The ringing ostinato on the wrong side, the simple melody, the master and music inseperable. My eyes close, ringing fills my mind, first the brown colored experience, then a fit of desert sand.

The first drop, a low note on the bottom string, I know this part, I can play it. It pushes me, "Further, it whispers." Further into an abyssal darkness, a kind of quiet world. There is no fear in this abyss, it’s not an angry world like advertised by some minds, but rather a kind of sleeping dark, a place of pure thought. I will into this world a dream, a star, a string — the cosmic kind — nothing escapes the faculties of my mind and reason.

The triplets — Oh the Triplets! The former ostinato becomes a rolling hill. Verdant, the sand sprung to life, trees and birds — yellow and blue, finches and larks. High notes, deep drummed notes, the strum. The master’s hands crash against the strings in a fit of thunderous fury. The storm breaks over the quiet hills, lightning and thunder, rain and sleet over the trees, the birds are silent now, the crashes and the howling wind. The sky dark as a dagger splits into furious factions — on my right hand twisted armies of grotesque, beautiful demons roar; a legion against the storm. On my left the lightning, furies of gods older than I, the rain — washing as a flood — the hail and the sleet, cutting as thrown knives do. Then the calm.

The calm, quiet prelude to the war to end all things, an apocolypse contained in eight steps. The bloodied mouths of the demon horde drool with ravenous anticipation, the bright white lightning ceases for a moment on the side of Titans, the din is gone, the battle looms.

One man — I — stands in the middle, I become the master, I feel my fingers morphing and bending to the shape of the note. The first melody returns. The demons driven back by the sweet sound of a single bird echoing those sounds. The titans realize their folly and retreat; I am not the master, but I seem to inhabit him. His music fills my ears and my music fills the air’s, the demons vanish, the storm lifts, all that is left is wet grass. The strum flashes again, a last aftershock of a forgotten almost-war. Mean-whiles and never-weres and all manner of monster lost to time. All disapear, all burnt before the fury of a single melody. The wet grass lay beneath my feet, the cooled air drifts across my fingers, the melody again, the trees again, the flowers and the fields and the birds — oh the birds!

A ringing ostinato on the wrong side, the melody fades into a final, quiet strum. Another story told, another legend ended, and the old world fades back into view.

I loved that fucking dog.

He died a few years ago, that mutt was my best friend. I know it’s cliche, but they really don’t judge you, he was always happy to see me even if I hadn’t been the best caretaker. I hadn’t been there much for the last few years he was alive. I’ve always felt like I let him down somehow. He wandered off one day into the woods and never came back — though I think that might be one of those comfortable lies my family has decided to tell me to help me deal with the fact that they put him down. He was old, he had a good life.

I loved that fucking dog.

His name was Randy, we played a lot. I talked to him, he listened. I would tell him my troubles and he would advise me that the proper solution was to feed him large quantities of human food, as it made him happy to receive it. By making him happy, I would be happy, and all would be right with the world.

I don’t know why I’m talking about him, this whole thing is half experiment in free-writing, half two-in-the-morning rant, half cocked and half shot-off and who the hell knows what kind of fractions are going on here.

I just miss my dog. I feel a little alone sometimes, I think we all do. We all have a friend we hold close and lose, a companion which leaves us for whatever reason. Maybe they move, maybe they just fall out of touch, maybe they die.

December seventh gets a lot of press. Before 9/11, it was the last time we had been attacked — really attacked — as a country. No one ever talks about December eighth.

I think it’s an interesting thing, that as a culture we are so good at remembering the initial shock of tragedy, but not the long pain of recovery. Look at 9/11, we are horrified by the images of burning towers against a cobalt sky, but we don’t think about the hundreds of people who were mutilated by the falling debris, the people who had (and have) chronic breathing issues from the dust. No, those people don’t seem to matter — only instant death is important, not slow suffering.

Look at Hurricane Katrina, people remember the shocking images of houses submerged and debris-filled-former-streets. People forget that, even now, New Orleans is a broken city. Many still have not recovered from the long term effects of the Hurricane.

No one thinks about the soldiers who survived the attack, the ones who had no cherry-red-lipstick "M" etched on their forehead by inexperienced nurses, overwhelmed by the gore. No one seems to remember these men and women who were too hurt to survive but not hurt enough allieviated from their pain by morphine.

"M"

Why don’t we react to this psychic stress? The 3000 who died in 9/11 — horrible, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in the Second Oil War — who cares? The hundreds who died in Katrina’s onslaught — horrible, the thousands who died in the botched reaction, due to unsafe, unsanitary conditions — that’s just fine.

I recently read a quote from "A People’s History of the United States" by Howard Zinn (I fear I’ve just tagged myself an uncivilized radical, I am okay with this. I’m unkempt, unkind, and proud. I am caring, I am human). In which he talks about a man, another professor, he of Columbian (as in, Columbus) history, and the founding of the new world. This professor buried one line about the horror Colombus and those who followed him cast upon the Arawaks and other Native tribes. Slavery, Deathcamps, abject slaughter as livestock to an abattoir. He buried it in one line, in a page extolling dear old Chris’ virtues. Zinn responds by noting that this historian didn’t try to hide the truth, or lie about it, he just tried to make it unimportant.

Why do we seek to make the ugly things unimportant? As horrible as 9/11 was, it wasn’t that ugly. What was (and is) truly ugly is the flurry of death it gave painful birth too.

3000 deaths were enough.

