In which Mike demonstrates once and for all the proof that God exists

Having some problems with the blog comments on this post and hoping that starting a new one will fix it.

Please direct your attention to the comments section, where MikeAdAstraSmith shall valiantly demonstrate to us poor, benighted sinners that God irrefutably exists.

[Edit: Actually we traced our problem to an overzealous spam filter, which probably thought that some comments looked too much like the work of a certain D**** M****. We're retraining it as fast as we can, but in the meantime, please do enjoy the thread.]

A few words about the Zeitgeist sequels

Our opinion of the movie Zeitgeist should be pretty well known by now. It is an extremely bad and tedious bit of filmmaking, and the scholarship in it is awful, and we disagree with all of parts 2 and 3, as well as nearly all of part 1. And if you need a reminder about why, here are three sites dealing, respectively, with the claims that:

1. Jesus never existed.
2. 9/11 was an inside job.
3. U.S. citizens don't really have to pay taxes.

Now that that's out of the way, let me share a few recent emails.

2/11/11

I was wondering if you guys were aware of the (second) sequel to that terrible film, Zeitgeist, and if you plan on talking about it any time soon. If you've done it recently, I apologize for spamming you... I haven't had the opportunity to watch the last few episodes just yet. I've just started watching the sequel on YouTube (so you don't have to do any googling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w&feature=feedlik), and in the first 10 minutes they started harping on how Biology is wrong because there's such a thing as epigenetics. Sounds like more relatively well-informed stupidity to me. I only watch it for the same reason I saw Expelled and What The Bleep Do We Know !!!111!? My hopes for humanity diminish proportionally.

1/28/11

by the way you sould look the new film " zeitgeist Moving Forward " where we see how
[long list of names with irrelevant credentials]
...etc and of course Peter Joseph

describe that our current system breeds insanity

and i hope you dont act emotional about the word zeitgeist because

" Zeitgeist moving forward " is not like the first film

1/25/11

I am a member of The Zeitgeist Movement and would love to get your feedback on what the movement is advocating. I have searched high and low for evidence that the concepts of this movement are falsifiable, but have yet to find any information doing so. I’m not sure as to whether or not you are aware of the difference between The Zeitgeist films and the Movement, but there is certainly an expressed difference.

11/29/10

Also, your host insistently bash the Zeitgeist movement and 911 truth. This really baffles me because the Zeitgeist Movement is a just secular movement that advocates the scientific method for social concern (doing away with corrupt monetary capitalism that allows children to go hunger)

Yes, okay, we get it. We heard you. Thanks. The guy who made Zeitgeist has made another movie-- actually TWO other movies now -- and they cover different topics than the original movie. Lastly, this message is from a comment on a Facebook link I shared that relates to Medicare. Though the commenter doesn't mention Zeitgeist directly, he did bring up the theme of the last two movies.

The better solution than social services is a Resource Based Economy and the elimination of the monetary system altogether. We cannot possible print enough money to solve all of our problems and we certainly cannot save our way to the needed solutions through austerity measures. The 'bottom line' is that money is THE constraint on human progress (well, that and cultural conditioning).

So, okay, I've finally decided I need to respond to this steady stream of emails, if only so I can have something to link in the future.

I have not watched the new movies, as I greatly prefer to do actual reading over sitting through talking heads. I have set it aside as something I might watch. After all, I suffered through What the Bleep Do We Know? and I guess I can get around to this one too, eventually. From what I understand, Zeitgeist: Addendum and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (which I shall henceforth refer to as ZA/ZMF because I hate typing) are mostly focused on popularizing something called "The Venus Project" (see link). It's a Utopian movement by a guy named Jacque Fresco -- Engineer, Design Consultant, and "Futurist" -- and he's been going around pitching this idea of a resource-based economy.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting: Atlantis. I mean, The Venus Project.

Here's what that means as I read it. The financial system is broken beyond all hope of repair, so we abolish all forms of currency. In its place, everyone gets boundless freedom to use "resources." Money is a fiction anyway, and the federal reserve is evil (as explained in the first Zeitgeist, part 3), and people are going hungry because we artificially limit resources (i.e. food) when they could be made useful for everyone (i.e., feeding third world countries).

I'm a fairly liberal guy. I believe that there are problems with our current economic system, and some such problems stem from unregulated capitalism. A couple of recent sources for information I recommend are The Big Short by Michael Lewis, which traced the origins of the recent banking crisis in a highly entertaining and readable way; and this episode of the show This American Life, in which they discuss the ways in which money is really a convenient fiction.

On the other hand, I'm a numbers geek, and from my perspective, money -- though "fictional" in some sense -- was a fantastic technological advancement in the history of civilization. In any system of trade, some kind of valuation is going to arise naturally. Economists may call it "utils," or it may just be that we compare the value of one thing to the value of something else on an individual basis ("I'll give you two chickens for that hatchet"). Money is simply a means of formalizing a system that people are going to agree on one way or another. In prison it becomes cigarettes. In the future it's probably moving towards all digital currency. Heck, you can even calculate a meaningful exchange rate between United States Dollars and World of Warcraft gold pieces (after adjusting for a lot of inflation due to the recent Cataclysm expansion). It's an abstraction that achieves a goal. Barter systems are fine in small villages, but they are hopeless at large scales.

In any case, "scarcity" does not exist because of money. Quite the opposite, in fact -- money exists in large part because scarcity exists. While many resources such as air and sunlight are effectively in infinite supply, other things are very definitely limited. An excellent (though fairly disturbing) book on the subject is Collapse by Jared Diamond. Diamond studied a number of cultures which, for one reason or another, didn't survive -- they experienced massive population crashes in which a large proportion of their citizens died over a short period of time. In most cases it was because they ran out of something.

In fact, I can kind of sum up Diamond's formula for disaster that is common among most civilizations that died by their own hands:

1. You have a limited resource. In one case it was timber (cutting down trees on an island faster than they grew back) and in another, it was grazeable farmland.
2. Something about your civilization requires you to use a lot of that resource.
3. It starts to run out, but the culture is rigid and resists change.
4. People talk about breaking their dependency on this resource, but don't actually do anything about it.
5. Much to everyone's surprise, it runs out.
6. Turns out the requirement for that resource is pretty widespread. Many people die.

I'm not going to go off on a tangent about which finite resources we rely on in modern society (*cough*oil*cough*) but even so, I'm pretty well convinced that if we solved one problem of scarcity, the problem would just move off to something else.

And that's where money comes in. It is an abstraction that puts a value on resources with different levels of scarcity. They're not all concrete resources, either: people enjoy their free time, and working to accomplish a difficult task (like volunteering to fly to a third world country and deliver mass quantities of food) is frequently regarded as a "what's in it for me?" situation. That's not money's fault. Money is simply a method of making an abstract concept ("What's it worth to ya?") be attached to concrete numbers.

Oh, but I forgot to mention how this problem of scarcity is solved under Jacque Fresco's system. Here, let me quote:

"A resource-based economy would make it possible to use technology to overcome scarce resources by applying renewable sources of energy, computerizing and automating manufacturing and inventory, designing safe energy-efficient cities and advanced transportation systems, providing universal health care and more relevant education, and most of all by generating a new incentive system based on human and environmental concern."

And also:

"With automated inventory on a global scale, we can maintain a balance between production and distribution. Only nutritious and healthy food would be available and planned obsolescence would be unnecessary and non-existent in a resource-based economy."

So you see, this is easily achievable, as long as we first keep in mind the intermediate goals of developing unlimited, clean, renewable energy sources. Also, since human government officials are inherently corrupt, we just need to develop artificially intelligent administrators to manage our cities and distribute everything efficiently.

Riiiiight.

Artificial intelligence and alternative energy research are only a couple of the most complicated problems facing inventors, businesses, and academics. Have been for decades. And to think that you can hand-wave that away as a minor inconvenience blocking the realization of your Utopia, that's a pretty damn extraordinary claim. In fact, I would venture to say that if you could create a world with no scarce resources, that all by itself would do a hell of a lot more to fix everything than whatever fantasy anti-currency government system the Venus Project promoters can dream up.

And then there's this issue of benevolent computer systems that will impartially make sure everyone gets everything they want. Okay, I've been involved with software development for most of my adult life, and I feel pretty comfortable saying we're not replacing all our politicians with robot administrators any time real soon. But even after assuming that little hurdle is crossed, artificial intelligence isn't a magic solution to anything. There's no reason to think it would be more advanced than human intelligence to start with, and if it eventually got there, no reason to think it would be any less self-serving.

