjGLH9IqEI0/s1600/Murdock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s-4RFEdHja4/T6eVemeAD4I/AAAAAAAAAao/XjGLH9IqEI0/s200/Murdock.jpg" width="161" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I was channel flipping last night when I came across a televangelist by the name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Murdock">Mike Murdock</a>. At first I thought he was just preaching some gimmicky message about "the five wisdom keys," but after a couple of minutes I realized that he was peddling his personal brand of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology">prosperity theology</a>. What you give to God, Murdock said, he will return to you <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10:28-30&version=NKJV">a hundredfold</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He repeatedly referred to this as "planting a seed," and used his own life as an alleged example. He'd had only a few thousand dollars to his name and given most of it away, when suddenly strangers approached him with expensive gifts: a rare vintage car, a $10,000 check, a luxury van. H</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">is premise doesn't even make mathematical sense: if everyone receives dramatically more than they give, where's it all coming from? Is God stealing it from the non-givers or something? It's all nothing more than a religious Ponzi scheme, one invented wholesale simply to jump-start the first layer of the investment pyramid.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Then came the actual requests for cash: Murdock urged viewers to get up from the sofa and plant their $1,000 seed. You sometimes hear about the questionable practices televangelists employ, but it's a bit surreal to watch one of them gaze right into the eyes of the home audience to ever-so-fervently bilk them out of their hard-earned money. Interestingly, I never heard any specific information about where the money would go. Both in his TV sales pitch and on <a href="http://www.thewisdomcenter.tv/">his horribly garish website</a>, he says only that it goes toward "spreading the gospel." Sounds awfully fishy—and sure enough, it turns out that he spends most of the donations <a href="http://austin.ynn.com/content/headlines/63283/evangelist-spends-most-charitable-donations-on-himself">on himself</a>. Less than <i>one percent</i> goes to charity.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Murdock specifically makes people in financial trouble the targets of his exploitation. He promises that your debt will vanish, that you'll make your mortgage payment, if only you plant your seed. He's intent on wringing <a href="http://www.trinityfi.org/press/murdock03.html">every last coin</a> out of them:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Maybe you've got money in a closet somewhere, in a coin collection, in stocks and bonds. I don't know where you're going to get it, but <i>you</i> know."</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One last bit of abuse that really made my jaw drop was his promise of "household salvation." He said that after one woman had promised to write him a check, the Holy Spirit had come to him and said:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Tell her that because she's planted a seed to spread the gospel, every member of her family will be saved."</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All those who planted the seed, Murdock said, could receive this wonderful blessing as a "fourth harvest" in the next 90 days. The words "insane" and "despicable" come to mind, but don't even begin to describe what this man is doing. When someone says, 'Give me money and your loved ones will receive eternal reward,' they've arguably splintered off from Christianity and started their own personal cult.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At first I considered the possibility that Murdock could actually believe what he was saying. But the more I read about his history, the more obvious it was that he's motivated by pure greed. He's taken full advantage of an environment that eschews skepticism and critical thinking in favor of miraculous stories and emotional appeals. My guess is that as soon as he steps off that stage, he's laughing all the way to the bank.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-72933251037278608192012-05-02T08:31:00.000-07:002012-05-04T08:38:47.115-07:00Fun With Memes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism">r/atheism</a> subreddit is often overrun with image-based memes that satirize Christianity. I have no problem with the memes in themselves—ideas are not inherently deserving of respect, and humor is often a good way to approach the more ridiculous ones—but they tend to get pretty repetitive and the logic doesn't always make sense. I usually spend more time in one of the reddit's many <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/12/advanced-redditing.html">alternatives</a> to r/atheism, but here I'd like to share a few of the memes that I actually <i>did</i> enjoy.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a general rule, these memes tend to point out an inconsistency with some facet of Christianity. They're nothing groundbreaking, but they do get their point across in a concise, funny and sometimes unconventional way. I'll start with a few choice sayings from <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/advice-god">the big man</a> himself:</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZD2heUwXGFY/T587engragI/AAAAAAAAAYg/CmFVn945KJ0/s1600/Hurricane+Gays.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZD2heUwXGFY/T587engragI/AAAAAAAAAYg/CmFVn945KJ0/s200/Hurricane+Gays.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UqMEQ_yXaIs/T587XtBZazI/AAAAAAAAAYY/CW7_HhIYCPo/s1600/God+Interference.