Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to dynotoaqrimp for sharing this with me.

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.

PZ Myers was, as is his habit, a little too fast on the draw and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Sam Harris supports racial profiling. Hemant Mehta, likewise keeping with his habit, was a little bit more measured and charitable. To be fair to Sam he explicitly isn’t exempting himself from looking like a Muslim. Although to be less fair Adam Gadahn looks perfectly clean to me, which makes it sound as if Sam equates traditional middle eastern Muslim appearance with uncleanliness. (Not cool.) However, even given Sam’s inclusion of his own appearance and his subsequent clarification that he’s “not narrowly focused on people with dark skin,” (as opposed to ‘broadly,’ I wonder?) this just left me wondering whence Sam’s proposed knowledge-at-a-glance is supposed to arise.

He does offer some hand-waving and a very vague suggestion that “ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling [sic] companions, behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances” might be indicative of “a person’s beliefs and terrorist potential” peppered with an ad hominem for good measure, that if you disagree with this Barnum statement, you’re either crazy or dishonest. Oh, so that’s it? All I have to do so that I too may be able to reliably identify Muslims at a glance is to consider every single one of their observable characteristics? Gee, thanks, Sam. I’m glad we cleared that up. If we implement this method of yours today, I’m sure the American prisons will be filled to the brim with would-be terrorists in no time. We just have to glance at people and take into account everything about them. Genius!

Look, contrary to Sam’s criticism towards his detractors, this – to me – isn’t at all about political correctness. Nothing could be less of a factor to me: I’ve drawn Mohammed two years in a row. It’s just that for a man who otherwise prides himself on rigorous sceptical and critical thinking backed up by facts, this idea of Sam’s seems remarkably sloppy, ill-conceived, and quite frankly it seems ideologically clouded by Sam’s (perhaps justified) animosity toward Islam. Sure, dislike Islam for valid reasons if you want. It’s certainly not less deserving of criticism than, say, Catholicism. However, please base policy upon factual efficacy, not personal dislike, however warranted it might or might not be.

Efficacy, after all, ought to be the crux of the matter here, and I can’t for the life of me understand how Sam imagines this will work. There are around 1 billion Muslims in the world, most of which aren’t terrorists, so even if we could somehow magically recognise them “at a glance,” how would that help? And what about Sam’s claim that “it is simply a fact that, in the year 2012, suicidal terrorism is overwhelmingly a Muslim phenomenon?” Is it now? Because I was under the impression that 94% of all America-based terrorism was perpetrated by non-Muslims. Depending on the base rate, of course, it seems likely that you’d catch more terrorists by systematically ignoring all the Muslims.

In any case it’s all irrelevant if we can’t reliably detect Muslims at a glance. So either Sam Harris must be proposing racial profiling after all or else he must have some Disney-scenario held in his imagination where Muslim terrorists show up at the airport cackling evilly and sporting full orthodox beards while wearing keffiyehs, thawbs, and sandals. As opposed to looking like Everlast here, who’s been a devout Muslim since 1996. (Not that I’m implying, mind, that Everlast is likely to blow up anything but mics.)

You know what, Sam? I’ll just let Sage Francis play you out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ll show you which culture to pump your fist at, which foot is right to kiss.
We don’t really know who the culprit is yet, but he looks like this!
We know who the heroes are; not the xenophobes who act hard.
“We taught that dog to squat, how dare he do that shit in our own back yard!”

Dr. at the November 29, 2005 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of days ago there was a minor kerfuffle between Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, and Neil daGrasse Tyson, the equally friendly astrophysicist, over the correct usage of the term ‘atheist.’ It wasn’t very interesting to me. Neil can call or refrain from calling himself whatever he wants. To me anyone who lacks a belief in gods is an atheist, but that’s how I choose to use the word. Some people use it differently. That’s fine. If they object to be called an atheist, I will respect their wishes even if I personally happen to think they are one. I share Neil’s disdain for arguing semantics. If both parties have clearly defined their terms from the outset, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Good on you, Neil, for wanting to focus on real issues instead of trivial semantics.

