Fish in Space

It's often observed that we don't have a lot of heroes to look up to any longer, not a lot of role models we can point to for behavior we can emulate. Part of this is human nature; there's no one who is perfect so there's always someone who disapproves of something you said or did. Another part, and I think it's a big one, is that communication has never been easier and there are cameras everywhere. Little mistakes get picked up and broadcast worldwide in proportion to the extent of your celebrity status. Hell, there's an entire subculture dedicated to celebrity gossip. So there's no one I could point to and say "I want to be that person. That person is the epitome of a moral role model." But that doesn't mean there aren't people I can admire. Who would they be? Just off the top of my head, here are four of them. First there's Stephen Hawking . Aside from his academic brilliance, he's a man who was stricken by a debilitating dis...

The story of Abraham binding Isaac from Genesis was brought up as one of several examples why the god of Abraham, if real, is an evil god. Someone then replied to complain how this story shouldn't qualify because "the whole point of the fucking story was to differentiate the God of Abraham from other gods that required human sacrifices." This is the same logic that tells us Biblical slavery is okay because it wasn't as bad as other slavery, but it prompted me to examine the story a little closer. We have a god who orders Abraham to sacrifice his son. No winky-face emoticons to indicate Poe's Law , just an outright command that Abraham has no reason to assume isn't sincere. This is okay because this is Yahweh, the source of all morality who therefore has the moral authority to order immoral actions and still have them be moral. Abraham, rather than telling his god to shove it, dutifully obeys and goes through with the preparations, right up to the point w...

I still see this being brought up, so here are some reminders of why the US is not a Christian nation. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1.html Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. http://www.usconstitution.net/tripoli.html As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian ...

In the news today, Obama has finally done something to help unions, only six years late. Naturally, I posted this to social media and almost immediately got the following response: FUCK unions. It is the unions who protect people like the cops who shot Hans Arellano, James Boyd, Levar Jones, Brian Dennison, Timothy Mitchell, Oscar Grant... I could go on. In these situations not all of these guys are saints. But in all of these situations the officers life was not in danger and they killed them anyway. A single life lost unnecessary is too many. I have a problem with leveraging popular outrage against genuine civil rights violations to build a straw man argument against an unrelated issue. Police unions -- not even the unions that helped to protect the police officers guilty of crimes -- are representative of all unions. There's a much bigger picture to consider here. Unions are designed to protect their members and serve their interests. Now, not all of their members deserve p...

I'm always jealous when better people than I formulate a thought I'd been circling around for years. In this case it's Michael Sherlock's tweet sporting this image. I'm impressed by his succinct description of the consequences of non-skeptical thought. Critical thinking and scientific skepticism are the filters required for producing rational statements of probable truth. Without these filters our brains will inevitably follow the path of least resistance and succumb to credulity, supernaturalism and all manner of magical thinking. I'm unable to find a source for this on the web, leading me to believe that this is taken from Sherlock's new book. I don't yet have confirmation.

Sacrilicious: adjective : a description of something so sacrilegious that it's delicious to behold. Portmanteau of sacrilege and delicious. example: The Loophole by Garfunkel and Oates is positively sacrilicious! What I want to know is this: why is this not a thing? Come on, Oxford! It's time to step up!

As an American who has lived outside the US, I can fully appreciate how insane our nation looks. Unfortunately, the reason it looks that way is because our nation is undeniably insane. We were once on our way toward being a secular culture that didn't care too much to advertise our religious beliefs. Then the Cold War happened and suddenly we had to do everything in our power to differentiate ourselves from the godless Communists. We became a Christian nation, proclaiming it in our motto, on our money and through our political rhetoric. Then it started to calm down again for a while until the late 70s brought the rise of Jerry Falwell and his poorly named "Moral Majority." Falwell midwifed a new era of religious fanaticism in the US, and we're riding out its death throes now. We envy other Western nations so much, you have no idea. But our religious extremists are afraid of them and for good reason. They're irrelevant in those nations, and they're not go...