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UqMEQ_yXaIs/T587XtBZazI/AAAAAAAAAYY/CW7_HhIYCPo/s200/God+Interference.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ahmk2lMmwCw/T588MM1ufsI/AAAAAAAAAYw/QqFeyEYVvLg/s1600/God+Saves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ahmk2lMmwCw/T588MM1ufsI/AAAAAAAAAYw/QqFeyEYVvLg/s200/God+Saves.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scumbag-christian">Scumbag Christian</a> meme focuses on apparent hypocrisies common among Christians themselves. It features particularly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck">obtuse</a> fundamentalist Kirk Cameron wearing the <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scumbag-x-scumbag-hat">Scumbag Hat</a> as its primary inspiration:</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oOKvRa1Pfmg/T589py8H2-I/AAAAAAAAAY4/CoYlXESd_vk/s1600/Mature+Atheists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oOKvRa1Pfmg/T589py8H2-I/AAAAAAAAAY4/CoYlXESd_vk/s200/Mature+Atheists.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b-9hIQ3v1BE/T5_1CgH3hNI/AAAAAAAAAZI/n-vnoUVpjDg/s1600/Crucifixion+Death+Penalty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b-9hIQ3v1BE/T5_1CgH3hNI/AAAAAAAAAZI/n-vnoUVpjDg/s200/Crucifixion+Death+Penalty.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/philosoraptor">Philosoraptor</a> may use some unusual reasoning to reach his conclusions, but he often does have a good point to make:</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lJcLbS3Co3k/T5_165yuALI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/biEd_r8K2C8/s1600/Picking+Bible+Parts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lJcLbS3Co3k/T5_165yuALI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/biEd_r8K2C8/s200/Picking+Bible+Parts.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XV_bYmYG_UE/T5_18zg_33I/AAAAAAAAAZY/JmjLpqdPgJ0/s1600/Prayer+Murder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XV_bYmYG_UE/T5_18zg_33I/AAAAAAAAAZY/JmjLpqdPgJ0/s200/Prayer+Murder.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-32YLAgrCzgw/T6AAW2h1LZI/AAAAAAAAAaE/t4-W2hQp1Ws/s1600/Atheist+Possession.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-32YLAgrCzgw/T6AAW2h1LZI/AAAAAAAAAaE/t4-W2hQp1Ws/s200/Atheist+Possession.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And here's <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/condescending-wonka-creepy-wonka">Condescending Wonka</a> to raise a few final issues in his lovably patronizing tone:</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eKOeIdpDE9M/T5__6-TYaXI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/J-qFIWp0m2g/s1600/Flu+Evolution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eKOeIdpDE9M/T5__6-TYaXI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/J-qFIWp0m2g/s200/Flu+Evolution.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fwe59Clc3n0/T5__8wzR4MI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/gHdSZxK46Lw/s1600/Bible+Context.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fwe59Clc3n0/T5__8wzR4MI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/gHdSZxK46Lw/s200/Bible+Context.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w9BscksCEWc/T5_3hjvI8JI/AAAAAAAAAZo/TpPWteJEdLE/s1600/Religion+Coincidence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w9BscksCEWc/T5_3hjvI8JI/AAAAAAAAAZo/TpPWteJEdLE/s200/Religion+Coincidence.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you like these, there are hundreds more in the <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAtheists">r/AdviceAtheists</a> subreddit. Personally, though, I think of them as I would a particularly rich dessert: slightly nauseating when consumed too often, but delightful in moderation.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-10403330233485312792012-04-30T11:44:00.000-07:002012-07-09T00:27:06.436-07:00The Purpose of Hell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m8PZJk52aqk/T564N86BLaI/AAAAAAAAAYM/7MfkTpSQlPE/s1600/Hell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m8PZJk52aqk/T564N86BLaI/AAAAAAAAAYM/7MfkTpSQlPE/s200/Hell.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone agrees that criminals should be punished, but what many people don't realize is that there are several different theories about why punishing criminals is a good idea. Here I'll examine whether any of these penal theories apply to an eternal punishment in hell. I'll assume in this post, purely for the sake of argument, that unbelief is in <i>some</i> way a bad thing. But even granting this, what we find is that these five rationales either don't apply in the case of the Christian God punishing us in hell, or imply that some other punishment would be more just.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first reason that one might be justified in punishing a wrongdoer is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology)">rehabilitation</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">—punishment for the purpose of morally improving the criminal. But since people stay in hell forever, anything they might learn to better themselves could never be put to use. At most it would result in morally upright people suffering forever, which is clearly even worse than if hell was only filled with the unrepentant.