Pay the priest, atheist!

My money pays for salaries of church officials. Every year, month, day. From every hour i work, a part belongs to the church. I’m a German atheist.

Germany – 1803. The state nationalizes the churches land and wealth. In turn the state promises to pay the salaries of church officials. A new german nation rises and falls. And another. And another. Today, over 200 years later. The treaty is still in effect. And Germany pays. I pay. 460 million Euro per year.

Our constitution grants positive and negative religious freedom. Negative religious freedom is the right to not practice or belong to any religion. So by having to pay taxes, some of which goes to the church, my civil rights are violated. If that is a strong enough word. I find their archaic morals to be abhorrent, the embrace of belief harmful, the systematic and probably ongoing abuse of children both sexually and by indoctrination disgusting. I even celebrate the winter solstice instead of Christmas. Still there is nothing i can do. The only politician ever, to try and legislate against this was kicked out of his respective political party.

Secularism is like freedom. Once it’s gone you realize its real value. Don’t let the religious claim the state.

Signs from God

Its such an amazing coincidence, it must be a sign! Oh, how often have i heard those words from various persons. But guess what. Not only is it just coincidence, its often far more likely then we think. Some “amazing” coincidences:

“Our birthday is on the same day!” Imagine yourself in a room with 22 other people. Would you have thought the likelihood of two birthdays falling on the same day is more then 50%? 365 days a year. 365/365=100% chance of unique birthday. Add another person. (365/365)*(364/365)=99.7% chance of unique birthday. And another (365/365)*(364/365)*(363/365)=99.1% chance of unique birthday. Count down from 365 until every of the 23 persons is accounted for. You get (365/365)*(364/365)*(363/365)…(343/365)=49,1% chance for an unique birthday. Therefore a 50,9% chance of two birthdays coinciding.

“I dream’t it and it came true.” Assuming 5 dreams a night at 365 days a year will give us 1825 dreams per year. Since they are rooted in our mind, we may encounter talking butterflies. But both, butterflies and the ability to talk, are not new to us.  Now factor in seven billion people. That’s 12.775.000.000.000 dreams dreamed per year or 35 billion dreams per day. If we give dreams a chance to come true of 0.000.001%/day that’s 35.000 dreams coming true. Per day.

“We have the same …!” Imagine you are in a room with a total stranger. Each of you is given a catalog of questions. From all the information we can disclose about ourselves there are bound to be similarities.

“Its the strangest coincidence! I met someone today. He also has a sibling named Chris and both our favourite food is pineapple.”

The human mind has a tendency to overemphasize the meaning of coincidence. Its an evolutionary trait. We evolved as pattern seeking animals. Seeing a pattern where non exists, is much healthier then failing to spot a pattern where one is.  Its called a “false positive” or “type 1 error”. Coincidence is just that. Coincidence. And coincidence becomes much more likely, when you factor in greater numbers. There is nothing divine about it.

Spot the difference

There is quite a lively debate in Europe, probably the US as well, about the Burqa and if it should be banned. Pro ban arguments range from the Burqa as a symbol of oppression to a fear of anything that has to do with Islam. While anti ban arguments encompass religious and personal freedom. What makes this debate so unique is how many women will speak out. They want to wear the Burqa as a sign of devotion. Arguably some are coerced into giving false statements, by their husband, religious institutions or their social environment. But surely not all. That made me realize two things.

How vast the difference between our two cultures actually is (not just by comparison of fanatics). And in the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” These women speaking out is utterly mesmerizing to me. They essentially want to be censored. It saddens me deeply, i’m at a loss for words…

Proof of god – part 2/2

Welcome back to proof of god – refuting the ontological argument (proofthatgodexists.org).

Part 1 is available here.

