A Disrespectful Tone

Linda's first CO2 experiment

2010-10-24T22:20:00.000+13:00

Holy. Shit.

This is awesome.

Lack of belief in gods

2010-10-18T21:58:00.000+13:00

Re: BREAKING NEWS: THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO POISON CHILDREN!

2010-07-29T22:08:00.004+12:00

There's a post over at SkepticBlog. I wanted to leave a comment - however, my wireless router functions as a proxy, and SkepticBlog won't let me comment from behind a proxy. :(

So, here's the response I wanted to make, just in case it gets noticed.

My sense is that it’s probably futile for my friend to “provide the evidence” that he pretends to be interested in seeing. How, then, do we reach such people, people who are out actively advocating against public health? I put the question to you.

Path I

Rhetoric.

Essentially, we're dealing with an audience that is not open to logical argumentation. Instead they respond to character and emotion.

So that's what we need to learn. Not that we should abandon logic - far from it. We have to keep that logic to keep us on the straight and narrow path of honesty.

But the logic can be downplayed with this audience. Just change the settings on the equalizer to emphasize the bass over the trebel.

Microsoft is good at this. They have some really byzantine technical documentation - but that doesn't go out to the CIO. They leave the technical specs in the appendix. The rest of the offering consists of a bullet-point executive summary that a 12 year old could read, and a bunch of pamphlets given over to 30% bold slogans and the rest reserved for smiling professionals and business people - because professionals and business people are their target audience.

We need to get better than our opponents at their own tricks. It's hard - it's a very different skill set to what most of us are used to. But I think this is the best way forward.

Path II

If we really can't reach a given audience without compromising our morals, there's another option. Change the audience.

Old saying: If you want to kill wolves, trap rabbits.

In the example of the blog post, I'm sure Dave has an audience of his own. That audience may be more amenable to reason than Dave. We can go after them instead. Again, this will need a bit of rhetorical leverage, but not so much as to convince a Dave.

In the end, without an audience to prop it up, woo will fade into irrelevance.

Path III

Give up. (I'm not a fan of this one).

I'm open to other options, but I and II seem the obvious choices to me.

Deepak Chopra Flyers

2010-07-25T18:11:00.009+12:00

Too long ago, I uncharitably tut-tutted the guys over at The Crommunist Manifesto.

On Friday, June 4th, Vancouver was the recipient of Dr. Deepak Chopra – quantum mystic, magic thinker, and purveyor of high-quality woo. In the interest of promoting the cause of evidence-based science and thought, skeptics from Vancouver’s chapter of the Center for Inquiry were on hand to engage the audience on their way into the event. We were armed with flyers (which can be seen here), and voices of reason. For more background on the event, you are invited to read the pre-event coverage from this blog.

I thought better of my tut-tutting and offered to put together a new flyer that might have proved more effective. I was supposed to do this over a month ago - but hey, better late than never, yeah?

Firstly, we need to consider two things:

Who is the intended audience?
What is the intended purpose?

Who is the intended audience?

In this case, knowing our audience is very easy. Our audience is also Deepak's audience. The key point is that the people attending Deepak's talk are the very people that like the taste of Deepak-brand Woo Kool-aid.

This immediately tells us a few things about the audience members.

They are not critical thinkers (yet)
They respond to appeals to emotion and character
They respond to the appearance of science and reason

The first point is straightforward. We know they're not critical thinkers, because critical thinkers wouldn't be attending in the first place. To be complete, critical thinkers could be attending on a 'know thy enemy' basis - but that falls outside the scope of the target audience.

The second point should be obvious. For all the shortcomings we skeptics might view in Chopra, we should be quick to acknowledge the strengths of both Chopra and his message.

And what a message! Using the hidden powers of the universe to get healthy, look young, lose weight, and attract wealth and success? Who doesn't want that?

Then consider Chopra as a speaker. He speaks calmly, at a good pace, with just the right amount of an accent to make him seem exotic and interesting. His voice is deep and reassuring, and he speaks at a measured pace. He appears clean, respectable, and exudes just the right amount of success - not so much as to make him an 'elite' (perish the thought!) but still more than enough to establish his character in the mind of his audience members as an authority figure. Chopra comes over as everything he needs to be to engage his audience and make them feel comfortable and at ease.

This then ties into the third point. Chopra likes to salt his message with high-level scientific vocabulary. However, it is not required for the audience to understand what any of these words mean in order to grasp the points he's making. And they want to grasp that message, they really do. So Chopra - and his audience - can gloss over the complicated science-ish terminology, giving the argument the appearance of scientific credibility. The audience buys into the appearance of credibility because they want to.

This is also going to be a hint of the Dunning-Kruger effect in play. We can be confident that most of Chopra's audience are unskilled in the scientific arena. This can contribute to the false self-assessment that they are skilled, especially under the influence of Chopra's lilting seduction.

Consider for a moment how good it must feel to have a trusted authority take your most cherished intuitions, tell you they're scientific, and then convince you that you now understand the implications of science in a way that most trained scientists don't. Those stuck-up science teachers when I was in highschool? Yeah - what did they know? They never could have understood that the moon only exists because we observe it! Thanks Deepak for showing me the truth about the universe - now I know more than those smarty-pants scientists! You're the best!

What is the intended purpose?

Given the assessment above, what are we trying to accomplish with this audience? Why are we trying to achieve it in the first place?

For those like me, Chopra is really, really annoying. Seriously. I just want to claw his face off every time he drops the word 'quantum' and gives that beautific, knowing, vacant smile. Deepak is laying honey traps of the mind to draw people down into a shiny, fluffy abyss of woo. The distress this causes manifests as grimace, a twist in the belly and a tensing of the hands. I don't like it.

So there's definitely an element of schadenfreude in play. I take pleasure in the thought of convincing people to move away from Chopra's syrupy drivel, because I want to see Chopra fall. Those like me will no doubt feel the same.

It's a valid and justified emotional response. But in this particular arena, acting on those emotions directly can only work against us. This audience is self-selected to have a membership that like and respect Deepak Chopra. Attacking Chopra directly - or revealing an emotional bias against him - will not endear our message to this particular audience.

So there's two reasons we need a different motive. Firstly, schadenfreude is doomed to failure. Secondly - it's not exactly noble, which should bother us of itself.

The attention should be on what's best for the audience rather than the best way of wiping the smile of Chopra's face. Given the analysis of the audience above, the motive should be clear. The audience lacks critical thinking skills, and Chopra is feeding into that. The goal should be to encourage critical thinking in the audience, and present them with the information they need to arrive at an informed conclusion.

So we have our purpose: Encourage the audience's capacity for critical thinking.

Encourage the audience's capacity for critical thinking: How?

So we have a noble goal. But what are we going to do about it?

It's an old problem: How do you convince someone to accept a critical argument when they don't find critical reasoning persuasive in the first place?

We have to find a way to hook into the audience in a way that suits them. We need to communicate on their terms - not ours. So - what are their hooks?

We only need to look at Chopra. What Chopra does, they like. Ergo: Do as Chopra does.

...

I know, I know. I didn't throw up in my mouth a little bit when I typed that, but I feel like I should have. Fact of the matter is: If we want to achieve something, we have to take a good hard look at the weapons of our opponents so we can learn to wield them ourselves. We should always rest everything on a foundation of critical reason, of course. But if critical reason appealed to the people who fall for shills like Chopra, they wouldn't be shills in the first place. Critical reason alone isn't going to win this battle for us.