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's also <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice">restoration</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">—punishment for the sake of repairing the damage resulting from the crime. But there's no reason to think that suffering endlessly in outer darkness would benefit God or any other possible victims in the slightest—unless we label God a sadist, who takes pleasure in our boundless pain. In fact, if we take at face value the apologist's claim that God is quite upset about having to punish us, hell seems to work <i>against</i> restorative justice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(legal)">deterrence</a>, which is intended to prevent crimes from being committed in the first place. Perhaps hell is a way to bully people into obedience. But there are two problems with this: First, given that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations">70%</a> of people on earth are non-Christians, the threat of the Christian hell has been largely ineffective at the global scale. Second, by attempting to threaten people into genuine belief when in fact belief is not generally a choice, this form of justice would fall into <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/06/death-of-pascals-wager.html">the same trap</a> as Pascal's Wager.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fourth is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incapacitation_(penology)">incapacitation</a>, or punishment for the sake of protecting potential victims from further harm. If believers are the victims here, hell <i>would</i> keep the evil heathens from corrupting them—but there are other ways to do this that don't involve excess suffering. If God is supposed to be the victim, it's unclear how hell is "protecting" him from unbelievers. Presumably he isn't so fragile that unbelief or even rebellion would cause him the slightest amount of harm. Perhaps rebellion harms God in some emotional sense. But in that case, hell is once again totally counterproductive: it's the perfect way to stir up even <i>more</i> resentment against him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, the crudest and most basic reason for punishing wrongdoers is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retributive_justice">retribution</a>: the idea that evil deeds inherently deserve to be punished, <i>apart from any tangible benefits</i> that will result from such punishment. This may <i>feel</i> like an appropriate reaction, but it's really nothing more than barbaric, institutionalized revenge. What some perceive as punishment for the sake of some idealized "pure justice" is actually a combination of the other rationales listed above. Even if we accepted retribution as a legitimate penal theory, though, it still wouldn't justify hell. Retributive justice carries with it a sense of proportion: the punishment must fit the crime, and eternal punishment for even the tiniest sin certainly doesn't qualify in that sense.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There really is no justification at all for hell as a punishment. This is true because many sins are essentially victimless crimes, and because eternal punishment for sin</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> results in no benefit to any party. However, apologists sometimes sneak around this by saying that <a href="http://www.christiananswers.net/q-grace/hell-and-god.html">hell is a choice</a>: if we willfully reject God, he grants our wish by taking us to a place where we can be completely separate from him. Nonsense. He could accomplish the same thing by simply snuffing out our existence altogether, and avoid all the unnecessary suffering. This would serve as a perfect form of incapacitation (it's impossible to cause any further harm) as well as a more reasonable form of retribution (more proportionate with the perceived crime).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One last defense apologists occasionally give is to claim both that retributive justice is valid and that hell is a proportionate punishment, because our crime has somehow caused infinite offense against God's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=98IGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA576&lpg=PA576&dq=god+%22infinite+dignity%22+hell&source=bl&ots=zd1HLsqKk_&sig=onJlbjaypi9ciwR8w1kkiFQ_l-o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=n_ajT8qEG6SQiQK_3oG-Aw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=god%20%22infinite%20dignity%22%20hell&f=false">infinite dignity</a>. Ridiculous. The relevant factor is not dignity, but actual harm. A crime against a king would deserve no more punishment than the same crime against a peasant. If the king threw a fit, demanding the culprit's execution due to some abstract violation of dignity, we would rightly label him a tyrant. If anything, the more power this king has and the more severe his demanded punishment, the more petty and unjust he becomes.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hell is not only useless as a punishment according to most penal theories, but also highly unjust and even counterproductive. The onus is on Christians to show that this unending punishment can somehow be justified, and they certainly have their work cut out for them.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-57865599333520726832012-04-24T07:54:00.000-07:002012-04-26T08:18:56.513-07:00On Ultimate Significance<div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O0m695GilB4/T5YHLY9KhrI/AAAAAAAAAXo/9FJ2PU7UzEQ/s1600/Sandcastle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O0m695GilB4/T5YHLY9KhrI/AAAAAAAAAXo/9FJ2PU7UzEQ/s320/Sandcastle.jpg" width="288" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/81195835@N00/2729763736">It's only a matter of time.</a></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have you ever made a sandcastle near the ocean shore at low tide, knowing that it would soon be erased by the waves? It probably happens thousands of times every day. Kids (and kids at heart) carefully craft the moat and courtyard, drizzle a spire of wet sand on each lofty tower, stand back to admire their work. All while keeping in the back of their mind a solemn understanding that all good things must come to an end.