Thursday, May 29, 2014

I Met Sean Carroll Today!



I just got back from the World Science Festival in Manhattan where there was a talk about the quantum measurement problem. The quantum measurement problem is traditionally where the different interpretations of quantum mechanics come in to explain the peculiar phenomena like the results of the double slit experiment. Hosted by physicist Brian Greene, Sean Carroll was there to represent the Many World Interpretation. After the show I got to meet him in person and have my picture taken with him. He was a lot taller than I expected but other than that he was very nice and cordial. I mentioned that I was a huge fan and that I particularly enjoyed his recent debates, especially the one with William Lane Craig.

It's so great being able to have access to some of your heroes in person. I actually saw Sean walking down the street right outside my job on the way to work this morning. Good thing I was late! Tomorrow I will be seeing the program about the latest developments concerning the gravitational waves that seemed to have confirmed inflationary theory. And later this weekend there will be several interactive exhibits and programs about science throughout the city, including a stargazing exhibition. It should be fun.

Watch the program below:

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Why Try To Convince Us God Exists Using Evidence, If It Will Ruin The Need For Faith?



If theists are going to argue that god doesn't want to give us too much evidence because that would ruin the need for faith or the ability to reject him, then why are so many of them investing so much time and money into trying to convince us - using evidence - that god exists? I fail to see how evidentialist apologetics makes any sense, because if I'm somehow persuaded by the arguments for god and I'm convinced he exists, then isn't the theist defeating his own purpose? Wouldn't I then be unable to deny the existence of god? Wouldn't I then not require any faith? Wouldn't the power of the arguments for god provide the same kind of conviction in me as would god giving me proof?

It seems to me that evidentialism is a farce, (not that I ever thought that it wasn't.) The whole charade to convince the masses that god exists using evidence seems to undermine the very things those same theists say is required by god in order for us to get on his good side.


Sunday, May 25, 2014

Can An Atemporal Being Be Personal?


On a recent Q & A on Reasonable Faith, a fan of Dr. Craig's ministry asked whether it is logical for a being to be both atemporal and personal. Craig's answer: Yes! Here's how he goes about justifying it and where I think he goes wrong.

First, I have argued many times that a timeless mind is by definition, non-functional. Minds think. That's all they do. Thinking is a verb; it's a process. The absence of time means one cannot think, and if one cannot think, it doesn't have a mind. On Craig's view, god is atemporal only sans the creation, and is temporal with creation. Under this view, the god that exists now is a temporal god, who is "free" to change with the passage of time. So since Craig believes the god who exists since the moment of creation is temporal, I'm going to focus on the atemporal god who is said to have existed prior, whether logically or temporally, to creation.

The questioner quoted an argument from an apparent atheist that said:

A thinking creature has will, reason and make choices based on reasoning. A creature beyond time and space can therefore not make the choice, since he is not bound by time and his reasoning can not work in any particular order.

Craig's response is that god doesn't require discursive reasoning. which is the process of arriving at conclusions from rational thought and decision making. God's omniscience, Craig argues, precludes reasoning discursively because god already knows the answer, regardless of whether god is temporal or atemporal. And this, he says, in no way precludes god's personal nature. 


But let's examine this further.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Problem Of Evil Revisited


I've recently been think about the traditional problem of evil. I'm talking about the argument that human moral evil is incompatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent god. The usual responses to the problem of evil are the free will defense, and skeptical theism. I want to offer a few quick rebuttals to the free will defense as a means to show how an omnibenevolent god is compatible with human moral evil.

1. If god prefers a world where moral agents can perform evil acts through the means of free will and considers such a world more valuable than one without free will, then this world is more valuable than heaven, because in heaven, it is believed, no one can perform evil acts and no one would therefore have free will. The possibility of free beings would entail evil actions could happen.

