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Ninja Rabbit appears to be determined to cling to the pop atheist illogic created by Carl Sagan:

When we say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the amount of evidence neccessary is probably determined by the method of evaluation. If your neighbor told you that he watered his plants yesterday, it would be a reasonable claim to believe. But if he told you he fed his pet three headed 50 foot alien, it would probably not be reasonable to believe at this particular point. Your neighbor would have to elaborate and give you evidence that this 50 foot three headed alien exists and is his pet. So in this sense, the evidence required to believe his statement required something beyond what was otherwise neccessary for a natural claim, hence “extraordinary.” The claim didn’t fit our prior well established body of knowledge and therefore required some extra proof of its soundness.

As I have mentioned before, anyone who repeats the common atheist talking point that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is demonstrating one of two things. The first option is that they haven’t actually thought about it; they’re simply echoing what they’ve heard before. The second is that they aren’t very intelligent. Those who are so foolish to add something about it being some sort of long-standing logical principle are either liars or idiots – almost always the latter – since it’s merely a quote from the pop astronomer Carl Sagan. While Sagan likely derived the concept from one of Hume’s comments, the principle was never accepted by philosophers for the very obvious reason that it is incorrect.

It’s quite amusing to hear self-proclaimed “rationalists” attempt to make use of this quote, since the claim that “extraordinary evidence” is required is fundamentally illogical. Because that which is supernatural must interact with the natural in order to be perceived, most supernatural activity will leave natural footprints which are capable of being evaluated by fully natural means. A poltergeist is supernatural, while a vase smashed by a poltergeist, a video of a vase being smashed by an invisible force, and an audio recording of an observing scientist watching a vase being smashed by an invisible force are all natural things that could be provided as evidence for the supernatural.

A proper scientific study of the supernatural, as proposed by the likes of Daniel Dennett, will look no different and provide evidence that is no more extraordinary than the evidence that is provided for any natural claim. Whether one is studying the utility of prayer, Vitamin C, or surgery in curing cancer, the means and the evidence produced will be the same.

As for the example of the watered plants and the alien pet, Ninja Rabbit has created a very poor analogy. It’s not a proper comparison. He’s assuming knowledge on the one part and denying it on the other; how do we know that the plants are actually his neighbor’s? We don’t; perhaps he doesn’t own them or even the house. How do we know if he watered them or not? We don’t. Perhaps they’re plastic. Ninja Rabbit is making a series of baseless assumptions based on the fact that because he knows other people own plants that they water, and because he thinks that his neighbor has no motivation to lie to him, his neighbor must be telling him the truth.

The reason the analogy is poor is obvious if we consider a more equitable version of it. Ninja Rabbit lives next door so he can see the plants. He knows they exist and are in decent health, so he concludes someone must be watering them. His neighbor claims to be doing so, so he accepts the claim. Now, if he also saw the three-headed 50-foot alien next door on as regular a basis and it appeared to be in good health, his neighbor’s claim to own it and feed it would be no more remarkable than his claim to have watered his plants.

It should be clear to everyone, now, that “extraordinary claims” require no extra proof of their soundness, the only difference between an “extraordinary claim” and an ordinary one is that there is usually less tangential knowledge surrounding what is described as an extraordinary one. But that tangential knowledge should not be confused with evidence in itself, especially when it does not even support the specific claim being made.

The rationale for disbelieving in the supernatural on the basis of an absence of ordinary scientific evidence for it is a perfectly logical one. (It’s inconclusive given the various forms of evidence, of course, but logical nonetheless.) However, this perfectly logical rationale also happens to directly belie the very illogical “extraordinary claims” argument. This should be obvious to any rational thinker, considering the problem that advocates of this pop illogic regularly evince in distinguishing between ordinary claims and extraordinary claims, and ordinary evidence and extraordinary evidence.

In summary: once something is proved, no extra proof is required. From a logical perspective, Sagan did much better when he remarked that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

An interesting interview with Bill Polian:

FO: Your Buffalo and Indianapolis teams are known primarily as offensive powerhouses, but Carolina was built primarily around defense. Did you focus on defense specifically because being an expansion team required a different strategy, or did it just shake out that way because those were the best players available at the time?

Bill Polian: We felt the fastest way to win was via defense. The running game. A sound kicking game. And the development of a young quarterback.

FO: Why did Carolina choose to build a veteran team that could contend immediately, but only for a short period, rather than building slowly with younger talent like Jacksonville, Houston, and Cleveland?

Bill Polian: We had to sell Personal Seat Licenses in the new Carolina stadium and therefore had to win right away.

I find it fascinating how blog interviews are often more interesting and informative than those done by journalists? The problem, I think, is that journalists tend to work towards the same sort of template no matter who they’re interviewing, whereas bloggers tend to focus on areas of particular interest.

PZ engages in the customary atheist chest-beating about his supposed willingness to engage in intellectual combat:

Somebody somewhere is going to have to someday point me to some intelligent arguments for gods, because I’ve sure never found them. And I know, someone is going to complain that I always pick on the weak arguments…while not bothering to tell me what the strong ones are.

