God Delusion#2

OK, so I've watched a bit more of Life on Mars and it's really great!

This is the second part of my God Delusion review. Here I cover chapters 3 and 4, which are based on arguments for God's existence and RD's argument against. I'm a bit more sympathetic in these chapters since he's less inclined to deride Christians as thickos and I like some of what RD writes when he's writing directly about Science. I'll do it as numbered points as before.

1. Infinite regress (p101). In a sense this is RD's weakest point. The physical world really does have a problem of infinite regress because we can observe causality, we always have to posit a physical mechanism which leads us to the current situation Ut <= Pu(U(t-∂)). We can't avoid the problem of regress because we always need a function Pu to provide the 'explanation' for the universe as we see it now. Since Pu is autonomous and not self-aware, it itself is a mechanism which requires explanation: Pu <= Mv(Pu-ß). Ultimately, the problem lies with science itself, because the problem is a result of seeing things in terms of transformations and science is a means of representing transformations, i.e. it is Px, My etc. This means that the only way out of the regress (i.e. the only way to make sense of being able to see the world scientifically, i.e. as transformations) is to assume that there is something, let's call this Ω which is capable of producing Px, My etc, but can't be represented, i.e. exists outside of science. Because Ω cannot be represented scientifically, Ω cannot be a mechanism (because a mechanism is equivalent to a transformation).
2. Dawkins makes a trivial error with his analysis of omnipotence and omniscience. That is, Being all-powerful doesn't mean he's changing history or the future, it just means he's in control. The two terms are just ways of expressing the ideas that we can be confident he hasn't missed anything and that ultimately things will go according to what he wants.
3. I don't really care about ontological arguments, they're not biblical and don't make sense - Dawkins is right here IMO. And the stuff about argument from beauty and experience I think are circular - that is, beauty and experience are both evidences of God if you already believe in him, but if you don't it's easily explained. That is, I have God experiences, but I don't really think they're useful to anyone but me.
   
4. I looked into his Argument from Scripture - in fact, the Gospels clearly demonstrate that Jesus thought he was God, but being selective with Scripture could lead you to think otherwise. Similarly, RD trots out the Chinese Whispers argument against scriptural accuracy (see post #3); his argument about Jesus' birth really isn't supported by scripture; his treatment of Jesus' geneology, New Testament Canon are really rather superficial. His argument from religious scientists I think doesn't demonstrate anything: emminent scientist Christians are a minority, but they do exist and this means they must be right or wrong or probably wrong or what?
5. Finally, RD introduces the Baysian argument using a Christian writer (I presume). However, I've never heard of him, but RD's critique of it seems largely reasonable to me, but personally that's because I don't think it makes sense to assign a probability to God's existence. Anyway, I think he uses that section, mostly because it leads him nicely into chapter 4.
6. Complexity. RD says: "By invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the ultimate Boeing 747." In a sense RD is saying this because he's assuming God is a system made of parts, based I guess on the reasoning that we design things and we're made of parts. But this argument itself is fallacious, because it assumes our consciousness and reasoning; our will and ability to design is only due to our physical makeup. Which is only true if you're already a materialist. Furthermore, it assumes that there's a relationship between our own complexity and the complexity of things we are able to design when actually the two things are independent. See the blog Ultimate Boeing 747 Challenge.
   
7. Much of chapter 4 is interesting. I really liked reading about his arguments on irreducible complexity. RD rightly critiques 'God of the Gaps' theology, but he gets the theology wrong - in reality God is God of everything, i.e. what we understand and what we don't. He's God over it all. The stuff on the flagella bacterium motor is really good and interesting. His criticism of Michael Behe, the ID proponent, is scathing in the extreme as RD bathes him in a torrent of negative adjectives in every phrase where he appears (well, maybe not that bad, but it is noticable :-) !)
8. RD isn't a physicist (but neither am I :-D ) and he's weaker when talking about the Anthropic principle and cosmology. He guesses at the probability of life appearing on a planet that's made of just the right stuff in exactly the right orbit around a star (it's part of the Drake Equation). His conservative guess is 1/1billion, but he's not following the Drake equation carefully and totally fails to mention the Fermi paradox: i.e if life is at all common in this galaxy, it'd only take 5 to 50 million years to explore it - so why don't we see evidence of ET everywhere?
9. Nevertheless even talking about the weak anthropic principle he still heads off into pure speculation by extrapolating from the 'billions of planets' that have bacterial life to the supposedly rare occurance of intelligent life. Yet we simply don't know the probabilities of any of this - i.e. the probability of amino acids becoming some kind of primitive dna/rna nor the conditions of the early earth to within even a vague order of magnitude.
   