What is left to say that hasn't already been said? But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Twice today I've been confronted by people who assert that "meaning" is some sort of property that can be found in objects or events. One asserted that beauty is proof of his god and another asserted that religion gives people meaning to their lives. So now I feel compelled to write about meaning and how we confuse what we want with what really is. The first individual asserted "...it is the meanings which are encapsulated within it which make it beautiful, which make it something enlightening." Naturally I pointed out that this implies that meaning is an objective property that we can glean from something, but an objective property doesn't change based on the perspective of who is looking at it. An apple doesn't change into an orange when viewed from the proper angle. Meaning shouldn't change at all if it's an inherent property. To further make his point this individual presented to me three actions that he believes have inherent meaning: a ...

Thank you, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show writers. I apparently needed this hot rage injection. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , The Daily Show on Facebook , Daily Show Video Archive

Thanks, Bill Maher. Lately there's been a lot of discussion about ISIS/ISIL, Islamophobia and whether or not Muslims are a threat to civilization (or at least Western civilization). It came to a head when Ben Affleck argued with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, accusing them of bigotry against all Muslims for their criticism of Islam. Some people agree with Affleck that Harris and Maher take it too far, others side with Maher and Harris that Islam is a genuine threat. Also, Christianity has been reformed which is why we don't see these problems in Christian countries. I want to come back to this in a bit. They're all correct and they're all wrong. Islam is a threat, no doubt about it. Any religion that isn't constrained by secular law is a threat both to its own members and non-members alike. But Islam is not an existential threat to civilization. They're not going to take over the West and establish a European or North American Caliphate. Yes, liberals in Europe...

I don't know if Tim Minchin had this post in mind when he wrote this song but it's possible. He's a fiendishly clever fellow. I'll just give him credit for helping to inspire this little essay while listening to this song. There are lots of reasons for me to be an atheist; the lack of evidence for gods, the mountain of debunked religious claims, the a priori arguments and assorted fallacies and so forth. Many trees have given their lives to record the multitude of reasons people have for not believing in any gods. Skepticism on the topic goes back as far as ancient Greece and the early philosophers who urged us to question everything, even the gods. There isn't much new to say on the topic since apologists are still trying to catch up with the fury of "New Atheism," but all these high-minded arguments from philosophy and science tend to go above the heads of the average believers and non-believers like myself. There are some simple very reasons why I ...

A common dogma tells us that the Abrahamic god is a jealous god, meaning there are things he demands that we must give him and he'll punish us if he doesn't get them. Why do I mention this? Because he's also supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent and allegedly the source of all wisdom and morality. So let's consider that for a moment. How do we look at a person who throws a tantrum when they don't get what they want? Childish? Juvenile? Certainly not someone who is wise, moral or benevolent. But he's the creator, we're told. We owe him things like worship and praise because he has that right. Let's look at someone who builds an ant farm. What do the ants owe the person who maintains their farm? Do they deserve to be flooded, baked or starved if they don't behave according to the rigid demands of their owner? History tells the story of hundreds of kings and queens with total dominion over their kingdoms. As a general rule we look poorly on...

After linking Greta Christina's Skepticon 4 speech to yet another tone troll I thought I'd watch it again. It's been a little while since I loaded it up and I thought I'd refresh myself on it. I'm glad I did because one section in particular stood out for me. "Oh, that's not what the religion really teaches! If you look at what the original text says this is being misinterpreted!" Like I care? The reality is that the Islamic religion as it is widely believed and practiced -- and not just the Islamic religion but other religions as well, this teaching is not restricted to Islam alone -- that religions as they are practiced in the real world teach that little girls' clitorises have to get cut off. This is by no means restricted to Islam or female genital mutilation. It's a common apologetic even among some atheists, to claim that a common belief is really just a mistranslation of sacred texts like the word "homosexual" in the Bi...

One objection to comparing the evidence for unicorns to the evidence for gods is that they're not the same thing. Unicorns didn't create the universe, God did. But how do you justify this claim? There's just as much evidence to support the creation of the universe by a herd of unicorns as there is creation by a god. Thus I introduce the Cult of the Celestial Unicorn Herd. Rather than there being a single, omnipotent unicorn running everything, the universe is instead segregated into specific tasks. There's a herd of unicorns dedicated to maintaining gravity, and another to maintain magnetism. There are herds to oversee inertia and chemical bonds, biology and everything else we see in the universe, as well as more that we haven't discovered. What we misinterpret as natural processes are actually supernatural forces governing everything. There is, of course, a special herd of unicorns dedicated to guiding intelligent life throughout the universe. There are intelli...