However, that is not what woke me from my slumber. Rather, it was the following paragraph from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s elaboration in the comments after Hemant’s blog-post:

The concept that you can’t prove a negative is often applied to “you can’t prove God does not exist”.  This notion, while strictly true in logic and philosophy, is simply rubbish to the practicing scientists. That’s why logicians and philosophers, in modern times, make bad scientists.  We prove negatives all the time.

I know it might seem petty and needlessly nitpicky of me to criticise a man as awesome as Neil for something he probably wrote in all due haste in a comment to a blog-post – hey, I’ll confess that I’m not always as lucid and deliberated in internet communications as I could be – but Neil managed to touch upon no less than two of my pet peeves with pin-point precision: namely the condescension of many academics towards philosophers and the oft-repeated misapprehension that ‘philosophy’ or ‘logic’ somehow prohibits the proving of a negative. What follows is the response I made to Neil in the comments:

I’m sorry, Neil. I’m a big fan. I really am. But rather than supporting that philosophers make bad scientists, that paragraph supports that scientists such as yourself make bad philosophers. I’m actually astounded that a person like you, who usually has such an immense depth of knowledge would say something so profoundly ignorant of philosophy and logic.

First of all, qualifications out of the way: I’m almost done with my MA in philosophy, but any other philosopher worth their salt will also tell you what I’m about to tell you: no, it’s decisively not true – strictly or otherwise – in either logic or philosophy that you can’t prove a negative. That’s complete nonsense. In fact, if that were the case, how on Earth would you know, since “you can’t prove a negative” is itself a negative statement? Not to mention that any positive statement is a negative statement of a negative statement. ‘(p & not-q)’ is truth-functionally equivalent to not-not-(p & not-q) which again is truth-functionally equivalent to not-not-not-not-(p & not-not-not-q) and so on. There is no profound logical difference between a positive and a negative proposition, which lets you philosophically prove the former but inhibits you from proving the latter.

There are various forms of philosophical argumentation, but let’s go with simple deduction. A deductive argument is valid if and only if the conjunction between its premises and the negation of its conclusion results in a logical contradiction. That is, the concept of validity is itself founded upon the law of non-contradiction, which is the negative statement that “it’s not the case that p and not-p.” Which, wouldn’t you know it, can be proven formally as follows:

1) (A & ~A) [Proposition]

2) A [Conjunction elimination from 1]

3) ~A [Conjunction elimination from 1]

4) ~(A & ~A) [Reductio, 1 - 3]

You’re a great man, Neil. But, please, in the future refrain from saying that philosophers are bad scientists simply because you don’t understand philosophy.

Yours truly,
Heini Reinert

Post-edit: I should have mentioned that I borrowed my law of non-contradiction argument from here, since I didn’t feel like reinventing the wheel.

Image via Wikipedia

There’s this post over at Gawker with the shocking headline “A Majority of Icelanders Believe in the Existence of Elves.” What is the basis for this outrageous claim? Why, this study reported on Iceland Review, of course, which found that only 8% of Icelanders believe that elves definitely exist.

I must have skipped one too many math-classes in school and missed the one about 8% constituting a majority. Even if you add the amount of people, who believe in the likelihood of elves to the ones believing they definitely exist, that still only makes 25%

Gawker must have misread, right? The following, however, is part of their direct quote:

Only 13 percent of participants in the study said it is impossible that elves exist, 19 percent found it unlikely, 37 percent said elves possibly exist, 17 percent found their existence likely and eight percent definite. Five percent did not have an opinion on the existence of elves.

What the Hell, Gawker? Didn’t you even read what you were quoting? Okay, let’s be charitable. It’s true that a majority of Icelanders (62% > 50%, see how that works?) believe the existence of elves is at the very least possible. That’s fine. So what? So do I. Since elves aren’t, to my knowledge, logically self-contradictory there is a possible world at which elves exist. It might even be very close to ours.