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, it may not even occur to the youngest beach builders that their efforts will be washed away. They work with such determination that the incoming surf takes them by surprise. When the water finally crashes through their frantic attempts at a defensive wall, they can only watch and mourn the ruins of their once-mighty fortress. But even for these naïve castle-makers, their sorrow at the destruction of their castle does not outweigh the satisfaction they got from creating it. If you asked them, most would say it was all worthwhile.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those who believe in eternal life sometimes wonder how the rest of us can live with the fact that it's all going to end someday. Even if we could use technology to achieve biological immortality, we would still ultimately be limited by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe">heat death of the universe</a> in roughly 10<sup>100</sup> years. So, they ask, what's the point of trudging along each day if it's all futile and meaningless in the grand scheme of things?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To which I answer: Why build that sandcastle?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because you enjoy it while it lasts. Because you treasure the memory as long as you can. Because its very impermanence is what makes it so special.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Further, I put it to them: What is it about the prospect of eternity that imbues our existence with meaning? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't see how the mere existence of an endpoint in any way negates our current actions, or how the lack of one is needed to validate them.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In fact, the more you start really thinking about <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/04/conceptualizing-eternity.html">what really eternity means</a>, the harder it is to imagine it as anything other than a fate worse than death. If you lived for another 10<sup>1,000</sup> years, you'd probably be too busy going mad with boredom to think back on how significant your life was 10<sup>1,000</sup> years ago.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Savor your life in the here and now—everything, from your fast food burger to your wedding day. If not for you, then out of respect for all those who will never get to. Because out of the countless quadrillions of people that could have been born to live a short life on this little blue planet, <i>you are here</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You are here</i> to gaze up at the stars and ponder your kinship with the universe. Be glad that you can reflect on the past, relish the present and make your mark on the future. And even though that mark will eventually be washed away in the waves of time, be grateful.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be grateful, because you didn't have to be here—but you <i>are</i>.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-37710320080635593762012-04-22T19:14:00.001-07:002012-07-09T01:34:02.533-07:00My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that I've done five installments <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/05/powerful-thoughts.html">of</a> <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/08/powerful-thoughts-vol-2.html">my</a> <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/11/powerful-thoughts-vol-3.html">Powerful</a> <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/03/powerful-thoughts-vol-4.html">Thoughts</a> <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/powerful-thoughts-vol-5.html">series</a>, I thought it might be a good time to go back through and pick my five favorite quotes from among them. There were so many great ones that it was almost impossible to choose, so I made <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mXUV9U3sIdqFySkd2XDK_5SCo2jqd5LII3ndw8XhWmU/edit">a Google doc</a> for my 15 favorites. Here are the top five along with my comments:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. "Answers are a luxury enjoyed only every now and then. So early on, learn to love the questions themselves." –<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qccer/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ask_me_anything/c3wh5g7?context=2">Neil deGrasse Tyson</a></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Curiosity is a great thing because it so often gives rise to discovery, but sometimes the answers elude us. It's easy to grow impatient and settle on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps">the first convenient explanation</a> that comes along even when the real answer is still out there. So we need to value the process of forming and testing hypotheses as much as actually arriving at conclusions—to value the journey as much as the destination. It requires us to think of unanswered questions not as obstacles to be overcome, but as invitations to explore our world.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." –<a href="http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html">Thomas Jefferson</a></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How wonderful it is that the same man who authored this quote was also a central Founding Father and our third president. We needed someone of his wisdom to guide this country in its formative years. During this period of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enlightenment">American Enlightenment</a>, intellectuals were already starting to question Christianity and embrace deism. But in a letter offering advice to his nephew, Jefferson had the audacity to suggest something that would be unthinkable to most people at the time.