Some say America as a power is fading, that other nations will soon take their turn as leaders on the global stage, I welcome the loss of this mantle of supposed responsibility (nothing we have done as a nation can ever be confused with any notion of being "responsible"). We are a broken nation, a broken culture, we have been for a long time. We think we are great but we are not. We hide from the ugliness, we hide from the bitter memories of our youth. We hide from the death, and genocide, and evil that we have done.

The Civil War

The Trail of Tears

The Massacre of Natives in General

The Corporate-Sponsored, Uncle Sam Approved Wars for Profit.

What are we?

Hiroshima

Who are we?

Nagasaki

We are a broken people. We are too hurt to survive, but not hurt enough for the cherry red

"M"

These are the titular words. No profanity lies in any individual word, no deep offensive tone, no words amongst them means something vile. Together, though, they are the worst words, the most vile, hurtful words that can be said.

"Stop saying that."

I feel dirty writing them. The word "fuck" has been considered a terrible word for a long time, but it has no comparison with this phrase. Censorship is the worst sin commitable. Censorship against anyone, be they Atheist or Theist, be they Right or Left, censorship doesn’t just offend, it kills.

It kills culture, culture lives on controversy. Sociologists may disagree, but consider — how is our culture defined? Is it defined in peacetime? Are our collective mores and values defined when things are simple and straightforward, when the peaceful leader leads and the lion lay with the lamb? Absolutely not, it is defined by Depressions and Wars and Recessions and Death and Controversy.

I recently heard about a Facebook group with the (perhaps in the grand scheme, unfortunate) name "FUCK JESUS CHRIST". I heard that many thousands of people wanted to shut it down, for being offensive to they’re christian natures.

"Stop saying that."

Nothing offends me more than someone telling me to stop speaking. Freedom of speech is freedom entire. Not just freedom from censorship by the government, or from private entity, but censorship from anyone.

No one should be able to force me to "Stop saying that."

"But the majority wants it."

Bullshit, the majority of this country wanted to prevent the civil rights of black people in the 60s, they were wrong. They wanted the Panthers and King and all of those who wanted fairness and equal rights to "Stop saying that." Their words made them uncomfortable, their words made them squirm at the thought that a Black man might be treated like a White one.

Who’s ideas are disgusting now?

Yes, the name of the group is grossly offensive. No, I don’t agree with every single thing the group stands for. Yes, I could choose to keep silent in this solitary time which calls for screaming. But I will not, I can not, it is against the nature instilled into me by my raising. I was taught to believe that all words were sacred, even the damning ones, even the ugly ones.

Yes, Mom, you don’t like this group. But you cannot stand for censoring it. You cannot because it is wrong.

There are many groups which advocate the notion that Atheists are not true americans, that Homosexuals are "less than" and that we are all, collectively, going to suffer and die for all eternity in the hands of a malevolent, vengeful demiurge. These words are deeply offensive to me.

There are many groups which say I should not be afforded rights, that I am an agent of all that is evil, that I am not fit to be a parent, or to be a human being.

These words offend me.

Yet, still I stand here, silent. I will not tell them to stop, no! I will tell them to sing those words louder. Shout those offensive syllables everywhere, and I will shout mine. "FUCK JESUS CHRIST!"

"FUCK ATHEISTS"

"FUCK EVERYONE"

But I will never tell anyone

"Stop saying that."

That said, Tom, if you feel I’m being unfair in my characterization of your argument, feel free to respond. I’ll add notes to this post indicating your disagreement, and respond to them in turn, in a different font or something. I will not delete anything I write here, so that in the future, I will not (if I were of the nature to do so) be able to deny having said it. I want this to be a fair and logical discussion, with no author/commenters bias. I say this here principally as a disclaimer, and so that in the future, no one will think otherwise. I respect your civility (I’ve had lots of uncivil commenters in the past), and as such I want to encourage it by being as fair as possible to you.

Okay, now for the fun part.

* Factual Errors

 First, just some factual errors. Hitler wasn’t an atheist. It’s a common mistake, since many ascribe that the use of social darwinism (a pseudoscience, I might add) requires atheistic beliefs, because only atheists could be so evil/whatever (so the usual gambit goes). However, as we can plainly see in here that Hitler spoke positively of Christian beliefs, and even referred to the Christian God as "His Lord and Savior" — now, this does not mean Hitler was Christian, but I don’t know of any atheists who would do that. Further, I’m not trying to imply that Hitler was the kind of Christian you or any other modern Christian is (for the most part, the KKK often claims they are Christians). In reality, I think that Hitler had a perverse notion of Christianity in which the Nation was the direct manifestation of God. However, I do my best to leave the Nazi’s out of discussion. As I do with Stalin, and Torquemada, and the myriad other piss-poor examples of human beings from history. These people had messed up beliefs, poor systems of ethics (Stalin was not the kind of atheist I am, his system of ethics and his beliefs were vastly different from mine and most atheists today).

 Further, Darwin did not imply that the "weak" should die — at least not in the sense you mean it. Darwin observed a fact. Those creatures who are not as capable at survival tend not to survive. This notion that Darwin advocated running around and murdering the weak is ridiculous. Babies are weak, and incapable of surviving on their own, the assertion that Darwin says the weak should die would imply that Darwin thinks we should go around murdering babies! But this is a gross misunderstanding of the theory. Evolution, particularly, natural selection, is just an observation of a fact, not a mandate. Furthermore, the notion of "weakness" is dependent on the environment. That is, I have poor eyesight, so in a long range marksmanship test, I am "weak" — I am thus likely to lose the test. However, I am very good at mathematics. The same person who may have bested me on the marksmanship test is now the "weak" one, and will likely lose if presented with a complicated math problem. Thus, this notion of Social Darwinism (which is what we’re talking about) is bunk on it’s face. The idea that we should actively "select" the "strongest" is stupid — we have, nor does there exist, any notion of fitness which is good for all environments. Hilter did not apply social darwinism, he applied genocide, and tried to justify it using psuedoscientific jargon. Darwin’s ideas weren’t the inspiration for the Holocaust, they were just abused to become a justification for it. A piss-poor one at that (though, I think there is no justification for the mass slaughter of 6 million jews and 5 million other minorities).

Still further, Darwin didn’t "complain that keeping unhealthy people alive in hospitals and asylums must be detrimental to the human race", nor did he conclude "We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind." At least, not in any of the books by Darwin which I’ve read, If you have a source, please provide it. Those things sound more like propaganda provided by Goebbels than any scientific observation by Darwin.

* The Argument Proper

Moving on, we’re actually moving back to talk about the substance of your argument, beyond the factual errors, let’s consider the first portion first, namely your discussion of — to sum up — "How evil requires an absolute standard"

First point, you make the assertion that the existence of evil requires a absolute standard, I disagree. If you’ll pardon a little math lingo, I can define any arbitrary standard I care for to the set of all human actions, and call it an ethical code (eg, something that delineates good from evil). More or less, I assert that I can arbitrarily ascribe an action to be good or evil dependent on nothing more than random chance. Is it a "good" ethos? Well, it is in the sense that it’s as valid as any other, but it does not appeal to our intuition of what is "right" and "wrong" morally, and there’s the rub. Humans have a sense of "morality" a notion which is more emotional than logical, there is an intrinsic "rightness" to some actions and a "wrongness" to others. However, where you see God, I see evolution and altruism. I argue that morality is principally genetic in nature. Namely, that as populations of creatures grew, it became evident that sometimes the sacrifice of an older member of the group (in some way, whether sacrifice means death, or other ill-effect to the ability of that creature to propagate it’s genetics) to protect a younger member was genetically "worthwhile" as the next generation would thus have more opportunity to propagate the genes of the species as a whole. Thus creatures with strong altruistic tendencies tend to spread their genes more, thus there become more genes which cause altruistic tendencies [2], thus there are more creatures who are altruistic, and so on. As mentioned in [2], this set of basic instinctual acts — protect the young, defend the tribe, don’t kill other tribemembers etc — become cultural mores, which in turn evolve into things like "Stealing someone’s car is immoral" etc. That is, I argue that a system or morals evolves based on ones culture.

But this implies that morals can vary across cultures — and sure enough, they do. If you examine the morals of aboriginal people of the various regions of the world, you find that some cultures treat Honor Killings as a moral necessity. Are these practices ethically sound? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I think they’re horrific. If you ask someone with a different ethos and set of mores, you may find otherwise. That is to say, I don’t disagree that we judged, say, the defendants at the Nuremburg trials absolutely, but it was only absolute within the framework of western ethics and morality.

What’s more, Morals change over time. At one point, it was considered immoral to marry someone of another race, that is no longer the case. It was similarly considered morally acceptable to own slaves, persecute Protestants, etc. None of these things are considered valid anymore. If morals were granted by God and are immutable and absolute, how can it be that morals have changed so much over time?

In general, the existence of evil is determined by ones culture, but every culture has some definition of evil, so consider an omnibenevolent God in any culture, the existence of evil in that culture — I argue — is contradictory with the notion of an omnibenevolent god within that culture. So really, this is an error on my part, I should have specified that the definitions of evil and omnibenevolence are indexed by culture, but I still hold that the overall argument holds within a specified culture, and I was simply arguing from "our" particular culture. Thus, evil does not require an objective standard universally, but rather a objective standard within the particular culture where the argument takes place.

Thus, I argue, the atheistic argument is not invalid, in fact it is quite valid, given appropriate specification — I was implicitly arguing from a particular cultural definition of "good" and "evil". This is somewhat ethnocentrist of me, and so I should have been more careful, however the argument is sufficiently parametric to function in any context, after noticing that the good/evil question is not absolute. I leave you then with the following question, which I dearly love to ask, a kind of thought experiment.

Consider if your particular god (so that we remain polymorphic over all gods, I don’t specify which one, just assume it is "absolutist" in his or her moral code) ordered you to murder all shorter than 5′ 6”, without prejudice or hesitation. This was written in no uncertain terms in a book you believe to be perfect and infallible. Is it therefore "right" to simply slaughter all of those people? Is is morally sound to do so? I argue it is not, that murder (at least in our ethos and with our set of mores) is wrong regardless of the particular deity who advocates it.

This thought hearkens back to the "Lawgiver" fallacy, that is:

1. Every law has a lawgiver
2. There exist natural laws
3. Thus there must be a lawgiver for natural laws.

However, this is an equivocation fallacy, natural laws and civil laws are not the same thing. Similarly here, evil, more specifically good, is being equated with following the absolute laws provided by some deity, which in turn assumes that moral codes can only come from a deity.