2. God could have made it so that all people born would naturally be good natured and wouldn't desire evil. He could have done this a number of ways, such as making it so that only the sperm cells that would make good people would ever be created or get to fertilize eggs. If this is not considered feasible or desirable, then a heaven where there is no moral evil is also not feasible and wouldn't seem desirable either.

3. If god cannot prevent human moral evil because it would violate free will, then it makes absolutely no sense to pray to god if you are ever threatened with violence.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

20 Questions Atheists Struggle To Answer (Extremely Short Answers)


These questions were floated around to atheists over the years and I'd thought I'd take a quick crack at them. These are my (extremely short) answers to them.

1. What caused the universe to exist?

The universe may not need a cause, especially if the B-theory of time is true. All causes in the universe are (a) temporal and (b) material, showing that our notion of causality doesn't necessarily apply to the origin of the universe, if it is the beginning of space and time.

2. What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

Chance. The same way that our planet is just the right distance from our sun to allow life to exist, so is our universe.

3.Why is the universe rational?

Because logical impossibilities are in fact, impossible.

4. How did DNA and amino acids arise?

Well we know amino acids can spontaneously arise naturally as the Miller-Urey experiments showed us, and as the building blocks of DNA, amino acids probably evolved from simpler molecules as in the RNA hypothesis. If "God did it" is your explanation, then you would be saying that scientists should stop doing all their research in molecular biology and close all their institutions, thus proving that faith is opposed to science.

5. Where did the genetic code come from?

It most likely evolved through many years and attempts from simple molecules to more complex ones.

6. How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?
There are no real irreducibly complex parts of biological systems, there is simply our current ignorance to how some of them formed, and there is a whole lot more ignorance by creationists who use things like the bacterial flagellum as an example of IC when it has been clearly refuted.

7. How do we account for the origin of 116 distinct language families?

Languages evolved over tens of thousands of years all over the world. There is zero evidence that the biblical story of the Tower of Babel explains the origin of language, and most Christians today it seems even reject such an absurd story.

8. Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000 BC?

It was due to the invention or agriculture around 10,000 BC that lead to the first towns and cities being developed. When humans stopped hunting and gathering and began farming and domesticating animals, they had a reason to stay in one place permanently.

9. How is independent thought possible in a world ruled by chance and necessity?

I'm not sure what independent thought means here, but if it is implying free will, there is no evidence of free will.

10. How do we account for self-awareness?

Consciousness.

11. How is free will possible in a material universe?

Given the laws of physics that we have which are deterministic, there is no free will.

12. How do we account for conscience?

Through extremely complex interactions between neurons and chemicals the exact mechanism by which we don't yet understand. We do know that mind is a product of the brain and there is zero evidence that the mind controls physical brain states.

13. On what basis can we make moral judgements?

We usually assess whether our actions will benefit us and others and whether they will increase harm. We certainly don't use the Bible to make moral judgements, or else we'd actually increase harm and likely end up in jail.

14. Why does suffering matter?

Suffering matters because we recognize that it is a state we don't want ourselves and others to be in.

15. Why do human beings matter?

Because we have the most highly evolved cognitive faculties that allows us to make rational decisions as well as suffer to the highest extent of all other species.

16. Why care about justice?

Because we naturally care about fairness, and justice requires fairness.

17. How do we account for the almost universal belief in the supernatural?

Because it was evolutionarily beneficial for our ancestors to believe in false positives (believing in things that weren't there) and this lead to the belief in angels, demons, spirits and gods.

18. How do we know the supernatural does not exist?

For several reasons. (1) because of the reason I gave for number 17 which shows that evolution would have lead to our belief in the supernatural even if it didn't exist; (2) because we have no evidence for it, even though the supernatural is in principle verifiable since it is said to interact with the physical world; (3) assuming that the supernatural exists makes no sense when critically examined. For these reasons we can be reasonably confident the supernatural doesn't exist.

19. How can we know if there is conscious existence after death?

We can and already do know that consciousness is fully dependent on the physical brain and so when the brain goes, consciousness goes. There are also too many unexplained questions about consciousness and the soul for which no dualist has any satisfactory answers.

