Author: VD

Pity the poor cam whores

Either Andon failed Reading Comprehension 101 or we are facing an imminent Internet tragedy:

jumping from high places – always fatal. injecting kids with vaccines – almost never fatal. comparison warranted.

The central problem with this critique is that the comparison that was made was not between jumping from high places and being vaccinated, but rather between being filmed and being vaccinated. Still, I should be truly fascinated if Andon genuinely wishes to argue that being filmed by a web cam is intrinsically more deadly than being injected with poison. Perhaps, I can only imagine, he subscribes to the notion of the camera stealing one’s soul?

And yes, as always, these are real critics and genuine attempts to “correct” my reasoning.

Dissecting Divine Hiddenness

This is one of the more feeble arguments against the existence of God I have encountered, but since I haven’t actually critiqued it before, I thought I would take the opportunity to do so now. From Wikipedia:

The argument from nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) is a philosophical argument against the existence of God, specifically, the God of theism. The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, and therefore, this weighs against God’s existence. This argument is similar to the classic argument from evil in that it affirms inconsistency between the world that exists and the world that should exist if God had certain desires combined with the power to see them through. In fact, since ignorance of God would seem to be a natural evil, many would categorize the problem of divine hiddenness as an instance of the problem of evil.

1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).

This argument is a dreadful one because it manages to be unrelated to the Biblical God as well as logically fallacious. Even if it wasn’t outright admitted in the very description, it is trivially easy to demonstrate that the argument cannot possibly apply to the Christian God by simple reference to the Bible. Contrast these two statements:

a) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
b) ““Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal, I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious.” Hosea 9:15

Since perfect love both proscribes hatred and is not equal to conditional love, the argument clearly fails to apply to the Biblical God at the very first step. As can be readily verified, the verse from Hosea is only one of the many verses in the Bible that describe, in some detail, those whom God hates, in some cases, with a self-described passion. Therefore, it is patently obvious that the argument from Divine Hiddenness has absolutely no relevance to the Christian God.

As is so often the case, the atheist argument is dependent upon an intellectually dishonest bait-and-switch. The argument doesn’t, and can’t, apply to the Christian God, and yet is presented as an argument against the Christian God, thus relying upon the failure of the interlocutor to notice the substitution of a hypothetical and nonexistent “perfectly loving god” for the actual God worshipped and described in the Bible.

Moreoever, the argument against the imaginary “perfectly loving God” even fails in its own right for the following reasons:

1. It is false to say that God must be perfectly loving since the available evidence, both observable and documentary, indicates that God is not.
2. “No reasonable nonbelief” does not follow from “perfectly loving”.
3. There is no evidence that reasonable nonbelief occurs. There is, to the contrary, considerable evidence that most nonbelief is both unreasoning and unreasonable.

To understand how astonishingly illogical the argument is, consider the following variant utilizing the same “logic”.

1. If there are frogs, they are purple.
2. If a purple frog exists, no ribbetting will be heard.
3. Ribbetting is heard.
4. No purple frog exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there are no frogs (from 1 and 4).

Thus by the Argument from Ranine Hiddenness we are able to conclude that no frog exists, even though our conclusion flies in the face of the observable fact that something out there – though clearly not a frog! – can be heard going ribbet, ribbet. And frankly, I think I’d be more impressed with the intellectual prowess exhibited by the average frog’s ribbets than by the cretins who produced this illogical drivel.

So, I will now pose the obvious question to Smiley, who was good enough to bring this argument to our attention earlier this week. Do you still find the Argument from Divine Hiddenness to be “infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian?”

UPDATE: In the interest of spelling things out more slowly for those who are too ignorant to realize that the Christian God is the God of the Old Testament as well as the New, and are too lazy to bother looking up the various other references I mentioned, I will point out the obvious. “But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” – Revelations 2:6.

In which I quote Instapundit

HE’S A SCIENTIST — you can’t expect him to be good at math:

Heh. Of course, in fairness, given that Gleick only has a B.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from Berkeley, there is a very good chance that he never took much in the way of math or statistics courses.

As I’ve previously noted, one of the dirty secrets of science education is that most science majors study very little in the way of logic, history, math, or statistics, which is why they so often reveal themselves to be every bit as clueless as the average individual whenever they venture outside their very narrow areas of education and professional expertise.

A dance of desperation

In addition to proving the old adage about scientists finally struggling up to reach the final peak of knowledge, only to find the philosophers already ensconced there, this latest attempt to dance around The Great Why shows the increasing desperation of the scientific godless:

It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation….

