Godly Aliens

Image: Kecko

I have had a few questions regarding my agnosticism and atheism from some Christian and non-Christian commenters, so I thought I would explain my position with an analogy between gods and aliens to demonstrate not believing versus believing not. I hope the three in the morning post doesn't lose its coherency...

I am an atheist because I don't believe in any gods. That is not to say that I believe there are no gods, just that I don't actively hold some belief regarding it. To assign some values to it:

+1: I believe there is at least one god. (theism)
0: I do not believe there are any gods. (a-theism)
-1: I believe there are no gods. (anti-theism)

The proposition is "A god exists." With that scoring method, I gain 0 points. Perhaps to make this more clear, let's relate this to aliens. We have the following scoring options:

+1: I believe that aliens exist. (alienism)
0: I do not believe any aliens exist. (an-alienism)
-1: I believe no aliens exist. (anti-alienism)

The proposition is "Aliens exist." Again, for this, I score a 0. It's not that I believe no aliens exist, it's that I have no belief regarding it. There may be or there may not be; I have no belief either way (I'll clarify this point later).

Just like with the god question, "alien" is not well defined. What are we talking about here? Super intelligent aliens? Semi intelligent aliens? Aliens constructing spacecrafts? Aliens who are mere life and not even sentient? It's as ill-defined as "god." What are we talking about here? An omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient god? A deistic sort of god? A personal god? A semi-powerful god? An omnipresent god? It's not really defined.


Now, my lack of belief in aliens is not simply because I do not know. You can start defining the aliens and giving them characteristics. For example: A race of aliens who are super intelligent, capable of interstellar travel, and have been visiting Earth for centuries. They are little green men, with antennas coming out of their heads, they have been abducting people for centuries, probing them, and studying them. Once they have finished, they put that person back on Earth. That's the proposition, here's the scoring:

+1: I believe these aliens exist. (abductionist)
0: I don't believe these aliens exist. (an-abductionist)
-1: I believe these aliens don't exist. (anti-abductionist)

In this case, I score a -1 because I have the belief that these aliens with these activities don't exist. Of course, I don't "absolutely know" one way or the other; they may exist. I believe they don't, though. There are many reasons that have led me to this belief: Why always abduct the stupid people? Why the homosexual overtones with the abductions? Why travel all this way for all these centuries just to study us? Why not make your presence known? Why haven't we been able to detect you?

Just because I believe these aliens don't exist does not contribute at all to the general existence of aliens or to my general not believing in aliens. In other words, my anti-abductionist belief has nothing to do with my an-alienist lack of belief.


Now, to relate this to the god question. Start defining one and I'll see what I score on it. Take the Judeo-Christian God. He created the life, the universe, Earth, and everything 6,000 years ago. He's omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. He had a son 2,000 years ago and wrote a book in his free time. He will judge everyone after they die and send them either to Hell or to Heaven, depending if they believed in the divinity of Jesus. That's the basic proposition, and here's the scoring:

+1: I believe this god exists. (Christian)
0: I don't believe this god exists. (a-Christian)
-1: I believe this god does not exist. (anti-Christian)

I score a -1 because I believe this god does not exist. Of course, I don't "absolutely know" one way or the other; he may exist. I believe he doesn't, though. There are many reasons leading to this belief: The contradictions of his magical power (omnipotence and omniscience, for example). The extraordinary amount of suffering in this world does not lead to an all-loving god. The idea that God exists, powerful enough to reveal himself, cares that we believe he exists, and does not show himself because he doesn't want to force the belief or whatever, is absurd. Why would a god that powerful even care enough to create us, and further would even care about us, and finally would care that we believe he exists? Why if it's all about us did he create the billions of others stars and planets? What about all the evidence which disproves the 6,000 year old Earth/universe? What of all the errors, idiocies, and immorality in the Bible? Why write a Bible at all? If he doesn't want to interfere with us, why do it once with the Bible and again with Jesus, but never again? Why isn't there more evidence regarding Jesus and why isn't there any about his magical powers? I could go on, but that's the point of the religious absurdity series.