20. What accounts for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances and growth of the church?

It is not an established fact that there was an empty tomb and resurrection appearances. They may have all been made up by the writers of Mark and Matthew, who wrote 40-50 years after the supposed events and were not eyewitnesses. Paul never mentions an empty tomb. See Four facts that aren't really facts.

As you can see, many of these questions probe the "God of the gaps" territory, and some, like the question about languages, are so bad even most Christians wouldn't recognize them as tough questions for the atheist.


Sunday, May 4, 2014

Theists Say The Darndest Things...Again


And the nonsense continues with the theist who just won't understand...the amazing Randy demonstrates once again that he doesn't have a coherent explanation how the omnibenevolent god he believes in can be compatible with the unnecessary suffering of evolution. From his blog:

27 comments:

  1. How is the god of classical theism falsifiable? Or do you argue that it isn't?
    ReplyDelete
Replies
  1. Well, if one were to show an internal incoherence, then that would work.
  2. Can a being be both omnibenevolent and capable of evil?
    Delete
  3. I think it depends. On some interpretations of the question, yes. On others, no.
  4. Depends on what? In what interpretation can a being be both omnibenevolent and evil? How are you defining those two opposing terms?
    Delete
  5. I'm not defining them at all; I didn't ask the question.
  6. I'm asking you to define "omnibenevolence" and "evil" in such a way to make them mutually compatible that does not also render their definitions incoherent with themselves. You seem to say that it is possible. I'd like to know how.
    Delete
  7. That's easy: "omnibenevolence" means "funny" and "evil" means "Steve Carrell."
  8. Look, if you can't seriously answer my question, just say so.
    Delete
  9. I'm not interested in answering questions that are ambiguous. Your original question remains ambiguous. That's it, and that's all.
  10. There's nothing ambiguous about my original question nor my subsequent ones. You said omnibenevolence can be compatible with evil. I'm just asking you how you can achieve this without redefining the terms in an incoherent way. But this is apparently too complicated.

    I say this cannot be done and have given you the opportunity to prove me wrong.
    Delete
  11. I already achieved this, and it was coherent. I still don't know what you mean by the terms, and it really doesn't bother me whether or not you think it can or cannot be done.
  12. You didn't actually make a coherent argument. And to demonstrate that, I've asked you to define "omnibenevolence" and "evil" in a way such where there wouldn't be any incoherence if a being had both of these properties.
    Delete
  13. Where? I've read and critiqued your response to me and I didn't see it anywhere. Could you reprint them here for clarity?
    Delete
  14. It's only a few comments up.
  15. That wasn't an actual answer and you know it.
    Delete
  16. It was an actual answer, and you just didn't like it.
  17. Ok then explain in detail, otherwise it's obvious you don't have an answer.
    Delete
  18. That doesn't make any sense. You explain that in detail, otherwise it's obvious you don't have an answer.
  19. Define omnibenevolence first.
    Delete
  20. That's easy: "omnibenevolence" means "funny" and "evil" means "Steve Carrell."
  21. Cite an online dictionary that uses that same definition.
    Delete
  22. The Randy Online Dictionary, precisely two entries so far.
  23. LOL. You don't have a coherent definition or argument and you know it. Just as I suspected.
    Delete
No, I don't know it. Next.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Randy Replies


Almost every theist I've encountered and almost every theist I've heard defending their faith recognizes the problem of suffering as a real problem for theism. That is to say, they recognize that an omnibenevolent deity is incompatible with the existence of gratuitous suffering. That's why so many theists spend so much time trying to argue that gratuitous suffering doesn't really exist, but only seems apparent. The theist will find themselves is an arduous position if they try and defend this in light of evolution. That is because the evolutionary process requires suffering and death in order to work, and any god who would contingently chose to use evolution as the means to create one particular species when it could have done so by other less tormenting means needs to have a very good reason why - especially since it is argued that god cannot perform immoral or evil acts and can only choose morally good actions.

