Tag Archives: skepticism

Our Responsibility to the Truth

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Ethics, My Philosophy

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We tend to think that our responsibility to the truth is satisfied if we refrain from uttering hurtful lies. Even the most ethical among us seem to think that we’re fine as long as we don’t intentionally deceive others. Is our responsibility really limited to that?

Many people tell white lies to their spouses, lie on their tax returns, commit warranty fraud, propagate rumors, emphatically state things which they have no evidence for, and allow people and organizations to get away with saying things that aren’t truthful. The same people feel hurt when someone lies to them.

Lying can be intentional or unintentional. When done intentionally, it is often because some advantage is to be gained by the deceit. When unintentional, it can usually be blamed on carelessness or intellectual laziness. Just as we are culpable for intentional lies, I believe we are also blameworthy for our unintentional lies.

Lying damages society in a number of ways. That is true whether the lie is intentional or unintentional but we tend blame only those that lie intentionally because we assume that unintentional lies can’t be avoided. That assumption is wrong.

Most unintentional lies can be avoided by doing some simple fact-checking. A lot of the rest can be avoided by doing more in-depth research. The rest can be avoided by rephrasing our statements to note our level of uncertainty. All unintentional lies can be avoided by being aware of our own ignorance. We are all ignorant, to an extent, in different areas of knowledge. That is fine as long as we are aware of what we are ignorant about and refrain from speaking with an air of knowledge on those subjects.

Take for example, the person who hears that homeopathy works wonders and recommends it to a friend with cancer–as an alternative to a hospital visit. Later that friend dies, partially because he wasted time with an ineffectual treatment instead of getting chemotherapy. The person who recommended the ineffectual treatment is at least partially to blame for the death.

It is not enough to believe that what we are saying is the truth. To ensure that our statement doesn’t bring harm to society, we must investigate the truth of the statement before stating it. We must ask ourselves in what ways the statement could be false. Even when we have gathered evidence to support our assertion, we should caveat it with a reference to the evidence or to our level of uncertainty. There is nothing wrong with prefacing some statements with “I think” and concluding them with “but I could be wrong about that.” Too many people are too quick to assert something. If they would only add a reference to the evidence they are basing that assertion on, we could more easily determine its validity for ourselves.

If a scientist tells us that we are safe from an earthquake and then a deadly earthquake occurs, we are rightfully angry. How could that scientist not look at all the evidence? How could that scientist not end the statement with a comment about the uncertainty involved with such a statement? We are angry about this and yet we continue to propagate rumors about people we don’t like particularly well.

Perhaps the amount of blame we assign to the unintentional liar should be based on the intellectual ease with which the lie could have been avoided. If someone makes a false statement that couldn’t have been avoided without considerable research then perhaps that person is not as blameworthy as the one whose lie could have been avoided by doing some simple fact-checking.

We must become critical thinkers (I believe this skill should be formally taught in elementary school). After my parents and most of society deceived me, albeit unintentionally, for more than ten years, is it any wonder that I hate deception? It is our responsibility to learn how people deceive each other both intentionally and unintentionally. By studying the art of truth we also learn about cognitive biases–how our brains deceive us and how we go on to deceive others because of that.

Before I conclude this post, I want to talk briefly about something that really irritates me; rumors. I was once accused of committing a crime (I was never charged and the real perps admitted to it several weeks later), so I know the power of slander/rumors and the damage that they can cause to their subjects. By being responsible for the things that we say, we become one less person that starts a rumor–one less person that hurts another. When I hear what sounds like a rumor, rather than spreading it further, I find it more productive to offer alternative explanations to the rumored one. It often takes the gossiper aback and causes him or her to reconsider their evidence.

I encourage you not to blindly believe the things I’ve said here but to reason through it yourself. By learning the skills of critical thought, we become filters for the information that flows through society. Not only can we stop ourselves from uttering unintentional lies, we can offer commentary on the ones that others utter. And always remember… we are to blame for our lies, the intentional ones and the unintentional ones.

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Is TLC’s Long Island Medium Fake too?

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Other

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In the last week or so this blog has been getting 15,000 to 30,000 page views per day. All that attention was generated by my last several posts which reveal that TLC’s Breaking Amish is based on a false premise. Given all this attention, I feel it is my ethical responsibility to point a questioning finger at another one of their shows–Long Island Medium.

