This move is was done largely because I wanted some real server space for my projects, I’ve gone with nearlyfreespeech hosting, which — so far as I can tell — is a wonderful host, it allows for alot of really neat hosting options (Including HApps, a haskell-based web framework).

Also, NFSH only charges based on the bandwith, so by tacking on adds, the site should more or less pay for itself. (right now it costs me about 0.05$ a day, plus 15$ for a 2 year domain name registration).

Soon enough I’ll have a few sites set up over there, so come visit!

~~Joe

My posts, you may have noticed, are thinning

But friend, in reality, you’re winning.

A new provider I’ll find

Then leave wordpress.org behind.

And Humbuggery will continue blaspheming.

~~ Your humble Author, Joe

I’d like to address the GLBT community now, I don’t know if there are any GLBT readers out there reading this, but I’d like to say that I think science and logic are on your side. Science has found some genetic basis for sexual preference, and logic tells me that — if it’s not your choice, then it shouldn’t be deemed “Wrong”. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m happy for you guys and girls, we in the skeptic community know that winning even a small victory against idiocy is satisfying, encouraging, and I just wanted to wish all the californian couples getting married in the near future good luck on their new, official, legal lives together.

Once again, Go Californian Supreme Court! May the FSM bless you and guide you by his noodley appendage!

Ramen!

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able, and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God.”

In this episode, we’ll explore two ideas, omnibenevolence, and another interesting idea, omnimalevolence.

Omnibenevolence, one of — as far as I know — the first realized, and first questions attributes of deity. The fundamental argument of this much researched idea is that if God is omnibenevolent, and ostensibly created the universe, then why did he bother to create evil? To borrow a common sentiment from religion, I’ll quote the Bible, specifically 2 Peter:

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” [1] (Emphasis Mine)

This God, seemingly, wants only good for people; yet allows apparently countless thousands die, and not only die, but suffer in eternal hellfire.

Let me just say, if this is the God I’m supposed to believe in, let alone serve, then I want no part in it. I refuse to work for anyone that is so morally bankrupt that — even though he has the ability — won’t save these people, it’s despicable.

However, we cannot attack this problem without a good definition of what omnibenevolence is, so lets define it as follows:

• Omnibenevolence is defined as being unable to withhold oneself from doing good. That is, in any situation, an omnibenevolent being will choose the ethical answer.

Similarly, we’ll define Omnimalevolence as the opposite of the above, that is, to always choose the unethical answer.[2]

So how does this idea fare logically? Well, first, we may see some correlation between omniscience and this, since always choosing the ‘correct’ ethical answer requires knowledge of that answer. We leads us to ask the ‘hard’ questions, like gay marriage, or abortion, or the death penalty. When is it ethically ‘correct’ for us to kill someone as penalty for crimes committed? We’ve shown that these questions have no ‘right’ answer. So how could a omnibenevolent god make the right choice?

Similarly, if god is incapable of doing evil, then that idea flies in the face of omnipotence and free will. If we say god is capable of everything, and in the same breath say that “it is impossible for God to [lie]“[3] (to borrow from the bible again), this is a trivial contradiction, and one of the most glaring ones in the bible. The common counter argument is that “God simply chooses not to lie, and has promised that he never will.” But to that I ask, if the bible is the divine, literal, true word of God, why didn’t it say that? The issue here comes down to certain groups wanting to have they’re oil and burn it too. They say that the bible is the literal truth, so we point out a contradiction. They then say that that part was metaphorical, and so we tell them about their former position, and now they’re in a bind. You can’t say something is literal, and then tell me that parts are metaphorical, and that you’re the only one who knows the literal from the metaphorical. It’s a scam. It gives you a license to make the text say whatever you want.

To be honest, the omnibenevolence problem is fairly unassailable, it’s an ethical problem, and ethics are generally subjective. I think I’m going to stop, with the note that the few arguments I did present here also apply in the opposite direction, for omnimalevolence. In any case, a nice short post on omnibenevolence never hurt anyone.

Before I go, a quick summary, so far we’ve shown that omniscience is not much more than incredible intelligence, omnipresence doesn’t really work out, and we offered an admittedly weak argument for the case against omnibenevolence. I’ve got only one or two more to go. (I’m still considering the case for omnipotence, as that’s the real big one, and I’m digging up another interesting one, I hope.)

Not sure what I’ll do for my next series, any suggestions are welcome.