Dr. Krauss delineates three different kinds of nothingness. First is what may have passed muster as nothing with the ancient Greeks: empty space. But we now know that even empty space is filled with energy, vibrating with electromagnetic fields and so-called virtual particles dancing in and out of existence on borrowed energy courtesy of the randomness that characterizes reality on the smallest scales, according to the rules of quantum theory.

Second is nothing, without even space and time. Following a similar quantum logic, theorists have proposed that whole universes, little bubbles of space-time, could pop into existence, like bubbles in boiling water, out of this nothing.

There is a deeper nothing in which even the laws of physics are absent. Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them? Here Dr. Krauss, unhappily in my view, resorts to the newest and most controversial toy in the cosmologist’s toolbox: the multiverse, a nearly infinite assemblage of universes, each with its own randomly determined rules, particles and forces, that represent solutions to the basic equations of string theory — the alleged theory of everything, or perhaps, as wags say, anything.

There is, of course, a fourth type of nothingness. And that is the amount of scientific validity contained in Krauss’s desperate attempt to use a fraudulent veneer of science to avoid the obvious conclusions driven by the relevant philosophic logic. This isn’t even science fiction, it’s just purely evasive fantasy. If I were to seriously propose that full-grown unicorns, little rainbow-colored horned equines, could simply pop into existence, like bubbles in boiling water, ex nihilo, people would rightly dismiss me as a fantasist and a possibly insane one at that.

But substitute “universes” for “unicorns”, and suddenly, we’re talking science!

Guilty of what?

John Derbyshire points out that New Jersey is dabbling with throwing out the rule of law on behalf of a sexually aberrant minority and doing so with the full blessing of Republican governor Chris Christie.

[A] year last September, Dharun Ravi and another freshman, Molly Wei, used a webcam to secretly watch Clementi kissing a young man Clementi had picked up…. Three days after that, Clementi committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge. Whether this had any connection at all to the webcam incident, is not known. That Dharun Ravi thought his prank might drive Clementi to suicide is preposterous; that he intended that result is preposterosity squared.

The homosexualists were up in arms none the less, and every damn fool politician in New Jersey joined in the hue and cry. Chris Christie, who I think less of every time he opens his fat mouth, quote: “I don’t know how those two folks are going to sleep at night, knowing that they contributed to driving that young man to that alternative.” They don’t know that, Governor, and neither do you, and neither does anyone. They played a trivial prank; Clement killed himself; cause and effect are not obvious, certainly not established to any fair evidentiary standards.

I find it no little amusing that a suicide three days after a minor, if potentially emotionally upsetting event is supposed to be conclusive evidence of “murder by reckless manslaughter” whereas when a doctor injects poison into an infant, who goes into seizures and dies within 12 hours, it is considered impossible to determine cause and effect and the very idea that the poison injection might be responsible is scoffed at as unscientific.

This is little more than a show trial, meant to publicly communicate the message that homosexuals are innocent victims of society and injuring their feelings by failing to approve their actions at all times is evil, bordering on criminal. The irony is that Dharun Ravi is obviously far less culpable for Tyler Clementi’s suicide than those individuals who repeatedly urged a psychologically unstable young man to not only indulge his abnormal sexual desires, but to identify himself by them.

The military supports Ron Paul

It’s strange, how the candidate who is supposed to be crazy because of his “insane” foreign policy is so strongly supported by the military, who actually have to carry out the dangerous tasks that are so cheerfully set for them by Republican and Democratic chickenhawks alike:

Current and former service members staged a rally outside the White House today in support of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Several hundred troops and their supporters attended the event. The veterans were men and women, young and old, some in uniform and some in plain clothes.

The demonstration was a mostly silent affair, with the veterans standing calmly at attention in rows. An organizer bellowed that each second of quiet was for every military suicide since President Obama took office. A second moment of silence was for each soldier to die abroad under the current commander in chief.

The ironic thing is that many members of the military openly despise their slobbering Republican “supporters” who are so eager to show their enthusiasm for the military by waving flags as they send its members off to die for Afghan democracy, Iraqi oil, the national security of Israel… and whatever the purported rationale for being in Somalia was.

The NFL on Tebow

Michael Silver, who was never inclined to be a natural Tebow fan, nevertheless put together a short and interesting history of the Denver quarterback’s remarkable season, beginning with his first start against the Dolphins:

I don’t have a problem with what Tim Tebow’s doing with [his outspoken Christianity]. I’ve seen him try to articulate why he has the belief and why he believes the things he does, in a very easy way to understand. He’s not the guy, when the cameras are put in his face, saying, you know, “Praise to God, because he supernaturally let that ball hit my receiver!” You know what I mean? But he’s up-front with it, and he makes many people uncomfortable. I do have a problem with what the Christian community is doing with his faith, that they are almost becoming a cult following. I think it’s an “us” problem, not a “him” problem.

