In Reply To “Everything happens For A Reason”

I know I said yesterday, I would blog more regularly and I would post again in a week, but today I read a post on another atheist blog” Justin Vacula : The Green Atheist ,  in which he criticizes a predominantly  theist predisposition towards anticipating or demanding a reason for things.

Sometimes things just “are” and there isn’t a why answer.

Often a “how” answer is just the way the world is.

It’s not that I would disagree with Jason, but I feel the disenfranchising of reason itself, is not necessary just because an answer is not forthcoming.about a particular event or phenomenon. Moreover the appeal to reason in this case, is predicated on a hopelessly irrational idea of what reason is, along with a predisposition to foist totally dogmatic, ad hoc, excuses  for a hopelessly absurd, unseasoned, and completely contrived fairytale. If, as we ought to be, we are motivated to find reason which accords with rational explanations, then having no answer, is better than a silly answer which proclaims the whole damn universe exists, because of a magic sky pixie. That is still no answer, because we do not understand how this happens. It does nothing to explain in terms of cause and effect. Reasons are explanations of why X is necessary, not excuses for assumptions that are only deigned to be necessary by fiat. I have heard theists try this on too. In trying to explaining why god is proclaimed to be necessary they sometimes contend that it’s the only thing that explains X. Where ‘X’ is any kind of mystery you might imagine.

It is so often assumed by theists, that because something is, not yet understood by the human mind or more often, not understood by them personally, that IT, whatever ‘IT’ is, must be impossible by any natural means. So they proclaim yet another victory for their god of the gaps, since a miracle of god would have to be the only logical explanation. Not that they understand proper formal logic, nor even a modicum of natural understandings, but somehow they expect it to all make sense in such an ignorant vacuum, and if it doesn’t hay presto miracles are the instant solution. goddidit is their chosen miraculous  method, as that is how they were raised or otherwise indoctrinated. What strikes me about religion is that is an obvious attempt to provide explanation for things we had no means to explain at the time these systems of ahem.. ‘thought’ were inaugurated. They were never intended for people with modern sophisticated epistemological understandings of reason and logic.

When I hear this phrase ”everything happens for a reason” I tend to agree, even though I am a super-devoted-uber-atheist. It reminds me of one of my most beloved sayings, by the professor on Gilligan’s Island (That dates me), who once said “There’s a logical explanation for everything Gilligan”. The reason goddidits are so inclined to invoke their sky pixie, is because they abhor the idea of not being able to say ‘I don’t know’. It seems to me that they have a insatiable appetite for superficially pleasing reasons that justify the prejudice and dogma that they have bought into. Their magical sky pixie, god of the gaps, provides them with what they wish to think of as reason. It is a reason for anything however implausible or inevitable, because their is no accounting for magic. To state that there are in general ‘reasons for things (perhaps everything)’ is not a point of contention IMHO. Implying that you know what those reasons are, when you have done nothing to deserve such providence, is the height of arrogance. That is the real issue, but I also understand what you are getting at. The question of importance, is ‘HOW’ (and I mean it: PRECISELY ‘HOW’) do you go from presenting speculation which demonstrates a total disregard of logical reasoning in the first place, to confident assertion of knowledge.

Theologians don’t work on the problem of indeterminism or randomness. Physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers may all yield some insight into the question of whether causality is universal and what causes or reasons are most plausible in any given situation. The phrase “Everything happens for a reason”, sounds ominously like an advocacy of reason. If the interlocutor was truly interested in this subject of reason for things, then it might have been stated more like a question i.e. ‘for all we know’ and ‘I am inclined to contend’. The brash insistence that all things are required to have a reason, is not reference to any hitherto unknown logical secret of nature. Pressing the claimant for clarification, would no doubt reveal a singular preference, as the proposed reason, provided by superstitious religious dogma.

But no ‘REASON’ per se, would be proffered for the alleged plausibility of their ‘reason’ in hindsight, nor for the context of justification, requiring a mesh of interconnected cause and effect relationships to be established. The interconnectedness of intimately studied phenomena, which ARE; (seriously I mean it, ARE TRULY), artifacts of a massive web of interconnected causality established by reasoning. So YES! Thank these people for establishing the primacy of reason, and point out that is why banal assumption and superstition is not acceptable in courts of rational discourse. If you are going to sit at the debating table as an advocate of reason, you had better be prepared to manifest your implied reasons as artifacts of what is understood to be reasoning where reasoning is expected to achieve results that can be checked and confirmed.

The process of rational human inquiry, has given us the ability to separate fantasy from reality, and the plausible from the absurd. This precious jewel has been cut from the rough, IN SPITE OF, not BECAUSE OF, ignorant tribal fairytales, whose adherents still tenaciously cling to the emotional comforting of a sky-daddy and the promise of eternal life. These people do not insist on ordaining the general fact that there must be ‘A REASON’, because they CARE about establishing rational connection between some potential undiscovered cause and the effect we observe. Oh No! The providence of causality itself, as a conceptual benefactor of the human mind; that’s not the motive. observations about anything must cultivated and interpreted with post hock confabulation and confirmation bias, to countenance an absurd cosmic fairytale, that entails a parochial worldview that the universe is made just to be the physical residence of humanity while a magical sky-daddy carries out some ‘plan’ (as if he wasn’t omnipotent and therefore had to work against the arbitrary constraints of contingency).

That monotheistic tale of multi-layered absurdity, comes in numerous mutually inconsistent versions. But I hazard a fair guess, that when your interlocutor is jousting for this lofty noble principle advocating that “Everything happens for a reason” I strongly suggest that they are not speaking,in same the vein as the Professor of Gilligans Island about a LOGICAL reason for everything, which we may yearn to discover. They are not humbly pretending that our curiosity for mysterious events might be answered in principal, even if never in practice no that’s not what they want. They want to imply that because YOU cant/or won’t jump to a conclusion, that you must concede there is no explanation. In other words: If you don’t explain what the reason is, then it means you advocate indeterminism. On the other hand, these pastey allusions of things requiring a cause, are bent to fit the implication that ‘anything your theory about life, the universe and everything, cant ‘explain’ but mine can, is an artifact of evidence in my favour’. What childishly stands for ‘explain’ is some post hock confabulation of superstitious rhetoric, which bolsters the claim that whatever this event/phenomenon in question may be,  it happens to be part of ‘gods magic plan’.

Quite apart from the obvious flaw, that Occam’s Razor does not prefer an assumption over a mystery, and even then, when the assumption boils down to an infinitely worse supernatural mystery, the gain to be found in finding a reason, is not just the happenstance that the subject in question should fit into the broader explanatory system (or ‘theory’ if you like), but that it should now be reconciled as a more probable or inevitable outcome. The Australian aboriginals ‘dreaming’ story, that a giant snake carved the mountains and valleys, in the same manner as ordinary snakes, leave tracks like little mountains and valleys in the sand, it’s very charming indeed and illustrates how we used to look for (or actually guess at) simple explanations in terms of causes and effects we could understand. The giant snake did not improve the understanding of the Australian Aboriginal. Nor is the myth of such a creature true. It was a ‘just so’ story, contrived to fit. Simply wondering, and not pretending to know, would have been better.

Reasons above all else, need to proffer explanations. Explanations need to be thought of as leading towards necessary conclusions. They may be provisional  and dependent on some other conclusions, but we need to be able to see the logic, that shows how the reasoning leads to better parsimony. It should by rights lead to further predictions and using the premise that it is true should lead to highly specific predictions of events or phenomena that might only be found If it were true. An excuse for privileging an assumption, because it can be in some way construed as consistent with a fairytale, is not the same as providing reasons, or REASONING. It’s EXCUSENING.

The cynicism and arrogance of these people, is just plain astounding These are the people who care so little for the real providence of the process we call reason, yet would dare to insist on requiring reasons for everything and use the need for reason, as a foot in the door for their fairy-tales of lamentable ignorance. The explanation they would proffer as a cause in any event, and the basis of justification for their claim, is not any kind of reason in the sense of natural causality, but in the only sense that could be comprehended in a mind devoid of logic or critical thinking skills. They are thinking along the lines of a meaning which satisfies petty human proclivities. Cause in the narrow religious sense, is akin to a circumstance which is enacted by conscious choice. It is not the ‘CAUSE’ predicating heat to the evaporation of water, and precipitation to rain etc… It is not an understand in of WHY something happens, because you can see how it MUST! They can sometimes see a connection between cause and effect sometimes, leave the ice cream out of the fridge it will melt. eat too much fruit and you will get the runs. That is trivial observation. It doesn’t become reason until you ask WHY? and HOW? They leave out necessity and demand that their sky pixie is required to be the all important cause of all things. To this end they ignore that necessity is built into nature. Perhaps everything does have a reason, indeed a cause or a multitude of them, but logically consistent with every other. That may ultimately mean everything which is not impossible is necessary.

Their proclivity to ignore details of the ordered universe and look for purposes that agree with this petty human need for self approbation, is what sanctions this delusional prejudice for explanations that are satisfied by the personal desires of a magical being. They are not advocating a chain of causality, using logical techniques, establishing at each point the ‘how and why’, but the only thing that even smells like reason to them, is something synonymous with the concept of ‘MOTIVE’. That is the willful deliberations of a conscious being, enacting or orchestrating the events to bring them about. In such a mindset, you don’t have to understand WHY that being was motivated to do so (only that there was a motive – or even could have been). Even then you have no need to ask HOW. The cause of the event/phenomenon is established by the assumed existence of an entity who might want to cause it. So again it boils down to the assumptions of supernaturalism. Any designer/creator being who could engineer an event or phenomenon by supernatural means, could not provide any hope for a contribution to ‘reason’ as it is intended in the rational quarters of natural inquiry. In providing a ‘reason’ we must show how it follows logically from other logically predicated premises, ultimately the soundest reasons are ultimately predicated on provisional axioms, so the conclusions may be seen as inevitable.

If we want to KNOW how the universe works, we CAN NOT, arrogantly expect to be given explanations which just happen to make us the most treasured and precious things which exist. Thinking that what stands as ‘explaination’ or ‘reason’ is the whims of a capricious pixie in the sky, with thought, emotions, ambitious plans and contracts to manage human behaviour, is just an atrocious joke and an insult to the quality of life we ALL enjoy because of the real providence of reason. We all require reasons for the things we don’t yet understand, the main differences between the superstitious theist mind and the rationalist, is that the theist will not acknowledge the honesty of proclaiming uncertainty, or just saying ‘I dont know’. The theist tenaciously refuses to throw out preconceived dogma and accept many ot the plausible reasons that there are, for much of our universe, not because they truly see more parsimony in thier prefferance, but on an intellectually dishonest basis. Indeed they may have no knowledge of reasoning skills whatsoever, they may abhor logic and so they may be incapable of seeing ‘REASON’ as anything other than, comfortable prejudice, retrofitting happenstance in hindsight, to their dogmaticly priveledged fairytailes with complete disregard to parsimony.

I guess this post will mark a transition for my little blog. I have recently subscribed and been added to the The Atheist Blogroll which, In Mojoey’s own words: “is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.” So if you are an atheist blogger too, then why not get on board? Tell Mojoey I sent you and he’ll halve the enrollment fee (which is entirely free of course). I also joined another blogroll closer to home with ANZAB the Australian New Zealand Atheist Blogroll. This is run by the wonderful and prolific Sean The Blogonaut. Sean has been a wonderful influence in promoting the upcoming ‘The Rise  Of Atheism‘, Atheist convention in Melbourne in March next year.

The Rise  Of Atheism will be a wonderful opportunity for us Auzzie atheists to meet up and get to know each other better. It will also be a ground braking historical event. With so many (thousands) of atheists expected to converge and put Australia on the map of proactive atheism. An illustrious line up of speakers will inspire attendees and together we will send a message to the powers to be, ‘we atheists do exist, and we care passionately about protecting secular values and rights’  This is an exciting event not only in the lives of those who plan to attend, but in the grand scheme of world history. Here in Australia ‘The Rise Of Atheism’ is our chance to be good hosts, and extend a warm welcome to those who come from abroad to speak or attend. It is a golden opportunity to put on a great show and let the world know what fantastic ambassadors of atheism we Aussies are. Speaking of great shows and ambassadors, the organizers of this convention have been incredible, tireless volunteers, and have been jumping through hoops (including fixing up a malicious DDOS attack on the website servers holding the convention website hosted) to put together a show that will never be forgotten. So if you have the chance to speak to the members of the Atheist Foundation Of Australia, be sure to thank them for doing such immensely tireless and selfless work, to put all atheists (Australian or otherwise) in a world that much less dominated by religious bigotry.

Now. I said that this post would mark a transition for Skepticus Maximus, that was partially to do with the blogrolls I have signed up to and last month I had a record number of visitors, which I am very grateful for and thanks to all those who came to visit. I have decided to make a regular post every Saturday if I possibly can and try to have something to say about life on-line, life in the real world (yep, there is still a real world), atheism or perhaps even just a brief overview of the weeks main events. I have not been a dedicated blogger in the past, and I have tended to use this place as a copy pasta repository, but now that the visitor hits have been elevated,  I have decided to make use of the momentum and hopeful keep it up. I do enjoy writing when I have something to write about, and I have just recently enlisted with Associated Content, an on-line publishing repository and content brokerage. I only have the one article so far but that is a start. Well I hope this is viewed as a more bloggyish and normal reader orientated blog post, if you care to comment on my style and offer constructive criticism, don’t I cry easily… No no!, just kidding. Please! criticism welcome. I would like to improve, so drop a word in the comment box if you can spare a moment. Meanwhile I’ll see you next week.

Reason Before Belief VS Belief Before Reason

The following discourse is the reply to a PM I received on my youtube channel and also the consequent commentary I was inspired to write, as I thought about the response to this rather bizarre criticism. Apparently I had commented on a video somewhere (I don’t recall which one at this point) and it seems, as my correspondent has indicated by quoting me, that there must have been a rather prolific amount of what I will dub ‘belief spouting’.

It is a particular bug bare of mine you see, to hear a rabble of redneck yahoos, mindlessly blurting out what they BELIEVE. Often the most inane and ridiculous extravagance is taken for license, to whimsically speculate on the most far fetched ideas with the longest odds being wielded as effortlessly as matters of undeniable certainty. While little thought if any, is given to rhyme or reason amongst them. In such a place nobody calls for any justifications. Anything is allowed, from far fetched absurd speculation, to completely ridiculous impossible absurdity. nothing below a particular line of implausibility is allowed though. If you try to interject with some sober facts that are established beyond any reasonable doubt, in these nonsensical non-think-fests, you risk being booed down and scorned out of existence. So it makes a nice little challenge, to think of a way to drop rationality into the mix and have it handled with some degree of respect before it is seen for what it is and kicked to the curb.

For that purpose, sometimes it helps to use a little irony and satire to feign the level of sincerity and adopt the same protocols as the natives. Like pontius pilot might say, ‘when in Woame do as the Woamans do’. So it seems, I had delivered a kind of copycat ‘believe n run’ to this crowd, with a little sarcastic twist of ironic rationality. Seems I had delivered my opening line as a completely unqualified belief, but one that immediately endorsed rationality and as such, it might undermine the need to have or portend any beliefs, as if they were important in and of themselves. Perhaps it also contradicted those who would pontificate about wild unsupported speculations and put a cruel knee into the most irrational or absurd conjectures. But then that was the point. I too can state my opinion, and for what it’s worth, it should be worth little if it isn’t the product of reason and critical thinking. You should think so, I should think so, as should anybody else think so.