We are offered “Logic changes” and “Logic does not change.” Or in other words, logic is absolute or its not. While absolutism has problems we discussed before, we shall be fair and (again) view the argument independently, but skip the circular bull**** (and the coming ones) the author throws at us.  Has logic changed? Well, yes it has. As our understanding of the world around us and our mental capacity increased, so has our application of logic improved. So at the very least humanity has improved its ability to apply logic and due to this logic has changed in our minds. Which is why we encounter the next set of choices. We are now to decide between “Logic is made of matter” or “Logic is not made of matter.” What the author is obviously fishing for, is the distinction between material and immaterial. Note how material is a definition but immaterial is not. Its like comparing stones and not stones. At best, this is not very well thought through. Immaterial is an inherently negative word. It will show you what something is not. But never what something is. For example is logic electromagnetic energy? Certainly not, that would have bizarre consequences. What if i wanted to answer “Logic is an (now) innate human ability, that enabled us to stand evolution’s test much better and since it dramatically increased our ability to survive, the characteristics that allow us to use logic became more prominent over time.” Pointing out, that “logic is not made of matter” does not hold any explanatory value whatsoever beyond the given statement. Did i tell you? Snakes are not clouds and logic is immaterial.

Next the author wants to know whether “Logic is universal” or “person relative”. Logic is universal the way math is universal. Its universality does, in no way rely on the divine as the author suggests. All it needs to show is that it works. Because it is a tool we wield and this tool shows success in resolving (difficult) situations it became acknowledged around the world. It’s not the other way around. We use it because it works, it doesn’t work because we use it. Also i think the authors frequent use of circular logic begins to make quite a compelling argument for person relative logic.

After the following statement: “To reach this page you have admitted that absolute truth exists, that you can know things to be true, that logic exists, that it is unchanging, that it is not made of matter, and that it is universal. Truth, knowledge, and logic are necessary to prove ANYTHING and cannot be made sense of apart from God. Therefore…”

While the author has failed to show that absolute truth exists. Failed to make a convincing argument about knowledge. Failed to prove that logic is unchanging. Stated that logic is immaterial. Has not understood the concept of universality. Has not convincingly connected any of these to god (how can he, its what he is trying to prove), we will again look at the argument independently.

You may ask yourself, why i do this every time and there actually is a good reason for that. “God commands thou shall not kill” is a true moral statement. Simply because it holds no explanatory value, as to why, it still has a valid conclusion.  I would prefer something along the lines of “during the development of our society it has been shown that killing people has immense adverse effects”. But both essentially come to the same conclusion.

We finally arrive at: “Truth, knowledge, and logic are necessary to prove ANYTHING and cannot be made sense of apart from God”. Therefore “the Proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything.”

It’s such a ridiculous false premise i don’t even know where to start.

It can be divided into two statements.

Truth, knowledge and logic are necessary to prove anything. I actually agree with this. And i think most will. But the author never does show it.  Why doesn’t he at least make the easy arguments. Prove that water has a liquid state: [True] Turn on your sink. Is the water in liquid form? [Knowledge] So you (and others) can verify that water can have a liquid state.  [Logic] Therefore water has a liquid state. Fail to make any of the three steps and your argument falls apart.

Truth, knowledge and logic can not be made sense of apart from god. Come on. Sye Ten Bruggencate even fails to show, how they can be made sense of with god. It is my opinion that his statement would even be refused by many Christians.

In conclusion. The authors use of circular logic is the dominant form of “reasoning”. The abundant use of false premises, lackluster definitions and the failure to prove anything only allow us to come to one conclusion. Which i want to give you in his own words: “…an exercise in self-deception. You may know things, but you cannot account for anything you claim to know.”

Agreed. An exercise in self deception indeed.

Christian censorship

Are their arguments that weak? Sometimes when i comment, i immediately know: “That was a bit over the top”. But most of the time i tend to comment very fairly. I try and give constructive input on whatever premise they based their argument on, but will also say why i think the argument doesn’t rest on a solid foundation. Which concepts they need to define and/or prove. Admittedly that is, most of the time, somewhat impossible. But that’s not my fault, now is it?

What amazes me, is how about half my comments tend to get lost in the void of “comment waiting for approval”. Do they know their argument is that weak and they can’t defend it or do they simply don’t want to deal with it? In any case it is like saying “This is what i think is true, but please don’t burst my bubble.” What kind of a mindset is that?

