Re: Religion is irrational, right?

Catholic.com has a question/answer on the irrationality of religion, which I would like to address. You can see the original article here: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/religion-is-irrational-right

The answer starts of with the assertion that “rationalists are among the most irrational people“. They offer no basis for making such a claim, and then move on. I would call this an attempt at poisoning the well.
Let’s take a look at the answer, and try to clear up the problems.

Christianity claims there are truths which are beyond the power of reason to demonstrate, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrational. There’s a difference between what is irrational (against reason) and what is suprarational (above reason).

Actually, yes it does. This is precisely the meaning of irrational beliefs. Call it suprarational if you want (because the word is completely meaningless, just like supernatural), but holding a beliefs which is not yet justified, with reason and evidence, makes it an irrational belief, by definition.

The answer then goes on about quantum physiscs, and how it’s beyond the reasoning ability of a four year old. Frankly, quantum physics is beyond the reasoning of most people over the age of four as well, but this isn’t the problem.

• Quantum physics actually has a tremendous amount of evidence in support of it
• Quantum physics has falsifiability, meaning that it can be shown to be wrong
• Most importantly, quantum physics would have been a completely irrational belief 500 years ago

In other words, the fact that a person is limited in what he can know doesn’t mean there isn’t something beyond that. If we move from an individual to the human race as a whole, we can say that the fact that there may be limits upon what man, as a finite creature can know, doesn’t mean there aren’t thing beyond what he can know.

The above is correct, there are limits to ones knowledge, but the question doesn’t ask about epistomology, rather it asks about rationality. Is it rational to accept that there is a reality beyond reason? Frankly, I see no reason to accept that there is anything beyond our reasoning, until such time as it can be demonstrated. The last part of that sentence is key, and is the basis for a position of skepticism.

Christianity claims to have a message from beyond man’s intellectual horizon. It claims God (whose existence, by the way, is knowable even with our finite reasoning abilities) has revealed things which are beyond reason, but which don’t conflict with it. It also claims that reality as we know it gives evidence, though not proof, that transcendental truths exist. Whether this is so or not, it’s not an irrational position.

Apparently the author believes that God is knowable, but yet nobody can provide a reliable method of determining if God actually exists, rather they just claim this with baseless assertions. Regardless of there being some evidence for a claim, the God claim has come nowhere near meeting its burden of proof.

From the Christian perspective, the rationalist is like a man with a road map who, having found the map reliable in what is pictured, somehow concludes from this that only what is pictured is real. The rationalist thinks roads which go off the map go nowhere, but it’s really rationalism with its blind faith that’s a dead end.

No, actually, the rationalist is like a man in a world with only maps of Kentucy, who asks how to get from Louisville to Chicago Illinios? When nobody can give them precise directions, they attempt to drive there by faith, and end up on a dead end street in Lexington. The rational conclusion is that faith is not reliable, and we don’t know of any way to get to Chicago.
The religious person, on the other hand, doesn’t bother to take the drive, but claims that faith will get them there if they need to.

The author seems to want to conflate truth, with rationality. In truth, there are things that are true which are completely irrational to accept, because the evidence doesn’t yet justify belief. I’d put almost all religious claims in this category.  Frankly, this answer is not suprizing from a Catholic, but is almost complete nonsense.

Marriage equality

I’ve been baffled by the whole marriage equality thing for a long time, and I’ve failed to even grasp the reasons given by the “traditional marriages only” camp.

On one side we have people who love one another, want to show commitment to them, and have access to the same rights that a man and woman doing exactly the same thing would have.  There’s very little here that doesn’t make good sense.  Marriage’s are granted by the government for the purpose of increasing the common good, and allowing people to express their love and commitment to one another.

On the other hand, you have the large group of people in both the United States, and Canada, who feel that granting the right of marriage to people (who want to marry people of the same gender) would be dangerous, unnatural, and possible damn the whole country.  Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson both believed that the 9/11 attacks were the result of the US’s acceptance of queer people.  Really guys, if you believe the bible, maybe the attacks were Yahweh’s retribution for wearing two kinds of fabrics in the same cloth, or any of the 600 other commandments in the bible.  Or maybe, just maybe it was some nut bar Muslims who decided they didn’t like something.

We now know that being gay isn’t something people can just turn on or off.  Once you’re born, you’re either gay or you’re not.  To deny these people the same rights that straight people have just seems cruel.  The whole “god” argument doesn’t fly with me either.  Your god (the supposed creator of everything) created somebody gay so that they would have to live a shitty life where they hide their true feelings.  For me, this is just another nail in the Christian coffin.

When somebody can offer me a even a reasonably valid argument, with some half decent reasons, against same sex marriage, I ‘ll look seriously at what they are suggesting.  At the moment, I see nothing in any of the plethora of arguments (most of which are so silly they don’t deserve attention) to suggest that we shouldn’t allow same sex marriages.