Anyway, my point should be an obvious one–you can’t talk to dead people! Convincing people that you can talk to dead people is easy. All it takes is research and cold reading.

So please contact TLC and ask them to prove that  the Long Island Medium is not a fake. If it’s real, it should be easy to prove. There’s even a $1 million dollar prize in it for them if they can prove that it’s real.

My posts over the last two weeks have generated a lot of interest. They have also generated a lot of something else as evidenced by a visit from a private investigator with veiled threats of a slander lawsuit. However, I believe in revealing the truth, even if the process or the potential consequences become scary.

Student Einstein Trumps Atheist Philosophy Professor

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Other

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There are quite a few variations of this story about Einstein beating his atheist philosophy professor in a philosophical argument. Here is one variation of the story. I’ll add my own thoughts after it. My commentary and counter arguments are rather extensive and I apologize for the length of this post. I do hope it clears up some of the myth surrounding this story.

Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD good ?
Student : Sure.
Professor: Is GOD all powerful ?
Student : Yes.
Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?
(Student was silent.)
Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. Is GOD good?
Student : Yes.
Professor: Is satan good ?
Student : No.
Professor: Where does satan come from ?
Student : From … GOD …
Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student : Yes.
Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?
Student : Yes.
Professor: So who created evil ?
(Student did not answer.)
Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor: So, who created them ?
(Student had no answer.)
Professor: Science says you have 5 Senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son, have you ever seen GOD?
Student : No, sir.
Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your GOD?
Student : No , sir.
Professor: Have you ever felt your GOD, tasted your GOD, smelt your GOD? Have you ever had any sensory perception of GOD for that matter?
Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.
Professor: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student : Yes.
Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.
Professor: Yes, faith. And that is the problem Science has.
Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Professor: Yes.
Student : And is there such a thing as cold?
Professor: Yes.
Student : No, sir. There isn’t.
(The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.)
Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)
Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?
Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light. But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, well you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?
Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man ?
Student : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?
Student : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good GOD and a bad GOD. You are viewing the concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing.
Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?
Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
(The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going.)
Student : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor. Are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?
(The class was in uproar.)
Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?
(The class broke out into laughter. )
Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable.)
Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.
Student : That is it sir … Exactly ! The link between man & GOD is FAITH. That is all that keeps things alive and moving.
By the way, that student was EINSTEIN.

I have a lot of things to say about this tale, so many, in fact, that I’m going to break it up into parts and sub-parts. First, I’m going to critique the presentation, and then I’ll critique the philosophical arguments.

The Presentation

Historically False

This was not Einstein, that’s a myth. This is a tale that has been making its rounds on the internet for quite a few years. Over the years, parts of it change but the overall idea is still the same – Einstein trumps an atheist professor’s philosophical argument for disproof of God.

See: http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp

There is another historically false claim – that Einstein was a Christian. That is just wishful thinking.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_religious_views

Fallacious Appeals to Authority

Whoever invented this tale used Einstein’s name in an attempt to add intellectual authority to the tale. An appeal to authority can be a valid argument tactic but in this case it is fallacious because a consensus does not exist among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion. Even if the story actually was true (it has been established that it is not) this appeal to authority would be a fallacious tactic.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

The appeal to authority that I’m referring to above is the idea that Einstein would endorse the specific arguments put forth in the tale. There is also another implicit appeal to authority – that Einstein endorsed Christianity. This is fallacious for the simple reason that it is historically false as has been established earlier.

Psychological Manipulation Tactics

This tale portrays the atheist philosophy professor as being ignorant and easy to trap in philosophical arguments. No professor of philosophy (atheist or Christian) is as dumb as the one portrayed here.

The tale-writer is a psychological manipulator that utilizes the human tendency for conformity (See Bandwagon effect). Notice how the tale-writer has included an entire group of people (a classroom) and notice their reactions during the dialogue between student and professor;

  • “The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.”
  • “There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.”
  • “The class was in uproar.”
  • “The class broke out into laughter.”
  • “The room was silent…”

It is obvious that the tale-writer used the “crowd” as a conformity tactic. I mean, who doesn’t want to agree with the majority?

These psychological manipulation tactics employed by the tale-writer are intended to persuade a reader to take the side of the student. Such persuasion tactics go beyond that which an objective presenter of the philosophical arguments would use. The tale-writer did not present the philosophical arguments in an objective manner, but rather, lies about the origin of the tale, makes fallacious appeals to authority, and attempts to psychologically manipulate the reader.