Show of hands, please. How many people want to turn over our economy to these guys? ...Thank you.

Okay, I'm not saying that all artificial intelligence is inevitably going to conquer humanity and harvest their essences to power an elaborate virtual reality that enslaves us or anything. I'm just saying, I don't see why the AI is going to make any decisions better than a human with some really good ideas who knows how to use data mining tools. A better question is, why don't we elect one of those?

Getting rid of money wouldn't save the world from scarce resources. If anything, the immediate effect would be that without a perceptible cost to themselves, people would use up those resources faster than ever. I don't see how these super-cities that Jacque Fresco invented will stop people from wanting to travel, which is one of the big ones when it comes to draining energy. In fact, if I had all this free time and were unlimited by capital, that's the first thing I'd do a lot more of. And I can't envision a realistic political path to implement what sounds mainly like "Socialism... With Robots!" when you have the Tea Party just slavering to declare that Civilization As We Know It is coming to an end if we allow some tax cuts to expire.

So in the end, I'm left with an impression of The Venus Project that is not much different from the original Zeitgeist. It's a large group of fans with who have coalesced around a group of persuasive amateurs, drawn to the notion that they have uncovered some deep and massive truth that is hidden from the rest of us willfully deceived, blind fools. It is largely ignored by people who have expertise in anything relevant like, say, economics -- not because they're trying to suppress it, but because there's basically nothing of substance there.

There. You asked my opinion. Now you've got it. I hope you're satisfied.

Understanding atheists

A response to this posting by Rabbi Adam Jacobs:

"My dear Rabbi Jacobs,

If your goal is to try to "walk back" some of the clamorous dialogue and understand each other better, perhaps you shouldn't start by presuming to define atheism on your terms and proceding to tell us that we're not really atheists.

Beating on the straw man of absolute certainty immediately discredits your commentary.

Perhaps you shouldn't claim to already understand our perspective while demonstrating, at every turn, that you most certainly do not (and claiming to be seeking this understanding).

If you really wanted to understand our position, you wouldn't claim to already understand it, you wouldn't write such a transparently concern-troll-like sermon, you'd actually engage in conversation instead of, ironically, engaging in the very sort of dialogue you claim to be trying to avoid."

Open thread on episode #696

Matt and Jeff go through many calls, including the return of Mark from Austin Stone. Have at it.

Vote for Iron Chariots Wiki!

Atheism.about.com is running various polls for favorite atheist resources, and Iron Chariots is among the finalists!

So yes, this is shameless self-promotion of an Atheist Community of Austin-originated resource, but there are other great reasons to vote for it. Bear in mind that as a wiki, the more widely Iron Chariots is known, the easier it is to draw in great editors and improve the content. So get out there and vote!

Edit: The Atheist Experience is currently running second place for best podcast.

Update: As has been pointed out in the comments, both of ours are handily ahead now. Go, fans! We loves ya.

Onward Christian Thugs

This week in Texas, State Senator Dan Patrick proposed a bill to require women seeking abortions to undergo a mandatory sonogram, see the image of the fetus, hear its heartbeat, and hear a mandated description of the fetus by the doctor. The only purpose of such a bill is to coerce women into making a choice that Dan Patrick and his fellow Christian thugs think is the moral one. These sorts of bills have been proposed and many approved all over the country. Fortunately for Texas, some of the most odious parts of this particular bill have been softened in committee, leaving only the doctor-supplied fetal description mandatory.

The number of things wrong with this sort of effort are astonishing. Let's see if we can list a few of them:

• A major objection would have to be that these sorts of bills are a transparent (and often successful) attempt to use the government as a tool to further the lawmaker's Christian beliefs. The supposedly "secular" purpose of the bill is education, but that's a ruse (but we'll get to that.) If freedom of religion means anything, it means freedom from religion — freedom from transparent con games.
  
• They might also claim that they're trying to reduce abortions, but that would be framing the issue wrongly. They are trying to create more people who can be coerced into their religion. You never see these Christian groups promote birth control, mandatory waiting periods or mandated doctor intervention for the MEN who are impregnating these women. You do see Christian groups working to remove an honest teaching of the responsibilities of parenthood in high school health classes. Christians feel that they've gotten the process this far with their efforts. They have to "close the loop" and get the baby born. See "God's Little Rabbits" for more about their success.
  
• They (and we all) know there is no God to whom they can pray to make more human beings. Only a moron would believe such a thing, right Dan? Matt. 7:7, Matt. 17:20, Matt. 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matt. 18:18 all have Jesus claiming that prayer works all the time. Gen. 1:26 (and others) has God creating humans. Christians don't believe that stuff. Christians know they have to co-opt as many uteruses as they can (there's plenty of sperm to go around — just make masturbation taboo).
  
• Dan and his fellow Christians know that God and the church have failed to enforce their edicts on their flock. The absolutely must use the real power of the government to achieve their end.
  
• After the baby is born, they lose interest. Christians know that the evolution-engineered motherhood hormones will kick in. While Christians want to have the power to make these decisions, they never step up to the plate when it comes to the responsibility for the child. If they ever did, you'd see Christian organizations make deals with women where the deep-pocketed Christian group would fund the child through college in exchange for the mother bringing the child to term. Christians instead use coercion and thuggery, which are their time honored tools.
• Christians claim to care about poverty, but efforts like this have the effect of creating poverty. Again, the marketing doesn't match the actual behavior. Their only "solution" here is to encourage single mothers to get married. "Family values" apparently means the creation of families by coercion. No wonder the divorce rates of evangelicals and fundamentalists is higher than that of atheists.
  
• Christians like Dan don't think the mother has the intellectual capacity to make the moral decision to keep the child, but they seem to think that she is perfectly capable of raising it. Ironically, the women seeking abortion are the ones that know their limitations. I'll trust a woman's decision about her abilities over Dan Patrick any day of the eternity.
• There is often some claim of the "sanctity of life", but Christianity is a religion that teaches our bodies are little more than soul traps whose natural use is to release the soul so that it can go meet the Christian god. The god of the Bible is a murderous thug who has also commanded the murder of children and the unborn. The "sanctity of life" is a complete fabrication incompatible with Christian dogma.
  
• Dan Patrick is not a doctor, nor are any of the law makers (that I know of) creating laws like this. They have no business interfering with medical procedures.
• Dan and his ilk clearly don't believe in the golden rule, such as stated in Matt. 7:12. If they did, they would welcome others to insert themselves in their own medical treatments. I would encourage those of you who do believe in the golden rule to make Christians aware of this fact. If you can find someone who advocates Christian interference in medical practices, teach them a practical lesson in Jesus' moral teachings.
  
• Supposedly, women seeking abortions need education. I have yet to see a bill mandating education about the cost and responsibility of raising a child or the risk of child birth. There are no bills forcing women to see pictures of women who died in child birth. There's no education about the emotional risks of postpartum depression and the risk of the mother harming the child or herself. The "education" that Christians propose is one-sided.
• Christian efforts to slow abortion have failed. According to this article, countries with strong religious belief have higher rates of abortion. We might make more progress taxing religions and using those funds to support unwanted children.
  
• Finally, I don't see anything resembling compassion in Dan Patrick's bill or other efforts by Christians to prevent abortion. These people clearly care more about their invisible friends (their concepts of god) than the women they seek to manipulate.
  

Christians claim to care about "sin", but overlook the issue of responsibility. Christians seek to try to make their god happy by coercion and manipulation of vulnerable people. The atheists I know, focus on responsibility. How can we educate people so that the understand the consequences of their actions? How can we provide them with tools to mitigate harm? How can we help people who know they are in over their head? Abortion is not a good thing, but why don't we start using reason, responsibility, and compassion to address the problem?

Regarding the studio technical problems

My inbox is occasionally plagued by comments, complaints and some suggestions about how to fix the audio problems on the TV show. Thanks.

It's come to my attention that some people simply do not grasp the situation...

We do this show from a public access studio. These are studios that were built when the cable companies first started in order to promote free, community-run programming. These studios are old and vanishing...very few cities have studios and even fewer support live shows or call-in shows. We're fortunate to be able to do the show at all. (Just ask the Seattle Atheists...)

