Cryptocurrency and Goldbugs

For years I’ve been listening to cranks talk about how fiat money is worthless and how we should return to the gold standard. Now, I’m not an economist, and I have only the most rudimentary understanding of economics as a field, but I do understand one simple economic principle: value isn’t inherent in anything, value is imposed by common interest. As I understand it, gold became a value standard in part because of its beauty but also because of its rarity. Aluminum (aluminium for you fans of the mother tongue) was once the province of kings because of its rarity before we learned to pull it out of the very soil. We prize things that are difficult to get, which is the argument goldbugs use to explain why paper, or “fiat” currency is trash. How can paper money be valuable when all we need to do is give ourselves permission to print more of it?

That brings us to cryptocurrency. In 2008 someone introduced the idea of a digital currency that requires computer resources to “mine” the complex blockchains that validate them as the real thing. The encryption is so complex and monitored that it’s allegedly impossible to hack. This artificial scarcity for cryptocurrency makes it difficult to obtain and therefore valuable. But why should anyone care about a complex series of bits and bytes on a hard drive? Well, because we said so, that’s why. Bitcoin isn’t any less arbitrary as currency than gold or paper currency. It’s valuable because we agree it’s valuable, and therefore can be used in exchange for goods and services by those willing to deal in it. Advocates say that digital currency ought to replace fiat currency because it’s stable (spoiler: it isn’t) and can’t fail like the US dollar (it can).

Why do I bring this up? Because of the hilarious news I saw about a man who lost a hard drive with something like eight thousand Bitcoins he had mined, currently estimated to be worth $760 million dollars. It turned out that his ex-girlfriend threw it away. The story itself is comedy gold, but the part that I think is lost on most people is the fact that cryptocurrency has still failed to live up to its promise of replacing physical currency as the standard. Note how the title of the article calculates the estimated value of the Bitcoins in US dollars.

Over a hundred years ago, the US pegged its monetary system to gold, and our economy was in a constant state of boom and bust because the value of gold isn’t as reliable as goldbugs claim it is. Silver didn’t do any better. What stabilized our economies the best was monetary policy, where smart professionals used their training and expertise to adjust economic conditions via interest rates and public policy. This smoothed out the market highs and lows so ordinary people like you and I didn’t suffer so much during market failures. In the 1980s, conservative lawmakers started rolling back those policies and regulations to give markets a freer hand at operating, and we got the Savings & Loan crash in the late 80s, then the 2007 market crash that made my 401k accounts disappear. Economic stability doesn’t come from pegging our currency to anything in particular, it comes from careful regulation and maintenance of our economic environments.

Last, but not least, cryptocurrency is a ponzi scheme. Unless you’re mining it yourself, buying cryptocurrency with your own money just enriches everyone up the chain who invested before you. Any benefit you get depends on others following you to buy it after you. If you are mining it yourself, then you’re depending on suckers to pay real money to inflate the value. It’s valuable because we think it’s valuable, not because it has any inherent value in itself.

There are other problems inherent with cryptocurrencies that invite criminal activity and international espionage, but they’re not really germane to the point I’m making here. I don’t do cryptocurrency in part because I don’t think it’s ethical, and largely because it’s not the magic spell its backers would have you believe. I hope you won’t fall for the scam, either.

The Injustice of Sexual Abuse

I want to apologize in advance for touching on a subject that's probably going to trigger a few people, so this is your advance warning: if discussions about sexual abuse, rape and the difficulty of prosecuting those crimes are likely to provoke some bad memories or feelings please skip this post.

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Here in the US we have a problem with rape and sex abuse. The problem is that we're not treating it like a problem, just as an embarrassment that we'd rather see go away. That doesn’t mean addressing the problem so it doesn’t happen again or treating the problem like a genuine crime to be investigated and prosecuted like theft or murder, it means we just seem to throw up our hands and ignore the problem until people stop talking about it. For a while it seemed that the #MeToo movement would start moving the needle but I’m still seeing the same old attitudes and problems. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are being held accountable for their abuse but Brett Kavanaugh, Michael Shermer and David Silverman all look like they’re going to get away with a slap on the wrist at most. No real investigation, certainly no prosecution and no indication that this will ultimately end their careers. Today I encountered a fellow who argued that David Silverman is not a rapist because there’s no proof. Of course, Silverman admits to several of the encounters but insists they were consensual in spite of the testimony of the women who came forward to accuse him. It comes down to “he said, she said.”