So, if we're going to emulate Chopra - how, exactly, does Chopra do what he does?

Deepak Chopra - A Case Study (Not Quite)

I add the term (Not Quite) because I'm not familiar enough with Deepak's methods to give a definitive overview of how he does things. I couldn't stomach it. I can force myself to slog through Kant, but there's only so much sugary nonsense I can stomach. I just don't have the endurance to sit through Chopra. I really, really don't. But it would be a very, very useful resource for the skeptical community if someone else could.

That said, I do have a superficial impression of how Chopra does things. Chopra makes appeals to people's intuitions and emotions. He makes them feel safe, secure, smart, powerful. We need to find a way to do the same. I need to emphasize: This is hard. I'm not trained in this, I'm just stumbling through. Others can in all likelihood do a better job than I can.

I've attached a .pdf of my sample flyer - and now is a good time to open it up and have a look. For all the words above me in this essay laying out my thought process, the end result is rather simple.

Pretentious Deconstruction

There's two flyers - in my head, I've labelled them the solipsism flyer and the quack doctor flyer. Each flyer has the same basic structure, however. Hopefully the principles I've outlined above should shine through.

First, there's an opening line. Some advice a work colleague once gave me was that when people are skimming, they're most likely to take in a sentence with the structure of subject - action - thing. So the opening sentence sets the topic. Subject: Deepak Chopra. Action: gives us an interesting view of. Thing: the world around us/healing and personal health.

Key word in the opening sentence is 'interesting'. The opening sentence is almost positive about Chopra. It's easy to see through after engaging with the flyer for a few minutes. But that's the point - you have to engage with the flyer, take it in, and think about it before you realize that it's a negative critique. That's all the flyer really has to do. Opening on this note gives the flyer the best possible chance of not being dismissed by the reader on the first sentence.

The opening sentence is followed up by a quote from Chopra that indicates his position on these topics are less than conventional. Some space and bold on the quote gives it a prominence on the page that draws the eye. Chopra's turn of phrase is engaging and eye catching, regardless of the truth of his claims. I'm very happy to quote him so as to use that eye-catching quality for my own purposes.

Then we have three hook statements, each beginning with 'We all'. The idea here is to do as Chopra does - tie into the intuitions of the reader, make them see themselves as part of a collective with a collective wisdom that Chopra is challenging. Yeah, it's a dirty trick. Deal with it. Sure, I could make a logically sound argument for the cause. Hell, I could do it in logical form with numbered premises if I thought that would work. It wouldn't. Deepak uses rhetoric to keep his message coming. We have to fight fire with fire. So long as we can back up our arguments with critical reasoning, we're ethically in the clear... But I'll grant that it's a dirty, cheap move, and it's morally suspect enough to require an ethical defense to be on-hand and ready.

The hook statements are there to draw the reader in, get them on side and engaged, feeling safe and secure in their communal wisdom. The hooks are followed up with a curiosity prompt. Chopra's view is briefly contrasted against the common wisdom, and then the question is asked: How can we know if this is true? Does this sound too good to be true? The idea is to prompt critical thought and reasoning, after all. We want people to be engaged enough to determine the answers for themselves. It also puts the flyer on a slightly higher footing. The flyer isn't telling anyone what to believe outside of some very common wisdoms that will appeal to everyone. All it does is question Chopra. They establish that it is Chopra that is making the outlandish claim about reality. We should be curious - but we should also be critical.

Finally, the CFI Vancouver logo that I lifted from the original flyer.

The back page to each flyer contains a large, opening sentence that relates directly to the subject on the front. Each one ends with a demand for real answers - real answers in bold. This is the only snark that I permitted myself in the flyers, and it does go against the grain of my earlier reasoning about the best approach. But I think it's just subdued enough that it works. I don't want skepticism to lose its edge altogether, no matter what.

Finally, I copied over the url references from the previous flyer. I messed around with fonts and whitespace a bit to make the flyers easy to read without feeling empty. I'm pleased with the end result.

I have the source document (2007 .docx) available on request if anyone from the Crommunist Manifesto wants to make any alterations to the .pdf.

I hope this humble submission is met with approval. ^_^

'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009

2010-07-24T16:56:00.007+12:00

Youtube-heavy day today.

If atheism is true, then where did the universe come from? Something can't come from nothing!

Sound familiar? If you've ever argued religion with a theist - particularly online - chance are are you've heard something like this before.

Typically, my response has been to dismiss the claim as an argument from ignorance: Just another example of the old and easily dismissed claim that since we don't know how X happened, God must have done it. This dismissal is sufficient and justified - but unfortunately it is unsatisfactory in the mind of the theists that like to raise it.

However, it turns out we have an answer. Lawrence Krauss spends an hour discussing contemporary cosmology. Eventually, he considers the question: Why is there something rather than nothing? His answer:

There had to be. If you have nothing in quantum physics, you'll always get something. It's that simple. It doesn't convince any of those people - but it's true.

Give it a go. I promise that it's one of the best uses you'll ever find for spending a free hour of your time - you can't have sex and eat icecream all day.

Carl Sagan: Consider Again That Pale Blue Dot

2010-07-24T13:13:00.002+12:00

Nothing much to add to this one.

Reza Aslan gets it exactly wrong

2010-07-19T14:04:00.019+12:00

Reza Aslan has submitted a recent Washington Post article: Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett: Evangelical atheists?

It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism--an atheist fundamentalism.

Reza is unexpectedly correct on one thing, however. Describing contemporary atheism as fundamentalism isn't an exaggeration at all. To the contrary: It's flat-out wrong.

Fundamentalism only means to be in strict adherence to certain precepts within a prescribed text. Atheism does have a body of literature - but no text is prescribed as sacred or fundamental in any way. Without a sacred, ideologically prescribed text, atheism simply cannot be a fundamentalist world-view. It fails to meet the single necessary (and sufficient) criterion for the qualification.

Reza goes on to explain what he thinks fundamentalism means, and why it should apply to atheism.

The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: [1] the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), [2] the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), [3] the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), [4] the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, [5] their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.

Consider:

The conviction that they are in sole possession of truth.

The troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics.

The insistence on a literalist reading of scripture.

metaphorical

true

The simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon.

Their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.

Atheists can be shown to be America's most widely distrusted minority

A short reflection on Theology

2010-07-19T08:36:00.012+12:00

When presented with the inevitable fallacies of theologians, we free-thinkers should exhibit neither contempt nor feigned surprise, but rather a tired and well-practiced pity; for if we were to deny theologians their fallacies of assumption, there would be no theologians.

To show contempt to theologians for their logical shortcomings would be analogous to showing contempt to the dung beetle for living a life dedicated to excrement. In the case of either creature their means of securing a lifestyle is an essential part of what they are. It cannot be helped.

Instead we should consider the ingenuity of the dung beetle, and marvel at the constructions it can achieve from mere excrement. Similarly we should marvel at theologians for the not dissimilar inventiveness they display given their limitations. Their available tools are restricted to logical fallacies and intellectually hollow rhetoric. It is no small accomplishment for theologians to construct a parody of argumentation from these components - and the accomplishment is only greater should they manage to keep a straight face while doing so.