This posturing is pretty funny. The Minnesota Atheists Talk radio show he champions is afraid to allow a paid advertisement for TIA, PZ himself doesn’t dare to so much as mention the book even though it’s inspired Sam Harris to fundamentally revise his thesis about the end of faithtribalism, and I’ve never seen any mention of the likes of a serious theological heavyweight. Greg Boyd would chew him up worse than Doug Wilson destroyed Christopher Hitchens, albeit politely.

PZ, if you’re genuinely looking for an intelligent argument for gods, I’ll be happy to give you one anytime you like. Your blog, my blog, on Northern Alliance or Minnesota Atheists radio, it makes no difference to me. But, I rather think you won’t dare, since we both already know that you don’t have an intelligent argument for the nonexistence of gods that I haven’t already demonstrated to be flawed in one way or another.

Speaking of atheist arguments, I’ve been meaning to get around to the ten arguments that were suggested by Blackblade, Endosymbiosis, Stanford and a few others here. Let’s start with Blackblade’s Argument from Imperfect Design.

The Argument from Imperfect Design is based on the idea that since the physical “design” of our bodies is obviously flawed, in manners that a human designer would have easily recognized and avoided, they cannot have been designed by an intelligent designer, much less an omniscient one, therefore they cannot have been purposefully designed. This absence of purposeful design proves that the theoretical designer does not exist. Because I do not need to argue the details in order to refute this argument, I shall concede the otherwise entirely debatable points that the human design is flawed, that a human-order intelligence could have done better, and that the Creator is more or less omniscient from a human perspective.

Now, consider John Madden NFL Football 2008 in any of its various incarnations. There are around 1,700 virtual players existing in the game, all of whom are given ratings for various physical characteristics such as Speed, Tackling, Passing Accuracy, and so forth. 99 is the perfect rating, 0 is presumably the lowest, although one seldom sees a rating south of 50. Of these 1,700+ players, not a single one is designed for perfection; even that rare player with an Overall rating of 99 does not possess a 99 rating for every characteristic. (Adrian Peterson might come close in Madden 2009, except for an INJ rating in the low 70s.)

Does this observable design inefficiency indicate that there is no design inherent to John Madden NFL Football? By no means! Perfection would be inimical to the purpose of the game, it would be a detriment to both the simulation and the enjoyment of the player; imperfection of design is intrinsic to the game. Now, we may not know the purpose of the game called Life, much less what, if anything, it is designed to simulate or test, but there is certainly substantial evidence in the Bible suggesting that Man’s imperfection is inherent to his design. The Argument from Imperfect Design does legitimately call into question both the designer’s goodness as well as his omniscience, but it does not, it cannot, call his actual existence into question. Now, imperfect design doesn’t prove the designer’s existence either, but it may provide us with certain clues as to our intended purposes.

It’s perhaps worth noting that the Argument from Imperfect Design also touches on a tangential issue, that of theodicy. Now, I have little patience for such an easily settled issue that has nevertheless troubled so many inferior minds for so long, so I shall merely point out that it is as ridiculous for humans to call God’s existence into question because bad things happen as it is for the football players in a PS/3 universe to doubt the existence of John Madden because season-ending injuries are permitted to occur in his game.

Not, you understand, that I didn’t raise my eyes to the heavens, shake my fist, and cry “why, John, why?” when Adrian Peterson went down with a season-ending injury in the last game of the 2010 preseason.

A professor explains the daunting problem of educating the ineducable in The Atlantic:

There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.

No one wants to learn everything and plenty of people don’t want to learn anything. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it is not only wrong, it’s an unconscionable rip-off to force people to jump through academic hoops in order to apply for jobs that don’t actually require those credentials.

Here we go again:

Despite strong criticism from the opposition and even its own coalition partners, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed Wednesday to give Germany’s police forces greater powers to monitor homes, telephones and private computers, maintaining that an enhanced reach would protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

A Reichkanzler asserting sweeping new powers for the Staatspolizei. That’s new. One of these days, people are going to figure out that it’s not the terrorists who are the problem, but the governments. The frustrating thing is that Umberto Eco wrote his essay explaining the symbiotic nature of the relationship between terrorist and government, Striking at the Heart of the State?, back in the late Seventies.

Apparently it’s hard to resist being the change we have been waiting for:

I think it’s going to be reasonably close through most of the actual campaign. And we all know that the GOP doesn’t mind bringing out the knives. But if this long primary season has showed us anything, it’s that Obama keeps his eye on the prize, and is far harder to knock off target than many of us believed at the start of all of this. I suspect and hope he will be the next President of the United States because of it.

Let’s just say I disagree. I think Obama’s chance at being the next President of the United States is not much better than Scalzi’s or mine. Consider the following:

1. He’s one of the most left-wing Senators in the Senate.

2. He is the most verbally bumbling presidential-level candidate since Dan Quayle. This would be more apparent if the media weren’t so enamored of him; the Republicans won’t let it slide the way Hillary had to.