The Philosophical Arguments

The major points of this tale are its two philosophical claims;

  • Evil was not so much created by God as it is an example of an absence of God
  • Even scientists have faith

Unjustified Claim: Evil is the Absence of God

On the surface, the argument that evil is just the absence of God seems to be compelling based on the given analogies. However, let us look closer…

Arguing that cold is just the absence of heat, and darkness is just the absence of light, is an argument of semantics. It is not how we think of our world in our day to day lives.

When we think about temperature, we think of a spectrum ranging from low temperature (cold) to high temperature (hot). To argue that heat is just the absence of cold is to disregard the definition of the two as they are used in natural language.

When we think about light, we think of a spectrum ranging from bright light (light) to low light (dark). To argue that darkness is just the absence of light is to disregard the definition of the two as they are used in natural language.

Despite the two arguments about cold/heat and light/darkness being just arguments of semantics – they are logically valid if we all agree to constrain our normal definitions of the terms.

They are valid because temperature and light are physical, quantifiable, phenomena in our universe. Temperature is a quantifiable property of matter that can be precisely measured with scientific instruments. Light is electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with scientific instruments, and many of its properties can be measured with precision. The point is – these are real, physical, and measurable phenomena of our universe.

Good and evil are not. Good and evil cannot be detected with scientific instruments. Good and evil cannot be quantified with scientific instruments.

It is my counter claim that good and evil are not physical phenomena. Rather, they are our subjective assessments of the effects of certain events. It makes no more sense to claim that evil is the absence of good than it does to make the claim that good is the absence of evil.

Overall, this is a specious argument that benefits neither side of the debate.

Unjustified Claim: Everybody has Faith

Here I will not attempt to disprove the existence of God but merely to demonstrate the difference between religious faith and rationally justified beliefs, thereby showing the final claim of this tale to be unjustified as well.

To make the claim that religious faith has the same epistemological value as rationally justified beliefs demonstrates a complete ignorance of the scientific method.

The belief that persons have brains is supported by the following scientific evidence:

1) The fact that every person that has ever been scientifically examined in the necessary manner has been found to have a brain.

2) The brain is the only known object that can cause the complex behavior of persons.

3) There is no evidence to suggest that there are persons with no brains.

While these facts do not deductively prove that any specific person (that has not been scientifically examined) does have a brain, it does constitute a rationally justified belief that is fully supported by Occam’s razor.

Religious faith, on the other hand, is a set of beliefs that is not supported by scientific evidence.

To equate religious faith with scientific beliefs is to blatantly redefine our commonly accepted definitions of these terms and it is an insult to intelligent beings everywhere.

“Pulling” Bellyaches: An Amish Medical Superstition

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Amish

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There is a notion among some Amish that bellyaches (abdominal pain) can be “pulled” from another person. The notion is that, coming into physical contact with a person suffering from a bellyache will cause the bellyache to transfer to the new person.

In a show of empathy and altruism, a grown person will attempt to pull a bellyache from a suffering child or baby. Some Amish parents go so far as to judge the health of their babies by whether or not the parent gets a bellyache while holding the child.

I don’t think this medical superstition is widespread among the Amish, and it is also possible that it’s not restricted to the Amish. It’s just that on the few occasions I ever heard about it, it’s been an Amish person that has told me.

The Obduracy of Religious Belief

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in My Philosophy, Religion

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The Christian belief in the Bible is quite unlike, for example, my current belief in “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins. Back when I believed in the Bible, I thought of it as “truth”. I also believed other books but I would think of them as good stories or as helpful information.

Why the big difference? Why did I consider one ancient text as pure truth and all other ancient texts as just stories? Why did I consider the Bible to be pure truth but other books, that I also believed to be nonfiction, were just informationally helpful?

In the Bible, fantastical stories such as a person living briefly inside of a whale, a virgin giving birth, a snake talking to people, were perfectly acceptable. Why were those fanciful stories acceptable but similar stories in other books were dismissed as myths? If I had read a story in The Blind Watchmaker that claimed a person had lived and survived inside of a dinosaur for three days, I would have been extremely skeptical. I would have asked for some serious evidence to back up this extraordinary claim. Why then, was it perfectly alright for a similar story to be in the Bible?

Some atheists will arrogantly state that they became atheist as a child when they first read the Bible. These people relate the story of how upon reading fantastical stories about talking snakes and virgin births that of course they had to discard the whole thing as mythical… as if the rest of us are just too stupid to get it.

