Skeptics can believe in god

July 14th, 2010

Matt Dillahunty wrote a thoughtful post on the Atheist Experience blog that I somewhat disagree with. The post is worth reading, but the post is attempting to answer the question: can you be a skeptic and a theist?

I must preface that obviously I’m an atheist and a skeptic, and I do feel that if you equally evaluate every belief with scientific skepticism, you will most likely be an atheist.

However, part of the reason my blog was on a long hiatus is that I was bothered by the question: What separates believers from non-believers? It’s this thought process that leads me to disagree with Matt’s post.

The biggest overarching problem in Matt’s post is the lack of a definition of what skepticism is. There are hints of a definition, but it’s never set out as: “this is what a skeptic is.” Before writing this post, I decided to look for some sort of official definition. The best I could find is on Wikipedia describing scientific skepticism:

A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation. The scientific method details the specific process by which this investigation of reality is conducted. Considering the rigor of the scientific method, science itself may simply be thought of as an organized form of skepticism. This does not mean that the scientific skeptic is necessarily a scientist who conducts live experiments (though this may be the case), but that the skeptic generally accepts claims that are in his/her view likely to be true based on testable hypotheses and critical thinking.

Empirical or scientific skeptics do not profess philosophical skepticism. Whereas a philosophical skeptic may deny the very existence of knowledge, an empirical skeptic merely seeks likely proof before accepting that knowledge.

That seems like a very good summary of what a skeptic is. Nowhere in this definition or in Matt’s post does it require that absolutely every belief a person holds must be rationally reasoned through scientific skepticism. In fact, as I think Matt would agree, sometimes there are questions that science cannot currently or may never be able to answer.

The leap I’m going to make is to claim that by asserting that Pamela Gay or Hal Bidlack are not skeptics is the No True Scotsman fallacy. It’s a natural instinct to see someone who is generally of the same class but holds a different belief and say, “They’re not a true skeptic.” We see it all the time when one Christian sees another Christian of a differing denomination make a claim and justifying the cognitive dissonance by asserting that they aren’t a true Christian.

Even though I think that Matt’s post is arguing the No True Scotsman fallacy, I still think it has some interesting thoughts to pursue.

Can you believe without evidence and still call yourself a skeptic?

This is where my thoughts have been for the past year, and I have to say that my current conclusion is, “Yes.” Scientific skepticism is based on evaluating evidence and when there is no evidence an individual can decide to believe either way. This does not violate the idea of skepticism. It merely violates Matt and my preference that our beliefs be justifiable, and that if something is unjustifiable, we try not to believe it until we have a justification.

In fact, as Matt will claim on the show, he believes that there are no gods. He won’t do this when he’s debating a specific claim of a god, because he knows that believing in no gods is a positive claim. He realizes that he doesn’t have enough evidence to justify the “no gods” position to a reasonable certainty in terms of an actual debate. This belief that he holds is akin to believing that there is a god where that god’s definition contains no testable or evidentiary claims.

That’s not to say that my personal beliefs don’t line up with Matt’s, but I think we both recognize that the belief that there are no gods is not something that can be held up to a necessary level of certainty to assert it in a debate.

Should we be critical of other skeptic’s beliefs?

As an evangelical Christian, I was always taught to be sensitive to other people’s beliefs. If I saw another Christian swearing, I shouldn’t judge them and tell them they are going to hell. The reason was that god and that person had a relationship that was a work in progress, and that who are we to judge someone’s personal walk with god?

I’m no longer a Christian, but I still think that this is a good approach in general. No one is a perfect skeptic. If someone believes in something that is demonstrably false, it is perfectly reasonable to discuss the subject with the person. But if that person isn’t ready to talk about that subject, we should be temporarily respectful and continue discussing other topics. If we aren’t, we risk turning that person away.

Now, if we see someone holding a belief in something that isn’t demonstrably false, but is a positive belief not backed up by any evidence, should we criticize that person? No, I think it follows the same approach as the previous situation. If someone is open to discussing it, then by all means discuss it. Otherwise, we move on and revisit the topic later.