Like Dilfer, I have no problem with Tebow whatsoever. I still very much doubt his long-term future as a starting NFL quarterback, but I like him, wish him well, and have thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment he and his team provided last year. He is an excellent role model as a person, a player, and a competitor, but he is not a theologian, a prophet, a pastor, or a proof of the existence of God.

There is no reason why Christians shouldn’t cheer for men like him and Jeremy Lin and wish them continued success. But rather than pray for their sporting success, pray for their ability to resist the temptations that will inevitably be presented to them. It doesn’t matter if the world that the world sees Christians are good athletes. It does matter that it sees they remain strong men of good character, regardless of what fate throws at them.

Kurt Warner: “Often we want to focus on the individual and the great things he’s done, kind of like Tim Tebow, and rightfully so. But the thing you always notice in the Bible is that the result of those things is other people believing.”

The grand climate climb-down begins

It looks as if the global warming scammer who hoped to concoct a reverse Climategate may have been identified:

FEBRUARY 20, 2012: Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.

Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.

An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with.

A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.

In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.

Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.

We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days.

There are several interesting things about this action and subsequent confession, which it appears may soon be followed by further confessions. They are as follows:

1. Contra their feverish insistence that the Climategate emails didn’t reveal anything significant or do any serious harm to their cause, it’s obvious that the global warming scammers believe that they did. Hence the document theft and release.

2. The stolen Heartland documents that were released didn’t actually do any harm to the anti-AGW cause or it would have been unnecessary to forge any documents.

3. The global warming scammers understand that they have failed to convince enough people that the scientific consensus is settled. In fact, they’ve now reached the point that so many people reject these assertions that they’re doing damage to the credibility of science and scientists by association. This is why Gleick is, as the Heartland press release correctly points out, ludicrously trying to claim that it is HEARTLAND that is attempting to stifle “rational debate”.

4. They’re getting seriously desperate. Which makes sense. In times of severe economic contraction, there will be significant pressure to stop funding all science that isn’t of immediate practical benefit, to say nothing of obvious junk science like what passes for climate science.

The consequence of this is that more scientists – who are herd animals, after all – are going to find that they cannot participate in the scam any longer. We’ll know that it’s over when clueless science fetishists like PZ Myers belatedly admit that because there isn’t any global warming, Man isn’t causing it and the science that they claimed was definitively settled never existed in the first place.

Losing the next war

I don’t care how much the USA spends on its military. It’s all but guaranteed to lose its next major war:

The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training. This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldn’t push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding, York said.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this too, but it seems to be me it’s been years since I last heard some Republican attempting to justify the latest federal encroachment by babbling “we are at war”. In light of this nonsense they’d bloody well better hope we’re not.

Portrait of a facepalm

This is an actual dialogue from the comments that I felt deserves to survive the heat death of CoComment:

Agnosticon: There’s a lot of mens rea in this argument. [The Divine Hiddenness argument.] It is basically a legal analogy. A rational disbeliever allegedly does not have “guilty mind” and should therefore still be worthy of salvation, however he isn’t, a contradiction. Rational justification here is equivalent to non culpability, while that may not be full justification, it is not unjustified either, it occupies a gray region. I think the argument rests on the assumption that God would be wise enough to perceive this and avoid it, but He doesn’t, hence no God.

VD: It is a stupid and logically invalid argument, as I will demonstrate when I get around to it. And, as I have pointed out on many occasions, legal and moral culpability are two very different things. Regardless, arguing about the fact of God’s existence on the basis of Man’s law is self-evidently stupid.

Agnosticon: At least it doesn’t question beg, as does arguing for the existence of God based on God’s Law.

VD: There is no “at least”, it’s simply invalid. And who is arguing for the existence of God based on God’s Law? If you still think I’m doing that, you’re simply demonstrating your intellectual limitations again.

Agnosticon: I’m not saying that. I’m just anticipating some circularity in the rebuttal to the [Divine] Hiddenness argument, but I’ll wait until you give it.

As a general service to commenters here, let me recommend that you read this and contemplate the wisdom of not publicly attempting to defend an argument that you have made by comparing it favorably with an argument that someone else has not actually made, but that you anticipate them making. Even if an argument is intrinsically flawed, you can’t burn a bloody strawman until the straw is gathered and assembled.

And on a tangential note, I’d be curious to know what the regulars here deem the over/under on the percentage chance that Agnosticon can successfully anticipate the structure of my arguments, much less the actual argument itself?