Special Pleading

One of the most frustrating things about trying to have discussions with religious people is their tendency to insist that skepticism and the rules of logic should be applied to my position but that their position is somehow exempt from the same sort of examination.

This is not just a double standard.  It is extreme intellectual dishonesty.  It is extreme bias.

The term for this type of shifting standard, where the advocate of a position unjustifably claims that his position has to be judged by a different standard or an exception to the rules is "special pleading".

In my experience with the religious the "different standard" continually shifts.  As soon as they realize that a particular standard doesn't support their position, they claim that another one applies.  Furthermore, they do this without justification, which is what makes it special pleading.  There are situations where different standards apply, but only when justified by relevant, demonstrable differences between the things being judged.

The religious will claim that their new standard is justified but usually they will not have an adequate justification for it.  Their arguments for the shift in the standard will suffer from the same fatal flaws as most of their other arguments:  They will be based on unjustified assumptions, circular reasoning or some other logical fallacy.

Although one should know the term "special pleading" and what it means, it won't usually be helpful to use it in a discussion with a religious person.  Instead, once you recognize that the argument is based on special pleading, demand that the religious person justify the use of the claimed exception to the usual rules of logic.

Most often this type of dishonest argumentation is combined with circular reasoning, such as where the religious person claims that the rules of logic don't exist because god's alleged traits make him an exception to those rules.

Top 15 Quotes by Famous Atheists

I recently found this list on listverse.  I thought it worth passing along:

1. Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov

2. I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie

3. All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway

4. Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin

5. Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche

6. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw

7. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut

8. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright

9. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot

10. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens

11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

12. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon

13. The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan

14. Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. — Woody Allen

15. It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

Religion Is for Psychopaths

I recently came across an article about a professor of neurology at U.C. Irvine named James Fallon.  There have been a number of articles about him and his work recently, so you may be familiar with this story.

Prof. Fallon was participating in a study comparing the brains of normal people with those of confirmed psychopaths.  The study found certain traits that the brains of the psychopaths all seem to have in common.

As part of the study, he scanned his own brain and discovered that he had the same traits in his brain as the psychopaths.  He also happened to have several murderers in his family tree.  He now presents this discovery as an example of how biology is not destiny.  Having a loving family prevented him from becoming yet another murderer in the family tree. 

The most intriguing part of the article to me is where he discusses the misdeeds of his youth, because having a good family wasn't really enough to make him a good person.  That didn't happen until he left religion, saw his behavior for what it really was, and took responsibility for it.

Here is his description of that thought process:

Since I’m a lapsed Catholic, I started thinking of psychopathic behavior in terms of the seven deadly sins. Those sins, to me, are just psychopathic traits and tendencies with different names — I kept sinning, and I kept doing it over and over and over. And using the term “sin” is one example of how we’ve all mollified psychopathic behaviors: if it’s a sin, well then that’s okay, because everyone sins and then you go to church on Sunday and you make it better. But it’s not actually okay.

I’d say that around 10 or 15 percent of us are pretty borderline as far as psychopathy goes, but we all let those behaviors slip and we protect each other — we say “oh, it’s okay, he does that all the time,” or “oh, that’s just how she is.” It’s a Stockholm Syndrome epidemic. What I’d tell you to do is strip away the bullshit terms and excuses surrounding your behavior, and ask yourself what you’re actually doing and how it affects other people. For me, simple linguistics were what it took to change my behavior. Instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a sin and I gotta go to church,” it’s a matter of saying “Oh wow, I just did something really psychopathic, and I gotta figure out how to stop it.”

In other words, he was a classic hypocrite who simply used religion to feel good about himself when he didn't deserve to do so.  Once he stopped using religion as a guide for his thinking he made the leap to being a good, responsible person.  And, he offers this as advice for those afraid that they, too, may be psychopathic.  Clearly, he recognizes that religion is just an excuse for bad behavior--a salve for psychopaths.

In addition, he makes a very legitimate point about the way in which the rest of society treats the psychopathic in our midst.  We try to make excuses for them, especially when they are a member of our "tribe".  We do this out of fear.

This behavior helps us understand why there is a taboo in our society with regard to criticizing religion.  It exists for the same reason:  fear of the deranged.  Fortunately, we have reached a point in human history where an increasingly large number of people have begun to realize that we should be more afraid of keeping silent in the face of the insanity that is religion.  We can only hope it isn't too late.

Compartmentalization

Like most non-believers, I have often wondered how any educated person can possibly believe in god.  The contradiction seems to be too much to understand.  Once one knows the history of science it becomes glaringly obvious that all religions are just primitive myths.  It also becomes glaringly obvious that the arguments used to support religious belief are not logically valid.

Or, to put it more succinctly, once you know of the way in which "gods" and "spirits" were used by more primitive people to explain away mysteries--to fill the gaps in our knowledge--then you can't help but notice that this is precisely the way religious people today use their "god".

The god of the gaps type arguments are really all that the religious have to rely on.  But, as I explained previously, this type of argument is simply not valid and the past instances of its failure are proof of that.  They prove it rather conclusively, in fact, because that argument has been proven wrong every single time mankind has put it to the test.

