Vox Popoli

Ninja Rabbit attempts to rebut:

You seem to have confused what I said about the context of a specific claim. Let’s go back to my example, where I was referring to an incident in which the testomonial evidence of an “extraordinary claim” would need to be corroborated by some evidence that wouldn’t otherwise need to be provided by an ordinary claim. What you said about not knowing whether the plant is actually plastic, or not knowing whether the plants are really his, is true. But I think this was a rather uncharitable interpretation of my example. Let me now explicitly add that you do in fact know that the plants belong to him and that you’ve seen him water them, and you may have felt them before and so you are sure that they aren’t plastic. It’s true that I’m “assuming information,” but this is merely neccesary to prove my point by first trying to establish that the details of such a plant are known by you. The one thing that you do not know is if he specifically watered his plants yesterday. The claim that we are analyzing is the neighbor’s testimony of having watered his plants yesterday. It would probably be reasonable to believe this claim, given what we know. It’s not an extraordinary claim. We could demand some more evidence that he really did water them yesterday if we had some reason to be extremely skeptical but as far as the situation goes, we do not. The evidence required to convince someone an ordinary claim happened is not exhaustive or meticulous, for this would be impractical for accepting everyday claims needed to live efficiently.

Now, of course if we had also seen his neighbor feed his 50 foot three headed alien pet everyday, and he claimed to have fed his pet yesterday, it would similiarly be reasonable to believe him as you rightfully observe! But we’ve never seen such a pet. Indeed, the very existence of 50 foot three headed aliens is highly suspect at best. So now we have a good reason to be skeptical; this is an extraordinary claim. So this means that we can’t accept the testimony right off the bat like we can with the previous one. We’re going to need some further evidence that corroborates this claim.

Now let’s say that we could corroborate a claim about an alien or a ghost and explain its characteristics as we can with other animals. In what sense would they be supernatural as opposed to natural? How can supernatural phenomena interact with natural onesas you say about the poltergeist? Does that mean supernatural things are made of matter? Again, what does “supernatural” mean exactly?

Even if you define an extraordinary claim as something the reciever has no “tangential knowledge” of, it wouldn’t change the fact that we need to investigate that more thoroughly than a claim in which we do have “tangential knowledge.” When you talk about what consitutes ordinary and extraordinary evidence, you have to take into account the type of claim. For a testimonial claim, hearing something we have reason to disbelieve, it’s reasonable to evaluate the claim further before believing it. Scientific claims are more meticulous and exhaustive, so an ordinary scientific investigation would be appropriate for evaluating a supernatural claim, but so far most supernatural claims that I know of have fallen short of being established by such an investigation. And they would still raise all the problems I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

So if a person claims to be able to dribble a basketball, that would be consistent with our body of knowledge about physics so we can believe this ordinary claim without replicating it. But of course, we could ask him to demonstrate if we wanted. If a person claimed to do be able to levitate a basketball, that would not be consistent with what we know about physics, so we’d have to ask him to show us that before we can believe him, since that’s pretty extraordinary as far as we know, and we need some verification that would be more exhaustive than the kind we would use to believe the first guy’s claim about dribbling the basketball. So when people claim to believe in the basketball levitation without it being demonstrated, it can be considered unreasonable.

I’m not quite sure how I can spell this out much more clearly. The analogy is Ninja Rabbit’s, not mine, and the problem he’s posing in it is tautological. The only difference in the ease with which we are accepting the information for which we have no evidence is the fact that he posits different amounts of information provided in the two examples compared. But this is irrelevant, and as he admits, if he were to provide the same amount of information in both cases, there’s no more reason to believe the person’s claims about his actions in the first case despite the extraordinary nature of the second one.

A much better analogy would be to compare the claim of alien pet feeding with running into a total stranger at Home Depot, who claimed to be your neighbor and also claimed to have watered his plants – which you have never seen – the day before. This modified analogy properly separates the ordinary from the extraordinary without providing additional information to weight the comparison. And while we might find it easier to believe the stranger on the basis of his testimonial evidence, for example, asking him the color of his house or the make of the car parked in his driveway, as I pointed out before, we’re only talking about an emotional ease of belief rather than factual evidence. In both cases, it comes down to nothing more than our faith in the testifier’s credibility.