I have a brain capable of critical analysis and I made full use of this skill when reading all but one book. Why did it take so long for me to become skeptical of the Bible? The answer to this can soon be reached once we understand that the Bible is a very significant part of a huge set of beliefs called “Christianity”.

The answers to all of these questions, I believe, can be answered by understanding what religion is and understanding how and when it is taught to a person. But first, check out this post I wrote about belief systems because I’ll be talking a lot about beliefs and belief systems for the rest of this post.

Religion is a set of beliefs that is pretty comprehensive – it pretends to explain everything from ‘why are there mountains’ to ‘how should I live my life’. Therefore, for a religious person, the set of beliefs that is his religion is almost inextricably meshed with the rest of the person’s belief system. Even changing one little belief is difficult to do because it would have ramifications for many of the other beliefs that it is intertwined with. A religion generally forms a large fraction of a person’s belief system.

Secondly, religion includes metaphysical beliefs. Metaphysical beliefs are beliefs that have to do with being and existence, and concepts such as cause and effect. Religion provides answers to such metaphysical questions as ‘why is there something rather than nothing’, ‘what was the first cause’, ‘where did we come from’, and ‘why are we here’. As such, religious beliefs become foundational to the person’s overall belief system. Individual religious beliefs become the axioms upon which the rest of the person’s belief system happily rests. To change these beliefs is almost as hard as tearing the foundation of a house out from underneath the house without disturbing the rest of the house.

The religious person suffers less from existential angst than the non-religious person because his metaphysical questions are answered. If a religious person starts questioning his own beliefs these metaphysical questions pop up and he wonders ‘well, why are we here then’. The existential angst that would be caused by unanswering these metaphysical questions is often on its own, enough of an incentive to stay with religion.

Religion is also a self-supporting set of beliefs. When questioned on one belief, the religious person can always bring out another belief that supports the first one. In this way, everything backs itself up. In logic, this is known as “circular reasoning” and it is a fallacy. In a small syllogism, circular reasoning is easy to identify and to recognize as fallacious but in a very large set of beliefs like religion, it is so easy to miss it.

Children will happily believe in Santa Claus but after learning that Santa doesn’t really exist, it is much easier for them to accept it and move on than it is for anybody to accept that their religion may not be true. Why is there such a difference? I believe it is because of the reasons I listed above. Believing in Santa is only a small set of beliefs, and it answers only one metaphysical question – ‘why should I be good’, whereas a religion is a huge set of beliefs and it answers pretty much all of the metaphysical questions.

It could also be that a child finds it easier to revise beliefs and possibly even to completely rebuild their belief system. After all, their brains are still developing and they are in the perfect stage to absorb massive amounts of information and to incorporate a massive number of beliefs.

In the previous paragraphs I explored several of the qualities of religious belief which have a direct effect on its obduracy. Now it is time to examine the methods that are used to deliver these beliefs to a person’s mind and how these methods also have an effect on its obduracy.

A baby starts off with basically an empty mind when it comes to beliefs about the nature of things. If you start with an essentially empty mind, the mind will accept the first thing that comes to it because there are no pre-existing beliefs to contradict the incoming information. For that reason, it is easy instill any kind of belief system in a child.

It is generally easier to dismiss new information than it is to revise existing beliefs so once a belief system has been established, it is very difficult to remove it even if it blatantly contradicts reality.

Most religious parents teach their children the religion starting at the youngest possible age. Long before the child learns that different people have different ideas about how things really are, long before the child learns that there are many different religions, and long before the child learns anything about critical thinking, the child is taught that its parents’ religion is the only possible truth.

Can you blame a child for rejecting other viewpoints? As the child matures, and if the parents continue to reinforce the same belief system, the belief system becomes more and more difficult to change.

The installation of a religious belief system is quite different from the installation of a secular belief system. With religion, the child is taught that not only is the religion pure truth – it is unquestionable truth. Any question that the child has that could undermine their belief system is quickly rebutted by the parents with reproachful assertions that it is evil to ask those questions. The child is admonished and sometimes physically abused simply for asking the unwanted questions.

Can you blame the person when years later he is still unable to honestly question his belief system when the mere occurrence of such a question feels treasonous and blasphemous?