Here is The personal message quoting my original comment, itself quoted within the Reply I had been working on. Towards the end I decided to blog this instead and just send my correspondent here. At that point it seems, I have changed perspective and begin to address my readers. I thought I should mention this, to allay any confusion and because it’s just so much easier than going through and editing the whole damn thing. I have been up a long time now, I’m sure you will understand. I have simply inserted a note to delineate the change in perspective. From there I return to you dear reader, but for now let’s see what I have put in reply to my critical correspondent:
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Sorry It has been so long since I have found the time to write this reply. I don’t know where you have taken this quote from and your PM provided no link. Therefore I cant work out the context, but I dare say I was being flippant in the first line, with a barrage of others who I suspect may have been contending their beliefs without the slightest care that they should have some motive or desire to account for those beliefs.

~~~ Skepticus Said:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I believe in attempting to understand the truth, whatever that may be. Evidence is more important that belief though. Belief is not a valid method of knowing, but a by product of reason, at least it should be. Religious people always talk about ‘belief’ and ask about ‘belief’ as if it had any importance. As if believing something made it true.
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~~~My Correspondent Responded:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
interesting the connection and contradiction between your
first and last sentence:
i believe in ………..as if believing something made it true.
then what makes true what you believe in?????
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Sorry, but there’s NO contradiction there. I may just as well state my belief as may anybody. In NO WAY does what I have stated as my belief reflect a contradiction with my long upheld principle that BELIEFS SHOULD BE HELD FOR REASONS, and believing things doesn’t make them true. Put even more succinctly I uphold a personal maxim of ‘Reason before belief, not belief before reason’ On the contrary BECAUSE a belief established rationally about any particular fact is inert and inconsequential (the very principle I am advocating above) The belief I have stated above “…in attempting to understand the truth, whateverthat may be” is no exception even more it is entirely consistent with the principal it endorses.

ironically you seem to be reacting as if I am not entitled to have an opinion (or beliefs), precisely because I have stated my decree, that facts do not follow from beliefs. Apparently then, the only people entitled to have an opinion, are those who fabricate their beliefs with disregard to rational protocols such as accepting that beliefs should follow from reasons which follow from facts, rather than the other way around. Should one construct a logical rationale then, to show how they arrive at a belief (personal conclusion) by establishing rational priorities while seeking accord with stringent protocols of reason, then somehow they are not entitled to hold such belief as are manifest by this means and their claims for justifying that belief, may be proclaimed a contradiction. Ergo – we mustn’t believe anything logical.

Glibly stating ones belief and making no mention for any kind of rationale, is a failure to present the THINKING PROCESS that should precede a conclusion. Nobody should be interested in just what you or I BELIEVE, but rather how we came to those beliefs (which are after all nothing more or less than our personal conclusions) and what justifications we used to arrive at those conclusions.

My statement “I believe in attempting to understand the truth” is a statement of personal ideology. It is an example of a suitable way to use the phrase ‘I believe’. As it is a statement of personal ideology, it obviously doesn’t precede from a specific chain of cause and effect relationships, nevertheless the rationale should be obvious enough. At least is should be obvious to those who accept their existence within an objective reality and understand that the factual nature of reality, is independent of personal belief. That may not be as obvious to some, as I once assumed it was.

In the statement “I believe the sun is hotter than the moon” the phrase ‘I believe’ acts as a qualifier for the statement ‘the sun is hotter than the moon’, subordinating it to a personal conviction. That conviction is my conclusion about a tangible fact of reality. Notice the phrase ‘the sun is hotter than the moon’ is a matter of fact, it must either be objectively true or false. I am entitled to speculate but If I do so, it would be useful if I qualify that speculation with my rationale. THAT is the point I was trying to make with the original comment. Why should anybody care that I think the moon is hotter than the sun? The important question is Why (for what reasons) do I think this, for that is the real information that should be examined if we wish to know if the conclusion (belief) is justified with rational precedent.

In a world where assertions of fact are true or false for their own reasons ‘not because of anything somebody believes’, glibly stating an opinion about a matter of fact, as if it were true because you say so, is the height of absurdity and arrogance. We need to have the humility to know our place in the universe and realize that what makes something of a factual nature true or false is something beyond our capacity to influence by exclaiming beliefs. What is so hard to comprehend about the self evident proposition that ‘BELIEVING SOMETHING DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE’?

A child of 10 should understand this well, and not require any further clarification. The objectivity of the external world is self evident and it trucks no contention with the subjectivity of our personal convictions such that they may be granted the status of an opinion. Only fools attempt to supplant well established and understood matters of fact, for their own unencumbered opinion. When they do so, it comes as no surprise that they can offer no workings out or reasoning to show the objective rationality of their clueless opinion. These may have once been the children who stubbornly refused to grasp the concept of colouring within the lines, wrecking every other child’s colouring book in the deal. They are also very likely to be the ones, who had the hardest time drawing a distinction between the toilet and their pants.

I did not state ‘I believe in attempting to understand the truth’, BECAUSE I think that believing it makes it true. In the English language, the phrase ‘attempting to understand the truth’ is not even a  statement of a factual nature. It is an aspiration, an intention or a goal, but not a statement of fact. The aspiration itself is ABOUT fact or ‘truth’, but it is not a statement OF truth because it doesn’t resolve to the conditions true or false. It is actually a personal value, objective, intention or goal. It is ASPIRATIONAL. It is that which I ASPIRE TO. I might have stated it as ‘I believe it is a noble objective to understand the truth’, and that IS a statement of fact (ie it does resolve to true or false), but in this case the fact in question is incontestable because what IS or ISN’T ‘noble’ is not itself an objective matter of fact. Instead it is only my OPINION that ‘understanding the truth is a noble objective’.

Nobody could object to my making the statement as I am just as entitled to my opinion as anybody else. Even if I AM only chiming in with my opinion to be sarcastic, nevertheless, the actual opinion that I proffer is EVEN STILL, one that is hard to disagree with on a purely rational basis. So my belief about virtue and intellectual integrity, is whimsical in practice (as I am being sarcastic) but rational in principal (as it makes an appeal to subordinate opinion to reason). The fact that this might be expressed as an opinion based belief (although, actually, it happens to be expressed as a maxim or ideological principal), makes it nothing like a contradiction. The conclusion is still a rational one. A rational conclusion is still rational at the heart, even if it may be expressed whimsically as an opinion based belief. The opinion itself and the rational conclusion confer agreement with each other. They both advocate holding reason OVER belief [NB: Not instead of belief].

What you seem to have missed, is my tongue in cheek demonstration of glibly stating an opinion (which in existing company at the time, may have been all anybody cared to do), yet nevertheless demonstrating the humility of subordinating beliefs to the strictures of rational inquiry, by advocating the ‘attempt to understand the truth’. In other words, if you can believe anything you want on a whim, then one might just as well (or even better) choose to be prudent and stick with rational inquiry and demanding there be reasons for any conclusion. The corollary was quite clearly, fully intended to trump the antecedent proposition, artistically couched as it was, in the language of an aspirational belief. [EDIT: At the time of writing the addendum, new information had been discovered and I have added this comment since:  It was deliberately ironic BECAUSE I was asked to express my belief and BECAUSE I find this constant rambling  on about beliefs so damned annoying. But it WAS NOT a contradiction.]

Instead of understanding this you seem to have pounced on my having the temerity to exclaim a position of belief, as an opportunity to accuse me of a contradiction and implicate me in a treacherous conspiracy of one, to commit some heinous hypocrisy. [facepalm]  Good grief! There had to be one didn’t there?  As if simply having a belief, qualifies for the very same criticism I presented. I did not state that one must ‘NEVER HAVE ANY BELIEFS’, did I? What I did say was “Belief is not a valid method of knowing, but a by product [that should have been 'byproduct'] of reason, at least it should be.”

Belief should be a byproduct of the process of reason. How obvious is it, that ANYBODY should want to have reasons for whatever it is they believe? This is just so profoundly self evident, that it beggars belief, I should even find myself compelled to explain it, because I suspect I am being criticized for honoring this golden axiom of the highest (but most obvious) intellectual integrity. Astounding! Bizarre! That does not prevent me from having a belief, in fact it necessitates my belief. That is, because reasons lead inevitably to facts. I will be compelled to believe (just as inevitably) the plausible facts which reason leads me to discovering. Where reason compels, belief is necessary.

But the belief is the bath water and reason is the baby. If you want to think and have understandings, you should therefore want to intimately know reasons not beliefs. Beliefs don’t tell you anything. A deranged lunatic can proffer beliefs and they can be the product of equally deranged reason, wild guesses or no reason whatsoever. Unless you can examine the reasoning behind the beliefs, you have no idea of the intelligence and sanity of the belief other than your own independent speculation on the same subject.

This remark however, takes the cake:

“then what makes true what you believe in?????”

That is sillier than simple words can describe. Firstly a word on style. Sentences in the English language always start with a capital letter and only one question mark is required to terminate and punctuate a sentence as a question. You should see if you can trade in four of those question marks, for a couple of capital letters. Next; I can hardly describe how poorly structured this question is, whatever the intended meaning actually happens to have been.

Nothing “makes true” what I believe. Nor does any specific thing, make what I believe true; especially not after the fact. My whole point has been, as it was in the first place, that things are true (or false, or green, or 3.14159…, or 124.8 PSI, or 72 KG, or saturated, or compressed or magnified 3X or whatever status, condition or value they hold, in relation to any measurement or statement about them), for their own individual reasons, which are quite apart from our opinion based beliefs.

Let’s call this the end of my reply to my critic: What follows is addressed to you dear reader:

What kind of stupid question expects a preconceived singular cause for the truthfulness, of the multiple plethora of facts which I may hold as beliefs? The preconception that there has to be a singular cause, gives this question the smell of religious mentality (i.e. one true god as the cause of all things), but then that suspicion was already on the cards. The stench of religion was attested to, in the motive for somebody to even criticize an affirmation of rationality, while missing the obvious sarcasm and also botching up logic so badly in the criticism.

The noted lack of literacy and atrocious language usage skills are another hallmark of an illiterate, redneck, religious ignoramus. As with the vile stench of anti-intellectual self-righteousness. But to ask this astoundingly stupid question, preloaded with singular causality, and expecting me to state THE reason which makes EVERYTHING I believe true, that is a real smoking gun. I won’t say I am certain, but I am hedging my bets strongly, in the direction of a religious critic having foisted this remarkably stupid, illiterate question and It’s attending criticism.

No matter how you look at this question it is asked in complete ignorance of the actual point being made by my original comments, that things actually have their own reasons for being what they are, independent of our beliefs. Indeed each fact that may be regarded as true (or whatever), is entitled to have its own reasons for existing in this condition. The moon has craters, because it gets hit by asteroids. My car is yellow, because the pigments in the paint tend to reflect light in the wavelengths 570–580 nm while absorbing the others, and so on.

Can you imagine how many lifetimes it would take to answer this question, if it were taken at face value? Given the number of things I believe and the myriad of reasons I have for individual believing each one. My Jug just boiled. I believe this, because I know the sound of boiling water and the click it makes when it cuts off automatically. I am even more strongly convinced, because I know I am the one, who set it to boil in the first place. I know an old friend came to visit last week, because I answered the door and he came in and we chatted for about an hour. The sun will appear above the eastern horizon tomorrow, because the rotation of the earth… you get the idea?

The crowning glory of this question though, the shining jewel of stupidity that makes it’s owner the mayor of Idiotsville, is the deliciously perverse way, it completely inverts causality itself. The very idea that something is expected to “make(s) true what” I “believe in”, as if believing in something is an act I can whimsically choose, and then I can provide an after the fact catalyst to act upon my belief that ‘makes it true’.

This is a powerful delusion at the heart of the follower of any Abrahamic faith. You can believe things and that will make them true. All god seems to want, with all his petulant, capricious heart and soul, is to be believed in. Not world peace, abolition of hunger or even the most beautiful sonata, but for people to believe he exists. According to his worshipers and their church leaders, he will send you to hell for not believing. It is the only unforgivable sin.

Sound’s like emotional black mail to me considering the eternal pain and suffering factor. What? Just because I didn’t believe an absurdly implausible fairytale? Sounds much much more like the kind of story greedy con merchants would fabricate to coerce you to try and pretend you believe their fairytale. Still if you never learn to reason properly and you have your curiosity leached out of you, then you are a dry sponge hanging over a sloshing tub of delusions. The more they splash on you, the heavier laden you become and the harder it is to cling to the tenuous thread of rationality above. You may eventually give up and drop into the tub and become saturated.

Let me say this again Nothing “makes true” what I believe. Nor does anything, make what I believe true. Beliefs are not IN ANY WAY causally related to facts. The chain of cause and effect is impervious to the influence of beliefs in all but the tiniest fraction, that involve our own self motivation. The mundane and trivial scope of influence I have in this universe aside, only leaves everything outside of my scope to influence. The color of grass, the name of the next person who walks past my house and how much sugar you have in your coffee (if any), (get it?) For all intents and purposes and infinite plethora of possible facts that I (and you) have no control over.

For all of these things, including how the universe works in broad principle… No!… make that ESPECIALLY how the universe works in broad principle, these things are NOT subject to our whimsical choice of what we wish to believe. In fact if we have our head screwed on properly, we don’t have any choice about what to believe at all. NO! none! Beliefs should be the products of reason, by which I simply mean there should be reasons for what we believe the things we do, they should be logical reasons and they should also be outside of our control for anything but actions within it.

Critical thinking is not always easy, and excision of our wishful thinking can be thought of as an imposition on our freedom. You are free to believe anything you want (morally) but that is hardly a liberty if you wish to only believe that which is actually true. When you understand there is an objective world outside your mind, in which certain facts and measurements exist and when you choose to know the truth about it, with the bounds of possible accuracy, then you have to voluntarily relinquish, wishful thinking. That means if X is not true, you do not wish to believe that X is true. You then need to accept there are some tools that work towards finding out if X is or isn’t true, while there are others which do not work. Thinking that beliefs have any place in discovery of what the facts of reality are, is a HUGE ERROR. You can’t believe some thing to make it true. You have to believe it IF it is true, or disbelieve it IF it is false. Otherwise you have to estimate the probability.

In any case, beliefs (personal conclusions or perhaps plausibility estimates as the case may be) are on the end of the chain. They are inert byproducts They are estimates or conclusions about what actually IS or ISN’T factually true. They don’t do anything to the fact (or fallacy) they represent, they are just conclusions about it. A belief has nothing more to do with a fact, than waving a flag has to do with patriotism. Just as trees swaying do not cause the wind to blow, having beliefs doesn’t give people reasons to hold facts. Facts give people reason to hold beliefs. You have to make some attempt to know what the facts are, that process is what we call reasoning.

That is at least what I attempt to make my beliefs represent. If you choose instead to use a definition of the word ‘belief’ which includes the ability to exercise ‘freewill’ upon beliefs in the manner suggested by religious faith, then you have chosen a definition (misappropriated or equivocated) which corresponds to what in my nomenclature, is known as a delusion. You are not free to choose what to believe, as Judeo-Christianity suggests, if in fact, what you wish to believe, is whatever just happens to be true in the factual sense. Think about it, you cant make any choice by which the outcome of something outside of your control (such as if there is or isn’t a god), would be altered. In measuring external facts you are just like an instrument. A rain gauge can not DECIDE how much rain has fallen. It must passively measure the results of facts external (and indifferent) to its existence.

If religious people wish to dispute this point, they could at least have the nerve to confront it head on. I for one would LOVE to know how their whimsical choice to exercise freewill in choosing their BELIEF, is going to have any effect on anything other than how well (more like poorly) their choice accords with plain ordinary FACTS. That is to say, they should let us know how the belief influences the fact, if that is indeed what they expect to be able to do. As far as I can see the only thing you can do by altering beliefs, is change how well they fit with reality. That is a worthwhile exercise, if you enthusiastically embrace reasoning and realize the beliefs you hold have discrepancies with the facts of reality. This process of investigating reality and adjusting ones beliefs is often called LEARNING.

But that is not how the religious mind works and choosing beliefs is not an exercise in critical investigation of reality. The arbitrary choice of religion is lauded as a personal, moral choice. Moreover, it is also a choice deliberately intended to take dogmatic authority over critical thinking and reason. Religious people are conveniently silent on this, and wherever possible attempt to have their cake and eat it too. While peddling a belief system that will ultimately demand you to take your critical thinking and throw it on the scrap heap, it pretends as far as possible to convince the wary skeptic that it somehow still makes rational sense and true believers, will bend over backwards to accommodate critical discourse, as long as they think they can cheat, lie equivocate and generally ‘bear false witness’ on behalf of their sky-daddy. The whole field of theology is one big pretense to be doing some intellectual ruminating of a presumably rational nature. At least that is the pretense of it, but faith is not to be trifled with, and logic, critical thinking and reason, had better not try rising above faith, but…

Wait a minute. This all started with BELIEF. Nothing but pure unadulterated belief. And it stepped off the rational bandwagon precisely where logic and critical thinking was replaced by faith and dogma. Prior to this we had been talking about how beliefs were inert, and followed passively after the facts which we learned from reality. How then did we get divorced from rationality and critical thinking? This, is a question religion needs to answer for. The only reason is the one in full view. Making belief an active willful choice and raising BELIEF above REASON. To make matters worse the Christian dogma in particular, is encumbered with this hideous burden of guilt/shame for vicarious sin and the failure to ‘BELIEVE’ is punishable by eternal suffering. So believing IS UNQUESTIONABLY, something you are expected to do by means of ‘personal choice’ in a manner entirely divorced from reason or any logical method of apportioning conviction according to the plausibility of the belief or claim being presented.

So therein lies my criticism of the whole bat-shit crazy idea. How in the fuck is choosing a so called ‘BELIEF’ this way, supposed to meet any agreement with reality? The stupidity is obvious. The blackmail is obvious, and you could say that believing this (or anything for that matter) for beliefs own sake, beggars belief, but actually it canonizes belief; belief without reason. DOGMA! Of course the expression ‘beggars belief’ is a reference to the impoverished status imposed upon ‘belief’, usually in consideration of a particular absurd conclusion. So in another sense, dogma as a general principle, beggars belief far more effectively than anything could hope to. What is more important though, where dogma is concerned, is the BEGGARED impoverishment of REASON. Belief can take care of itself, reasoning needs to be looked after and nurtured. A belief will be whatever it must after the reasoning is done. Really what is happening is this: First of all dogma beggars reason and then religion canonizes the beggared, buggered, bastardized and butchered, belief that it brandishes as a result. It’s actually such belief which beggars reason, rather than the reason which beggars belief, if you see what I mean.

Returning to that absurd question for a moment. I considered taking it at face value and constructing a tongue in cheek reply to somehow ironically point out the absurdity, but as I played word games with it, I realized that there is an answer, a very good and very straight answer. Of course we do have to deconstruct the question, hammer the dents out of it and put it back together in some semblance of grammatical order. To that end, I chose to interpret the question as “What makes what I believe true?”.

I asked myself if there is one idea or concept that runs the whole gamut of nature (even reality itself), which encompasses all things as if to “make them true”? Then it struck me; that is precisely what causality is. All cause and effect relationships are entwined by the singular concept of causal connections. There is no need for a single cause of all causes as the primitive minds of the ancients assumed, but all causes need to be locked into a network of causally connected relationships, in which each element is logically possible, consistent with every other element of the network and consistent with the whole. Together, the logically and mutually consistent relationships of the interdependent elements of this network, adhere to the deeper principles of NECESSITY. Perhaps anything which isn’t impossible must be compulsory, but surely anything that is true, is logically possible and also necessary, otherwise it would be a-causal.

In any case the universal, general effects of logical necessity and causality, taken together are a more than adequate answer to the question “What makes what I believe true?” The question may have been intended as a more specific rhetorical device while assuming the properties of prejudice within an ill fitting, tiny, parochial, epistemological flawed, flat earth worldview of a young earth creationist, but I got to milk a little inspiration out of it FTW, and Well… damn it all, if that didn’t make me feel so much better.

Peace Love & Mung Beans Baby.

Addendum:

Having completed this article (all but the spell check), I decided It would be OK to go and sneak a peek at whether my speculation had been correct, that my correspondent was actually an ignorant godbotherer as I had suspected. It should come as no surprise for the reasons I have already put forward, that my suspicion was correct. Good guess? Hardly! But what I did receive as an added surprise, was the discovery of where the critic’s quoted text had come from. There it was, my comment exactly as quoted, right on the godbotherer’s own comments list. I didn’t even think of that, but I should have. Why? Because my reason for making the comment has been sitting on my own comments page all along I regularly notice it, but it has little meaning out of context. The matching comment on my own list, was from my correspondent who had dropped in to ask “then what do you believe in?” This question itself, would quite likely have been in response to something I had said on a video comment section somewhere, but that’s not important now.

Now we have an explicit, direct reason for why I had ventured into the domain of proffering what it is that I believe. The prefect reason in fact, as I had indeed been directly and explicitly ASKED what I believe in. Not just ‘what are my beliefs’ you note; but what do I believe IN. Explicitly asked as it happens in the statement of personal ideology mode I mentioned earlier. Well what a surprise then that I dare to express my beliefs as such and with precisely the attitude one should expect considering the beliefs I actually do hold and the question that was asked. Scrap the speculations I made of tongue in cheek, sarcastic predilections. No such imprimatur is required, to explain my temporary inclination to express my preference for rational thinking under the euphemistic guise of aspirational belief. It hardly needs to be tongue in cheek when I was directly asked ‘what I believe in’.

How interesting, but it doesn’t stop there. The attempt to saddle me with an accusation of  hypocrisy or self-contradiction, was actually prompted by somebody else visiting my correspondent’s channel, someone who may have had a better cause (although even then it’s still way of beam) as this visitor to my correspondent’s channel, was probably not privy to the original question I had been asked, but this person ventured for the following:

[NB: Keep it in mind that this person was probably unaware that
I had been asked 'what I believe in' by the owner of the channel]

[Regarding my original comment]:
“I wonder if he truly believes that?
It’s funny when you only read his first and last words though:
“I believe in………………As if believing something made it true.”

Hello! Hello! I’m having a little de-ja-vu here. Haven’t I read those words somewhere else before today? How much more bizarre can this get? Even thought my aspirational statement of belief in “attempting to understand the truth” DOES NOT contradict the caveat ‘believing something does not make it true’. i.e. I believe that BECAUSE IT IS TRUE, It is not true BECAUSE I BELIEVE IT. THE FACT THAT IT IS TRUE INDEED, DOES NOT PREVENT ME FROM, BUT REQUIRE ME TO BELIEVE IT. And even though I could by all rights state this belief without provocation excuse or justification and least of all without it being a contradiction, here I am being handed on a platter, the most unassailable and completely ideal guild edged invitation, to profess my belief. But on top of this the person making this accusation knows full well why I have tendered my belief as they themselves are the one who asked me to state it, i.e. ‘what do you believe in?’ In all fairness, the statement ‘I believe in attempting to understand the truth’ is not actually a BELIEF as the preface ‘I believe’ is simply a commonly used rhetorical tool for expressing an aspiration. Therefore there is no FACT in the statement that could even be tested for TRUTH value, and so no contradiction of any fact is possible.

As if there were not enough boxcars on the ’stupid train’ already, the godbotherer in question, takes the cue of this ignorant bystander, who is probably unaware that I was actually solicited to give my belief, and yet knowing all this still proceeds to upbraid me with the accusation that I was contradicting myself and consequently implies I am a hypocrite. My god-bothering correspondent should have pulled the ignorant bystander with the ‘bright idea’ into line and pointed out that I was invited to express my belief. But NO!… instead my god-bothering friend decides to send me a PM pointing out “the connection and contradiction between your [my] first and last sentence” while demonstrating the breathtaking level of ignorance and stupidity some people are capable of in their desperate fight find any pathetic morsel of justification for contrived strawman criticisms. Fuck knows why, because the criticism was only sent by private message. So It’s not even as if this moron even had a publicity point to score. The whole ordeal is just bat-shit crazy from top to bottom.

So it should come as no surprise that my first line is about what I do indeed believe. But having the quality a euphemistic ideology, the belief I stated “I believe in attempting to understand the truth” was not in the same category of ‘beliefs’ which one could contradict themselves with, by claiming it was factually true, because they believed it. Not that anything I had stated about any belief conferred anything but the opposite of that meaning anyhow, i.e. ‘that no fact is true because I or anybody else believes it’. But as I have explained, the belief I conveyed, was not even a matter of fact, but even if it was, It wouldn’t matter, because, even if I did believe it, that would only be because of its factuality, rather than its factuality being because I believe it. So, one more time for the half brain-dead, the declaration “I believe in attempting to understand the truth” DOES NOT even remotely contradict the caveat ‘believing something does not make it true’ and you would have to be a FUCKING MORON to think it does.

But here’s the acid test. If my correspondent or their acquaintance, wishes to take up the issue and clarify how this could be a contradiction, I expect them to FIRST, put their own cards on the table and stipulate which half /(halves) of the contradiction it is they disagree with? So to my correspondent (and their acquaintance), don’t just accuse somebody of contradiction; own the responsibility for clearly identifying your own sympathies with the remarks being made and advocate a clear position of your own for which YOU may be held accountable. To that end: Do you believe in attempting to understand the truth? You can simply answer in the same vein as I expressed it. So in other words: Do you agree with me, that understanding the truth is important? YES or NO? On the other hand do you agree with my statement that, ‘believing something does not make it true’, YES or NO?

I would expect a reply giving not only your straight answers to these two direct questions, but a detailed explanation of how you arrive at each conclusion. By all means convince me that either or both statement is unworthy of my whole-hearted endorsement. You must surely disagree with at least ONE of these statements, otherwise you ALSO, are a hypocrite by your own logic. You can by now, see the paltry, insipid idiocy, that stands for logic here of course can’t you? I have said something (anything), that is critical in some way (anyway) of beliefs. So that means that beliefs are bad (kinda sorta and um… er… sumfing like dat.. der… ya know?), but hang on didn’t I start of by saying ‘I believe’ (Ummmm!… you said ‘believe’. I’m telling on you. wah, waaah… MOMMY! Mommy! that man said ‘believe’ and he doesn’t like beliefs waaah waaah). I don’t know how anybody with this level of stupidity, can actually go to the toilet by themselves let alone use a computer to communicate. Actually, the illiterate slop I received, is hardly worthy of dignifying, with the stately honor of being dubbed communication. So it could still be considered a moot point, if such a creature can manage to wipe it’s own backside.