I don’t really understand the questionnaire placing “possibility” between “unlikelihood” and “likelihood.” Unless the likelihood of something is either zero or one, it has no bearing whatsoever on the possibility of said something. Perhaps the researchers intended “possibility” in a more colloquial sense, but if so then they can hardly lament ambiguity in their results. In any case a majority believing in the possibility (no matter the sense) of something isn’t exactly sensational.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have no idea who these people are and I’m too lazy to research this in-depth. So pardon me if I judge them solely by the merits of this short conversation. The man doing most of the talking (hereafter ‘The Gambler’) seems intelligent enough as apologists go. Unfortunately he is not doing a particularly good job explaining himself. If you find this video hard to follow, no worries. I did too. Just blame The Gambler. John Ankerberg, the host, isn’t doing much to improve matters either. He clearly has completely the wrong idea about the topic being discussed and The Gambler is doing nothing to correct him. Quite the comical farce.

Let’s start with some of the misconceptions. As I understand The Gambler he’s talking about the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God. The argument deals with the well-known aspect of the universal constants (certain fixed quantities partly governing our universe’s behaviour) that had some of them been altered ever so slightly, then life as we know it could not have existed. To use a popular analogy, our universe is like a machine with a bunch of dials, many of which seem carefully tuned to “life.”

This concept is hopefully understandable even without getting into too much detail. We can leave aside what those constants are and why fiddling around with them would turn off “life mode.” In any case, it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the age of the universe is sufficient time for “evolution to occur.” I’m not even sure what Ankerberg means by this. Given large enough reproduction rates any amount of time is sufficient for evolution to occur. Not to mention that evolution is entirely irrelevant. The driving force of fine-tuning arguments is usually the supposed improbability of life; not its diversity. Why would the laws of physics allow the existence of life at all, when they could have failed to do so even more easily?

The other main misconception is that the idea of multiple universes arises solely from the atheist’s discomfort with the improbability of life. Many philosophers, theoretical physicists, and quite a few authors have postulated multiple universes for all sorts of reasons. By all means let’s concede – as I did before – that:

Accepting the actual existence of many worlds in order to escape the existence of God seems arbitrarily discriminatory

This doesn’t in any way detract from the fact, that if you have independent reasons for believing in multiple universes (e.g. because they allow you to make sense of modality or because they allow you to retain determinism in quantum physics) then it dissolves the mystery of “fine-tuning” quite neatly into a weak anthropic principle at no added cost. That is to say, if you already believe we live in a multiverse for reasons nothing to do with theism/atheism, then you get to shrug your shoulders at fine-tuning and say “Well, I suppose there had to be life as we know it in one of them.”

Which leads us neatly into The Gambler’s critique of atheists, that we commit the Gambler’s fallacy. He likens it to tossing a coin repeatedly. The coin lands with ‘heads’ up improbably often. Atheists allegedly then conclude that the coin therefore must have been tossed prior to the ‘head’ run. The Gambler considers this conclusion fallacious because the coin might be double-headed. He is right in his assessment that what he describes is an example of Gambler’s fallacy. He is wrong about the dialectic.