One theist who doesn't think there is a good reason to think gratuitous suffering and omnibenevolence are incompatible is Randy Everist. Recently we got into a bout on this very issue and he has made his case why he thinks they are compatible. My last post was a critic of our debate over on his blog, and he wrote a post further articulating his views. So here I'm going to critique his defense that there is no good reason to think that an omnibenevolent deity and gratuitous suffering are incompatible.

The first thing I noticed in his response to me as well as in our debate, is that he never defends or even claims the position that gratuitous suffering doesn't exist. Maybe he does, but he hasn't made this known in our dialogue. From the start, he tries to break down the logic of my argument so I will critique his claims line by line.

First he states the two propositions that are part of my argument, but not exactly in the way I would phrase them. Nonetheless, I will use his interpretation of my argument verbatim.

1. There is an omnibenevolent God.
2. There is gratuitous suffering.

He states that it's not clear why they are contradictory, even though it seems that the vast majority of his fellow theists recognize a problem. He further claims that I made no argument defending their incompatibility. I made an argument, and I posted that argument in my last post, but Randy's predicted response is always, "But why think this?" followed by a bad explanation. He tries to restate my argument saying:

3. If (1) and (2) are compatible, then it is indistinguishable from evil.*

Then he makes a fuss claiming that I wasn't clear as to what "it" means, saying it "has never been very clear". But I beg to differ. It's very obvious from what I wrote that I meant omnibenevolence. I wrote, "If omnibenevolence is compatible with the intentional creation of suffering that serves no purpose, well then how can we distinguish it from evil?" It's very obvious what "it" meant, but apparently it confused Randy and so he tries guessing "it" meant gratuitous suffering. Really? Would it really make any sense if I asked, "If omnibenevolence is compatible with the intentional creation of suffering that serves no purpose, well then how can we distinguish gratuitous suffering from evil?" Gratuitous suffering and evil are fully compatible; it needs no explanation. In fact, many people define evil as the infliction of gratuitous suffering.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

The Theist Who Just Won't Understand


The logical incompatibility of an omnibenevolent god with gratuitous suffering is very easy to understand for most people, yet over on the Possible Worlds blog, smug theist Randy Everist just could not grasp why there is any such conflict between the two. I suspect that he really does indeed recognize that this is an unsolvable problem and that it logically entails that the god of classical theism is impossible. But to avoid this becoming apparent, I think he's feigning ignorance, misunderstanding, and that there is any logical problem here at all. There are no plausible explanations to this problem. I know because I've refuted pretty much all of them. It's possible there are other theodicies that I haven't heard yet, but this is exactly why I like to challenge theists - I want to hear their best explanation.

I thought Randy Everist would be a good candidate as he is well familiar with the arguments for god but he subtly admitted that he doesn't really have an explanation. All he did was try really hard to play defense and falsely claim that I have not properly made the case that there is any logical conflict between gratuitous suffering and omnibenevolence. You can read our debate using the link above to be the judge.

Many atheists know that debating with theists is like talking to a brick wall. Randy is no exception. He exemplifies the core of what I think the problem with theism is. When cornered by a good argument, they special plead, or they'll claim that not having an answer doesn't mean the atheist is right by default, even if the problem is logical. Well, if that is so, then the same thing works for the atheist who may not be able to fully explain the origin of the universe. The atheist not having an answer doesn't mean the theist is right by default. I think we all understand this is correct.

I made my argument as easy to understand as one possibly can. I even made it into several different logical arguments. For example:

1. Omni-benevolence is incompatible with gratuitous suffering,
2. gratuitous suffering exists via evolution, 
3. therefore the god of classical theism cannot exist.

Very few theists disagree with premise 1, but Randy seemed to be saying that this wasn't so. He responded:

Why should we think that's true? Where have you defended the premise that an omnibenevolent God is incompatible? Where have you shown a premise set that is logically incoherent, and defended why?