The problem so common amongst creationists, is that they never hold themselves accountable for their own beliefs but they constantly attack those who do. They present a barrage of strawman, fabricated disputes, and revile, shirk and hinder any criticism of their own beliefs in any way possible. This is demonstrated in the dispute above, as nowhere was there any attempt to voluntarily forward any opinion, by the critic about the statements in question. Only to unleash an ill-conceived accusation that the two statements were contradictory. Never mind the creationist having the balls to express an opinion for what they themselves think about either statement, just foist an empty rhetorical hit and run, and ALWAYS maintain the pretense that if your opponent can be criticized about anything, it somehow validates your own worldview; the old ‘I’m right because your wrong’ charade.

My own self-imposed standard that beliefs must be the end result of valid reasoning, is an encumbrance that I embrace and admit, in the kit of intellectual honesty that can be used against my ideas. Far more often than not, the imposition is self-imposed and the sacrifice is some idea I might have liked to believe, (farewell biorhythms) but if it isn’t true, it isn’t true. Where is the discipline of self-criticism in these creationist cowards? They wish to clutch at pebbles of reason (as if they really understood it), if and only if those pebbles can be hurled as weapons against their adversaries. Learning to use and embracing reason as a tool of personal intellectual hygiene, wouldn’t ever occur to these vermin. They are in the business of confirmation bias and malicious destruction of the valid and carefully reasoned worldview of their opponent. You can plainly see who is and isn’t playing fair, by noticing who puts their cards on the table, who volunteers to bring in their own laundry, while on the other hand who is always attack attack attacking, without having the balls expose their own position nor provide justification for the same. lemee heeeeear ya say… HALEL.. um… No, make that… !PATHETIC!

Censorship! Because It’s More Effective Than Faith Healing

I guess it’s fair to say that I’m just a little jacked off right now. I had spent the best part of a full evening (4 hours or so) laying out a detailed and very carefully considered attempt to explain what makes atheists so annoyed at the arrogance of theists, who blurt their supernatural certainty, in contradiction of the cautious worldview found in the skeptical mind. It was on this the comments page of the ’speaking in tongues’ video which is the subject of this thread. I laid down about 15 full comments in reply to one particular viewer (respectshan), went to post the last one and the comments had been disabled by the filthy maggot revkiethbarr. Again, I had not been using a text editor (when will I ever learn?), but then again, the comment software doesn’t seem to like it when you use the Linux clipboard (it may have something to do with text encoding etc..) I dunno, I am not a happy chappy.

I had made a very diligent attempt to restrain myself from hostility this time. Earlier I had called the god botherer in question an ignorant moron or some such thing. I do often just blurt out my honest emotional response, but what the fuck. I am human, and this is toxic poison to society. it really does undermine our secular values and falsely place religious moral codes above secular ones. Swearing and ad hominem, is hardly what you would call a blood bath on the streets. Religion is all to often directly the cause of intolerable bloodshed, murder, gang warfare and hostile vilification. That is just the violent motives ordained by holly books and endorsed by their alleged creator deity authors. Whenever this is raised religion is flatly reflected as the motive, everyone else’s religion is blamed, or the modern civility of secular society, is credited to the modernity of later gospels and interpretations. Shure thing!!  We can see how peaceful and civilized the theocratic countries have become. Without secular democratic values, these knuckle walking savages, would be out in the streets dancing a jig and firing guns into the air, every time a rival religious leader was killed. Some people deserve to live in a place where you never have to paint your house, as long as you dont mind  the colour red. In such a place, you just wait till the blotches of splattered holiness join together. That’s one less chore but the extra entrances which your neighbors keep installing, well… talk about butchers.

I reserve the right to have zero confidence in the stable civility of religious minds even here in the west. Just stir up their personal vengeance generator with a report on abortion or violent child abuse. Some things are enough to make anybody cry. When these people cry there are no tears they are crying, savage, violent, slogans of personal hatred and vengeance. When the crime is serious and matches their puritanical agenda, they have no hesitation to reveal that the law of the land is not good enough for them their accountability is ceded ultimately to only the one authority. It’s when we are dealing with the most serious moral decisions, that we need to respect the shared responsibility and make our decisions with the utmost care and reflection. My hostile vitriol could never compare with these could be, and would be violent criminals. Anybody who can have the bibles grotesque barbarity quoted or read and know of it themselves and yet fail to recoil and not become repulsed, is potentially sociopathic miscreant. Why would expect any different. There is no more logical validity behind their belief in the moral supremacy of god than their failure to identify and dispense with Pascals Wager. Wishful thinking, circular reasoning and interchangeable currencies of is’s for aughts. and visa versa.

The ‘good’ reverend revkuntabull, having not enough respect for freedom of speech and too cowardly to let other peoples comments stand on their own merit or other wise, is quite an interesting character from his website. He has a book published called “From Genisis to Armageddon”.  That book should have something for the whole family. From the nice kiddy’s ‘arky warky’, to the timeless suspense thriller for all the adults, it’s the same one which we’ve all been waiting for Arrrrrrrrrrrmageddon. What would you call the Flying Spaghetti Monsters epic food fight at the end of times? How about Armaspaghettion? (L) copyleft me Skepticus. But if the food runs out, then you might hear it called ‘Armageddinhungry’.  But I suppose I shouldn’t be so flip and I should try to see it as the serious issue it is.  Wasting food is something this world can little afford. All those starving babies in the third world, deserve the chance to grow up healthy, go to school (until they get to the sciencey part). They should have a chance to be confirmed and worship and then one day they might proudly go amongst their people as holly campaigners abolishing the horrible evil practice of contraception. If you don’t want to catch disease you should wait till your honey moonlight, or come to an arrangement with a nice clean alter boy.  You think they may be called altar’s because being bent over them is sure to ‘alter boys’?

These people aught to pull their heads in and adopt some humility. Unfortunately they are to stupid to see this, after all the world does revolve around them. I might get angry an voice my contempt, but I still bend over backwards to present the reasoned and dispassionate logic to support the rational side of debate. I can be quite blunt to idiots I don’t know or don’t care much about, but anger swearing and ridicule is not hate or violence. Those are the machinery of religion and I sometimes turn crimson and shudder with loathing exasperation, but I know full well I would never lift a finger in anger or take to the streets and throw rocks or torch cars. Religious people are also civilized, except the ones who aren’t. You don’t have to be a vigilante or a terrorist to be uncivilized, just being a cheat and and an underhanded vermin, who takes advantage of easy prey and stacks the deck at every possible opportunity. Indoctrination methods as well as and censorship from critical discourse serve the modern villain well. Those are the greedy, desperate, self serving echoes of a barbaric past and it tells me that these people do not want to be mature or civilized citizens. They do not want to share resources and leave a legacy of virtue and pride. Why would they? They are programed to accept a point list of direct commandments. WTF is free will for then? ‘Do these things or burn in hell for ever. ‘

Doesn’t seem to leave much scope for freewill to me. It ’s not just that the choice is preempted, but that the scope for subtlety of choice is constrained to black and white instructions. Actually you are not supposed to be condemned to hell for breaking the commandments if you confess and ask for forgivingness. God it seems, just can’t stay mad at those puppy dog eyes forever. If those puppy dog eyes should stare straight through him though, and see nothing, then that is your role call, for the pits of hellfire. Sorry that’s unforgivable. “I gave you a bronze age story, full of arbitrary capricious miracles and wars”, the kind, loving deity might say. “It had talking serpents, a little sun I once told to stop going around the earth and several different contradictory versions of creation. Plus it encapsulated and plagiarized the mythology of the older middle eastern myths. What more do you want? Not that eastern block Buddhist and taoist crap I hope. You’re not interested in that little fat gut made rock are you? Huh? They say god could never make a rock too heavy for him to lift. Look at this little fat bastard. He could never lift himself and he’s made of rock. You wouldn’t want me to send my son over there and have to eat goodness knows what. God cant be sustained on dishes of cabbage leaf and butterfly entrails, any more than he can dwell with iniquity. You couldn’t see that thousands of other religions were wrong, just because they had the same sort of evidence. So, it didn’t tip you off that nearly everybody else in your community were keen believers in me. The avalanche of bias in your own small local community, not enough to tip you off was it? All those other cultures they wouldn’t know how to understand my divinity. Look at them they cant even speak properly and they dress so weird. Maybe you just couldn’t see reason to believe was that it?

“Didn’t have enough evidence did you – you evil bastard. You couldn’t understand the psychological phenomenon that freewill gives you the right to decide, what seems probable? Well god loves you shit head, and however nice you have been as a human being, you must roast in hell. Not just for some arbitrary period, but for eternity. Don’t you see? you could have just decided for yourself by not thinking and excepting some unfathomably fantastic fairytale scenario, and nothing about thought reason, or evidence will override this one thing. You must believe in me, and do your utmost to convince others. Learning how to reason will cause cogitative dissonance, so you better STFU about that and avert thine eyes.”

How obvious is the cowardice of ‘hellfire and brimstone’ as a motive for pretending to understand reason and ignoring or evading valid reasoning debate while pretending either it or the evidence we see is consistent with a deity (obviously conscious and supernatural) otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to say I know everything already. The evidence is all around you. It’s everything you cant explain at face value and everything for which you can say goddidit. Now we have established the undeniable existence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Never mind about where the FSM comes from. It’s probably that saucepan over by Russell’s Teapot.

Don’t forget, just because goddidit is not an actual explanation in terms of cause and effect relationships and you don’t know HOW goddidit; I mean just because goddidit is a synonym for ‘how the fuck would I know’ that is no reason to avoid arrogantly undermining the hard earned and meticulous investigations of natural science. Everything THEY study is ASSUMED to obey the laws of nature, and they don’t even TRY to jump to supernatural conclusions of inexplicable laws and forces outside of the natural realm. The marvels of our universe from the simplest corn popping to the forming of a snow flake or the miraculous properties of a banana are all things for which goddidit is the nat…er supernatural alternative.

Just remember. As long as you PERSONALLY don’t understand how something works, you should immediately leap to the conclusion that it is impossible according to natural laws. Since it’s theoretically impossible that you should find yourself in a situation which requires you to say “I don’t know” or even estimate the probability of alternatives, you must assume perfect certainty is available to you and avoid doubt or uncertainty. Meticulous studies of nature and academic details of logic and reason are superfluousness. God is the answer to every question because god isn’t bound to the logical laws of causality within nature. Godidit means that you know everything and don’t have any gaps in your explanation of the entire cosmos. Isn’t that how deists feel? Godidit can be used to plug any gap in detailed specific, causative explanations.

The supernatural being without rules, can be assumed to do absolutely anything. Somehow, many of us were persuaded to believe that something could exist to escape natural law. But the only things we know with any degree of certainty are known because natural law describes what is necessary. The implications of necessary phenomena and their relationships, lead us to investigate further natural laws. etc. Nothing can be MEANT by the supernatural. It is a void, or a suspension (even a contradiction) of necessary truth as we understand it. It can not be partisan to knowledge, as unlike nature, we have no understanding of how it works.

There are no rules of the supernatural, which logical reasoning mandates. How can nature be any less than the sum of everything that is possible? As long as there is a logical explanation for anything, that thing is understood to be the result of laws that are logical and consistent with nature.  While there may be anomalies, we sometimes have too say we don’t understand that yet. While there may not be a known explanation for a thing, it is not inevitably supernatural. It’ cant therefore be assumed to be supernatural. The reason nature abhors a miracle, is because nature attends to all things that are logically possible. The very definition of a supernatural event, is that it defies natural law and natural laws are defined by logical necessity. Nature is at the very least, delimited by the bounds logical possibility. We can’t even conceive of a supernatural event with out conceding that they must be illogical in principle.

Before too long I will put some time into replacing the failed attempt at posting on the revporkypie’s comment section for the video about babbling bullshit. I have also mirror’d it ftw. You can view it and yes, even comment right here.

It turns out our good revkockbag is something of a jet setting faith healer. The best medicine for this kind of bolloks is this:

Of Laws and Gods

Again I have found myself in debate with yet another YouTuber, again resulting in a rather long essay. This YouTuber is a Hydrogen fuel enthusiast and began slamming skepticism in general, with a strawman caricature of what skepticism really is. Here’s the clip. May it speak for itself:

I have responded to this on the comments page with the following:

Good grief.

You are calling yourself a skeptic in the ‘right’ measure or to the ‘right’ degree. How do you KNOW the right degree? At the beginning you scorn skeptics who doubt a various list of things including God. You point out (quite correctly) that we don’t know anything as certain fact and scorn skeptics with a strawman that Laws are written by people and so they are ‘our creation’. Sorry but they are only discovered by us. The laws are natures we obey them as a matter of necessity.

Natures laws are not like judicial laws.

Before long however you are talking about Jesus as if he and your freaking imaginary friend were just indisputable facts. MAN!! It’s not the so called “hard core’ skeptics that need to take a look at how to avoid making over confident knowledge claims, It’s faith heads with imaginary friends. Did you ever hear of Occam’s razor? You can dispute the second law of thermodynamics after you find evidence which contravenes it. That’s just how it works.

BTW I don’t know of any skeptics (hard core or otherwise) who pontificate as authoritatively as you do here, even though by the end, you begin to admit you have to accept the same deal and say ‘maybe I am wrong’. When you accept this however, it is clear that you are only talking about your interest in hydrogen fuel technology. You haven’t given a moments thought to the double standard that you accept your FAITH based beliefs as certain facts. You have shot your own foot with this crap.

Your wholesale presumption and arrogance presumably gives you license to pontificate that “One creator wrote down” all the laws of the universe at the beginning of time. “We are just witnesses to it” Pardon me? Who’s pontificating? When something is discovered about nature, we often find laws of nature which demonstrate necessity, and give rise to understanding of basic natural principals. You may be ignorant to the difference but we are learning rather inescapable understandings.

Apparently all you recognize of science is observation, and perhaps you hope that mainstream laws can be overthrown at a whim.

When you look at new ideas and contemplate how open minded you are, give a little thought for the skeptic who not only has an open mind to the idea itself, but also to alternative, the possibility that the idea is wrong. It isn’t only belief which makes us open minded it is also doubt. It is allowing evidence to speak for itself and truth to stand on it’s own merit.

If you believe ID hogwash, then it’s YOU who needs to look more carefully at a snowflake etc… You need to notice that these things are governed by natural laws, which don’t require supernatural creation to be explained. It is YOU who needs to think about what you are claiming by suggesting that God made this universe because he had MAGIC powers.

You need to notice how Goddidit doesn’t explain anything. How does the magic work? Nobody can explain. If they could it wouldn’t be magic would it?

For magic requires actions that just defy logic and reason. If your magical sky pixie can just blink and make something happen, then it sounds like a wonderful fairytale, but it doesn’t actually explain how it happens. You trash the very beautiful and hard earned scientific understanding of how snowflakes are formed, by revealing your personal ignorance of any such understanding and declare because you are lacking the knowledge to understand, that there must be a God to make snowflakes.

Don’t you realize that a God doesn’t provide any knowledge of how anything works, only a magical excuse to fill the gaps of real understanding.

I think you need to get out of YOUR high and mighty chair, take off YOUR pontificating crown of knowledge and realize that you can’t make your absolute assertion of fact that god exists, as if it were dependable knowledge, especially if you expect others to reserve some respect for uncertainty.

EletrikRide responds:

It’s not magic, its the Creator in action. The laws of chemistry, physics, kinetics and thermodynamics, etc. govern the process of forming a snowflake. You fail to realize that all of those disciplines exist solely because they were created (written), otherwise they would not exist. Deny it as you may, the truth exists independent of your personal beliefs.

And it is YOU who needs to continue to delve into the nature of this Universe. The deeper you dig, the more you will discover that all these natural phenomenon that you think to be random cannot possibly be so. One thing about God – your belief in Him is not required! He exists no matter HOW defiantly you continue to disbelieve. That’s why He is God. Your belief is desired, not required. You also RESERVE THE RIGHT to not believe. You should not be judged by other men for not believing!

Thank you! You just described in detail the reason why I support the views i do on hydroxy. I rely on what i have observed and recorded, not what someone has told me. then i post my results for all to view.

I know I’m in the right degree with one simple measure: I don’t troll around on you tube and on the net leaving nasty or vulgur comments, making rude unjustified personal attacks, or administering unprovoked character assassinations on a person’s character. I approach skepticism with an open mind and do my best to avoid the personal attacks that others indulge in so easily. Of course I am only human and sometimes I resort to these methods when attacked unjustly. I NEVER start these fights

Now i get it!! You don’t believe in God or Jesus. that is fine. You are allowed to believe what you will – as that is FREE WILL. And yes, I’m familiar with O.R. That is why for me, it is inescapable that God must and does exist. For you to disagree with that is fine, but for you to insult me for it is illogical and unjust. Also, I NEVER disputed the Law Of Thermodynamics. I dispute your personal understanding of it. You did NOT write that law!

There is NO double standard here. Only your inability to understand the message I’m conveying here. I cannot make it any more clear, so if you choose to reject my views, that is fine. But you are not in a position to criticize them until you actually understand what is being said first! In reading your posts, I think you are just desperately grasping for something to criticize me for. That is fine, but present a logical argument. This is not logical on your part as it stands.

Skepticoz Responds:

Don’t you realize that a God doesn’t provide any knowledge of how anything works, only a magical excuse to fill the gaps of real understanding.

I think you need to get out of YOUR high and mighty chair, take off YOUR pontificating crown of knowledge and realize that you can’t make your absolute assertion of fact that god exists, as if it were dependable knowledge, especially if you expect others to reserve some respect for uncertainty.

The last time I checked, that’s actually what skepticism actually is. The ability to reserve a margin of doubt, rather than absolute certainty.
I accept some things almost beyond a shadow of doubt, but only by reckoning their probability. In principal I accept that nothing is a completely watertight 100% certain fact, but then it just comes down to probability. If only you had a vague clue how improbable your primitive, barbaric, bronze age god Yahweh, of the dessert dwelling barbarians was.

EletrikRide Responds:

Your comments are slightly derogatory. I considered not approving them, but you bring up a good point despite your hate of open minded thinking. So I will entertain your thoughts despite your abrasiveness. Again, the evidence of the existence of God is all around. It’s 100% watertight. The problem lies with your inability to see it, not His ability to reveal it. The burden of proof is NOT on God. after all, he MADE you. He is not MY God, He is OUR God.

I have no pontificating crown, nor high chair. I’m only presenting the truth, in that I never said I think I’m better than you. In fact, I don’t. It is obvious, however, that you do think you are somehow better than me. That is evident in your previous insult. Despite your disdain, I will not be changing my view on this.

God provides all the knowledge and proof of anything and everything He has created. You choose to ignore it, then accuse Him of not disclosing. That is not fair.

What we see in the last comments above is the fervent, stubborn, refusal to view another persons point of view from their own angle and the obstinate insistence of pushing a personal worldview upon others. No, the burden of proof is not on God Thats for sure.If god doesn’t exist it couldn’t possess any burden of proof. The debate is between two mortals. One of them is making claims about the existence of a creator God. And the burden of proof is always on the claimant. You claim X, you prove X. I only note EletrikRide’s attempt to shift the burden of proof away from himself.

“He is not MY God, He is OUR God.” WTF?? Sorry pall. He’s a sick twisted imaginary delusion infecting your mind. I denounce he exists and repudiate the concept you call the holy ghost. Just keep your sick stinking delusions to yourself.

The following is the response I wrote in answer to the response I received from my first comments.

---

“I know I’m in the right degree with one simple measure: I don’t troll around on you tube and on the net leaving nasty or vulgur comments, making rude unjustified personal attacks, or administering unprovoked character assassinations on a person’s character.”

Good Boy!! I think you deserve an elephant stamp and a gold star, for your wonderful good behavior. But ah.. Umm.. How exactly does that help determine the degree of plausibility, in any idea you have adopted or rejected, or more to the point the degree you should require? I will take that as a glib failure to attend to the point.

“Now i get it!! You don’t believe in God or Jesus. that is fine. You are allowed to believe what you will – as that is FREE WILL.”

Yes but, if you look at you clip again, you may realize that your whole argument rests on a designer god. I am not just randomly stating my disbelief. Whether I believe in any god or not isn’t even relevant. The fact is that YOU DO, and it is your claim that God writes natural laws which allows you extend authoritative credence to the idea that they can some how be disregarded.

“And yes, I’m familiar with O.R. That is why for me, it is inescapable that God must and does exist.”

Then you are being negligent with your reasoning skills.

“For you to disagree with that is fine, but for you to insult me for it is illogical and unjust.”

Can’t see what you are taking offense at. but of course taking offense, it’s a fine art for creationists, so maybe I don’t see the subtle points in it.

“Also, I NEVER disputed the Law Of Thermodynamics. I dispute your personal understanding of it. You did NOT write that law!”

Well I never said you did dispute it. You used it as an example of a law which should not be used to declare something impossible. I simply pointed out that if it can be disputed, it must be done with evidence. My comprehension of thermodynamics was never in contention either, until right now. If you want a debate about who is a better authority, then you are debating like a ten year old schoolboy. GROW UP. If I make a mistake in my interpretation of thermodynamics, THEN you can pull me up and correct me. The general complaint that nobody can use laws in debate, unless they have the authority of having written them is absolutely moronic.

For starters thermodynamics is an entire area of physics with numerous laws. I suspect you are referring to the second law of thermodynamics, because it is the mother of all laws for defining limits on physical dynamics. You have a very naive perspective if you think that conscious beings (people or gods), “writing down” a law as you put it, is what makes it real, or if you think that only the being who creates the law can dictate when or how it must be enforced.
Laws of nature do not require sentient beings to exist for them to be obeyed. They are not created when somebody comes along and writes them down. They exist in nature and are independent of the human endevors which discover them. The laws as they are written, are descriptions of circumstances in which particular cause and effect relationships are either impossible or inevitable. They describe predictable results.

As such, laws can and do describe what is or isn’t possible, at least to the degree that we have them right. If we have to adjust our understanding of the laws, then that needs to be demonstrated empirically with good evidence. At which point we have an anomaly, until we can find a logically watertight set of laws, which cover all of the evidence. The laws are written, to describe the logically sound boundaries of behavior in nature.

Whenever you propose a system in physics and a critic points out a particular law, which contravenes the workings of the proposed system, it will either be that the law doesn’t apply, the system won’t work or the law is wrong. In the case of the last one, you had better check it out because discovering anomalies in natural laws, can lead to fantastic discoveries and Nobel prizes etc…

If the law doesn’t apply, you make a refutation based on that. But to cry foul because your critic didn’t write the laws, and because you think you should be exempt from natural laws on the grounds of an opponents lack of authority is just silly. To claim a higher power exists and that nobody can tell you that laws have to be obeyed because that person didn’t write the laws and that your imaginary sky daddy is the “only authority of the verifiability of the laws of the universe” well that is just patently absurd.

The only reason we can consider something a law, is because it CAN be verified. The only authority on verifiability of the laws of the universe, that we know of and can say exists, it the entire scientific establishment, including research facilities, peer review journals, academic science, mathematics, science historians and philosophers science and reason etc, etc… There is no single authority in other words.

“You TOTALLY missed the spirit of the message I was trying to convey. You just hate it when someone presents a logical arguement that defies your hatred of this technology.. I’m sorry it is to much for you to handle. Too bad your mind is closed.”

NO! I TOTALLY got the whole thing. YOU are so TOTALLY off beam it is unbelievable. I was searching the net (with my completely open mind) looking information to understand how plausible the hydrogen technology may be. When did I ever say that I dispute the validity of hydrogen fuel, let alone HATE it. WTF?!!! If that is how easily you jump to conclusions then no wonder you believe in magical sky pixies.

“It’s not magic, its the Creator in action.”

So you think perhaps supernatural creation doesn’t contradict the way in which nature is understood to work. Or you don’t understand that when an event is supposed to in actual fact, violate laws of nature that this is supernatural. The Christian God of the Bible is manifestly supernatural and creation is considered to be a miraculous, supernatural event.

Whether you like the word ‘magic’ or not, that is precisely what is being proposed and regardless of what you call it, it doesn’t explain anything. You don’t seem to have a very firm grasp on causality and necessity. When a phenomenon is understood, it means we can establish it within a mesh of cause and effect relationships. Things don’t just happen because they are allowed to, or because they feel like it. They happen because they simply must under given circumstances. When we discover a law of nature it is this necessity that is described.

“The laws of chemistry, physics, kinetics and thermodynamics, etc. govern the process of forming a snowflake.”

You’re damn right they do, and theres no grounds to supose that anything other than natural causality is at the heart of it.

“You fail to realize that all of those disciplines exist solely because they were created (written), otherwise they would not exist.”

‘Laws’ and ‘disciplines’ are two separate things. Disciplines are founded to study areas of knowledge; knowledge, which in science is taken from nature. The laws are relationships in cause and effect, which can not be logically avoided. Nobody creates this law, this relationship in nature; it is discovered and found to be necessary to maintain logical consistency with other evidence and laws. Disciplines are man made (or though nature preempts them) whereas, laws are immutable natural artifacts of the universe.

“And it is YOU who needs to continue to delve into the nature of this Universe.”

NO! I am sorry. Again it is you who seems unable to distinguish precept from concept and abstract from concrete. I’ll thank you not to bestow upon me the appalling limitations of your grotesque little perspective.

“The deeper you dig, the more you will discover that all these natural phenomenon that you think to be random cannot possibly be so.”

So here we have the emphatic crescendo to the shrill heights of absolute certainty, accompanied by total authoritative statement of that which can be declared impossible. “Can not possibly be so”?!! What are you thinking? You haven’t established that with any logical inference. The best you could possibly have is a personal lack of comprehension of how it could be explained any other way than your naive creation myth.
Because you don’t posses the imagination to contemplate or understand any natural explanation, you just throw up your hands and say ‘goddidit’. This is sometimes known as the argument from personal incredulity. Not only that, but you state it with the same emphatic certitude, that you deride those nasty ‘negative skeptics’ for having when they endorse a law of nature to declare what is necessary or impossible.
That is the absolute height of hypocrisy. It is the unbreachable bounds of ridiculous absurdity and incredulity, to claim particular laws of nature are not known to a degree that makes them practically certain and to claim that a fantastic creation myth from middle eastern bronze age, is a necessary fact, because you can’t see how any natural explanation of things like snow flakes is possible without a supernatural deity.

You yourself are being negatively skeptical (if there ever was such a thing) about the laws of nature, their intrinsic inviolability as well as their inevitable consequences, and yet here you are emphatically declaring absolute certainty about something as absurd as anything ever could be.

I’ll explain it again A) Just because you can’t see how nature might be self contained with a logical explanation for all natural things, doesn’t mean that a supernatural deity needs to exist. It may just be that there is a natural explanation thay you simply don’t comprehend. B) God doesn’t explain anything anyway. The explanation only imposes an even larger assumption on the situation. That assumption is that a supernatural god exists, who has supernatural powers, and provides supernatural explanations which we don’t understand the workings of. It’s an assumption that this being A) exists B)created even then it is devoid of causative explanation, since nobody knows the details in Gods methods.

