The Geeky Atheist

On reddit, someone noticed a search for the question referenced in the title turned up this:

So, in an effort to change this, people are beginning to link to xenu.net with a link like this:

It is possible to be happy

If you want to help people searching for happiness not have a chance to be lured into Scientology, it would be great to bring Xenu.net up in the search results regarding happiness.

I've been a bad person in that I haven't been updating recently here. I've been on YouTube with a few videos, but plan on updating in both spots now.

I've been listening to debates between theists and atheists for a while now, and for the most part, I have heard most of the arguments. A recent episode of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot was with a Christian philosopher that debated/discussed the efficacy of the Kalam Cosmological argument with William Lane Craig. Linked from the show notes post is a radio interview with William Lane Craig.

Their discussion was good, but I wanted to hone in on something from that interview. At 14:40 in the audio, the conversation follows about the "first cause" in Kalam's argument:

Interviewer: Bill, you argue that we can recover some attribute about the cause just by conceptual analysis. What would this cause of the universe be like. Well, it couldn't be material because it brought about matter. It couldn't be spacial because it brought about space. It couldn't be subject to time because it brought about time. [...] Are you saying he has some trouble with that?

Craig: Yes, he didn't dispute that the cause would have to be timeless, immaterial, and spaceless because it brought time and space into being. But he wanted to dispute my inference that the cause would be personal, and one of the arguments that I give for the personhood of the first cause [...] is the following argument: there are only two candidates that I know of in the philosophical and scientific literature for entities that can exist timelessly and immaterially, and that would be either an unembodied mind (consciousness without a body) or else an abstract object, like a number, a mathematical object. But mathematical objects don't stand in causal relationships. [slight chuckle] The number 7 has no causal impact upon anything. It is part of the definition of abstract objects that they are causally effete or causally impotent. They don't stand in causal relations. That implies therefore that the cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind. And therefore the cause of the universe is a personal being.

And Wes' response to this was just to say, "Well, how do you know these are the only two alternatives? Maybe there's some timeless, immaterial entity that we don't know of."

Interviewer: Well give it to us, I mean...

Craig: Exactly, I thought that was a very weak response. I said, "Fine, tell me what it is, I'll include it in the list." But there is no non-ad-hoc candidate in the philosophical and scientific literature, apart from minds or abstract objects that I know of. Nor could he name one.

Emphasis added by me. You can see in his own language where we have an argument from ignorance and an a false dichotomy. We have an example here of a merging of two logical fallacies: the argument from ignorance and the false dichotomy. I've dubbed it the unknown false dichotomy.

Examining the Unknown False Dichotomy

To examine why this reasoning is flawed, all we need to look for is some past beliefs that were argued, "it must be this or that" and the actual answer turned out to be some third option that no one had thought of.

The most impressive example that comes to mind is from Einstein. Prior to Einstein, light was argued that it was either a particle or a wave. One one side, you had people pointing to the photoelectric effect proving that light was made of particles. On the other side, you had people arguing that it was wave-like due to the famous double-slit experiments. There were only two proposals at the time, and both had their supporters. But as Einstein demonstrated, there's a wave-particle duality. The elusive third option that was previously unknown.

This example clearly demonstrates the mentality at the time: it can't be a wave because look at the photoelectric effect. It can't be a particle because look at the dual slit experiments.

But we're missing the other side of the unknown false dichotomy, because if you asked these scientists if they could be wrong, they would most certainly say, "Yes, there's clearly something we don't understand." Unlike Craig, they recognize that just because we haven't thought of another possible answer doesn't mean it must be one of the existing answers. Reality doesn't always fit our pre-defined views, and we must be ready and open to discovery of anything that fits the bill more precisely than any other view.

The key thing to remember is that in reality we have to deal with probabilities, not absolute truths. Just because our understanding of wave-particle duality fits our measurements right now doesn't mean that we have a 100% true theory on the way light works. But when we look at what happened before the big bang, if "before" even makes sense, we can't make any assumptions. When someone claims, "I only know of X possibilities, and since it can't be (X-1) possibilities, it must be the last one!" they've gone about trying to prove their point by disproving all the counter claims. But just because you've rejected all the other claims doesn't make yours true without actual evidence.

We have no evidence of anything prior to the big bang, and therefore our state of mind should not be one that we assume a specific truth, but rather an open mind ready to accept whatever any evidence we may garner can show.