That’s the problem. When it comes to personal testimony they’re not weighted the same. Rape and other sexual abuses aren’t like other crimes where it’s possible to dig until you arrive at the truth. Even where evidence has been collected there’s little hope of action. We’ve known for decades that rape kits aren’t being tested but in spite of that the status quo has not changed and doesn’t look like it’s going to be. Otherwise the evidence is ephemeral at best since bodies heal and witnesses tend to be scarce. The only thing the victims have left are the mental and emotional scars that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and that’s difficult to display on trial because no one is willing to believe them. We’re willing to blame and convict pedophile priests without the kind of physical evidence we demand in adult cases. Is that really holding to a consistent standard of evidence? When so few rape charges lead to conviction is it any wonder that women give up trying to pursue justice for it? Women who accuse their rapists more often end up getting more abuse heaped on them as society blames the victims.

To add insult to injury, efforts to put a dent in the frequency of rape and sexual abuse have likewise failed. We’d much rather tell women they shouldn’t get raped than to teach men to not rape. We’d rather blame women for dressing provocatively or flirting or simply not taking enough notice of their surroundings than blame men for abusing them. I see more outrage over claims of false accusations than I do rape itself. When it’s pointed out that women get raped regardless of how careful they are, how modestly they dress or how directly they say “no” it’s disregarded. We don’t want to hear it. We’re not willing to lay the blame where it lies: on the rapist rather than the victim. Instead we demand evidence we know can’t be presented because it’s not a crime that leaves the same kind of evidence. We blame the woman for making the accusation because one false accusation somehow invalidates all rape accusations. We protect the men because their privilege matters more than women’s safety and call that justice.

As a man I am ashamed of my gender. I know this makes me a “bleeding heart liberal.” I know I’m a “social justice warrior.” I see no reason to reject either label because I don’t see these as bad things. There’s a moral rot at the heart of our society revealed by how often men get away with rape and sexual abuse and I want to see it come to an end. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. Use all the slander and libel against me you want, I don’t care. I refuse to provide cover to systemic failings in our society.

Flying On Autopilot

What I'm about to discuss here is not ground-breaking. Many people will already be aware of the topic but I feel it worth exploring.

Working in IT I have necessarily learned a little bit about automation. Learning to write computer scripts to automate common tasks has been a significant boon to my life in computer support like when someone is constantly losing their network mappings or there's a folder that constantly fills up with old, unused temp files but never gets cleaned up and ultimately slows down the operating system. Yes, I'm looking at you Microsoft. The point being is that scripts are labor-saving devices, tools we can launch to automate a process that would take more time and energy to do by hand. What's interesting is how we do this in our daily lives in ways that have nothing to do with computers. Did you ever drive somewhere familiar to you but with the mental note that you need to make an extra stop, then miss it? You were driving on autopilot. Did you find yourself talking about something with someone only to discover that neither of you were talking about the same thing?

We all develop strategies for dealing with everyday life, like taking one route over another on our way to work or navigating potentially hazardous social settings. We come by these strategies through observation, imitation and experimentation. At some point in our lives we were taught strategies on various topics and tried them out, learning for ourselves what works or doesn't work. We then took those strategies and created mental scripts for ourselves to use them without wasting much time thinking about it. Once a situation matches a pattern in our scripts we automatically launch into the behavior we think is most appropriate to the situation we think we're in. But we don't always get it right; we sometimes fall back on our behavioral scripts when we ought to be paying closer attention to what's going on. It's something everyone does to some degree.

Why am I talking about this? For a couple of reasons really. One is because most of us aren't aware that we're doing this or really think about what it implies. Another is because we can get lazy and avoid change because that would require more energy than we're willing to commit. We often call this "getting stuck in a rut." Sometimes we get frustrated because we recognize we're in a rut but we're not willing to spend the energy necessary to climb out of it.

One of the most egregious examples of this behavior involves religion. There are a number of reasons why so many religions focus on ritual and repetition and one of them exploits the human tendency toward scripted behavior. The more you do it the less you think about it, and we find that comforting. It relaxes us and allows us to fly on autopilot. It becomes habit-forming and we get locked into following the script we're taught to follow. Religion encourages this, particularly on religious matters. Don't think about it, just do as you're expected. Which means when religion gets things wrong its followers don't notice or don't want to think about it. They can get angry when confronted with it.