I don’t even “burden” them with what i think applies, i simply try and get them to defend their point of view. Oh well…

Review: Breaking Bad

It’s overrated. In my time i have rated roughly 1000 titles on imdb.com. And those are just the ones i remembered. Meaning, i know a thing or two about movies.

– be warned: Spoilers –

And Breaking Bad is a great show. You know it, i know it. Still i think its a little overrated. Here is why. Its based on a fish out of water, anti hero concept. That’s great. Almost alone makes up for an entertaining view. Those two concepts are amazing ingredients to get the viewer hooked.  But both do come with baggage. The fish out of water will at some point learn to swim in its new environment. Which in case of Breaking Bad is being an anti hero. This means the environment has to capture the audience now on its on, rather then the protagonist additionally needing to learn to live in it.

The Anti hero concept while also very compelling, too comes with problems the writer will face. Its mainly the protagonists likeability. Writers often resort to introducing  a villain, or antagonistic concept, that is less likeable then what the anti hero does. So in relative comparison he is a “good guy”. Dexter is essentially completely written in that fashion. To me, it fell of in season four or five and jumped the shark mid season eight.

So during the plot, the anti hero will time and time again perform immoral actions. Which makes him less and less likeable. To counter this writers resort to increasingly evil villains. In Breaking Bad the result of this is a freelance, nazi, drug dealer army, which has left a wake of bodies behind it and is essentially void of morals. Doesn’t get much worse then that. The best anti hero i encountered as of today, is Roland Deschain of Gilead in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

And then this super villain gets used as deus ex machina. A concept that is used when writers don’t know how to finish a story, have run out of time or want to deliver a more surprising ending. I would have rather seen the Hank story arc play out, then them being taken out of the picture. I get that its used as a metaphor for “go down this path and you will lose everything”, but it doesn’t satisfy me completely.

Still a great show, bit overrated though 😉

My rating: From 1-10 rated 8.5

The second coming

A majority of Christians believe Jesus second coming is within their lifetime. And i believe they are right. In fact, i believe, he is already here. Proclaimed himself as Jesus, son of God, our savior.

But he was taken to a mental institution where he now passes the time playing with his junk. Coming over and over again. Also he enjoys all those pretty colors every six or so hours, when the new “happy pills” come in. So much for humanities salvation. And what do we learn from this dear Christians? Listening to one madmen is not enough! A preacher can only tell you so much. You need to listen to all the madmen.

Proof of god – part 1/2

I always wanted to deal with the ontological proof of god. Ontology is part of philosophy and deals with the metaphysical. But i was concerned it would be too dry of a read and not really accessible. So i let it rest until just recently, when i found this link:

http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/

Its not the classic ontological argument but it is guilty of the same errors. This one though comes as a visual step by step presentation.

The Page was created by one Sye Ten Bruggencate, who as it turns out is to Christianity what Sarah Palin is to politics.

If you wanna skip the step by step guide through the argument you can skip right to the refutation by searching for <search me>.

On the first stage it gives you the option to choose between four statements (with absolute truth=“True for all people at all times everywhere”):

“I don’t care if absolute truth exists.”

Choosing this will redirect you to the Disney homepage. Essentially stating if you don’t want to follow the reasoning then go watch the Disney Channel. Its a cheap distraction disguised in humor. Oh well. That is what you get for diving into ontology. See?

“I don’t know if absolute truth exists.” and “Absolute truth does not exist.”

Clicking here will give you two more options. “Absolutely true” will redirect you to the beginning. “False” will have the same effect. In both instances stating: “This is not a glitch (Think about it)”.

Absolutely true: If it is absolutely true that you don’t know if absolute truth exists then this is an absolute truth, which therefore exists. Same goes for “Absolute truth does not exist”.

False: If you are absolutely sure absolute truth does not exist then that is an absolute truth. Which then again exists. Same goes for “Absolute truth does not exist”.

“Absolute truth exists.”

So this is what we are left with. Clicking it will give two new statements: “I don’t know anything to be true” and “I know something to be true”.

“I don’t know anything to be true” will lead you to a decision between true or false. Which will both lead you back one level and state “This is not a glitch (Think about it)”.