More on the NZ Atheist Billboards

2010-07-18T22:08:00.018+12:00

Another criticism of the Atheist Billboards has gone up. Dr. Matthew Flannagan has uploaded a blog post titled There’s Probably No God? Fisking Atheist Billboards.

Looking into Dr. Flannagan's online profile reveals that he "holds a PhD in Theology from the University of Otago, a Masters (with First Class Honours) and a Bachelors in Philosophy from the University of Waikato... His area of expertise is Philosophy of Religion, Ethics and Theology."

This is... peculiar. Because in his post, Dr. Flannagan demonstrates a breathtaking naiveté regarding the billboard slogans put forward by the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign. Now - I don't mean to be quick to jump to conclusions. This is the internet - and as we should all know, people don't necessarily bring their A-game to every blog post. Snark, flame and knee-jerk reactions reign over a nuanced and considered representation of the opposition's argument.

Unlike Dr. Flannagan I don't have a PhD or a Master's in anything at all, let alone Philosophy or Theology. I do have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Auckland, although I don't expect that to help me much here. So no - I haven't got Dr. Flannagan's credentials. However, I do have a deep familiarity with the atheistic viewpoints presented in the billboards. If Dr. Flannagan shares this familiarity with the subject then he has failed to demonstrate it in his critique of the subject.Dr. Flannagan's objection here is simple. He (correctly) interprets that the billboard is attempting to address the claim that practicing religion makes people good with some facts about the New Zealand population. He dismisses this by pretending that no-one is claiming that religious practice makes people good. He pretends that the only argument ever put forward by a religious apologist is that God is a necessary foundation for a metaphysics of morality. Given that the billboard does not address this second claim, he dismisses this slogan out of hand as an expression of 'philosophical confusion'.

To the contrary, Dr. Flannagan. We are not (as a general rule) so philosophically confused on the issue as you seem to think. This may come as a shock, but it is possible for someone to disagree with you strongly and not be ignorant of basic philosophy. We do understand that there is a difference between:

the claim that believing in God makes people good, and;
the claim that the existence of God is a necessary prerequisite to make people good, regardless of what those people believe

As an example, Socrates' dilemma to Euthyphro is practically required reading in atheistic literature. Of course, it may come as another shock to Dr. Flannagan to learn that we atheists have a rich literature too - an area in which he fails to demonstrate any familiarity whatsoever.

I submit that it may be forgivable that I, with no relevant credentials or claims to expertise of my own, may be unfamiliar with the nuances of contemporary Christian theology. But given that Dr. Flannagan boasts a PhD in Theology, a Masters in Philosophy and that "his area of expertise is Philosophy of Religion, Ethics and Theology", it is less forgivable that he should fail to demonstrate any kind of familiarity with the available atheistic literature on the very subjects of philosophy, religion, morality and ethics in which he claims expertise. This lack is a significant blind spot in his analysis of our slogans and arguments.

But more to the point, many apologists for religion have - frequently - made the claim that practicing religion leads people to live a moral life. Frequently they will go so far as to claim that the moral life can only be achieved through the practice of their particular brand of religion. This claim really is out there in the public sphere - and we are justified in addressing it.

Dr. Flannagan and his theologians of choice may or may not be more sophisticated than this. But the scope of this discussion is wider than Dr. Flannagan and his alleged experts and authorities. His views deserve some attention, it's true. But it's just plain selfish of him to expect us to give his views all of our attention. Occasionally, we are going to address views in the public sphere that are not those of Dr. Flannagan. I'm sorry if he feels left out - but I promise we'll get around to his views eventually.If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Dr. Flannagan seems determined to interpret every billboard slogan as if it were a self-contained academic treatise on the subject of theology. So once again he fails to consider the wider context of the public discussion on religion, and how billboard #2 fits within that context.

Dr. Flannagan's response to billboard #2 is particularly odd. He spends three paragraphs waffling on about an absurd claim that he knows we are not making. It's just weird. Eventually he does get around to a point though. He grants that humans had to invent the idea of God - but he considers that just because an idea is invented, this does not make it untrue. He attempts to lend support to his argument by pointing out that the idea of atoms had to be invented too.

The disanalogy should be obvious to even the most superficial reader. Atoms can be empirically demonstrated to exist. If atomic theory of matter was false, we could prove it through careful experiment. The same cannot be said for the God theory of existence.

The core claim of billboard #2 is a simple one: That religious accounts of God are works of fiction, just like Zeus, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, fairies and Master Yoda. This stands in stark contrast to the claim that religious accounts of God are valid ways of knowing about God by means of divine revelation - a claim that is widely held in the public sphere.

So again - within the context of the public sphere, billboard #2 makes a salient point to address a common religious claim. Dr. Flannagan's critique misses all of that. Instead he opens with a bizzare tangent before immediately (and artfully) dodging the point via a fallacious argument from analogy.

His Masters in Philosophy must not have included the course that taught that although analogies are powerful tools for the purpose of explanation, they are not valid as arguments.In his critique against the final billboard, Dr. Flannagan betrays a breathtakingly Christian-centric view of the issues at hand. He completely fails to understand the entire point of the message of this billboard.

Dr. Flannagan rebukes this third billboard by substituting the phrase 'non-Christian perspective' for 'God', and then rebutting this new, nonsensical message.He manages to entirely miss the point. Dr. Flannagan very clearly does not believe in the existence of Zeus, Ra, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, Thor, Osiris, Apollo, and the rest. The billboard asserts that almost everyone rejects the existence of very nearly all the Gods ever invented by humanity, but that some of us just go one God further in rejecting Yahweh as well.

It's a direct reflection of another famous element in the atheistic literature, the existence of which Dr. Flannagan continues to allow himself to appear ignorant.

I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

- Stephen F Roberts

He then goes on to perform the same unsubtle hokum, substituting 'morality' for God and pretending that this implies the message implies moral nihilism - which is not the claim in the first place.

Dr. Flannagan has transparently substituted different words into the slogan, drawn an argument from the words that the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign did not submit, and then rebutting that substituted argument instead of addressing the point actually being made in the first place. I've noticed that this is a common tactic in this kind of discussion, particularly on the internet. It's sneaky, and feels a bit underhanded. There really should be a name for it.It's probably Dr. Flannagan's third-last paragraph that really gets to the heart of the matter:

Taking a stand on any issue of philosophical substance, whether by affirming, denying or simply being sceptical of it, is to put oneself in opposition to any number of other people and groups who take a contrary stance. That is life. Such pluralism hardly provides a reason for thinking “there probably is no God” any more than it gives us a reason to doubt any other perspective on the world.

Dr. Flannagan has repeatedly made the same error in his analysis. He's treating the billboards as if they were each a self-contained treatise on the subject of theology. The pretense is that they are two-step arguments, with the premise as the large text in green and the conclusion as the tag 'There's probably no God' in orange and pink. This is - in a word - nuts.

The billboards are, quite clearly, billboards. With catchy, eye-grabbing and thought-provoking slogans. Two seconds spent on Google reveals that the purpose of the billboard campaign is to increase the visibility of atheism and provoke discussion.