This is closer to how the real dialectic goes:
Theist: “The universe is remarkably structured. If you fiddled around with some of its constants, life couldn’t exist.”
Atheist: “Surely you mean ‘life as we know it’ couldn’t exist? Maybe other possible “tunings” could support other kinds of life?”
T: “Alright, but that’s just speculation.”
A: “Sure. So the universe is unlikely. What’s your point?”
T: “So it must have been purposely designed! God obviously wanted life and therefore created a life-supporting universe!”
A: “She might have done a better job…”
T: “Excuse me?”
A: “Never mind. But hold on. Surely your premise, that the universe is improbably life-supporting, doesn’t support your conclusion that therefore a life-desiring creator exists.”
T: “How so?”
A: “Well, perhaps it’s just a massive coincidence or…”
T: “Yeah right.”
A: “Oh, I agree it probably isn’t. However, it’s still not ruled out by your premise and so invalidates your argument. Or maybe there are multiple universes.”
T: “Aha! That’s the Gambler’s fallacy!”
A: “It would be if I had tried to argue that there are, in fact, such universes based on nothing but the premise that it’s improbable that our universe should support life. However, I’m not the one arguing for a multiverse, you’re the one arguing for God.
T: “But surely God is more parsimonious!”
A: “Perhaps. But if you think I would have committed a fallacy in arguing for a multiverse, because the conclusion doesn’t deductively follow from our agreed premise, then surely you must admit that your God-conclusion is equally fallacious.”
T: “But concluding that a coin, which always lands heads up is double-headed isn’t a Gambler’s fallacy.”
A: “No, it isn’t. It is, however, an argument from ignorance. At least until you’ve ruled out other possible explanations for your improbable tosses. You evidently believe in God. Suppose God intervened in the coin tosses?”
T: “But the double-headed coin is analogous to God. What is ‘God’ then analogous to?”
A: “I honestly don’t know. Some other supernatural explanation for the universe being the way it is? Maybe humans will discover magical means to time-travel, go back in time, and design the universe.”
T: “That sounds perfectly ridiculous.”
A: “Not more so than your God does to me…”
T: “…”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Where’s your God now, William Lane Craig?

P.S. If anyone is interested in a thorough and passionate explanation of why it’s important to draw Mohammed, I recommend the following video by Thunderf00t:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Edit: I was featured on Friendly Atheist again this year. As last year I am very honoured to be among good company.

Maybe it’s just because I’m from the Faroe Islands but, in my experience, Christians seem obsessed with falling into the ocean. Another frequently used canard is the good old “If you saw someone falling into the ocean and you knew they couldn’t swim, wouldn’t you do anything to save them?” This is usually the go-to excuse for the “tough love” of the unpleasant and dishonest kind of proselytism and of the forcible injection of religion into education and politics. A variation is the oft-repeated bridge-gambit; “If someone were about to walk onto a bridge, you knew to be unstable, wouldn’t you be justified in saving them from danger by any means?”

The danger is Hell, the rickety bridge is your life-style, and what’s being justified is any immoral conduct perpetrated by the believers. After all, they only want the best for you. If establishing a theocratic dictatorship or orchestrating medieval torture is all that’s keeping you out of eternal damnation, isn’t it actually the moral duty of the theist to do so?

This is what Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, in their book ‘Heaven,’ call the Querists’ Fallacy:

“Most querists honestly believe that what they do is necessary for the good of their victims’ lifesouls. You know why. You have heard their reasoning.” Epimenides paused for emphasis. “And you have asked them: What if their reasoning is wrong?”
“I have,” said Sam. “And I can’t detect any flaw in their answer: `By accepting the possibility of error, we risk our own lifesouls for the good of others. What greater love can there be than this?’ That was the answer that led me to become a torturer myself. I tried to inflict mortal harm on Second-Best Sailor!”
“You did,” said Epimenides calmly. “But nevertheless, there is a flaw. You could not find it because you looked for it within the querists’ logic, and that was what seduced you. But the flaw lies in the context, not in the content. Understand this, and you will never make such a mistake again.
“The Querists’ Fallacy is to pose the entire argument within the context of their own belief system. However, if they are wrong to torture innocents, those beliefs may also be wrong. In particular, the belief that the querist’s own lifesoul is at risk may be wrong. And then, what they do is based not on love but on ignorance and superstition.”
“But—are you saying that the Lifesoul-Giver doesn’t exist?”
“No. Neither am I saying that it does. I am saying that it is a fallacy to make deductions on the basis of a false hypothesis.”