I've spoken before about the need to shock believers out of their complacency but I never really explored what I mean by it before. This is it. This is the nature of religious complacency: the human tendency to develop scripts for ourselves so we don't have to spend much energy thinking about what we're doing. Faith, in the religious context, means you're not supposed to take yourself off autopilot when it comes to religious matters. Anything that deviates from the script is a bad thing and might be punished severely. This is how loving, compassionate parents can turn into monsters who beat their children or harass them, even kick them out of their homes when it turns out the child doesn't share their beliefs. This is how good people do bad things: because they're following the script that's been ingrained into their behavior since infancy.

How do you break the script? It depends on the person. Some people cling to their scripts, too insecure to ever deviate from them. Some people are just too complacent, uninterested in putting forth the effort necessary to examine or modify their scripts. Some people just aren't aware that they're following a script and, once it's pointed out to them, will make them willing to take a closer look. Some people are frustrated because they recognize they're stuck in a rut and are open to change. You never know until you talk to them and find out.

I've spent the last three decades examining my scripts and adjusting them to the best of my ability. I still make mistakes and I still fly on autopilot far too often than is good for me. But I know I'm prone to it and I'm willing to change. Sometimes I just need help figuring out how.

Help We Can Do Without

I voted today, and I'm glad I did. I couldn't find the ballot they sent to me until my wife kindly informed me it was probably buried in the pile of mail I hadn't noticed. But I dropped it off the completed form this morning on my way to work and all is well with the world. I hope.

Something in particular caught my attention, though. Now that the election is finally almost over and we're just about done with the Wikileaks' dump of hacked emails attacking Hillary Clinton they've gone and made a curious claim that they weren't trying to harm anyone in particular, they just wanted to provide a service by informing the general public. Nobody's buying it, and no one should. Here's why:

• They had this information back in March, long before the nomination was decided, before but carefully timed the releases in such a way to do maximum damage not to a specific candidate but to a specific party.
• They did not visibly work toward exposing corruption in both major parties. They just shrugged and said because no one had tried hacking the RNC it wasn't their problem.
• What they did release was overhyped but ultimately very weak tea. The most common comparison was with sausage: you don't want to watch it being made, but that doesn't make it bad. What we learned from those emails is that Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff are seasoned politicians, not that they'd actually done anything illegal or unethical.
• Even though they also claimed they didn't have any information damaging to the RNC, Assange admitted to having information on Trump. He claims he didn't release it because what Trump was saying to the media was far worse than anything he could release. He hasn't given us the opportunity to decide that for ourselves.

So I call bullshit on any claims of objectivity or being nonpartisan. This was very clearly a hit job on a candidate and a party that they didn't want to win the election today. Between Wikileaks and James Comey it's clear that if any rigging is going on it isn't in favor of the Democratic Party.

Argument By Moderation

There's a curious trend in social media that simultaneously amuses and disgusts me. I call it "argument by moderation." Moderation in this case doesn't refer to a moderate or nuanced position, but rather the people responsible for performing administration on a forum. They don't have an easy job, and once the forum gets big enough they don't even try. They'll ban or lock you if anyone complains about you whether or not it's warranted.

Last week I posted this comment, making a general observation as I occasionally do and not addressing anyone in particular.

After a few days this sparked a conversation with another user trying to peddle his "spiritualist" business and everyone who knows me knows how gladly I suffer fools. The conversation ended fairly quickly once I made it clear to him that I'm not easily swayed by bullshit. It's not the first time I've had discussions like that on Twitter although it had been a while, and I feel that I was fairly restrained compared to other evangelicals I've interacted with. I thought the matter settled until today.

Okay, time to go to the mail account I registered for this, a one-shot I created expressly for stuff I don't care about. It turns out that Yahoo! really wants more information about me because they decided that while they recognize my password they won't let me continue without further validation. The validation account I used for that address is bogus because frankly, they don't need to know and I'd never needed it before. Today, it seems, I needed it. So I have a cascading failure of confirmation emails to accounts I can't access which is preventing me from verifying that I am who I say I am.

So, round one to the "spiritual" snake oil salesman for engaging in argument by moderation after he came to me with claims that I had the temerity to question and deride once he couldn't support them. But should the Twitter admins follow up on my support request they'll be able to see this short timeline of events and hopefully draw the conclusion that there was no unusual activity on my account, just someone tattling on me for failing to show them the respect they didn't earn.

