The Greatest Threat?

This video wins the prize for "Most [shall we say "greatest"?] Unintentionally Ironic"...

Pentecosts Know How to Party!

Thanks, Jim!

What Atheist Do I Be?

Jim just took this quiz and posted his results, so I figured I'd do it, too.

I take serious issue with scoring "33% theist"!

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 75% Angry Atheist 50% Apathetic Atheist 50% Agnostic 42% Militant Atheist 33% Theist 33% Spiritual Atheist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

What does God explain?

When guys like Will Wilkinson are writing brilliant stuff like this it really kills my desire to blog much at all, at least when it comes to the heavy philosophical topics. Given the law of comparative advantage, I should leave the philosophizing to Will (and others) and I'll stick to, uh..., something else I haven't quite figured out, yet.

Anyway, I particularly like Will's approach to the definition of an atheist, here:

...[I]f something plays a role in our best explanation of some phenomenon, you should believe it exists. Otherwise, not. God, for instance, is the best explanation for nothing. That’s why you shouldn’t believe in God, or the posits of string theory. (People...who hesitate to call themselves atheists because they cannot “prove” nonexistence are simply confused about ontological commitment. If [one's estimate of the probability] p for “God exists” is so low (”vanishingly unlikely”), then God must play no role in [one's] economy of explanation, which is all there is to being an atheist. You don’t just get to decide whether or not you are one.)

I see little to disagree with in any of the rest of the post, either (or the whole blog, for that matter).

I rarely find myself feeling envious of another man's genius, but Will Wilkinson is definitely one of the few exceptions. Perhaps in part it's because he's got a really hot girlfriend who seemed (at last check, anyway) to be totally nuts about him. Some guys have all the luck!

How to Stay Out of Hell

These are the 8 things that you must do if you want to avoid burning in the lake of fire for all eternity. Watch carefully and be sure to take some notes!

I look forward to seeing you in Heaven!

Thanks to Jim Lippard.

It's funny 'cause it's true!

Thanks, Solan!

Confirmation Bias

Is it just the skeptics and the scientists who take epistemology seriously?

This question springs from my continued study of The Bible and its prima facie absurdity. Confronted with the Bible's inherent lunacy, Christians metaphorically wave their hands and avert their eyes, and take comfort in those biblical passages that glorify faith. It seems very few of them are truly concerned with the fundamentals of how we know what isn't so. I find it fascinating that religious folk can be so blind when it comes to their own crazy beliefs and yet so rational when it comes to the crazy beliefs of others. Jews laugh at Catholics. Catholics laugh at Mormons. Mormons laugh at Scientologists... ad nauseum. Of course, this tendency isn't restricted to the religious sphere alone. It seems par for the course in any sales pitch for snake oil.

While I was an admissions counselor at the University of Phoenix (really nothing more than a glorified telemarketing position) I had the pleasure of having two "network marketers" on my admissions team. One was affiliated with Quixtar (an Amway offshoot - though they don't like to point that out) and the other was affiliated with some long-distance service reseller called ACN. I was only able to have a couple brief (though animated) conversations with the Amway/Quixtar zombie before he was completely alienated, but they were enough for me to surmise that the guy was completely closed off to rational discourse. For example, he felt it was a huge selling point that Quixtar "pays you back" for the things that you purchase from them. Inexplicably, he thought that this was materially different from if Quixtar simply lowered the prices of the items in question, and he further felt - again, inexplicably - that this was an important demonstration of the truth that he would soon be able to retire and live off the massive residual income - he would soon be living the dream.

Meanwhile, my ACN friend was often privy to these conversations, and he would happily join in the derision. Unlike the Amway zombie, my ACN friend, Mike, was someone I had known for a while. Based on overheard conversations I had always kinda guessed he was in on some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, but I always felt it was none of my business. Subsequent to the Quixtar conversations, I broached the topic with him.

The first thing I asked him was why he was so down on Quixtar. He said it was because that was clearly an unworkable pyramid scheme, whereas ACN was the real deal. This is, of course, the standard sales pitch of every pyramid scheme out there. They all claim that their compensation plan avoids the pitfalls of the "real" pyramids and assures success to those "business owners" who "only have what it takes." Nevermind the mathematical impossibility of this claim. The mental gymnastics that Mike performed, when confronted with these inherent obstacles to easy money, were a sight to behold:

Well, obviously we both look at network-marketing differently. I look at as something you can do part-time, which is fun, where you have no boss, where it is all up to you. If you produce, you get paid if you do not you don't, there is no grey matter. I look at is as sorting through people, looking for superstars and believing in someone who may not ever think they can do something great. I have gone in knowing most who take this ride will fail because of either lack of belief, work ethic, or fear. I know I have to pay very close attention to those who are successful and duplicate what they have done . For what they have and the experiences they have are what I want for myself and my girlfriend.

I'll take the easy pot-shot first and say that I agree with him when he says "there is no grey matter." Of course I'm sure he meant to say "area," but in this instance I choose to have faith that Freud was on to something. The rest of the 'graph reads like Kiyosaki on a three-day speed binge, but when he makes the claim that what he is doing is "fun" I have to call foul. Having been a Realtor for two years, I know how uncomfortable it is soliciting your friends and family for business.

Now, I don't mean to pick on my unfortunate friend (who has, since writing the above, not-so-much come to his senses about ACN as ground to a halt - the way he put it: "I have transferred my time and energy into other areas"). He simply serves, I think, as a reminder that the religious impulse lurks in unexpected places. We have an insidious--though perhaps understandable--tendency to see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe--what the philosophers, skeptics, and scientists call confirmation bias.

Oh, and by the way, check out the real "Secrets of the Rich" here.

Does Anybody Really Read This Stuff?

This stuff, I mean.

I’ve been having some fun trolling over at the Dying In Christ blog for the past few weeks. The woman who blogs there, Maureen, seems to have the perfect mixture of kookiness coupled with a willingness to, at least periodically, respond to criticisms (and, since she does lots of gay-bashing, she certainly attracts a lot of that).

As a direct consequence of this trolling, along with a promise I made to a friend of a friend over a year ago, I was inspired to read the 4 main Gospels, starting with the Gospel of John. My copy of The Bible is the Red Letter Edition of the New International Version. Now, I don’t mean to be insulting to my Christian friends, as I have a couple whose intellect I do respect a lot. However, I honestly have to ask: How the hell do you read this stuff and still believe it?

Aside from becoming disgusted with the figure of Jesus almost immediately, the main thing that jumps out at me about the Bible is how poorly written it is. This is supposed to be the inspired word of God, right? As such, my expectation would be that the prose would be evocative, the plot would be riveting, the characters would be well developed and inspiring, and the polemic would be inescapably persuasive. The Bible is none of these things. A two-bit hack could write better. How do Christians explain this?

I’ll hazard a guess and opine that all the explanation required is the recognition that people have a terrible fear of death, with the corollary fear that perhaps there’s no meaning or value in the universe after all (other than what we give it). I will further conjecture that, in many—and perhaps most—people, this fear is so all-encompassing that they are willing to grasp at anything that might provide even a glimmer of hope, no matter how absurd it is (and the Bible certainly is that).

I’ve got more to say on this topic, but I’ll get to it in later posts. In the meantime, I’m hoping that my Christian friends won’t consider this one to be so judgmental that it doesn’t merit a comment or two, because I would like to inspire some sort of honest dialog about it.