The studio equipment is largely beyond our control. We can't rewire the studio and while we've spent quite a bit of money on our own equipment, you can have the best equipment in the world and if you're plugging it into antiquated or improperly configured gear, it won't make a bit of difference. Their recent $1M renovation doesn't seem to have involved any significant improvements to the audio.

The studio uses a Telos digital telephone hybrid but the soundboard at the studio isn't properly wired for a mix-minus setup and doesn't have sufficient discrete channels.

We use the studio on Sunday afternoons and it's used by many other people throughout the week. Those people change settings. They break things. They attempt to "fix" the problems that others have created...which creates more problems. They have different needs and requirements for their show, so they reconfigure things to suit them.

Every week we show up an hour (or more) before the show, run cables, configure lights, set up the table, reconfigure equipment, figure out what is broken and try to find a way to fix it before the show starts.

Every week we're walking into an unknown configuration and doing our best to get it back to "our" setup. We're talking lights, sound, camera, CG, DVD recorder, background, telephone (and more)...and most of it has been "adjusted" by someone else during the week. (I can count, on one hand, the weeks where we've had nothing to fix.)

Additionally, there are settings we're not allowed to change (though it doesn't stop other people from messing with them).

We then do a 'test call' - which seems to work just fine, though it doesn't seem to indicate whether or not all of the calls on a given show will work fine. The problem is intermittent. Some calls are worse than others...some have NO feedback, some have a little and some have a lot. Some calls seem to only be working in half-duplex, some are full. We've found no discernible pattern (I do suspect that cell phones are a huge part of the problem as they're notoriously horrible at full-duplex and signal quality).

If you think we're unaware of the problems, you're wrong.
If you think we're not MORE frustrated than anyone who watches or listens to the show, you're wrong.
If you think we wouldn't love to fix the problems and aren't doing everything we can, you're wrong.

This isn't just a matter of finding the right expert or throwing more money at it. (I'd recommend watching the Super Bowl half-time show for a prime example of how knowing what you're doing and having money to throw at something is no guarantee that things are going to work correctly.)

I appreciate the feedback and the suggestions. I appreciate that people care enough to try to improve the show....but I'm also baffled at how anyone could think we're unaware of the very problems we've spoken about countless times on and off the show - often WHILE the problems are happening.

One recent letter added a rather ironic note (which did make me laugh):

"Please fix the phone problem! (This is your money maker, and it's ruining discussions. Stable and clear sounding phone-lines are crucial"

Wow, I've never thought of that! The irony of using the phrase "money maker" when referring to a show that we actually pay to produce and freely donate thousands of hours to, is sadly humorous.

Don't misunderstand - I'm not writing this simply to bitch at the people who are writing us about this problem, I'm just expressing my own frustration and letting people know that e-mails that are essentially pointing out the elephant that I'm riding have been read, and won't be getting individual responses.

We'll also continue to look for solutions, but I wanted to give people a taste of what we're dealing with in order to avoid some of the suggestions that aren't very helpful.

Open thread on episode #695

Today's show was, as usual, fraught with difficulties, though not as many as we originally suspected. Once again, the calls were problematic, with some callers having a hard time hearing us. Whether the problem is with our audio, their cell phones, or a combination of everything, is unclear. But we're well aware of ChannelAustin's long history of audio problems. Not only that, we dropped the damn UStream feed in the last ten minutes, but the full video should be fine.

It turns out that the first call today, with Mark from Austin Stone Church, may not have been a problem on our end after all. Russell and I thought we just lost the call, which happens. After the program, Frank and John in the control room told me that Mark's feed was just fine. Only after we'd brought up problems with Matt Slick's TAG, Mark apparently stopped talking, then hung up.

If that's the case, it can't have been Mark's proudest moment. According to him, he had the whole congregation watching (awesome!), and, if he indeed hung up, they watched him basically wither in his defense of the faith without much of a fight. Still, we'd have put him at the head of the line had he called back. Better luck next time, Mark.

Note to self: When Christians call the program and immediately demand politeness from us, they are probably about to launch into a string of absurdities and falsehoods that they don't want us to call them on. Frankly, the minute Mark listed the risible Ray Comfort as some authority on evolution, and repeated the tiresome canard that there are "no transitional fossils," I was done with politeness. No, I'm not going to scream nasty names at you while I correct you. But the fact is, with the plethora of scientific literature and research out there demonstrating to as high a degree of certainty as science can promise that evolution is real, there is no excuse for willful ignorance and the deliberate dissemination of disinformation about what science actually says. Frankly, the creationist line that there are no transitional fossils is on the same level of intellectual irresponsibility as flat Earth belief.

This is an aspect of religious fundamentalist dishonesty I think deserves zero tolerance, and there's been way too much coddling and misplaced "fairness" towards a "controversy" that does not actually exist. If you've only read Ray Comfort and not any actual scientific text, and you want to call us and challenge us on evolution, know this: it will not be a pleasant experience for you. You are simply not in possession of the facts, and we will steamroll you with them.

Also, since the gang at Stone Church seem to think Matt Slick is impressive somehow, let me share with you an email we got from a viewer today, who passed along a question from Slick.

How can an atheist trust his own judgments if his brain is completely restricted to the neurochemical laws and cannot operate outside of those laws? Doesn't this necessitate that all the laws/chemical reactions/brain arrangement require certain reactions based upon the stimulus that produces a specific and predictable result due to that person's particular neurochemical arrangement in his brain? How then can such a person trust that his conclusions about the universe be accurate since what he believes and interprets is governed by those laws? How does such required neurochemical reactions produced truth and proper logical inference? If the atheists cannot answer this, then it, demonstrates his worldview has serious problems.

Jeff Dee caught this grenade and lobbed it right back.

How can a theist trust his own judgments if his mind is completely unconstrained by any rules? Doesn't this necessitate that all of his thoughts are random disconnected nonsense? How then can such a person trust that his conclusions about the universe are accurate, since what he believes and interprets is NOT governed by any laws? How does such unconstrained rambling produce truth and proper logical inference? If the theist cannot answer this, then it demonstrates his worldview has serious problems.

So I'd suggest apologists start looking for another hero. Matt Slick isn't as slick as he thinks.

Notice how misogynist the GOP has gotten lately? Want to do something fun about it?

Abortion rights is not necessarily an atheist issue. But it is a human rights issue. And it's something the Christian Right has chosen to go to war over with its biggest, nastiest guns. They're not exactly about playing fair either.

Recently, civilized hominids everywhere were left slack-jawed in disbelief when Republicans tried to redefine rape in order to make it damn near impossible for any actual rape survivor to terminate her pregnancy. They coined the baffling term "forcible rape," implying they think there's such a thing as "consensual rape." Or something. Anyway, it's obvious no Good Christian Woman would be out drinkin' in bars and shit. So if some slutty sinful whore gets her drink roofied, it's obviously her fault for not being pure enough, ain't it?

Now it's gotten crazier. As it seems to be GOP policy to constantly try to out-douche one another, Pennsylvania's Republican Senator Joe Pitts has introduced H.R. 358. This bill would allow hospitals staffed by the kinds of people with a bug up their ass about abortion and a thin grasp of the Hippocratic Oath not only to decline to provide a life-saving abortion to a woman who direly needs one, but even to refuse to facilitate transporting her to a hospital that will. Save her life, that is. So we are presented with the spectacle of a woman dying in agony in a hospital parking lot while the nurses and orderlies on duty calmly watch Oprah and tweet about their weekends. Paradoxically, Pitts calls this the "Protect Life Act." What a lovely thing Christian family values are.

And remember, these are the same people bleating about less government, less government!

It's especially boggling when women, in what can only be thought of as Stockholm Syndrome taken to exponential new heights, fall into the right-wing misogyny camp and oppose the very medical procedures designed to help them in the unfortunate and hopefully unlikely event they will need them. Get it straight: no one is a fan of abortion. But to deny that sometimes the procedure is necessary, and moreover, to declare that the life of a woman is automatically worth less than that of a blastula, and that once a woman is gestating, she is automatically deprived of her personhood and her only function is now that of incubator, is nothing less than monstrous. That this is in fact how the Christian Right thinks is enough to make you think nuclear holocaust might be all humanity deserves after all.

But here's a little something you can do. It's even fun!