God is intangible, unknowable and ineffable. Except when he isn't. (updated)

One of the fundamental flaws I often criticize about religious belief is when believers want their cake and eat it too. Specifically, I refer to when their arguments rely too heavily on special pleading. And no, adding caveats to the definition of a god does not bypass special pleading. I can redefine chocolate as the essential first cause of the universe, but that doesn't make the definition valid.

But other examples of special pleading include arguments like this: god is mysterious, unfathomable and uknowable but somehow believers are granted special knowledge of who this god is, what it is and what it demands. Believers typically justify this via "special revelation," that they or their religious founders have been granted special knowledge by that god to carry out the divine will. Each religion and sect claiming special revelation typically considers the special revelation other religions and sects as heresy or at least attributed to human error. But since there are so many special revelations, how does someone not raised or converted to one particular orthodoxy distinguish which are the truly divine revelations and which are heresy? This problem is informally called the argument from inconsistent revelations. One of the supporting criticisms against divine revelation is the way it tends to follow cultural and geographical boundaries.

A point I've made before is that no religion has any better argument or evidence to support it than any other. Believers aren't basing their claims on independently observable phenomenon, they're projecting what they think should be true rather than what they can demonstrate to be true. There's no common experience for believers to reference so revelations vary from culture and region and even among different believers. This leads us to the skeptical position that 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. Excuses aren't enough.

The Importance of Skepticism

One of the things I regret about my education growing up is that there wasn't any significant effort made to teach skepticism and critical thinking. These are skills I've had to pick up on my own as an adult, and it's been haphazard at best. I don't have the greatest critical thinking skills and I'm not nearly as good a skeptic as I want to be. The problem is that the more I learn the more I recognize the need for these things. I also recognize that there are a lot of misconceptions about skepticism and people who practice it. I thought I'd dedicate this post to examining the art of skepticism and how it applies to everything we do.

First of all, it helps to define what skepticism really is. As Michael Shermer pointed out, skepticism is not a position, it's a process. A skeptic isn't a curmudgeon who automatically naysays anything they hear. A skeptic isn't someone deliberately trying to pour cold water over your head to ruin your day. A skeptic is someone who follows a process intended to distinguish reality from wishful thinking. Let's face it: there's a lot of wishful thinking in the world and it creates problems we could otherwise avoid.


A skeptic is not necessarily a scientist, but a scientist must be a good skeptic. Your average skeptic isn't going to have better than a layman's understanding of things like biology, chemistry, cosmology, economics, physics or politics. They may sound more knowledgeable but that's relative to your average bloviator. A good skeptic will research a claim before deciding whether it is true or false, but there's no guarantee that the information they find will be accurate. Skeptics are just as prone to bad information and false assumptions as everyone else, they're just more likely to update their assumptions as new information becomes available. A successful skeptic is not someone who can debunk any claim they find, it's someone who can debunk their own assumptions when they're wrong.

There are so many examples of how skepticism should be an essential part of our daily lives, but I'll keep this short. There's one example that's infamous in the modern age, something everybody thinks they know to watch out for: getting conned. In the computer security world it's known as social engineering but confidence artists can be found in every walk of life. It's a profession almost as old as prostitution where someone tricks you into trusting them so they can take advantage of it to defraud you of money or property. How many times have you taken a phone call from someone offering to fix your credit problems or sell you a product that will revolutionize your life? Do you think all the email spam talking about breast enlargement pills and penis enlargement tools get sent out because it makes them giggle? The Nigerian Prince scam has been around for at least a hundred years, possibly more. Years ago I had to explain to a friend that they shouldn't go shopping for a new house just because they received an email advising them they'd won a lottery in London -- a lottery they admitted they'd never entered. These scams persists because people fall for them. Not everyone does, and not all the time, but it happens.

But before you pat yourself on the back for being a successful skeptic, take a closer look at your assumptions. Are you a fan of alternative medicine? Do you believe in angels? Are you convinced that lowering corporate tax rates creates jobs? Do you think that poverty is created by coddling the poor? I guarantee you have assumptions that you are not being skeptical about. So do I. The question is are you constantly questioning your assumptions and trying to update them with current information or are you only willing to accept information that confirms what you already know?

It's up to you to decide: are you a skeptic? Do you think skepticism is a crucial skill or is it a danger to your beliefs? Do you have the impression that a skeptical world is a cold, dark place devoid of love or meaning?