This week has been interesting. Although my wife and I came out to my parents back in March, we haven't mentioned anything to my wife's parents. On Saturday, they flew in to visit us for 9 days. After doing a cursory tweet about a slip-up I did tonight, I wanted to expand on my thoughts of when to come out of the closet as an atheist.

A little background. My parents were much less fundamentalist than myself or my wife's parents. My wife's family is fairly fundamentalist, centered around Pennsylvania and Virginia. These are the same group of people that we heard call Obama the antichrist, amongst many other things. While we did civilly talk politics tonight briefly, I don't really want to delve into that.

A couple of reminders for those stumbling across my blog for the first time. My wife and I deconverted recently and both were calling ourselves atheists by January of this year. We married just over 3 years ago, when both of us were fundamental, young-earth creationists. More about that here.

A few interesting things came up tonight:

• My stepdad mentioned to them that it was so nice to have a daughter-in-law that was a believer. I didn't ever know he said this to them.
• They said how nice it is for my wife to sing and me to play the piano at church (I did this as an atheist last Christmas). My wife and I are trying to schedule the Thanksgiving trip such that we just can't quite make it to church, "darn."
• They were asking me about some details they hadn't heard from me about what I was looking for when I met my then-to-be wife on Match.com.

The last one is where I made a small slip up. In passing I used the phrase, "I was a Christian." This is what I tweeted about:

GeekyAtheist: Slipped up a little with the in-laws tonight. In the middle of a conversation, I said, "and I was a Christian." They didn't catch "was."

A few interesting comments came in, and I realized what I then tweeted: "Trimmed tweets trigger terse thoughts." Thus, I decided it was time for a blog post.

The basic response I go was about coming out of the closet to them. While I am trying to be more and more open and never lying about my true convictions, I try to avoid the subject with some people. My in-laws are some of those people. It's not for fear about debating them -- it wouldn't be much of a debate, they are emotional people and would probably explode and not be able to actually discuss it. It's purely for the only reason I think religion has any merit. For some people, their faith that a guy in the sky is keeping an eye out for them is the only thing keeping them going. My in-laws are some of those people.

My father-in-law has been struggling in the job market for the past couple of years, but after getting a decent job last fall, he was laid off back around March again. He does several interviews every week, but nothing seems to come through. He has hopes that an interview he has lined up for Tuesday after they travel back will be a bit more fruitful. They wanted to support their child in her career and came out here to support her, and had to sacrifice a lot to do it. They are the type of people that won't take a handout, so our pitching in is more subtle -- I've been doing a lot of cooking, and leaving very little opportunity for them to pick up any of the tab.

But to them, God is a support structure. The last thing I would do to them is shake their support structure by asserting there is no God. While I obviously feel that I'm right, I don't think this is an opportune time to express our convictions. Since we only see them two, maybe three times a year, it's not that hard to structure our visits such that we can avoid being at church on a Sunday (not because we wouldn't sit through it, but purely because they always expect us to perform). Also, it's been surprisingly easy to deflect or avoid comments about God. For example, a friend from high school that I didn't really feel like debating the other night had this conversation with me:

me: just go with who's successful and do what you love
me: it'll work out
him: yeah
him: and the most important thing
him: stay in God's favor
him: one thing about being back in X... I've been cleaning up my life a little bit at a time
him: and that's probably the best thing for me
me: Yeah, X was a nice, laid back place to be
me: I don't know if I could live there anymore though
me: too remote

While I will definitely come out to him one of these days, it's fairly easy to avoid the topic at all. And the interesting thing about believers is that they just assume you are a believer, especially if they knew you were in the past. That's why my "was" comment earlier didn't ruffle any feathers. That's why my complete avoidance of the God subject in the chat above didn't raise an eyebrow. That's why I don't think I'll have any problems avoiding the topic.

If they do find out, it's not the end of the world. This is who we are, and we are proud of who we are. We are happy to talk about it, or to not talk about it. The only thing we ask is that we are respected, and we will continue to respect those that respect us with few exceptions.

So what does everyone else think? Anyone else in a similar spot?

Last night as many of you know was the peak of the Perseids. I had driven up into the mountains on Monday night as well, but left my tripod mount back at the house. I set back out again last night with all of my gear in tow. The results were spectacular. After my comments and pictures, I'll give a few tips that I didn't read anywhere else on how to best set up your camera to capture meteors.

The view from up at roughly 10k feet is absolutely spectacular. Here's a 30 second exposure of my view of Santa Fe. According to another observer, the lights at the very edge of the horizon is actually the start of Albuquerque. I believe that's true because between Santa Fe and Albuquerque is pretty much nothing.