10. "You are so 19th Century." Dawkins wonders why he was criticized by theologians in this way. He figures it's because the 19th century was the last time someone could genuinely believe in miracles. I think he should really have asked them why they say that. Here's an alternative theory: what they mean is that Dawkins is Modernist, not Post-modernist. The difference being that Modernism assumes truth is objective, wheras Post-Modernism doesn't and it's thinking first appeared in Hegel's philosophy in the 19th century. RD is firmly in the first camp. Moreover, much of what passes for modern Atheism is really a belief-system stuck in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some casual examples: (a) Atheists use the word religion in singular, particularly when they're referring to Christianity, except when they're referring to Catholicism. This only makes sense when you think back to the 18th century when Christianity was the only European religion going, but Protestants would frequently refer to Catholics as having a separate religion. (b) Atheists frequently state that religion is the cause of all wars. Well, that was fairly credible in the 18th century when Europe was still reeling from the effects of the religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it's largely a nonsense in the 20th and 21st centuries. (c) RD frequently talks about 'Consciousness raising', but this is really just a euphemism for 'Enlightenment', the 18th century's Atheist movement.

In the end then, chapters 3 and 4 are probably the nicest in the entire book, I just don't think they make a good case against God's existence. So, hey-ho, let's move on to the next chapters.

God Delusion#1

It's kinda inevitable that if I started to read the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins I'll end up making comments about it, so here goes. I'm basing my comments on the paperback version which includes some additional material.

I was thinking of writing a fairly pedantic response, but there's just so much there I disagree with I'll have to be far more judicious. In this post I'm confining my critique to where I believe RD is factually wrong or where he reveals nastier sides to his character. At the moment I'm only 81 pages into his incessant diatribe so there's plenty of space for me to reasses the quality of the book. However, here goes:

1. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot quote. Here, Sagan claims Christians argue "no, no, my god is a little god and I want him to stay that way." When in fact Christians argue on the basis of the wonder of the universe that he's exactly the opposite and that the more amazing we find the universe is, the more amazing God must be. Dawkins reiterated this quote in a TED lecture. I don't know why - Christians don't preach it, and we don't believe it.
   
2. Pages 46-48: The Danish Cartoons of Mohammed(pbuh) riots. The thing that gets me here is Richard Dawkins gets it so wrong. He says the episode 'illuminates society's exaggerated respect for religion' in fact the original thing was triggered by a bunch of secular cartoons that displayed a complete disrepect towards Muslims. RD passionately defends the right of secularists to ridicule religion, but it wasn't Atheists who died from the riots, but Christians and Richard Dawkins cares nothing for them, his adjectives are 'ludicrous', 'comic', 'tragedy' for the whole episode.
3. As you read through Dawkin's book you find that he pillories Christians at every turn whilst portraying Atheists in consistantly glowing terms. In fact he believes mockery is the best way to deal with Christians. As RD says (p55) "Thomas Jefferson as so often, got it right when he said 'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligable propositions.'
4. Secularism and the Founding Fathers (p60-68). Here the whole section is highly disengenious. RD starts with a false premise "It is conventional to assume the founding fathers... were deists." Is it? I'd always been lead to believe they were a mixture of fairly radical Christians of the Pilgrim Fathers kind and Enlightenment thinkers (including Deists). I found a webpage which lists the actual religious affiliations of the 56 signees and it turns out that even though the majority were Christians, RD quotes only from the 4 Deist/Unitarians.
5. RD supposes that the reason Christianity is weak in the UK is because the UK was weary of religious wars or because it's full of ineffectual vicars (p62). He's half-right there. Actually it's easy to see why Christianity is weak in the UK, because church attendence tailed off massively after WWII, a secular war. Though it's probably true there's lots of UK vicars who see their role as having "innoculated vast swathes of the English against Christianity."
6. Burden of proof. Strangely, RD believes on the one hand that the burden of proof rests on Christians (p74-75) and yet that it's unnecessary to read what they write (p14-p15). Admittedly, he says he'll read from credible Christians (p14), but most of the quotes he uses are from Christians I've never heard of, apart from Alistair McGrath p78pp1.
7. Evolution as an Atheist weapon (p92). in the end RD sees the point of talking about Evolution as part of a war against Christianity "the real war is between rationalism and superstition... religion is the most common form of superstition." This is why RD isn't interested in avoiding conflict between Science and Christianity and why he's so critical of Atheists and Christians who do.
   

At this point I'm leaving it for now, because I'm only up to Chapter 4 and I want to watch the next episode of Life On Mars on DVD :-)

-cheers from julz @P

Super Green Hero!

I've been meaning to write this post for a little while now, just wanted to say something about James Alden's heroic tackling of an armed robber at Somerfield on Wednesday Dec 19.

