Behe Responds to the Kitzmiller Decision

ID proponent Behe responds to the Kitzmiller decision (previously discussed here and here ). Specifically, he responds to the Court's finding that "intelligent design (ID) is not science."

Here is his conclusion:

The Court's... reasoning is premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; an incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory with the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID.

Via The Panda's Thumb, who points out the following:

Most often, Behe’s answers consist of simply repeating the arguments he made at trial, as if the Judge was just hard-of-hearing instead of utterly unconvinced by them. And when Behe does try to explain himself, the outcome is often worse.

But go ahead, read it for yourself.

Which God Do You Believe In?

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. --Stephen Roberts

The [God] that can be described is not the eternal [God]. --Tao Te Ching

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it --Michelangelo

As far as I can tell, no two theists believe in the same God.

Does God have a gender?
Does or did God literally speak to people?
Is God a trickster who created a universe to look billions of years older than it is?
Did God dictate the Bible word for word?
Is Genesis literal truth, truth in the language of its day, or mythology?
Does God want anything of us?
Is there a Heaven?
A hell?
Do dead people come back to life?
Is God the same thing as the Universe or the Multiverse?
Is God loving? Wrathful? Both? Neither?
Are we God?
Is God in everything?

I could come up with hundreds of these questions. Maimonedes came up with 13 answers which he (sort of?) believed all Jews needed to believe, but even those are controversial.

In short, the theists are right when they say that God is unknowable. As an atheist, I agree. :)

But what's an atheist? Do I disbelieve every possible definition of God? No, I believe in love and in the Universe and some people say God is love or God is the Universe.

All I can do is describe what I don't believe in.

Perhaps that's ultimately a path to a God.

When I was a smart-assed computer science student, I was faced with a test question which I was sure had a mistake in it. Instead of trying to figure out if I was misunderstanding it or asking for clarification, I decided to set out disproving the question's consistency.

I wrote a page and a half of text, numbers, and equations trying to prove that the question was wrong. Half an hour later, though, I reached the end of my calculations and found that not only was the question right, but I'd reached the correct answer by trying to disprove it.

Maybe theism is the same way. Maybe some theists just saw the question "What is God?" and quickly reached the right answer.

But for me, all I can see right now is that the question rests on a false assumption. Perhaps by trying to disprove it, I'll return to theism. (I doubt it, but I must admit it's possible.) For now, all I can do is figure out all of the gods and religious claims I don't believe in.

Theists who want to know God should take atheists seriously. We might turn out to be your best allies.

Quote of the Day: Religion as Theater

I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock. --Howard Stern

(Disclaimer: not a big Howard Stern fan.)

Stern could just as well have said "I don't think there's any difference between [an Orthodox Jew waving a lulav and esrog | a Mormon wearing special underwear | a Pentacostal speaking in tongues | a Baptist dunking a baby underwater | a Muslim kneeling on a praying rug] and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock."

On this blog, we often debate creationism vs. evolution, divine revelation vs. the documentary hypothesis, and absolute vs. relative morality, but sometimes I have to just marvel in the sheer wackiness of religion.

Sometimes I just want to throw out all the arguments and just point and say, "Look how ludicrous this stuff is!" But everybody thinks their religion's unique and true. It's just everybody else who's crazy.

There's a more substantive point here, though, and that is this: religious ritual is theater. It's designed to produce an emotional reaction in the observer/audience. In and of itself, it's meaningless. Turn on your television one Sunday morning and watch a televangelist with his fire and brimstone and sing-song voice and emotional arguments disguising logical fallacies. It's simply a tool for the leader/entertainer to manipulate his/her audience.

How many people would believe in religion if their emotions weren't manipulated by calculated showiness? What if you had to sit down each potential convert (or ba'al teshuva) and explain logically what your religion was all about without any singing or kugels or fancy garments? How many people would become religious? People fall in love first with the rituals and the lofty promises; they accept the rationalizations later.

Children, too are raised into religion more by emotions than by reason. Some of this is unavoidable, of course. Children simply don't have the capacity to reason at an adult level. But look how much effort is put into directed emotional manipulation for religion. There's ritual and Bible stories and Left Beind movies and Santa for Christians and Elijah for Jews. ("Look! Can't you see the wine receding!") And how much is put into emotionally manipulating children into believing in the Big Bang or evolution or relativity? Basically none.

Perhaps we skeptics should fight fire with fire. Maybe we should make up a bunch of stories about science and skepticism to tell our children at night. We could a write a skeptic's Bible with stories loosely based on the destruction of the library at Alexandria and Marie Curie's discovery of radium. We should tell them that Einstein was ten feet tall and Newton lived until 200. Galileo could move the planets just by whispering some magical equations. Once, Mendel created a bean pod that was four hundred feet long!

It would be ironic, for sure, to teach science by manipulating their emotions, but maybe we need to look at the ends instead of the means. Maybe we should create rituals involving altars to Darwin and giant turtles as his priests. We should make bracelets in the form of the double helix and tell our children that Watson and Crick will protect them from evil. (Or maybe they'd say "WWW&CD?") Perhaps we should have a day of rememberence every year for the dinosaurs who went extinct. We can celebrate the equinoxes by wearing elliptical hats and tilting ourselves a little to the left for the day.

It's always just facts and skepticism, facts and skepticism, with us skeptics. It's boring and anyway you'd need to live in an ivory tower to believe in that stuff. We need to get with the program.

(**extracts tongue from cheek**)

I Got Visited by Jehovah's Witnesses!

I argue with theists who are trying to convince me of their views online all the time, but it's rare I come across one in real life (other than old friends and family from Orthodox Judaism.)

Half an hour ago, two very nice older ladies rang my doorbell, introduced themselves, told me that they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and asked if they could talk to me about God.

I smiled and said, "No thanks, I'm not interested."

The apparent spokeswoman asked, "Can I ask why not?"

"Well... I'm an atheist."

"Oh!" She smiles at her companion. "We were just talking about that. Do you think that humanity will be able to overcome all the problems that the world is facing today?"

"Hmm... I hope so," I replied. (In hindsight, I'm sure we won't be able to overcome ALL of them.)

"So you do think about that sort of thing?" she asked.

"Yes, of course." I smile again.

"Can I ask why you're an atheist?"

Here I paused. I didn't want to launch into a rant and I was trying to end the conversation, so I sort of choked. "Well, you know, evolution and stuff."

No response. Then she gestures towards her companion and asks, "Well, if we find some literature that we think might be new to you, can we come back and give it to you?"

I smile again. "No thanks, I've done my research."

"Okay, well have a nice day!"

"Thanks, you too!"

I know I didn't change any minds. If I had wanted to get into it, I could have ranted about the immorality of refusing necessary blood transfusions for yourselves and your children, or about believing in a God that lets only 144,000 people out of 6 billion get into Heaven. But I'm not here to argue with little old ladies that their entire worldview is fraudulent and immoral.

That's why I have the internet. :)

Atheist Testimony, Free Verse Style

I Am An Atheist

A presentation given to the Key West Unitarian-Universalist fellowship. It is a 20 minute reading in verse and the title should be self explanatory. While it may offend some, many people find it entertaining and informative. I hope you are among them. I am available to do this presentation and others to be found through my home page. For more of these, go to http://alseye.com I would appreciate your comments.
presenter: Al Brenner

(via IIDB)