Recently, Lila Rose, a rising star in the (sexist wisecrack coming) right-wing bimbo brigade behind Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, made a ludicrous attempt to swiftboat Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides a plethora of invaluable health assistance to women everywhere, but which the right chooses to characterize exclusively as Dachau for Babies. Rose's stunt was butt-stupid, even for a Republican. Like her BFF, convicted criminal James "Doctored ACORN Videos" O'Keefe, Rose tried to punk PP with some video doctoring of her own. Her ingenious plan must be read to be believed.

Over a five day period, visitors to Planned Parenthood health centers in six states said they were seeking information from Planned Parenthood about health services Planned Parenthood could provide to underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring.... Men, sometimes accompanied by a woman, have visited at least 11 Planned Parenthood health centers in six states within a one-week time frame. During their visits, they claimed to be involved in sex trafficking of teens, some of whom are in the United States illegally. These men appeared at health centers without appointments and said that they were seeking health services for themselves, but they quickly turned the conversation to the sex ring they said they were managing.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that right. The plan was to get PP to appear as if they were helping conceal the existence of a child-sex trafficking ring. Rose's little brainchild was itself aborted, however, when PP did what she hoped they wouldn't do: report this bullshit to the FBI.

Now of course, poor Lila — abetted by her pals in right-wing media, of course — will continue to try to sell this false story, and probably paint herself as some kind of martyr for truth. Wingnuts do that kind of thing. But here's a fun thing we can all do, as a kind of sweet revenge. It's a way of letting petty little people like her, and all her anti-choice pals, know that the more they lie, the more they try to tear down women's right to safe and legal health options through disinformation, the more we will remain committed to the cause of women's health. And a little thing called truth.

• Click on this link. It will take you to Planned Parenthood's "Honorary Giving" donations page.
• Throw a few bucks their way "in honor of" Lila Rose!
• Finally, send Lila a friendly, cordial, profane-insult-free email at lilarose@liveaction.org, informing her that you have done this, and that her campaign of disgraceful lies has resulted in your increased support for Planned Parenthood. In her name. Don't be snarky. Don't cuss her out. Don't give her any ammo to whine about the evil libral socialist godless heathen scary people who are stalking her. Be so civil it hurts. You could also add that you hope she never finds herself in need of PP's services, and to keep an eye on her drinks when she goes out.

That should do it. A little bit of the old martial artist, turning your opponent's attack back upon them, you see. Most satisfying. But then, people like Rose have committed to a life of lies. Committing to truth, as she'll soon learn, wins in the end.

The Atheist Experience Facebook page

I know this won't be of interest to many of you, but for our Facebooking friends, here's a curious thing. Over on Facebook, there's an Atheist Experience page that looks for all the world to be official. Except it isn't, and never has been. We have no idea who put it up, and whoever did seems to have abandoned administrating it. It currently has over 7740 "likers," all of whom clearly hopped aboard thinking it was an official page, and who have in fact built up something of a little community there. So it would be a shame to have to get it taken down, which is why Jen is looking into whether Facebook will simply let us take it over. We don't relish having it taken down and starting up our own from scratch, but that's what we'll do if we must.

We don't have a problem with fans doing fan stuff. After all, most of the people who have become fans of the show did so after discovering YouTube clips posted by other fans. And we're aware that on the intarweebs, a lot of stuff is simply going to be out of our hands.

What bugs us is that this page was set up to look official when it is not, and thus whoever created it is guilty of deceiving our viewers. If this had been set up as a fan page (there's already a fine fan group, run by the Macalpine clan, though I have no idea what the difference is between "pages" and "groups" as Facebook sees them, or why they created two separate but nearly entirely similar things in the first place), then hey, fine. If we get to take the page over, we'll definitely use it in a more (I can't believe I'm about to use this fucking word) proactive way, posting frequent Wall updates relating to ACA activities, blog posts, video clips, and other stuff of interest. As it is, we can use it to do none of those things, and fans meanwhile are posting stuff to its Wall addressed directly to us, oblivious to the fact we aren't even seeing it. So, you know, we'll keep you posted.

Of course, if the person who did create the page happens to be reading this, dude, let us have admin privileges and take it off your hands. We won't send ninja after you or anything.

Pimpin'

Well, these turned out nicely. They're super comfy and, given the arctic blast that slammed Texas today, I can confirm that they are warm. I'll begin the shipping process starting tomorrow.

The first run is gone baby gone. But I will be happy to do a second run, if, this time, we can get between 50-100 takers. (The first run was only 30.) Contact me at wagnerfilm[at]yahoo[dot]com and I will send you payment and other relevant information.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.

Christian book title fail

(This was Tracie's catch on FB, actually. Too awesome not to share with the rest of you though.)

Huckabee's Fund Raising Letter

Jen and I will be doing the January 30th show. We'll be looking at the distortions, half-truths, and outright lies in a fund raising letter sent by Mike Huckabee. One of our members received it (we know not why) and she brought it to our attention. Please consider this post open to comments on the letter and the show.

BRING ON THE CRAZY!

Some emailer from "UK Isle of Wight" writes:

Subject: GOD Dose exist and the proof is everywere

Quite simply and so beautiful, GOD is nothing and nothing is the absolute of everything

Kazim:

"GOD is nothing"

I agree with that part. The rest seems to be pretty much gibberish.

Emailer:

nothing exist

hypothetically lets say the universe has a wall made of rubber if we take all the stuff out we get closer to nothing until were left with particles bouncing around at a colossal rate witch would form heat as energy this “energy” is now in theory in nothing so it has no forces to keep it in or to burn its fuel so it expands massively on a colossal scale until it spreads its energy out evenly then it would contract back in and technically repeat again and again.

so if nothing is something can we call it God in the sense of something of a creation or beginning rather then a higher being of consciousness?

Kazim:

The things you are saying at least superficially resemble sentences constructed in the English language. I imagine they make sense to you in some way.

Emailer:

v = HD and E=mc2

what don't you understand ?

Kazim:

Flamingoes may journey smooshily up besides the curly hedges of knickers!

Emailer:

to write out the complete origins of the universe would lag the internet out for years in one single email. to be derogative of meaning i.e. talking gibberish is not only showing a complete bias approach to life and its existents but also completely missing my point of God cannot exist as nothing is impossible nothing is Zero witch is unachievable and infant but without zero nothing would exist at all.

It was a joke u numpty !

best wishes

Anyone care to join me for some Schadenfreude Pie?

If you were reading this blog in the summer of 2008, you will understand why I couldn't stop giggling when I discovered this.

Open Thread / Show #693: Jen & Tracie

As always, we air at 4:30-5:30 PM (CST) today (Sunday). You can watch live on ustream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-atheist-experience

My plan is to discuss a few of the willfully ignorant things theists say in response to discovering people are atheist activists, including statements such as "why are you so angry at god?" and "I think you're just searching for god."

Example: Person X has a loved family member who swears by a particular homeopathic doctor, who is conning them out of their money and resources and "treating" them for a dangerous and potentially fatal illness. The family member will not seek demonstrated effective treatments from a conventional doctor, because the homeopath has convinced them that modern medicine is a hand-puppet of Big Pharma and therefore an untrustworthy conspiracy. Eventually the family member dies. Person X begins a blog and a youtube channel to tell their story to help expose the dangers of homeopathy. They are contacted by others with similar stories, and they form an association to spread information to people about the lack of support for homeopathic claims and hopefully to help others avoid the same suffering they have experienced at the hands of charlatans.

They should expect to get letters from believers expressing they are wrong. They should expect to be accused of being cogs in the Big Pharma conspiracy. They should expect to get testimonials from well meaning people with anecdotes about their "successes" with homeopathy and the "good" they are convinced it does.

But I'm sure they would never expect some willful idiot will suggest that they are fighting homeopathy because they secretly want desperately to find evidence showing it really works, or that they secretly already believe it does work, and are angry about the fact it works.

These particular rebuttals to the anti-homeopathy movement would be ridiculous. It seemed to me time to provide a link calling it out as "stupid," for people to use. I'd rather atheist skeptics, anti-theists and activists spend their time letting theists provide their demonstrations for their claims of gods existence, than spend their time having to defend against accusations that even a fool should recognize as foolish.