Where did I ever give the impression that I believe natural phenomena to be random anyhow? Again we see vestiges of your own impoverished imagination, because you simply lack the education or insight, to see the interconnectedness of all these phenomena. You must think that, if there is no creator god, then the relationship between things and what makes them necessary is void or unaccounted for. In some cases a cause may presently be unaccounted for, but when we discover something new, it is never in isolation, it is with respect to many other phenomena. It is connected with causal elements and so hold it to a sensible place within nature.

The story of nature is anything but random. You started your clip out mentioning the laws of thermodynamics. This is a good example of cause and effect relationships which are very far from random. Take the back off a television (after unplugging it), and have a look in there. The box of electronic gizmo’s, obey very very very, precise laws of electronics, which as it happens, couldn’t help but do whatever each of them do. Yes they are designed by people but they work entirely by natural principals which are entirely out of our hands. We may design resistors and capacitors etc, but we don’t design Ohms law for instance. OK I suspect you want to intervene here and suggest that these laws are put there by God. Right? Well that’s just it, these laws are inevitable. They happen because they must. When you understand such a basic law, you should also see how it is not possible to avoid under the relevant conditions.

That is why your TV is so predictable, the laws being obeyed by electrons in the circuits do not alter. Even when the TV breaks, it is because wear and tear is a natural situation and the laws are still being obeyed but the circumstances have changed. Heat must always conduct from the warmer to the cooler body. It’s not because person wrote it down on a piece of paper. If you think thats what laws are you simply don’t get it ol’ boy. A law such as that, existed when and wherever heat was first conducted in nature, and continued without fail ever since.

If you can not see this inevitability in the laws of nature, then I guess that is where you claim without god there could only be randomness. Well I do in fact see how some inevitable relationships in nature are determined by cause and effect. I am not bending over backwards to see these things and I am not deluded. NO! Many many many things, do not require anybody to intervene so that they may behave predictably Lawfully in fact. I have no need to invoke a supernatural creator to understand why heat must conduct from a warm body to a cooler one. It is simple. Heat is energy. Heat is the positive value, and the the lack of it cant propagate. Heat may dissipate, but the relative coolness simply emerges in situ from the lack of heat.

A fair part of what atheist/skeptics find annoying about the religious/paranormal mindset, is the limitations of ignorance they are willing to bestow on others who explore nature and find truth. They are so willing to contradict that truth and assume the other guy is as naive about nature as they are. Then they go on to imagine that their hair brained unreasoned fallacies of supernatural fantasy, are also valid reasonable facts, because in some vague, childish, ‘just so’ way, however implausible, they explain a little something “like how the elephant got his trunk” etc.., to a regressive irrational mind with no reasoning skills.

I fully realize what you are saying when you look around you and say ‘look at all this’ and how ‘could it be so?’… It really is a noble and worthy question you pose and you are right to ask it. Don’t think that I don’t understand the wonder of the natural world you call creation. It is people who have gone deep enough to find interconnectedness generalizations and principals of law that explain how it not only might be so, but how it (or some of it) must be so; these are the minds to which you need to at least pay heed, if not ultimate respect. When you scoff at the imperfection of mans knowledge, it is not being done with a retrospective understanding of how far that knowledge goes. You clearly do not posses a map of where the perimeters of that knowledge is.

At the same time you profess to know the why-fors and where-fors of a sentient being, on who’s behalf you do profess to speak, when you claim that ‘only he can know all of this’. Now surely you must have some tiny inkling of how presumptuous you sound. While you pay quite fair accord to the fallibility of human knowledge, you seem to expect an exemption slip for your own personal beliefs. Those beliefs are as arbitrary and based on philosophical whim as anything man has devised. I do appreciate why you think they are honored with evidence that you find convincing. Yet still that does not warrant elevation to absolute fact.

If I had to name a fact in this whole universe which I had to stake my life on; a fact that if it were correct in the truest sense, I would survive and If it were false I would perish; I would be happy to name the second law of thermodynamics. Not only that, it would be my first choice. Eddington puts a fine point on it with this:

“If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington,

Now. If on the other hand, I had to choose a widespread belief, which would be somehow confirmed as absolutely true or false in the truest sense of a foolproof confirmation, and I had to nominate one that was categorically false, on pains of the same perish or prevail conditions as the previous test, I would again, happily nominate the deistic belief in supernatural creation.

Now suppose for instance, my inquisitor, may not be happy with this choice because, perhaps I might have to specify something more specific. It may be the loch-ness monster or the efficacy of tarot cards for instance, or the Creator had to be named by a particular religion. I would then unhesitatingly nominate the Christian creator. It might be tempting to nominate Allah, just because I consider that one a bit more violent and sadomasochistic. But since it isn’t a popularity contest but one which depends upon (im/)probability I would pick Yahweh, simply because I am more familiar with the Bible as well as doctrinal details and therefore have more information with that god, to make confident Judgment. Any creator god would do, but Yahweh, might give me a fraction of a percent more advantage. I don’t need so much advantage over the other gods though, that it would improve my tranquil nights sleep.

If a supernatural god was necessary, then the second law of thermodynamics wouldn’t be. The problem for god is in actual fact, it is the second law that was discovered and not god. You say that you have discovered god because you also proclaim that “he” is necessary. The problem with that is, to back that up, you keep appealing to the magnificence of nature and how the splendid artifacts of nature bear witness to marvels that could only be explained by supposing that a god does in fact exist. Otherwise you may proclaim, the universe would be without it’s causal agent. The evidence we see would be impossible. Is that a fair paraphrasing of your position?

What’s wrong with this position? Plenty. For starters you began your clip, decrying the power of mere mortals to state that anything is impossible including ESP Telekinesis God etc… You called people who do such things ‘negative skeptics’ which of course has a derogatory connotation. Even though I have never met a skeptic with such forceful conviction of certainty or doubt, I see that you have since boldly an emphatically declared that the existing evidence is impossible without there being a god. You personally cant see how it could be possible, so you are entitled above any other mortal, to declare the situation impossible, despite your shrill, overbearing imposition that declaring the impossibility of ideas can not and must not be done.

By your reckoning God just gets a free pass. If you cant understand something then goddidit. No where do I see you consider supernatural creation as provisional truth that must pass muster. You have been congratulating yourself as ‘open minded’ and slandering me as closed minded, yet right from the outset, you introduced your God (not just a hypothetical, generic deity, but JC, The Spook and Big Daddy the three and only), as if it were just undeniable fact that nobody even questions.

It’s quite obvious that you are not only convinced that god exists, but that you are incapable of constructing a reasoned thought which doesn’t A) assume that god exists and B) depend upon that gods existence for it’s validity (circular reasoning). All you have delivered for reason so far, is the argument from personal incredulity. That is: ‘I can’t believe things could be this way’ or ‘I don’t understand how things could work like this’; therefore: ‘there must be a god who’s (inexplicable) powers fix it, so that the marvelous things I cant explain are all accounted for’.
But this is completely absurd.

You don’t explain how you reach this inescapable conclusion, that the evidence which you deem to be impossible by any other means, actually IS impossible without a creator. You are long on rhetoric and short on logical reasoning. Even then, you don’t explain how it is, that by supposing there is a God, we can get past the problems you imagine we have in explaining the world naturally. On top of that, you don’t acknowledge that even if God were a viable explanation for this perceived discrepancy, that it doesn’t go without saying that there could not be some other explanation. You seem to have reached a conclusion by instantly arriving there. No reasoning by deductive syllogisms along the way, just !POOF! Hey – I KNOW!! It must be God that did it.

When I contemplate a god, for starters it is a hypothetical being (that should go without saying but still); I imagine a being which has miraculous powers and if there is something in the universe that might be unfathomable, I suppose that such a god can make sense of it because it is a higher being. But if a god were to actually allow blatantly irrational and inexplicable things into nature and the realm of human observation, it would mean that god was contravening the very same immutable laws which that god has provided. It means god permits paradox and lawlessness in nature. Of course I cant help it if it’s true, but it apparently isn’t.

So. Supernatural powers are anathema to understanding how the natural world works because they actually contradict natural laws. It is because we do have some understanding of natures principals, which has been developed and described as laws, that we can point out many events or relationships in nature which would be impossible according to our best understanding. If a god (like a magician) were to perform an apparently supernatural act, it might still be a lawful natural act, but one we have yet to understand. Supernatural creation however, is the explicit claim by religions that God performed miracles to make the universe along with many other miracles. As it is proposed by the doctrines of Christianity, concepts of heaven, hell, the fall and miraculous redemption, death and resurrection etc etc… are all metaphysical concepts, transcending our physical natural world and having independence from nature.

In any case. I have to note that a miracle working God, is as fanciful and implausible as any child’s fairytale story. As you may rightfully point out, I cant definitely say any such things as ’serpent never spoke’ or ‘a man never walked on water’. But I can say that these things are implausible beyond the darkest shadows of insanity. The definition of a miracle depends on violation of natural law. As I have yet to discover anything that violates natural law, I have to Go with Hume’s Maxim:

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless that testimony be of such a kind, that it’s falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

On the other hand, as I explained earlier, the necessity of natures laws is what makes them inviolate. Hedging bets is one way to reckon your heading, but you will get extra points, if you have found a seemingly inescapable conclusion. Of course we don’t KNOW EVERYTHING, but we cant just contradict everything that we DO know, with reasonable confidence. We cant whimsically throw out the very conclusions which as yet, seem to be logically watertight. A story with demons, angels, spirits and magical beasts, of many kind aught to raise a few brows of credulity.

To proclaim without explanation of some reason, that the existing state of natural world is too irrational and implausible to be logically consistent and it must have some explanation quite apart from the interwoven laws of nature, which describe a mesh of interconnected mutually consistent and necessary relationships, is a strange thing. Given that they impart understanding upon the minutest atom and the furtherest galaxy; understandings upon which we depend for our lives, not just when we board a Boeing 747, or cross a footbridge, but for our food chain, our utilities, power, water, technology, practically everything that makes modern life possible. NO of course we don’t understand anything about nature, it is all just fanciful dreaming and wishful thinking that’s all it is. Laws are only the musings of bored, half crazy scientist, arranging letters they have pulled out of their alphabet soup.

What we need to make the silly, irrational, inexplicable impossible natural world more plausible even 100% logically watertight, is a few dozen angels, some demons to frighten us, a couple of miraculous destructions of the world population, (a flood would be nice), A devil to drink, sing and dance with and big scary God to threaten us with infinite torture in a place called Hell, if we don’t choose (with our free will) to believe he exists and obsequiously fawn over him, compulsively worshiping him, day and night. To make it more convincing, he had better also have a son who is also God himself, who he can send to Earth, so he can make himself die on a cross, sacrificing himself to himself (but not really because he will come back), to pay for some sin which he didn’t commit but which we are all blamed for, that was committed when the first man lived in a garden with a magical tree and a woman who came from his rib was tricked by a talking serpent, into eating some fruit from the magic tree, which got them kicked out of the garden.

Now isn’t the second law of thermodynamics, just so damn Silly? I might point out that the problem you have, with accepting skeptical denouncements of what is possible, based on the second law (the law of thermodynamics as you put it), has more to do with your own denouncement of a plausible, natural, explanation of the universe than you might think. In both cases, the parties are convinced that some particular claim can not be true.

In the case of the second law, it is a concise law about mathematically precise definition of the limit to possibilities within a closed system. It states that the ‘entropy of a closed system, can not decrease’. That just means if no energy or information can get into or out of a system, then it can never become more ordered or energized. This puts the mother of all nails in the coffin of perpetual motion machines. I have no reason to suspect that it applies to hydrogen fuels. I am not trying to discredit that. Just so you know.

In the other case, that of your astonishment at the whole natural world, I can only intuitively speculate it is somewhat based on how organized and purposeful everything is, animals, ecosystems, the whether, the unbelievable level of interaction, the complexity, the infinitesimal and astronomical scales from one magnitude to the other. Some people think the more science reveals the more unfathomable and well… unaccountable the universe seems. If there is nothing controlling it how does it manifest this magnificent panoply of orchestrated behavior? Why would it have to develop delicate tissues with cells and, their individual machinery more complex than a typical human factory, but packed in the millions on the head of a pin. Why So many species of animal? Why stars?

It is an understandable question, but it does have good, rational, natural answers, for the inquirer with the open mind. Our astonishment with the amazing organization of the universe, is similar to the skeptic complaint based on the second law, if you think about it. We may think of the universe as a closed system, and note that our possible disbelief at the amount of organization, is like the prohibition on order (organization/ information/energy) increasing in a closed system. There are a few important distinctions we should make though:

• The second law postulates a hypothetical idealized system for reasoning purposes.
• The second law reduces to mathematical axioms that are inevitable and mathematically proven.
• The real universe is complex but messy. Making generalizations from first principals is packed with pitfalls.
• One is a precise and inviolate corner stone of physics, the other is an illconcieved whine, derived from unpersued knowledge and the resulting naivety.

In the real universe we really do find an amazing degree of order and organization. But the second law doesn’t prohibit order or mandate chaos, it only prohibits the order or energy from increasing, even then, only if the system is closed. It doesn’t assume the levels of energy or order were low to begin with either. So it turns out that my intuition about the second law as principal applied to the real universe, is not so helpful.

Surprising though, how similar the demand for a justification of order/organization in the universe is to the previously scorned second law, forbidding increased order/organization albeit in more precise conditions. Your failed proof of God really depends on a half-baked irrelevant, bastardization of the very same second law, which you began your clip discrediting. The universe may be considered closed (by some cosmological models), but there are abundant reserves of energy through out the universe.

What of the complexity and purposefulness of nature though? What of the intricate and astronomical? There are many great wonders which we might assume need to be hand crafted or mandated by a higher mind. But as I have been trying to say for some time. The laws we see in nature are found to be necessary. There is nothing illogical in this. Discoveries in science are more often than not mandated by predictions arising from previous discoveries. Each link in the causal chain fits into a unique niche and regularly explains something that can no longer be considered arbitrary or speculative.

The mesh of interrelated facts, that must not contradict and must satisfy Occam’s Razor are not what some people might imagine of science. To some it’s as if scientists just go up to a lucky dip box and pull out an unrelated surprise. A gift they can use without understanding how it got there. I don’t know if you are getting the metaphor of the chain mesh links, but consider a puddle of water. We dont look at a puddle of water in a field and declare “Wow! look at that, god made that puddle just the right shape to fit that ditch” It turns out that the law reflects a reality that just HAS to be the way it is

However you may express disbelief and declare of impossibility at what you regard as implausible. Even if you were right, that nature can not account for this or that phenomenon, then it only means that we are short of a good explanation of it for the time being. That is nothing like exercising the weapons of mass assumption, called religion. To illustrate that your own demonstration of calling ‘goddidit’ is a convenient ‘just so’ story, I note that you didn’t just invoke a generic idea of deity, but made a specific claim that Jesus Christ was the only one who could determine ‘the infallibility of the laws’ or something similar. Well that says a lot.

Apart from the possible infallibility of natural laws before the time of Jesus being born, I would also like to know how you got FROM: ‘I am absolutely certain there is a god, because I cant understand some things about nature’ TO: ‘The Christian God of the Bible is the one I am certain about’? You certainly didn’t pause to point that out. It must be just another Christian moment in which your dogmatic certainty reaches a new shrill height of presumptive hypocrisy.

You seem to believe you have a god given right to declare absolute certainty in anything that you believe and say. It’s incredible man. You are an international treasure. Even the most hard line fundamentalists nut jobs I debate, at least have the humility to to acknowledge that their faith based beliefs, are not certain facts of objective reality. The reason I called you out in the first place, is that you gave yourself up. You put forth the negative claim that others cant make negative claims. Certain knowledge of the “law of thermodynamics” was more or less precluded by extension that that nothing it predicts could be used to denounce any examples of it’s violation. Now it is a absolute No-No of epistemology to denounce absolute knowledge in any absolute sense. It is hypocrisy because the denouncement itself is an absolute claim. I can’t say ‘It is an absolute fact that absolute facts are impossible to be divulged. Otherwise how could I divulge the absolute fact that this was true? It is a self defeating argument. The same is true with your negative claim against skepticism.

There seems to be a class of mind which needs to have and hold absolute certainty at all costs. If there are any doubt’s or gaps they must be filled with anything at all costs. However absurd a miracle wielding sky pixie is, it is orders of magnitude more satisfying that having to say Hmmm?? I’m not sure about that. For the skeptic doubt uncertainty and admitting what you don’t know go hand in hand with intellectual honesty.

The religious mind also seems to have trouble grasping the related ideas of supernatural , miracle , magical , and impossible. Miracles are not considered impossible, and the supernatural is just another realm where a complete alternative set of logically consistent laws exist but they override natural ones. Supernatural events are allowed to come crashing through to the realm of nature and contradict the working systems of natural epistemology. Even better, you can assume that one of these events occurred/occurs when confronted with any situation you cant comprehend/explain. You have rational reasons when you can afford to hedge a bet on them, otherwise anything goes with the supernatural God of the portable goal posts.

People of this mindset, need to understand that magic IS supernatural, and miracles could only be classed as such if they violate fundamental laws of nature. Events which are permitted by nature are natural and don’t belong to the class of events called supernatural, or magical. Since reasoning and empirical inquiry are confined to the natural realm, the understandings we build are within nature the evidence presented is within nature and the establishment of events and laws outside of nature (supernatural), by definition, require the catastrophic overthrow of some natural laws. A true perpetual motion machine for example would have to be supernatural and a contradiction of a law which is in principal irrefutable. I am brave enough to say that it wont happen because it cant. Knowledge is built out of what we can logically say is true. Logic and reason cant endorse supernatural claims, because they are founded on contradictions of nature. They wouldn’t be supernatural if they weren’t. Contradictions of nature, contradict the very system wrought with logic and reason.

The real reason for religious thinking, is absolutely and categorically NOT because it makes logical sense. The typical religious mind is somewhat behind the eight ball on critical thinking skills. We all have different talents, but rational mindedness and logic are not the forte of the religious ‘thinker’. As social company, one can only hope they cook well, ‘put out’ well or at least have a well stocked liquor cabinet. The cause of the rational paralysis, is easy to spot and the motive is totally dominated by emotion.

Most religious people are indoctrinated in their youth before they have developed much critical thinking skill (if any). The effects are as obvious as the nose on your face. You were brought up in the western world, possibly with Christian parents, relatives or friends. What religion do you practice? OH! Christianity Hmmm! What a surprise. Now take a look at Abdul over there in Iraq. What religion do you think he practices? Well his parents, friends and relatives are probably Muslim, so I doubt he is a Rastafarian.
In recent years communications and transport are allowing more rapid radiation of religion, but it is obvious that in the past Gods were precisely as isolated as their worshipers. A just and fair God would not be racist and remain on one land mass. A God who can create an entire universe, with billions and billions of galaxies and has omnipotence and omnipresence, but who can’t seem to escape the deserts of the Middle East.

If I were asked to specify at a bare minimum what we should expect from a God with out being to demanding of forward proof and miracle stuff, it would be this. The humble provision of equal access and revelation to all cultures on the planet. Any God which had managed this, would have stood out as a clear favorite for a candidate as the obvious choice of one true God. A book that came out thousands of years ago, in China, Japan, and The Middle East, as well as other places, telling the very same story as closely as possible, within translation limits, and heralding the words of some God, well that would be very impressive. Especially if most of the cultures had remained in complete isolation from each other up to that time.
This reasonable expectation, would not even expect God to perform any miracles. Even Jesus could have sailed a boat out to sea and delivered his message to other cultures.

It is preposterous that where you happen to be born effects not only what religious beliefs you hold dear, but also which ones you are even exposed to. Yet this is what happens. Religious minds cleave to the beliefs of their parents, families and friends. Many are raised from the cradle to adopt primitive beliefs as tradition or cultural expectation. How can ‘what you believe’ be imposed upon you?

People believe this crud, because they are scared of dieing and being as they are, indoctrinated with the emotional blackmail of hell and false promise of heaven and because they have no mastery of critical thinking and Occam’s Razor, they don’t know quite how to assess plausibility or parsimony. The consolation prize is economy pack with wishful thinking and confirmation bias, and so they take that, and avoid anything that shakes their foundations.

They are also swooned by Christianity with the attractiveness of being able to think they can unburden their conscience , because all their sins will be forgiven. Pity that when they adopt this particular belief it is also accompanied with a belief that everybody is guilty of original sin. So people who want nothing to do with this absurd belief are also dragged into the believers fantasy and blackened with stigma for uncommitted vicarious sin. Nice way to throw disbelievers under the bus, while you run for the cover of forgiveness. It is the people you have wronged that you need to EARN forgiveness from, not you imaginary friend who lets you off the hook.

I won’t even start on the horrendous injustice and contaminated moral vacuum of Christian morally, but how obvious is the ‘too good to be true’ sales pitch, if you are told you will live forever, and that you sins can be washed off in a cloying emotional love fest of rapture. and all God wants ever so disparately is for you to believe in him. If there’s one thing that pisses God off, is that some people might not believe in him. That should be all the more reason for him to travel abroad but No!

Another smoking gun of religious rationality, is this ceaseless appeal that everybody needs to believe. How crazy does it seem that you can be expected to make a conscious choice to decide a particular set of claims is true. Notice they don’t ask you to assess the claims they present and decide for yourself how plausible you estimate them to be. NO!! that would be thinking rationally. “We want you to actually believe it” they would say and “God wants you to believe it” Why are they so desperate? I don’t go about deciding that I can consciously will myself to believe something. I don’t think that even makes any psychological sense. It does however demonstrate a prerequisite for the mindset predisposed to wishful thinking. If you can ‘will’ yourself to believe, then you can ‘believe’ whatever you will.

Notice that this is standard practice in Christian circles, as well as other religions too no doubt. A mind that cant estimate plausibility and think with rational accumen, is destined to push the buttons that give the easiest rewards. “God gives us free will” they keep telling us, “So we can decide between sin and virtue” Belief in the Christian God, comes complete with this moral dichotomy and tells the story of pure evil on on hand and pure goodness and love on the other. Freewill is defined as a moral predicate, but the appropriate choice is a no brainer. What is true on facts about how the universe came to be and the origin of humans, is not a moral choice, as guilt laden as some Christians want it to be. It is a matter of fact and that is that. Reaching the correct conclusion, will depend on relative probability according to empirical evidence, not on a struggle for your mortal soul at the behest of bleeding hearts, who want you divorced from free thought, paralyzed from reason and controlled by pure emotional impulse.

Another video that is worth seeing on the prevarications of emotional pleading and playing the hurt feelings card is this one. It’s one of my all time favorites:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuyUz2XLp1E]

Christian Ethics = Epic Fail

In the following, I have shifted a dialog which started in a YouTube comments log, because I made a reply which got too long and transfered to a text editor to paste it back later in parts. However, as I began contemplating the issue of moral values in secular atheism vs Christianity, I got more interested and it turned into something of an essay. In case you are curious, I will also post the video, which is from: The Atheist Experience series:

The dialog I have filtered out here is between myself (Skepticoz is my youtube screen name) and the user named GooHuman. I am doing this in chronological order, so what follows now is the dialog leading up to my little essay, which was too big for YouTube comments..

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Skepticoz:
This is a red herring. Anything I do good or bad, has nothing to do with the nonexistence of God. Christians can pretend to do good because of the existence of a deity which they pretend exists, but neither Atheism nor Christianity in and of themselves do any good, it is people who do good. The real question is how sincere are their motives? Without a God watching, any good I might do, is off my own back and subject only to the praise of my peers.

GooHuman:
You are on to something but then you go flying off the road again. Jesus stated clear as a bell that God values grace, compassion, kindness, and of course loyalty (among other things). Those values lead to good actions. We recognize the good in them wether or not we accept their source.
What values can be attributed to the non-existence of God? Whatever works, I guess. No one is holding your feet to the fire should you choose to abuse your fellow man. Plenty get away with it.

Skepticoz:
“Jesus stated clear as a bell that God values grace, compassion, kindness,..” Who would have thunk it? What with all the savage barbarity ordained by god in this life and the threat of eternal damnation in the next. your god appears to be a monomaniacal, misogynistic, homophobic, sadomasochistic barbarian asshole.
If you are doing good things because Jesus says these values A B and C meet gods approval, then you are only being a sheep. You can think for yourself and know they are good.
“No one is holding your feet to the fire should you choose to abuse your fellow man.”
There is nobody holding my tongue to an ice cream should I choose to do the complete opposite either. I am not governed by a celestial dictatorship. Although I do have peers and I do have a conscience and I do have the inbuilt faculty of empathy. I do not however have a magical sky pixie to FORGIVE me for my sins. I will feel guilty about them until I have put them right, or until I die.

GooHuman:
You are making my point loud and clear.
And I ask you, why will you feel guilty for sins? If you don’t believe in God, then what difference does it make should you go against him before you die? The people? So they hate your memory and then they die too. So what? Why feel guilty about anything?

Skepticoz:
I am not making you point. You are making mine.
I told you why I would feel guilty about my wrong doings, because I have empathy and compassion DESPITE my godless heart. You are deliberately ignoring this point and it is quite insulting to hear your cynical religious bigotry in assuming I should be out murdering raping and stealing. The fact is I am not and that is a discrepancy you are left to explain. You just keep arrogantly insisting that the only source of morality is God. Xtian biggotry.
It makes no difference whether I go against your imaginary friend, as I can’t go against something which doesn’t exist. It does matter however, if I go against society and my conscience. Kinda dishonest of you to try pretending that social protocols don’t matter since we will all be dead. It matters VERY much to me how I will be remembered as this is the only kind of immortality I believe I have, my legacy in memory. Anyhow, I need to live with others while I am still alive, so EMPATHTY MATTERS.
It’s just downright foolish that Christians keep baning on that drum that we could not have morals without God, because it implies that if they had no God, a celestial dictator looking down and judging their every action, then they would be out looting raping and killing for fun. You may concede that you would be an evil asshole without your imaginary friend but don’t tar me with that brush thanks. Are you too stupid to see what an insult this argument is?

