Noah Lugeons: How to Survive a Theocracy in 8 Easy Steps

Given the political climate these days - even worse than it was during the Bush administration, which I'd thought would be impossible - you might need this.

And you probably need it now - or,... well, before now, really - because some of these steps are going to require a great deal of advanced planning (the first two steps, for example).

Note that Noah Lugeons co-hosts the Scathing Atheist, God Awful Movies, Skepticrat, and Citation Needed podcasts - all highly recommended. You can find them on many different podcast platforms. (Note that you do need a fairly high tolerance for both profanity and dick jokes. They're not exactly safe for work.)

Alex Jones

I don't know about the first part of this. How could Alex Jones be considered "charismatic"?

Or does "charismatic" mean "unethical, combined with batshit crazy" in the UK?

Ravi Zacharias and quantum physics

This is about the bogus educational claims of Ravi Zacharias, rather than quantum physics itself (although "quantum" does seem to be the latest buzzword in pseudoscience and religion).

This is shorter than most videos by Seth Andrews, and I did think that the interview was interesting. Note that there are links to RaviWatch, and to the other videos mentioned, here.

How to get climate change wrong... again and again

This is exceptionally good, I'd say. But it's also a bit depressing, given how it won't accomplish anything at all. Crowder doesn't care if he's wrong, and none of his fellow deniers do, either, as far as I can tell.

Was the United Airlines victim actually a felon?

Rebecca Watson is one of my favorite people on YouTube. It's not about this particular incident. (Frankly, I never even saw previous videos about it, and I don't normally jump on outrage click-bait, anyway.)

But she always gives me a lot to think about. And her lessons are quite valuable.

An Index to Creationist Claims

This isn't anything brand-new, but I thought I'd point out this website: An Index to Creationist Claims.

If you've ever talked to Creationists, you'll know that most of them don't even have a fifth-grade level understanding of evolution. Many don't even know what evolution is. I'm no biologist, but that's been obvious even to me.

And you'll hear from these people lots of different arguments for why evolution is wrong. (Oddly enough - or maybe it's not surprising at all - you never seem to hear an argument for why Creationism is true. They seem to think that disproving evolution would magically make their own beliefs valid. Obviously, it doesn't work like that.)

Still, it's rather shocking to see all of the claims of Creationists on the same web page! I didn't realize there were that many of them. Heh, heh. But I love how the website handles these claims.

Click on a particular claim and you'll go to a page that clearly, and succinctly, describes everything you need to know. First, it repeats the claim and gives a source for the claim (just one source; many of these claims can be found all over the internet).

Then it lists one or more brief responses. These really are brief, and I love that. I should learn from this website! (But I know I won't.) Typically, a response seems to be all you need to know in the shortest version possible.

But after that, there are links and/or references for further research, so if you do need to know more, you can find much longer explanations (often scientific reference materials).

I've had this web page bookmarked for some time, but I don't use it much. (As I say, most arguments by Creationists require only a fifth-grade level understanding of evolution to refute.) However, it's a fascinating page to browse.

Take a look. It's really quite interesting, isn't it? I'm impressed!

How big alt-med tried to silence a scientist

So, you thought you'd heard all of the downsides of a Trump presidency? Sorry, but... not even close. I'm sure we'll be learning of new downsides for the next four years. (Let's just hope it's not eight.)

And yes, some liberals can be just as gullible as conservatives when it comes to this alt-med bullshit. But liberals tend to have a lot better attitude towards regulations and libel laws (among other things).

Donald Trump's fact-free world

To the faith-based, facts don't exist. Thus, it never mattered when Donald Trump lied. And it doesn't matter when he lies now. After all, reality is whatever you want it to be, right?

For Trump supporters, if you believe that millions of people voted illegally, then that becomes your reality, even though it's simply not true. I mean, our actual reality has a well-known liberal bias, right?

This isn't just Donald Trump. Far from it. In recent decades, the entire Republican Party has become faith-based in ways that simply deny reality. Global warming is a "hoax." Evolution - the foundation of modern biology - doesn't exist. Republicans reject science whenever they don't want to believe it.