[1] 2 Peter, 3:9 NRSV. I use the NRSV for two reasons, firstly, My sister (A Theology Grad Student) mentioned that it is the Bible most commonly used among her academic colleagues. Secondly, it seems that we atheists tend to prefer translations like the KJV or the NKJV. When in fact these translations are typically only used by radicals in the Christian religion. When we confront those subgroups, using the translation they use is just fine. However, I think it would be unfair to use a version as dated and — as far as I’m concerned — prejudicial, in a setting such as this. Reference retrieved from http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=2Peter+3

[2] As usual, I have to enter the disclaimer, if you don’t define this particular attribute in this particular way, that’s fine. You’ll have to judge for yourself if the arguments presented here apply. I aim to choose a definition which gets the general sentiment of the idea.

[3] “… in which it is impossible that God would prove false,” Heb 6:18, NRSV. http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Hebrews+6

1. In general, I do not delete comments.
2. If the comment disagree’s with any belief or idea presented in this blog, fine, as long as it’s substantive.

I will not allow comments that are simply “This post sucks”, “You suck” or any variation of that sentiment, unless you can offer a convincing argument, or at least attempt to make a convincing argument.

We’ll forgo an extensive recap, I’ll only ask that you recall that we have all but shown omniscience to be, at best, equivalent to a fair amount of intelligence, and less so with the application of the somewhat iffy third axiom. Given Occam’s Razor, the conditions which would allow for this kind of omniscience are fairly extreme — one would have to study a very long time, and even then would not be able to do much better than a well trained PhD with a well programmed computer. So we’ll go ahead and call omniscience bunk.

Omnipresence. Generally, we take this to mean “everywhere at once”-ness, or the idea that the omnipresent being is somehow capable of existing in all places in and out of the universe at once. This is not particularly formal, so I’ll refine the definition to the following set, with each being less “powerful” than the last[1].

1. True Omnipresence: Omnipresence is defined to be the physical act of existing in every single place in the universe or without at the same time.
2. Pseudo-Omnipresence: Omnipresence is defined to be the physical act of existing in many arbitrarily chosen places in the universe or without at the same time.
3. Technological Omnipresence: Omnipresence is defined as having in one’s possession, or as an inherent ability, the ability to gather arbitrary data about places in the universe instantly, from anywhere.

These three definitions will be taken in turn. With the following caveat.

We will not consider omnipresence “outside” the universe. Since we have no idea of what rules are obeyed in such a place, if it exists, and this is inherently a problem of physics in the universe.

I add this caveat because truly, this problem is unassailable without the assumption of the third axiom, and we have no axioms for the non-physical universe, and no way to disprove it’s existence. At least not without assuming some fairly nasty things. You will further note, that even if I disprove only the part of the definition involving our half of the universe, we find that it really breaks the spirit of the idea as a whole. Since being omnipresent in the non-physical half of the universe is really rather pointless for an interacting deity.

That said, We will be implicitly using the third axiom a lot, we will aim to show each of the three definitions to be impossible, or — in the case of the third definition — already basically achieved by humanity.

True and Pseudo-Omnipresence

This one is easy to disprove. It’s a simple fact of physics, matter cannot coexist at the same time, in the same place, with other matter. If our deity is omnipresent, and is omnipresent in our half of the universe, as the definition states, then clearly he cannot be in all places at all times. However, there is a more fundamental problem with omnipresence which will inform the next disproof, so we will go over it here.

The problem has to do with Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the cosmic speed limit. Simply put, there is absolutely, positively, no way for anything to travel faster than the speed of light. Period. This also, no matter how confusing it may seem, also applies to information. To convince yourself of this, realize that when we think, electrical signals in our brain actually have to travel some distance, and thereby take some time, to get from one neuron to the next. Similarly, not even gravity is instantaneous. The common example is the consideration of what would happen should the sun explode. If gravity were instantaneous, we would be flung from orbit at exceedingly high speed into the midst of space, and shortly thereafter see a brilliant explosion and shock wave of super-hot gas crashing towards us in a fiery, but seriously spectacular display of red-hot death.

However, gravity is not instantaneous, and in fact, it travels at about the speed of light[2], so in this case, we would see the explosion and be released from the gravitational pull of sun more or less simultaneously, shortly thereafter we would be swept in the fiery death.