GooHuman:
Alright. So you claim to be moral. Your insulting tone speaks otherwise, but lets assume you are. If I understand you, your basis for morality is society and your conscience. So if you lived in Somalia, society dictates a completely different norm.
Do you believe that others consciences are different? Non-existent maybe? What then would be their morals? Killing children with guns is unsportsmanlike conduct?
All I’m saying is, if morality is not common between us, it’s meaningless. Can you find the truth in that statement?

Skepticoz:
“Alright. So you claim to be moral.” Oh! That surprises you does it? Well I make no special claims except that I am at least as moral as Christians and that I have to think about what is right and wrong rather than just obeying like a well trained dog. Right or wrong, I face the consequences of my deeds as I don’t have a psychological fire-escape ‘being forgiven’ in the back of my head. If anything I must be more careful because I can’t rubout my mistakes. They are written in permanent ink.
“Your insulting tone speaks otherwise” MY INSULTING TONE??? Hello Pot!!? This is Kettle speaking!! You’ve got some balls you have pal. With your blisteringly arrogant assumption that nobody who isn’t told what to think by a celestial dictator could have any moral fiber. Still, you’re to stupid to realize how insulting and rude you are to go around looking down your nose at the moral values of others, while you yourself have none you weren’t actually given by a fantastic myth. HYPOCRITE!!!
“So if you lived in Somalia, society dictates a completely different norm.” Society dictates a different norm in Somalia because Somalia is almost 100% Muslim and that means that it is populated by people such as yourself, who allow morals to be dictated to them like trained dogs. Relative morality doesn’t work in a moral dictatorship. Despite the fact that they also live under a moral dictatorship, this is no guarantee that their morals will agree with yours, nor even that of other Muslims.
What it does guarantee is division and disharmony, savage, brutal, barbaric cruelty. Bloodshed, murder rape and war. A Feudal society in constant disarray, unless the dictatorship can win and maintain 100% control. Even then the barbaric cruelty use to keep the status quo is inhumane by any reasonable modern standards. The Muslim world is living in a brutal, barbaric time long past. It’s just silly to point to Muslim country as an example of Social moral norms. Somalia is a moral wasteland.

Skepticoz:
“All I’m saying is, if morality is not common between us, it’s meaningless. Can you find the truth in that statement?” Morality is not meaningless without perfect agreement at all. A concept that was never instigated in the ancient world was democracy. We don’t need a divine ruler to explain why it’s fair to ‘average out’ a choice. You know very well, that you live in a society which makes moral decisions without divine decree. And look!! It works far better than theocracy.

GooHuman:
We are talking about morality. Democracy and judicial systems exist outside your head. We humans have learned to compromise to live under one system. We are not talking about that.
Please recall, we are trying to determine what the basis for our morality is. I say God made us that way, you say society and conscience.
Pardon my tone if I sound insulting.

Skepticoz:
Come on man don’t be a dickhead. The judicial system and democracy, do not consist of stone buildings and wooden benches. They are thinking systems that comprise methods for unifying social thought. How democracy works, what is fair, how to decide what is fair. You know we do it you know it gets done and you know that we don’t use God.
OK? You claimed that if morality was not common between us, it would be meaningless. I disagreed. Courts and parliaments aren’t morals, neither are churches.
You refuse to try imagining that your morals come from anything other than God. You probably know very well that you wouldn’t just go off murdering, raping and looting if you didn’t believe you have God’s ordained morals. You aught to know just as well as I do why (the real reasons) we don’t do this kind of thing. Obsequious fawning obedience to curry favor with an imaginary friend is not morals. Humans – EMPATHY & compromise to live under one system, sounds like a much more noble cause to me.
Just to recap: Your moral code as far as I am concerned comes from an outside source: Man made dictates of biblical scribes often as interpreted (ad-libbed) by church elders. My code comes from internal ethical reasoning. I must evaluate with my own mind. Both systems need to be externalized in order to be incorporated into a larger social system they both need protocols for negotiating agreement. Secular ethics uses rational debate, religion uses bloodshed, terrorism, blackmail & proselytism.

Wow skepticoz, you are one angry athiest.
I was pretty sure we were talking about the morality that each of us has regardless of any outside source. I don’t know how you got on this banter about our judicial system. I guess it was just an excuse to throw out more insults at all things religious.
I tell you what skpticoz. Wether you understand morality or logic or anything ultimately means little to me. You believe whatever you want. But do yourself a favor. Listen.

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GooHuman, A note on who’s listening (taking notice):
I see you lost the trail of comprehension about where courts and parliaments enter our discussion of society sharing a moral code, even though you were the one who claimed “if morality is not common between us, it’s meaningless.” Do you remember saying that?

What is common between us, is is usually shared by a common medium, dialogs, protocols etc. My moral values are no different to yours in that respect. For a common medium you have your Bible and perhaps church fellowship, I share my moral values with others in the community also, even with Christians such as yourself. We also, both participate in a democracy which allows us to excersice our (obstesiably concience based moral) choices in the wider community to regulate the agreement and harmony of society. Our elected elders use public opinion (again obstensiably concince based moral opinion) to drive policy formulation and legislation.

By asking where the commonality of my system of morality resides, you are effectively demanding that I manifest the media, mechanisms, and protocols that permit my morality to be shared, to show that it is not “meaningless” as you put it. So I do this and you complain, what was it? Oh yes “Democracy and judicial systems exist outside your head.” But so do churches. holly books, and gods. These are only the mediums we use to regulate the common protocol in sharing our moral mandates. I have already clarified this but you seem to be playing dumb. It’s working.

Now lets just compare two of your petulant demanding statements that seem to limit the range of responses you deem acceptable. On one hand you say “if morality is not common between us, it’s meaningless.” On the other hand you also complain “Democracy and judicial systems exist outside your head.” Do you see how these demands contradict each other? Of corse you do. You are bending over backwards to corner me in a no win situation and hand waive away any response I might give no matter how valid.

Anything that is “common between us” is by definition not an individual mental construct such as a moral (we are not Borg) and must by deffinition be external. Anything I give on the other hand that serves as a moral foundation for ‘group think’, is by deffinition external and could not therefore be in and of itself a moral, so you discount it on those grounds. Aparently on your watch, a moral system, including whatever permits it to share comonality of moral agreement, must consist of nothing other than morals and must reside inside the head of the individual at all times.

The idea that morals can be conveyed as information and shared in groups or that moral decisions can be made by groups having a process to do so, such as group discussion and democratic rule, is not a fact that you wish to acknowledge because it contravienes your pre-ordained deffinition that shared information is not morals, and therefore do not contribute to morality. That unfortunately contradicts your petulant demand for a morality that is “common between us”. Anything “common” must by deffinition be external and therefore not a moral.

The reason I pointed to democracy, parliment and the judicial system, is because these are mechanisms and institutions that enable group morality to be instigated. Along with that communications mass media and anything that alows us to excange information within our societies, can be useful to modify our opinions and form a moral outlook.
Morals are only internal while they remain silent thoughts in our heads. But most morals have some relevance to other people, so when it comes time to use them, they are applied to situations and choices that exist externally. So ‘applied morality’ is not just stagnant morals locked up in our heads. You asked how atheist morality can be common between us and I answered, by sharing our moral perspectives, and influencing society democratically. It may be a moral when I am thinking about it, but It is still a moral when I am discussing it with other people and It is especially a moral when I am acting upon it.

Many forms of communications allow us to discuss our moral values with others and participating in democratic procedures, allows us to actually take our moral decisions and share them as a social group. So as an atheist I may still construct my morals internally, including advice/information assimilated from peers and the wider community; I may reach informed choices about my personal moral code, but it doesn’t stop there, because others may be interested in my perspective and I may have choices to make, that externalize my internally induced morals.

It is you LEAST OF ALL, who gets your moral mandate internally. Why do you demand an internally constructed morality? As I have explained. “…I do have a conscience and I do have the inbuilt faculty of empathy.” I do not have a imaginary friend whispering in my ear how to be good. I must contemplate my moral reasoning, consider how others would feel about my actions and choices (assuming I wish to do the right thing) and that process makes my morals as internally constructed as it gets.

Compare that with yourself: Your prayers are not directed at yourself, your Bible does not reside inside your head, and your church community are people in your neighborhood you may go and meet. None of these components of Christian life are internal sources. The god you believe exists is also out, because the morals you claim he delivers are external they come from outside of you. They existed (by all Christian accounts) before you and I were born. Unless you were on the mountain with Mosses and God whispering in God’s ear what you think he should put on the stone tablets, then you are not the fabricator of your own moral guidance system and it is not internally constructed. I hope I am making this point clear now.

The idea of theocratic, moral dictatorship, is anathema to freethinking, humanistic, moral determination from within. You either get your morals from moral reasoning or you don’t. To the extent you deffer to a holly book and an aledged deity, you are not building your own moral values internally. So why do you demand the same from me?
If any truly common moral resides within each of us, then it suggests one of two things. Either that moral has been taken in or put there from an external source, OR we have a method of deriving morals internally, that like a calculator, can be used to derive a predictable result. Moral reasoning is not as objective as mathematics, but many problems are obvious enough that you can derive the same answer as anybody will give without hesitation or duress.

Agreement or commonality of our morals is no big deal, because we have so many of the same motives, fears desires and instincts. Because we are a social creature and live to fulfill common goals many of which can be attained by symbiotic cooperation. Our moral reasoning is automatically based on the same logical precepts.

‘Do unto others’ is not a principal of Christian morality, it is a principal of universal morality which everybody instinctively appreciates. Its history in literature and theology predated Christian mythology. There was the eastern idea of Karma that ‘what goes around comes around’ and even the Wiccans have their ‘Harm yea none’.

The idea of preemptive charity and goodwill is something that does not require any God to exist, for it to be stated, invoked, or practiced. Whether you like it or not, morality is universal not a Christian concept. It is unified by common sense and common goals as a society. It is based on our capacity to appreciate and experience empathy.

We all know better than to steal for instance. If somebody owns something, it is not within our rights to take it from them, but that’s not the important thing. ‘We are not allowed to steal’ is one reason not to do it, but a better one would be that we understand the consequences that it will have, not just on us, but on the victim of our crime. They will probably suffer from the loss of the stolen item and they will miss it. They will not have it to use or enjoy and they will be deprived, inconvenienced and possibly upset about their loss. It is not hard to imagine how we would feel if we were in their shoes.

We don’t need the golden rule to state the obvious either. We don’t need stone tablets or papyrus scrolls. Many many and much much more complex ethical dilemmas have been solved throughout history without the need for any divine moral inspiration. In any case the moral dictates of the three Abrahamic monotheisms, are no real moral guidance, they don’t even mandate general solutions beyond the simple scenarios they address. They only provide point lists like the ten commandments, to dictate outcomes. There are no general rules in them, of moral reasoning as there is in the study of Ethics.

The commands are negative ‘Thou must not’ and the motives punitive. They do not teach ethical thinking, they only make commandments. Where they do demonstrate moral lessons, such as in the various parables, they are none that could not be understood without a divine creator claiming to be the author’s inspiration. Christopher Hitchens has a standing challenge: “Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.” I would add, without appealing to belief, worship or self approbating unilateralism of faith as the sneaks try to do, by granting themselves the assumption that not only is worship good, but their kind of worship in their particular religion/faith/denomination is good. That is obviously circular reasoning and appeals to the Naturalistic Fallacy which is committed according to the Principia Ethica “whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition of the term “good” in terms of one or more natural properties (such as “pleasant”, “more evolved”, “desired”, etc.).”

What you seem to be doing GooHuman, is testing the obviously false proposition that there is actually no moral guidance system if a theocratic moral manopoly is not present. It’s not a reasonable starting assumption as I have told you, because obviously, Atheists DO have morals, OK?

We tend to be a bit touchy when it is assumed by dogma heads, that we must be living in a moral vacuum. Instead of asking how atheists could possibly have morals, it would be more becoming (not to mention moral/ethical) to accept that of course we do, and set about investigating morality to see how else it can be acquired. I have already suggested to you, that in the absence of your theocratic moral dictatorship, you too would still know how to derive some moral conclusions. It seems perfectly obvious to me but you haven’t bothered to respond to anything that I might be yearning to know. It’s time to put your cards on the table, and justify some of your own theistic propositions.

You must realize that all atheists are not running around looting, raping and eating babies. We are all regulated by secular man made law of course, so even if I wanted to commit heinous sins I know it would be hard to get away with them. But the point is that these laws ARE secular and much more detailed than the theocratic biblical rules they have superseded. Their fairness and effectiveness is a reflection of what people want collectively. Safe streets, equal opportunity, undigested babies etc. These man made rules are decided without consulting any sky pixie. In any case atheists do seem to typically have the same collective desires.

How might YOU explain the existence of atheist morals, if you must insist that they can not be derived from any other source than your supernatural creator god?

You have not put your cards on the table GooHuman. I don’t know if you are in fact, positively making this assertion (that atheists could not have morals), only that you insinuate that it is my problem. If it is to be admitted that athiests do have morals, then it can be assumed that they are derived otherwise, than from your alleged deity. If you are bold enough to claim that morals can only be sourced from your god, then the onus is upon YOU to explain how the athiest finds them. You see part of the insult is that you ask me the question. That in itself accuses me (and by extension all atheists) of having no morals, and shirks your own responsibility for explaining the morals that I do obviously have. Do you understand why I say it is your responsibility? If you wish to claim that morals can only come from god, then atheists should have no morals.

Like wise with anybody who’s god is false (and therefore non existent). If the Christian God is the only one true God and the only source of morality, then nobody other than Christians should be able to distinguish right from wrong. Besides being horrendously presumptuous and arrogant, that is just so obviously not true. You need to demonstrate some of those fine upstanding Christian morals of yours GooHuman by admitting the weakest flaws in your theological propositions and giving charitable concession to the opposing.

I am very proud of my moral compass. I think rightfully so, since I have to work hard at earning it. I have battle scars and embarrassing memories aplenty to remind me what the price was to possess such a device. Now I polish it, keep it safe and guard it well. I don’t expect a deist to understand, because they have a martyr who they believe paid the price for all of their sins and blah…blah… blah… You know the story. I shoulder my own burdens but I am not trying to wear my heart on my sleeve. I only note that all my moral faculties, are hard earned and deserved.

Christians need to be mindfull of the offense they might cause when they:

• A) Carelessly complain about insults (playing the victim card as usual)
• B) Implicate others in a lack of moral / logic comprhention or..
• C) Scorn their critics to listen, keep up or pay attention.

On the last point C) It is because Christianity has been asleep at the wheel for hundreds of years that they don’t notice or comprehend what is going on. It is ironic to the point of outright being funny (honestly- the absurdity made me chuckle, and actually diffused some of my annoyance), that you claim I am not listening, even as you admit you have lost the plot about how the “banter about our judicial system”, first arose.

On point B) Well If you have your moral code handed to you on a platter and don’t have to comprehend morals / logic, then I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate what it means to have any comprehension in this department.

With point A) You may not know how offensive it is to just present Christian ideologies burdened as they are with gilt and shame for simply existing, when the person you are speaking to has earned the right to forgive themselves without a magic panacea. I believe it is psychologically healthy to remain guilty, until I have done something to fix my mistakes and make up for my wrong doings. That would fit well with any standard, universal, moral reasoning or ethics.

The idea that somebody else can suffer for my sins, or I can be punished for an ancestors wrong doing, are simple examples of moral inequity. When people take them to heart, it erodes otherwise sensible moral values. Christianity as I see it is a net burden on the moral landscape because it teaches this displaced retribution through the doctrine of atonement. It is often pointed out that the core doctrine of Christianity is the Death of Jesus for (all of) our sins. In which case I have to profess that Christianity is simply rotten to the core.

When more than 50% of the population can be convinced to shirk their burden of guilt for sin, rather than making up for their sin / accepting personal retribution and rather than think of why we should or shouldn’t do certain things, accept instead a cut and dried list of do’s and dont’s, we all suffer. When they are prevented from thinking about moral reasoning and told they are forgiven, I and millions of other atheists are effected. Many of these people are voters in the democracies we share, some of them will potentially be among those who have sinned against me. ‘Jesus think’ will not help them to understand what they have done wrong, why it is wrong and motivate them to compensate for their wrong doing.

On the other hand people need to accept that they can recount their wrong doings, in the manner of alcoholics in the twelve step program, who make a list of everybody they have slighted and set about trying to hold themselves accountable and compensate their sins. We need to be able to make a just compensation and receive honestly earned forgiveness, so that we can move on and let go of the guilt. Our conscience should not be free until we have paid real penance to the right people. But when we have, we deserve a clear conscience, and we need that goal to be attainable, for a conscience based morality to work.

Having somebody else pay for our sins and being thus forgiven, simply makes a rod for our own backs and displaces the function of our conscience. Asking God to forgive you (and accepting that forgiveness) when the sin you commit is against another mortal, is obviously flawed. It is your victim who deserves the apology, they may also deserve much more than that, to make up for your wrong doing, but in Christian ethics, you just say sorry and to the wrong guy and you are magically forgiven. Well you may think that God forgives you but I don’t.

Here’s a scoop for you. Atheists don’t believe your god exists, any more than they believe in Allah or Wotan or Vishnu or the tooth fairy OK? From where I stand, when you confess your sins to your imaginary friend, and imagine he is telling you “everything is fine, just don’t do it again”, It is precisely the same as letting yourself off the hook Scott free. Anybody with the vaguest sense of fairness should see what is wrong with this picture. If you are walking around thinking you have nothing to be ashamed of and your karma is balanced, then you are wrong. You need to make up for wrong doings and fix your mistakes.

‘But! wait’… I suppose you might retort, ‘I don’t just seek forgiveness from God, I also set about balancing the score, you know… setting things right.’ Well good. I’m glad to hear it, but those are not actions motivated by the principal of vicarious retribution as espoused by the Bible. In as much as you choose to do this, you are acting independently of the bible and doing as any person with a conscience would do. As I have said about the golden rule, the Bible may mention and Christians may do, many things which are not exclusively (or even especially) uniquely Christian values or actions. I am not concerned with your random acts of kindness, except to note how befitting they would be of a fine upstanding atheist.

The ethical values that are taught my the main tenant of the Biblical retribution actually appeal to a very selfish motive. Rid yourself of guilt and get yourself off the hook. I do find it annoying also that Christians often wave this particular thing in the face of the non-believer, “Jesus died for your sins you know” almost clucking their tongues and waging a stern finger in scorn for good measure. Well no he didn’t actually, not even from your view point. As I am an atheist, I will be burning in hell for my sins. That’s by your account. That is how it works isn’t it? The worst of my sins Indeed the only unforgivable sin, is the sin of withholding belief.

Your petty, vindictive, egocentric, monomaniacal, Barbaric God is such an insecure and self aggrandizing being, that he would damn me to suffer in hell for eternity because I didn’t acknowledge his existence (against all empirical evidence), where as a mass murdering, child molesting, criminal, who pimped his mother, wife and daughter to pay gambling debts, could theoretically offer a deathbed confession and ask for God’s forgiveness to be allowed into heaven.

From my point of view, the alleged character called Jesus died to provide an infinite excuse for the wrong doings of Christians and let them off the psychological hook, for everything the ever did wrong and ever will, but not for the non-Christian. I am supposed to be grateful for this supreme act of martyrdom, and sacrifice, because it was so selfless, but from where I stand it’s nothing other than emotional bribery, with a ‘get out of guilt free card’ and the promise of never having to think for yourself about how to be fair or moral. Furthermore if God does not exist the Bible is wrong and Jesus/crucifixion/atonement are factually wrong so is branding people guilty of sin from birth and then selling them the cure.

It is selfish to want this undeserved emptying of the conscience and it is also ungrateful to nature and to your natural faculties of moral reasoning, as well as very irresponsible to the rest of society for whom your moral accountancy is required to accord with personal retribution. In the real world you are the one held accountable to your sins and that is precisely how it should be too.

The bribery and blackmail of heaven and hell are just Soooooooooo, obvious it isn’t funny, appealing to fear and greed (I don’t want to die in hell / I want eternal life in paradise), for anybody with enough rational accumen to avoid deriving an is from an aught. The agenda to convert em before they learn any higher reasoning skills (and as a consequence probably never will learn any), is but another facet that makes the whole ploy look as disingenuous as any evil con merchant plot based on greed and power. The ploy to brand us all as sinners in order to sell the magical cure for sin, again, is a cheap transparent facade that is nothing short of an insult to intelligence and a cruel cynical ploy to enslave the emotions with blackmail. A filthy disgusting shame game.

The trick is that no sooner do you buy into this vulgar insult of being tarnished with sin, than you are forgiven of those sins. Accepting we are sinners from birth at the time of conversion into Christianity is painless for the convert because they are already from that moment forgiven. All that they have done, is saddled everybody they left behind them with unrepented / unforgiven sins and copped out of their own sin with a plea bargain from God.

Because Christians choose to buy into this fantasy, along with it’s ‘morals come only from god’ theocratic bargain, they automatically get to consider themselves as morally superior whether they admit it or not. THIS! Despite the fact that they are typically as guilty as anybody still, of their past digressions, and haven’t done anything to make amens except pretend that their belief in a savior can make it all better. Upon conversion they commence the belief that everybody is a sinner, but non-Christians deserve to be guilt laden (to the point of being destined for Hell) because they have not repented or been forgiven. What a vile load of egocentric, self serving claptrap.

In pasty euphemisms they might be heard to concede “you know Christians aren’t perfect just forgiven” but of course what they are thinking is more like “how could an atheist possibly have morals” The sanctimonious piety and self righteousness, is never far below the surface with Christians. I hope this goes some way to help explain why Atheists get annoyed by so called Christian morality.

Don’t Let’em De-Fetus

I knew right from the two second mark, that the video above, would NOT be a balanced sober and rational piece, but an emotionally overwrought, bleeding heart appeal to most unreasoned and irrational prejudiced that a mind, can muster. How could I tell? Because the soft melancholic piano in the background, is just the emotive, touchy feely, atmosphere most effective to coerce irrational, reactionary emotions, If you want someone to listen, think and reach an intelligent, unbiased conclusion you don’t plaster a video up to the gills, with syrupy, emotionally manipulative schlock. This really was just the most prime piece of loaded , preordained, melodramatic, navel gazing propaganda, you could ever hope to see.
The problem with the implications of the footage, lies in identifying precisely when life is thought to begin. The least rational will consider a fetus to be valuable life from any age, they might even include an undifferentiated fertilized egg. The absurdity, of the shameless propagandizing is revealed by the reference to those fetuses as babies. The late term pictures were admittedly quite disturbing and I wouldn’t have thought abortions were legal anywhere at that late stage. I can’t help wondering if they slipped in some still borns for dramatic effect of continuation down the slippery slope. Like wise the preoccupation with those tiny little limbs from which you could clearly make out hands with fingers.

We have natural instincts that can also be exploited by this kind of propaganda. we see the tiny hands and feet of a baby as signals which make it lovable and deserving of our affection and nurturing. The feeling that anything which has the tiny body parts of a human even extremely undeveloped, is likely to twinge those emotions as well.

The truth and problem is, that life doesn’t suddenly begin at any point.. And you can’t kill something until it can sensibly be said to have a life of it’s own. A fertilized egg is the basic beginnings of a human being we don’t call that thing a person or a baby, and it doesn’t have a heart, a spinal coulomb or a brain. Of course it doesn’t have a set of cute little hands either. That is more like what the emotional irrational instinct wants to identify as human, even if the other features are far more important as milestones. You could just as easily say the spine, at some particular particular stage it passes, would allow it to look elongated enough to mark the start of life. Or maybe when the first heartbeats can be detected. Others will say a baby does not qualify as living until it is apart from it’s mother and breathing independently.
Back at the earlier stages the appearance of a brain is another tempting milestone to call life. The undeveloped brain though, will have a long way to go and just because it has some brain tissue it certainly doesn’t demand that we attribute cognitive behavior, personality, awareness, and career aspirations.
As far as a rational realist is concerned, the cognitive functionality is the best developmental feature to identify life. I am referring to life as the cognitive experience of our self, rather than life in the other (biological) sense of anything living. Every tissue in the human body is living, that includes the developing fetus in a pregnant woman. The existence of a brain is no justification to herald the start of life. In fact the brain is at this stage, like any other organ being just more living tissue that is part of the whole fetus, a special kind of symbiotic growth that is still nevertheless a part of the woman. When the body develops the cute little hands and feet, the brain is still far from functional. Even if it were it couldn’t assimilate much in the womb.
The start of life for general purpose, is of course the birth itself. Even still, the newborn is a product of delayed development and the retention of infant traits (neoteny) and does much more of it’s developing as an infant after it is born. As a result it is far more dependent on parental care for every need. The baby still develops it’s neurology and cognitive skills for years, before it is really a complete human. Things always develop but, the human baby is much more of an incomplete creature even out of the womb.
There are those who will contend that a child needs to be given experiences and have the fully functioning brain to assimilate them and time to reflect compare and learn. At what age would you say a child achieves self awareness? I would say it is a gradual accomplishment, but by 5 the child is as self aware as some people ever become. Awareness of the world around us is also important. “I am a girl and I will skip” “Daddy is over there we will go to the shop soon’” Once a child has these faculties and awareness of the world as well as self. I would argue that it is a heinous crime to take life away.
But even a newborn child, is cognitively little more than a life support system for all of it’s sense detectors. His chubby little hand floats up in front of it’s own face and what does it think? :”What the hell is that thing?” “Hope it’s not a monster.” He doesn’t know the hand belongs to himself. The newborn baby doesn’t have aspirations or an understanding of anything, it knows some important senses, such as the taste of baby food and the discomfort of a wet nappy perhaps. Yet a bewildering myriad of sight sounds and sensations will for quite a while be an unrelated jumble of disjointed sense events. The baby doesn’t know what to make of it, Till sights and sounds begin to become familiar, in memory and sense data is reflected as reward or warning indicators. there will be no significant pattern built up. For a long time a baby is doing crude inference, that assimilates for familiarity and pleasure.

At this point I would argeue that a baby’s life is worth to itself, the sum of it’s understanding about life, the product of it’s awareness. It can’t value life any more than this. It doesn’t know ther will be a tomorow nor why there was a yesterday. It lives for the present moment. Yes, a baby has the potential of it’s whole life before it, but it doesn’t know that, and nor does it know what it might be missing if that future were taken from it.