The billboards are very clearly not intended as self-contained arguments. It would be wonderful if Dr. Flannagan could bring himself to acknowledge this simple fact and instead look to the context and background that has shaped these views that disagree so strongly with his own. That way he could actually involve himself critically in the discussion. I'm not being rhetorically coy when I say this - I do genuinely mean it. Dr. Flannagan clearly has a keen intellect, and I really would value his legitimate insight in this conversation.

However, by keeping to a policy of knee-jerk dismissal in place of true engagement, Dr. Flannagan has only excluded himself from the discussion by refusing to understand what it's about in the first place.

New Spice | Study like a scholar, scholar

2010-07-18T20:34:00.001+12:00

... and the meme evolves. ^_^

NZ Atheist Billboards: Probably OK

2010-07-17T01:13:00.032+12:00

It's an irony that the first strongly negative response to the NZ Atheist Billboards that I have come across is from someone who is - effectively - on our side.

Lindsay Perigo has had a made a whinging attention-grab that he has titled: Memo to NZ Atheists—Grow a Pair!

It's uninspired stuff - entirely undeserving of its exclamation point. Perigo isn't worth the time of a full response - however, he does serve very well as a Simplicio against which to discuss the significance of the term 'Probably' in the campaign.

What sort of abject cop-out is 'There probably is no God' after 'We are all atheists about most gods. Some of us go one god further'?! There probably is no God? Is that what we say about all the other gods?

Perigo isn't alone. Even on the official NZ Atheist Bus Campaign website, many commenters have preceded his criticism. The term 'Probably' is surely too soft-spoken, too weak, too mild. We're outspoken atheists, damnnit! Just by being atheists, we're gonna be stepping on some toes. So let's not just step - let's stomp!

The sentiment has been echoed in many places. Now, I'm not about to tut-tut the notion. The importance of having an uncompromising voice of atheism in the public sphere cannot be overstated. I read and have even contributed to Pharyngula, and I admire greatly the insights and commentary of PZ Myers. I lurk around the RichardDawkins.net, and value Dawkin's contributions greatly. Similarly for Ibn Warraq over at the Center for Inquiry, Jerry Coyne, Ophelia Benson, Tim Minchin, Greta Christina - the list goes on.The fact is that I like in-your-face, firebrand atheism. Its a good thing, in both the sense that it is a valuable part of the conversation going on around the world regarding the place of religion in society, and also because it's my personal, emotional preference. Snark is good. Anger is good. Satire is good. Upfront honesty is good. Outright ridicule of the ridiculous is not only good - its the only appropriate response to the ridiculous. That's what ridiculous means.

So in no way do I want to wag my finger and tut-tut at those noisy, boisterous and outspoken atheists. I couldn't if I wanted to: I'm bloody well one of them in the first place!The insightful reader will have detected by now that there's a powerful 'however' moving towards this blog post, so here it is: I feel very strongly that firebrand atheism is a good thing. However, I can also acknowledge that it isn't always the way to go. Sometimes it does pay to tailor the medium and the message to suit the audience and the purpose.

In the case of the NZ Atheist Billboards, there are a few purposes. Firstly, there is the goal to increase the visibility of atheism in New Zealand public life. This is important, both for atheists who may feel alone in their experience of our culture and society and also for theists of various stripes who may consider atheism to be some kind of abnormal fringe movement that can and should be marginalized in the public sphere. In either case, atheism may be seen as an outlier - strange, different, threatening - a public stance to be avoided. The simple and bland assertion that atheists exist in significant numbers in New Zealand is reason enough, all on its own, to justify the campaign.

Secondly, there's the goal of starting a conversation - a dialog - about the role of religion in our culture, society, and politics. It would be really good if the topics of atheism and religion could come up around the water-coolers in offices all over the country. Just to get people talking, thinking, and engaging with these topics is also reason enough, all on its own, to justify the exercise.

There are other reasons as well - but these two are enough to make the point.Consider Purpose 1: Raise visibility of atheism in New Zealand as a legitimate alternative viewpoint to religion.

What does the inclusion of the word 'probably' bring to this position? Well, it does two things. Firstly, it softens the message a bit, without sacrificing the core of that message. This softening is the very thing that has annoyed Perigo and those who agree with him. But in this case it is deserved. The purpose of the campaign is to raise visibility - but we don't need to raise our visibility to the audience of Lindsay Perigo. All those atheists and humanists and freethinkers that are annoyed at the use of the word 'Probably' - they're already convinced that atheism is the way forward. There is no need to preach to that choir. They are not the intended audience.

The intended audience is anyone who is not already disposed towards atheism. The harsher the message, the more the intended audience will dismiss it out of hand. Granted, many of them will dismiss an atheistic message regardless of how it is presented - but I refuse the notion that this is true for all believers (and closeted non-believers). There will be some that we can reach - and we'll catch more of them with the word 'Probably' than without it.

The 'Probably' also serves a useful point in establishing the reasonableness and legitimacy of the atheistic viewpoint as contrasted against religion. The use of 'Probably' highlights the fact that atheism and humanism are not dogmatisms, that we are open to disproof, that we are not fundamentalists in the sense of strict adherence to a fundamental text. It brands the campaign as more reasonable - and reason is our strong suit. We should play to it.This feeds into to Purpose 2: Starting a dialog. It would be nice if believers would abandon their faith, but in many cases this simply won't happen. We're going to have to get along with people who disagree with us about some pretty important questions. The dialog is important, because culture is defined by those who participate in it. We can only influence the decisions believers will make in the public sphere so long as we can get them to converse with us, taking turns to alternately talk (and be listened to) and then let us talk (and in turn, listen to us).

The use of 'probably' is a strong opening indication that there is scope for discussion. This is the classic tit-for-tat opening move. Consider a believer that might actually be open to engaging in the conversation. We want such believers to talk with us - because as far as I'm concerned, the more that we get such people thinking critically about anything, the better they will get at critical thinking. If believers are thinking critically about atheism, that's still good practice. We want believers to be good critical thinkers. Firstly, because they will make better decisions. But secondly, because the more that believers come to excel at critical thinking, the more they will start to notice the blatant flaws in their own belief systems. Cognitive dissonance is our friend.

So take a believer that might just be willing to engage atheism in actual discussion. Will the use of 'probably' make them more or less likely to decide against engaging with the subject? The opening move of indicating there is scope for conversation - that we are not unequivocally rejecting the outermost possibility of God's existence - can only work in our favor here.So these are just some of the reasons why atheists such as myself have donated to the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign. The donations are still coming in. There are people getting behind these messages.

This is important for Perigo to notice. Because if he feels this strongly about it - and I'm sure there are others that agree with him - he doesn't have to just take pot shots at us from across the internet.

Perigo could start a bus/billboard campaign of his own, with his own message. He's open to do so - nobody's stopping him. I'm sure he would even have a membership base to draw from in the form of those atheists and humanists who are also ticked off about the use of the word 'Probably'.

In the meantime, Simon Fisher and the rest of the gang behind the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign have the privilege of deciding for themselves how to run their own campaign. They started it, they considered the message they were bringing to the market, they asked the donors what they wanted, and they settled on the messages they did after some sound reasoning and introspection.

So instead of having a bitch, moan and whinge about those humanists and freethinkers who gave up their time, energy and resources to actually do something, I invite Perigo and those who agree with him to give up their time, energy and resources.

Perigo, if you're so wise and clever: Start your own bus/billboard campaign. Show us how its done. You have the message and the people - so get cracking.