Why is this important? General relativity tells us nothing travels at faster than the speed of light, and that includes information and “thoughts”. The fastest way to potentially transmit information would be to shoot a highly cohesive laser beam from point A to point B and use more code (or something like it) to spell out the info we wanted to send. However, imagine being an omnipresent deity, if you have only one mind, but exist in many physical locations simultaneously, it stands to reason that you could potentially transmit information from A to B in constant time, less than the time it would take to transmit said information at the speed of light, take the following example:

I am an omnipresent being, I am simultaneously existing on Alpha Centauri and Earth. On earth, I’m working as an astronomer looking for supernovae, and I’m looking in the general direction of Alpha Centauri. Now, since the light from the supernova will reach me in Alpha Centauri about four and a half years[3] before it gets to me on earth, I can scan the sky quickly on AC, find a supernova, transmit those coordinates instantaneously to earth — since I’m really one person in two places — do a little adjustment and point my earth bound telescope to watch the show 4.37 years later, in stunning detail.

This would be a wondrous thing, Phil Plait would probably wet himself if he had this ability. Hell, any astronomer, amateur or professional could well find uses for the ability to predict where and when unpredictable events are going to happen in the universe. But sadly, no dice, this violates the laws of physics, and it will forever, because that’s how physics works.[4] This shows that it’s certainly true that “True Omnipresence” is impossible, but it also shows how Pseudo-omnipresence fails. Since even if I can only be in two places simultaneously, I still violate this law. Also, consider the alternative, what if I can exist in many places, but not transmit information between myself. Effectively, I have just cloned myself some number of times (depending on how many places I am in). That really flies in the face of the spirit of omnipresence, the idea is that I am everywhere at once, and can act in accordance with all that information, or in some cases use it to spy on my followers and then judge them later.

So, so far, here’s the conclusion. Kids, when your mother says “God is watching.” you can show her this proof, and say, “If He is, than he’s violating Einstein’s general relativity and information theory, and a few laws of physics, too.” You’ll probably get your ass grounded, but it’ll be worth it to see the look on her face when you tell her God’s breaking the laws of Physics… Someone ought to arrest him…

Now the fun one

Technological Omnipresence

This idea is not as radical and Human 2.0 as it sounds, it’s actually very simple, Technological Omnipresence (TO) is, fundamentally, the end result of the internet.

Consider the definition I gave for this type of omnipresence, it is simply the ability to get arbitrary amounts of data about anything, when we go on the internet, and google search “Giant Iraqi Mousetraps” and come up with ~41,600 hits[5], we have just gathered some arbitrary information about some arbitrary thing. The internet as it is now is not a true omnipresence technology, since we don’t have access to it everywhere, and it doesn’t have access to everything. However, as the internet grows, it amasses new information, and as wireless technology and mobile connectivity technologies grow, we find new ways to connect ourselves to each other and to arbitrary amounts of information about any arbitrary thing. So, I am happy to say that Omnipresence is very possible, in a sense, and what’s more, we’ve got it half built. Note, we didn’t even need God for this. At one time, it may have been that this was something only a “god” creature would have possessed, but now, in a lovely humanistic spin, we’ve got omnipresence at the tips of our fingers.

Conclusions

So Omnipresence, in some sense it is the least important, potentially most benign power any god could possess, it is typically used as a scare tactic, and nothing much more than that. But we have seen how omnipresence, particularly Technological omnipresence, is really a ‘power’ not just reserved for gods, but something we are fairly close to having now. What does that say about us as humans? Are we like ‘gods’ now? I think no, we aren’t gods, I think that really, we’re beginning to realize, because of this kind of omnipresence, that the gods we thought were, weren’t. They were just figures we once clung to, they gave us some degree of hope- we found comfort in the idea that someone was always around, looking out for us. Let’s face it, there is something comforting in believing that we have a kind of supernatural big brother, ready to step in for us any where, at any time. I don’t think believing in such a thing is wrong, even today. As we noted, we can’t — with logic or science — address the supernatural, nonphysical, or in general non-materialistic, and that’s okay. The problem that comes, when we start to believe in this supernatural big brother, is that we can slip in to thinking that our beliefs are the only ones that count, and that everyone else should be made to agree.