You'll probably have to click to enlarge to see it. The boxes help guide you to it. The full size image is available here

Full size image

Full size image

I had a great time, but photographing meteors can be tricky. Here's some tips to ensure a few exposures:

1. Use a tripod. A must for anything nearing a 1 second exposure, let alone 30 seconds.
2. Either have a cable release, IR remote, or set your camera to shoot delayed on a timer. The pressure from you hitting the shutter button will nudge your camera causing a shake. You need to have the exposure start when you're not touching the camera.
3. Long exposures are great, but at a low ISO setting (ie, 200) the meteors won't register. I experimented with ISO 1600 and 2500 on these exposures. I was still able to do 30 second exposures without things being blown out.
4. Snap lots of pictures.
5. Pick a spot in the sky and try for 5-10 minutes. Don't rotate between every shot.
6. When sorting through the images, you can compare two shots of the same area of sky by using the arrow keys back and forth. This helps spot the faint ones.
7. Don't use built-in noise reduction. Even software noise reduction really affects the quality of the streaks.

Lastly, don't get too frustrated. As we all know, karma plays a large role in this, and obviously my karma is low. Nearing 2am, I told myself, "Last picture" about 4 times, and then finally started taking things down. By the time I had my tripod fully packed up, I had seen 3 bright meteors. That's really frustrating when you know you didn't capture any big ones in your exposures.

But then I realized, this was my first time, and I still loved it. Anyone else have any good exposures?

I've had a great summer for astronomy. At some point last year when I began to grasp the universe's true age, it filled me with a sense of wonder. But when I look back, I think it must have been the winter vacation home my wife and I rented out in the mountains of Virginia. The moon wasn't out and with the nearest town miles away, the view of the stars was simply stunning. I point to that moment as being what rekindled my love of the stars.

I began listening to several podcasts about astronomy:

• AstronomyCast
• 365 Days of Astronomy
• Blueshift

I yearned to watch the stars. Back in February when Comet Lulin was becoming visible, I tried unsuccessfully to capture it on camera. I knew I needed a telescope to satisfy my desires.

Fast-forward to The Amazing Meeting 7, I was part of the winning group of the auction to have a private planetarium and observing trip with Phil Plait.

This was a great experience, and I learned a lot. We did see a few globular clusters, binary stars, Jupiter and Saturn, but the biggest disappointment of the night was that this observatory was next door to two baseball fields. Despite not having a game on that night, the lights were on. Overcoming the odds, Phil and the great people at the planetarium helped guide us to things we could still see. This was the first time I had actually looked through a decent telescope at the sky, and I got hooked.

Returning back to my humble summer abode, I've been hunting for telescopes when I finally decided to see if there were any astronomy clubs in Santa Fe. There is one, but their site is horribly out of date. However, in searching I found another person who has a great domain name: Cosmonut.org. And he has a 20" Dobsonian. I was sold.

Unfortunately my wife just wasn't going to have a chance to make it out there with me because of her busy schedule, so I booked a trip myself. I drove 45 minutes out into the desert/mountains and we were at a lovely dark sky spot. The only thing impeding the view was that it was a full moon.

Despite not being Phil Plait, Peter Lipscomb had a mastery of the sky and we saw nearly everything on my list. If it weren't for the brightness of the moon, we would have been able to check off "galaxies" from my list. With his scope, we saw clearly the bands of Jupiter (including seeing roughly where the red spot is, even though the color contrast wasn't good enough to actually make it out), four moons of Jupiter and a 5th impostor (it's in the constellation of Capricorn), several globular clusters, a few nebulae, and we even were pointed to where the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon.

After the family of three left, I stuck around for a moment to try to take a few moon pictures, and Peter and I began chatting. I was picking is brain about astronomy, telescopes, and more. I wasn't completely useless -- I helped him load his scope into his truck. While we were chatting, I saw a meteor and he informed me it was one of the Perseids. I was a bit shocked because I thought it was too early. I asked him for his favorite, public dark sky spot, and he pointed me up the mountain through the Santa Fe National Forest up into Hyde Park. He was spot on.