Does that mean I don’t think the Atheist Experience show is any good?

Absolutely not. The Atheist Experience is a live call-in show broadcasted on both the internet and local access channel in the Austin area. I love the show. Why is the show different than what I just finished describing?

The people that Matt, Tracie, Jen, Martin, Russel, Don, Jeff, and others discuss and occasionally ridicule are reaching out to the show to discuss their points. If the hosts of the show were calling people randomly to discuss things, then I would be opposed to the approach in terms of spreading skepticism (although I do think it still would be entertaining).

My final thoughts

At TAM 8, I met a person who showed me this venn diagram:

I think it breaks things down nicely. I was a skeptic before I became an atheist. I was a skeptic-atheist before I became a humanist. However, there are skeptic-humanists that are not atheists. Likewise, there are atheists that are neither a humanist or a skeptic.

I don’t think it is our duty as skeptics to actively attack people. This was the point of Phil Plait‘s talk at TAM 8. We shouldn’t attack people, we should attack false beliefs. The moment that we attack the individual, the moment we lose the possibility of helping that person out of irrational beliefs. I know Matt wasn’t specifically picking on Pamela Gay — she just happened to be there with quotes to dissect.

I think that a skeptic can believe in a god, but that as skeptics we should always strive to look for what beliefs we have that are based without evidence and try to limit those beliefs. However, we must also recognize that our minds are wired for believing things. Because of this, in places with lack of evidence, it may be hard if not impossible for an individual to stop believing.

That’s all fine for people like Hal who is a deist. I do believe, however, that if you call yourself a Christian, Muslim, or some other religious person but also call yourself a skeptic that you should look at your own beliefs. The reason deism is different from Christianity, for example, is that to be a Christian you are making a few positive belief claims that can be investigated. Most Christians would agree that if you call yourself a Christian, you believe that Jesus came to Earth, was God’s son, and his crucifixion allows anyone who believes in him to get into heaven.

The claims of Jesus can be investigated, and many people have done so. The specifics of evaluating the evidence for those claims are not for this topic. I’m merely pointing out why I think that Christians who call themselves skeptics should continue evaluating all of their beliefs with a skeptical mindset.

Becoming a skeptic is easy, but evaluating all of your beliefs in the new method is the difficult part. No matter where you are at on the journey of evaluating your beliefs, I personally welcome you to our small group known as skeptics.

Sorry for breaking your feeds

July 14th, 2010

If you subscribed to this blog via RSS, you probably noticed a refresh of many articles. I’ve moved over to WordPress rather than my own custom-written software. Because of this, the RSS feed got updated in the process.

Sorry for the hiccup.

Karen Armstrong A Case For God

July 13th, 2010
I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s "A Case For God," and decided to try to find a few videos of her talking about the book. In the process, I came across something that epitomizes several problems I have with her reasoning behind her case.

It’s a bit rambly, but so is modern theology, so you’ll have to give me a little leeway.

Daniel Dennet’s talk from AAI 09 "The Evolution of Confusion":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9w8JougLQ

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It is possible to be happy.

February 13th, 2010

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.

5 Facts about me

February 6th, 2010
This is a response to SingSoMuch’s tag, where I give 5 interesting facts about myself.
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The Problem of Evil, the Christian God, Heaven, and Free Will

January 29th, 2010
This has been another recent thought experiment of mine, the idea that the "free will" defense against the problem of evil directly causes big implications with the concept most Christians have of Heaven.

For more information about the Problem of Evil, check out Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

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The Unknown False Dichotomy

January 25th, 2010

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.

Original Sin

January 24th, 2010
A short video talking about the absurdity of inherited sin.
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Staying in the closet

August 22nd, 2009

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?

My Astrophotography of the Perseids

August 12th, 2009

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.

Perseids Meteor Shower 2009

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.

Perseids Meteor Shower 2009

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

Perseids Meteor Shower 2009

Full size image

Perseids Meteor Shower 2009

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?