Something I've been thinking about lately are the justifications believers have for belief. Right off the bat, belief is usually treated as the default assumption. We should believe in their god because we can't prove them wrong. There are unbelievably intricate apologetics, hermeneutics, elaborate philosophical logic chains that try to hide the fallacies and false premises and of course the indefatigable fallback of "faith." We're unreasonable in our skepticism because we're not experts in their specific religious beliefs, their specific interpretations or their specific arguments. We should just leave them alone and let them believe, nevermind that they do little to stop people trying to force their beliefs on us. Nevermind that most believers aren't expert in apologetics, hermeneutics or philosophy either. Curiously, they don't demand proof of non-existence for anything they don't believe in. Fairies don't need proof of non-existence, ...

For years I've been hearing scorn from conservatives about the liberal fetish for multiculturalism and how the Left goes out of its way to make excuses for Islamic extremism. I've always been puzzled by this criticism because I haven't heard anyone make such excuses. Even on the Left we don't see the point in making excuses for misogyny and violence. Finally someone linked me to an article explaining where the criticism comes from. Apparently, it mostly originates from the far left outside the US. It helps to remember that "far left" inside the US is mostly limited to the not-quite socialist Green party and environmentalists. We don't have the liberal extremists that Europe does. Nevertheless, I suspended my knee-jerk reaction to deny and disavow and read through the accusations. Some of them deserve criticism. Some of them don't. Most of them invite response. So I have two thoughts here. First, dehumanizing the opposition doesn't solve anythi...

Seriously. Don't do it. The following is an example of something that I felt compelled to write when someone asked for help writing a eulogy for his friend. Bob was a genuine nature-lover. I mean that literally. He loved nature. Once when we were out hiking by a pond I watched him catch a frog and force it to fellate him. I asked him what the hell he was doing, and he told me that God wanted him to have dominion over nature so that's what he was doing. Then he yelled at the frog, "What's my name? Say my name, bitch!" That was Bob. Always going that extra mile.

A very nice Christian kindergarten teacher made a post about Christian priorities that I would find almost heartwarming if not for this poison pill right at the beginning: Don’t get me wrong, it saddens me that a teacher can actually get fired if he or she offends someone by praying aloud or teaching scripture in a public school. It sickens me that some school systems (not mine) have taken the phrase “under God” out of their daily Pledge of Allegiance. It frustrates and sometimes angers me that other religions seem to be tolerated so quickly, yet Christianity simply will not be tolerated in some public school systems. It makes me want to cry out “What are we doing?” This was my response to her. I hope she allows my comment to pass moderation, but I'm posting it for posterity. I apologize for being the voice of dissent here, but I have to ask: do you truly believe that that there's some kind of War on Christianity ala Fox News? Do you really think your beliefs are under att...

Sometimes injustice happens. Hitler lost the war but was never brought to justice. More violent dictators die of natural causes than are executed for their crimes. Dick Cheney continues to influence US politics in spite of his fear of being tried for war crimes. As much as we don't like it, crime does pay. It's usually the stupid criminals that are brought to justice; the intelligent ones are rarely caught and the most successful of those never let their crimes come to light. How do you feel about that? Angry? Frustrated? Outraged? I hope so. Common questions asked of atheists revolve around morality. Without a god, what's to stop people from being immoral? Why not screw people over for personal gain? The answer is of course that the vast majority of immoral behavior is perpetrated by people who fervently endorse belief in one or more gods. They just tell themselves that either what they're doing isn't wrong or that they'll be forgiven for it. But it's...

There's a problem with Stephen Jay Gould's ill-considered "non-overlapping magisteria." The problem is that it was never true. Religion has been making claims about reality since its inception. It's been giving ground on those claims for centuries because its claims are unsupportable. As Jerry Coyne is reported to have said, "when something in science is disproven it get tossed on the junkpile of bad ideas. When something in religion gets disproven it becomes a metaphor." Religious beliefs make claims that compete with science all the time. The most glaring ones involve evolution denial and creationism and are easily disputed by evidence. The more subtle ones merely claim a deist god or a magical energy field that powers our consciousness. All of them make claims about reality and when we turn our skepticism toward them we're inundated with protests that it's not something we can be skeptical about. It's not subject to scrutiny or evidence...