Saturday, April 26, 2014

What Is It With Christian Bloggers?


There's a recurring theme I've noticed on many Christian blogs: they're a bunch of pussies when it comes to debate. They like to assert claims about the existence of god without liking to defend them. They employ strict comment policies with gestapo-like authority and throw up defenses laced with esoteric terminology designed as a smoke screen to avoid having to address your challenges. Case in point, Randy Everest over on his Possible Worlds blog. I got into a debate with him over the Craig/Carroll debate and my evolutionary argument against god came up. He denied that it was even a problem and he denied that a perfect omni-benevolent being as god would be incompatible with the unnecessary suffering of evolution. And after several days of going back and forth and dealing with his smug attitude, he has still not made a reasonable case why. It is obvious to me, and I think anyone who reads our "debate" that he is trying to avoid that obvious conclusion in my argument with a smoke screen. I think he's afraid he will lose this debate badly, and so he's avoiding it at all costs by trying to throw up technicalities.

Christian debaters are wussies when they've got a real atheist to deal with. They want some naive kid who hasn't spent years studying Christian apologetics as I have.

I am actively searching for a theistic blogger who will debate me either here on my blog or anywhere else. I want a smart, knowledgeable theist who knows their religion, philosophy and science and who is as passionate about debate as I am. So this is a call out to any theists out there who want to debate me. Just comment here or tweet me @atheismnthecity and we can set it up.


Coming Out To Your Coworkers About Your Atheism


I try to be as open as I can with everyone around me about the fact that I'm an atheist, but the one area that I am most nervous about coming out is at work. Coming out to your coworkers about the fact that you don't believe in god could for some people be nerve racking, so much so that many atheists choose to keep their non belief in the closet when dealing with coworkers even though they might be out to their friends and family. The reason why this is so serious is obvious: at work our atheism might put our jobs on the line.

Now how serious this matter is all depends on your coworkers and work culture. In a perfect world, we'd all be able to be open about everything in our lives. But in the real world, some people live and work in areas where atheism is a dark and dirty word, and being labeled an atheist will immediately throw suspicion and distrust on you. Many people have been discriminated at work and fired over their atheism becoming known, and it is something that I'm sure many atheists keep in the back of their mind.

I happen to live in the secular metropolis. As a result, I don't work with deeply religious people. In my department at work, one of my coworkers is a secular Jew, another one is a non-religious theist who believes in god but is not religious about it, and another is a Hindu. None of them talk about religion all that much, but the other week I was asked bluntly by my manager if I was an atheist when I made a comment about bad reasons to be a vegetarian. It all started when I said that I respected vegetarianism but not if one does it for religious reasons. Then my vegetarian manager asked if I was an atheist and a lot of ears were listening to our conversation.

Normally, I'd be open about my atheism and perhaps even proud to announce it. But this was work, and a new job for me at that. The possibility of losing my job over my atheism crossed my mind for a split second. My answer came out but I forget my exact words. I was honest that I did not believe in god, but this kind of side tracked the conversation into the definition of atheism, which I educated my coworkers is merely the disbelief in any gods, not the certitude that no gods exist. Overall, it went down smoothly. I don't even think that my coworkers care at all whether I'm an atheist and so far it doesn't seem to have affected our relationship at all.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Second Law Of Thermodymanics and Evolution


Some really stupid creationists will sometimes try to argue that the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that evolution cannot happen. The 2nd law states that in a closed system, entropy or disorder, always increases. And since evolution means that complexity will increase over time in organisms, this somehow violates the necessary increase in entropy - unless a god can intervene.

The argument is easy to refute and has been done so many times. Unfortunately, many unlearned creationists have never bothered to look up the evidence refuting the argument and they let their confirmation bias get the better of them.

So...

First, the earth is clearly not a closed system. We are part of a solar system and we have a sun. The sun provides us energy, and that energy can allow complexity to increase without a violation of the 2nd law, which only applies to closed systems.

