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Curse you Godless Science!

On April 16, 2010, In Religious Stupidity, Science, By The Armchair Antichrist

The preferred reality.

There are religious people who openly deny the validity of science. And there are others who pretend to accept science in order to sound more reasonable. But, they usually come to ask the same ridiculous questions.

One of these insightful questions is “You did not observe the big bang so how can you say that it happened?” Accordingly, there are other variations of this question for evolution, dinosaurs, and other things, but they are as equally ridiculous.

The people who ask these questions will often also claim to understand science and the scientific method. But, if that was true then they would know that science does not rely on strict observation of single, isolated events. Science often relies on logical inferences (i.e. induction, and deduction) to infer after the fact with experiments, models, and theories to explain what happened.

So, science is somewhat comparable to crime scene investigation. When a crime scene investigator arrives at the scene of the crime they of course did not observe what happened. But, they can analyze what was left over such as physical evidence (e.g. DNA, footprints, fingerprints) to find the person who committed a murder for example. They can make logical inferences supported with evidence and work backwards to construct the most probable course of events that took place.

This is does not give 100% certainty. And this is something that most people don’t know about science: that it is probabilistic. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we have and it has worked for us time and time again. Nothing else is even comparable. Go ahead. Try praying to your invisible friend for truths about the universe or look in your holy book for them. I guarantee the results will not be the same.

But, I digress. Even if we do observe some things directly in science many religious people will still not accept it as the truth. If you recall, creationists usually claim that that evolution has never been observed and that there are has been no observed instances of macro-evolution, which is also known as speciation. This is clearly false because I can give you an entire page (http://www NULL.scienceforums NULL.net/forum/showthread NULL.php?t=15030) of them.

The fault is not in science, but in the creationists ignorance. Their notion of ‘kind’ is vague and has no comparison to ’species’. They think speciation is modern apes evolving into humans or modern cows evolving into whales. So, they have no idea what the threshold for a new species is at all. What they are really doing is using their pre-conceived notions and applying them to science. And when that doesn’t work they blame science for ‘lying’ to them.

The solution is to have an open mind to both confirming and disconfirming evidence. Unfortunately, that is not available to them.

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Tagged with: big bang • creationist • deduction • Evolution • induction • inferences • logical • probabilistic • probable • religious • Science • scientific • species • universe

Good Old Kant

On January 12, 2010, In Arguments against God, Nature of God, Philosophy, Religion, By The Armchair Antichrist

Although Kant believed in God (not the Christian one since he was very critical of Christianity) and tried to provide logical reasons to believe in God, this excerpt from his Critique of Pure Reason illustrates some of the problems with the God concept. Specifically, it helps shed some light onto all the meaningless talk about God being outside of time, space and so on.

“If we suppose an object of a non-sensible intuition to be given, we can indeed represent it through all the predicates which are implied in the presupposition that it has none of the characteristics proper to sensible intuitions; that it is has none of the characteristics proper to sensible intuition; that it is not extended or in space, that its duration is not a time, that no change (succession of determinations in time) is to be met in it, etc. But there is no proper knowledge if I thus merely indicate what the intuition of an object is not, without being to say what it is that is contained in the intuition. For I have not then shown that the object is even so much as possible, not being in a position to given any intuition corresponding to the concept, and being able to say that our intuition is not applicable to it. But what has chiefly to be noted is this, that to such a something [in general] not a single one of all the categories be applied. We could not, for instance, apply it to the concept of substance, meaning something which can exist as subject and never as predicate. For save in so far as empirical intuition provides the instance to which to apply it, I do not know whether there can be anything that corresponds to such a form of thought.”

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Tagged with: christian • Christianity • god • intuition • logical • reason • space • substance • time

Mission Statement

On August 29, 2009, In Mission Statement, Religion, By The Armchair Antichrist

I am not expecting to convince many theists or even any at all. But, it would make me happy if I convinced even one person. This blog was created partly to give theists a point of view that is different from their own. Some of you live and interact in your own little community of believers and rarely encounter people who don’t share your beliefs. And some of you never question your faith.

You may have noticed that I am generalizing. But, you have to cut some slack for a person who has never believed in his life. At least I admit that I do not hold absolute truths. This blog was created to also show theists that what they believe is not the absolute truth. There are many people in different religions who hold different views and many people in your own religion that hold slightly different views. Furthermore, you must accept that there are many logical absurdities that you have to overcome in order to fully believe.

If you are one of those people who believe that there are many different paths to heaven and what not, you are not my target audience. I am specifically targeting people who believe that belief in a particular God and its requisite doctrine is completely objectively based and not subjective at all. These people need to understand that they do not hold the upper hand in terms of knowledge of the world and that it is up to them to explain the contradictions and explicit falsehoods present in their belief systems before they can peddle it to others.

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Tagged with: belief • believer • contradictions • doctrine • faith • god • logical • Religion • theist • truth

God’s Will or Free Will?

On August 16, 2009, In Arguments against God, Christianity, Free Will, Philosophy, Religion, By The Armchair Antichrist

Can free will exist in a world with God? I cannot see how. All that you have done and everything you do is part of his grand plan. If you are unable to depart from this plan and what his all-seeing eye has made real then you do not have free will. And if you are capable of doing so then God is fallible. This is a logical contradiction that has not been properly addressed by theists. It is either that God has a plan for your life or you have free will, but not both.

Furthermore, the choice God gives you whether to believe in him or not also lacks the element of free will. For one choice he promises everlasting peace and happiness, and for another everlasting pain and suffering. It seems that God is attempting to coerce you into one choice over another. Even in our mere dealings among humans, testimonies or confessions that are brought about through coercion are not considered valid in court.

To further illustrate, if a mugger comes up to you with a gun he will indeed give you two choices. Either you can give him your wallet or not give him your wallet. It is completely up to you to decide. But, for the latter choice he threatens to shoot you. Yes, this is not a perfect analogy. It was not intended to be. It was only to show you that there can be no free will when you are threatened to be punished for what you choose.

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