The emotional impact of my atheism

2010-07-17T01:02:00.005+12:00

Pigeon Mountain is a quick drive from my house. It’s not actually a mountain – that’s just the name. It’s a big hill though. I pass it on the way home some sometimes. Sometimes I’ll pass it at night if I’m coming home from a movie or something. And very occasionally – once every six months or so (more if I’m having a rough patch) – I’ll get the urge to go climb it at night.

At a brisk walk, it takes me about five minutes to get to the top – so no, it isn’t all that far, but it’s high enough. I don’t know if I imagine it or not, but it feels like I get less light pollution when I’m that far above the level of the street lights. The stars seem to stand out more. Pigeon Mountain is on a bit of a peninsula, so there’s pretty much constant sea winds. I wander up there in my jacket on a warm-ish night, and the wind fills my ears. I look up, and the night sky fills my vision.
I look up, and my mind fills the universe.

That infinite vacuum wheeling above my head… It grips hold of the edges of my consciousness, expands it out past my skull and up into the sky. Through the back of my skull, all the fascinating things I’ve learned about cosmology whirl behind my eyes, and in a few short instants I’ve gone off, racing across the universe, watching as stars birth, coalesce, burn, and then nova before my eyes. I think about the majestic interplay of all that energy in all its forms… all the light moving about in all directions, not just the directions I’m looking from, a sea of electromagnetic ripples overlapping one another in all ways and passing through a three-dimensional ocean.

This is all just in my head, of course. But even without knowledge of what they are, just looking up to watch the stars still pulls at the mind. My sense of self expands out, and it feels like it’s encompassing everything.

At this point, the wind has been stealing away all the warmth I built up walking up the hill. The chill sets in, and I’m suddenly aware that the universe, whilst beautiful and majestic, is nonetheless cold. Not cruel, exactly. Just impersonal. Indifferent. Moving, but unmoved by the softness or warmth of human life.

At that point, I cast my eyes down. I usually see a car going along the main road I follow on the way home. Looking down, that car could easily be me, driving along, my mind wrapped up snug in its little bubble of warm human foolishness. From the cold and alien place my mind is currently occupying, that little sliver of warmth seems so precious. Not only does it give the universe a little sliver of the warmth it lacks, but it is also precious because it is so fragile.

And it occurs to me that, whenever I’m driving, there will always exist some perspective of my car similar to the one I am taking now, atop this hill – even if it is just the perspective from the empty air above me. That preciousness will always be there, even when I’m not aware of it, and I can always let my mind expand out to take the long view so I can remind myself about it, should I need to.

Then I look about at the houses. Pigeon Mountain rises up above a comfortably middle-class suburban area. Each house is a little light, each light is a little bubble where a group of people have carved out a little life for themselves where their bubbles overlap, becoming bigger and stronger and warmer. Each home is a tiny little bubble among many – a frothing foam of warmth and softness and light, a sea of laughter and sorrows and life.

It’s all so precious, because it is so rare. And because it didn’t have to be. The universe dancing above my head stands as a mute sentinel over the fact that our world never had to be this way. The universe doesn’t care. It isn’t malevolent, just indifferent. It has nothing to care with.

The only things I know about in this universe that are capable of caring are human beings, with all our foibles and quirks and weaknesses. We are transient on the scale of the universe. In the eyes of the stars we exist but for a flicker. The universe has no purpose for us. How could it? The universe isn’t the kind of thing that can impose a purpose! It has nothing to have a purpose with. Just matter and motion, nothing more.

But from that matter and motion has come something very special – totally unexpected, totally unplanned, and perhaps unique. From the purposeless dust of the universe has come the means for imposing purpose on the universe. This is something that may never be replicated again. It is so precious. It is so fragile. It is so fleeting. And it matters so very, very much.

And it is here that I find myself overcome with the… silliness of most religious thought. It often seems that the whole point of religion is to trick us into thinking that we matter because we will live forever. It’s as if the present moment – the only thing that is ever really real – is meaningless to the religious mind. So in despair, it turns away from the present and towards the eternity of the stars – but there it turns away in horror at the cold indifference it finds in the depths of the void. So the religious mind pretends that the universe has its own bubble of warmth and life and personality, its own reassuring cocoon of personality and purpose. And the religious mind calls this fantasy-bubble ‘God’. But it is not real. It is a comforting illusion only. The real warmth – the warmth that really matters – comes from that which is really alive. Life.

Where such a mind goes wrong is at the very beginning. The transient and impermanent moment isn’t meaningless. Nothing lasts, but it matters while it does. And it matters because it matters to us, because we are. Purpose isn’t something that is granted to us mortals by eternity. No. It’s the other way around. It is eternity that is granted a meaning by us, the transient and fragile mortal minds that breathe life, lust and love into a cold and impersonal universe.

And the entire basis of religious thought just seems so… silly really is the only word that fits. There are more sophisticated arguments against the existence of God than this – clever devices of rhetoric, complex philosophy, simple observation, the fruits of critical thinking, and so forth. But it all pales in comparison when you can grasp how deeply and profoundly silly the root of religious thought really is.
And that’s the emotional impact of my atheism. I can feel in my bones how silly and human the myth of God really is. It’s so… limiting. It makes our brief, special, vibrant lives into nothing more than an entrance examination for an eternity that will never come, and wouldn’t matter even if it did. What matters is here and now. Tomorrow will only matter when it becomes the new here and now – it is the hereness and the nowness that gives a moment its meaning, not its place within eternity. It is kairos that grants meaning, not chronos. And even once we are gone, there will still be meaning and light and life in those we leave behind. Funerals are rites for the living, not the dead.

Religion denies the only thing we have that really matters in favor of a myth that wouldn’t matter even if it was real. It’s just so silly. And so very, very tragic.

Reposted from rhetoric sans pareil.

Acupuncture

2010-07-16T18:11:00.008+12:00

Did you know that fake acupuncture is better than the real thing?

Sound crazy? Maybe - but it's true. Pretending to pierce the skin with toothpicks outperforms the use of acupuncture needles. To make matters worse, piercing the wrong places with needles can outperform piercing the right ones.

Acupuncture is all based around the idea that piercing the correct points of the body with needles will stimulate qi, a supernatural vitalistic fluid that flows through and around the body. This stimulation is claimed to perform many wonderful things, such as healing and pain relief.

If piercing the wrong place or even failing to pierce the skin at all outperforms the real thing, it's a bit like a pharmaceutical company that tries to put a new drug - with side effects - on the market despite that drug being outperformed by mere sugar pills.

We can say 'with side effects', because acupuncture is not risk free. There are risks to acupuncture. Risks such as accidental piercing of the vital tissues such as the heart, lungs, or spine. These kinds of side-effect can result in significant harm - in extreme cases, even death.

That outcome is a long-shot to be sure. But is it really worth the risk - however small - for a treatment that is demonstrably outperformed by toothpicks?

Consider C0nc0rdance's video on the subject, and judge for yourself.