And remember Ben Carson, Dr. Knowlittle, our next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Because of a completely fictional story in the Bible, he's decided that the pyramids - which are nearly solid stone - were used to store grain. Even crazier, he thinks that the scientific explanation for the pyramids is that aliens built them!

This is what happens when you cease to care about what's true and what isn't. This is what happens when you decide that "facts" are whatever you want them to be. This is what happens when you're faith-based, rather than evidence-based.

And now we've got a president-elect packing high governmental positions with crazy people, along with similarly loony politicians who'll soon control all three branches of the U.S. government, who simply don't care if their beliefs are true or not, because they reject the very concept of "facts."

What has happened to my America?

The Scathing Atheist: President Trump

"Apparently, the majority of voters don't care what's true."

Amen! I don't even want to think about the election. I'm still so disgusted with my country, so disgusted with my species, that I don't think I'll ever regain the relative optimism I once had.

I never thought we'd be this fucking screwed up! Never in my life did I imagine that America would be this ignorant, this gullible, and this dumb. I've never expected perfection, but I certainly expected better than this!

But I was wrong.

Anyway, I sure as hell don't feel like picking at this bleeding scab anymore. But this expresses what I feel quite well, so I thought I'd post it. (He's actually more optimistic than I am. But then, at my age, I won't live to see a sane Supreme Court again.)

John Oliver: multilevel marketing

Herbal supplements are a big enough scam as it is. Combine them with a pyramid scheme, and you really have something designed to separate the marks from their money, don't you think?

Non-Belief, Pt. 17: Proving the Negative

I don't believe in leprechauns, because I've seen no good evidence that leprechauns exist. I can't prove that leprechauns don't exist - you can't prove a negative, right? - but if you do believe that leprechauns exist, you have the burden of proof to demonstrate that.

Let me say right from the start that "prove" and "proof" are misleading here. Personally, I don't think that we can "prove" anything about the real world, such that we couldn't possibly be wrong. No matter what evidence we have, it still could be wrong. It might be ridiculous to think so, but that's not "proof."

Maybe we're living in the Matrix or in a computer simulation where nothing is as it seems. Maybe there's an all-powerful deity who could do anything, by definition. (Why would he? Well, "God works in mysterious ways," right?) Maybe we're God, gone mad from loneliness and just hallucinating all this. I could go on and on.

But in casual terms, we tend to say "prove" when we mean "demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt." I prefer the word "demonstrate," so as to avoid misunderstandings. "Proofs" are for mathematics and logic. In the real world, we have evidence.

And without good evidence that leprechauns exist, there's no good reason to believe that they do. It's not my responsibility to demonstrate that leprechauns don't exist. I can't prove demonstrate the negative, but I don't need to. It's the person who does believe that leprechauns exist who has the burden of demonstrating that.

That's simple enough, isn't it? You're all with me so far, I hope. Obviously, we could disagree about any particular bit of evidence, but we're in agreement on the principle of the thing, right?

Now, I don't believe in gods, either - for the same reason that I don't believe in leprechauns. In both cases, I haven't seen any good evidence that they exist. In both cases, the burden of demonstrating otherwise lies with the person who thinks that they do exist.

In the absence of such evidence, non-belief is the default. I'm an atheist because I don't believe that a god or gods exist, and I don't believe that a god or gods exist because no believer has ever demonstrated otherwise.

I could claim that no god exists, but why would I? If I did that, I would have to define "god" (which seems foolish, given that I don't believe in them) and I would have the burden of demonstrating evidence that gods don't exist. Not only does that seem foolish, it also seems impossible.

But it's not so impossible if we're talking about a particular god.

In his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan talked about "The Dragon in My Garage" (the full text is here). You can't demonstrate that there isn't a dragon in a garage, if believers can imagine whatever they want to imagine about that dragon.

But suppose we begin by agreeing on the characteristics of a dragon. In that case, we'd expect to find certain evidence in that garage - not only the dragon itself, but footprints, dragon droppings, food scraps, scorch marks, etc.  And in that case, the absence of evidence would demonstrate evidence of absence.