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XTuskK8Ptag/T5Ng1oA08-I/AAAAAAAAAW4/pL91LjUG2WM/s1600/Question+With+Boldness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XTuskK8Ptag/T5Ng1oA08-I/AAAAAAAAAW4/pL91LjUG2WM/s200/Question+With+Boldness.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The quote, highlighted on a page of the original letter.</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This encouragement of radical, intrepid questioning should be an inspiration to skeptics everywhere. And he follows this by steamrolling the most common obstacle to investigating one's faith—the fear of divine retribution—in a way that beautifully echoes Galileo's <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.asp">disbelief</a> that "the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use".</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. "Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today." –<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=0h16m47s">Lawrence Krauss</a></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plucked from a legendary 2009 physics lecture entitled "A Universe From Nothing," this statement on our origins may at first seem shallow in its irreverence, but I don't see it that way. Too often religions like Christianity rely on the beauty of ideas rather than their truth, making reality look cold and alienating by comparison. People take solace in God's invisible guiding hand and fear that a world without him would be desolate, chaotic, meaningless.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Krauss shows that in some ways, the natural world can beat the supernatural even at its own game. An innocent god-man being tortured and killed on our behalf is an inspiring tale (if a gruesome and illogical one), but it can't hold a candle to the breathtaking magnificence of cosmology. All the heavier atoms in your body—the oxygen and carbon, the nitrogen and calcium—had to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis">forged within the blazing furnaces of stars</a>. They later became <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova">supernovae</a>, exploding so chaotically that they briefly outshone entire galaxies, forming nebulae rich with heavy elements <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis">that then collapsed</a> to form solar systems—and eventually, in our case, intelligent life. Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson again, describing this process:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." Truth, it seems, is far more worthy than fiction of our awe and admiration.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. "Mythology is someone else's religion, different enough from your own for its absurdity to be obvious." –Anonymous</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What a perfect summary of the double standard inherent within every exclusivist religion in history. It's so easy for Christians and Buddhists and Muslims to look at each other and scoff at those other peculiar beliefs, all while retaining an intense blind spot with regard to one's own. So persistent is this bias that even I as a former Christian <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-pro-christian-bias.html">suffer from it</a>, despite my deconversion.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why I love Daniel Dennett's <a href="http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/daniel_c_dennett/2009/09/teach_our_children_well_1.html">suggestion</a> that schoolchildren be taught a mandatory, neutral, fact-based class on world religions. Only the most cripplingly stubborn parents could object to an impartial presentation of alternative belief systems. Yet many students would come out with a more critically informed view of each religion—including their own. The more information kids can access about religions from all cultures, the less likely they are to succumb to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroup_bias">ingroup-outgroup bias</a> that allows religious exclusivism to thrive.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: Times;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. "I had no need of that hypothesis." –<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-Simon_Laplace&oldid=486281707#Religious_beliefs">Pierre-Simon Laplace</a></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This famed quip was in reply to none other than Napoleon, who told Laplace, "They tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace's response encompasses so much in just a few words: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor">principle of parsimony</a>, the relentless march of science, the ever-diminishing God of the gaps. Although it was probably just an offhand remark, his calm yet firm rejection of God as explanation is emblematic of the human race's steadily increasing storehouse of knowledge.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>No need of that hypothesis.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After millions of years of cowering at shadows, we have finally begun to crawl out from the darkness and into the light. We need only to let our eyes adjust to the dazzling brilliance we've discovered. It is my hope that for any incredible explanation that lacks equally incredible evidence, we, as a civilization, will soon have no need of that hypothesis.</span></div>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-36314422667143776852012-04-14T07:45:00.005-07:002012-04-14T18:50:09.323-07:00The Uncertainty of Intuition<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."</i> —Richard Feynman</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm only a novice when it comes to philosophy, but I think I've noticed a general trend within the field. First, someone comes up with a philosophical framework for explaining a certain phenomenon. Then someone else comes up with a counterexample that intuitively appears to falsify that framework. Philsophers are then faced with a couple of options: They can follow their intuitions and either modify the framework or reject it entirely, or they can continue to accept the framework and claim that it's in fact our <i>intuition</i> that's faulty.</span><br />