I am far more likely to believe a completely extraordinary claim from an individual I know to be a truthful and sane than a very ordinary claim from a proven liar who I know to be susceptible to self-delusions. But in either case, and contra the late Mr. Sagan, the evidence required to prove a claim is identical. Whether an individual claims to be able to dribble a basketball or levitate a basketball, he can’t prove it without demonstrating it to us, regardless of how reasonable we might feel his claim to be. The ironic thing is that Ninja Rabbit’s attempted rebuttal makes it clear that for some people, the “extraordinary claims” argument is less an insistence on requiring extraordinary evidence to accept supernatural claims as it is for an argument for accepting certain natural claims without any evidence beyond the testimonial. As for the natural vs supernatural aspect, Ninja Rabbit doesn’t seem to be aware that unless he wishes to seriously argue that scientific evidence is extraordinary, he has just conceded the argument in my favor. He also seems to have forgotten that “extraordinary claims” is not concerned with what testimonial evidence is reasonable to accept in everyday life, since the entire context of the argument, as made by Carl Sagan and oft cited by atheists, is the debate surrounding science and the existence of the supernatural.

While we’re on the subject of the supernatural, I should note that one agnostic wouldn’t mind a few appeals being thrown in that direction on behalf of her boyfriend’s father, who was badly hurt in a motorcycle accident yesterday.

You’ve got another week to prepare for the next section of Thucydides. The combination of a tournament, a game, and the start of Euro 2008 all happening on the same day rendered me hors de combat.

As for Euro 2008, my thoughts are as follows:

1. The Italians were my clear favorites until Cannevaro got hurt in training. The Germans are everyone else’s favorites, but I have my doubts about their strikers and their keeper. The French strikers are also dubious; Henry isn’t what he once was and he’s never performed that well on the world stage anyhow. And after Greece won last time – roughly the European soccer equivalent of Appalachian State winning the national title via the BCS – it seems almost insane to bother making picks. I guess I still see the Azzurri as favorites, just not as clearly, thanks to their depth. I know they’re squabbling in camp and the prima donnas are clashing over everything from playing time to mirror time, but when has this ever not been the case? Avanti Azzurri!

2. The Swiss were robbed last night. A handball no-call cost them a penalty and then they hit the woodwork on what should have been an easy put-away. While Frei isn’t the loss he’s reported to be and Yakin is much better up front, they really needed the point that a tie would have given them. With Turkey looking very beatable and Portugal looking very not-beatable, the first game probably settled the group in the Czech Republic’s favor. It just goes to show how the defense should never push forward on a partial clear.

3. The Portuguese took a while to get going, but they are going to make some noise in this tournament. What was a 2-0 game could have just as easily been 5-0 were it not for the goalkeeper’s friend coming to the Turkish defense no less than three times. They’ll walk through the group stage; I loathe Cristiano Ronaldo but he is probably the best player in the tournament since Kaka’ and the rest of the Brazilians aren’t in it.

4. I’ve never seen Turkey look this weak. They looked like they could easily manage to lose to both Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

5. If Spacebunny leaves me, it will apparently be for a member of the Swedish national team. Is it a bad sign that she suggested a road trip next week to watch one of their practices?

Speaking of woodwork and goalkeepers, I tried a new kid in goal for the first time last week, mostly because he can punt the ball well. He only played two games before breaking a finger, but he allowed just two goals in those two games. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but after the tournament a scout for Black, the pro team, asked if he’d be available next year to join their kids team at the next level up. I basically scoffed at this… until the tournament yesterday. The boy’s finger was recovered enough to play and this time he allowed ten goals in five games, but six of them were against the other big program, Blue, and of the ten only two of them were even remotely stoppable. He saved at least five shots that I was sure were going in, which was why we went 3-1-1 in the tournament but had Blue inquiring about him for next year as well.

I’ve had three other kids graduate to Black over the last five years, but this one is the most surprising because he’s shown absolutely no signs of being more than an average player over the last three years; if they’d been interested in this year’s star midfielder, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all. It’s a good lesson, though. I guess sometimes you just need to find the place that happens to suit you best.

By the way, Spacebunny and I thought we were going to be able to avoid flying a tournament flag on the car until this morning. But then, how can you possibly argue with irrefutable logic like: “first we can get a flag for the car, and then… woo-hoo!”

I’ve been feeling pretty happy that Obama MAY have proven me wrong in potentially ending the Lizard Queen’s reign of terror before it starts. Now, after reading this, I wonder if this might not actually be a frying pan-to-fire situation:

Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

I read something like that nd my first thought is that if this guy happens to get in power, he is going to kill a Hell of a lot of people. If they start talking about Light and Higher Orders, then you know there’s poison in the Kool-Aid. And if they restartthe calendar or rename the days of the week, you know the guillotines are rising.