3. His long-time connections are radioactive.

4. He’s been getting regularly thumped in the polls AFTER being recognized as the probable nominee.

I don’t actually think it makes any substantial difference who wins, I’m mostly just marveling at the Democratic Party’s ability to shoot itself in the head when presented with the White House on a silver platter. All they had to do was the obvious, but apparently that was just too easy. It will be interesting to see if they move to dump him, particularly after he tried to convince AIPAC that keeping American forces in the Middle East was a bad idea.

The reaction of some of the Obamanations in the comments are pretty amusing. I’m just kind of curious… if he’s not one of the most left-wing members of the Senate, then who is? Left-logic… you have to love it.

Every now and then, Jonah reminds us that he wasn’t always a Serious Bestselling Author:

The Magic Negro: That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future — an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced. That’s the change we need.

Jonah: Why stop there? Why not force oil companies to invest in perpetual motion machines, dogs that don’t poop and free holodecks for every American.

Dogs that don’t poop! Free holodecks! Now, there’s a platform that Americans can get behind.

The New Republic trips over its own redefinitions:

This is, put simply, an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibilities. Even though our standing in the world has been severely diminished by Iraq, we should at least be debating intervention in Burma.

Two questions. One, if each of us define our own moral standard as many atheists insist, isn’t the concept of collective moral responsibilities an oxymoron? Two, how can any government or society possess a morality in the first place, much less a moral responsibility?

I find it amazing that the Left, which opposes intervention in Iraq, wants to invade Burma. The only difference these days between big government liberals and big government conservatives is who they think American troops should be shooting.

CS asks for a distinction:

I was wondering if you could elaborate on the basis of an assertion that I recently saw you make on your blog (“You may now make your historically ignorant statement attempting to give science credit for that which either predates science, was created by non-scientists, or should more rightly be credited to entrepreneurial activity”) and that you also made in TIA – that it has often been wrongfully assumed that certain technological/beneficial advancements to humanity can be attributed to “science”. You reference a Current History journal article about soviet vs. US science spending in the TIA to show how massive government science spending doesn’t equal an abundance of technological/scientific advance, but I was wondering if you could point to any other material that supports your assertion; perhaps, quite simply, an example of a private industry development that people may think developed via academic science. Also, I was wondering if you could perhaps clarify your definition of the difference between developments attributable to “science” or “non-science” (e.g., would the hypothetical development of a new, effective miracle drug by academically trained/accredited scientists working for a private pharmaceutical company be a result of “science” or “entrepreneurial activity”). I realize you acknowledge the fuzzy distinction between science and non-science in the TIA and I may be generating a false dichotomy based on your treatment of this issue, but I am intrigued by your argument (since I typically would be one to credit ‘science’ by default for new advancements) and was hoping you could provide more info.

First, I note that it is deeply and profoundly disingenuous for science fetishists to attempt to claim for science technological accomplishments that predated the scientific method or were accomplished by non-scientists making use of the simple trial-and-error approach. If science is nothing more than trial-and-error, there is no such thing as a scientist; we are all scientists. The fuzzy distinction of which CS speaks is the result of two things, the incorrect expansion of the concept of basic experimentation to cover the entire methodology and the dishonest desire of science fetishists to claim every positive human technological accomplishment for science.

The scientific method is a reasonably rigorous and methodical process that involves copious record-keeping and intellectual intent. It is not merely noticing that chocolate and peanut butter happen to taste good together; baking is not science. In the same way, two young men experimenting with electronics in an effort to have fun or make money is not science; while mainframe computers most certainly the result of science, personal computers were not. To argue that a non-scientific technological development is science because it could not have taken place because of previous scientific developments is spurious reasoning, as the same logic could be used to demonstrate that the personal computer is the result of agriculture.

In answer to the question about the private pharmaceutical company, it’s not the profit motive that determines whether a given development was the result of science or non-science, but rather the approach to the problem. If a technological development is the result of the direct and purposeful application of the scientific method, it should be properly credited to science. If it is the result of the same shotgun approach to trial-and-error that was used successfully for millenia prior to the development of the scientific method, it cannot be.

I find the subject somewhat ironic, considering that despite my being occasionally labled an opponent of science or a scientific ignoramus, I probably have more patent applications and developed more technologies than 95 percent of my critics. If one of my designs were to prove useful in some scientific sense down the road, is there any doubt that it would be subsequently credited to science despite the fact that no one presently considers me a scientist or what I am doing to be science? Science is a useful, if dangerous, tool, but it is the height of ignorance and illogic to insist that Mankind could neither survive nor progress technologically without it.

Yes, I know what the media is reporting. You, on the other hand, know what credence I place in their analytical abilities and the forced tone of the coverage tends to underline my skepticism. I will wait until either a McCain victory in November or, far less likely, an Obama inauguration in January to declare the Lizard Queen electorally dead in 2008.

You got a nice Democratic Party there. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it….

UPDATE – You can’t honestly say I didn’t warn you:

He thought a little thing like winning would stop her? Oh, Bambi. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons. If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance. “It’s never going to end,” sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. “We’re just moving to a new phase.”

Even as Obama got ready to come out on stage for his victory party, the Clinton campaign announced that it had won a Wyoming superdelegate and Terry McAuliffe introduced her at Baruch as “the next president of the United States.”