Furthermore, Brian Green in his first book The Elegant Universe notes, “Everything tends towards greater disorder. Even if you clean your cluttered desk, decreasing its entropy, the total entropy, including that of your body and the air in the room, actually increase. You see, to clean your desk you have to expend energy, you have to disrupt some of the orderly molecules of fat in your body to create this energy for your muscles, and as you clean, your body gives off heat, which jostles the surrounding air molecules into a higher state of agitation and disorder. When all of these effects are accounted for, they more than compensate for your desk’s decrease in entropy, and thus the total entropy increases.” (pp. 334-335)


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Physicists Claim Mathematical Proof Universe Began Spontaneously From Nothing


I try to keep the content of this blog original, but every once in a while I like to report on interesting scientific findings. Recently over on medium.com I read a report that Chinese physicists claimed that they have mathematical proof that the universe could have spontaneously formed from nothing. When such incredible claims are made, even if they favor our position, we should always be reserved and examine the data with as much skepticism as we would data that contradicted our viewpoints.

From the site:


One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a Big Bang. This is not just an idea but a scientific theory backed up by numerous lines of evidence.

For a start, there is the cosmic microwave background, which is a kind of echo of the big bang; then there is the ongoing expansion of the cosmos, which when imagined backwards, hints at a Big Bang-type origin; and the abundance of the primordial elements, such as helium-4, helium-3, deuterium and so on, can all be calculated using the theory.

But that still leaves a huge puzzle. What caused the Big Bang itself? For many years, cosmologists have relied on the idea that the universe formed spontaneously, that the Big Bang was the result of quantum fluctuations in which the Universe came into existence from nothing.



That’s plausible, given what we know about quantum mechanics. But physicists really need more — a mathematical proof to give the idea flesh.

Today they get their wish thanks to the work of Dongshan He and buddies at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics in China. These guys have come up with the first rigorous proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously because of quantum fluctuations.

The new proof is based on a special set of solutions to a mathematical entity known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. In the first half of the 20th century, cosmologists struggled to combine the two pillars of modern physics— quantum mechanics and general relativity—in a way that reasonably described the universe. As far as they could tell, these theories were entirely at odds with each other.

The breakthrough came in the 1960s when the physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt combined these previously incompatible ideas in a mathematical framework now known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The new work of Dongshan and co explores some new solutions to this equation.

At the heart of their thinking is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This allows a small empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to fluctuations in what physicists call the metastable false vacuum.

When this happens, there are two possibilities. If this bubble of space does not expand rapidly, it disappears again almost instantly. But if the bubble can expand to a large enough size, then a universe is created in a way that is irreversible.

Link: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/ed7ed0f304a3
Arxiv paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.1207v1.pdf


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Maybe I'm Not Human


I'm going to get a little personal here for a moment.

I think I'm missing out on one of life's most amazing gifts: being in love. I'm in my early thirties and I have never once been in love before. By "being in love" I mean being in a loving relationship with someone who is also in love with you. I do not mean to say loving someone who does not love you back. I'm talking about the full package, the two-way street of mutual love. I have never had a relationship where I've been in love with the person I've dated where she loved me back. I thought I came close to it once, but in retrospect, I don't think I could call it true love. It may have been obsession masquerading around and fooling my brain into thinking it was love.

Some of you have been in love. Some of you maybe are in love. Some of you fell in love, got married and are still in love with your spouse. But love for me so far has never happened. I'm very picky about women. I need a girl with a certain look. I tend to fall in love with my eyes pretty easy, but that isn't really love, that's lust. True love means you have to be able to look past the surface to the inner core of a being. You have to accept them for all their flaws, you have to still be able to love them at their worst moment. That for me is the hardest thing to do. I have a really hard time loving the whole person and seeing past their flaws. The most beautiful woman are far from perfect.