I have heard theists confuse hypothetical uses of "god" with belief in god. But I find this utterly dishonest, because we all use hypotheticals routinely. There is no reason someone should suddenly be unable to recognize a commonly used method of examining a claim. I might say to you I think a problem with your car is that you have an oil leak. But you know of some reason that isn't correct. You say "If it were an oil leak, though, I would expect XYZ to be happening, too, right?" That does not mean you agree it's an oil leak. And nobody should misunderstand that. In the same way if an atheist says "If there were a god that killed all these people that would be morally inexcusable," the atheist is not asserting believe in god and belief in the claims of the Bible. It's clearly a hypothetical, and even more-so due to the fact he wears the clear label "atheist" to alert the theist he doesn't accept this god is real. There is no excuse for any misunderstanding in these dialogs. I'm convinced these "misunderstandings" are willful dishonestly and red-herrings to get the atheist off track and in a defensive mode so that the theist is then relieved of having to defend an indefensible position.

So, if it helps, save the link to this blog post. Whenever you're told you "hate god" or are "searching for god," copy-paste and tell them atheists are worn out arguing dishonest stupidity and unless they have something of actual substance to offer in support of their unjustified beliefs, you aren't going to waste your time debating people who can't grasp basic levels of communication such as how to recognize the use of a hypothetical, the meanings of common words ("atheist") or how to apply the simplest context ("I don't believe in god, therefore I cannot hate god").

*Correction: I updated the headline to reflect Jen replacing Matt today as host.

More Blogger wackiness

While scanning the dashboard tonight, I noticed quite by chance that some legitimate comments had been snagged by the spam filter. So far Blogger's been doing a fine job of ferreting out the Asian pr0n and Markuze ravings, but there are some decidedly non-spam comments stuck in there as well. I'll go through some of these and try to clear the ones that are indeed legit, so if you've tried to comment here and wondered why it hadn't appeared, this may be why. One pointer for future reference: comments that include an inordinately large number of links seem to get autoplonked.

"God Exists" and "The Bible Is True"

Following is a synopsis of some responses to a viewer mail we received from “Aaron.” I gave up hope that Aaron would be able to go very deeply into a dialog about his own beliefs, but felt it was worth recording for the edification of blog readers.

Hello Aaron:

This may be my last reply, because you demonstrate a level of understanding of the history and reality of your own religion and holy book that really requires a “Bible and Christian History 101” course, not a few letters from an association volunteer. And even though I am involved in Austin with an Educational Foundation, I’m not here to spoon-feed you a semester’s worth of information you could easily find online if you honestly even wanted to know how your Bible came to exist. I suggest you start here and follow the links to educate yourself on at least the basic facts about your own holy book:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Canon

There have been many versions of it—including many “final” versions of it. And today there are in fact at least three “orthodox” Bible versions that are accepted in mainstream Christianity; and these are not all based upon the same set of base manuscripts for their content. When you say “The Bible,” then, you are using a word that refers to at least three different widely used anthologies of early Christian writings that are all considered “THE” holy Bible by different, large groups of people who all call themselves “Christians.”

>The Bible was written by Moses - who yes, was a shepherd

There is no compelling evidence that Moses even existed, let alone that he wrote any part of the Bible. We have wildly exaggerated tales about him, mostly in Jewish mythology, but nothing to confirm this was ever a real man, any more than a figure like Paul Bunyon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Historicity

The idea Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament is a Jewish myth. Christian Bible scholars know this. May I ask where you obtained this information and who told you this was true? Further, can I ask you why you believed it without researching it yourself? Many Bibles today come with Translator’s notes which would tell you—right there inside your Bible—that we don’t have the identity of the author of the Pentateuch—the first five books that Moses is said to have authored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentateuch
“Modern biblical scholars see no signs of Mosaic authorship, but indications of much later writing”

>but also by a doctor/historian (luke)

Again, this is not a valid claim. It is not known who authored the gospel of Luke. It’s just an old church traditional tale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke#Authorship

> and a guy who was a master of Jewish law (Paul).

Again, some books are attributed to Paul. But authorship assignment still requires speculation. There is no “fact” of who wrote the books within the Bible. But it is an undisputed reality that whatever is in there now is a revision of whatever was originally composed (which we no longer have).

Whoever is feeding you your information is unreliable and/or lying to you. Go to a Bible shop and open up the first page of each book in a NIV. You will see a page that tells you who the authors are *suspected* to be (if there is even a suspected author) and whether those assignments are based on scholarly guesses or just old religious traditions. What you will not find is anything conclusive to identify authorship to any high degree of certainty. And what you will not find is any credible Bible scholar who has studied these texts—believer in god or not—claiming they know who the authors actually are.

>Why would guys like Peter put embarrassing things about themselves in book where they’re just trying to gain followers (Jesus calls Peter “Satan,” peter deneies Christ). If you’re tyring to lie to build a following, you don’t do that.

Can you demonstrate Peter authored any book of the Bible and explain how you can be sure he did?

More importantly, when did I claim to know what anyone’s motives were for authoring 2,000-year-old letters? I have no idea what motives some anonymous author had 2,000 years ago for writing a letter—and I am sure you don’t, either. More importantly though, whatever was originally written is now gone. What we have now are altered texts that are no longer representative of the original writings.

I don’t know if you’re inclined to read more. I had been giving you very brief replies. My thinking was that if you couldn’t even recognize your own reasoning was absurd (in my examples of how you reasoned about Gremlins vs. god), I wasn’t sure a lengthy and densely informational response would be of any use to you (and would just waste my time). That said, I did put together a response to you, but mainly to post to our blog for the benefit of others who might actually be inclined to learn from it. However, if my assessment of you is incorrect, and you can follow the information below, here it is for your edification, broken down into three (hopefully easy-to-digest) parts.

1. Your support for your belief using “you can’t prove it’s not true” is irrational. And here is why:
You asserted god exists and the Bible is true; and you challenged someone who does not believe god exists and the Bible is true by asking if the claims “god exists” and “the Bible is true” could be disproved. However, you admitted you could not disprove gremlins exist; and when you admitted that, you acknowledged only that “maybe” they exist, but you “don’t know” (meaning you aren’t committed to saying if they do or do not exist).

But as someone who did not believe gremlins exist, who admitted he could not prove they do not exist, if your argument (i.e., I believe god exists because that claim cannot be disproved) is convincing, why do you not now believe gremlins do exist? Until you say it is true that gremlins exist, you are not a person who believes gremlins exist. That is you are still a nonbeliever in the existence of gremlins. Your position is merely it is possible they could exist, not that you believe they, in fact, do.

If you do not find an inability to prove gremlins do not exist to be a convincing argument for their existence, why did you use that same line of argumentation with me for your god, repeatedly? If even you demonstrate you don’t accept it as compelling--what on Earth made you think anyone else would find it compelling?

2. “The Bible is true” does not make sense based on my understanding of the word “true.”
“True” as I understand it, generally means “correlating to demonstrable reality.” So, when you say “the Bible is true,” I assume you mean that if we examine all of the best evidence for things claimed in the Bible, it will show a consistent positive correlation to what the Bible claims about reality. Since this is not the case, I don’t know how you’re using “true.” Here are two examples of what I mean, one addressing extra-Biblical reality, and one addressing internal Biblical reality.

Example 1: Extra-Biblical example:
You asserted not that evolution is false, but that you believe god was the catalyst for evolution. If you aren’t disputing evolution, then we can say that, in fact, we agree the Bible is not true in the case of Genesis and the account of how humans came to exist on Earth. According to the Bible, man popped fully formed and already communicating using language. And ultimately this same first human was wearing clothing and using agriculture--straight from his magical beginnings from dirt.

If we look at what evolutionary biologists put forward as the model of human evolution, then the Bible is not “true.” There is fossil evidence, DNA, and beyond biological evolution, a demonstrable history of how and when human agriculture is first evidenced compared to how long humans had existed previously in nomadic or hunter-gatherer cultures. Additionally we can tell from excavations approximately when people began to fashion tools (and by proxy when the idea of “manufacturing” things, such as clothing, may have been introduced), and there is simply no evidence to support that the earliest humans would have been “truthfully” represented by the Genesis account. All of the evidence appears, in fact, not to correlate to that account as “true.”