To educate someone is to provide information, to provide explanations, to provide instruction. To indoctrinate someone is to provide information, to provide explanations, to provide instruction. The difference is, when someone is indoctrinated they are not expected to question what they are learning and in many cases they are not allowed to question or to critically examine what they are being taught. Someone who is being indoctrinated is not given the choice to believe or disbelieve.

Religious parents do not educate their children about religion – they indoctrinate them.

Water Divination

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Conversion

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Water divination (or water witching or dowsing) was taught to me at a fairly young age by my Father. I turned out to be a natural at it. I’d simply take two heavy-gauge wires about two feet long and bend both into an ‘L’ shape. I would hold a wire in each hand – the short portion of the ‘L’ in my hand. I would hold my closed fists about a foot apart with the wires sticking out in front of me.

I should note here that many Amish don’t like the idea of water witching because they fear that it is a gift from the devil (just like magic supposedly is). My Father apparently didn’t share that view.

To find water I would start with the wires pointing away from me and parallel to each other. Then I would simply walk around slowly. If I crossed an underground water stream, the wires would slowly swing toward each other until they crossed.

I was quite good at divining for water. If I’d test myself by walking toward a jug of water that I had placed on the ground for exactly that purpose, the wires would cross when they went over the jug. The same held true when I divined near our well or above known underground water pipes.

I went as far as to walk around our property with pen and paper and map all the underground waterways beneath our property. I was so good at it that I even demonstrated my skill at school. Some of my fellow students were skeptical at first but they all believed me when half of them discovered that they too had the gift. Excitedly, we took turns with the wires – walking over bottles of water and proving ourselves over and over again.

Nobody knew exactly how water divination worked but it was my older brother’s notion that it had something to do with the Earth’s magnetic fields and how it flowed through water, metal, and the human body. To my mind, it seemed like a plausible explanation and so I ascribed to his “theory”.

It wasn’t until years later (I was probably around 20 years old) when I decided to look into the scientific research in the field of water divination. What I found troubled me greatly. For such a useful physical phenomenon I expected considerable and positive research being done on it. What I found instead, was that researchers consistently, statistically proved that there was no such thing (or at least they proved that “skilled” water diviners did no better than chance on average).

By this point in my life, I had grown quite fond of mathematics – even the rather indefinite field of statistics. It troubled me to think that mathematics didn’t agree with me.

So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands and test it myself. I found a jug, filled it with water, and placed it in the backyard. Then I found some wires, bent them into the appropriate shape, and started witching.

What I discovered was astounding. I had completely lost my talent. The simply wires refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t cross over the jug unless I really really willed them to.

My mind went back to rebuttals I had heard other water deviners make when questioned. “It doesn’t work unless you believe in it.” Still, why would it not work for believers who try it in front of scientists?

I was getting really suspicious now. I found a piece of wood and drilled holes so that I could place the wires into the piece of wood and in that way I could divine for water without touching the wires. What I discovered was quite interesting.

Since I had drilled the “holder” holes straight down into the wood (the holes were vertical and almost perfectly parallel), the wires could not cross. They would both swing one way or both swing the other way, but they would not cross.

I took them out of the piece of wood and held them in my hands once again. This time I was interested in the mechanics involved in getting the wires to cross. After playing around with them for a bit, I realized that when I held the wires and they crossed, it was not because they were swiveling due to some attraction between the long tips of the wires, they were crossing because the top of my fists tilted almost imperceptibly toward each other causing the tips of the wires to slowly fell toward each other by gravity’s force alone. In retrospect, this is all blindingly obvious but if you really believe in something it almost requires a punch in the face to accept the opposite.

At this point I started seriously considering the possibility that I had fooled myself all those years. Could it really be that it was only my will causing my fists to tilt imperceptibly and cause the wires to cross?

Back to the computer I went and to the Wikipedia article about water divination. After reading carefully the possible explanations, I learned about the ideomotor effect. The ideomotor effect described exactly what I had been starting to suspect – that the whole thing was my will causing my fists to tilt imperceptibly and the wires to cross.

It was at this point that I started seriously studying the ideas related to skepticism. What I learned about the placebo effect and the other myriad ways that the human mind fools itself, had even more of an effect on me than learning about the ideomotor effect. Within weeks my well rationalized belief system was crumbling and my mind kept going to the Weird Al song, Everything You Know is Wrong.

All Amish kids of my generation know Weird Al’s songs because of Amish Paradise. Check it out, I think it’s quite hilarious…