What I suspect the baby’s future really represents, is our living vicariously in the future of our child. The child is part of our own legacy and our instincts allow us to sacrifice a lot, to carry the child through to adulthood. Our instincts also prime us to have an inordinate psychological investment in the child to protect it from harm and provide for its needs. As parent’s we must do this (if the child is to survive) because it lacks size strength and knowledge to protect itself or a means to fend. I believe that it is fending for a child and protecting it that places such huge revulsion and stigma on the death of a child. An adult is grieved and missed, but it is seen as practically unbearable misfortune. to loose a child. At the risk of sounding cynical, the angle does exist, that the adult who dies only looses it’s own life, but when the child dies it takes part of the lives of the parent with it, the vicarious part that they wanted to pass along to the child.
Our children don’t owe it to us to carry us vicariously into the future, it’s just human nature for us to see it that way. The behavior of child nurturing, makes plenty of sense for the child we have decided to raise and protect. But not everybody has the luxury or stability of planning to become a parent, so the instinct to rail against the pregnant woman aborting an unborn fetus from an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy of a future life, is somewhat disingenuous.

The problem that the anti-abortionist is failing to acknowledge, at least in this appalling, sensationalist video, is that for some women and couples, there never was a reservation made in their lives too become a parent. Some people consciously choose to go childless believe it or not. At one time a woman who got pregnant would have no choice but to become a parent. So they must have either remained abstinent or accepted the chance of accidental pregnancy and mother hood in the bargain, if it should happen by chance.

What shaming somebody to bare a child is likely to do, is make a woman, who may not be ready, or suitable, for the role of parenting, bound against her will, to a completely different life than she had planed. She may not cope with motherhood. She may resent the burden. Also her child may develop insecurities, lack strong parental influence. There may be many other unfortunate consequences of unplanned parenthood pregnancy, and ultimately the children may end up derelict antisocial and dysfunctional.

There may also be psychological burdens of guilt an shame for the stigma created. if the woman should stick to her guns and terminate the pregnancy. The burden I mention, is not actually her fault, if we refuse to buy into the anti abortion rhetoric. She may instead be worrying herself sick with guilt because the ill conceived anti-abortion lobby is proliferating the idea that a baby she never planed and probably cant cope with, deserves to be given a life.

So a growth without comprehension of it’s own existence, which is human in the same sense that my earlobes are human, gets terminated before it ever gets to be aware of it’s own existence. So consequently the fetus never becomes a baby and never fulfills the life which it was never privy too. There is absolutely no need for people to accept the obligation to become parents if they should accidentally become pregnant.

In the final scenes of this atrocious video the screen captions announce, that “1000000 abortions are performed every year, in the United States alone.” We are then invited to ponder: “What if you were one of those babies?” Bit of a dopey question on two levels really. “If I was one of those babies”? !!WHAT IF!!? What the hell do you think ‘if’? It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion. How many of those 1000000 fetuses, escape from the clinic and find themselves another nice womb to gestate in? Then it asks another question “Would you choose life for yourself?” Huh!!? You mean aborted babies can still choose life themselves? Well let me see now Umm. I’d have to think about it really. I am being invited to take my 43 year old mind, back to before the time I was born, and use it with the full benefit of hindsight, knowing as I do what it means to have a life and decide if I would want to continue as I actually did.

I think we can safely say, that the vast majority of aborted fetuses don’t go contemplaing (more than forty years after the event) whether they might choose to be terminated. The general effect of termination, is that it would prevent such a person from existig as the one doing the post-facto retro. The good news is that they wouldn’t know any better because they never would have existed. Don’t take it from me though. Ask a fetus. The fact that forty three years separates me from my prenatal fetus, is what makes it possible for me to contemplate this dilemma, and find that I would not be in any position to make such a choice. You can’t give a fetus hypothetical hindsight and regard the moral choice as being equivalent.

The opportunity for human lives to be fulfilled, begins with people who decide that for themselves, a child would be a goal of fulfillment. The fulfillment of the child’s life needs to be synchronized with the fulfillment of the parent. The right to life has to be considered from both viewpoints, and then compared against the disadvantages of being a parent with an unplanned child, and a child who is unplanned, possibly unwanted. You can’t expect everybody else to want something, just because you do.

The comparisons of abortion with murder, or even terminating a life that is supposed to have some right to exist are extremely absurd. If the potential life of a human is to be entertained as a right that is being withdrawn by abortion, then the same right is being withdrawn every time we take a birth control pill or use a condom. By that metric, failing to have sex at every possible opportunity, could deprive many unborn children, of a life they have a right to live.

Free Speech Prohibited In ADD Forums

For a few weeks now (as a person presently being diagnosed for ADD) I have been visiting and posting at ADD Forums. Just a word of warning if you happen to be visiting there to post anything. Free speech is not allowed at ADD Forums. Being a willing critic of any human rights abuses, Scientology is just about as deserving as any. I am also a skeptic of all bogus pseudoscience and an atheist activist. On top of all this is my pet hate for anything coercive and scamish. So when I saw a thread posted in the site suggestions & feedback section, titled “Yo Admins”, which read “Why are you allowing ads for scientology to be put on this website? Seriously wtf?” I was naturally very interested. Well It’s an issue of it own to examine the appalling caliber of Google’s advertising clientèle. Every cheap assed two bit scam merchant around is given pride of place in their ‘ad sense’ and ‘ad words’ boxes screaming slogans that are only fit for gullible suckers.

The admin Andrew, responded to this alert with the following message:

The Google Ads banner that you see before you log in is NOT controlled by the ADD Forums. However, if you would please reply in this thread with any URLs listed in those ads, we will do our best to block them from appearing anymore.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Well, no surprises there, I knew myself what the problem was, and even then some, as I have heard that Google is also allowing it’s advertising customers to pay extra for keywords that give them dominant access to websites using them. Scientology is interested in competing with conventional psychiatry and diverting people who need help towards their cure all bogus science fiction pseudoscience of dianetics, wherein ‘all that ails ya’ is a result of disembodied souls (called thetans), who belonged to people that were blown up by an evil overlord Xenu 75,000 years ago and which now clinging to you creating all your ailments. Scientology also has a whole conspiracy theory, that all psychiatrists and most mental health professionals are part of an evil conspiracy to take over the world.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find Google accepting large wads of cash for privileged placement of scientology ads in high traffic sites that use the words: psychiatry, neurological, mental health, etc.. Scientology is doing a hard line cultivation of interests with Google right now and it easy to see why. Google is the life blood of the internet. As the search engine of choice it has dangerous power to influence and modify what information people get to see and what they don’t.

Google have been for some time, caving in to litigious pressures and swooning to the financial rewards of the rich cult. They have contrived to beat down any websites critical of scientology in their search results, and also to refuse any advertising clients and advertising hosts critical of scientology. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the company were being infected from within by converts to scientology. Scientology would surely be targeting it in that way also.

Back to ADD Forums now and The original poster of that thread posts the IP address that was requested, then I read this thread and I decide that I have something to contribute to this discussion. Apart from the evils of scientology in and of itself, I have grave concerns about the cult getting into bed with a powerful corporation like Google, having the power they do to influence the flow of information around the internet, so I post a message which is quoted below, that post was deleted and by way of clarification from one of the moderators (Lady Lark) I received the following:

Your recent post (quoted below) was trashed, due to it’s political and religious content. The guidelines have those listed as a restricted topic, because it’s always been a flame war if it’s in open forums.

I’m letting you know, so you know what happened to your post, and to ask you to please be aware of the guidelines when you post here. Thank you.

[Note: This is the original post in question:]

FWIW, I have personally deigned to boycott Google and encourage others to do likewise. Here’s one good reason and helpful info on replacing all of Google’s services. For a search engine I use Wikia Search It’s fantastic and allows collaborative editing, ranking etc. Another reason to boycott is here: GOOGLE, Censorship and Scientology? I have even been toying with the idea of making an ethical advertising service to provide an alternative to Google adds. I was looking for a patron organization, to start it of as an NPO and raise funds for other worthy causes.

Meanwhile why not let Google know what you think about it muzzling of free speech, getting into bed with charlatans and using your website to publicize a thieving death cult? Here’s the contact info:

Suggestions: suggestions@google.com
Praise and complaints: comments@google.com
Not satisfied with search results? search-quality@google.com
Report errors, bugs and broken links: webmaster@google.com

Cheers Skepticus

I didn’t explicitly mention it in that post, but I don’t criticize Scientology because of crazy woo woo beliefs, but because it is rife with human rights abuse, because it resorts to it’s Fair Game Policy with anyone who it deems to be a threat. It has a mafioso style PR machine and a litigious cabal of legal thugs. It openly condones an approach of threats and attacks to undermine any criticism, however legitimate it does not pander to criticism by facing the music and providing an honest response ever. It would help to bare this in mind as you read on.

So I have made it clear that I don’t like Google hopping into bed with Scientology, the first link is a criticism of Google for an entirely different actions of playing fast and loose with its search results to muzzle popular bloggers. That blows because it quells the voice of ordinary people. Google is beyond respectable ethics for that alone. Now what is wrong with criticizing a big, greedy, corporate curmudgeon, that is controlling the information flow on the internet and who has the unprecedented power to put huge dents in the human race’s collective ability to foster free speech. It really is that serious.

The internet is by far the most important and pervasive information sharing and free speech facilitating resource we have. Whereas conventional media ‘broadcasting’ allows for ‘few to many’ dissemination of information, the internet provides so many opportunities for each person to participate in the gathering and reporting of information, as well as expressing of ideas, opinions and criticisms. It is crucial that we are allowed access to the information that other small interests (minorities) and individuals are producing, as well as equitable exposure that has been taken for granted for the earliest years of the internet. That equity in freedom to criticize and freedom to be found, seen and herd, keeps the freedom in free speech. I responded to the above mentioned removal of my post and subsequent notification with the following.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lady Lark Your recent post (quoted below) was trashed, due to it’s political and religious content.

I am very disappointed to hear this Lady Lark. I stand against Scientology not because of it’s its beliefs (absurd as they are), but because it is a ruthless, dangerous, litigious mind control cult, that is wrecking lives even as we speak.

Google’s approach has been a knee jerk reaction to avoid litigation and to greedily side with a wealthy patron of their advertising services. The ‘Church’ of Scientology is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to control what search results Google produces and to threaten repercussion to sites who are critical of Scientology. Despite valid potential fair use defenses Google has not been supporting it’s users and has declined ads for websites which criticize Scientology’s practices and has revoked accounts to serve Adsense and Adwords. effectively depriving their client a revenue stream.

Google is in a unique position of massive power to control the information flow of the internet. That makes it a prime target of Scientology’s insidious campaign. Scientology isn’t a religion and doesn’t deserve the protected mantle of religious freedom that it seeks to hide behind. Religion is a convenient word for Scientology which in some parts of the world, affords it tax free status and almost everywhere invokes our politically correct responses, which in this case are incorrect. It is a moot point to ask if any religion is more benevolent than malevolent, and the promotion of a fraudulent fantasy maybe common to many religions and bizarre cults but how does Scientology differ from a religion? There are a couple of important distinctions.

Scientology does not settle for the voluntary participation of it’s victims. Once enrolled the participant is scrutinized and made to divulge their innermost secrets (which can be used against them). This is played of against willingness to ‘buy into’ the effectiveness of the bogus Scientology therapies. Results are nothing more than willingness to testify to the benefits of the ‘tech’ and submit to greater levels of enthusiasm. The cost of this process is gradual alienation from the real world and diminishing communications or quality of contact with loved ones, but the financial cost is the smoking gun.

No traditional religion, attempts to con it’s followers out of every possible cent they can afford and then some, in return for the teachings of the church. The teachings (of most religions) are supposed to be free and the tithing a voluntary option, proportional to the followers income.

Scientology scriptures called ‘techs’ by comparison are jelously guarded secrets which must be dished out in a piecemeal manner, for huge profits. The techs are sold as ‘training courses’ just as would be done by a commercial business. The fact that the followers are being sold on a science fiction fantasy, that insists these ‘techs’ lead them inexorably towards the attainment of super human powers, is hard to accept from a commercial stand point, given that it is plain and simple fraud.

Any particular religious belief is also normally sponsored by a number of different non-for-profit organizations usually called churches. One single organization is not usually the single repository of all doctrine and revenue. The Anglican church for instance, may represent one doctrinal strain of Christian belief, but the legal and financial nature of each individual church is autonomous. The tithing’s of all Christians do not go to a central repository. Scientology was never intended to be a belief system adopted by autonomous organizations, free to ‘worship’ or believe as they choose.

There is an underground network, called the ‘freezone’ which consists of ex-Scientologists who practice Scientology without the blessing of the Church and they must remain in hiding from it. The only cover the freezoners have, is their autonomy and anonymity. The fact that they do not exist as a legal entity. such as a proper registered organization, means that the Church has nothing to attack. If the freezone registered an legal organization and openly practiced Scientology as an alternative to the original church, it would be litigated out of existence without a fleeting doubt.

Scientology lobbies and pleads for all the legal protection of a honest, legitimate, commercial, profit making enterprise. This tends to work because the legal profession runs on money too. While at the same time it demands religious sanctity and political correctness for it’s beliefs. It’s beliefs and practices are however inseparable due to the manner of indoctrination and that it presents the practice of Scientology as a commercial product and scientifically valid technology. It is neither a religion nor a science nor a legitimate commercial business.

Religions also tend to have a history, in which their doctrines date back to ancient times. The Church Of Scientology, dates back to the lunatic rantings of a third rate Sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard in the fifties, who proudly declared his intention to start a religion for profit. His crackpot, fledgling, pseudo science, ‘dianetics’ was expanded as an after thought, to include a mythical fantasy about an evil alien overlord Xenu. Scientology suceeded, despite the fact that it was well known that it’s doctrine was deliberately fabricated. Most people who buy into Scientology, are really more interested in the therapeutic claims of the training and then the chance of becoming superhuman.

Poorly informed people, tend to bow down and grace Scientology with all the provisions of a legitimate and worthy [B]religious[/B] belief system. It is NOT!! If there were ever an organization deserving of the label ‘insidious, sinister, evil cult’ then Scientology is it. The Church Of Scientology are as ruthless and merciless as the mafia (perhaps worse). They will harass (physically and mentally) and litigate against any body who tries to oppose them and their errant ex-members, are prone to suicide and death under mysterious circumstances.

One of the more sinister aspects of the Cult Of Scientology, is it’s abhorrence and disdain for the mental health profession. Worked into their delusional space alien fantasy, is a conspiracy theory, that the mental health profession is trying to destroy humanity and poison the minds of anybody it can get at. Needless to say the coincidence that the mental health establishment also happens to market a range of services, that might be seen as being in competition with Scientology ‘alternative mental health services’ is an ominously smoking gun. What a bizarre little coincidence, that the one conspiracy of allegedly evil saboteurs of society, just happen to be the very same tiny minority of individual professionals, who are entrusted to provide services that are intended to address mental and emotional problems.

In Scientology all of a persons problems are construed as the consequence of these sticky little souls called thetans. Apparently the galaxy was overpopulated 75 millions of years ago, so the evil overlord Xenu had a culling session. He brought billions of people to Earth (known back then as ‘Teegeeak’) in DC-8-like spacecrafts, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to wreak chaos and havoc today. Sure that makes perfect sense right? So that’s why we need dianetics to teach us the methods of clearing these menacing souls.

Luckily Scientology has just the solution. The therapy sessions then consist of more brainwashing techniques and prying for personal information. The participant literally ‘buys into’ this world of pseudo-psychology, literally, with large wads of their hard earned cash. Initially they are curious and just searching for a way to feel better about themselves. They buy in to the possibility that the Scientology ‘techs’ are an advanced technical methodology and personal improvement program. It is human nature to persevere and give some therapy a chance to work. As soon as any coincidental gain is experienced though, the credulous participant will be eager to give the credit to the Scientology techniques, because they now have an emotional investment in justifying their purchase.

If it were just a case of buyer beware, like; credulous consumers making bad used car purchases, we might care less, but considering many of these victims are actually in need of proper mental health care services, there is a duty of care we all share as citizens to demand justice and protect our more vulnerable members of society.

Once in the clutches of Scientology victims are encouraged to avoid all external mental health services and not take medications for real psychological / psychiatric disorders. That’s right! Scientologists are against Psychiatry, mainstream therapy and medication of all mental illnesses. There have been numerous tragedies leading from this over the years. People who have failed to get help and who have stopped taking prescribed medications because the Cult Of Scientology has denounced the mental health profession. It rarely ever ends well for the Scientologist with mental health issues.

In this particular forum I would expect a little more sympathy for the movement of anonymous individuals who speak out against the abhorrent human rights abuses of Scientology. Who gives a rats bum, if they believe a deluded fairytale of aliens and tormented souls? Their beliefs are not the issue, although those beliefs obviously do play a motivational part in their actions. It is the actions of the Church Of Scientology and it’s evil empire of gluttonous destruction, that is worthy of honest and fair criticism in any public forum where free speech is (or should be) advocated.

In my defense, I would contend that it is an egregious misrepresentation to identify Scientology as a religion. So I am disappointed that my criticism of the cult of Scientology would be construed as relating to a religious topic. Neither could my post be considered political. Scientology is not a political organization in the professional sense and I don’t have a political bone in my body in the general sense ‘of attempting to coerce’. Although to be sure about the point of politics, I find myself looking on wikipedia for a definition, as politics just seems like such an ambiguous word. The definition given reads thus:

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of “social relations involving authority or power” and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.

I am inclined to think that a specific reference to party politics within civil governments it the intended context as used in the forum guidelines:

Banned Topics:

• The main focus of ADD Forums is to provide a safe supportive place for people affected by AD/HD, and other co-morbid disorders. To do this, sometimes we must limit the scope of the permitted topics, to foster such a supportive environment.
• We have had issues arise here that have prevented this from happening – primarily members voicing their opinions about religious and political matters. While everyone is allowed their own opinions, there really is no other way to prevent such issues from “disturbing the peace”, except to keep these things completely out of the ADD Forums in the first place.
• It is against ADD Forums Guidelines to discuss religious and political matters on the ADD Forums.

If ‘politics’ is to be read as simply “the process by which groups of people make decisions.” Then I think you would be hard pressed indeed, to make a distinction between my post and any other of hundreds which might happen to discuss the process by which groups of people make decisions. Discussing how mental health professionals for instance ‘make decisions’, is a very common theme around here. From that I might conclude that the intended meaning is more in line with “behavior within civil governments”, in other words to translate that into what would be prohibited you might say it is ‘party political rhetoric’. Well obviously that counts my post out.

On the other hand, It doesn’t go without saying that the contents of the forum reflect the guidelines very accurately anyhow. Having given the ‘what not to do’ guidelines a reasonably careful perusal, it seems like rather a lot is not enforced at all and some blatant contraventions are even fully endorsed by the staff here. I don’t want to start pointing the finger to particular examples and making complaints, because I fully endorse and advocate freedom of speech and abhor censorship, but surely you can understand a person feeling aggrieved if a decision to delete their post is a double standard..

If you make rules that are conveniently vague and ambiguous in attempts to ensure you have any situation covered, then pick and choose when to enforce them at whim, that is worse than having no rules at all in my opinion, as it gives license to arbitrary dictates, while making a euphemistic pretense at transparency an fairness in the rule of law. To be effective laws need to be concise and limited to quite particular situations and then they needs to be enforced consistently. That’s not a specific criticism, just a generalization BTW. Although the guidelines here do seem a tad gray around the edges.

It seems from the guidelines that the author is more concerned about avoiding contentious or controversial issues. It does not seem from the generally accepted forum discourse itself, that simply mentioning a religion is prohibited or even frowned upon. Perhaps you could have, rather than prohibiting discussion of religion, simply prohibited saying anything negative about it. Here is where the foolishness of censorship begins descending on the slippery slope. If we can talk about something in only a positive light then we are immunizing it from valid criticism and endorsing it unfairly with a privileged status and import.

What seems to be happening in many places is the understandable avoidance of contentious issues by sweeping them under the rug and pretending they don’t exist. Religion is a contentious issue precisely because religion causes contention. Making everybody tippy toe around the hostile monster and only say nice things about it, is unfair to those who disapprove of the monster and wish it were dead. I didn’t help to make the monster, I don’t like the monster and I don’t want to find the monster everywhere I go, peeking one of it’s ugly heads around a corner and grimacing insidiously. I am only willing to meet the monster on an equal playing field where I can haul back and take some pop shots at it.

When a greedy, sinister, insidious, evil, brainwashing cult of self destructive doom and death, is allowed to masquerade as a religion (however insidious and brainwashing religion is in general) it is also allowed to evade criticism by association. In this case the association is with something only better in practice rather than principal, and even then only by a matter of degree. This is the reductio ad absurdum we achieve, by sacrificing freedom of speech for political sanitation.

I hope this will give you some food for thought and perhaps you will consider learning a little more about the vile scourge of Scientology and perhaps you might reconsider the rather whimsical and unfair removal of my post, in light of what you learn.

The following was the only response I received for this long hard look at the facts which I hoped would have been insightful:

I am not here to debate the merits, or lack of about Scientology, but to enforce the guidelines. The mods have the final say. If you have an issues with my decision, you can take it up with the Admins, who are Andi and Andrew.

OK! I think, I will do just that said I:

“The following is in regards to a discussion I have had with Lady Lark:”

[Note: I quoted here, my first reply to Lady Lark explaining my position, then continued:]

The reply I received from Lady Lark reads as follows:

“I am not here to debate the merits, or lack of about Scientology, but to enforce the guidelines. The mods have the final say. If you have an issues with my decision, you can take it up with the Admins, who are Andi and Andrew.”

I’m sorry, but that is rather blunt and not at all comforting.
Are guidelines really something to be rigidly ‘enforced’. If so then I believe there are a number of double standards. Also the word ‘Guidelines’ should be reconsidered. Are we trying to have our cake and eat it too, over how consistently the rules must be obeyed/enforced. Using the weasel word ‘guidelines’ might imply that there are not stringent rules or that they are not strictly policed.

Where accountability to fairness and transparency is being considered, is it possible that the word ‘guidelines’ can be used as an excuse for not being consistent? So Guidelines are strict rules when a moderator/admin says so, but only suggestions to be interpreted if a guideline is contravened but not enforced.

You can of course point out that you (or your mods) are entitled to make the call and enforce the guidelines as you (or they) see fit. That is true, but it is also true that you are entitled to be unfair and upset people unnecessarily by applying guidelines inconsistently or in a biased manner. If pleasing yourselves were the only objective and criterion, then why bother having any guidelines or rules in the first place?

Declaring your rules should rightfully be seen as a two way street. The enforcee agrees not to breach these boundaries of behavior. The enforcer agrees (or should do) not to broach the boundaries of jurisdiction. Calling the rules ‘guidelines’ is the first smoking gun of convenient ambiguity. If you were open to honest constructive criticism, I could go right through your guidelines and point out where I feel they are ambiguous and one sided. Needless to say I do feel your ‘guidelines’ are wanting for conciseness and fairness.

Attempting to prohibit criticism of anything and avoid anything/everything controversial, is just plain wrong in my book. You can’t pretend to create a saccharine society of happy people like The Stepford Wives, without playing fast and loose with freedom of speech and resorting to whimsical, inconsistent application of rules/guidelines or whatever you wish to call them. That means you must make a facade of subjective boundaries, (guidelines) which nevertheless you might imply are objective, and then you pretend that you will also honor this agreement by not over stepping the jurisdiction you have implicitly agreed upon.

Controlling and enforcing this contrived ‘hooray for everything’ pleasantness, is prone to being cumbersome and unwieldy, unless you are turning blind eyes here there and everywhere. Prohibiting any discussion of controversial topics like religion or politics (hmm..then how about sport?), is like having to constantly keep bailing the water out of a leaky boat.

The problem should not be whether or not you disagrees with somebody, but whether or not you are polite and congenial about it. People should be allowed to speak freely and debate on their own terms, until the resort to verbal abuse. Even then, ’sticks and stones may brake my bones, but names will never hurt me’ is a worthy maxim.

The real problem in this world, is that people have traditionally had difficultly maintaining a peaceful dialog about their beliefs, ostensibly because so many of those beliefs are inherently exclusive and intolerant. The very idea of censorship is exclusive and intolerant. It says ‘we exclude the discussion of…’ or ‘we will not tolerate disagreement with…’

People throughout history who have followed exclusive and intolerant beliefs have tended to become enraged and then violent when it is their beliefs being challenged censored or excluded. When two exclusive intolerant cultures collide, we know from history that the result is often bloody violence.

What we clearly need to do, is learn to communicate without becoming hostile, intolerant and violent. Verbal hostility is hardly the worst of the problem though. The real problem we need to sanction is violence. We need to learn to accept rational criticism of our ideas and not throw tantrums. So canning discussion of any particular subject is really quite foolish. The lack of communication is the problem in the first place. Censorship of thought ideas and words, was the problem which spawned closed minded dogmatic beliefs. Rational discourse by contrast is the process which reverses this trend, it requires that subject matter remains open, and puts the onus of responsibility upon individuals to be civil and reasonable.

I realize that this is not a forum to discuss and debate religious issues, and I know that but I am not attempting to advocate deliberate debate. It is also not a forum to debate hairstyles or how to cook pasta or anything else. Topics come up in general conversation. I just don’t believe it is a very good policy to ring fence religion and allow it to evade criticism, by applying censures of prohibition, the same approach that caused the controversy and made the topic a bloodbath in the first instance.

In the case of Scientology, there needs to be a very decisive and very determined uprising of public opinion to have the cult bought to it’s knees and have it’s back broken and many outstanding atrocities investigated. This matter has nothing to do with religion. It is an urgent social welfare and human rights issue that is yearning for a resolution. People need to be informed about what is going on both withing the cult, and to what the cult labels OP’s (Oppressive Persons).