I’ve said a few times now in this blog. I don’t hate people who believe in god, any god, be (s)he Allah or YWVH, Zeus or Odin, Amin-Ra or Isis, or even the flying spaghetti monster[6]. There is a difference between a Believer and a Fundie, a believer believes because they find comfort, or hope, or even just a sense of belonging. A Fundie believes because it gives him a cloak with which to hide his bigotry and hate. Those are the people I really hate. If you are a believer, I hope you found this post interesting, maybe a little uplifting, so that you won’t need to rely on the old dogma’s anymore, if you’re a fundie reading this blog…

hehe, don’t get me started…

Next time, maybe Omnibenevolence and the problem of evil? I’m saving omnipotence for towards the end.

~~Joe

[1] By “powerful” here, and in any sense, I mean that one statement is assuming more than another. That is, Let be the assumption that the reader is a white male, aged 20-30; and let be the assumption that the reader is a white male, of any age. The statement is more “powerful” than , since it fundamentally assumes more about the reader. In general, a weak statement is one that assumes very little, and a strong statement assumes much. Typically, we find that a weak statement, for instance the commutative law of addition, implies many stronger statements, eg the fact that , which in this case is just a specification of the general law.

[2] General relativity predicts it to be exactly as fast, but experiments bounce on either side of that speed, to wit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_centauri

[4] Firstly, sorry Dr. Plait didn’t mean to get your hopes up about the early supernova warning thing. And I hope you don’t mind me using you as an example, given the fact that I’ve never met you ever. Readers, There may be a loophole here, since wormholes could potentially shorten the distance between Earth and AC, without actually changing the distance between Earth and AC, it’s complicated, ask your friendly neighborhood astrophysicist for how wormholes work…

[5] http://www.google.com/search?q=giant+iraqi+mousetraps&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[6] Ramen.

First, lets recap, we have three axioms we are operating on.

• Axiom of Incompleteness: There cannot exist a sufficiently powerful logical system that is simultaneously complete and consistent.
• Axiom of Consistency: If we prove something in a consistent logic, then it is unequivocally, irrevocably true. Proof is infallible.
• Axiom of Fair Play: Everything that exists, materially or otherwise, must abide by the rules of logic, and further, anything that interacts with the physical world obeys the the laws of the physical world.

Of these three axioms, the first is actually a theorem due to Kurt Gödel, and the second is actually just a definition of what it means to be a proof in consistent logic. The third is the clincher, it’s the one you actually have to believe in some cases. This is a common theme in mathematics, for instance, in set theory, we have a few axioms which are comparatively “easy” to believe, and one that is somewhat difficult to believe. This usually leads to a set of theorems that are free of the use of the “hard” axioms, and later a set of theorems which include the axiom. We’ll follow the same general format here.

We also admit a heuristic principle, which most people know and use regularly. Scientists typically call it Occam’s Razor, laypersons call it the KISS principle. It’s definition, colloquial and scientific, is as follows:

• K.I.S.S, Keep it simple, stupid.

More formally:

• Occam’s Razor: When in the presence of two or more equally valid explanations for the same phenomenon, the explanation involving the least number, and simplest, assumptions is most likely the correct explanation.

We’ll use this as a guiding principle, when we see many explanations for how something works, we’ll pick the one whose assumptions are both few, and most basic. We’ll also use the principle’s contrapositive[1], that is, if you have to assume many complicated things to explain something, then your explanation is most likely wrong.

One more thing, before we begin. There is a principle in physics, specifically time-travel physics, called the Novikov self-consistency principle, this principle, in effect, states that when one travels through time, you cannot create any paradoxes. It comes up when we think about the grandfather or billiard ball paradoxes, that is, if we shot a billiard ball through a wormhole at just the right angle, and that wormhole sent the billiard ball back through time so that it exited and could collide with it’s younger self so as to knock the billiard ball off it’s original trajectory, so it never goes through the wormhole in the first place, then we have created a logical paradox, where did the new billiard ball come from? This idea is often generalized to mean that as long as one doesn’t create a paradox somehow, then one can do whatever they want. You’ll see that, in effect, this is my third “Axiom of Fair Play”. However, the NSC principle implies something stronger than my Axiom, that one cannot create a paradox, not just that one must not. I mention this in case someone wants to bring up the NSC principle in an attempt to rebut a proof containing my third axiom, I’ve taken it into account, and choose a weaker assumption to boot. That said, on to the proof.