True: If you don’t know anything to be true then you know something true.

False: If you know that you know of nothing true, then you know something true.

“I know something to be true” is the only choice left to us. Clicking here will lead us to this textblock:

“You have acknowledged that absolute truth exists, and that you know some things to be true. The next step towards the proof that God exists is to determine whether you believe that logic exists. Logical proof would be irrelevant to someone who denies that logic exists. An example of a law of logic is the law of non-contradiction. This law states, for instance, that it cannot both be true that my car is in the parking lot and that it is not in the parking lot at the same time, and in the same way.”

Some of you might start to notice a pattern.

We are now asked to state if logic does exist. Choosing “Logic does not exist” will give us two more options. “I used logic to conclude that logic does not exist” and “I came to the conclusion about logic arbitrarily”. Both are pretty self explanatory and bring us back to where we must decide if logic exists.

After clicking “Logic exists” we are prompted to answer if logic changes or not. By saying it changes we approve that it can change and maybe has changed. Therefore contradictions within logic are possible. We are open to choose “logic does not change” and “logic does not change”.

We are now to decide whether logic is made of matter or not.

“Logic is made of matter” will reveal two more choices.  “Matter changes” and “Matter does not change”. Matter does not change will lead us into an obvious dead end. If matter changes then logic can not be made of matter because that would be a contradiction.

It goes on asking us if logic is universal of relative.

“Logic is person relative” will leave us with a self contradicting dilemma.

We move on by picking “logic is universal” and are rewarded with this text:

“To reach this page you have admitted that absolute truth exists, that you can know things to be true, that logic exists, that it is unchanging, that it is not made of matter, and that it is universal.

Truth, knowledge, and logic are necessary to prove ANYTHING and cannot be made sense of apart from God.” Click on “The proof that god exists”.

“The proof that god exists is that without him you couldn’t prove anything.”

We are now asked to decide if we believe in god or not. “I believe that god does exist” will bring you to the main homepage. While “I do not believe that god exists” shows this text:

“Denying belief in God is not unbelief, but “professed unbelief” – an exercise in self-deception. You may know things, but you cannot account for anything you claim to know. Arguing against God’s existence would be on par with arguing against the existence of air, breathing it all the while.You admit that absolute truth exists, but cannot account for it without God. You claim to know things to be true, but cannot justify knowledge or truth according to your own worldview. You use universal, immaterial, unchanging logic in order to come to rational decisions, but you cannot account for it. Truth, knowledge and logic are not the only ways God has revealed himself to you…”

It goes on like that for a while.

Additionally we are given these definitions:

“Knowledge: Unless one knows everything, or has revelation from someone (God) who does, something we don’t know could contradict what we think we know.”

Truth: If our thoughts are the mere by-products of the electrochemical processes in our evolved brains, you would not get “truth” you would get “brain-fizz.” Chemicals do not produce “truth” they just react. As Doug Wilson said, it would be like shaking up a can of Mountain Dew, and a can of Dr. Pepper, opening them, and watching them fizz. Neither fizz is “true,” they just are. For truth you need someone (God) who transcends the natural realm.

Universal, immaterial, unchanging logic: For universal, immaterial, unchanging logic, you need someone (God) who is universal (Psalm 90:2), not made of matter (John 4:24) and unchanging (Malachi 3:6). Without God, who has universal knowledge, we could not know anything to be universally true. Without God, who is Spirit (not made of matter), we could not make sense of immaterial things. Without God who is unchanging (and logic is a reflection of the way He thinks), we would have no basis for expecting logic not to change.”

<search me>

So lets look at the argument in short.

Absolute truth exists

We know something to be true

Logic exists, does not change, is not made of matter and is universal

These three are the foundation on which the conclusion (“The proof that god exists is that without him you couldn’t prove anything.”) rests.