Mankind once thought the winds were caused by gods, now we know it is because the sun heats up the air at the equator more than the air at the poles, which caused sideways movement (wind) as the air at the equator rises leaving a vacuum that sucks in the cold air that is sinking at the poles.

Mankind once thought the Earth was flat and held up by a god.  Now we know it is round and that we are held onto it by its gravity, which curves space and holds us to the Earth.

As our knowledge of the natural world becomes greater, we learn that our supernatural hypotheses are false because they are not grounded in fact.  One cannot help but learn this lesson if one has even a little education.

So, how is it possible that some can cling to religion in spite of an education that appears to have been adequate to acquaint them with this knowledge?

One answer to this question that is often suggested is that the religious somehow "compartmentalize" the various ideas in their minds so that their religion doesn't have to face this challenge.  Personally, I don't know how this is possible.  I have long suspected it is true, but I simply could never do such a dishonest thing.

I no longer have any doubt, however, that this is exactly what some believers do because I read this article on Alternet in which a believer unknowingly provided a perfect example of this type of non-reasoning and an example of why it is illogical.

The article is entitled "Why Atheists Like Dawkins and Hitchens Are Dead Wrong."  The author, a young western Muslim woman, tells us that atheists are dead wrong to say that religion and science are irreconcilable.

The problem, however, is that she doesn't actually address the issue of whether or not religion and science are irreconcilable.  Here, in her words, is the solution to the "problem" and the explanation of her opinion that they are compatible:

There’s plenty of wiggle room and then some. On anything that is not established as theological Truth (e.g. God’s existence, the finality of Prophethood, pillars and articles of faith), there is ample room for examination, debate and disagreement, because it does not undercut the fabric of faith itself.

There you have it, the wall compartmentalizing religion and keeping it from the withering glare of science.  There is plenty of room for both religion and science, she tells us, provided that one does not debate, examine, or disagree with anything that would undercut the fabric of faith, which, of course, means that articles of faith are never even given a chance to conflict with science.  (It is also a one way street in which articles of faith can grow in number as the churches see fit, but science is not allowed to increase its domain in a similar way.)

This young woman's article is explicitly meant to debunk the assertion that religion and science are irreconcilable, which is defined as:  Incapable of being brought into harmony or adjustment; incompatible.

It is not correct to say that two things do not conflict when the truth is that one has never allowed them to come into contact, much less examined and compared them.

Notice first that the definition contemplates action or attempted action on the part of the person trying to determine if the word "irreconcilable" applies.  One cannot know if something is irreconcilable with something else if one does not ever try to reconcile them, and the author has not only not done so, she has told us it is forbidden.

Thus, it is clear that the author failed utterly to prove her point that Dawkins, et al., are wrong when they assert that religion and science are irreconcilable.  She makes no attempt to reconcile them or prove that it can be done.  In fact, it appears as if she has never attempted to reconcile these two things.  Instead, she walls them off from each other--the way one would with any two things that are incompatible or irreconcilable.

Thinking for Yourself

Many religious people actually think that it is immoral for anyone to think for themselves.  That alone is enough for me to think that religion itself must necessarily be immoral.

I would hope that the reason for this would be obvious, but I know it is not.  I know this because if it were obvious, then no one would ever spout the nonsense about the danger of thinking for yourself.  Yet, one hears it all the time.

The reason this phenomenon tells me that religion itself must be immoral is the following:  I think that it is not only possible but probable that most individuals will come up with moral rules superior to those promulgated by religion.  In fact, this is what has happened repeatedly throughout history.

An example of this type of moral progress exists in the history of slavery in the U.S. and the support and opposition to it.  As one of my favorite historical and literary figures, Mark Twain, noted about the Church's "evolution" on the question of slavery:

"There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one-- the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession-- at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts -in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all."

On the question of slavery, the churches did not lead the way toward greater morality.  They fought against it mightily.  And, one of their most oft employed weapons in that fight, as in most others where religion is fighting to retain or gain power (regardless of morality), is the admonition to its followers to lean not on their own understanding of morality, but to follow the church's ancient immoral teachings.

Why We Must Not Be Silent

Yesterday, I came across an essay at the Richard Dawkins' Foundation website that I think sets out very well many of the reasons that it is a moral imperative for atheists to speak up.  Anything as powerful and influential as religion must be examined closely.

Here is a link to the article:  Sorry Liberal Christians, But Jesus Is Dead To Me.

Bullying

I saw an article this morning that I wanted to share.  It concerns the cumulative effect of bullying on children.  As you might imagine, the more a child is bullied, the greater his mental and emotional problems.  The article doesn't concern religion directly, but, as we all know, religion is the excuse for a great deal of bullying.

The tendency to bully those who are different and the resulting long term harm to the victim is exactly why school prayer should not be allowed.  It is also exactly why the religious want school prayer.

Here is a link to the article:  Effects of bullying may add up in kids: study.

(I don't know why the editors chose to flout the conventions regarding capitalizing titles, but there it is.)