<div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let me give a couple of examples, starting with one in the field of ethics. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism">Utilitarianism</a>, generally speaking, is the ethical theory that one ought to maximize the overall amount of happiness that exists. It seems like a perfectly sensible way of approaching the subject, but some versions of this concept are vulnerable to what Derek Parfit calls the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox">Repugnant Conclusion</a>. In the diagram below, each box represents a population; width measures group size and height measures average happiness. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Repugnant Conclusion is that according to some forms of utilitarianism, Z is preferable to A because Z's total area is greater than A's. In other words, having a massive number of people whose lives are barely worth living is preferable to having a (relatively) small number of people whose lives are extremely happy.</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdWUTryDLHE/T30NgnK94dI/AAAAAAAAAWM/arVLhuxkuIA/s1600/Repugnant+Conclusion.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="113" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdWUTryDLHE/T30NgnK94dI/AAAAAAAAAWM/arVLhuxkuIA/s320/Repugnant+Conclusion.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intuitively, this conclusion </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>does</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> seem repugnant—but is it our ethical theory or our intuition that we should modify in response? Perhaps we look at Z and imagine throngs of people toiling away in a wretched struggle to survive, when what we </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>should</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> realize is that a life "barely worth living" </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>is still worth living</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. If these people looked back at their lives in their golden years, they could honestly say they were glad to have lived. Hmm... maybe such a world wouldn't be as bad as we think.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the previous case it was pretty easy to imagine our intuition being wrong. But now let's take on a tougher example, this time from philosophy of mind. The leading philosophical framework for understanding what constitutes a mind is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind)">functionalism</a> (see also <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/">the SEP</a>). Basically, it says that what makes a mind is not any particular material (e.g. neurons), but a way of functioning: it must receive inputs which alter its internal state and produce outputs. It could be made of neurons, silicon or anything else as long as it's properly organized and functional.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enter the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain">China Brain</a>. Ned Block asks us to imagine the entire population of China hooked up to one another in some way (walkie-talkies, for example), with each person corresponding to a neuron. The individuals then communicate in a rudimentary manner that mimics the firing of interconnected neural pathways. The result is sometimes known as a Blockhead.</span><br />
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</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UYDyt9IjgaI/T4DPDIjvDoI/AAAAAAAAAWY/QRYTBu8YmiQ/s1600/Blockhead.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="173" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UYDyt9IjgaI/T4DPDIjvDoI/AAAAAAAAAWY/QRYTBu8YmiQ/s200/Blockhead.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Haha. <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China_brain.png">Blockhead</a>. Because his last name's Block.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can this vast collection of people buzzing at each other on walkie-talkies really have mental states? Can it experience sadness or the color red? Block wants us to intuitively conclude that such possibilities are ridiculous, and certainly they <i>seem</i> to be. But how much of this intuition is due to the fact that we normally think of minds as embodied and centralized?</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Imagine that we could somehow shrink this crowd of a billion, put them inside a human skull and attach them to the appropriate sensory inputs and motor outputs. If you had a conversation with this entity, who looks and acts exactly like a normal person, would it really be so hard to think of them as having a mind? Conversely, imagine that we could take someone's still-living brain out of their head and the stretch the neurons out across hundreds of square miles. If you walked into the middle of this silky net of microscopic axons, would it seem any more like a thinking, feeling, experiencing mind than the China brain does? Suddenly, the obvious conclusion may not be so obvious anymore.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This post is partly an excuse to share some really cool thought experiments, but I do have a point to make as well: We need to be careful about accepting intuitive philosophical arguments, because they can be engineered (intentionally or not) to push us toward an unwarranted conclusion. Daniel Dennett coined the term "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_pump">intuition pump</a>" to describe such cases. Often these arguments employ sophisticated misdirection to make us ignore factors that would dramatically change our judgment if properly understood.</span><br />