Knowing everything is a tantalizing idea. Imagine, knowing the answer to every question, the proof to every true conjecture, and disproof of every false conjecture. You would be a very famous person if you were able to simply spit out the full history of the planet from it’s beginnings 4.5 billion years ago till now. However, it is fairly easy to see that this idea falls apart under the first axiom. If you had the correct answer to everything, then you would form a consistent logical system, by definition. I would get a consistent answer from you, no matter what I asked, and if you were truly omniscient, that answer would be the same every time, and would be correct every time. However, you would also have to form a complete logical system, in that you have the answer to every question, by definition of omniscience. Therefore, you form a complete, and consistent logical system, which violates the first axiom. So, given our axioms, the naive idea of omniscience fails.

What about a kind of conditional omniscience? That is, you don’t have the immediate answer to everything, but you can acquire an in a constant amount of time? This solves the error with the first axiom, in that you never really contain a complete logical system, you’re just a perfect consistent system, able to answer any question in a finite amount of time with a consistent answer, but not actually knowing the answer until the question is asked. You have now become what computer scientists typically refer to as an “Oracle.” Something with the magical ability to answer some hard problem quickly, in our case, you are really a “superoracle”, capable of answering every question. A common use of oracles is to disprove the existence of a real object which could be that oracle. This is done by constructing a question to ask the oracle which violates the rules of logic or physics. We can do this with our oracle, as well. Consider the following conversation between Kurt, our friendly neighborhood logician, and our restricted omniscience oracle:

• Oracle: What is your question?
• Kurt: Is the statement “This statement is a lie” the truth or a lie?
• Oracle: The statement is the truth.
• Kurt: But if the statement is the truth, then mustn’t it be a lie? Since it asserts such?
• Oracle: Well, yes, so the statement is a lie.
• Kurt: But then isn’t the statement the truth? Since it’s lying about it’s own lack of veracity?
• Oracle: My head hurts
• Kurt: It’s okay, incompleteness can do that to you.

This somewhat humorous (I hope) story should illustrate the point, if the oracle can provide a correct answer to every question, that implies that every question must have a correct answer. So by constructing a impossible question like this, we find that this incarnation of our oracle can’t exist. So we must restrict it further. This idea of an “impossible” question lies at the heart of Kurt Gödel’s Theorem of Incompleteness (and our first axiom). Gödel was able to prove the theorem by constructing a sentence like “This statement is a lie” in any arbitrary logic. Interested readers would do well to read “Gödel, Escher, and Bach” by D.R. Hofstadter[2]

So now we must further restrict our oracle to being able to answer all answerable questions quickly, this would still give the appearance of omniscience, but would avoid the incompleteness problem by dodging the impossible questions entirely. However, what good is this kind of oracle? What kind of questions are left when you eliminate those with no answer? This begs the question, “What kind of questions have no good answer?” In general, the ‘important’ questions we might want to ask such an oracle, questions about the meaning of life, or the ethics of abortion or war or any other hot-button issue are impossible to answer firmly in one way or another. We can’t unilaterally say it’s always okay for a woman to have an abortion, what if the child is seconds from being born? What if she wants to abort it simply because it will have the wrong hair color? Similarly, we can’t say it’s always wrong, what if the child will be born with horrible, painful defects? What if the having the child endangers the life of the mother? Who’s life is worth more? These aren’t questions with a blanket answer which an oracle like ours could provide, they are impossible, and must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it is necessary for a woman to have an abortion, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we have to go to war, I like to think that most of the time we don’t. The point is that these deep questions have no “right” answer, there are many answers for them, depending on the exact conditions present, and the beliefs of the people involved. No magic oracle could decide these problems finitely for all people.

Further, there are problems that this oracle would have relating to the third axiom, in that, some problems have an inherent minimal amount of time to answer. For instance, in order to add two numbers, I have to examine every digit of each number at least once. This idea can be proven fairly easily, and is done in first year computer algorithms classes. So, there are some problems which, while the oracle could provide an answer, would take an inordinate amount of time to answer.