Example 2: Internal Biblical Example:
The New Testament passage (Gospel of) John 7:53-8:11 is as good an example as any. As an atheist, I have no objection to agreeing that the men and women who are hired to translate the best modern translations of the Bible are qualified people for the job. They are expert at reading and interpreting ancient languages that the average person wouldn’t begin to have a clue about. Additionally, they are devoted specifically to the texts used within the Bible. These are men and women who have devoted significant portions of their lives and careers to the Biblical manuscripts specifically. And I accept them as “expert” when it comes to claims about those manuscripts.

In the NASB and NIV versions of the Bible (both reputable translations), if any person takes an interest in doing so, they have a wealth of input from these experts, literally, at their fingertips. There are marginal notes, footnotes, endnotes, etc., right on the pages where the text appears. Anyone can see what the translators have to say about the texts Christians are reading in their Bibles. And I can’t imagine anyone claiming the people inserting these notes are not qualified to giving the best opinions of what the best and most current data demonstrates about what is “true” about these texts.

Throughout the pages, there are many insertions of notes that alert the reader that the text is in question or is disputed. It will alert you that this or that verse here says X, but in some other available manuscripts it does not say X (or says Y instead).

I chose John 7:53-8:11, because it is probably one of the most famous stories in the Bible about Jesus. It is the story of the adulterous woman--who is brought before Jesus for judgment. He there puts forward the famous line “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” This has become a very popular story with Christians.

Yet, according to the translators’ notes, it isn’t included in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts. They say outright and boldly, right on the pages of the NASB, that the story was added to the text later. These are translators who have a vested interest in the production and sale of Bibles being a successful industry. They have no cause to undermine their source of income by claiming “it’s a fake!” And yet, that’s what they’re saying if you are someone who accepts this book as “true.” If any group had a reason to lie or be biased about the Bible including reliable content, it would be people who work in the Bible-selling industry, selling to people who, like you, want very badly to believe it is “true”--and yet they’re telling you (and me) it’s not.

So, the best and most reliable evidence, considered by the best experts in the field, with no reason for bias against the text, does not align with your claim “the Bible is true.” And you can see this yourself--as any Christian who is interested can also--just by opening a good Bible translation that includes translator notes.

So, I have no idea what you mean when you say “the Bible is true.” I see no evidence that it should not be considered to include lies, errors, falsehoods--whatever you want to call them—basically statements that do not correlate with the best evidence we have to judge against in reality.

3. Your claim “god exists” is so far a meaningless statement, to which I cannot respond—since it makes no sense as you have stated it.
So far you haven’t really explained what this claim means. I don’t know what you’re calling god, so I have no idea what to say about whether it exists or not. But for example, I accept the existence of many things—books, water, chairs, even oxygen (which can be demonstrated using balloons and fire, and many other methods). To me, “exist” is a word we use to assert that a particular item manifests in some way in demonstrable, material reality.

This is why it’s interesting that you said only that “gremlins may exist” after admitting you could not disprove them. If I were to go into a classroom of 10-year-olds and ask them if gremlins exist, they would inform me gremlins are fairytale, mythical creatures that do not, in fact, exist. Their assessment has nothing to do with gremlins having been disproved. It would be a statement of the extreme lack of evidence for the existence of gremlins. In other words, the people who assert gremlins cause machines to malfunction, have never been able to produce a demonstration of what they’re talking about. This leads the reasonable 10-year-old to assert that gremlins do not exist. That is, their manifestation within reality so far cannot be discerned from nothing.

So, we have two bins. One labeled “nonexistent” and one labeled “existence.” Everything starts off in the “nonexistent” bin. And once it unambiguously manifests in reality in some way—either on its own, like the sun, or by some demonstration, like oxygen--it goes into the bin of “existence.” What we don’t do is put items into the “existence” bin BEFORE they are demonstrated to exist or before they manifest self-evidently in some measurable fashion.

Interestingly, a 10-year-old gets this, but you are so unwilling to admit your argument “you can’t prove it doesn’t exist, ergo it’s reasonable to accept that it does” is a fail, that you have demonstrated you will even dishonestly assert you can’t really say gremlins don’t exist—even though you and I both know that if you were honest, you’d admit you don’t give a second thought to asserting gremlins are myths. A 10-year-old is not only more reasonable than you, then, but also more honest.

My question to you is whether this thing—whatever it is you’re calling god—”exists,” in that it demonstrates a manifestation in reality that we can discuss. Or whether it is indiscernible from nothing? And if it’s no different than nothing, I can’t agree that “nothing exists.” And I can’t really examine what we’re supposed to be talking about in such a case—and I can’t see how you could, either? I have no data points to confirm to even begin a dialog with you about it. When you have some manifestation or demonstration, come back and we’ll have “something” to talk about (rather than “nothing”).

Thanks for writing.

-th

###

I’m sorry to say that after this exchange Aaron replied that he’d rather believe in god and be wrong, than not believe. That’s right, he threw Pascal’s Wager at me, after all this trouble I went to jotting down these notes. But knowing it would go to use at the blog allowed me to avoid feelings of futility and disappointment.

When I replied that Pascal’s Wager is a fail, but that he’d have to research it to find out why, he sent back a fairly large cut-and paste-apologist’s Web site content that asserted Pascal’s Wager was a fail because god demands devotion and real belief, not just someone playing a part.

I congratulated him on finding one reason Pascal’s Wager fails, and gave him a few others as a bonus point for having looked it up at all. Then alerted him that copying and pasting without giving credit to a source is plagiarism, because it’s like trying to claim someone else’s ideas as your own. He had asked me if maybe Matt would write back to him. I told him Matt is copied on all the tv e-list correspondences, but that his probability of a reply from Matt was quite low for two reasons:

1. He’d already said he’d rather believe and be wrong. If someone asserts they don’t care if they believe falsehoods, what is the point of anyone arguing with them about the their beliefs? I can’t imagine a greater waste of time to enter into.

2. The last copy-and-paste note (paragraphs and paragraphs of material) was indicative of a problem we often see with some mail correspondence. We ask people to contact us to discuss what they believe and why they believe it. Sending us reams and reams of what someone else believes for us to rebut is senseless. If they can’t explain what they believe and support what they believe, providing their own reasons, then maybe they’re not ready to assert it as their belief? If the person who wrote the content Aaron had stripped and sent to us wanted to challenge us about his beliefs, he’s welcome to do so. But nobody on our list is interested in arguing with random apologists’ web content through Aaron’s endless relays. What an easy conversation that would be from Aarson’s perspective? He wouldn’t have to think or type or explain anything—just copy and paste while we spend time crafting thoughtful responses using our actual reasoning.

To summarize: Nobody on our list is interested in a one-sided waste of our time.

Universes and the equivocation fallacy

I said I was going to comment on this in the Episode #692 thread, but the comment got way too long. So here's a full post.

In the most recent episode, a caller named Peter from New Zealand tried to prove that there is no God. Side comment: I have to say, I get really impatient with this topic, almost as much as attempts to prove that God does exist. Both pro- and anti-God arguments usually hinge on the notion that you can "prove" or "disprove" the existence of physical things through pure reason, without respect to the things that you actually observe in the universe. Augustine was really into this concept, and it was a big deal sometime around the Renaissance. But basically the rise of science was based on a recognition of the fact that our model of the universe is always going to be tentative, so we should build up a system that recognizes facts as more or less likely to be true based on their support through observation. There is never, ever, going to be some kind of successful argument purely of the form "A is A, therefore Bigfoot exists / doesn't exist." Proving things in the real world requires that you look at things in the real world.

Look, guys, 200 generations of philosophers have tried and failed to both conclusively prove and disprove the existence of God. If you think you have solved the problem all by yourself, you are most likely not only wrong but sounding completely ridiculous. Learn to live with uncertainty.

Anyhow...

Peter in particular was making a fallacy which is extremely common in theistic arguments against scientific cosmology. Namely, he was making an equivocation fallacy on the word "universe."Early in the call, he says: "My definition of the universe is 'that which exists.'" That's fine, and it's certainly ONE legitimate definition of the word universe.

But as his argument unfolds, he wants to apply that same definition to the claim that "God created the universe." Then, the argument goes, obviously that is logically contradictory since God cannot create the universe if he is part of the universe.

To quote another caller: No, no, no, no, no. You're done.

The theistic claim that God created the universe applies to THIS, current, physical universe that we inhabit. That is a completely separate definition of the word "universe" from the one he started with. You cannot claim that you are using one meaning of a word, only to turn around and apply a different one. That's what the equivocation fallacy means.