So let me demonstrate that the Christian God doesn't exist. Remember, again, that I do not have the burden of proof here. I'm perfectly fine with my non-belief, my atheism, as a consequence of no theist - and certainly no Christian - demonstrating that his god does exist.

But just for fun, let me demonstrate a negative.

First, I have to define "God," so how about this? God is an all-powerful (or "maximally powerful"), all-knowing being who wants human beings to obey him (or, if you prefer, to do some things and not do others). Obviously, God wants us to believe that he exists. That's clearly a prerequisite for obeying, loving, or whatever else you think God wants from us.

(I'm talking about the Christian god right now, but that's a broad enough definition to match other gods as well. Certainly, this argument would work just as well for the Jewish and the Muslim gods.)

Like the dragon in the garage, if this particular god exists, we should expect to see certain things. But what do we see? Christianity is the world's largest religion, which is pretty good for a man-made faith, but still, less than one-third of all human beings even believe that the Christian God exists.

How could an all-powerful, all-knowing deity want human beings to know that he exists, yet be that bad at convincing us? And this is just existence, note. Christians can't agree even among themselves about what that god wants and doesn't want from us - even today's Christians, let alone the Christians of the past.

Heck, the Catholic Church spent a thousand years rooting out heresy with fire and sword or today's Christians wouldn't even be this much in agreement. (Early Christians couldn't even agree on how many gods there were.)

And just look at the issue of slavery if you want to see how inept - or non-existent - the Christian god has really been. Or witches, perhaps. Modern Christians would have been burned at the stake as heretics for most of their own religion's existence.

All of this demonstrates that the Christian 'God' does not exist, don't you think? After all, if there were an all-powerful, all-knowing god who wanted human beings to know that he exists, then we'd all - or nearly all - agree about that. If there were an all-powerful, all-knowing deity who wanted human beings to do some things and not do others, we'd all - or nearly all - agree on what those things were. That's obvious.

Of course, maybe you believe in a weak, ineffectual god, a half-wit god, a bumbling idiot god. Or maybe your god doesn't want human beings to know that he exists. Maybe he likes to torture people in hell, so he wants the excuse that we don't believe in him. Hey, just like Sagan's dragon, you can always make excuses, if you really, really want to make excuses.

And I can't demonstrate that all gods don't exist. If your god is different from this, fine. Remember, I don't have the burden of proof anyway. You do. I think I've shown that 'God' does not exist, but I didn't have to. My atheism is fully justified by the fact that you can't demonstrate that he does exist - that no believer can demonstrate that his god exists.

You don't, after all, believe in leprechauns because no one can prove that they don't exist, do you? But I wanted to show that it is, indeed, possible to prove demonstrate a negative. The absence of evidence where there should be evidence is evidence for the negative.

___
PS. You can find the rest of my Non-Belief series here.

The miracle of Mother Teresa

(Jesus and Mo)

Pope Francis made Mother Teresa a saint yesterday, on the basis of two miracles. But the real miracle is that people actually buy that bunk, here in the 21st Century.

Here's one of those 'miracles':

[Monica] Besra, who is from a tribal community in eastern India, was so sick she could barely walk when nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, helped her to a small prayer room one day in 1998.

She paused by a photo of the nun and suddenly felt a “blinding light” emanating from the portrait, and it passed through her body. Later, other nuns pressed a religious medal on her belly, swollen from a tumor, and prayed over Besra as she lay in bed.

She says she awoke at 1 a.m., her body feeling lighter, the tumor seemingly gone.

“I was so happy at that moment I wanted to tell everyone: I am cured,” Besra recalled Wednesday during an interview at her home. ...

Mother Teresa was considered a living saint by many believers during her lifetime, but Besra’s story has always been treated with skepticism in India because doctors and the state health minister debunked it at the time.

They have long maintained that Besra had been suffering from a cyst, not a cancerous tumor. The doctors have said she recovered after she received tuberculosis treatment for several months at a government hospital in Balurghat, about 270 miles north of the city where Mother Teresa spent decades ministering to the destitute and dying.

“I’ve said several times that she was cured by the treatment, and nothing has happened,” one of the doctors involved, Ranjan Mustafi, said in a brief telephone interview.