All the gods I don't believe in.

One of the problems frequently encountered in religious debate is that everyone has a different definition of the god(s) they believe in. This creates a moving target for the atheist expressing skepticism regarding those beliefs. There are at last count something on the order of three thousand different gods that humans have worshiped; here's a non-canonical list of them. In addition, there are thousands of sects within various religions all claiming to worship the same god but attributing different personalities to them effectively creating new gods in the process. Then there are Deist gods who are undefined but nevertheless divine by nature and pantheism which holds that the universe and everything in it is some sort of manifestation of godhood. It's exhausting. So here I will go through a top-level list of gods I don't believe are real.

     1. I don't believe in any gods that are responsible for the creation or function of the universe.

If you have evidence to demonstrate that your god is the author of all and that nothing can exist without your god then show me the evidence. Your personal conviction is not evidence of anything except that you're convinced. I need more than words to believe, I need independently verified peer reviewed observation. That then brings me to my next point:

     2. I don't believe in any of the gods that must be argued into existence.

Philosophical arguments from Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways through to the modern modal ontological argument are not evidence, they're speculation. Speculation only ceases to be speculation when you can present evidence that can be independently reproduced and does not depend on a desire to believe before it can be observed. Claiming that life is dark and ugly without your god doesn't show me your god is real, it shows me you have no imagination. Invoking love and beauty doesn't prove your god is real, it proves you view life through a very narrow lens and I have no reason to limit myself like that. Threatening me with dire consequences doesn't convince me of anything except that you have no argument. Arguing for your god doesn't impress me, evidence does.

     3. I don't believe in any gods that are interested or interceding in our lives.

Gods have been depicted as everything from humans or familiar animals with super powers to a single omnimax entity greater than the whole of our universe. I could see how people might think the super-powered gods might take an interest in our affairs but the omnimax god doesn't make much sense. It would be like us focusing on a small batch of mitochondria within our bodies and declaring that everything revolves around them. But regardless of power level, I just don't see any reason to believe there are gods intervening in our lives. I get the same results praying to Zeus, Wotan, Jesus and Ganesh as I do to a jug of milk. Repeated studies find no effective change in outcomes from prayer except those corresponding with the placebo effect and you can replicate that result just by letting people know you're wishing them well.

     4. I don't believe in any gods that have the power to suspend natural laws to perform miracles.

Miracles are tricky things. They never happen when anyone can test or verify them. A discouraging number of them have been debunked, even the "official" ones. They're always held up by the faithful as evidence of their gods' power but they're rarely convincing to anyone else. I rarely hear of devout Hindus experiencing a miracle from the Christian god or devout Christians experiencing miracles performed by the Muslim god. But let's assume for the sake of argument that these miracles really did happen as claimed; where's the evidence? Even an ethereal, extra-temporal omnimax god would necessarily leave traces when interacting with our universe, also known as "evidence." The evidence presented for these miracles is always subjective and typically anecdotal. There's never any evidence that skeptical researchers can point to and say "that must be of supernatural origin, because it violates causality."

     5. I don't believe in any of the gods that have been presented to me because I've not been given convincing evidence that any of them exist.

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it as long as it continues to be applicable: I'll believe anything you tell me as long as you show me evidence appropriate to the claim. Nothing else will do, and you're only wasting your time if you think you've come up with a new argument or example for why I should believe. If your evidence wouldn't win you the Randi Foundation Million Dollar Prize then it won't move me, either.

The Path of Least Resistance

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.

Justifying Belief Versus Non-belief

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, nor do vampires or werewolves. That's different, we're told. Fairies didn't create the universe or die for our sins. But how do they know?

There's an endless list of things we don't believe in that don't require challenge because people aren't promoting their belief in them. They're not plastering their belief on billboards and cars and they're not voting based on how they think the unicorn living in their shoes want them to vote. We don't bother debunking such things because there's no need.

I'm often asked what I believe about the beginning of the universe or how life began. My answer is I don't know and that's okay. Not knowing gives us room to find out. We know the universe began because it's here. We know that life began because we're here and it's all around us. What we believe about those things is irrelevant to the fact that they're here. All that remains us for us to figure out the details. But it's hard to do that when our search for answers is hindered by declarations of faith that have no justification and don't fit the available evidence.