Let’s get real here people – PLEASE!. If a person can not criticize Scientology because the evil, devious bastards, at the top of it, manage to con some governments into recognizing this cult as a religion, then censorship has gone way too far. This is precisely what they want (along with tax free status) and plays completely into their hands.

Again I reiterate, that Scientology is vehemently apposed to psychiatry, medication and mental health in general. It causes untold heartache discomfort debilitation and destruction of lives by banning members from communicating with loved ones who disavow the cult. It makes people who need professional help turn away from their mental health professionals and go off of their medications. That makes it extremely relevant in this forum as an organization diametrically apposed to our very support base. The mental health profession, it’s practice and medicine.

When people have been sucked dry financially and emotionally, they often realize they will never attain those super human powers, they may wake up from the delusional dream, only to become morbidly depressed about their loss of life; the time, the money and the relationships they have ruined to please the greedy cult. Sadly, having finally escaped the clutches of the cult, in shame and despair they commit suicide.

If we cant criticize that, then we cant criticize Charles Manson, Jim Jones or even Adolph Hitler.

So hoping that being honest about the whole affair was the best approach, without pulling any punches or pleading a sugar coated coercive case and yet still hoping this would seem fair, I sent this of to the admin Andrew, to receive this response:

Skepticus,

You clearly have an agenda, and there are many forums on the Internet that welcome these types of topics with open arms. The ADD Forums has clearly spelled out guidelines which prohibit certain topics – guidelines which your agenda clearly violates, in Admin’s opinion.

Should you wish to remain a member of these forums, please stay within the letter and spirit of the guidelines. Should you fail to do so, your posting privileges may be suspended, or your account closed.

Well. Now I am feeling quite rubbed up the wrong way. Considering the original post was not offensive and contained only a combination of the expression of my own opinion or facts that can be checked, it constituted valid criticism of an insidious cult which is entirely undeserving of any polite mercy and certainly isn’t worthy of whatever a reasonable person would consider a religion. I was then threatened with suspension or being banned, if I didn’t fall into line. I was also offered no clarification of any points that I raised in my previous post, regarding the ambiguities of what constitutes “religion” and “Politics” nor where Andrew felt accountable to fairness in a two way deal to honor boundaries of jurisdiction. That is an entirely fair point that is implicit in the intention to set out rules (or to use the weasel word “guidelines”). Here is my final response and the final exchange in this debacle:

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Re: Regarding Guidelines & Scientology

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Skepticus, You clearly have an agenda, and there are many forums on the Internet that welcome these types of topics with open arms.

Andrew. As I have gone to great lengths to explain and justify. My agenda (and everybody has agendas) is neither unreasonable nor relevant to your ‘guidelines’. Which considering the way they are enforced should be called rules instead of using weasel words to evade accountability to the many violations which go unchecked.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew The ADD Forums has clearly spelled out guidelines which prohibit certain topics – guidelines which your agenda clearly violates, in Admin’s opinion.

So your ‘guidelines’ support human rights abuses then? My only agenda is in defense of human rights and equality. You have not responded to my specific points that Scientology is not worthy of being regarded a religious institution in which I clearly indicate why and my other concerns about the general ambiguity and whimsical ‘guideline’ enforcement issues I raised. Simply contradicting me doesn’t suffice for a reasonable refutation.

Your prohibitions are a clear violation of freedom of speech principles. You may be entitled (legally) to adopt such draconian censorship on the net, but that not to say it is very ethical or fair. I certainly wouldn’t call it honorable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Should you wish to remain a member of these forums, please stay within the letter and spirit of the guidelines.

SPIRIT???? Sorry, I don’t believe in spirits. And when you are charging at me like a bull with you blunt club made of guidelines, to bludgeon me into submission by pure authority, where do you get off expecting me to read between the lines and indulge in a liberal interpretation of your beloved, ambiguous guidelines? NOBODY has pointed out to me, where and for what reason my post is supposed to be in violation. You make the banal assertion that my breach it is clear even though I have indicated I don’t understand how or why. You have offered no clarification.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Should you fail to do so, your posting privileges may be suspended, or your account closed.

Oh! So a member comes cap in hand pleading to have the decision to delete one of their posts reconsidered, and you respond with megalomaniacal threats to close them out and shut them down. As far as I am aware, I have done nothing to warrant such a warning. I don’t believe my post deserved to be deleted in the first instance, now you add insult to injury by threatening me. As long as you have no obligations to being reasonable and fair, why don’t you just go about wily nilly deciding you don’t like people, delete all their posts, tell them to f**k off and close their account?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew This issue is not up for debate, and we consider the matter closed. We look forward to your future contributions to the forums.

Well then. Considering you made no effort to address any of my well considered points, and also lacked the maturity to take my various advice as constructive criticism; Considering the petty attitude you present of might is right and ‘I’m the boss so you’d better shut up when your told to’ then I think I will decline your offer to make any future contributions. That’s your loss not mine.

I hope you never have to experience the loss and heartache of a loved one falling prey to a diabolical cult like Scientology, but if you do I hope you will think of Skepticus, and remember how helpful you were to my ‘agenda’ (the public awareness of this scourge and it’s human rights abuses). You are right though, there are many places on the net where people can (for the time being) exercise free speech, it’s a shame that ADD Forums isn’t one of them. You may consider the matter closed, but that’s just your opinion.

Lisa McPherson

The Unfunny Truth About Scientology

Operation Clambake

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Here we see an admin pretending that there is no ambiguity in their guidelines, refusing to acknowledge the ambiguity that is pointed out to him point blank, and then using the ambiguity to condone bending the rules to suit the preordained policy that the moderator (and or administrator) can never be in error. There is a rather unstated assumption to be taken for granted, when you join many internet forums, that regardless of whatever the rules may say, the forum administrators have every right to make their own mind up about what is fair and just and the rules (guidelines) are there just to deceive you into believing there is a fair set of limits establishing an agreement between the enforcer and the enforcee. Rules are usually good things, which serve to protect us and limit undesirable behavior. When rules can be used to provide a camouflage for subversive cults and the greedy corporate monopolies at the heart of our information services that is a sure sign that something is wrong.

You should be entitled to not be discriminated against in any public forum. The possible set of rules made up by an admin aught to be subject to a ubiquitous set of rules which prohibit ‘negative discrimination’. Anti-criticism rules preclude any reasonable discussion of a topic, which might be rightfully deserting of criticism. In a forum such as this, where religion and politics is baned from discussion, a person who’s pastime is skepticism and atheist activism is precluded from mentioning their interests. I am tired of being treated like the scourge of society for having the gut’s to challenge the social assumptions that religion (or God) is the moral force of the universe. Being silenced in a forum opened for public access is abhorrent. Incidentally, there is a special section on ADD forums, for discussions of Meditation and Spirituality. It’s another story really, but after my post was first deleted, I vaguely recalled a similar incident from a couple of years ago, where I had a post removed for something absurdly trivial. It turns out that the previous episode was also at ADD Forums, so I will top post that exchange as a prequel, as that will also set it in chronological order.

Nevertheless, as much as I despise religious bigotry, I shouldn’t have to worry
about religious prejudiced in this particular case. My first line of defense, is that Scientology is not a religion (assuming that was the basis of the complaint in the first place) so however critical I was of scientology it is not relevant to censor me on those grounds. By alluding to the “spirit” of the rules I can only suppose that Andrew meant to imply that we should all read between the lines and just appreciate that the intention is to prohibit the discussion of anything controversial. well I have a couple of problems with that. Firstly I didn’t agree to no post on any topic that is controversial. Secondly, I have no commitment to remain silent on topics that I consider worthy of criticism and politely circumvent opportunities to voice that criticism. Should we have to accept that ADD Forums disallows criticism of anything? NO. There are multitudes of posts on the forum that are critical of things which are permitted as worthy of criticism, from practitioners who deny ADD, to people who abuse the medication. Those are some of the more prolific examples, but along the way there are many examples which present criticism of more general topics.

If it is not criticism itself that is being prohibited, then what may we assume bout the intentions of the censorship? You must either accept that Scientology was being honored as a religion, or that the intention to enforce the ’spirit’ of the guidelines, is being played upon as a euphemism for the prohibition of anything controversial. Ummm… Isn’t that a tad gray around the edges and asking people to censor themselves effectively based on what they in their own opinion consider to be controversial? Clearly the words religion and politics are not clear cut and are open to mis interpretation and semantic abuse. That is precisely what L Ron Hubbard was committing in his original ploy to invent a religion and incorporate into it, his bogus pseudoscience of dianetics.

The irony of this draconian enforcement of so called ‘guidelines’ is that the effort to avoid controversy within the group, serves to cause disharmony between the users and the mods/admins. Nobody that I know of had complained about my post or taken offense. There was no attempt to warn or ask me to edit the message first. The wholesale result was to give offense by taking offense, and that is how a good many hostile engagements are started. I am a proponent of letting ideas stand on their own merit and permitting even encouraging vigorous criticm of ideas. It is up to individuals to guard against ad hominem criticism and learn to take criticism of their own ideas graciously. Preventing controversy is really the same as preventing criticism. What is needed is more debate and criticism of ideas and less censorship.

As I pointed out to Andrew censorship over what one must think, know, say or write, is the heart of bigotry and dogma. Religions are made to censor and prohibit. There is nothing in a verbal or written discussion to harm anybody. Sticks and stones shall brake my bones but names shall never harm me. We need to encourage verbal / written critical discourse, it is time we learned to understand and accept critical discourse and learn to draw a line at physical violence Considering the power of religious exclusion and Censorship to fuel hatred and intolerance, because religions teach that you must censor your own thoughts and also those of anybody you meet that this book is the truth and light and the moral code that one must live by. The motive to censor thoughts becomes a violent impulse in the mind of the extremist.

I am also tired of being considered an extremist, because I would so openly and harshly criticize a set of ideas or actions. My willingness to be open to discourse and return criticism is my greatest virtue if I had to choose. The willingness to debate and be willing to face the critical frontiers and put my own ideas to the test should be considered a hallmark of honesty. Meanwhile the naked hostility of censorship is the driving motive of untold bloodshed, hatred, vilification, ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses the world over. I am rapidly achieving awareness that It is censorship and restriction upon free speech which therefore places a stranglehold free thought that is the real enemy in this world. ‘The truth’ will set you free, but who will set ‘the truth’ free?

Regards Skepticus

A New Beginning

This is my first post on my all new Skepticus Maximus WordPress.com blog. I am presently in the throws of importing from my previous livejournal blog at MY OLD BLOG I had some problems there with setting up an offline editor (software installed onto my own computer, which allows me to format and edit my posts then uploads them to my blog). There seemed to be no good information in the help documentation or the FAQ’s there, so I decided It would be easier to set up a brand new blog on a with a hosted system which I think (I hope) is more popular and therefore has better community support.

Three days latter with diversions to, select a stylesheet, create a new title banner, investigate the new software and upload some images from my drive, and I am almost back to square one, without the posted content of my previous blog of course. I will now catch up with the importing of some of my previous blog, and then I will have a good brows around the WordPress blog-sphere and community.

See you in the soup.
Skepticus

EDIT: PS: I am incredibly impressed. I found the import feature and gave it my livejournal login details and hit the button. WOW!! I just lifted my whole blog site comments and all, then posted them here on my main page. Thanks WordPress, you are definitely going up in my estimation of merit.

A Dose Of Rationality

On the 23 May 2007 I watched the SBS program Insight, which hosted a debate on ADHD/ADD entitled “A Dose Of Reality”. It was my first introduction to the depth of the controversies surrounding ADHD/ADD. Firstly I will mention my interest in this topic as a suspected but undiagnosed ADD sufferer, but also I am a Skeptic, that is, in the general sense of the word. I believe in the virtues of applying critical thinking skills to questionable beliefs and practices. In keeping with this I am also a rationalist, an atheist, and a critic of quack medicine of the snake oil marketing movement. As such, I would hope to bring a conservative, rationalist view point to bear on this topic.

There are several points I would like to make about this TV debate, but first I should note the scope of the subject matter covered, as it was spread rather scarcely over a wide gamut of interrelated issues. It would therefore be prudent to enumerate them one at a time and investigate them separately.

• Is ADHD/ADD actually a specific illness or could it be the collective excuse of underachievers who wish to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their bad behavior and their poor performance?
• Is ADHD/ADD hereditary?
• Are there proven neurological differences in the brain of the sufferer?
• Is ADHD/ADD being over diagnosed or under diagnosed?
• Are there appropriate mechanisms in society for the detection, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD/ADD?
• Is the medication safe? Is it effective? Is it being administered responsibly?
• Is ADHD/ADD a continuously variable range of characteristics or set of quite arbitrary traits?
• Are words like behavioral and temperament, semantically distinct from the functional definition of symptoms of a disease or disorder?
• how does ADHD/ADD relate to emergent trends within society such as the complexity and fast pace?

Firstly we must all brace ourselves against the sensationalist onslaught that is par for the course within the media. Fortunately this was an SBS program so its journalistic integrity was quite high. Nevertheless the debate was moderated by the host and directed by the questions she choose (or was directed) to ask, which were not necessarily along the most scientific line of questioning nor was the depth of investigation devised to provide enough meaningful discourse, that any convincing conclusion could be reached.

The first matter of disagreement began after a couple of anecdotes and testimonials were heard. A Pediatrician Dr Patrick Concannon who was asked to describe the nature of ADHD. Dr Concannon was bold in his assertion that ADHD/ADD is a neurological disorder, is was strongly transmitted by hereditary factors. A whole program could have easily been devoted to debate this question alone, and little justice was done by the flash in the pan treatment it received. The pro-genetic camp was adamant that ADHD/ADD was just as genetically determined as typical physical characteristics such as height. A great deal hinges on this question as it determines accountability and precedes many of the other questions mentioned above.

Countering the pro-genetic claims were the views of one George Halasz (child psychiatrist), who claimed to have never heard of any scientific evidence that a set of symptoms such as those claimed by ADHD/ADD sufferers were caused by any specific genes. He insisted at this point, that ADHD/ADD was not actually an illness but rather a set of symptoms. It would serve us well to think about what this means. It seemed to me that Halasz was admitting the same set of evidence and yet still denying that ADHD/ADD even exists.

This matter should have perhaps been clarified, but right of reply was thrown to Concannon who pointed to several studies which clearly demonstrate a link between genetic progeny and heritability of ADHD/ADD symptoms. It seems that any one member of a pair of identical twins, separated at birth stood in the order of 75 – 80% chance of having ADHD/ADD symptoms if the other twin (who they had never met) was also an ADHD/ADD sufferer.

Halasz’s response was to concede that the correlation of symptoms was real but not the disorder itself. His justification for this is interesting.
Halasz responds by drawing a distinction between characteristics such as temperament which are heritable and an actual disorder. Moreover Halasz, takes issue with the studies mentioned having established a cause and effect relationship, which posits a ‘real’ disorder as the cause of an associated set of symptoms (the effect).

Apparently for Halasz, a disorder can not be defined by a set of genetically heritable symptoms, if by some means we can describe the erstwhile symptoms with circuitous euphemisms. By dismissing the chain of cause and effect, he seems to deny the existence of, or perhaps even the suffering caused by the condition itself.

The concern about establishing cause and effect relationships in any scientific study is a very valid one, and one we must pay great heed to. We must never confuse correlation with causation. Just because two things correlate or coincide with each other, does not imply that either one is necessarily the cause of the other. Even if two phenomena (A and B) correlate 100%, then A might possibly be the cause of B or perhaps B is the cause of A, but there is also the possibility that both A and B are caused by independent phenomena C (D E…).

Nevertheless, establishing correlations in science is an important and valuable part of the process, of narrowing down the possible cause of any given effect.

Looking at the studies mentioned above, what might we conclude about the correlation and causation of the specific phenomena with which we are being presented? Firstly there is a statistically significant trend between people (identical twins) who share almost all of their genes by virtue of their homozygous inheritance. This fact is used in science to isolate traits that are passed by genetic inheritance as opposed to environmental conditioning. When one twin has a set of arbitrary but specific traits that are not common within the general populous, and the other twin having been separated at birth is also found to posses the same set of arbitrary and specific traits a strong case can be argued that the cause of these traits is genetic.

Whether we call these traits a disease, a disorder or a dysfunction is a purely semantic quibble, but there should be no argument that what such a study identifies, is a condition, that is not shared by the majority of the general population, and that it is moreover a genetically heritable condition.

Importantly though these studies establish a baseline argument, that a specific, identifiable condition exists separate from the commonly shared, hereditary traits of the general population. With each of these twins there is a correlation between the set of phenotypic traits (the symptoms of ADHD/ADD) and their own genotypes (the specific allele pair sequence in their DNA). This is implicit from the fact that they are both found to exhibit the unique symptoms of ADHD/ADD. It goes without saying that there is a direct correlation between their genotypes by virtue of their being homozygous twins.

There are three possible conclusions we might consider from the studies mentioned above:
A) That the correlating symptoms of the twins, associated with ADHD/ADD are the cause of the correlating genes or…
B) That the Correlated genes are the cause of the correlated symptoms or
C) both the correlated symptoms and the correlated genes are caused by a separate cause or causes.

I don’t know of any respectable biologist, who would entertain the absurd notion that a set of genes could be permuted retrospectively by the phenotypic traits that are supposed to encode them. To put that another way: “On the planet I come from, genes cause traits” or “genotypes encode for phenotypes”, not the other way around. So much for option A.

Option C. is ruled out because the researchers have deliberately chosen twins who are separated at birth. What is not determined by their genetic make up, must be determined by their environment, rare congenital conditions not withstanding of course.
An entirely environmental cause would show up no greater tendency for identical twins to correlate, than any other pair of individuals chosen randomly from the population. Since the ambient frequency of ADHD/ADD in the general populous is such a small minority, a correlation of 75% or more is a highly significant finding, that shows strong hereditary causation.

Like any good scientific theory, the hypothesis that ADHD/ADD is a legitimate biological disorder should be testable and amenable to potential falsification. Apparently it has been so tested, and stands on its own merit.

The specific complaints of ADHD/ADD sufferers is no laughing matter, nor should their complaints be fobbed off with euphemisms such as ‘temperament’ with the implication that a temperament is something we all have, and so it is not significant in the identification of a specific disorder. As if to say that the word “temperament” is a mutually exclusive alternative to “disorder” or “illness”. As if hereditary disorders could not manifest symptoms of temperament. I think I can confidently estimate that particular characteristics of temperament are effects that are entailed by the condition itself, so that the observation that temperament is also a heritable factor would be seen as doing an end run about the fact that ADHD/ADD is a self consistent set of specific symptoms (including temperament), that could be caused by a specific genetic disorder.

If the studies cited above are correct and accurate, there is no question that there exists a genetically heritable condition that causes the symptoms of ADHD/ADD. All that is left to decide is whether this condition is worthy of being identified as something we should call a disease or disorder.

Perhaps there are stringent legal guidelines for definition of disease in medicine, this may be for good reason to prevent the legal fraternity from having to deal with ambiguous areas of gray. I have absolutely no expertise in this area, but I doubt that legal requirements provide any considerations that need to be granted precedence over common sense and biological ones. The fact being established by these studies, is that a specific biological condition is the cause of a specific set of symptoms. The symptoms themselves qualify in their untreated state, to mandate the classification as a general disorder or disease.

The generally accepted meaning of disease is: “An impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning” The dis-functionality of the ADHD/ADD symptoms alone reflect the very essence of dis-order and dis-ease. I don’t think I need to plead with much fervor or coercion, to point out that the symptoms claimed by the alleged ADHD/ADD sufferers, is an abnormal impairment. So by a purely functional definition what they claim to be suffering is: “An impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning”, a disease.

It was of course possible, that many complaining of these symptoms were imagining them, or just looking for excuses for their own dysfunctionality and poor lifestyle choices. There was the possibility that the condition was psychosomatic and/or that the condition was primarily or exclusively manifested by the environment. If those studies above are legitimate, then all of this can be safely ruled out. What ever the symptoms may be, whatever we choose to call them, they are collectively and qualitatively distinct from the wider population and they most certainly are biological, as anything which is determined by genes is ipso facto a biological phenomenon.

Dr Halasz has also ridiculed the origin of the ADHD/ADD classification, pointing out that it was created by a committee of psychiatrists. This is also problematic. We might suppose that the symptoms being agreed upon, are to some extent subjective, intangible concepts. If a panel of psychiatrists convene and establish regulatory guidelines for identifying and diagnosing such a condition that the condition might be magically plucked out of nowhere and patients retrospectively fitted for suitability.

The problem may be exacerbated when you take dangerous drugs and administer them to treat such a condition that never existed before the cannons of the American Psychiatry Association were passed down.

Perhaps Dr Halasz is missing the point that abundant evidence has been forthcoming for a demographic of underachievers, who’s unfulfilled lives have been turned around or at least significantly improved by diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Dr Halasz repeatedly cited the absence of evidence ” that he was aware of” in constructing his arguments. From his absence of knowledge about any genetic studies establishing causality in ADHD/ADD to his absence of knowledge about “asthma being created by a committee” or “appendicitis being created by a committee”, he repeatedly resorted to argumentum ad ignorantum, or argued from personal incredulity. He also failed to make a distinction between inventing the word or classification and inventing the actual disorder itself.
Halasz’s smarmy innuendo fell short of an outright accusation that ADHD/ADD is a fantasy, but he did venture that suggesting a genetic cause was perpetuating myths.

My question to Dr Halasz is: In what peer review journal have you published your refutations of the present genetic studies? I wonder how Dr Halasz imagines these other disorders were discovered. At some point we have to accept that names and categories are human contrivances. The art of nomenclature can not be accomplished without entertaining arbitrary human conventions. The fact that a committee decided how todefine and categorize ADHD/ADD is only likely to demonstrate that some democratic agreement was fostered. What are the alternatives? That an individual psychiatrist would perform the duty?

The concern I am hearing from the ADHD/ADD opponents is that this disorder is not legitimate unless an underlying physical / neurological explanation can be found. Prior to statistical methods in genetics, it was necessary to find specific neurological / neuro-chemical phenomena which could be linked to symptoms, before declaring that any hypothetical disorder was a specific legitimate disease. There was a time when the only hard evidence available were the tissues, neuro-hormones and electrical impulses of the brain. Apart from this, were the commonalities of the outward symptoms displayed or described by the patient. needless to say psychiatry has been dogged by the complex and mysterious nature of the brain, while at the same time, symptoms of potential psychological illness are subjective and intangible, hard to understand or describe for both the practitioner and the patient.

Nevertheless if you have a statistically significant group who share common symptoms and behaviors there is every reason to suspect a common cause. But a cause of what? Is a set of symptoms a disorder just because there are a statistically significant number of people who share them? That in itself is an arbitrary matter for humans to decide.

Before entertaining the purely semantic quibble, it might serve us well to examine the etymology of the word and remember not to confuse concept with precept. I don’t see what is wrong with having a completely separate category of conditions for which no physical causes have been discovered. My understanding is that we already have such a category and it is known as a syndrome.
If there is something valid to criticize about the process of classification by committee, it is the usual plaint, that ‘a camel is a racehorse designed by a committee’, and the misnomer of ADHD/ADD is a typical example. Besides the fact that the duel acronym is unwieldy and redundant the, word ‘deficit’, is widely regarded as misleading as hyper-focus and over-persistence is often just as prevalent and significant as any lack of attention. The real problem with attention would seem to me, to be that the attention is governed more by autonomic impulse. Given all of this, I would have suggested Hyperactivity And Autonomous Attention Syndrome (HAAAS or H/AS) or something along that line.

Having said that I will note that all this semantic banter is trivial to an infinitesimal magnitude, by comparison with the consequence of leaving actual sufferers of actual symptoms in a baneful fog, just because we can’t find a puss filled tumor growing on their brain. The question remains for myself at least, what evidence has been found to support the neurological basis of ADHD/ADD.

There was little evidence presented in the course of this TV debate, and I have only been aware of the disorder for a matter of months. I have however, been aware of the symptoms my whole life and I do feel that they are qualitatively unique from the ordinary character traits of my fellow citizens. Calling them temperament is just a game of semantic hide and seek, because the disorder appears to profoundly effect temperament anyhow. Saying ADHD/ADD is not a disorder, but a manifestation of other genetically heritable characteristics, is like saying blue is not a colour but a characteristic of light.

The claim that the genetic studies do not identify causes of the condition is outright disingenuous. Whether or not any specific neurological evidence can be found, the ultimate cause is genetic, because a significant genetic correlation has been found. A genetic abnormality could be a severe birth defect, a terminal disease or an unusually tall child. From the point of view of genes, there is no specifications which instruct us on how to distinguish normal from unusual, unusual from abnormal and abnormal from defective. The genes are the primary cause, and this has been confirmed.
In a nutshell the problem is this.

If you are not arbitrarily choosing your definition of ‘disease’ or ‘defective’ you are arbitrarily choosing your definition of normal. There is a whole range of possible genetic variations from the equally probable to the completely unique. From the desirable and benevolent to the fatal and malevolent. The same process of gene copying, mutation and natural selection has produced both the most beneficial, practical variations and the most hideous and deadly.

In between we find artifacts of the rare and unusual, which may be either beneficial or detrimental. We also find a continuum of progressively more common traits, which tend towards the more beneficial end of the ‘harmful to useful scale’, this is because natural selection has been weeding our garden for millions of years, and the gene pool tends to accumulate genes that allow us to prosper if not live long.

So you see, it is up to us to decide what ‘illness’ and ‘disability’ are. Genes can not tell us. They produce what we might choose to call ‘normal’ character traits, in precisely the same way as they produce what we might choose to call genetic ‘disabilities’ or ‘diseases’. Sickle cell anemia may be caused by different genes than say albinism, but the processes that create the gene sequences and translate them into character traits are the same. Albinism is an anomaly that may or may not be considered a disability.

For a person who lives in a cool climate, it might make little difference, but if the albino happens to live on the equator, the harsh sun would almost certainly give cause to consider the albinism a disability. We are forced to categorize genetic illness and disability using arbitrary man made distinctions, whether we like it or not. The fact is that nature gives us no stick to draw a line in the sand with anyway.