But saints are big business for the Catholic Church - and very popular with their customer base. 'Mother Theresa' is also very popular, although she shouldn't be. But that popularity made it inevitable that they'd make her a saint.

Monica Besra probably believes what she says (although she's getting a lot of attention for this, and lying for attention certainly isn't unknown). Presumably, those really are her memories of 18 years ago (not that memories are reliable either, of course).

For what it's worth, her husband doesn't believe it:

All this irritates Monica's husband Seiku. "It is much ado about nothing," he says. "My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle." He is peeved at his wife's fame, in part because the press is constantly at his doorstep. "I want to stop this jamboree, people coming with cameras every few hours or so." He concedes that the locket is part of the story of Monica's ordeal but says no one should suppose there was a cause-and-effect relationship between it and the cure. "My wife did feel less pain one night when she used the locket, but her pain had been coming and going. Then she went to the doctors, and they cured her." Monica still believes in the miracle but admits that she did go to see doctors at the state-run Balurghat Hospital. "I took the medicines they gave me, but," she insists, "the locket gave me complete relief from the pain."

Well, we all know faith-based people, don't we? Nothing will stop them from believing what they want to believe. And nothing will stop the Catholic Church from taking advantage of that.

The second 'miracle' accepted by the Catholic Church was that of a man who recovered from a brain infection after his wife supposedly prayed to Mother Teresa. (I've heard it called "multiple brain tumors," but it was apparently an infection that caused abscesses in his brain. That's how doctors diagnosed it, at least. There's always a question of how accurate any diagnosis might be.)

It was a serious condition, certainly. But the man was being treated for it in a hospital. Was the man's recovery remarkable? Perhaps. But was it miraculous? Why would you think so?

Think about this. When Catholics get sick, how many of them don't pray to get well? How many of their family members don't pray for them? And Mother Teresa has been very popular among Catholics for a long time.

Yet, given all this, the Catholic Church can only come up with two miracles (at least one of them extraordinarily dubious)? What about all of those people who prayed and their loved ones still died? What about all of those people of other religions - or no religion at all - who also had remarkable recoveries? Remarkable recoveries might be uncommon - since, otherwise, we wouldn't consider them to be remarkable - but they're perfectly normal.

There are seven and a half billion people in the world. Occasional remarkable recoveries - especially when under modern medical care - are exactly what we should expect naturally. There's absolutely nothing that points to a god here. Indeed, I'd say it's just the reverse. If praying to Mother Teresa - or anyone else - actually made a difference, it should be far more obvious than this!

After her death, we learned that even Mother Teresa doubted God:

Although she publicly proclaimed that her heart belonged "entirely to the Heart of Jesus", she wrote to the Rev Michael Van Der Peet, a spiritual confidant, in September 1979 that "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak."

This is supposed to be a saint. How could she pray and find nothing but "silence and emptiness" if her god - this saint's god - really did exist? And yet, none of this makes any difference to true believers. Rev. Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame, for example, actually said, "This can only enhance her reputation as a saintly person..."

When even your saints can find nothing through prayer, and even that doesn't cause you to doubt your beliefs,... what would? Well, again, the faith-based tend to believe what they really, really want to believe.

And the Catholic Church will always use that (just as they use the Shroud of Turin, despite knowing for centuries that it's simply a medieval forgery, just as 'saints' don't even have to be real people).

I don't know. Maybe the celibate old men who run the church actually believe this stuff (being faith-based, themselves). Maybe they'll just cynically use whatever is popular with their customer base. I suspect that it's some of both.

But the real miracle of Mother Teresa is that people are still gullible enough to buy this bullshit. Even in our modern world, where scientific and technological advancements do cure people, there's still widespread superstition and just... astonishing levels of gullibility.

Well, it's easy to fool someone who really, really wants to be fooled.

___
Edit: I added the cartoon a few days after posting this. It was just too fitting.

A little humor

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Tired of political humor? I thought that would be a nice change of pace.

Of course, it's religion, so maybe it's not all that different. OK, how about this one, then?

(Savage Chickens)

John Oliver - feelings vs reality

John Oliver has done it again. This is what I continually blog about here: believing what you want to believe vs reality.