I drove up there last night shortly after midnight. I arrived at the lookout point I had been to during the day two months ago. On the way up I was reminded I truly was in the forest. Deer lined the roads, and I could have sworn I saw a bear cub climbing up a hill as I came around a bend. I could have been mistaken, but the shape and proportions looked pretty spot on, but the darkness could have easily fooled me. Finally I arrived at the lookout point and stayed in my car. At first I didn't see much, and then a lone motorcycle came up and parked at the spot with me. It was silly of me to be scared, but honestly I was. I stayed in my car for a bit and noticed he was just standing off looking into the sky as well. I finally got out of the car and chatted him up a bit.

While we were chatting, I saw at least 30-40 meteors. It was beautiful. This was the perfect dark sky spot. Unfortunately in haste I left my camera tripod attachment at the house, and so I wasn't able to take any good pictures. I'm returning there tonight to try to get good pictures.

What amazed me was that with the roughly half-moon last night, I could see the faint cloudiness of the milky way in the sky. It was spectacular. Off in the distance I saw the lights of Santa Fe and then even further my new friend pointed out was the beginning of Albuquerque. The view was spectacular, not only of Santa Fe but of the sky as well. I want to experience this every night of my life.

I'm hoping to get some pictures tonight to share. Without the tripod mount, it was futile trying to take any pictures of the sky. If I get any good ones, I'll be posting them here. Hopefully I've inspired the itch to go look at the sky. I highly recommend doing it tonight, as the Perseids are in their peak. My personal viewing tips:

• Go out at least 15 minutes away from your nearest decent sized city. Light pollution is killer.
• Give yourself 20 minutes with no lights on for your eyes to adjust.
• Look into the north-eastern section of the sky.
• Do this slightly after midnight and watch for at least an hour. You'll see them.

Best of luck in your observing!

I can not in any way take credit for this thought, I've heard it from multiple sources. But I felt it deserved a page on the interwebs.

Pastor Wiley Blake of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. has been praying for the death of President Obama. On "The Alan Colmes", this exchange took place:

"Are you praying for his death?" Colmes asked.

"Yes," Drake replied.

"So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?"

"Yes."

Audio available here

What I've heard others say, and I'm going to lay out the argument for, is that under the United States' criminal law, Blake is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder (at the minimum). Let's investigate the terms at hand.

Murder consists of an intentional unlawful act with a design to kill and fatal consequences. Generally, an intention to cause great bodily harm is considered indistinguishable from an intention to kill, as is an act so inherently dangerous that any reasonable person would realize the likelihood of fatality. Thus, if the defendant hurled the victim from a bridge, it is no defense to argue that harm was not contemplated, or that the defendant hoped only to break bones. source

Conspiracy to commit murder is an agreement of two or more people to commit a crame, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions. Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law only requires the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act. This is sometimes described as a "general intent" to violate the law. source

Blake is praying to God for the death of President Obama. What is prayer? Clearly in this case, his prayer is a request from God for an end result. Let's rephrase it using the work "asking": Blake is asking God for the death of President Obama.

Now, let's change God with "a hitman": Blake is asking a hitman for the death of President Obama. Clearly with these terms, Blake is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. So what's different between "asking a hitman" and "praying to God?" In the eyes of a believer, absolutely nothing.

Can someone be charged with conspiracy to commit murder for praying?

There's really only two options: Either prayer has power and thus praying for the death of someone is conspiracy to commit murder or prayer has no power. Obviously we know where I stand on the issue -- prayer is absolutely, positively powerless.

For a believer they will assert prayer has power. It would certainly be an interesting court case, but I believe that Blake can be charged with conspiracy to commit murder and probably even convicted. Why do I think that if I don't think prayer has any power?

Let's form an analogy. Let's say Bob posts an ad on Craigslist for a hitman. Let's say Bob and an anonymous person talk about it and agree to whatever terms are necessary. Bob then gets arrested. It does not matter whether or not this anonymous person could murder the target or not. The intent is still there and the conspiracy is still there. A death does not need to happen for conspiracy to take place.

OK, really, **should** we charge people with conspiracy to commit murder?

Now that's a harder question to answer. We've seen what can happen to someone like George Tiller. I honestly think that we should prosecute those who publicly admit they are praying for the death of someone, because there are people who will take matters into their own hands.

But we won't have anyone remotely soon attempt to prosecute this sort of charge. Instead, when confronted with someone who prays for the death of someone, this series of questions should give them reason to pause:

1. Are you praying for the death of X?
2. Do you believe God can kill X?
3. Do you believe that God answers prayers?
4. Do you realize that because you are asking for the death of X from God, whom you feel will respond to your prayers and whom you also believe has the ability to kill X, you are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder?