ET is Impossible?

According to the Bible as interpreted by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, ET cannot not exist. Ham recently posted one of the brighter gems in the usual grimy dreck of religious silliness. Entitled “We’ll find a new earth within 20 years” it explains why intelligent aliens cannot exist.

Now the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space. I certainly suspect not. The Earth was created for human life. And the sun and moon were created for signs and our seasons—and to declare the glory of God.

And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—the Savior of mankind.

Jesus did not become the “GodKlingon” or the “GodMartian”! Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the “Godman” as our Savior. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that we see the Father through the Son (and we see the Son through His Word). To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is just totally wrong.

An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race—human beings who are all descendants of Adam.

I sometimes make fun of religion. There is no meanness intended by this -- I just think there is something strange about an adult having an invisible friend. Maybe I just have a hollow spot where my bump of reverence is supposed to be. That doesn't mean I think religious people are necessarily evil or good or indifferent but it is obvious that some are sillier than others.

That said, I agree that Ham's interpretation is correct given the text and context of the Bible. I just don't buy it. I know there are other sects of Christianity that interpret the plain language of Biblical cosmology in a less than literal manner. I don't buy their hand-waving explanations either. It may well be that we humans will never encounter another intelligent species but that is because the Universe is big place and, I think, intelligence is rare.

Especially rare over at Answers in Genesis.

Is Everyone Religious?

This essay was sparked by a post on Ex-Army entitled Everybody's Religious. Normally, I would have just posted a short comment but Google's gstatic is screwed up again so I was unable to. That gave me some more time to think about the question.

So, is everybody really religious? More importantly, am I religious? The more I thought about it, the more I realized the answer to that question really depends on how I define "religion". The definition I have used for decades is a positive one:

A thing is a religion if it asserts the existance of at least one of:

1. the divine or
2. an afterlife.

That seems pretty simple and straight-forward to me.

• Christianity is a religion because it asserts there is a god (or gods, depending on how you count them) and it asserts the existence of an afterlife (resurrection).
• Islam is a religion because asserts the existence of a single god and it asserts the existence of an afterlife (resurrection).
• Hinduism is a religion because asserts the existence of a pantheon of gods (in some versions this is conceived of as a single god) and it asserts the existence of an afterlife (reincarnation).

Since either one of the above characteristics is sufficient to to make a religion I can add to the list:

• Theravada Buddhism is a religion because it asserts the existence of an afterlife (reincarnation) but not the existence of the divine.
• Sadducee Judiasm is a religion because it asserts the existence of a single god but rejects the existence of an afterlife.

There is a whole lot of human group behavior that does not fit the definition of religion above. For example, line dancing does not assert the existence of the divine nor of an afterlife so it is not a religion. Still, it seems to me that my definition is a pretty generous interpretation of the concept of "religion".

So, am I religious? So far, I find the evidence for the divine and the afterlife is insufficient to non-existent so, according to my definition above, I am not. However, there is a second, even more liberal, definition I infer from some of the half-baked arguments I've read over the years. I call this a negative definition because it does not require any positive assertions:

A thing is a religion of it takes a position on the existence of at least one of:

1. the divine or
2. the afterlife.

Using that definition atheism and agnosticism are "religions" (though I think line dancing is still exempt). Both take a position on the existence of the divine: Atheists do not believe it exists. Agnostics say it is impossible to know. A definition of religion that includes atheist and agnostics as "religious" strikes me as woolgathering but it does seem to summarize the arguments from the everybody-is-religious positions I've read.

I am sure there are more combinations of criteria regarding what constitutes a religion. In fact, each of us can define it pretty much anyway we want. So, unless all parties can agree on what a religion is, there is no possibility of rational discourse on the subject.

The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians -- and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay* fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe -- that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
-- H L Mencken, in The American Mercury, January, 1924

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*Though the term "gay" was already being used to describe a homosexual male by the 1930s, I am pretty sure Mencken was using it the sense of " having or showing a merry, lively mood."

The Nature of God

I rarely post anything about atheism here. I have no particular reasons for avoiding it but my atheism is like my hair or my teeth -- I've had it for a long time and, with reasonable care, I'll have it until I die. However, when I tire of writing about the important questions out there I sometimes fall back on it.

About a month ago, I made a tongue-in-cheek comment on Facebook combining two commonly asserted characteristics of God with the nature of evidence.

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Assume God is both omniscient and omnipotent

An omniscient god would know what evidence would cause me to believe in it. An omnipotent god would be able to provide me such evidence. But God does not provide me the evidence so:

1. God is not omniscient or
2. God is not omnipotent or
3. God does not want me to believe in It or
4. God does not exist or
5. God is just being an asshole.

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To which someone replied:

Just to nitpick you forgot a possibility: The point could be for you to believe without proof (best definition of faith i've ever heard) for some reason. Or perhaps God reveals himself to you all the time and you simply miss it.

Just to play white devil's advocate over here

Fair enough but I didn't miss those possibilities so much as I excluded them.

My argument is deductive and belief without any evidence whatsoever (faith alone) would necessarily exclude any such logical process -- Credo quia absurdum! If God has a choice in the matter (It may not) and is truly omnipotent then It would not have to obey any rules at all. Even the rules It insists we humans obey. If God is revealing Itself to me in ways I do not recognize what does that tell me about the nature of God? Not much really except It chooses to not reveal Itself. Which is the point.

The part about God being a asshole was deliberately flippant because, even if I assume the reports are reliable, there really is no reason to assume that God is playing an honest game. Heck! maybe the whole salvation thing is a con and our reward in the afterlife is determined by when we die -- odd numbered souls go to heaven, even numbered souls go to hell. I am not aware of any conception of God that requires It behaves as we humans expect.

Prediction my Ass!

Barhardt is making a big deal* -- again -- of "Communist-Homosexualist Infiltration" (My, doesn't that sound evil?) of the Catholic Church. It is mostly just a collection of the half-baked raving I've come to expect from her but as one of her "proofs" she cites the Second Secret of Fatima making a big deal of the "prohecies" therein. She asks:

How did three children know the name of the next pope, who wouldn’t even be elected and thus given the name "Pius XI" five years before the fact? How did three children foresee and date World War II?

The so-called miracle at Fatima happened in 1917 while WWI was already raging so predicting its end is not too remarkable. Wars come and then they go. Similarly, predicting the beginning of another war (assumed to be WWII) is not exactly evidence of precognition.

How about that part about predicitng the name of of a future Pope. OK, that could be a real prophecy. Pope Pius XI (born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti) did not ascend to the Papacy until 1922 -- almost five year after the alledged miracle.

Wow!

Of course, if you are one of the half dozen people in the world who read this blog you know there is catch here. This one is simple: The Second Secret wasn't written until 1941. Every "prediction" it contains happened before the the "secret" was revealed.

Just how gullible does she think we are? In reality, any prophecy in the letters were postdiction made after the fact.

*Sorry, no link but it was posted on April 28, 2012 at 10:05 PM MST. Just in case you want to search it out.

Jesus Save Me From Your Followers.

The Mad Orge has a rant about "Super Mormons" making a stink over his wife's producion of the school Christmas play.

In one number, children sang while holding hands. That was offensive. Third grade boys and girls shouldn’t hold hands. They shouldn’t sing “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Clause.” Even though its a family song about Mom and Dad having a tender moment together… But they think its about adultry. How thick do you have to be? And then their was the hanukkah song that was to immoral for their kids. It was nothing in the song, but because it was Jewish. Don’t get me started about everything wrong with that…

From: My Mormonism is better than yours

There are people out there who look for excuses to be offended. It is no suprise to me that a significant number of them latch onto religion as an excuse for their neurotic failings. In truth, most of the few Mormons I've met and whom I knew were Mormons were pretty decent people. However, they may have been good peoel but that does not necessarily make them good Mormons.

So what makes for a good Mormon?

Beats the hell put of me. I can no more answer than I can tell you what makes a good Catholic, Jew or Baptist.

I am fortunate that I was born with a hollow spot where my bump of reverence should be so all the talk of gods, goddesses, god-neuters, demigods, avatars, etc. leaves me yawning. I think I can recognize a good person but a good follower of whatever religion? I suspect it is like recursive, self modifying code. A religion is what its followers make of it so, if they make it into crap, then crap becomes the new salvation.

That might explain why so many of them act like think their shit don't stink.

On a Clear Day I can See Bulgaria

One of my guilty pleasures is reading the blog Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart. Recently he put up an interesting post on belief in God entitled Does Believing in God Arise from Our Evolved Theory of Mind?. It's a pretty good summary of the present state of thinking about the evolutionary origins of religious belief. By way of introduction, Arnhart mentions Alvin Platinga's assessment of the various arguments for the existence of God(s).

In God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (published in 1967 and 1990), Alvin Plantinga offered assessments of the various arguments for believing in God. He concluded that the best argument was based on the analogy between believing in other human minds and believing in the Divine Mind. Although we have direct access to our own minds through subjective experience, we have no direct evidence for other human minds. But except for the radical solipsist, we regard belief in other human minds as a reasonable inference from our experience with other human beings. Similarly, we might conclude that although we have no direct, observational evidence for God's existence, we can reasonably infer the existence of a Divine Mind as a more perfect version of our human mind. Plantinga concluded: "if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter."

I've never seen the sense in that argument. The original version I read was presented in a confusing manner that may have sounded profund to the author but, I think, really made it look desperate. A -- ahem -- Hail Mary play.

I'm just a dumb 'ol Engineer and don't pretend to understand all the subtleties of philosophy. With that in mind I present my argument for the existence of other minds.

1. I have direct experience of my own mind.
2. I formulate a theory of how a sapient mind operates.
3. I have evidence other entities exist.
4. I observe other entities.
5. I see they act in a manner consistent with my theory.
6. From this I can infer that these other entities have sapient minds too.

Obviously, the linear argument above is simplified for illustration Feedback is a part to the scientific method as I currently understand it so one step may trigger a reevaluation of a previous one. For example my observations of other entities may cause me to alter my theory of sapient minds. That's how science works in the real world.

The parallel argument substituting God -- She, He or It -- goes like this.

1. I have direct experience of my own mind.
2. I formulate a theory of how a sapient mind operates.
3. I have evidence She/He/It exists.
4. I observe She/He/It.
5. I see She/He/It acts in a manner consistent with my theory.
6. From this I can infer that She/He/It has a sapient mind too.

Plantinga's problem is he pretends the same process I use to discern the existence of other sapient minds will work with the Divine Mind of She/He/It. Clearly it does not. Then he works backwards from a failed argument to argue that believing that She/He/It exists is rational.

Atheists in the Three Percent

In a recent posting on leverguns forum the question was asked:

Hmmmmm,... so, you think Christians are forcing Atheists to financially support Christianity?

Yes, I do.

Every time tax money is used to support or promote religious belief, the collectivists are stealing from me to support a belief I do not hold to. That's an aspect of socialism and I want no part of it.

In the Big Picture, there is a reality the God talkers had better face if they want this to end well. A significant minority of the so called "three percent" are atheists. Another minority are pagans. I know of a few gays and some Jews in there too. Get over it.

The only ideological purity test I have for an ally in in the fight against the collectivists is a belief in the rights and liberties that were codified by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that these rights extend to all sapients regardless of race, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, etc. I don't give a crap if you're an anarchist, libertarian, atheist or Catholic. Even Baptists are welcome.

You can save your ideological carping for the day after the collectivist boot is shoved back up their own arses or you can look in the mirror to see why you lost.