The Republican Party has abandoned reality, and there's no better example of that than with Donald Trump.

John Oliver: "What is truly revealing is his [Antonio Sabato, Jr.] implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. Because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican National Convention this week. It was a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts."

To the Republican Party these days - and to a frighteningly large percentage of the American people - reality isn't important. To them, reality is whatever they want it to be. The fantasy they've built up in their minds is the new reality, to them. It's as real as 'reality TV' - which means, of course, that it isn't real at all. But they don't care.

Crime in America has been dropping for decades. Fewer police officers are being killed in the line of duty. The world is less violent than it's ever been. But terrorists and Republicans push fear for their own purposes. And people who are faith-based, rather than evidence-based, 'feel' what isn't true, while rejecting what is.

This is the problem with faith-based thinking. It's not just religion. The problem is not caring about the truth of your beliefs. Demagogues can use that.

You have the right to your own opinions, but you don't have the right to your own reality. Reality exists, whatever you might think about it. And your own feelings don't alter the facts.

Are cell phones the key to eternal life?

As I've noted about the current political situation, media companies are in business to make money. Sensational articles attract readers. Sensational videos attract viewers. And controversy always sells.

"Nothing to see here" doesn't attract people. Nuance is boring. Agreement is boring. And the people writing these articles and announcing these discoveries aren't scientists and likely don't fully understand what they're reporting, themselves.

But whether they understand the science or not, they definitely understand what will make money for them and what won't. After all, that's their job. It's not informing the public. It's making money for their employer. That's why they were hired.

 And yes, it's the exact same thing when it comes to politics. Sure, everyone is biased. That's unavoidable. But the overall bias of media companies (with obvious exceptions like Fox 'News') isn't about politics. It's about making money.

That's why our media are the way they are. They're shallow and sensationalist. They're terrified of losing access by being too good at journalism. And above all else, they want two sides fighting over the truth. It doesn't make any difference if one side is batshit crazy, because it's the fight itself that's actually important to the media, not the issue.

Angel

(BBC)

OK, this is weird:

Indonesian police have confiscated a sex toy from a remote village after its inhabitants and some on social media mistook it for an "angel".

The doll was found in March floating in the sea by a fisherman in the Banggai islands in Sulawesi province.

His family took care of the doll, and pictures soon spread online along with claims it was an angel.

Police investigated amid fears the rumours would cause unrest, and found it was in fact an inflatable sex doll.

Indonesian news portal Detik said photos of the doll dressed demurely and wearing a hijab spread on social media shortly after its discovery.

Rumours then began to spread that it was a "bidadari" [angel] along with unverified stories about how it was found "stranded and crying", prompting the police investigation.

OK, as the local police chief noted, "They have no internet." No doubt they find the whole concept of an inflatable sex toy to be bizarre. So do I. But it's the 21st Century, and they still believe in angels?

Well, so do most Americans, I suspect. It's crazy, but it's not limited to primitive people in Indonesia. (I do think it's funny that the doll was dressed "demurely" and wearing a hijab, but it was probably dressed that way by the villagers, don't you think?)

Furthermore, the belief in this "angel" did spread on social media, apparently. It wasn't just poor fishermen, not at all.

But you know what's most interesting to me? Stories were already spreading about how this angel was found "stranded and crying." But according to Christians, we're supposed to believe the magical stories spread by primitive, superstitious people 2,000 years ago?

This doesn't just show how superstitious people can be when they don't understand something. It also shows how people make up and spread stories about the supernatural. And this is the 21st Century, with widespread literacy even in Indonesia and far better access to news and information than existed in biblical times.

Well, I thought this was both interesting and instructive. And quite funny, too. :)

Non-Belief, Pt. 16: The Maximally Great Ontological Argument

As William Lane Craig puts it:

1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
7. Therefore, God exists.

As I understand it, that's basically Plantinga's version of the ontological argument for the existence of God. I don't know if it's become more popular these days, or if I've just happened to run into it more often lately, but I thought I'd post a few comments.

Note that I'm not a philosopher, and I've had absolutely no training in philosophy. Still, that's never stopped me. Heh, heh. Anyway, I previously commented about "Proving God through Philosophy," and I stand by what I said there.