So we are left with an oracle which, upon examination, is no better than a very smart, very well read, unbiased human being. Omniscience breaks the rules of logic, and when we remove the parts of omniscience which break those rules, we are left with nothing more than what we already have. I think this shows a real, powerful idea, that we don’t need to invoke the oracle, or god, or the flying spaghetti monster to answer these questions, we are capable on our own of doing so? Why is it that we think so little of ourselves, that we feel we are unable to answer the hard questions, when we haven’t ever tried? I noted that some of the problems with the Omniscience Oracle stem from the time it would take to answer the problem. This idea comes from computer science, where complexity is of paramount importance. Since computer scientists are always aiming to make things run faster, they came up with a particularly apropos idea, parallelism and concurrency. The idea is that, hard problems may not ever be made easy, but when you can’t make the question easier, you can always throw more horsepower at it. I think that what we, as human beings, need to do about these hard problems, is stop turning to dogmatic belief in a single answer, and instead of defending the conclusions of one man, or group of men, throw our considerable collective mental horsepower towards actually coming up with good criteria for when one solution works for a problem, and when it doesn’t. We have a lot of potential, as humans, we are, so far as we know, the only thinking, sentient forms of life on this planet. We have hard problems which need solving, and it is time to set aside the static answers of the past, and learn new, ‘faster’, better ways to solve — or even just approach — those problems today.

I hope you enjoyed the post, this one is a little on the long side (10838 characters…), hopefully the next few will be shorter.

[1] contrapositive : when given a logical statement of the form: , then you may deduce

[2] “Gödel, Escher, and Bach” by Douglas R. Hofstadter, amazon

Religion in general seems to be about this god fellow. An apparently invisible superforce who willy-nilly screws around with life on our particular blue marble.

Fundies think he’s male, hates gays and anyone who disagrees with them, and is locked in near-endless battle with the forces of evil.

Some people think that there are lots of these toddlers gallavanting around in the cosmos, harrassing each other, messing with peoples lives, and generally frakking things up pretty good for the rest of us.

But what is god? I am a firm believer in the following three facts. Let me start by stating the following: logic is infallible within it’s realm. This is a big statement for someone like me. Especially since it may seem that I believe in the same things I condemn, that is, in complete infallibility. However, look closer, I didn’t say that logic was completely infallible, only that it was so within it’s realm. Pure logic cannot address every question, for to do so it would have to be what’s known as a “complete” system, and a mathematician named Kurt Godel showed that it was impossible to have a system which was both complete and infallible, in the mathematical world, we call this infallibility “consistence.” Godel’s proof boils down to the first fundamental fact I believe in.

There cannot exist a logical system that is both complete and consistent simultaneously.

I believe this because it is a proven result of consistent logic[1], so it’s not really a matter of belief or disbelief, it’s a matter of acceptance. Which leads me to the following fact:

When we prove a fact true in consistent logic, it is unequivocably true. That is, If proposition A implies proposition B, it will do so today, tomorrow, and forever. Mathematical Truths are immutable.

Another bold statment, but really, it’s just a restatement of the idea of consistent logic, and it’s a tradeoff, that axiom says, fundamentally, that we cannot address every question, that there will always be things we simply cannot talk about using our logic, but it does guarentee that everything we say, assuming we’ve not broken any logical rules, will be true.

Finally, I believe the following:

Everything that exists, materially or otherwise, must follow the rules of logic. Further, anything that interacts with us materially, must be bound by the laws and rules of material physics. In short, you cannot cheat, you must play by the set of rules for whatever “game” you play.

This is the only axiom I am really accepting here, the first two ideas were definitions or theorems, this is an assumption I make about reality, that everything, including god, if such a thing exists, is bound to play by the rules of logic. Not Science, Science cannot address god, science is a study of the material world, the supernatural is outside it’s purview. However, everything must be logical, and that is the truly fundamental assumption I make. The second clause gives what I feel is really a corollary to the first clause, that is, it would be illogical for a creature to not be affected by gravity without some kind of physical adaptation or apparatus preventing gravity from acting upon it. Effectively, I am assuming that there is no such thing as magic. There is no way for me to do something that is inherently without reason, I can’t just stop obeying the laws of gravity, I have to have a reason.

So, whats this all about? Why should you care about this? Well, God is an interesting character, many different groups of people believe he can do many different things. Some believe he is omniscient, some believe he is omnipotent, others, omnipresent. My question is this, Under the assumption a god did exist, what would he look like? What supposed attributes hold up under logical scrutiny. I don’t kid myself, true believers who think their particular god is omnipotent or omniscient won’t stop just because a silly thing like logic or proof get in the way. Really this is an exercise in philosophy, something which I enjoy, and I think people like me might enjoy. It is interesting to think about a god, whether or not he exists. It’s a thought experiment about whether or not we can prove or disprove the existence of god[2], and if we can prove, or at the least cannot disprove, the existence of god, what kind of god would he be?