My believing that Christianity is false (and, by consequence, the Christian God) has nothing to do with my atheism on the broader question of the existence of gods.


Is this all some grand equivocation to get around saying that "I believe that no gods exist"? No, of course not, as I don't believe that. I believe that certain proposed gods, such as Yahweh, Allah, Thor, Zeus, Anubis, Ra, Osiris, Apophis, Odin, etc, do not exist. Certain types of gods though, like a deistic type of god or even a god very limited in power and with no other defined attributes, I hold no belief in either way. I may one day believe in them, but the time to believe in something is when there is some good evidence or some good reason to believe in them. In the light of counter evidence, contradictions, and good reason not to believe, that is an appropriate time to believe they do not exist. And just like super intelligent aliens abducting the dumbest people on the Earth and having homosexual encounters with them, there is good reason to believe that Yahweh does not exist.

While not concise, I hope this elaboration was clear enough for those who have asked about it.

I Am No Longer an Atheist

Over at The Raytractors, I offered a little contest to identify some activities, principles, or causes that are religions under Ray Comfort's definition of religion. Since Silent Dave stole the one I was going to do on Raylianism, I decided to go a little different of a route:

If Ray can select the inappropriate connotation of the word religion (zeal) to prove that atheism is a religion, then I can, by the same method, show that atheists are fools for not believing in gods -- and Ray Comfort is a fool for believing in his false god. I submit the following definition for God from the American Heritage Dictionary -- the same one Ray chose his definition of religion from:

A very handsome man.

Brad Pitt -- God

I am no longer an atheist.

EXPOSED: Gravity is Absurd

If Newtonism were true, we would all be dead right now; obliterated by the Moon.

Update
If, after reading this article, you are still a fundamentalist Newtonist, feel free to try to prove gravity exists to win $25.

Introduction
When Google Chrome came out today, thirty minutes before my class, I had a dilemma: go to my physics class and listen to an interesting lecture on the way our universe works, or stay at home and play with a shiny new toy from Google. I'm fairly confident in my choice of the latter. In this new toy, I decided to spend a few hours of listening to creationists debunking evolution. I was sufficiently convinced by their arguments and have, myself, become a creationist.

Having my fundamentalist belief in evolution broken by the great iconoclast Kent Hovind, I chose to apply my new found skepticism to other absurd so-called "scientific" theories that I had always assumed to be true. After much though, I have rejected the theory of gravity using the tools Dr. Hovind and Dr. Comfort have given me. I urge my fellow Raytractors to abandon their faith in gravity by considering the following...


The theory of gravity is absurd. It doesn't merely seem absurd; it is absurd. Here's a little history lesson to start off with.

The History of Newtonism
The theory of gravity, or Newtonism, was hypothesized by Isaac Newton in 1687 in his work Principia Mathematica -- that was over four hundred years ago and not much has changed since. I am not saying Newton was a dumb man, of course not. Newtonism was a brilliant theory in his day.

But let's not forget: it was just a theory formulated over four hundred years ago. Just as Darwin didn't have access to the modern technology that we have and didn't know of the complex structure of cell, Newton was even more ignorant, through no fault of his own. Calculus hadn't even been formally established and, as such, Newton's work rested on geometric proofs -- a math far below our current accepted standard of calculus.

Besides the sketchy historical basis of Newtonism, its historical impact has been grave. There is no denying that Newtonism has been the source of many social ills throughout history. The Nazis themselves believed in Newtonism and made is a central part of their quest to exterminate the Jews. As Ben Stein once famously said, "Science leads you to killing people." Indeed, this is what we say in Nazi Germany as they put Newtonism into practice to kill people. Using the idea that things are accelerated towards the Earth, they not only threw people off of high points to kill them, they also dropped bombs based on calculations made with Newtonism. This is the ugly truth of Newtonism that the scientists refuse to include in their physics books.

The Character of Newton
Before we examine the theory itself, it's important to understand the character of Newton. Just as in a courtroom where you establish the credibility of the witness before considering their testimony, we must first establish Newton's credibility before considering his theory.