The burden rests on non-believers to challenge these justifications. It shouldn't be; we shouldn't carry the burden of proof or have to justify our non-belief. But since we're still in the minority we don't have much choice so all we can do is keep at it and keep refining our arguments. We can't have too many tools available to accomplish this task.

No More NOMA

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.

You know what raises a red flag to me? When someone tells me that what they said shouldn't be scrutinized.

If religion doesn't want to compete with science then it shouldn't make claims about reality. Talk about how it's a good thing to be nice to each other. Talk about the importance of meditation and creativity and appreciation of love and beauty. These are nice, safe topics that don't provoke skepticism. Everyone appreciates a good song and a hand extended in generosity. But if you're going to talk about souls and gods and divine plans then be prepared to butt heads with science because your beliefs can only survive in the gaps of our knowledge, and those gaps are closing slowly but surely. Be prepared for the day when there's no space left.

Evaluating Truth Claims

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?

Scientism

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 as an example of scientism in the modern age when Sagan said, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” For those of you who may not be familiar with his work, Carl Sagan never once denigrated creativity, memory or imagination. In fact he had a lot to say on the importance of those topics.

It's worth pointing out that creativity, memory and imagination are all important aspects of the human experience. They help us create solutions, express feelings and communicate ideas. Without creativity and imagination it would be impossible for us to form new questions for us to test on our way to finding answers. It would be impossible to challenge the ideas we've already formed to make sure that they accurately reflect reality. In science and all other aspects of life these qualities are what allow us to do more than merely survive but also thrive.

We look to the dark and undiscovered places, imagine what their secrets are, and pour every bit of cunning we have into amazing, complex tools just to see if we were right. We cast a light into the darkness and find ourselves intrigued by the darkness beyond that and start the whole thing over again. Imagination both fuels and is fueled by science. Creativity is what turns theory into knowledge and knowledge enables further creativity in turn.

However, this has its limits. We can't invent an answer and expect it to be correct simply because we like it and want it to be true.

Scientism is a slur against people who dare to acknowledge that we are flawed creatures with senses that are not always reliable. Consequently we must approach our assumptions and conclusions skeptically, no matter how we arrived at them or how long we've held them. What accusations of scientism does is betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is and how it works. Ultimately, science is skepticism applied in a rigorous and methodical manner.

Another thing the accusation tries to do is pull science down to the level of religion. I'm often faced with accusations that they're both based on faith. Richard Dawkins shows us what science would be like if that were true.

The Problem of Evil

Today I ran across a discussion that rehashed the Problem of Evil, specifically some problems I had early on with how an all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent god can create an entire universe knowing that the fate of its creation is to have 99% of it suffer in eternal torment that it inflicts on them. Some Christians try to reconcile this by saying that their god isn't truly omniscient, or doesn't exercise his omniscience all the time (ref: Mr. Deity). Others claim that he willingly refrains from exercising his omnipotence in order to preserve free will and so forth. None that I've met are willing to concede that if he exists he saw the wholesale death and suffering of humanity and did nothing to correct it because he either doesn't care or wants that result.

The problem, as far as I see it, lies in magical thinking. You have this god who is supposed to be looking out for you and your best interests. The world doesn't really seem engineered to give you the best life experience; every day is a struggle and it often seems that events conspire against you. But this can't be possible if your life is being overseen by a loving, all-knowing and all-powerful god. Therefore there must be another reason for it, one that is beyond your comprehension because the alternative is that one of your assumptions about your god is wrong and if you follow that thought process you might discover that all of your assumptions are wrong and you might have to abandon the idea altogether. So we fall back on our default assumptions and assume it'll all make sense later on, probably after we're dead. "Jesus, take the wheel."

It's one way to cope, although the cognitive dissonance it necessarily creates is never comfortable. But Christianity has an answer for that, too: "Blessed are those who suffer for doing what is right. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them." Of course, in doing so you run the risk of ignoring obvious solutions to temporary problems in the name of validating your religious beliefs. Simple, easy things like making the world a better place instead of assuming it's pointless since your god will wipe it all away to create a new earth to live on.

Naturally, different Christians will have different answers for how they attempt to reconcile this problem. Some will deny it's a problem altogether. Others will present different variations or apologetics. Nevertheless, I haven't seen any answers that don't fall back on magical thinking. Their god created the world by magic (divine, but still magic), therefore the answers must be magic as well. You just have to have faith that it's true.

And of course, SMBC Comics offers the simplest explanation possible.