I intend to do a few of these posts, try to reason through some of the big attributes, many of them will be structured as informal proofs. Many of them will also be conditional, that is, it may be possible for god to have attribute A, but having A might preclude him from having attributes B or C, etc. I look forward to working on these a bit.

[1] Godel proved, using consistent logic, that any logic of sufficient expressive power could not be complete. This implies that any complete logic cannot also be consistent. So there is no circular reasoning problem, proving things about logic with logic is done quite often, and it does work, I promise, and I can prove it.

[2] It is my opinion that this is an, unfortunately, impossible feat of logic. For reasons to be explained in a later post.

I want to apologize to my Mom, I don’t hate you

I will not, however, apologize for the truth.

Listen, Fundies, Liberals, Anarcho-fascists, whoever reads this. This blog isn’t about what you want to believe in.

If you want to believe that this Jesus fellow was born of a virgin, was the son of god, or had three heads. I don’t care.

The problem for me comes when you people try to say that what you believe is the scientific truth, is the real truth, an account of what really happened. When you tell me that a man was born of a virgin, I say “How?” You tell me a man came back from the dead, a real live zombie, I ask for some evidence.

If you want to have a delusion, thats fine, we live in America, and last time I checked, the bill of rights were still in effect. You’re entitled to believe as you will, and when it comes to belief, I’ll leave you alone.

It’s when you start saying that what you believe is the only option, thats when I have a problem. The fact is, we don’t know if Christ existed, the evidence doesn’t shoot either way. The fact is, we don’t know if God exists, and we’ll probably never have the ability to determine it scientifically. It’s my belief that, in fact, theres no way to know whether God exists at all, even using pure logic as a basis, but thats my belief. It’s not a fact, I don’t claim it’s veracity, It’s just what I conjecture. It’s not my right to tell you to believe my conjecture. It is, however, my responsibility to tell you what is true. What is true, is that there are a hundred explainations for just about any question you can come up with. It has been observed that most of the explainations are crap. Typically only one explaination for a question fits with the evidence, there is — as far as I have seen — one cause leading to one effect. So, I ask you this, if you believe something, and I believe the opposite, who is right?

The fundamentalist says that they are right, you are wrong, period.

The scientist says that the evidence, combined with logical thinking, will tell us.

Who has the better view?

I don’t hate fundamentalists, my parents are both fundamentalists, hell, for a good 15 years of my life, I was a fundamentalist. I went to church 3 times a week, 8 to 1, most sunday mornings (two sermons in the morning), about 6 to 8 on sunday evenings, only one sermon during that tame, and 6 to 8 on wednesday evenings, again, one sermon. By my estimations, thats about 5+2+2=9 hours in church, with about 4, 1 hour sermons, the rest of the time was “fellowship” — chit chat and small talk — or the occasional pot-luck dinner, and singing, I really like the singing.

Actually, I still like the singing, I was in the church band (helping to liberalize my church with my electric guitar. ), I really enjoyed the hymns we sung. I still hum most of them, I love the songs. I don’t hate christians, I don’t hate fundamentalists, and — really — I don’t hate anyone (with limited exceptions). What I hate is what religion does to people.

Why should me disagreeing with you make you feel so bad? The problem is fundies. Not fundamentalists, fundamentalists are typically good people, the people I went to church with were mostly nice people who “loved Jesus.” Fundies, on the other hand, are psychopaths, these people preach a message of “any dissenter is of the devil.” They teach that disagreement is sin. They tear families apart with this doctrine, I’ve seen it happen. They’ve taught good, loving, caring people to get upset about the very thing that makes, or at least made, america great. They teach people to take offense at people who disagree.

I disagree with anyone who believes in God, however, I never write about, or to, those people in this blog. The “fundies” and “fundamentalists” I write to are those people who say, “You aren’t allowed to disagree.” “Dissent is Sin” is a sin. I mean- You’re own savior, Jesus, kept in his group of disciples a skeptic. For his day, Thomas was as close to a scientific skeptic as we’ll get. When I was in church, I heard Thomas’ behavior railed against, “Don’t Doubt God” they said. That is wrong, just plain wrong. One of the chief lessons we were taught in sunday school is that “Iron sharpeneth Iron”, Well, count me as your blade upon which to hone. I think that, if you honestly look at the problems I bring up, you’ll realize that all I’m talking about here is tolerance. All I’m talking about here is censorship sloughed upon us by stupid men who are afraid to be disagreed with. Who think that they have some divine right to ethics and morality.