So, in summary, Tom, I disagree with your argument, however, I think you also misunderstood my argument. You end your comment with "Thus, the theist does not have to defend his position" etc. (that’s paraphrased, by the way) — but my argument doesn’t attack your god, or any god. If you observe my axioms as I laid them out in the beginning of the "Deconstructing God" series, I argued that the only gods I could address would have to obey the following rules (paraphrase):

1. Everything obeys the rules of a consistent logic.
2. There is no logic that is both complete and consistent
3. There is no unexplainable phenomenon, no inherently impossible feat within the universe.
4. Any entity must obey the Self-Consistency Principle

These rules are completely inapplicable to the God most Christians worship (I assume you’re Christian based on the content of your comments, please correct me if I’m wrong), who generally is assumed to exist outside of the realm of so-called "human" logic. What I’m saying, effectively, is that there is no way you can possibly convince me that this particular kind of God exists — that is, one that exists outside of logic — without demonstrating my axioms to be incorrect, which — I’ll be honest, I don’t think is possible, I’ve tried very hard to do just that! I just felt that there might be a little hostility / resentment in those last lines, so I wanted to assure you that I could not care less about disproving your particular deity. I just like asking questions, the whole series was mostly an intellectual exercise.

Alright, I’ve procrastinated enough, I have English homework to do, and then I get to work on Topology and Abstract Algebra, so I really want to get through the English homework…

/Joe

[1] As he puts it, which I think is not a bad bit of terminology, modulo the implicit association with fallacies, which I think is not particularly strong.

[2] Though, I would argue that altruism spreads more on the level of meme (eg, evolution of ideas, rather than genes proper. The term is due to Richard Dawkins), there is (in my opinion) some level of genetic basis to "jumpstart" the notion.

He asked me to visit the website of one Perry Marshall[1], I’ve linked to the more relevant discussion which he proudly claims to have won on the IIDB forums, his website proper is linked there. His central thesis — which is all I’m going to talk about, as his website is _chock_ full of… ahem… arguments — is as follows:

DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.

All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.

Therefore DNA was designed by a mind.

Let’s pick it apart.

"DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism." Fine, but what is a pattern, code, language or information storage mechanism? I argue that a pattern is a purely human construction — Nature has no such notion. Nature is blind, it cannot have a concept of a pattern. So sure, this premise is true, but only vacuously. This is argued here[2] and responded to here[3] with the following:

I define "Coded information" as a system of symbols used by an encoding and decoding mechanism, which transmits a message that is independent of the communication medium.

But this is not a true definition — we can apply it to anything! Solar Flares are just a simple code which indicates to other stars the happyness of that particular star, and other stars will respond in kind. Obviously since more than one star has solar flares, then there is communication between stars. They must be intelligent!

Of course, this is absurd, but the benefit of Marshall’s definition is precisely what I provided. He argues earlier in the thread that anyone who can provide an empirical example of a code that was not designed has toppled his proof. His definition requires "a system of symbols used by an encoding and decoding mechanism" and that this definition includes DNA. He argues that any other empirical example that is biological in nature, occured as a result of DNA, thus, they are all moot. Someone in the thread suggested (like my example) that photons provide a natural means of communication between stars, Perry never seems to address this, but that is likely due to the fact that the thread is _massive_.

In summary, I think that Perry is suffering from the law of large numbers. Anything observed in large enough quantities appears to have a pattern. Consider a field of wildflowers of differing colors and heights. If the field is large enough, and you admit a complicated enough interpretation, you could say that the flowers have grown in such a way as to reproduce a coded representation of Hamlet. This is the Bible Code all over again. The Bible is a massive, effectively random grouping of characters. If you have a complicated enough pattern of skips and jumps, of course you will find something, as you would in any large collection of letters. As happened with Moby Dick. So sure, DNA is a code, but only vacuously so. However, heres the rub, Perry never accepts this, he changes his definition enough so that he never has to say he was wrong. The reason this discussion ended was not because Perry won, but because he refused to argue in the first place. Instead, he clung to his fallacious argument, and those who were trying to have a logical discussion simply got bored arguing with a brick wall.

It’s not only Creationists who do this, it’s completely possible for anyone to do this. Atheist or Christian. However, this is not the case for the Atheists here, in my opinion.

Moving on, let’s consider the following:

"All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information."

Petitio Principii, "All codes are created by conscious mind" — says who? Why must this be the case — even if it were the case that Perry had a proper, valid definition of ‘code’, he still is begging the question that every code is necessarily designed. And lets not kid ourselves, "Created by concious mind" is just a sugary version of "designed by god." That is, just because we cannot find a code that Perry can’t subsequently shove into his definition of ‘non-naturally designed code’, doesn’t mean their isn’t one. Let’s, therefore, examine a parallel syllogism to Perry’s, similar to the one here[4], ours will differ only slightly.

Premise: All Computers have CPUs

Premise: All Computers are descended from the ENIAC

Conclusion: All things descended from the ENIAC are Computers

However, this is patently untrue, many things descendent from the ENIAC are not computers — Digital Alarm Clocks, for example. This is similar to Perry’s claim.

These are my issues with Perry’s claims, I find both of his premises wanting, thus I find his conclusions do not follow from his premises. However, let’s examine why Perry calls this one a "Win" — in fact, his claim is based on the idea that all those who were arguing with him stopped, but it appears that the thread is still live. I see posts from today! What appears to have happened is that those who were arguing w/ Perry started answering other questions from other creationists, and arguing with them, for whatever reason. Perry read this as capitulation, I read it as a thread evolving into a new conversation about something else. At best, this is a draw for Perry, but I’d actually call it a win for those arguing, as they now have a lovely, long term thread chock full of interesting debate, and one small aside that lasts for about 15 pages about someone who had a lousy idea, got convincingly (at least, to anyone with a modicum of understanding about the theories involved) debunked, but didn’t accept it and move on.

I’m not saying Perry isn’t sincere, I’m not trying to convince him to be an atheist. On the contrary, I don’t think it’s right (ethically) to try to "convert" anyone to anything. I think that Perry has a preconception, a preconception which apparently he is uncomfortable with, as he feels he must justify it to everyone. I have a preconception too! My preconception is that Math is the single most powerful tool we have to understand the world. This is a completely unfounded notion, but I still hold it. In fact, the position is irrational, but I still hold it. The difference between my preconception and Perry’s is that I don’t feel I have to justify it to anyone. You are more than welcome to disagree, I’ve a fair chance that my preconception is wrong, but that won’t change my preconception. Perry, on the other hand, wants to convince you to share his preconception, for what reason we cannot know, but my guess is that his preconception makes him uncomfortable, there is a cognitive dissonance he is trying to resolve, and he attempts to do so by convincing others with lousy arguments.

That said, let me respond to Tom about another thing. I’m changing the deal we made. I have no websites for you, I thought about it, and theres no way to I could give you any without feeling like I was trying to convert you. As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t think that’s ethically sound, so feel free to send me more sources to look at, I’ll try to get to them when I have time, but otherwise, my only referring website is this one.

[1] http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=135497&page=1

[2] http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?s=26648a0c67d7015d4ba8f7cf13f7d5b4&p=2691385#post2691385

[3] http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=2692636#post2692636

[4] http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=2694067#post2694067

Tu Quoque, or the “Yah? Well… you used to” fallacy, attacks a former or current position which has a social stigma associated with it (regardless of the veracity of said position), instead of addressing the argument made. Some examples:

• Alfa: “There is no physical evidence that supports the belief that psychics are anything more than hoaxsters and con artists.”
• Betta: “Well, you used to believe in ghosts, since there’s no evidence for them either, you must be wrong about this.”

Here, Betta doesn’t address the argument, but rather invokes the fact that Alfa at some point held a belief that had no evidenciary basis. Regardless of the (implied) fact that he no longer believes it. Here’s another example

• Gam-Ma: “Honey, I know you think that Astrology is science, but it just isn’t. There’s no evidence.”
• Kap-Pa: “Well, you think that 9/11 wasn’t a government plot either, shows how much you know.”

Here (in this poor, greek married couple’s dialog), we see that Kap-Pa again doesn’t address the argument, but instead accuses Gam-Ma of not believing in something else that bears a stigma in his (implied) conspiracy theorist circle. We see this kind of fallacy alot with creationists cdesign proponentists. As in this dialog, they (the proponentists) tend to pair this fallacy with an ad hominem, which is why it is often difficult to determine whether or not something is a Tu Quoque fallacy.

Speaking of Ad Hominems, you can remember the Ad Hominem fallacy by remembering that it attacks the character or repute of the arguer, rather than the argument. Here’s an example:

• Epsy Lon: “Creationism has no scientific basis in reality, whether you call it ID, Creationism, or the Flying Spaghetti Construction Theory, it’s all simply baseless, disproven conjecture.”
• Omee Cron: “Well, you’re just some stupid evilutionist! You can’t tell me my faith is wrong! You baby-eating atheist!”

Here, Omee Cron (somewhat enthusiatically) attack’s Epsy’s character with a statement that may (or may not) carry a stigma socially. Notice how, while being an atheist or evolutionist is not “wrong” in the sense of ethics (well, assuming we don’t mean fundamentalists ‘ethics’) it still carries enough of a stigma to be an effective Ad Hominem.

I hope this helps you all to remember the difference between these two fallacies. They often form (as I mentioned) a 1-2 punch of irrationality. First a Tu Quoque, then a quick Ad Hominem. Sometimes they are further combined with a Strawman too provide an easier target. Kent Hovind uses this Strawman-Tu Quoque-Ad Hominem attack all the time, watch a few of his videos (preferrably the ones debunked by ExtantDodo on Youtube) to see this.

Speaking frankly, this woman has some serious issues. Quoting from her song “Fashion”[1], the lead track on her latest album:

I am, I’m too fabulous.
I’m so fierce that it’s nuts.
I live, to be model thin.
Dress me, I’m your mannequin.

and from the same song:

I need, some new stilettos
Can’t walk, down the street in those
You are, who you wear it’s true
A girl’s just as hot as the shoes she choose

Now, I can appreciate an interest in fashion, I may not be fully capable of understanding it, but I can appreciate it. If you like fashion and enjoy it healthily, fine, but I cannot comprehend how any sane person could possibly think what these lyrics assert.

Is this what our society has become? A cesspool of vapidity and consumerism? Where the best dressed rule and the rest are treated as have-nots with no societal rights? We wonder sometimes why scientists and academics and thinkers and really smart people get shoved to the wayside for the likes of Tyra Banks and daytime talkshow hosts. Why we undervalue science and knowledge — why we demonize being smart. I roughly say — this is why.

If you can’t tell, I’m flabbergasted. This woman has gasted my flabber. Perhaps I am somehow broken, blinded that I cannot see things as normal people, who look at one’s shoes to determine relative attractiveness. Perhaps I’m a product of a bygone era where what is between one’s ears determines the quality of a human being, and not the straps of dead-animal hide attached loosely to one’s feet. Perhaps I’m simply a man out of place — in my existence, I’ve always valued one’s capability for rational, sober thought more than the ‘cuteness’ of one’s accessory. This obsession with merchandise — this is what we proffer as our legacy, to our children and there’s. A culture who at one time brought us Beethoven and Bach now hands us Greed and Consumerism, packaged about repetitive, thumping, tribal beats-of-drums.