I've been on many sides of the love dilemma. I've been in what I thought was love with women who didn't love me back. I've had women who were in love with me that I didn't love back. I've been in love with a woman's looks but hated their personality, and I've been in love with a woman's personality but wasn't attracted to their looks. It is not fun being in either of these situations and they all lead to emotional suffering for those involved.


Sunday, April 13, 2014

Missing In Action


It's been a while since I've blogged. I've had a few changes in my life in the past month or so. I got a new job recently and it requires that I work longer hours. That means less time for blogging, but more money, and that means more opportunity for partying. This past winter I spent many cold winter nights huddled in front of my computer blogging and debating online. Now that I have more money, and the weather has gotten nicer, it seems to me that my priorities have changed. Going out partying in the city with my friends has won out over sitting home alone with my computer.

This is not to say that I've lost interest in my atheism. Not at all. I've just been focused much more on the city. I'm still fascinated by metaphysics and questions on ultimate reality. I've been watching the new Cosmos series. So far my reviews are mostly positive. I like the fact that Tyson spends a lot of time inculcating the scientific mentality into the audience by telling them to never rely on authorities and to question everything, especially commonly held assumptions. I'm not sure the new Cosmos is better than the original that Carl Sagan did in 1980. Sagan's was a masterpiece. He had an amazing talent in personifying the awe and wonder of the universe. Tyson certainly has that too, and it's no wonder that he should be Sagan's natural successor. But the new Cosmos hasn't felt to me to be inspiring that awesome wonder that the original did in quite the same way.

I haven't been reading any new books about anything interesting. I've been engaging in a few online debates here and there, and what I've mostly gotten out of them is a further confirmation that theism makes no sense. A few witty Christians I've been debating really think that the evidence lies on their side. I've noticed though, that many Christian blogs have strict commenting policies. If you say anything that they don't like, you're banished. Gone. Most atheist blogs have a free and open commenting policy. I let anyone comment on my blog, and only have to delete the occasional spammer.

Unfortunately, given my new schedule, I won't be able to blog at the same volume I once did. If I'm lucky I'll be able to squeeze one or two a week. I miss those long nights writing for hours on my laptop. I have a host of ideas in their embryonic stages that I want to try committing myself to writing. I want to explore endurantism verses perdurantism, dating dynamics for atheists, and many more. All in due time I hope.

For now, getting over my hangover is my main concern.


Saturday, March 29, 2014

"I Have My Own Interpretation Of The Qur'an"


Earlier this month at my debate MeetUp I had a lovely conversation with a Muslim man over a few glasses of wine about the NSA spying scandal. In the middle of our conversation, I asked if he was Muslim, and he told me that he was. I then asked him why he thought drinking alcohol was OK since it is a prohibition in Islam and he told me that he has his "own interpretation of the Qur'an."

This is a line echoed by many theists that I've engaged in intellectual discussions with, and it's a perfect example highlighting one of the two major problems with the divine command theory of ethics. The epistemic problem with the DCT is due to the fact that no one knows what god commanded what, and whatever commands god is believed to have made can be subjectively interpreted however one wants. This leaves you ultimately, in practice, with moral relativism - which is, ironically, the very thing that the DCT seeks to eliminate.

Now the Muslim gentleman at that MeetUp is a really nice guy. He's pretty much just a regular guy who happens to be Muslim, and he can engage in intellectual conversations on a variety of topics. He takes a liberal approach to his interpretation of the Qur'an, which I think us atheists would hope for all Muslims to do, if they insist upon keeping the faith. It is said that American Muslims are far less radicalized than Muslims in other Western countries. There are always exceptions, but this is generally true. I suppose what we should encourage among all Muslims, but specifically Muslims living in the West (because we are most affected by them), is that they adopt a progressive attitude towards their religion in the same way many Christians in the West have.

Finally, I've also got my own interpretation of the Qur'an. And that is that it's a man-made book full of contradictions and factual errors and it shows. See here.


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