On absolute truth exists. Notice how the argument never actually proves absolute truth exists. Its a logical fallacy called circular logic/reasoning. It usually goes like this. A=true because B=true. While the reasoning in argument B can be valid it can’t necessarily prove A to be true. If the premise is doubted or wrong (A is true because B is true) holds no longer any explanatory value. A=all birds lay eggs and B=all birds can fly. All birds lay eggs because all birds can fly. Even if B were true it wouldn’t follow that A is true. In our case its A=true because B=false and C=false. It just tricks one into giving the desired answer. What if you were to answer: I’m reasonably sure absolute truth does not exist instead of “absolutely true”. It is very hard to prove absolute truth actually exists. People have been trying for thousands of years.

Mathematics holds absolute truth. Rejected. 7+6=13 is a true mathematical statement. But it is only true because we defined it and agreed upon it. It is not necessarily absolutely true. (“True for all people at all times everywhere”). The Romans used different numbers. Our example employs the decimal system. What about binary? 00000111+00000110=00001101. So i’m sensing the “But these are only variations of the same statement. Math explains the nature of reality” argument. Yes math does that. It is a language. Human made and used to describe nature. It is very effective at doing that. But has changed tremendously throughout the course of history. We are pretty sure the basics are true. But when it gets more complex? And what about describing the nature of reality. What is reality? Is it universal or is our perception of reality unique for every person (reality gets filtered through the human mind). My eyesight is somewhat bad. Sometimes when i look at a number or license plate. Some string of text i haven’t read before my mind will try and compensate for the lack of visual prowess. What looks like an 8 can actually be a 3. My mind just made the missing parts appear. Or did you know you can never see the present? Visual information is processed through light. But light has to travel. The farther away something is, the more it is an image of the past. What does this say about the nature of reality? Well, i honestly have no idea. But i could describe it to you using mathematics. What if we had evolved to see magnetic fields, heat or radiation instead of light. Would our perceived reality not change fundamentally? How does our perceived reality differ from “actual” reality? Would it be described by the same set of mathematical rules? In the spirit of absolute truth: Mathematics may hold universal truth and proving that might be impossible.

Morality and ethics hold absolute truth. Rejected. Witch burning, Slavery, Gays and so on. We have agreed on a certain set of rights anyone inherently has. Like the right to life. But its not an absolute truth.

So in general: We come close to absolute truth in closed systems. But those are all man made. To someone standing outside they might not be true.

On knowledge (“Knowledge – Justified, true, belief”). Of course the author is referring to knowledge derived from absolute truth but realizes that is a point hard to defend. We have already shown his argument to be insufficient to prove that absolute truth exists. The line of reasoning therefore stands on shaky grounds. But we shall concede this point and look at the argument independently.  As with absolute truth the argument offers no actual prove other than providing us with the same blend of circular argument we encountered before. It has little explanatory power. The authors definition of knowledge also is somewhat incoherent.

Knowledge is a justified, true, belief. How about the following Gettier problem.

Two people apply to rent the same house. Person A has a justified believe that Person B will get the house. Person A also has a justified believe that Person B has four dollar notes in his wallet. Person A can conclude “the person with four dollar notes in his wallet will get the house”. But in fact Person A gets to rent the house. As it turns out he also had four dollar notes in his wallet. So the statement “the person with four dollar notes in his wallet will get the house” was a justified, true believe. Statements with false premises can be knowledge by the authors definition but not apply to the colloquial use of the term knowledge.

Can we still know anything to be (reasonably) true [for example: Humans need oxygen in order to survive]? Yes, but the authors definition and reasoning are not very convincing.

Does logic exist? Conceded. Logic exists. But notice how the author offers no actual prove (circular argument again, really?…) or even a definition.

Go to Part 2.

NoSpy?

Similarities between God and the NSA anyone?

Seems to me the Christian world has gone on to long with big skydaddy to worry about big brother watching too. After all. Whats reading a little conversation here and there, when God has free HD view into every shower and bedroom.

Genesis 1:27 “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”. His own image hm? That should make for one godlike boner.

Religulous – The sixth circle of hell

I think Thomas Jefferson put it well when he said: “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”

This section contains explicit language and should not be read by the squeamish. I shall apologize in adv… ah screw it. It’ll be fun.

Anyone wanting to honestly and genuinly discuss a topic should see the “god and the world” category.