No matter how catchy her rhythms, I will forever be turned off by this vapidity, this shallow view. She encourages consumerism as if it were virtue, I call it vice. I can only hope there is a silent majority who agrees.

[1] Disco Heaven, Lady Gaga, Track 1

A little piece of that steel comes off, the knife gets a little sharper. Psychologists say that there is a fundamental difference in how some people handle stress or sadness. Some people “ruminate.” Dwell on a problem till it consumes them, they become the problem, every moment they relive the details till it becomes traumatic and saddens them. Others, however, distract themselves.

Sometimes all you need is to sharpen your knife.

Sometimes I feel sad — some people think this calls for all manner of invocations of ritual or reliance on something, someone, or some distant deity. For me, I just need to sharpen my knife. It’s a simple task, it takes all of my attention, a four-twenty grit stone and a little water. First stroke, reverse, same angle, second stroke, reverse … It’s pointless and I know it, but it takes my mind off the myriad stresses of the day — it’s like prayer, I suppose, for those who use it. A prayer is really just a way to talk through a problem. Whether you actually speak to someone when you pray is irrelevant, the purported power doesn’t come from the deity, but the entity. When you pray, you ponder a problem from an outside space, you don’t ruminate over it, you understand it. It’s an object now, something to be manipulated and understood, not lived in, lived over, lived through again. It’s just a problem.

Theists Pray, I sharpen knives.

My way just has a practical result beyond the stress reduction — I get a sharp knife out of the deal too.

When I was a Boy Scout I learned how to sharpen my knife, how to care for it. It’s more friendly than friends sometimes. It always wants to help you, it’s useless without you, and if you’re not careful, the blade will get knicked. That’s a pain, sometimes you have to dull the blade to fix it — godawful sound of a orthogonal edge on the four-twenty grit. But it’s what you have to do to sharpen your knife.

It’s a metaphor, in a way, for every problem. Sometimes the problem just takes patience, even hundreds of strokes may not turn a dull-knicked knife to a razors edge. It may take thousands, or tens thereof to bring that edge to a fine hone. But it’s what it takes to sharpen your knife. Sometimes you have to make those godawful sounds or do godawful things that make your face cringe, your insides quake, your stomach turn and your fingers shake, but sometimes you need to sharpen your knife.

Cold steel, whet stone.
Sometimes I like to sharpen my knife.

I mean both my immediate, and my extended family. My grandparents were Catholics, the kind that listened to the “Every sperm is sacred rule”, so they had 9 kids- all of my aunts and uncles are married, all but one pair of them have kids. I have something to the effect of 30 cousins, plus my brother and sister.

All of them (except my sister, and perhaps one or two of my cousins by the one remaining catholic uncle) are creationists, most are young-earth creationists, one likes Kent “I-don’t-pay-taxes” Hovind. My cousin, who we’ll call Mike, so as to protect his privacy (I have no cousins named Mike), had Expelled on his computer. Thats the level at which my family’s views differ from my own.

I spent most of this afternoon in Hanover, MA. At my Aunt and Uncle Hovind-fan’s house. I love my family, but sometimes I feel so alienated from them — I really feel like the black sheep. I guess the point of this is to allow me some reprieve from the incredible sadness I feel because I don’t think like them — the sadness I feel because they can’t see the beauty… not without hiding it behind their religion. People oftentimes wonder how I, as an atheist, can see any point in living — since there is nothing, no one, to live for. The unstated major premise of course is that the only thing worth living for is one’s religious beliefs or one’s diety. I don’t live for those things — I didn’t even when I was a christian. I wonder sometimes if people really think like that — if they really think the only reason worth living is for this invisible man. I try to imagine the way in which my brain was twisted to believe such a thing. I don’t mean to say that you must be twisted or deranged or something to believe these ideas, I mean that I cannot physically remember how to cause my brain to accept these old ideas which I now find demonstrably untrue. Sometimes my family tries to convince me that my position is incorrect, and I should come back to the “fold”, as it were. I always get the same feeling, and I imagine they get the same, I always feel as if they are bumbling through the hallways of cognition — eyes closed even though the lights are on — trying to find a way to me, to pull me back. I feel that I have opened my eyes — at first blinded, but slowly adjusting to the light. A searing, painful, beautiful light which simultaneously begs me to stare and orders me to look away. It’s as if I’ve been focused so intently on this tiny little world, only to be yanked back by common sense to see the whole starry cosmos sitting — silently — before me. I think that they feel the same way — but I can’t find a way to remember how it felt when I did what they do to me, to others.

This blog post is, as you may have noticed, markedly different from my usual fare — if not in the flowery language which I so dearly love, then certainly in the tone. I know that I usually write very technically, but I felt retrospective this 2:30am, and as such I decided to write. I think the point of it is partially for solace, I don’t like being the black sheep, and partially as a plea for a kind of — a kind of new family. Not a replacement for the old, but an addition to the previous 50-or-so brood. One thing I miss about being a christian is the constant reminder that ” we are family”. Atheists, Nonbelievers, etc sadly lack this feature, I think. It’s been said before, and now again, we are not good networkers, we are individualistic, mostly — our beliefs belie our nature. I wish though, that sometimes, sometimes I had a familial relationship with other likeminded folk. I talk to a few nonbelievers on occasion, but it’s never been a familial or friendly relationship, it feels more like being with a comrade-at-arms, than with a close cousin.