Here, let Dictionary.com make this more concrete. Peter was starting more or less from definition #4 of "universe": "Logic: the aggregate of all the objects, attributes, and relations assumed or implied in a given discussion." I.e., "Universe" = "Everything." But "God created the universe" implies definition #1: "The totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos." That's not the same universe!

Let me put it another way. Science fiction and fantasy fans frequently refer to the "universe" that encapsulates a particular set of characters, history, and rules. For example, the universe of "Lord of the Rings" contains Middle Earth, Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, and all that deadly dull stuff in the Silmarillion. Fans of Joss Whedon's work refer to "the Buffyverse" (or sometimes "the Whedonverse") which contains the events of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and comic books, as well as Angel, and possibly (depending on how liberal you get) Dollhouse as well. Fans of David Weber's Honor Harrington character call his books the Honorverse. Etc.

Here's the point: J.R.R. Tolkien simply does not exist inside the Hobbitverse. Joss Whedon does not exist inside the Buffyverse. David Weber does not exist in the Honorverse. Certainly it is relevant and appropriate to speak about Joss Whedon during a discussion of Buffy, but Joss still does not occupy the same universe that Buffy does. (There are apparent exceptions, of course. But even if an author writes a version of him or herself into a story universe, it's still not really the author; merely a character who happens to bear the same name and some characteristics.)

In the 1977 movie "Oh God," George Burns appears as an unassuming man who turns out to be God. It is fair to say that in the universe(4) of "Oh God," God exists. It is also fair to say that within the context of that story, God created the universe(1). But you still can't confuse the two definitions with each other, and that's why Peter's argument is not good.

Within the universe of the fictional story known as "The Bible," there is a character called God. That character created the universe (i.e., the cosmos). I think we can all agree on this from a literary point of view. Christians only differ in the sense that they believe that the Bible is non-fiction, or in other words, we are living in a universe that is accurately portrayed by the Bible. If that were true, then God would exist within this universe(4) but not within this universe(1).

And now that I have beaten this topic to death, go forth and equivocate no more.

Open thread on episode #692

Matt, Don, "Sacred" as a buzzword of ignorance. Have at it.

I just finished listening and I have a comment about the New Zealand chap who attempted to disprove God. However, it wasn't my episode so I'll save it for the comments section.

That so-called "Christian morality" in action yet again

Sometimes, by happy serendipity, you discover something that, in a totally non-conspiracy-theory kind of way, allows you to connect a few dots and go, "Ah soooo!" Being someone who makes something of a close-to-full-time hobby of science fiction and fantasy literature, and knowing as I do a number of writers both professional and aspiring, I came across news recently of a potential scam targeting the latter group.

The sad truth of our world is that there are hucksters and con artists out there who latch onto your dreams and hopes and insecurities in order to rob you blind. Religion has refined this so expertly all you can do is stand in awe.

Aspiring writers are easy pickings for vile charlatans. And it is via the blogs of award-winning science fiction novelist John Scalzi and literary agent Janet Reid that I learn of a writing contest for newbie talents, the fine print of which can be summarized as "We Are Going To Fuck You." (What does any of this have to do with atheism and religion? Wait for it.)

The contest is run by one Karen Hunter of First One Digital Publishing. Immediately, to anyone who knows anything about the legalities of actual publishing, red flags are flying all over the map. First flag: entrants must pony up a $149 entry fee. An entry fee isn't problematic in itself, but this one's exorbitant, to put it mildly. I just entered an online screenwriting contest for the princely sum of 12 bucks.

Then there is this tiny little rider that they hope you don't notice, buried deep within the rules.

All submissions become sole property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. By submitting an entry, all entrants grant Sponsor the absolute and unconditional right and authority to copy, edit, publish, promote, broadcast, or otherwise use, in whole or in part, their entries, in perpetuity, in any manner without further permission, notice or compensation. Entries that contain copyrighted material must include a release from the copyright holder.

For those of you not up on writing or intellectual property stuff, what an entrant is being told here is that First One Digital Publishing expects you to give away all of your rights to the story you submit, forever. Once they have it, it's no longer yours, and not only will you never get paid a dime if, say, they sell the story to film or TV, you cannot even ask for it back if they do nothing with it. And you're expected to shell out 149 bones for the privilege. I'm reminded of Sarah Palin suggesting that women should be charged for their rape kits.

As Scalzi points out, with rules like these, why would any writer with a story good enough to submit to this contest not simply submit it to a real agent or publisher? Because you see, in traditional publishing, a writer is never expected to sign away all rights. When, for instance, Random House accepts your story or book, they are never flat-out buying up the story, lock stock and barrel. They are simply buying first publication rights, which is a license allowing them to be the publishers of your story, to which you retain full copyright, for a period of time specified by the contract. Once the contract expires, the publisher can choose to negotiate a renewal of it, or not, leaving the author free to take the property elsewhere. (Note: there is a thing called "work for hire," but I'm not addressing that here.)

But this contest is relying on newbie writers being utterly ignorant of their legal rights, which, sadly, almost all of them are. And considering that the accepted length for entries runs up to 65,000 words — right around the low end of what the industry considers a novel — this represents quite a lot of work Hunter is expecting a writer to pay to give up.

The fuckage continues. You don't have to know jack about writing and publishing to raise an eyebrow at this one:

In the event that there is an insufficient number of entries received that meet the minimum standards determined by the judges, all prizes will not be awarded.

Get that?

If an "insufficient number of entries" are received, First One can simply call the whole thing off. How many entries are "sufficient"? Why, they don't say. So they can get 20, or 200, or 2000, and decide, so sorry, we've received an "insufficient number" of entries, but thanks all the same for submitting. And for your entry fee. Wait, don't you get that back if the contest is cancelled? Why, it doesn't say, so I'm going to take that as a "No." So the contest will be off, but they'll still have your cash in their bank, and your story, which they can publish, edit, do whatever with, without paying you or even putting your name on it. Because their rules require you not only to grab your ankles but supply your own lube. Finally they wrap everything up with a kicker that leaves them legally untouchable for anything, including, one fears, any arbitrary decision to turn up at your house one day, shoot your whole family dead and burn the place down.

By entering, entrants release judges and Sponsor(s), and its parent company, subsidiaries, production, and promotion agencies from any and all liability for any loss, harm, damages, costs, or expenses, including without limitation property damages, personal injury, and/or death arising out of participation in this contest, the acceptance, possession, use or misuse of any prize, claims based on publicity rights, defamation or invasion of privacy, merchandise delivery, or the violation of any intellectual property rights, including but not limited to copyright infringement and/or trademark infringement.

No, I'm not sure what kind of writing contest could result in "property damages, personal injury or death," but at this point I'm willing to believe they'll think of something.

Seriously, even the prominent "Writers of the Future" contest, a major competition in SF publishing that has launched several notable careers, and which is run by the publishing arm of the Church of motherfucking Scientology, does nothing that isn't strictly ethically above-board in their own rules. Hopefully, by now, I've made it abundantly clear what an exercise in total fail Karen Hunter's little contest really is.

So now we get to that happy serendipity I mentioned earlier. Once word got out in writing and publishing circles — with people tweeting the living hell out of the Janet Reid blog in particular — some folks began to wonder just who this Karen Hunter person was. Particularly when she responded to Reid with an awesomely bitch-ass comment in her blog thread.

Janet,

While I appreciate your comments. And I understand your vested interest in this business because if we're successful, we eliminate the need for literary agents, the contest hasn't launched yet. So to post our rules and a link telling people that this is a contest to avoid is both self-serving and misleading. Are there issues with the rules, yes. But I think you should wait until the contest officially launches on Feb. 11, 2011, before you tell people to not join it. That's the fair thing to do.

Could I, a 20-year veteran in publishing as a writer and publisher, afford to put out a contest that rips people off? I'm not desperate. The goal is to truly find the next great author, something not too many people are actually looking for. What's been your success track record?

Blessings,
Karen Hunter

PS: I sleep extremely well every night because I operate in truth.

Man. Hunter wasn't done. This comment was immediately followed by "If my response doesn't appear on your blog, I'll know what your true motives are. Thanks again." Well, I'd say the contest, rather than revealing how unnecessary agents are, actually illustrates their extreme importance, as agents make their living running interference between clueless n00b writers and the hucksters like Hunter who try to scam them.