People make claims all the time, some more extraordinary than others. The claim I has a baseball is not an extraordinary claim given the number of baseballs produced and the popularity of the game in various places of the world. Curing cancer with baking soda is a significantly more extraordinary claim and typically provokes skepticism. I'm sure that someone who feel hopeful about treating their cancer with baking soda might actually experience a remission since we don't fully understand how cancer works. But does that mean that the baking soda is responsible for the remission, or is there something else at work that is completely unrelated to the asserted cause? So my question is why should I not be skeptical of your claims? Why should your claims about gods and reality be treated as an exception, exempt from skepticism or suspicion? Why should I not approach it with the same attitude that I approach claims of baking soda or crystal therapy cures for cancer?

What is "scientism?" Broadly, scientism is a criticism levied by believers against people who point out that science and skepticism have done more to expand our knowledge and improve our lives than any religion or faith. Thomas Burnett of the creationist organization BioLogos claims: As this new method [science] found great success, the specter of scientism began to emerge. Both Bacon and Descartes elevated the use of reason and logic by denigrating other human faculties such as creativity, memory, and imagination. Bacon’s classification of learning demoted poetry and history to second-class status. Descartes’ rendering of the entire universe as a giant machine left little room for the arts or other forms of human expression. In one sense, the rhetoric of these visionaries opened great new vistas for intellectual inquiry. But on the other hand, it proposed a vastly narrower range of which human activities were considered worthwhile. Astonishingly, Burnett quotes Carl Sagan ...

Earlier today I read a post pleading for help from a person who said that they felt physically nauseous when they contemplated death and what comes after. It's a common complaint from people who are still trying to deprogram themselves from religious thinking, and it's deliberate. I have a common response that I'd like to share. Fear, especially fear of the unknown, can't withstand scrutiny. You're following the programming you were taught to fear death and assume the worst. The truth is that what you were taught isn't based on good information, it's a scare tactic intended to keep you pliable and frightened. Frightened people don't challenge authority. You're not going to Hell after you die and neither am I. We will cease to exist, and while that's not a preferable outcome it's better than an eternity of unending existence. Ponder that as much as you can then set it aside. Think about it again tomorrow and the day after. The more you con...

Someone I can only describe as a troll posted a video of Alan Watts giving his speech beginning with "You are a fluke. You are a separate event, and you run from the maternity ward to the crematorium and that's it." He goes on to scold non-believers for envisioning such a cold, dark world where nothing we do matters so we may as well just commit suicide now and get it over with. It's a very dreadful speech focusing on the inevitability of death and how non-belief gives us nothing to live for. This is my answer. Did you ever enjoy a meal or a dessert? An event or activity that gave you pleasure? But what's the point, it's over now. The impermanence of the things that give us joy is a reason to not go on living according to the worldview of this troll. Only a god invented by humans is sufficient to give us a reason to live, a god that tells us not to live for this world but the next one. I enjoy a good meal or a dessert. I look forward to activities or ev...

Years after the issue should have been settled, I'm still hit with claims that the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution isn't really there because it wasn't explicitly stated as a "wall of separation" as Jefferson's letter clarified. I find it ironic that so many people who complain about my criticisms of the Bible or their religious beliefs being "out of context" are nevertheless willing to ignore the context of the US Constitution.

I am so tired of presuppositional arguments, whether or not they're acknowledged as such. One of the fundamental flaws I criticize about religious belief is when believers want their cake and eat it too. More to the point, their arguments rely too heavily on special pleading. And no, adding caveats to the definition of a god does not bypass special pleading. For example: if a god does not leave any traces for us to observe, then we have no reason to assume that anything we see supports the existence of this god. If this god is unknowable and incomprehensible, then we have no reason to assume anyone understands anything about it and can accurately represent it. So which is it? Is a god knowable or not? If not then the discussion is closed. If so then show us examples that clearly demonstrate how this knowledge is valid and not human bias.

Blogger has some basic tools for tracking posts, listing comments (when it occurs to me I might have any) and seeing how popular they are. Most of my posts average between five and fifty pageviews, some browsing in from reddit.com or twitter and some I'm sure from webcrawlers and other technologies. But one post in particular stands out. None of my posts have more than two hundred views except this one: it has over two thousand. So if I ever decide I want my blog to become popular or start up some ad revenue, I have to remember to post a silly comic with every entry. I find that both amusing and saddening.