If you’re against same sex marriages, and you have a good reason for it, let me know.  I’m always willing to hear evidence.

Women in chess

One of the more interesting aspects of the game of chess is how much men dominate.   For every good woman in the game there are usually 20-30 (or even more) good men.  At the lower ranks it’s even worse.

This is almost entirely a social problem, where women don’t want to, or simply cannot, get into the game because of social pressures and other problems.  Note that in no way do I think that women should ever be incapable of playing as well as any man, but the problem seems to be that girls are pressured by society to want to play with dolls, shop, giggle, and definitely not be engaged by something.

Technology sees exactly the same problem:  for every woman in the software engineering field, there are probably 20+ guys.  A field with almost no women is not something that’s going to encourage more women to enter.

Unfortunately, it’s a difficult problem to solve.  Without more women, women aren’t interested.  There are a couple of things that could be done to try and help reduce the problem, but I don’t really have any answer on how to get equal representation by women.  Here are some ideas:

• Increase the prizes (both value and number) for women in tournaments.  This won’t have an immediate impact, but it will keep the women involved and they may get notice.
• Youth chess is huge, and the ratio of girls to boys is decent.  Retention of the girls here should be a priority.
• Continue to de-stigmatize chess in general.  Women, more so than men, seem to feel the peer pressure of not wanting to be part of a stigmatized culture

Ultimately, we may never have gender parity, however, a better balance would ultimate help the game.  Nothing would please me more than to see women who take an interest in the royal game!

Yahweh cannot exist

The premise behind Christianity, the unfortunate religion I was indoctrinated into, when looked at from the outside seems bizarre and cruel.   If I had to sum up Christianity, it would sounds something like:

In the beginning, god got bored, created humans.  God said “Don’t eat that pie over there”, but we did anyways and created “original sin”.  Years later, god felt bad about original sin so he came to Earth in human form, created hell, died on a torture device, and allowed people a chance to be free of their original sin, all they have to do is ask for forgiveness and accept that his blood sacrifice to himself was good.

If your god is so good, why couldn’t he just forgive us without the blood sacrifice and condemning non believers to eternal torture?  My suspected reason:  He doesn’t exists, and never has.  He’s a made up creation of bronze age mythology that had the almost unique property of being the one god.  Read your bible if you want to find out how cruel and merciless he is.

To date:

• I see no evidence that he exists, or has ever existed
• I’ve never heard an argument that comes close to being good
• The arguments for him seem to be ‘believe or burn forever’

Atheism is absolutely the correct and logical path to take, until such a time that somebody can provide good evidence for their god.

Presuppositional Apologetics

I’ve had the misfortune of running into videos of Sye Ten Bruggencate ,and Eric (son of Kent) Hovind, and I have to say I’m quite both impressed and unimpressed.  Sye is very good at shifting the topic of the conversation around, and always trying to shift the burden of proof back onto the someone else.

For those of you who don’t know the argument, it goes something like:

“Can you be wrong about everything you know?”

If you answer, somewhat honestly, “yes”, you’re beaten because he’ll claim that you have no source for any knowledge claim (because if could be wrong do you really know it) and you’re not worth debating.  If you answer “no” (which is justified), he’ll ask you “How do you know that what you know is true, actually is true?” (or something like this).  “Reason and evidence”, says the rational person.  “How do you know reason and evidence are valid without using reason and evidence (which would be circular)?”  At this point he claims victory because his god has provided him the knowledge that reasoning and logic are valid, but as somebody who doesn’t believe in a god, you can’t know that, so everything is out the windows.

As a syllogism, well, to be honest I don’t actually know what his argument is.  As best I can tell it’s the simple “you can explain it without god so nah nah.”  But let’s try anyways

P1.  God existsP2.  Logic and reason are valid
P3.  Logic and reason can only be valid if god exists
C.  God exists

Well, given that one of your premises states as such, this isn’t much of an argument.  In addition,  Sye claims to have had a special visits from god and was told that reason and logic are valid (as well as that’s he’s real and the bible is all true).  If you’re getting mysterious messages from some outside source, how do you know that source is ACTUALLY your god, and not something that mimics your god (or just a delusion)?  You want me to have faith that you’ve had a real revelation, when  there are crazy homeless people who are also claiming the same thing (somewhat less eloquently mind you.)  Sorry Sye, but I’m going to need some good hard evidence of your claims.

Hopefully, this is the best argument the religious apologetic movement can ever muster.  “I had a personal revelation that says he’s true, and if you don’t believe me you’ll burn in hell forever.”

Now I have just one thing to say to the presup’s out there:  Screw off, and don’t come back until you’ve got at least a sound argument