The believers of Newtonism have a blind devotion to Newton, making him a deity of sorts. As such, they have whitewashed much of his history. There is a large amount of evidence that Newton was a sexual deviant; a homosexual. He never married or even dated. There is no evidence whatsoever that he ever had sex with a woman. He was also a very miserable and unpleasant man by all accounts. He conducted himself in an arrogant, pompous, and selfish manner which caused many quarrels with intellectuals of his time.

Gravity wasn't the only absurd unscientific theory he came up with; he was also deeply involved with alchemy and eschatology. In fact, it seems his interest in occult studies contributed to his theory of gravity, as he could not otherwise account for the concept of "action-at-a-distance" (another absurdity of Newtonism). As mentioned, he was interested in alchemy -- the idea of transforming common materials into gold and creating an elixir of life -- and also eschatology -- writing on the end of the world, even putting for the date of 2060 AD.

Newton is often credited with the discovery of calculus. This is another example of his followers whitewashing history and also ascribing to him the great accomplishments of others. Calculus was actually discovered by Gottfried Leibniz in 1684. Newton published the full version of his work on calculus in 1704 -- twenty years after Leibniz had already published his. Newton blatantly plagiarized Leibniz to try to take credit for calculus.

How can we believe anything that this plagiarizer has to offer?

Problems with Newtonism
All the problems discussed so far haven't even dealt with the problems of the theory itself. You may say the above is merely circumstantial evidence -- that it says nothing of the theory itself. The theory, though, falls flat on its own merits.

Newtonism doesn't even explain the observed fact that inertial and gravitational masses are the same for all bodies. Furthermore, it doesn't explain the precession of the prehelion of the orbits of the planets. For example, there is a 43 arcsecond per century discrepancy between what Newtonism predicts and the observed precession.

Examples could be continued, but explanations by Newtonism disagree with the observations. That's a fact, but that doesn't shake the faith of the dogmatic Newtonists.


The Absurdity of Gravity
Newton himself acknowledged the absurdity of gravity. He wrote in Principia Mathematica on this absurdity:

That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.

I have already exposed the glaring flaws in the so-called "scientific" theory of gravity. I will now expose the glaring absurdities in this theory tale.

Newtonism is improbable.
Newtonism states that if you drop a ball from a height of 1.5m (~ft) that it will take .553 seconds to hit the ground. If you drop it from the same height again from the same position again, Newtonism states that it will hit the same mark in .553 seconds again. If you do this a billion times, Newtonism states that it will hit the same mark in .553 seconds every single time.

This is statistically impossible to have such recurring precision. It would be like flipping a quarter a hundred billion times and having it come up heads every single time. The probability of the ball dropping from a height of 1.5m taking .553 seconds to hit the exact same location is roughly one in 2.04 x 10³⁹⁰. That is absurdly impossible.

Newtonism neglects mass.
To compound the absurdity, Newtonism states that objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass. What?! Perhaps he didn't have them handy, but if you go to the top of a tall building and drop a feather and a bowling ball off at the same time, the bowling ball will hit the ground much sooner than the feather. The idea that objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass is palpably absurd. This is demonstrably false, and yet Newtonists remain blind to this overwhelming evidence.

Newtonism cannot explain orbiting satellites.
I have already debunked Newtonism showing that it cannot account for the orbits of the planets due to a discrepancy. The absurdity of gravity does not stop there. Gravity cannot explain how satellites, the moon for example, remain in orbit. If objects of mass are attracted to one another, then why hasn't the Moon come crashing down to Earth?

If Newtonism were true, we would all be dead right now; obliterated by the Moon.

Source of Matter.
Gravity hinges on the existence of matter. If there were no matter, there would be nothing for gravity to work on. But Newtonism doesn't explain where this matter comes from. Are we to believe it gravitated itself into existence? Preposterous.

Blind Precision?
I have already discussed the problem of precision with Newtonism. Newtonism states that gravity knows how long to keep things in the air, when to land them, and where to land them. But how does it know? How does it know to accelerate an object from 1.5 meters high 9.8 meters per squared second towards the Earth, landing it in a position after .553 seconds? Just as Darwinism cannot explain how organisms know what mutations to create, Newtonism cannot explain how objects know when, where, and how to land.