Liberal religious beliefs came up again today, this time with the assertion that religious texts like the Bible aren't meant to be read literally. Mostly. Sometimes. Whenever we have verifiable evidence that whatever is being discussed has been debunked. Furthermore, someone claimed to me that most religious believers don't take their scriptures literally. Naturally, this required some verification. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans believe in angels. Literally. Why? It's largely driven by religion. 64% of Americans believe Jesus literally died and was resurrected. Not metaphorically but literally. 46% of Americans believe that humans were created, not evolved, in their present form within the last ten thousand years. Nothing metaphorical about it. 80% of Americans believe in miracles. Not allegory, not metaphorical miracles. Miracles on par with what's recorded in the Bible. Tell me again why I should assume religious beliefs and texts aren't being taken l...

When we describe something as "objective" what we mean is that it is "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: 'an objective opinion'" or "of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality." Since morals are value statements they are necessarily abstract concepts rather than material objects. They cannot be said to exist as part of objective reality. Furthermore, morality varies greatly depending on culture and circumstance which means it is never free of influence by personal feelings, interpretations or prejudice. By way of contrast, what are examples of objective reality? Those things that can be confirmed through empirical observation: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and so forth. Standing on the surface of our planet means that gravity will pull you and everyt...

One of the most common claims made by Christians is that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God. How do we know that the Bible is divinely inspired? Why, the Bible says this about itself. Of course, what this means varies depending on the Christian you talk to. For some it means the Bible is perfect and inerrant, that any time we find something wrong in the Bible it's us who is making the mistake because the Bible can't be wrong about anything. For others it means only parts of the Bible are divinely inspired and the confusion comes because we have to sift the human error in the Bible to find the parts that are genuinely inspired. The first claim, that the Bible is perfect and inerrant is easily refuted. Looking at the conflicting creation accounts in Genesis, the story of the Hebrews in bondage to Egypt , the prophesied destruction of Tyre by Babylon or the attempts to tie both Herod the Great and the Census of Quirinius to Jesus' birth in spite of Herod d...

Tom Wheeler , the latest chairman of the FCC, shocked the Internet by calling for approval for a "fast lane" proposal for the Internet. Effectively, in order to avoid having your site and services downgraded by ISPs you have to pay an additional premium for preferred service. It's the proposal that AT&T suggested back in 2005 which sparked the entire Net Neutrality movement. Remember that you're already paying for your connection to the Internet, and sites like Google, Amazon and Netflix are also paying for their connection to you. This proposal amounts to triple-billing. Of course, Wheeler's betrayal shouldn't shock anyone who knew who he was. An industry insider and lobbyist, he was always going to be sympathetic to ISP demands and ignore the consumers. So now he's trying to get a vote on new rules giving AT&T everything it wants and the backlash has been so severe that the FCC can't handle all the phone calls they're getting . Instead t...

In discussing Deacon Duncan's examination of god belief I was hit with the following comment: One can, however, acknowledge what inside of themselves is a story, and have gratitude and mercy for the stories one sees in others. It's the really hard-headed ones who become so convinced that their way is the "truth" and deem those who don't subscribe to their story as the "truth," who can be a bit of a pain, but who also miss out on the grandeur and the majesty of the world and the universe it hangs in. The implication here is that everybody has their own perspective and they're all unique, beautiful and valid ( except when they're not ). I often see this Milquetoast defense of religious belief and superstition as religion is forced to concede more ground on the nature of reality. However, there are two claims being made here that I feel deserve attention. "One can, however, acknowledge what inside of themselves is a story, and have grati...

Here in the US we have a problem with crime. We're obsessed with it. We dedicate outrageous resources to dealing with it and even romanticize it to some degree (have you seen the latest episodes of COPS, CSI or Law & Order? ). In our fantasies the innocent are protected and the guilty are punished. Yes, I said "fantasies" because we have an idealized notion of crime and punishment and it's causing some serious problems. A recent study points out that 4% of the people on death row are innocent and that percentage is higher for those sentenced to life in prison. Contemplate that for a moment: four out of every hundred people sentenced to death are victims of our legal system. Does that shock you? Does it bother you at all? It does for me, but I know people who don't give it a second thought. For them it's an acceptable margin of error. Consider also that we spend about $74 billion a year nationwide up from $37 billion in 2007 and just about as much a...