Why Atheists Care About YOUR Religion

2010-07-10T15:48:00.000+12:00

The New Puritanism

2010-07-10T11:05:00.007+12:00

The truth is that what actually happens during moralistic periods is virtually the same as what goes on in more liberal times; what differs is the lack of openness about people’s behaviour and the hidden nature of any harmful consequences. In moralistic periods, sin, crime and vice get pushed so far under the carpet that moralisers, believing (rather as children do) that what they cannot see does not exist, feel great self-satisfaction. The honesty of more liberal times, and the fact that everyone can then see harm when it occurs, affronts the moralisers; and they hasten to force it back into darkness.

- A. C. Grayling, The New Puritanism.

On Prometheus and Lucifer

2010-07-09T23:44:00.003+12:00

A friend of mine is living overseas at the moment. She's getting stuck into writing, and sent me an email a little while back with her latest idea for a story. I'm anxiously awaiting the first draft of her first chapter.

One of the main villains in her story is going to be Lucifer. I offered to give her a run down of some of the symbolism that's wrapped up under the surface of Lucifer in Christian mythology, and she said yes. I thought that my response would take a few paragraphs, but my fingers took over and she got herself an essay. A dæmon made me do it. :P

Anyway, this was cobbled together in the late hours of the evening after I'd had a few beers, so it's a bit of a ramble. I also didn't put in any references. Really, I was just vomiting up a chunk of knowledge that's been sitting in the intestines of my brain for the few years. I'm putting it up here, in the harsh light of day, mainly to expose it to as much criticism as possible - in truth, I don't know how right or wrong I am when I pieced all this together, and I'd like to know. So I open myself to your correction and dissent: It only makes me stronger.

Besides, there's a small chance you might even find this interesting. :D

As for the symbolism behind Lucifer, we have to look to the Greeks for that one.

In the Greek, a dæmon was something very different to how we understand the word 'demon', for reasons I'll get to later. The Greek idea of a dæmon was something not entirely unlike a muse. Muses were the sources of inspiration to do great works. In a similar way, the Gods stationed the dæmons - which were spirits of the air (æthereal beings, note the shared 'æ' in both words) - as the proxy between Gods and men. So while the muses were the source of inspiration, the dæmons were the source of those flashes of thought and brilliance that occasionally seem to hit us from out of nowhere. Dæmons were considered to be a bit dangerous - but dangerous the way fire is dangerous, not the way a gun is dangerous. So in the general poetic nature of Greek discourse, invoking the blessings of the dæmons was a metaphor for invoking the very idea of knowledge itself. In a nutshell, 'dæmon' meant 'knowledge'.

That description isn't entirely accurate... But it's good enough to be getting on with.

When you contrast the dæmons against Prometheus, you might start to see where I'm coming from. Prometheus was a Titan that stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humans. That's too simple a summary, however; Prometheus represented much more than just fire. He also gave humanity the secrets of writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. In that sense, though he was not a dæmon himself, he was fulfilling the same role. It's just that where the dæmons were subservient to the Gods, Prometheus had acted against them - and so he was punished by being chained to a rock for all eternity, where a vulture would turn up every day to eat his liver, only to show up the next day to eat Prometheus' liver again after it had had a night to grow back. The message was clear: Don't Fuck With Zeus.

Interestingly, Prometheus was also said to have created mankind from clay only to find out that one of his brothers had already used up all the best parts. This myth predates Christianity by a long shot. Curious, much? :P

When Christianity started exploding out of ancient Israel and into the world of the Gentiles, it came up into direct conflict and competition with Hellenistic culture. It's important to understand why this was the case.

Hellenistic culture had a different value-system to our modern, largely Abrahamic-based system of morals and ethics. Hellenistic culture valued strength and glory. Humility and weakness were not virtues to the ancient Greeks and Romans, they were sins - although not really sins, since the concept of sin wasn't even a Hellenistic idea. You had admirable people and despicable people, but there was no room for a concept exactly akin to all the nuances of a sinner. Unfortunately for history, it was part of the nature of Hellenistic values that the weak should bow to the strong.

So although the Hellenistic system had a lot going for it, it did allow for the powerful few at the top of society to oppress the weak. It was the dissatisfaction of the ignorant, weak and powerless in Hellenistic culture that paved the way for the uprising of Christendom. Christ's teachings offered a different value system, one were meekness and submission to authority became signs of virtue to be admired rather than weaknesses to be despised.

As is always the case, the poor and dispossessed outnumbered by far the wealthy and prosperous, so it was only a matter of time before the early Christians gained enough followers to become a power in their own right. Emperor Constantine's deathbed conversion had more to do with bowing to the political reality of the situation than anything else.

In their conflict against the Hellenistic tradition, the early Christians adopted a method of cultural assimilation and slander that, arguably, has continued to the present day. They incorporated much of Hellenistic mythology into their own. It was just like how Christianity wound up taking the winter solstice festival in the northern hemisphere and stamping their name on it. Depending on what the orbit of the earth is doing, the winter solstice (shortest day of the year, exact middle of winter, after which the days start to get longer and warmer) falls around December 20/21/22 ish. On the old Christian Liturgical Calendar, every day had some religious rite that went with it, and as such each day was named accordingly (with one exception - the Nameless Day had no such rite). Around the middle of winter there as the Mass of the Nativity of Christ, where all the Churches would give a special mass that was centered around the theme of Jesus' birth. On the Gregorian calendar, the Mass of the Nativity of Christ got mapped onto December 25.

The Church couldn't get the peasants to stop celebrating the pagan solstice no matter what they tried. So they compromised. They delayed the solstice festivals by a few days, and then got everyone to pretend that it was all down to the Mass of the Nativity of Christ (Mass of the Nativity of Christ => Christ's Mass => Christmas). The peasants couldn't really wrap their heads around all that very well, but the idea of a birthday celebration seemed to kinda fit the situation - and thus the myth that December 25th is Jesus' birthday. I say myth because we don't really know, and have no way of knowing, on which day of the year Jesus was born (although it should be emphasized that this is not a big deal - it just doesn't matter which day Jesus was actually born on, believer or not).

But I digress. The early Christians stole a lot from the Greeks in a similar fashion to how in later years they would steal the pagan solstice festival. But there were some things in Hellenistic culture that were anathema to the value system of the early Christians. In the Hellenistic tradition, knowledge was the province of wealthy and powerful elites. To slander those elites, the early Christians bastardized the idea of dæmons and turned them into demons - wicked spirits, tempters and tricksters, that would use honeyed words to tempt the faithful astray.

Modern day Christian fundamentalists still use the same basic argument - albeit hammered into a more modern shape - when they try to 'prove' that the Earth is really just six-thousand years old. "Don't listen to those atheistic scientists," they say, "they're just collaborating under an agenda to turn people away from God on account of their arrogance and hatred towards God," and so forth. The ancient ancestor of this kind of fundamentalist argument was the literal demonisation of the Greek dæmons.

In a similar way, Prometheus played a prominent role in Hellenistic culture as the one who brought fire to humanity. When you think about it, the knowledge of how to make fire from rubbing two sticks together was really the birth of chemistry and the energy economy. Because of fire, humans didn't have to rely solely on their own energy in order to survive. They could tap into the energy stored in the chemical world to make heat and light - and from heat cometh motion.

In more modern times, we can tap even deeper into reality than mere chemistry - nuclear fusion [edit: fission, not fusion - we haven't quite got fusion down yet :P ] is really just a deeper extension of our capacity to draw raw energy from the substance of the world around us and bend it to our whim. It is the surplus of energy generated in this way that gives us the resources to pursue civilization, science, art, music, medicine, construction, science, and so on and so forth. It's kind of a big deal.