And then, I note that this was written by a San Francisco freak who simply likes to fantasize that he’s taking part in something historically important, and I relax.

And I despise him for it:

An absolutely extraordinary auction is now taking place on eBay: It is of a Fidel Castro baseball card, signed. And the owner of the card has “improved” it by decorating it with the truth about Castro: that he is a murderous dictator, an enslaver of men, etc…. The auction ends today at 14:11:21 PDT (to use eBay’s precise language). The Castro card is the most-watched baseball card on eBay. And the third-most-watched sports item (behind two items concerning Tiger Woods). The owner has taken a lot of abuse from people who don’t understand why he did what he did – or who do understand, and despise him for it.

I have zero sympathy for Fidel Castro, he’s a minor monster who has greatly harmed the people of Cuba. I loathe all Communists, in or out of power. And yet, this is nothing but the posturing, preening vandalism of legitimate sporting history. By this logic, every adulterous baseball player should have his rookie cards defaced with the truth of his non-baseball actions… it’s ridiculous.

The Auzis begin the public push for the North American Union in the Washington Post:

Is Obama, in what he describes as this “urgent and pivotal moment” in history, seeking a broad mandate for . . . incrementalism? Does he propose to dismantle the embargo invisibly, step by step? Or will he in his first 100 days introduce a bold new hemispheric approach that would help produce the kind of change in Cuba that is long overdue? Here’s one example of new thinking he should pursue: The United States should apply to relations with hemispheric neighbors many of the lessons of the European Union and its half-century of economic and political integration. A functioning American Union that pools sovereignty is a goal worth introducing now.

I don’t think Obama will win; I don’t even think he’ll end up being the nominee come November. But this is the sort of thing I meant when I said that an Obama administration would likely be beyond our ability to conceive.

Daniel Larison makes an important point that not only addresses silly atheist criticisms of the “problem” of evil, but shows how those very criticisms indicate why atheist leaders so reliably become dictators:

Yet what these people seem to be terrified of most is the possibility that God really has allowed man such an extensive freedom, and that God is nothing like the caricatured martinet dictator that the sad New Atheists portray Him to be. Indeed, one gets the impression from many complaints against God for permitting suffering that they would very much welcome a deity who regimented and ordered their lives in order to provide maximal security and prosperity. As modern life has become in many respects easier, more comfortable and more secure, perhaps many moderns find the freedom that God has permitted them to be overwhelming and bewildering and their complaints against God are framed in terms that might be used for complaints against their fellow men: “if God really loved us, He would intervene and fix everything.” If you really cared about other people, you would want to meddle in their affairs to an obnoxious degree.

Even though God does intervene in history in dramatic, powerful and world-changing ways (see the Incarnation), what troubles the doubters is that God does not intervene more often. It’s as if they want to say, “Stop respecting my free will and just do something for me!” That this sounds exactly like the statement of a spoiled child is appropriate, because that is what it is.

As you know, I find the theodicy-related arguments made by atheists like Sam Harris to be almost embarrassingly childish. The problem isn’t that they are so easily refuted, although they are, but they put the lie to the atheist’s claim to have read the Bible. Or, at least, to have understood even a modicum of it… the gorilla can read Nietzsche…. Anyhow, the lack of knowledge and logic required to fail to grasp the concept of divine delegation and its eventual impact on the world described in Genesis and throughout the New Testament is profound.

And, as I noted yesterday, one has to have made a pretty serious committment to avoid doing any thinking about the matter in order to reach the conclusion that theodicy says ANYTHING AT ALL about the existence or non-existence of God. One can logically conclude various things about God’s omniscience or God’s character when viewed from a human perspective, but one cannot reasonably conclude anything about the state of His existence.

Thomas Sowell gives up on principle in favor of fearmongering:

One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear— or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s…. At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third-party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.

It’s sad to see one-time conservatives devolve into neocons. The idea that preventing sovereign nations is somehow a conservative concept is ridiculous. Nuclear proliferation is ongoing and inevitable; it won’t be too many decades before corporations and individuals have them or even more dangerous bio-genetic weaponry. Pretending otherwise defies both history and the technological curve, so betraying one’s principles on this basis is either tragic or absurd.

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.