It's been a common talking point over the past twenty years: Americans have a spending problem. We have too little money saved up and too many of us have nothing saved for retirement . Everywhere you look the message is the same: our debt to savings ratio is too high and it's a serious problem. Yes, it is. But why are we having this problem? I find it very curious that when I try to track the changes to the cost of living I get a lot of confusing data. We have easy graphs to track spending for the federal government, graphs on health care and driving and gun violence and just about anything else you could want that's pertinent to our daily lives. But not so much for inflation and prices even from official government sources. It's like they don't want us to know how much we're spending just to meet our daily needs. I live in a nice apartment with one and a half cars (my Lady got her scooter), very little debt (which takes some doing, believe me) and a fe...

It would be funny if it weren't so insidious. Having spent three years doing everything they can do to either repeal or undermine "Obamacare," we now have some initial indications of success and slower rises in health insurance premiums than at any time under Republican governance. Nevertheless, House Republicans have voted at least 47 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act UPDATE: 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act when they're not voting to delay it . At this point there's no stopping the implementation of Obamacare. The White House has delayed specific provisions to the derision of conservatives, but the overall provisions are not going to be stopped. Every year conservatives claim that it's going to make premiums skyrocket and every year it doesn't happen. Now we have an election year coming up, a mid-term election where Republicans typically have more success and they've pinned their election strategy on selling the idea that Obama...

Having just acknowledged that I can be wrong and be perfectly aware that I'm capable of being wrong, I come to the topic of being wrong about gods and the afterlife. Hell is a particularly insidious concept that really epitomizes the effectiveness of the carrot and the stick approach to coercion. On the one hand you've got this fairy tale place commonly referred to as Heaven where there's no more suffering, no more worry, no more sickness or death. In Heaven you experience an eternity of bliss while you reunite with loved ones and sing the praises of the all-powerful God. But if you reject God (and thus Heaven) then your only option is Hell, a lake of fire and brimstone where you experience unending torment and shame for all of eternity. I've listened to more than a few stories of people who were traumatized by fear of Hell as children, and a few adults who struggle with religion only because they're afraid that leaving it might actually send them to Hell. It can ha...

A lot of people who know me don't think of me as a particularly humble man. That would be because I'm not. I am in fact quite arrogant, or at least confident in the correctness of my assumptions. I'm aware that I turn off some people because of my air of arrogance. Other people are attracted to me because of my air of confidence. There's just no way to please everyone. In fact, I'm wrong about things all the time. I don't project this awareness because that's not how I was raised, but please take my word for it that I am aware of it. I am not right about things more often than the average individual. I'm no polymath like Sherlock Holmes who can speak authoritatively on a wide variety of topics. I have areas of interest in science, literature and politics but I am at best an enthusiastic layman in those areas. My understanding is general at best rather than specific. I grasp the basic concept of quantum mechanics but not well enough to teach a course in ...

In discussing presuppositionalism yesterday and today, the topic naturally turned to creationism (one of the biggest examples of presuppositionalism around). A few defenders of creationism attempted to argue the old straw about science being unreliable and incapable of offering certainty, therefore God. In doing so they betrayed their ignorance of what science is and how we know what we know. To begin with science doesn't talk about absolutes, it talks about degrees of certainty . The short explanation of this is that certainty is defined by supporting evidence. The less evidence you have to support your idea, the less certainty we have that it's true. The more evidence you have, the greater the degree of certainty. There are no absolutes when it comes to knowledge. We're always updating and refining our knowledge, but at this point we very rarely end up refuting something that has a great deal of evidence supporting it. Most of the ideas in science that get left behind...

I've been having a lot of discussions about presuppositionalism when it comes to belief in gods. A lot of believers are invoking it even when they don't know it's name. They assume that the existence of their god is a given and that it therefore falls to non-believers to prove otherwise. It's an extremely dishonest tactic by attempting to reverse the burden of proof . As I like to say, if I have to prove your god isn't real then you have to prove I'm not your god testing you. I ran across an old comic that neatly demonstrates the problem with presuppositionalism and the way it's applied in debates over evolution, cosmology and so forth. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.