So, theocratical believers, if your fall-into-ocean/rickety-bridge analogy is set within the context of your own belief system, what would the analogy look like if set within the context of reality? Well, for one, you don’t know. You don’t know that we’re in danger. You don’t know that you’re not in danger. You don’t know that your belief system will save us. You don’t know that we can’t swim or that the bridge is unstable. You don’t know…anything. You believe. You believe that if you don’t believe, you’ll go to Hell. You believe this for no other reason than your fear of going to Hell.

We’re all standing by a seemingly bottomless chasm. Spanning over this chasm are countless bridges, only one of which is stable and will bring you to the other side. All of the other bridges, no matter how sturdy they look, are unstable and will collapse under the weight of a person. Now, you might be willing to risk your own life on one of these bridges. Are you truly willing to risk someone else’s life on your ill-founded beliefs? Are you presumptuous enough to claim, without a shadow of doubt, that you know better than everyone else? You know better despite the fact that neither you nor anyone else have ever been to the other side or met anyone who has? Despite the fact, that all of us have equal access to the relevant facts? Do you have a moral obligation to force people onto your bridge against their will? Or do you have a moral obligation to let everyone make their own decision?

We don’t even know that the chasm is bottomless. Maybe there are trampolines and amazing sweets down there.

This is why ‘what would it take for you to change your mind?‘ is such an important question. If you don’t know, or if you can’t answer it, you’re a danger to all of us; your querist logic might as well lead you to believe the ends justify the means.

On our trip to Liverpool this weekend my girlfriend and I stumbled across a little shop down by the docks called Nauticalia. They specialised mostly in silly souvenirs and pirate-toys for the shorter population. However, imagine my delight when I found this amazing looking, high-quality cane. I have long been searching for just such a cane with a knob instead of a handle. At first I resisted temptation. However, I just had to buy it once I found out that not only can it be screwed apart into three conveniently stored pieces, it also has two “secret” compartments containing a telescope and a compass – both fully functioning! Check out my gallery below for a showcase of the cane’s many “features.”

The cane is available on Nauticalia’s website if anyone’s interested. They also have a similar model in a lighter shade of wood that comes with a small corked vial instead of a telescope. I wouldn’t recommend the latter unless it’s on account of the lighter colour, as it’s – oddly enough – more expensive (at least on their website, I think it was the same at the store), otherwise identical, and if you really want a corked vial in your cane, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one that fits. Small retractable telescopes are harder to come by.

I heartily recommend this cane. Especially for fending off pesky Liver Birds. You’ll see them coming a mile away.

I recently watched the Notre Dame debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig entitled ‘Is Good from God?’ I can refute everything Craig said in just three words:

Ideal Observer Theory

Look, theists, if you want to argue that Divine Command Theory farts rainbows and brings orgasms to needy little children, knock yourselves out. But honestly, stop acting as if it were the only coherent meta-ethical theory ever devised in the history of humanity. It doesn’t make you look clever, it makes you look either ignorant or dishonest. Craig must certainly be immorally dishonest, since as a Research Professor of Philosophy he ought to know better.

No, I don’t intend to defend Ideal Observer Theory over Divine Command Theory – though I’ll recommend Michael Martin’s book ‘Atheism, Morality, and Meaning‘ for the interested – and Ideal Observer Theory isn’t even the only theory that fulfils Craig’s criteria of ‘objectivity.’ I don’t even know why we should take seriously Craig’s assertion that ‘If God doesn’t exist there can be no objective morality’ since it basically just boils down to an argument from Craig’s personal incredulity.

However, my point is that philosophical integrity demands that we ought at the very least acknowledge that there are other positions available. We don’t have to accept them. Hell, we can argue vehemently against their veracity. But the least we can do is to not pretend that there is no opposing view; no legitimate disagreement. That’s not philosophy, that’s just plain old propaganda.

For shame!