Apparantly the chap had raided a number of locations in Withington and Didsbury and struck again at the Somerfield store in West Didsbury; poking a gun in James' back while grabbing cash from the till.

James waited for the guy to get distracted and then spun round; tackling him - though he quickly escaped and as far as I know hasn't yet been caught. And the gun was a non-functioning replica as far as we know.

I guess the key thing is that the way I look at it, it should be normal practice for people to respond to situations like that, as did the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 and part of the reason we don't is because our secular culture causes us to act as individuals: we see that a small minority of people are putting us in danger and that acting together they would be overcome, but the fact that 'I' am in danger means we don't act.

So why did James respond? My guess is that it's two things: firstly his eco-activism means he's used to doing what others don't have the guts to do - stand up to those in power when what they're doing isn't right. Secondly, his Christian faith gives him a different perspective on life, one where risking your life is sometimes reasonable, and which affects his psychology at a deep level.

As James said when he met us up at the pub a day later: "I almost met my maker yesterday" before casually starting on his pint.

DemonicVD Camcorder

I've done a Video project using a DVD Camcorder. It was a nightmare. Read on.

I videoed a showcase production for a friend last Saturday using a Sony DVD91E Camcorder.

Aside from the low quality - which was even worse than normal because I had to use LP mode - you have to bear in mind that the disks will act as gyroscopes when you move the camera - they will be extremely sensitive to camera shake and twist. So, I finished the filming and took the disk home. It was an 8cm disk so it doesn't fit in any slot-loading Mac - I had to use an old iBook. But it thought the disk was blank!

Turns out the DVD needs 'finalising'. so then I asked a teacher friend from Ivy Cottage who's school had a DVD camcorder which I picked up on Wednesday. I finalized the DVD (which meant I ended up holding the cam perfectly steady in my hands for 3mins, because it put up a dialog box saying "Finalizing: Do not subject the camera to ANY vibrations." but only after I selected the option (Grrr!!)) Then the disk was too dirty to read properly on the mac, so it took a bit of cleaning. I finally copied the files from the disk, but of course, I can't import them into iMovie, because it's DVD .VOB files not QT movie, .avi or .dv files. It took lots of faffing about until around 11:30pm until I got FFMpegx to convert the file to .dv format (import to iMac, create disk image, create DVD, fix DVD image and recreate etc, download FFMpegx and libraries...).

Awful. In 7 years I never had any problem like that with a tape-based system. Just plug it in, import video. Off I go.

OLPC Alternative 2

Well, hot on the heels of the eeePC is the DecTop.

The specs are a bit lower (366MHz Geode, 128Mb RAM, 10Gb HD, No Ethernet), but DEC will sell you a pack of 4 for $75 each (including keyboard and mouse). This takes the cost of our theoretical platform to around £45 + £85 = £130! ( or £520 for 4).


However, (and this is a big however), the DecTop isn't new. Actually it's an old AMD concept called the PIC, designed for developing countries, which doesn't seem to have been successful in the marketplace. The prices Data Evolution Corporation are offering are in fact sales prices, which kinda implies they'll stop selling them soon!

OLPC Alternatives

I'm always on the lookout for OLPC alternatives for Africa. It's actually rather tricky, for the following reasons:

• You really need a low-powered device, something that can be powered by hand or via solar cells. This is because often in Africa the electricity isn't often reliable. Realistically a person could provide up to 466 Watts, so 15 minutes worth of effort can power a 50 Watt computer/display for up to 2.33 hours.
  
• You need a system which can survive extreme conditions. That's another reason why it needs to be low-powered, because low-power means cool.
• You need a system which uses pretty much off-the-shelf components: standard RAM, pretty much standard HDs.
• You need a system which is low maintenance. This pretty much rules out sending old second-hand PCs. There's 2 reasons for this: replacement parts are hard to find and computing expertise is hard to find.
• You need a system which has conventional interfaces: VGA, USB.
• You need a system which is very cheap. The $100 laptop is currently at roughly $200 which is realistic to donate in 10s of units (£1000).
• You need a system which is based on open source software, e.g Linux.
  

Not many computers fulfill these kind of criteria. One of them is the Asus eeePC.
Research machines are currently selling them for £169 each for the 2Gb version. However, they are for educational use only.

Another alternative is the FitPC.
Assuming we have to pay the full whack of $285 (£150) this means we can put together a cheap developing country PC for around £260 (£85 lcd display, £150 machine, £10 keyboard/ mouse, £20 Hand crank PSU).

However we can probably cut this down somewhat. If we sell it through a charity on a non-profit basis we can probably do it for half the price: $143 (£72) and then get the rest of it ex-vat, we get: £72+£98 = £170 for the machines themselves (we'd then have to transport them).