I suppose it really boils down to a fundamental sadness — like that feeling you get at first after realizing that Santa wasn’t real, or that Barney the Dinosaur couldn’t be incanted by dancing around a stuffed facsimile. It was that dread feeling of “Nothing is the same anymore, I can never go back”. At first, you are sad, or even scared — depending on the context, but soon — soon you realize that you have embarked on a brave new adventure. A world which those you left behind cannot see. They are still bumbling in the dark, blind to the great white light of possibility. Perhaps I’m being fantastical, perhaps not, but where my family may see god, I see opportunity to learn. Their minds stop short at deity, my mind dares to drive past it. I don’t mean to sound smug, but it feels to me like they are limited, and I hate limitations — on anyone. Limitations, constaints, rules. I hate rules! I seek to break them whenever I can, the rules are a lie! But they are beholden by them, I just — I feel so much I cannot organize it into a coherent notion. It’s anger and sadness and disapointment and excitement and perhaps a sprinkling of fear. I want them to see what I can see — I want them to feel the wonder that I feel. When I look at the world I see machines and mechanisms and myriad moving parts — all they get to see is the hand of an invisible deity. They can never see the beauty and the wonder of the nothing-at-all, and not because it is impossible for them, but because they have their hands over their eyes. To see the universe — working and moving and bending through time and space, and then to willingly cover your eyes? I cannot comprehend it.

I just want them to see it, I just want someone to see it.

I vividly remember the first time I saw a bird, and understood what it was. It was a yellow finch, a small little yellow thing which fluttered around a birdfeeder in fall at the Old Country Gift Barn in Mendon, I sat there and stared as it flew. A flash of yellow and it was gone, off to a high tree 10– 20 feet away. I was stunned, I didn’t realize something could be that beautiful, that vibrant. I didn’t realize until then that it flew– the thing flew. I was quite young, maybe 5 or 6. I understood that birds could fly, but I never really grasped the concept. When I finally got it, I jumped up, I told the first person I saw, “They fly!” I shouted, to my poor mothers chagrin, “They fly!” I finally realized what the idea meant, I finally realized that things could fly.

I vividly remember the first time I truly understood evolution and physics and cosmology and all those things, I remember, to myself, whispering, “Beautiful.” It was the same sense of wonderment and understanding I had when I was six, and I saw the birds fly. All I want is for my family to have that feeling.

I’m sure by now my paragraphs have become more like the lunatical ramblings of a manic-depressive martian robot, and so I’ll stop, I don’t know who may read this- but I only ask you this, try to understand one thing. They fly.

Let’s start at the beginning.

It’s true, I’ve never taken a “real” IQ test. I have read _quite_ a bit about them though. I’ve cited some links which are representative of the materials I’ve read, there is more- and if you feel that those sources are somehow biased, I am very open to being presented with new evidence.

First, for those not aware, I just want to summarize the history and original purpose of the Stanford-Binet IQ Test and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, another important intelligence test which is based on an earlier test due to Wechsler-Bellevue[7]. Note that I’ve cited the Wikipedia entries for these ([2,7,8]) as being relatively representative, I’ve read other materia that. To be frank, I don’t want to bother finding, this is just a silly internet argument after all. One that does come immediately to mind is Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of a Man.

The Stanford-Binet (SB) IQ test was the first intelligent test devised, it started with the psychologist Alfred Binet — after being commissioned by the French government — attempting to develop a method for identifying children with low intellectual ability or intellectual defect for placement in special schools[8]. Binet himself noted that this test should be used for the sole purpose of identifying such children[1] and was not to be used as “a general device for ranking all pupils according to mental worth”[1*]
Binet recognized that intelligence could not be describe by a single number, that theissue was fundamentally more complicated than that. The test (and associated Simon-Binet scale) he created was for the purpose of categorizing children.[1,2(Criticism,Binet)].

The latter test (the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale/WAIS) was, as mentioned, derived from an earlier test[7]. Weschler defined intelligence as, “The global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his/her environment.”[7*]

A note of pedantics here, This is not what I would consider the colloquial definition of intelligence. Most associate intelligence with education, I want to make clear, they are, at least as far as the WAIS is concerned, different. Further, I would like to note that this is not a particularly precise definition- it encompasses all action, rational or irrational, as long as it is purposeful, but what do we mean by purposeful? Do we mean simply one whose actions are “under control” in a physiological sense? If so, then that would seem to imply that someone with a Motor-control disease, like Parkinson’s Disease, would be unintelligent- at least in that regard. If it means to that actions are well-thought out and rational, than isn’t the definition redundant? As the next criteria is the ability to think rationally? What does it mean to deal effectively with ones environment? What does it mean to deal effectively with anything? Again, I think the only logical conclusion is that the definition is equivalent to saying “Intelligence
is the ability of one to think rationally.” Which, I might note, is not a particularly bad definition, except that it is fairly narrow, and really attempting to test only logical ability. An important note for later.

The WAIS consists of 14 subtests and results in 3 scores. A verbal IQ, a performance IQ, and a composite, or “full-scale” IQ.[7]

Now let’s take a look at the subtests of the WAIS. It should be noted that, between the two tests, I find the WAIS to be better overall, but still lacking.

* Information subtest
This tests, for lack of a better term, social trivia. The example given in [7] is “Who is the president of Russia?” I argue that this is not a test of intelligence by the definition given, or more accurately by the constructed result — namely that intelligence is equivalent to the ability to be rational. This does not test my rational reasoning skills, my logical capabilities
or otherwise.

* Comprehension subtest

Similarly, this tests ones social “awareness” or “common sense”[6]. Again, I argue that this does not fit the definition, and is superfluous.