It's important to underscore that the ancient Greeks knew their shit. In 570 BCE, Pythagoras first hypothesized that the world (and the stars) were all spheres. By 500 BCE, any Greek writer of repute accepted that the Earth was spherical. In 240 BCE, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with an error of 5% to 10% by using trigonometry to comparing the lengths of noon-shadows in Syene and Alexandria for objects of known heights. Years later, Hero(n) of Alexandria (10 AD - 70 AD) published the earliest known book on the subject of robotics (albeit a primitive version of robotics).

So Prometheus was the bringer of knowledge, power, warmth, and light. Because of the knowledge and power part, both of which were associated with the Hellenistic master classes against whom Christianity was in conflict, the early Christians couldn't incorporate Prometheus in a positive light the same way that they would eventually do with the winter solstice. Prometheus was anathema to their core values. So instead, they vilified Prometheus in the same way that they did the dæmons.

Prometheus brought the light of knowledge and science to humanity. As I'm sure you already know, 'Lucifer' is Latin for 'Light-bringer'. It always seemed curious to me that the name of the 'Evil One' in the Christian tradition translated to something as benign-sounding as 'Light-bringer' - but once I came across the actual history of the symbology behind the myths, suddenly it all made sense.

Reposted from rhetoric sans pareil.

Culture is defined by those who participate in it

2010-07-09T22:11:00.001+12:00

On the subject of advertising though, I hate it when religious organisations do it, and I'm not too crazy about evangelical atheism either. It's kind of like the latter missed the point somewhere along the line.

The quote above is from an email conversation I've had with some friends. Full disclosure: The quote is taken out of context; this quote was followed up with some important qualifications that changed its meaning in the context it was given.

That said, this quote succinctly states a common feeling I'm getting from people whenever the subject of atheist bus ads or billboards comes up. There's an important response to this sentiment.

Culture is defined by those who participate in it.

Culture is built up out of many things. Each of those sub-systems bears at least some influence on the whole. As a general rule of thumb, religion has more leverage on culture than the rest. I can see how it could be hard for religious people (including moderates) to see this. I'm sure the artifacts of popular culture - movies, advertising, music, television - seem to have more pull on culture than religion. Self-declared religious leaders regularly denounce these aspects of culture for this very reason!

However, it is religion that has the most powerful leverage. Religion is sneaky and insidious - particularly when children are indoctrinated at an early age. Religion is built out of our innate (and frequently wrong) intuitions about the world. It should only be expected that religion should appeal very strongly to those self-same intuitions. It's easy to roll along with religious thinking and ritual. It gets its symbols, rituals and presence everywhere. Even if an aspect of human behavior turns out to be resistant to religion, religion just assimilates it (the re-branding of the winter solstice into Christmas is just the most blatant of many such examples). As a result religion gets everywhere, staining the lens of the mind's eye like a glass window. Religion shapes behavior, expectations, interpretations and goals - all at once.

Yet even as religion does all this, it makes itself boring. Almost unnoticeable. Religion is all-pervasive, yet it simultaneously renders its innermost workings completely dull. Have you every tried to read a treatise on theology? Sheer boredom can be enough deflect an inquisitive and curious mind to other more interesting occupations of thought. This helps to ensure that inquiring minds don't notice things in theology that theologians would rather such minds didn't notice.

This all conspires to make religion normal. The default option. It controls our culture in a million little ways. Our culture in turn controls us. Yet most of us hardly notice the influence. That which proceeds unnoticed will continue unchecked. This is what makes religion so powerful.

All well and good, perhaps. But why should we care?

Because when it comes to describing the true state of reality, religion is almost always utterly wrong.

We should expect religion to get reality completely wrong most of the time, because Religion is built up out of our intuitions about reality - and we can prove that our intuitions are frequently wrong about reality. Our intuitions tell us that the earth is flat and that the sun orbits us. Our intuitions tell us that lead should fall faster than wood. Our intuitions tell us that our visual field is complete (blind spots). Our intuitions tell us that our memories are reliable records of the past. Our intuitions tell us that we shouldn't pick the other door.

Human intuitions are wrong about the true state of reality most of the time. We should expect that any cultural artifact that is built on a foundation of human intuitions should also be wrong about reality most of the time. Religion is just such a cultural artifact. We should therefore expect it to be wrong about reality most of the time. The conclusion follows from the premise.

Giving the biggest lever over the whole of our culture over to a cultural sub-system that we can expect to be wrong about reality most of the time is potentially disastrous to our prospects for the future. Our culture affects our decisions in powerful, insidious and almost imperceptible ways. We fail to see our own culture for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can't see England. We're so deep into our own cultures we don't notice them. In a figurative sense, we are our culture.

This is important because unrecognized cultural bias can unknowingly influence our decision-making in very powerful ways. Our decisions matter. So much of what will happen to us - both as individuals and collectively - depends on the decisions we make now. Our futures depend very much on the decisions we make, both at the level of the grass roots as well as at the level of politics and policy.

We cannot afford to risk the outcomes of our decisions by letting them be influenced by a way of thinking that is practically guaranteed to be wrong about reality - which means wrong about the likely outcomes of our decisions. We cannot afford to risk our future to the fickle whims of religious opinion.

This is just one of the many reasons why it is good for atheism to announce itself in the public sphere. Simply by making itself more noticed - simply by taking up mental real-estate in the public consciousness by waving a big sign with an atheistic message over someone's visual cortex - this creates an offset to the pervasive and insidious influence of religious thinking. The mere presence of the atheistic viewpoint brings the religious viewpoint into stark relief. It makes religion look less like the default option. It's a small yet firm lever helping to pry the grasp of religion off the reins of culture.

If we want to look to the future, then we need to care about the decisions we make today. We need to know - know, to the best of our ability and despite our personal wishes and ideologies - what the likely outcomes of our decisions are going to be. We need to know what we should be doing today in order to get what we want tomorrow. More to the point, we need to know what we are doing today that is going to get us something we really, really, really don't want.

To do this we need the best possible picture of reality we can build. We need to cast out the ghosts of wishful thinking and flawed intuition and take up a stance towards reality that is open and honest. We need to be prepared to be proven wrong before we can learn to be right. Most of the process of acquiring new knowledge, the process of learning, consists of being proven wrong, over and over and over again. Just as innovation is the process of inviting serial failure, so too is learning the process of inviting serial recognition of our own ignorance. Every time we cast aside an opinion about reality that was wrong and replace it with something that is better, then we can say we have learned something new. Learning is the ongoing process of being proven wrong and accepting it gracefully - even eagerly. I want to be proven wrong; so should we all.

So long as we cling to our base intuitions and wishful thinking, so long as we cling to religion as our guide to what's true, we cannot possibly learn anything new about the true nature of reality. How could we?

Given the heights to which our power as a species has grown, we can't afford to be wrong anymore. Our decisions today have some very, very significant outcomes. One of the great problems of being human is that we can play dice with the universe - if we want to do so.

But for all the reasons above, we really, really shouldn't.

Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made For Us

2010-07-09T22:04:00.001+12:00

NZ Atheists Swap Buses For Billboards

2010-07-01T16:29:00.001+12:00

Reposted from: NZ Atheist Bus Campaign.

The NZ Atheist Bus Campaign will unveil billboards with friendly atheist slogans in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch this week.

The campaign has chosen the three winning phrases from more than 900 public submissions of billboard slogans. “We’re excited about this opportunity to promote these thoughtful slogans and hope they’ll get people to stop and think.” said Simon Fisher, spokesperson for the Campaign.

While the precise wording of the three new slogans is intended to be a surprise, Mr Fisher says that all three designs will include the text “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life” borrowed from the successful UK bus campaign.

With the launch of the billboard campaign, the organisation is also reopening its call for donations from people who want to see the billboards moved to other cities. “While the bus campaign would have been limited to main centres, the great thing about these canvases is that once printed they can be toured to other centres” said Mr Fisher. “If a community wants to put one of our billboards up in their area they can contact us, arrange a location, and we’ll be delighted to lend them the canvas”.

Despite similar campaigns being run internationally, the organisation’s plans to place ads on buses in New Zealand hit a brick wall earlier this year when NZ Bus accepted and then rejected the billboards, leading to the Campaign’s decision to take the issue to a tribunal. “The Campaign is still committed to the discrimination case against NZ Bus through the Office of Human Rights Proceedings. “We have kept funds in reserve for a bus advertising campaign if this is successful.” said Mr Fisher.

Interested Kiwis can see the billboards in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch from Friday this week.

For more information and to donate, see http://www.nogod.org.nz/

C# - DataRowView.Delete() does not set DataRow.RowState to Deleted - Explanation and Solution

2010-06-29T12:55:00.000+12:00

I recently had this problem at work, and lost a few hours trying to sort it out.

The problem scenario is that there is a listbox with a DataSource of type DataTable. When an item is selected from the listbox, its data is opened in a form to the right, allowing the user to edit or update the data using whatever controls we like. Functionality is provided by buttons: Save, Undo Changes, Delete.

The Delete button was a problem for me, because the RowState of the deleted row will not be set to Deleted until after the button's event exits. This seems to have something to do with the fact that the listbox is enumerating the underlying datasource, and hasn't had a chance to align itself properly. So calling Update right after the Delete doesn't help.

However, I want to call that Update immediately after the delete attempt for a reason - I want to know about any problems on the data level straight away. How can I do this?

The answer comes in the form of the DataTable's RowDeleted event. We can call DataRow.Delete from within the button click, and then force the Update on the deleted row from within the RowDeleted event handler. That update attempt can be wrapped up in whatever try/catch handling we like.

Knowing this up front would have saved me some time. Hope this comes in handy to others.

Too busy for example code right now - I'll whip one up when I have time, and update this entry accordingly.

Why I less-than-three Astrology

2010-05-06T11:42:00.002+12:00

One of my favorite astrology-related moments came when I'd just started seeing my (current) ladyfriend.

We had been seeing each other for about a month, and she had already discovered that astrology was one of my hot-buttons. Up until this point I had always held my tongue whenever she raised the subject, but it made me squirm... And she's exactly the kind of girl that is vindictive enough to do that to me on purpose.

So one day she pulled out an astrology textbook from her shelf and claimed it to be highly authoritative on the subject. She would prove to me that astrology was real. At this point, she asked for my star-sign.

"Taurus," I said, looking unhappy.

She turned the page to Taurus and went through the description with glee. "See, that's you," she would interject between every second line.

"I dunno," I would say. "That could apply to just about anyone," or words to that effect.

At the end, she closed the book with a look of triumph. "You see? It works. It describes you perfectly!"

"So that proves it, then?"

"Yes," she beamed.

My tone changed ever so slightly. "So... There's no way that this could just be, you know, a big co-incidence?"

She scoffed, putting the book down. "Of course not. Now you're just looking for excuses." She flicked on the TV and started surfing, smug in her victory.

The wry amusement in my voice coming through in full force now, I asked: "Are you sure? They were all kind of... you know... vague. Some of them could have applied to anyone. Maybe even everyone."

She snorted. "Face it. You've lost."

"Hmm... that's interesting." In the subsequent eighteen months that we've been together, she has come to hate it when I say this. Can't think why.

Finally sensing that something was up, she looked up from the TV. "What? Why?"

"My birthday is in December."

There was a long pause while the penny dropped - that I am actually a Sagittarius, but had lied about my star-sign with malice aforethought. Then she hit me over the head with the astrology book.

The look on her face was totally worth it.

"Have you heard of this James Randi fellow?"

She hit me again.

Eighteen months so far, and counting. ^_^

Backstory

2010-05-05T22:08:00.000+12:00

Five months ago (or so) I started commenting online using my real name.

Friends and family have told me I'm nuts. "Don't blog online under your real name!" they warn. "You work in IT. Your future employers are bound to Google your name, and if one of them is religious you could lose a job opportunity."

I'm an atheist, you see. One of the strident, loud, angry, disrespectful breed of atheist. The (allegedly) 'new' kind of atheist. And I like to write about it. It's a pleasure.

In one sense this was very good advice. I very well may lose future jobs because of this blog. But the advice still made me angry. Not red-hot, foaming at the mouth, fast anger. Slow anger - a low simmer. It took a while to bubble over.

So yes. I'm angry about this.

Not at the friends and family who gave me the advice. I'm angry at the stupid status quo that is factoring so strongly in their assessment. I'm angry that the best advice I have available from those closest to me is to keep my honest views safely tucked away where they won't be noticed. I'm angry that advice that is so wrong can still be so right.

Fuck That Noise™

This toxic status quo isn't going to disappear any faster for my pandering to it. There's a pragmatic reason to come out and declare my atheism loudly and publicly; if enough of us do it, it will become normal. Once it becomes normal, the status quo will shift into something else - and I would expect, something better.

Pragmatism aside, there's something more important to consider as well. The idea of pandering to the status quo - any status quo - by restricting my public speech... That makes my skin itch. What kind of person could take pride in pandering to the status quo? Life is too short, too precious to waste on something so depressing.

Speaking up, on the other hand... That always feels good. Even when I'm shown to be wrong, even when I make an ass of myself, and regardless of the consequences; I've never come to regret speaking my honest mind. To the contrary. It's often turned out to work out in my favor in ways I never would have expected.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not about to go harassing a some poor Christian or Muslim while I'm out and about socially, throwing down the rhetorical gauntlet. And while I'm on the subject of professionalism, it's worth mentioning that a co-worker or a client's personal beliefs are their own damn business.

One of the cardinal rules about my professional life is this: Don't raise the subject of religion. If someone else raises it, keep out of it. If I'm directly challenged and can't get out of it, just mention I'm not religious and then let them drop the subject. It's never gotten me into trouble yet.

That's my stance towards my professional life. I have no problems limiting my speech in a professional context. I'm being paid to develop software, install and configure that software on client sites, and occasionally bring along my technical expertise to sales meetings with clients. While I'm being paid to work, this is what I will do. I can pursue a social agenda of my choosing in my own damn time.

But that's just the thing. In my own time, I insist on thinking and speaking as I damn well please and as publicly as I damn well please. I'm not prepared to hand over control of my personal life to my work commitments. I already give over 50-60 hours a week professionally. What's left over is bloody well mine. If a potential employer expects me to give that up, they're asking too much.

Immanuel Kant - An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (pdf)