Frankly, it sounds ludicrous to me that there's an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator of the Universe - a god who really, really wants us to believe that he exists - but you can find zero evidence of that, no evidence that he does anything at all in our universe, and all you've got are word games to convince people otherwise.

How can this even make sense to you? If that god existed, we wouldn't be arguing about it. If that god existed, we'd have abundant evidence to that effect. If that god existed, he'd make sure that we knew it and that we knew which god it was. (We could still reject him, so don't give me any of those ludicrous 'freewill' arguments.)

However, today I'm going to comment on this particular argument - again, from my layman's perspective. I make no pretense to be an expert here. Far from it!  But I've been hearing this argument a lot lately, and it just makes no sense to me at all. (If you disagree, please comment.)

1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.

Right from the start, I disagree with the premise because Craig, and other apologists, haven't demonstrated that it's true.

To begin with, how is he defining "great" here? If we look at two different people, which one is "greater" than the other? Do you think that any of us would agree about that? "Great" in what way? No one is greater than every other person in every possible way. (That would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, certainly.)

Obviously, "great" is an extraordinarily vague word. "Great" can mean many different things. Unless you define it in such a way that we could come to a consensus about who is the "greatest" person on Earth, for example, isn't it too vague to have any real meaning at all?

After all, this is supposed to be a proof. How can you prove anything at all when we don't even know what you mean (not with any kind of precision, at least)? Craig is just defining his god as the "maximally great being," but that doesn't actually tell us anything. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that it's true.

But there's an even bigger problem with that statement. Craig hasn't demonstrated that it is possible that a "maximally great being," whatever that means, exists.

Human beings regularly confuse the word "possible" with the more accurate statement, "I don't know if it's possible." Not everything is possible.

Personally, I don't know if the existence of a "maximally great being" is possible or not. Partly, that's because I don't know what is even meant by that, not with any precision at all, but also, it's because he hasn't demonstrated that it is possible.

So, right from the start, I can't accept his premise. And thus, there's really no reason for me to continue here. If his premise is flawed, the argument fails. But I'll continue, anyway. I won't let you off the hook that easily. :)

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

How does he know that?

Craig doesn't go into that (not at this link, at least), but only says that "a being is greater if it exists necessarily rather than contingently." In other words, a being is "greater" if it actually exists. (Of course, if it doesn't exist, it isn't a "being" at all, so that's a meaningless statement.)

This is just playing word games, isn't it? I don't grant the premise, but if I did agree that it was possible, that would only mean that it was possible for a maximally great being to exist... somewhere in reality.

It wouldn't mean that such a being did exist. And it wouldn't mean that there are necessarily multiple worlds, either.

Note that we don't know if our universe is the only universe, and it's very common to confuse different meanings of the word "universe" (sometimes, we use "universe" to mean "everything that exists," which may or may not include more than our own universe).

A "possible world" is,... what, a universe that may or may not exist? Again, he hasn't demonstrated that other universes are possible. They might be possible, or they might not be possible. I don't know, and he doesn't, either.

I don't know. I suppose I might accept "hypothetical universe" as a substitute phrase? That, at least, indicates that such universes are pure speculation.

If, on the other hand, he means "world" to mean "everything that exists," then he hasn't said anything that he didn't already say in statement #1. He's just repeating what he claimed then, and I'll refer you to my response to that.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

This seems to make absolutely no sense whatsoever. He's saying that, if it's possible for a maximally great being to exist, then a maximally great being does exist? That's just ludicrous.

Of course, I haven't agreed that it is possible, since I don't know if it's possible or not. But if it's possible for leprechauns to exist, does that mean that they do exist, then?

If it's possible for unicorns to exist - and it is possible, as far as I can tell, since we could probably genetically-engineer horses using technology that exists today - does that mean that unicorns do exist? Of course not!

This makes so little sense that I have to wonder how anyone can make such a claim. I assume that it's based on his definition of "maximally great," but again, that's just defining a god into existence, not demonstrating that a god really does exist.

4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
7. Therefore, God exists.