Damnit, I don’t want to hurt anyones feelings here, but we need someone to tell the truth, and sometimes that hurts.

Mom, I’m sorry you feel sorry that I believe this way, but I’ll continue to be a materialistic atheist, because thats how I was raised. I’m a Berean, Mom, just like pastor always told me to be. I’m checking the facts, and the facts don’t line up with what I used to believe. If there is a God out there, he wants me to believe the facts, not the bible, the bible was written by men, about a man, who may have been born like any other man, or maybe not. I don’t know all the details, but I do know that evidence, logic, and good reason won’t lie to me. I’ve been raised to hate only two things, Censorship, and Ignorance. “Raise a child in the way which he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Mom, I don’t hate you, if you want to believe that “Jesus was born of a virgin, and is [your] savior”, then power too you. If it helps you to live a good life, (which, as far as I’m concerned, you have), good. I don’t need to believe that anymore, but I’d die for your right to believe it.

My mantra through life has been simple, Never be censored, Never not know, and — like a boy I read about a long time ago. A man can stand up.

I’m standing on what is right, because the evidence tells me, and evidence really can’t lie. I won’t stand on anything less firm than that.

Oh, and, I love you too, mom.

There was an article recently at Discover Magazine, if it was a serious article, it was misguided, if not, then it’s fairly amusing. It effectively is suggesting to stop using the word science, not to stop studying science. Just to stop calling it Science. It also suggests that the cornerstone of all the modern sciences — the Scientific Method — is a “near-translucent fig leaf of an idea.” What? Thats patently ridiculous. More on that later.

I see several (thousand) problems with this, but here are two:

1. As IDiot’s know well, you can call a duck (Creationism) by any name you like (ID), but it’s still a duck.
2. Science is a term used to refer to a broad collection of subjects. Just like Mathematics refers to many subfields. Not using the term doesn’t do anything than make it hard to refer to the general “idea” of science. That is, the world can be understood through experimentation and reason. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Science by any other name would still be Science.

My big problem though, and maybe it’s just nitpickery, but making the Scientific Method out to be unimportant — thats almost hurtful. The Scientific Method, or TSM, as I like to call it, has provided us a means to cure the Plague, send some guys to the moon, invent the most useful metatool since the human brain — the computer, and hundreds of other amazing discoveries. How can you possibly say it’s just a “fig leaf of an idea”?

He does note a point which deserves some more attention, the decline in the interest of science in schools. I completely agree- the reason, I think, is precisely one he points out- noone advocates science anymore. Those who do — shows like CSI and Numb3rs — inspire interest in those areas. What about the rest of the sciences? Advocacy works– we see it in the examples he gives. He, however, draws a false conclusion, in that he says that advocacy won’t work- that it’s too much, too late. I disagree, we need new Bill Nyes, Carl Sagans, and more shows like CSI, Mythbusters, and Numb3rs. We need Mathematicians, Biologists, Physicists, Geologists, all of the Sciences to start getting excited about science. Science is not boring!! Science is amazing, the real world is more complex, strange, and beautiful than even pseudoscientific fiction can come up with. Evolution is amazing, the fact that we were, as a species, at one point nothing more than a bunch of proteins, and through Darwinian Selection managed to evolve and improve until we put a man on the moon. Astronomy is beautiful. If you don’t believe me, look at the pictures from the Hubble space telescope. If you don’t believe some little mathematician- go look  at the night sky sometime, out in a dark field, and just look up. See the Milky Way, get a Telescope. If you still don’t believe me, ask an astronomer to show you what they do, ask Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy to tell you the amazing things that he gets to study for a living! Imagine your job was to look at beautiful images all day, and try to find out new and interesting things about them. Computer Science is fascinating, and powerful. A computer is a meta-tool, capable of building within it other tools. CS is almost as wide a field as Physics or Mathematics, the study of computers incorporates every other science you can think of. Astronomers need computer models of space, Evolutionists need computer models of animal populations, Mathematicians need ways to visualize the models they build. Speaking of Math, Math is amazing, stunning, mindblowingly unbelievably beautiful and useful. Maybe I’m biased, but the ability to express complex interactions of just about anything with a few simple operations. How powerful the Axiomatic Method is, a few short axioms about lines and points and you achieve the beauty of Geometry and Trigonometry.

My point is, Science is amazing, and if you want it to die, you’ll have to do it over my cold, dead, mathematician’s body.

Science is beautiful.