Some products of our genes have intrinsic flaws that are nevertheless the normally inherited character traits we all share. One example is our spine. Because bi-pedal locomotion was a recent adaption in humans, our vertebral column is based on the spine of a quadruped. It is not well adapted for upright walking and this is why we find that back injury is so common. If we ever met a race of bi-pedal aliens, they would quite likely have much sturdier skeletal support, unless they also recently adapted to bi-pedal locomotion. To them we would seem disabled, nay, you might as well say that we are disabled. Phenotypical traits are variously enabling or disabling depending on how well they are adapted to the functions we use them for.

With this in mind, we can now look at other non-heritable diseases and disabilities and see that they are blessed with the same limitations. Whatever the cause of a disease or disability it all depends on our capacity to deal with it to decide if it should be considered a disability. Our ability to deal with it will depend in turn on our heritable traits. We and all of our hereditary traits are locked into a dance with our environment. Our fitness our mental health and our ultimate success as individuals, is strongly affected by our traits and how well (or otherwise) we cope with our prevailing environmental circumstances.

Suppose a man with a comparatively weak heart is killed by a lightning strike. Now, some people who are hit by lightning do survive. Lets suppose that the man would not have been killed by the burns or the shock except buy the fact that it stopped his heart. It would be a strange thing for the coroner to declare that the man died of heart disease, nevertheless the genetically determined weak heart was just as critical in his death as an unfortunate lightning strike. Now this is a deliberately contrived example to illustrate two clear factors, one hereditary and another environmental that were both critical in a definitive fatality.

In reality we are made of a multitude of hereditary factors each interacting in a multitude of environmental conditions, from the infinitesimally small to the most obvious and influential. Think of the scores and scores of genes that make up your genotype each interacting as the environment of each other and the cells that are built according to the program of action encoded by those genes.

Each cell interacts with many others in a dynamic environment as each cell contributes to the complex environment of all the other cells, and so on through tissues, organs and interdependent systems of organs, right up to the scale of the individual. You.
It is hard to countenance the simplistic idea that a disease is either completely environmental or hereditary, or that it could somehow, by some intrinsic criteria built into nature, be defined as “disease”, from anything other than our own man made, functional definitions.

So is ADHD/ADD a condition clearly separable from trivial character traits? It is as separable as any other condition, as the symptoms are clear cut and the distinctions dividing illness from character traits are man made and arbitrary in any case. As for trivial, nobody who has had to live their life with the symptoms of ADHD/ADD considers the symptoms trivial.

I have never given any credibility to the mechanism of personal testimonial. As a skeptic I appreciate that testimonials of any kind, are no replacement for proper research, such as double blind controlled experiments, field studies and so on. I won’t try to coerce the debate with anecdotal information of a subjective and personal nature. Nevertheless I can testify to a person wondering what ADD is like, and with an emphatic caveat, that I don’t expect anybody to simply take my word at face value, This simply bye the bye, but I will venture to oblige.

More importantly, the testimonial, rather than establishing that ADHD/ADD is a valid disability, its real utility lay in establishing that ADHD/ADD is a unique, complaint rather than a cobbled together hoch-poch of combined, alleged symptoms / character traits.

One way to describe the feeling of ADD is to recall what it feels like when sometimes you awake from sleep and you just cant think. It is common to most (if not all) people at sometime or other to feel dull and disconnected from reality for a while until fully awake. One of my own personal characteristics, is that this dullness is extended throughout the day and I have to exert a diligent effort to make my brain work. Once I have it rolling though, I find I can think quite deeply and clearly.

It’s as if my mind were a freight train, while most other people have a motor-bike or a small car. Not only does the freight train take a long time to build up to speed, it also takes a lot of time and effort to stop. When it is time slow it down and bring it to a halt I find my “train of thought” has too much momentum it wants to keep going. The analogy is also apt, because the train runs on tracks. The train driver can’t choose where the train goes. The limited degrees of movement and the switches on the line are controlled externally.

A person with un-medicated ADD often feels like they have no control over where their life is going.
It’s painful to recall how poorly I did at school and with the task of relating to the curriculum. This may not be unusual for a child, but what is unusual is that the children who are scholastic underachievers are not usually intellectual and curious by nature. I was into electronics and radios as well as beekeeping and well read in nature and science. My school work and academic success was marred by unwillingness to complete written work, slowness and generally not being motivated by any desire to please the academic system.

Many people with ADD I have learned, are highly intelligent but self possessed, being motivated by curiosity and the joy of learning for it’s own sake, rather than social approval. Once I understand something I find it unnecessary to demonstrate that understanding, for any greater reward than knowledge itself. Along with this is the restricted nature of the curriculum, wrote learning and not being shown why the knowledge being presented was relevant.

I could go on to point out my sleeping patterns, hyper-focus, poor memory, over-persistence, blinking and distractability, suffice is to say, that these are also unique characteristics of the ADHD/ADD I don’t suffer from the hyperactivity that ADHD people do, but this is also a unique trait. Yes these are character traits but they are also very unique and specific ones. They appear as a cluster so that ADHD/ADD people tend to have several of them in varying degrees.

Any one of these traits in an individual is understandable, but by the highly specific nature of the traits, it seems unlikely that they would group together in such a specific way. The number of people who share these traits, and the degree to which they coincide with each other could only be explained by supposing that the condition is real and has a common cause in each person who has it.

Whether the numbers are one in a million or one in ten, the fact that the condition is quite particular and specific tells us that there is a peculiar and specific condition with a common cause. In this case it appears to be ultimately genetic, but given that the product of the genes (the phenotype), affects the way the individual interacts within the environment, it could also be considered to be an environmental disorder.

To understand this, you need only realize that the effective methods of treatment are by medication, counseling, life management planning, and group support. These are all modes of environmental control, even the medication, as this effects the brain, neuro-chemical environment of the mind. None of the effective treatments, involve altering the genetic makeup of the subject.

While the classification of a true disorder or illness is a matter of arbitrary human convention, the assumption that we all function in a state of wellness or health, in the absence of objectively defined disorders, is idealistic and arbitrary. Firstly because so many disorders and illnesses defy such clinically objective attempts at definition secondly, ‘fitness’, ‘wellness’ and ‘health’ are relative terms.
Another point of criticism I will mention of the Insight debate, is that in effort to tease out the controversies, it wasted time on the redundant issue of false diagnosis. It may be of some concern to be quite honest, but it is really a separate issue and one that is not particular to ADHD/ADD medication.

In fact the whole sub-text of the program, investigating the worrying prospect that ADHD/ADD medications are being over prescribed, takes in the whole gamut of over diagnosis, false diagnosis and the inherent dangers of the medications themselves. Against this, there is also the concern that politicians must do their part in regulating the practitioners and the drug companies. Then also that the practitioners and politicians are not subject to any conflict of interests. The debate entertained all of these interdependent issues briefly, but by trying to cover them all, it done justice to none.

The question “Are ADHD/ADD medications being over prescribed?”, is contentious swamp of unresolved sub-issues. I have a better question. How can the medical and mental health specialists, even begin to dream of finding a set of agreeable standards for diagnosis and prescription, when they can’t even agree on how an alleged set of symptoms should be classified or even what the fundamental definition of disease or illness is?

Surely we need to reach agreement about what constitutes an illness or disease, before we can decide whether ADHD/ADD is one. Then we need to decide this before we trot out baseless statistics, on relative diagnostic rates. When that is considered and agreed, we can deal with suitable dosages, regulation, etc.

There is a insatiable zeal in the media, to focus on ADHD/ADD, and harvest it for trashy tabloid ratings. I think it must be the emotive scenes of children behaving badly and the juicy stigma, that can be foisted on parents for resorting to ‘drugging’ their children. The interesting thing is that the media can beat it up from either angle. If the parents don’t medicate the children, they have the wild behaviour to lynch. If they do medicate, there is the parenting from a medicine bottle angle. The media has a win-win situation while the parents and ADHD/ADD children have a lose-lose.

A measure of integrity would see a media outlet, forgo the sensationalist aspect of ADHD/ADD and seize upon the issue of medical and mental health experts not being able to agree on what constitutes a meaningful definition of illness or disease. Have we really reached an age of such medical wonder, that we can transplant vital organs, re-attach severed limbs, and vaccinate against many diseases that once rose to plague proportions, without actually being able to say whether the concept, disease has some natural defining characteristics or whether it is Just a matter of man made categorization?

The real issue raised by this debate is orders of magnitude more important than the trivialities of any controversies surrounding ADHD/ADD. If there is an important issue regarding ADHD/ADD specifically, it is the general level of misunderstanding in the community, about it’s true nature and how marginalized are its sufferers (at least until they are diagnosed and treated). Another concern is the masses of people among the community who may be suffering from ADHD/ADD but could never figure out why they were so different and why life seemed so hard in so many subtle ways.

I believe the growing prevalence of adult ADHD/ADD, is really just a growing awareness of a problem that is obfuscated by the media and that many of us have carried with us all our lives. In the last decade or two, some of our children and grandchildren have materialized a dysfunctional set of symptoms that may be endemic to our complex social and technological societies, in which people with a particular genetic makeup function differently. It may be in part due to better mental health care and more astute and sensitive parenting practices, that these children are being noticed and given proper care.

Whatever the reason for the discovery in children, a secondary wave of new arrivals is being uncovered. Adults are hearing the testimonials and symptom lists of children or young adults who have grown up with ADHD/ADD. It is beginning to dawn on them, that these are the very same symptoms and idiosyncrasies that they have struggled with all their lives. I am not surprised that the number of ADHD/ADD diagnoses has increased and therefore so too has the rate of prescription.

Very little if anything was made in the debate ‘A Dose Of Reality’ about the growing incidence of adult ADHD/ADD diagnosis. One might think this was as relevant as it is obvious. It might also solve the perplexing mystery dressed up as a delicious controversy, of why there is an increasing rate of prescription for ADHD/ADD medication.

As an undiagnosed ADD suspect, I can only report on the appalling state of acknowledgment and support I have received in the public system, spanning back into the past decade. I have been unemployed on and off for most of my adult life. At the age of 32 I decided notify Centerlink that I had concerns about my longterm repeated cycles of unemployment, lack of career satisfaction and dysfunctional lifestyle. They responded by bringing in an industrial psychologist, to put me through an extensive psychometric evaluation.

Was I diagnosed with ADHD/ADD? Not at all. What followed wastwo years of counseling that missed the point, because the counselor was never going to find a problem that the psychologist failed to find. Almost ten years latter now, I find myself banging my head against a brick wall. Centerlink has failed me in my most deliberate and proactive attempts to establish the source of my problem.

Even with almost complete certainty about what my condition is, I have not been able to foster a process that leads to diagnosis through the department that expects me to be functional, motivated and job ready. I point this out because I need to be diagnosed to apply for sickness benifits or to establish a treatment regimen that could alleviate the worst of my dysfunctional symptoms. If I am expected to comply with Centerlinks stringent requirements, then they need to ensure that their demands are reasonable and that means ruling out the condition that they almost certainly overlooked many years hence.

Meanwhile I have attempted twice with two General Practitioners to unsuccessfully procure a referral to a psychiatrist and ringing around to those who have an understanding of ADHD/ADD, I have found they all seem to be booked solid with permanent clients and are no longer taking referrals. I have since learned of a way to gain access to the public health system, so my next attempt should be more fruitful.
If there is supposed to be a glut of over-diagnosis for ADHD/ADD, then it hasn’t arrived in my part of the world. There actually seems to be an unresponsive dearth, of both recognition and support. Getting a diagnosis seems to require tenacity, organization and motivation beyond the ken of many ADHD/ADD sufferers, and mental health professionals do not appear to widely recognize or support ADHD/ADD and those who specialize in it are sparse and in high demand.

A Child Psychiatrist Dr Jon Jureidini commented on the drug responses being nonspecific (to ADHD/ADD ), pointing out that the drugs being used to treat ADHD/ADD have the same effect on any member of the population. This observation was touted as criticism of ADHD/ADD as a specific disorder, being effectively treated with a specific drug. Presumably the logic is that a specific response would provide evidence that a condition was qualitatively different than the prevailing ‘normal’ conditions in the wider population. To this I must whole-heartedly agree, but it doesn’t automatically follow that a qualitatively nonspecific response is un-useful either in treatment or in diagnosis.

The factor not being acknowledged here, is that although stimulants have the same effect on all members of the population, regardless of whether or not they do exhibit ADHD/ADD symptoms, the functional distinction may be quantitative rather than qualitative. The explanation I have been given by a longterm ADHD sufferer is that the medication reverses a negative trend in their brain. They may be ‘under stimulated’, their brains being less capable of producing the neuro-chemical balance that most people enjoy. The stimulants assist by bridging this gap and allow the subject to produce normal neurochemical response.

The whole non-specific argument being foisted, is like claiming that a person with a hearing impairment, is not suffering from a specific disability because a hearing-aid does the same thing for a hearing impaired person as it does for a normal one. It is obvious that a hearing-aid amplifies sound in the ear regardless of who is wearing it. It is a non-sequitur to suggest that hearing impairment is not a disability, because the device used to compensate for it is non-specific.

By the same token, some stimulant medications are also noted for their ability to suppress the appetite. Again the effects are non-specific with respect to obesity. I am not a doctor, so I can’t say whether weight loss by stimulant appetite suppression is advisable under any particular circumstance, but I can say that it would have the effect of weight loss regardless of whether or not the subject is overweight. Again you don’t claim that there is no such thing as obesity just because the drugs that could effectively suppress appetite and cause weight loss are just as effective on people with normal physical proportions.

Of course the non-specific effect of ADHD/ADD medications is not an argument that helps either way. It simply isn’t relevant. The vast majority of drugs function the same way in the bodies and brains of both the general population and those people who they are effective in treating. The only difference is that the people who benefit from the universal effects of the drug are the people who have some condition that those effects can counter.

The difference with medication being claimed by ADHD/ADD sufferers, is legitimate if using that medication procures a beneficial outcome. The same benefits may not be applicable to the non-ADHD/ADD person. Taking the same medication may have negligible or no benefits, and it may be found that over stimulation might even be detrimental. With that in mind, we can return to Jon Jureidini’s claim that the ADHD/ADD medication is non-specific and therefore not indicative of a specific disorder. This I believe, is a biased argument from irrelevance.

It is irrelevant because it establishes no positive evidence against ADHD/ADD as a specific disorder and biased, because it assumes the need to demonstrate a qualitative distinction in drug response when a quantitative distinction in drug response is just as valid.

If a percentage of people are noticeably under-stimulated, resulting in the typical symptoms of ADHD/ADD, and the results of medication is that their practical functioning is improved to the level of the average person, then there is a practical benefit to be argued.

If on top of this the same medication were used by non-ADHD/ADD persons and shown to have no similar improvements in practical functionality, or indeed, if the effects had a functionally negative impact that there would then be a good argument that the results of the medication actually are specific to ADHD/ADD sufferers. In fact that they are suffering from condition which is neurological and that the quantitative drug response is selective.
I would like to suggest that a scientific study should be possible based on this hypothesis. What is needed is to establish some tangible parameters of measurable performance that are associated with the alleged symptoms of ADHD/ADD, such that the effects of ADHD/ADD medication can be quantified.

A double blind controlled experiment could be conducted by taking two groups of say, 50 subjects each, one group of carefully diagnosed ADHD/ADD sufferers and another group of people for whom the condition has been ruled out. The two groups are each randomly divided into another two groups, one will be given a placebo and the other a real dose of ADHD/ADD medication that corresponds to an average dosage prescribed for the average ADHD/ADD patient.

The ADHD/ADD patients will have to be screened to ensure that their regular treatment would be within a reasonable range of effective tolerance. The experiment would run for a nominal period, say, three months, after which the placebo control group is swapped for the active medication group and the experiment is repeated.

Each day the participants would have to record their results for effectiveness against a set of objective tests that correspond to as many tangible indicators of ADHD/ADD symptoms as it is possible to identify and devise measurable tests for.

I should also add that the prescribing doctors for the confirmed ADHD/ADD group, and the experimenters collating the results, should not have any knowledge of which participants are in either the placebo/control group or which are confirmed ADHD/ADD patients. The participants are assigned numerical randomized identities and only the computer program analyzing thedata can reverse collate the identities so randomized, after the agreed trial has been completed. If necessary the access to this function could be controlled by a set of independent passwords being required.

The pro-ADHD/ADD realist camp would hold one set of passwords and the anti-ADHD/ADD realist camp would hold the other set. After the trials have been conducted and the experiment is agreed to be deemed impartial the parties would then meet to unlock the reverse collating function that will reveal which identities were in which group. The re-collated data can now be used to populate some graphs that have been prepared in advance to demonstrate the results of the trials.

Considering the possible outcomes of the trials there are certain possibilities, that should positively affirm certain conclusions. I believe they are as follows:

1) The confirmed ADHD/ADD subjects show measurable improvement over the non-ADHD/ADD subjects but these results are also found in the placebo group.

This result would tend to suggest that ADHD/ADD is a psychosomatic disorder. The results to be expected would be influenced by the normal influence of the placebo effect. In such an event the suggestibility of the confirmed ADHD/ADD subject can be measured by comparing the results of both placebo/control groups.

Higher results for the positive response of the confirmed ADHD/ADD group, would indicate higher suggestibility of those who believe they have ADHD/ADD, and therefore that the claimed disorder is less likely to have a neurological basis. The results in this category are also influenced by the fact that effective doses of stimulant medication may be consciously noticeable, meaning that the placebo effect may be curtailed, largely because people who actually have taken the drug can expect a noticeable effect, This is less true though, of people who have been diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and who quite likely have I higher tolerance. A valid interpretation should take all this into account.

2) The confirmed ADHD/ADD subjects show measurable improvement over the non-ADHD/ADD subjects but these results are not found in the placebo group.

This result would tend to vindicate the claim that ADHD/ADD is a specific independent disorder of neurological origin without a significant psychosomatic component. This indicates that the effects of the medication have a positive effect on ADHD/ADD subjects that is not true of the wider population and that the greater the improvement shown over the non-ADHD/ADD group, the greater the degree of separation between the benefits to the ADHD/ADD group and non-ADHD/ADD group the greater the degree of separation that ADHD/ADD symptoms have over mundane character traits.

3) The confirmed ADHD/ADD subjects do not show measurable improvement over the non-ADHD/ADD subjects and these results are also found in the placebo group.

This result would tend to demonstrate that supposed ADHD/ADD medication was useful in stimulating all people equally and would tend to confirm the claim that ADHD/ADD medication does not provide a positive correlation to ADHD/ADD existing as a specific identifiable condition. This result is also importantly a neutral one in which the possibility still exists, that a specific identifiable condition, is not ruled out, but that these drugs are of no more significance in their benefit than they are to normal non-ADHD/ADD people.

4) The confirmed ADHD/ADD subjects do not show measurable improvement over the non-ADHD/ADD subjects and these results are not found in the placebo group.

In this case we have to again (as in the first case) look at the discrepancy in the placebo/control and consider which way the discrepancy lies. If the placebo group yield negative results ie: the non-ADHD/ADD subjects scored higher then we would have to conclude that non-ADHD/ADD subjects receiving the placebo were more likely to improvethan confirmed ADHD/ADD patients receiving the actual drug that is claimed to improve the symptoms of ADHD/ADD. Even if the measurable effects of ADHD/ADD medication on ADHD/ADD patients, is negligible or non-existent the placebo group should not be expected to fair worse.

The following is merely speculation, albeit consistent with the evidence I have considered so far. I suspect that the ADHD/ADD sufferers are a very real group of genetically predisposed people, who have quite atypical difficulties with adjusting to the complexities of modern life and modern society. Being hereditary, the predisposition for this inadequacy exists at birth. The time of life when these frustrations are most obvious is in early to mid childhood, before we have learned the social skills that allow us to trade good behavior for social acceptance. It should come as no surprise that a condition of this nature was first identified and accepted as a childhood disorder. But why should it spring up at this particular time in human history?

Again, I am only speculating but I do believe that the baby boom, an indirect consequence of the industrial revolution and post war prosperity, holds a key to this, heres why. In any rapidly expanding population, there is a proportional increase in the mixing or combining of genes. The resulting phenotypes are more likely to proliferate with detrimental or experimental characteristics. The gene pool is being shuffled more vigorously so its stability is compromised. One of the softest areas of influence, the area which would create maximal impact on experimental variation, is in the genes which control the software of our brains.

Natural selection is a hit and miss experiment and the neurology of the brain provides the best opportunity for variation that has any relevance in the modern world. While we were climbing down from the trees it was upright walking, opposable thumbs and extended infancy (neotany) that had the maximal impact. Back then the relevant genes for those traits would quite likely have been quite ‘plastic’ and rapid change would have been implemented effectively by maintaining higher mutation rates for those genes.

Today, in a technological society, we are beyond any advantages from adoptions of physical body structure. The pressure of dealing with complexities of culture language business and technology in our modern society would arguably put the genes controlling cognitive experimentation at a premium. I expect we have been collecting variation of these genes at a steady rate since the advent of primitive tribal society. Variations in evolution may accumulate without proliferating but sudden population explosions do cause proliferation of the new variety.

Selection pressure must increase as detrimental variants are thrown into the sieve of natural selection. Here we find ourselves in a post industrial society of information technology. A bristling garden of information, knowledge, technology and entertainment. Society and life itself appears to gain noticeable complexity and specialization with each generation. Personal relationships seem to become more complex, as the ante is upped, for the learning of a new layer of social dynamics. The same goes for politics, industry and Ughh!!… religion, which tends to gain layers of symbolism and rhetorical obscurantism.

The upshot of this is that our most recent major gene shuffling event, the baby boom, might have left us with a few interesting variations on the standard model of neurological software structure. I believe that people with ADHD/ADD, may very well be the best cognitive resource we have, until we perfect artificial intelligence capable of understanding a joke and finding it funny.

The problem for people with ADHD/ADD is that their unique cognitive faculties are not ideal for the increasingly complex and specialized world. People with ADHD/ADD tend to be non-conformists, more self possessed than self motivated. They are curious, intellectually indulgent and like to think outside the square. They have a talent for generalizing and making tenuous connections between many disparate ideas. They are eclectic and prolific in their interests and dabble almost promiscuously with ideas.

The real practical problem with this kind of mindset is not really that it is qualitatively or intrinsically faulty, but that it does not bode well with the strictures of social conformity and the increasing demands of society to deal with the complexities of life. If people with ADHD/ADD were given the chance to reach their full potential we might find that their way of thinking is a blessing to be nurtured.

In a sense the claim of the anti-ADHD/ADD lobby, that ADHD/ADD is not a disease is correct, but not because ADHD/ADD doesn’t exist and not because it is indistinguishable from “normal” character traits.

It is not a disease, because disability and ability, are relative terms that depend upon the environment in which they find themselves. The characteristics of ADHD/ADD could just as easily be great advantages if they were given the respect they deserve and nurtured for their positive benefits to society. ADHD/ADD may be carried by genes, but to proliferate as a dysfunction, disorder or disease, the carrier of those genes and those traits, needs to find themselves in an environment that puts them at a disadvantage. It could quite fairly be argued that the ADHD/ADD individual only carries an interesting set of anomalous traits, the dysfunctional part of the equation is supplied the society that accommodates those traits as a dysfunction. A person with ADHD/ADD is like a square peg in a society that only makes round holes.

We could take the argument above to an even higher plain, as there is nothing to suggest a priori that what the world needs more than ’round pegs’ is ’square pegs’. Imagine if you will that ADHD/ADD is actually a recent evolutionary adaption. One might wonder why any genetic anomaly, if purely detrimental, is not weeded out by natural selection before it ever reaches a couple of percent.

It might just be, that the cognitive landscape of the person with ADHD/ADD is a new adaption that is needed to stem the tide in run away complexity. The rising instance of ADHD/ADD could be explained by natural selection preferencing the genotype that manifests it. It follows then, that it is increasingly diagnosed and therefore that increasing amounts of medication is being prescribed for it.

Before the government commissions a study on why there is a growing trend in the prescription of ADHD/ADD medication, they aught to abolish any potential preconceptions, that ADHD/ADD is either a debilitating illness, psychosomatic, or a myth; recognize that many adults may be yet to learn about ADHD/ADD, and connect it with their own particular symptoms. They should recognize that ADHD/ADD, may yet be under diagnosed by an order of magnitude. They should also take into account that the environment provided by our complex societies, might be doing the lions share of putting the ‘dis’ in dis-ability.

In every walk of life, but particularly in science, there is a run away tenancy to accumulate data and for systems to become complex, often for the pure sake of complexity. I once read an article in New Scientist “Publish Or Perish” that described the pervasive trend of scientists doing research just to accumulate new data. As researchers struggle to make a name for themselves they are compelled to research and publish. Evermore sophisticated software and evermore powerful computers are used to mine data and present ever more mundane and specialized information.

But far less prominent is the incidence of researchers who make pervasive connections and draw conclusions. Opening up new areas of science and making profound theories would seem to require a different set of cognitive skills. Our education systems might teach the current understandings and delve into increasing specializations; they may give young people bits of paper to hang on the wall, but pervasive original ideas, require the kind of mind that can think outside the box. I don’t have great confidence that our educational institutions either teach, encourage or even accommodate this kind of thinking.

In light of all this, might it not be possible that ADHD/ADD is nothing less than a positive neurological adaption that has begun to proliferate in the social landscape, owing to a positive need for new cognitive algorithms. I believe that our societies have created numerous looming crisis’s that are begging for creative solutions. My social and political superiors, who make demands and conditions to which I am expected to comply, can provide no assurance in return that they have responsible control of our world.

The prospect that a more sane responsible society, might correspond with one in which ADHD/ADD is a wonderful gift and a resource to be nurtured, may just be too much to ask, but I don’t think it could be safely ruled out by the existing weight of evidence either. So… Hope springs nocturnal.

PS: I should not that this was written before I read ADD – Who’s Failing Who By Dr Brenton Prosser. Considering society as a poor environment for good people it seems, is not a unique idea.