The Alternative
Having now disposed of all the facets of Newtonism and exposed gravity as the fraud that it is, I will now advance the only rational explanation for the orbits of planets and the theory of what goes up must come down.

As Newtonism cannot account for the Moon orbiting Earth, what then? What is holding it in place? Well, it seems obvious to me that if the Moon is being held in place, there must be an Intelligent Holder. How else can one account for the perfectly circular orbits of the planets and the high precision and predictability of the paths of projectiles?

While we Intelligent Holder proponents do not define who the intelligent agent is, we know that, due to the impossibility of the contrary, this Intelligent Holder is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, thrusting objects downwards with the guidance of his noodley appendages.

RAmen.

A Godsend?

This isn't exactly a post on religion; I try to keep my technological posts to another blog. I am, however, a member of The Church of Google (and had developed my own form of Googlism before the Church was established). As such, I thought it was appropriate to post this revelation here:

The Google Blog has announced Google's latest project: Google Chrome. It is Google's own spin on the browser. It's very new, but I'm excited to see what comes from this browser, so I will be shifting my atheist demands from FireFox to Chrome for a week.

Google has a track record of revolutionizing whatever field it enters, so I hope it does the same here in this much needed area.

Blogger Science

In a usual move by Ray Comfort -- and many apologists -- he has chosen an alternate, inappropriate connotation of a word to support his wild ideas, just as he did when selectively choosing the inappropriate definition of animal to exclude humans.

He calls atheism a "religion." To support this wild claim, he confuses the idea of a sort of revealed or adhered religion -- such as beliefs, devotions, and practices concerning human affairs etc -- with religious zeal. He writes that:

It’s interesting to note that one definition of religion is:

"A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."

That rightly describes the ardent atheist cause. Despite protests to the contrary by its faithful adherents, atheism is a form of religion.

To get to this, though, he had to selectively skip over three relevant definitions (in the American Heritage Dictionary):

1a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
1a. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.

What's really interesting is that the definition he uses as religion (since it is not the "religion" we are discussing) applies only to someone like, say, Dawkins. Although, atheism is merely not believing in a god. Dawkins is not pursuing not believing in a god with zeal -- so that necessarily disqualifies even Dawkins's atheism as a religion. What Dawkins pursues with zeal is his opposition to organized religion, so that pursuit would be his religion. Merely "not believing" is not a cause, principle, or activity, so atheism is necessarily not a religion.

But, what of the apathetic atheist anyway? The atheist who wouldn't even waste the time to spend one minute listening to arguments for or against a belief in God? Since that person is not pursuing it at all he necessarily does not qualify as possessing a "religion" -- based on Ray's definition of religion as zeal.

But let's go ahead and explore what else qualifies as a religion under Ray's selective, inappropriate definition -- the only qualification being something pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. If he's going to use religious zeal to define religion, then we must also consider:

1. Blogging -- Blogging is my religion as it is an activity I pursue as zeal. Further, Ray is blogging, too, so that's his religion thereby violating one of the tenets of his other religion: Christianity. Blogging is my religion.
2. Education -- This is a cause I pursue with a high level of devotion. I devote myself fully to educating myself. I also spend free time providing free tutoring to kids because I believe education is important for them. Education is my religion.
3. Debunking Ray -- This is an activity I pursue with zeal making it, by Ray's definition, my religion. Debunking Ray Comfort is my religion.


Although Ray Comfort has previously said he is not a scientist, he overlooks the fact that blogging is a science, if you selectively choose the inappropriate definition of the word. We can use the word skill to define science.

2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.
3. An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.
4. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.

Blogging clearly qualifies as a science, then. There's a methodological approach to it, including ways to entice readers -- Ray adds graphics, formatting, and baits atheists. You gain knowledge through experience of blogging. You learn how to use the software, how to organize thoughts, etc.

Blogging is Ray's science (along with quote mining).