<div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes, too, an argument has at its core a subject that we as fallible humans are just flat-out bad at making judgments about, or even one that lies completely outside our realm of experience. I'm referring specifically to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument">cosmological argument</a>, which I hope to eventually delve into more deeply. In arguing for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument">Kalam</a>, William Lane Craig proclaims that the temporal universe cannot always have existed because actual infinites cannot exist. He uses the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_hotel_paradox">Hilbert hotel paradox</a> as a demonstration of this, but all he's really demonstrated is that the math of infinity is incredibly unintuitive. He also asserts that whatever begins to exist has a cause, and it again seems staggeringly unintuitive to think that the universe could have sprung up uncaused out of absolute nothingness. But a complete lack of everything—space, time, even physical laws—is in such opposition to our everyday experience that making any definitive pronouncements about its properties would be pure folly.</span><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So here's the moral of the story: In all aspects of life, theological and ordinary alike, be skeptical about relying on intuition to solve problems. Your minds is better suited to some tasks than others, and it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases">beset with biases</a> at every turn. It's easy for subtle yet crucial details to escape your notice, drastically skewing your judgment. Consider a given issue from many perspectives and try to think of what variables you may be leaving out—even when the answer seems clear-cut. Because as satisfying as it is to debunk pseudoscientists and expose charlatans, the most important part of being a skeptic isn't questioning other people. It's questioning yourself.</span></div>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271425200512139123.post-45732405232239396302012-04-12T07:36:00.003-07:002012-04-12T07:36:00.194-07:00Born at the Wrong Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BOpXMPTtHcs/T4NzNw3l4bI/AAAAAAAAAWk/CtCa_L_zEc8/s1600/Rafael+-+Resurrection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BOpXMPTtHcs/T4NzNw3l4bI/AAAAAAAAAWk/CtCa_L_zEc8/s200/Rafael+-+Resurrection.jpg" width="163" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've had less time for writing due to longer work hours, and I'm in the process of finishing a couple of other posts, but I thought I'd quickly share a mildly interesting experience of mine from this past Sunday.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't go to church much anymore, but I did go to Easter service at my parents' request. It was pretty unremarkable and mediocre as far as "Sonrise" sermons go, but one thing really did stick out to me as particularly insightful—though not for the reasons it was intended to be.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pastor's daughter made a very telling comment. She suggested that God was evident to us in the past (in the form of his interaction with the Israelites and his incarnation in Jesus) and will be in the future (in the form of the Second Coming), but that modern society is caught in a kind of "temporary atheism" because direct access to the divine is unavailable at the moment.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, how <i>conveniently</i> inconvenient.</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What an odd coincidence it is that we happen to be living in the precise sliver of time during which God isn't overtly interacting with humanity. Christians who subscribe to this line of thought would have us believe that we happen to exist in a sort of divine "blind spot"—one in which God can't be empirically verified, one that looks exactly as if he was never there at all.</span><br />
<div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do believers really find this kind of reasoning acceptable? Why doesn't it occur to them that God's "temporary" aloofness might be the rule and not the exception? And if we <i>do</i> reside in the one cursed era of an otherwise God-filled timeline, isn't that a needlessly cruel twist of fate? If he actually wants us to believe in him, why not give everyone the same strong evidence he supposedly <a href="http://othersidereflections.blogspot.com/2011/10/bible-for-skeptics.html">gave</a> in antiquity?</span><br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20:24-29&version=NKJV">John 20</a>, Jesus lets Doubting Thomas put his hands in the crucifixion wounds and says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." It's an appalling endorsement of belief without evidence, but at least he gave evidence when asked. As for the billions of skeptics who followed in Thomas' footsteps, I guess we'll be punished eternally for the crime of being born at the wrong time.</span>Timhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10805548538619765611noreply@blogger.com0