Even given the hilarious defensive petulance and rich irony of much of this whine, there was just a lot in Hunter's language that sounded to me exactly like the kind of butthurt rhetoric we get in emails from creationists, or conspiracy fans, or alt-med anti-vax loons, or anyone who's pissed at us for slamming something they've attached themselves passionately to, and who can't articulate their anger other than to imagine wild ulterior motives driving us.

So it came as little surprise to discover that Karen Hunter has done the right-wing Christian talking pundit thing on cable news.

Do any of you remember the "atheists need their own Hallmark cards" lady? Well, this is that Karen Hunter. And if you aren't familiar with her still, she made an appearance on Paula Zahn's show on CNN about four years ago, where the topic happened to turn to atheism. Appearing alongside the odious Debbie Schlussel, Hunter offered such memorable bon mots as these.

What does an atheist believe? Nothing. I think this is such a ridiculous story. Are we not going to take "In God We Trust" off of our dollars? Are we going to not say "one nation under God?" When does it end? We took prayer out of schools. What more do they want?

If [atheists] had Hallmark cards, maybe they wouldn't feel so left out. We have Christmas cards. We have Kwanzaa cards now. Maybe they need to get some atheist cards and get that whole ball rolling so more people can get involved with what they're doing. I think they need to shut up and let people do what they do. No, I think they need to shut up about it.

And here's my very favorite.

I think they need to shut up about crying wolf all the time and saying that they're being imposed upon. I personally think that they should never have taken prayer out of schools. I would rather there be some morality in schools.

Oh, morality? Would this be the "morality," Karen, that led you to think you could get away with trying to bogart the rights in perpetuity of possibly hundreds of hungry and eager aspiring creative talents, while taking their money and constructing an impermeable legal shield around yourself barring them from any recourse against you, even the right to have the fruits of their labors returned to them if you have no desire to publish them? Or if you do publish their work to great success, and overlook putting their byline on it, having set things up so you don't have to part with a penny in royalties either?

And was it the same "morality" that gave you the smug arrogance to think you could avoid getting called on all this bullshit, by actual established and respected (and godless) professionals in the field to which you're only a pretender? Is that an example of the Christian "morality" you disdain atheists for lacking? Then let me state how proud I am to have missed the lessons in "morality" you took to heart. As a creative person myself, nothing disgusts me more than the idea of a sleaze merchant like you exploiting the naivety behind someone else's dreams, and all for your own petty personal enrichment. But somehow, knowing that you've probably convinced yourself it's what Jesus would do, all I can say is, it figures.

On testable claims / Open thread on episode #691

Sorry I'm late with this, but I noticed some people wanting to comment on the recent show with me and Jeff, so I thought I ought to put up a thread. If you didn't see the show, here's what you missed:

(Thanks for the Photoshop job, Eik!)

I want to mention a point about one of the callers. This caller told us that he had experienced what some would consider to be "out of body experiences" or OBEs. However, rather than just assuming that he had experienced a supernatural event, he came up with the idea of hiding playing cards so he could look at them while projected. If this worked, he would have been able to predict what was value was on the cards and check them while awake. Much to his complete lack of surprise, it did not work.

We also discussed some other alternatives at dinner. I brought up an example I heard from Martin Gardner: you should keep a book of limericks handy in your house but not read it. It's easy to recognize a limerick on sight, but it's not easy for your brain, conscious or subconscious, to invent a unique limerick on the fly. So if you're not sure whether you're experiencing the real world, just open up to a random page and find a limerick you haven't read yet.

Now, I noticed in my email that someone had written a comment on the blog, but later deleted it. I won't quote the comment in full, or identify the poster, but I think the content is worth mentioning because it demonstrates a common method of dodging attempts to make supposedly supernatural events become testable. The commenter said that it would be foolish to try this sort of experiment, because all the experts on OBEs know that you cannot read text or see drawn images while you are out of your body. The page will show either random gibberish, or something completely different each time you look at it.

And I say, gosh, how amazingly convenient that is for somebody who wants to to believe in OBEs but doesn't want it to be disproved by science. In the first place, how does anyone, in fact, know this? How did the researchers come to the conclusion that it was actually the text or pictures that were changing, and not (as most skeptics would suspect) simply the brain making shit up as it goes along? And in the second place, what is it about "text" and "drawn images" that make them prone to being changed randomly or become nonsensical scrawlings, while the rest of the physical world is not?

To his credit, the commenter proposed an alternative test, which is to have a friend place a random assortment of objects in a box so you can later identify what they are. But it seems pretty arbitrary to me to be separating drawn images from other real world objects. Writing doesn't have mystical properties on its own; it's ink that has soaked into paper, or it's physically chipped out of a hard surface such as stone, metal, or plastic. If your experience can include this sort of physical stuff being scrambled around without any reason, how do you know you can trust any of your senses? You could be looking at, say, a rubber ball, and it would appear to be a fully grown cow. It's all just a sensory perception of the real world anyway, so that doesn't make any less sense than words in English changing into words in French, or a random string of ASCII, or Arabic characters.

There is, of course, something our brain does already which generates a proxy version of the world as we understand it without requiring any reliable sensory input. It's called dreaming, or hallucinating.

And making an experience off-limits to testing by constantly introducing completely arbitrary reasons why the tests you propose are invalid... it's the oldest trick in the book.

Talk amongst yourselves.

What casual remarks reveal about theism's view of the world

I'm writing this on Monday, but have delayed the scheduled posting of it for a few days, in that I do think there's such a thing as inappropriate timing. Some folks may still think I'm off base with this one, and that's fine.

In the wake of the horrific shootings in Tucson the other day, there has of course been a lot of argument as to possible causes, motivations, the role America's current volatile political climate may or may not have played in the event, and so on. I've been involved in a few arguments on Facebook myself.

What will go unnoticed — indeed what is almost certain to be praised — is the way theists will spout sanctimonious, pious bullshit so staggeringly stupid and offensive that it can only be by a willful disconnection of one's higher cognitive functions that the stupidity of such pronouncements do not meet with immediate ridicule and condemnation. Here's one such inane homily, plucked at random from CNN.

"The doctors are pretty clear that we just have to wait and see," Mike McNulty said. But he added, "I can only think that God has more important things planned for her in the future."

Now, sure, I'm willing to accept that Mike McNulty is a respectable Democratic congressman, a dear friend and colleague of Gabrielle Giffords', a good man dedicated to serving his state and his country, and an all around decent and intelligent fellow. He is in a deeply fraught emotional state, as anyone would be, and of course I'm not unsympathetic to that. I'm not attacking him here, so much as I am the inanity he has uttered, and what it says about how religion asks us to view the world.

Let's consider what kind of God this remark is proposing here.

As he sits upon his heavenly throne of purest gold and alabaster, he thinks to himself, "Hmm, I have important things planned for this Democratic congresswoman. Being omnipotent, there are any number of ways I can achieve this. But I think the best is this: I will arrange for a delusional psychopath to purchase a gun under his state's extremely lax gun laws, fit it with an extended clip, and shoot her in the head at point blank range in broad daylight in public. In the process he will shoot a number of other people, killing some, including a small child. But these will just have to be acceptable collateral damage, even though in my omnipotence it would be easy for me to prevent all of it. I'll just make sure the girl gets an extra-awesome Barbie collectors set when she gets up here, along with pie. Now, the congresswoman herself will not die, as I will arrange for the bullet to perforate only one of her brain hemispheres. She will be in a coma following this, and will be several years recovering. But the end result of it all will be that it will allow me to implement my important plans for her once she recovers. If she does. Even though I could do it any other way."

Does that about sum it up?

Seriously, the only way a person could believe in a God like this is if they just don't think about the implications of what they believe. Religion trains you not to think of such things. And this is why I think religion, far from being something to offer true comfort in a time of crisis, simply offers a way to delude yourself that every tragedy has a silver lining, and that a benign space daddy still has my back, even if making life better for me required a little girl to die.

If you think I'm being offensive offering a snarky critique of a statement made by a theist in the wake of a tragedy that happens to reflect his beliefs in the midst of emotional upset, well, that's your prerogative. For my part, I am offended by the way religion so easily makes light of human pain and suffering to find some way, no matter what, to glorify its God. It's not Mike McNulty I'm criticizing, it's the indoctrination that's influenced his thinking, and the way it values its God's glory over innocent lives.