The rest of these are just conclusions resulting from those first three flawed premises. Since I don't accept any of them - for the reasons I stated above - I certainly can't accept the conclusions based on them.

But how can anyone  takes this argument seriously? That's what I wonder. I suppose it sounds impressive, if you don't think about it much (and you really, really want to believe that your god exists). But I just can't imagine how anyone can take it seriously. How can even William Lane Craig take it seriously? (Admittedly, he doesn't have anything else, huh?)

Besides, note that, even if it were true, it wouldn't get Christian apologists very far. For me to accept Christian mythology, they would have to demonstrate (1) that a god exists, (2) that it's their particular 'God' which exists, and (3) that they know what that god thinks and wants from us human beings.

So, even if this argument were valid, at best it would only get them one-third of the way (and that's putting it generously!). Even if this were true, it would only get them to deism, not Christianity. A generic 'god' isn't what any of them really care to prove - it's certainly not what Craig wants to prove - and it wouldn't have any implications for our world and our society, anyway.

***

Hmm,... just for fun, maybe I'll try my own ontological argument:

1. It is possible that a maximally great turd exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great turd exists, then a maximally great turd exists in some possible toilet.
3. If a maximally great turd exists in some possible toilet, then it exists in every possible toilet.
4. If a maximally great turd exists in every possible toilet, then it exists in your toilet.
5. Therefore, you need to flush your toilet.

___
PS. Note that my other posts in this Non-Belief series can be found here.

Being an atheist doesn't mean that you're rational

Perhaps I should have used the full title? Being an atheist doesn't necessarily mean that you're rational.

Either way, this is a great video - a bit depressing perhaps, but only because people remain people. No, people aren't getting worse. It's just that the crazies can easily find a soapbox - and an audience - these days.

But the solution to problems of free speech is more speech. This video is excellent, isn't it?

Dr. Mary Anne Franks: fighting fundamentalism

This is a great talk, it really is - very perceptive and thought-provoking. It's not just about religious fundamentalism, either. Indeed, she seems to hit all of the hot-button topics.

Weirdly, the video has nearly as many down-votes as up-votes. Dr. Franks seems to be someone who gets her share of internet hate.

I have to wonder if they even listened to her talk, though. Even if I didn't agree with her (though I certainly do), I'd find it well-argued and interesting, and certainly nothing to get bent out of shape about.

Ah, but those hot-button issues - guns, race, internet harassment, abortion, etc.  Just the mention of them gets some people bent out of shape, huh?

Jesus vs aliens: the culture war at Roswell

(Demons Will Pose As Aliens)

Wow, this is weird:

I had these stereotypical alien abduction experiences when I was a kid,” Guy Malone tells me. “Little creatures with big black eyes were raping me and trying to eat me and trying to operate on me.”

We’re standing in the Roswell [New Mexico] mall’s CosmiCon—a space-themed collection of comics, costumes and other oddities presented in collaboration with Roswell’s 20th annual UFO festival, a kind of alien enthusiasts’ TED conference and county fair. Malone, an effusive storyteller with an easy laugh and a slight Tennessee twang, is here to hawk his memoir and pick up a few new believers while he’s at it.

“There were multiple dreams and memories spread across years. I didn’t want to believe it, but once I read books on the subject I thought, ‘yep, that’s me.’”

Malone’s a Christian now, and he no longer believes aliens abducted him—he thinks demons are responsible for the terrifying recurring visions of his childhood and adolescence. After finding Christianity, Malone says he received a calling from God in 1999 to move to Roswell, where he would spread the word of Jesus as a means of stopping alien abductions.

Yup, there's apparently a culture war between competing fantasies in Roswell, New Mexico. Of course, it's all about money, too, since UFOs bring in a lot of money to the community.

It’s a microcosmic culture war in which competing believers—of extraterrestrial identity, of Christian theology, of the holy church of the American dollar—proselytize their own mutually exclusive notions of reality.

I see no real reason to comment on this. I just thought it was interesting - and very, very weird.

(Funnyjunk.com)

PS. For a hoot, try doing a Google image search for "Jesus aliens." Yeah, that's where I got these images, but there are lots more where they came from!