* Vocabulary subtest

A quick note- while I find that this too also fails to meet the definition- it is important to realize that the WAIS is an english-based test, non-english speaking minorities will naturally score lower here. Of course, one could simply translate the test, and we will assume that such would happen in the event of administration of such a test.

Now, I could go through every subtest, but it will be significantly quicker to simply state those I think do fit the definition. You may retort here, “This is a strawman, you’ve simply constructed an easily defeatable WAIS test.” But- I argue (obviously) that I haven’t. My argument is thus, the operational definition for the WAIS test is shoddy and redundant. I attempt to eliminate the redundancy, out shakes the parts of the test which follow only from the redundancy, and we are left with what remains.

Here is my list of “qualified” (in the sense that they contribute to a measurement of intelligence by its definition) subtests:

* Similarities, but only to an extent where the questions are fundamentally noncultural. Eg asking a someone who has never seen an apple or pear what the difference between the two is will obviously lead to a poor score. Not because the person is unintelligent, but rather because they have no cultural knowledge of _your_ culture, rather than having no knowledge of _any_ culture.

* Arithmetic, assuming it involves basic proof-esque questions. Eg “Find the error in this chain of reasoning” or “complete the argument.”

That’s it. Two out of the 14 tests really seem to fit the bill at all. So I’m forced to ask, How are either of these

a) Representative of the intelligence of the entire person?
b) How do either of these give any kind of implication on Vocabularial Intelligence?

Perhaps you can clear that up for me.

Before we get to the SB-IQ test, lets talk generally about some criticism of the _idea_ of an “Intelligence quotient”

First, we have to ask ourselves, “Is intelligence static?” That is, can you become smarter over time, or are some people naturally more intelligent and others not so. I’d argue that, depending on how you define intelligence, you can get any answer you like. Therein lies my greatest issue with IQ and intelligence psychometry in general, Either the definition they give is uselessly narrow- like the reduced WAIS definition above- or they are uselessly broad, and generally thereby redundant, like the original WAIS definition. If perhaps we were able to nail down a satisfying “Just right” definition, I would be more apt to accept these tests. But personally, I think the river is too wide to cross when it comes to intelligence.

Binet, as we have seen above and in [1], thought that his test and similarly intelligence as a whole was a non-fixed quantity. That is, your intelligence could fluctuate over time. Looking at the SB-IQ test itself lends why that might be true. Specifically the SBIQ Test covers (generalized slightly for space):

* Verbal Comprehension and Vocabulary
* Spatial / Visual Reasoning (Paperfolding problems, Mental Shape Rotation, etc.)
* Math/Arithmetic
* Memory
[from 9]

Now- let’s examine each. The first- Verbal skills- gets better as you get older. Certainly a 10yo child speaks with better vocabulary than a 5yo child, and similarly a 15yo better than a 10yo, and so on. Our vocabularies grow as the result of social interation. Similarly our Mathematical and Memory related abilities grow with age as well. We know from Psychology[10] that even the most basic kinds of memory
like Object-permanence don’t start until around 2yo. And similarly concrete reasoning skills only start around 7-8. It takes us till 11-12 to get to the point where abstract reasoning is possible[10] I would similarly argue that Spatial and Visual reasoning grows with age as well.

So- There you have it, that more or less sums up the research I’ve done modulo the time I’m willing to commit here. I just want to cover one other topic for another commenter. Specifically about Class/Income and IQ. Since these replies are fundamentally connected, I don’t want to separate them, so for the remainder of this post, I am addressing user:thaumaturgy, and not user:contrarian.

First of all, this is a very common issue, and has historically been a source of great debate (_viz_ [11]), I would argue that access to knowledge is a integral part of both of the most common IQ tests (WAIS and SBIQ, and WISC (in effect, WAIS for kids) too) and fundamentally controls the result. As you can see above, the better part of these tests boils down to education. I score highly on math tests because I have studied it intensely- I learned how to do speed arithmetic and learned how to speed-read and comprehend. Therefore I score highly on those sections of the test. Speaking in a general sense, the question boils down to- are these IQ tests testing how educated you are, or are they testing how many tricks you’ve learned to beat them. I would — as you may imagine — argue the latter. If a child is born to a lower-class family, does not have access to good education, does not have time to sit and study in the library, he will score — in general — lower on the SBIQ or WAIS. On the other hand, a child who was born to a middle-upper class family, had access to good education, access to the internet, access to a library and time to make use of these things will score better. IQ tests measure education, class influences heavily on education, vis a vis, class heavily influences IQ. If you feel that this is a poor argument, you are entitled. Perhaps I cannot see the fallacy I’m making, but it seems to me that the question that IQ purports to answer is “Are you intelligent” and a necessary followup question is “Is this nature or nurture”. My response is that IQ does not answer the question it purports two- but I still answer the latter as “both.” There is obviously going to be some element of nature involved in intelligence. Nature has a nasty habit of getting into everything- regardless of whether we think it should or not, but also I think it’s obvious that nurture, and specifically class-status, similarly influences your ability to be educated, and thereby your IQ scores.

* I lifted the quote directly from this article. I trust it can be independently sourced to
be from Binet.

[1] http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia014.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ
[3] http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2007/12/gladwell-problems-with-iq-tests.html
[4] http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-30-2005-67806.asp
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
[6] http://www.personality-and-aptitude-career-tests.com/about-iq-tests.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford-Binet_IQ_test
[9] http://www.answers.com/topic/stanford-binet-test
[10] The exact reference escapes me, but it’s in the Development section (Ch. 3) of _Invitation to Psychology_
by Wade and Tavris, 4th edition, 2008
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence