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Atheism

science
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2008/12/30, 22:14

…is not scientific. Really the countless myths about that it is and the pseudoscientific arguments that people draw to supposedly back that up a-la Darwkins and Randi are prætentious at best, let us look into a few here:

Burden of proof: You have to prove some-thing exists not the reverse.

Very simple reductio ad absurdum: 500 years back, it wasn’t proven that Pluto existed, was that an undeniable scientific proof Pluto didn’t exist then? It wasn’t proven that America existed to Europeans is that an undeniable proof America didn’t exist then? Is this an undeniable proof any-thing outside the observable universe doesn’t exist? I’m sure you get that the argument doesn’t hold. It’s drawn out of context. All it says that if it’s not proven that some-thing exists is that it’s not proven that it exists. That does not equal a proof it doesn’t exist, until you’ve provided one. It just means the question isn’t resolved yet, what a lot of people seem to not be able to handle. The ‘I don’t know’ option, which is in all but a few cases the scientifically correct answer. Admitting you don’t have enough knowledge to make a scientifically accurate conclusion. Science isn’t out to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to every question. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is præferred when neither is proven beyond all reasonable doubt indeed. But.. biology.. it corrects itself all too often because biologists aren’t that scientific. In more serious (hard) sciences this happens not very often to never in mathematics and the lot. I can’t wait for that the holocaust actually did never happen.

By the way, about proving:

  • It is possible to prove of some things they cannot be proven, this does not prove them false.
  • It is possible of some things to prove that they cannot be proven false or true, this proves them independent.

Stone argument: Can God make a stone so big He cannot lift it himself?

This one concerns the Abrahamic deity mostly, as other religions don’t dabble in omnipotence all that much. One of my favourites though, not really an argument for atheism but I’ve included it. Okay, let us say we have a formal language in which we can formalise statements about the potency of an object x, P(x) is thus a certain thing that object ‘can do’. That langauge is also able to derive inconsistencies, by showing that certain potencies lead to others being unable to perform. Such as:

  • P: The potency of being able to swim.
  • Q. The potency of drowning every time one is in water.

Let’s just say it is provable that P -> NOT Q in this system. Let us have a certain x for which: P(x) AND Q(x). Obviously this is an inconsistency as we derived Q(x) AND NOT Q(x). Which is what you want for an omnipotent being. From a contradiction, every-thing follows. It means that every statement we can make in the language is now true. Including negations. Thus the object is ‘x’ semantically ‘omnipotent’. Does it stroke with the logic behind the laws of physic? no. But we’re talking about God, physics are no match for this guy, he’d frag pun-pun like it’s nothing. Also, it means that all objects are omnipotent but who cares.

‘All agnosts are actually really atheists.’

Completely true. Most agnosts are actually really atheists but style agnosticism because they know they have to because of all these arguments here. If you think that is an argument for atheism…

‘Atheism isn’t a faith. Is having no hair a hair colour?’

Ehh, what? This is such gibberish flawed a statement it’s pretty much equivalent to ‘Atheism isn’t a faith, can pigs fly after being eaten by Jews in the holocaust?’ it makes no sense, sorry, it’s absurd.

What a lot of people also fail to realize is that mainstream scientific notions are not inconsistent with creationism but rather so independent of them, they are however inconsistent with Young Earth Creationism, which is some-thing completely different and chiefly an Abrahamic notion. Also, contrary to what many people believe, science has no answers to the origins of life yet. They have a few ‘plausible theories’, which could have happened, but none have yet been proven to have happened. In effect postulating any of these as truth is scientifically equally flawed as some genesis-like story

Let us just take a quote from this, by the way very talentedly-Australian comedian / musician Tim Minchin:

If anyone can show me one example in the entire history of the world of a single spiritual or religious person who’s been able to show either empirically or logically existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their maul choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife… I will give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

I’ve shown in the first argument already why this is so-so. But what’s more important is, even though he has not seen a proof of the impossibility of the task he requests, he is still willing to bet a fucking pianoforte amongst some minor things on it. It seems he’s not going by science here at all, but by his intuition, his gut-feeling. Hardly scientific of course and shows that atheists really aren’t that far from theists in this respect.

Pseudoscience I

Theorem: Biology is a pseudoscience
Proof: Biology does not offer proofs or if it does does as stupidly as this little ‘proof’ here.

One of the most dire things wrong with this ‘proof’ is that it lacks a definition of ‘pseudoscience’. In order to define pseuoscience, let me first give an informal definition of the scientific method as used in this article:

Any form of deduction which is:

  1. Objective, any scientist at any time and any place and from any culture most come to the exact same results from the same set of data.
  2. Not contradictory to classical logic, the propositions derived in science may not be proven false in logic, however they do not necessarily have to be proven true, as in experimental results.
  3. Investigative, scientific deduction is to investigate what is true, not trying to prove certain things true.

With the occasional slips, biology remains largely innocent of malperformance on point 1 and 2. However on point 3 they fail graciously. Let’s examine some of their slips:

Species

Biology postulates the existence of the concept of ’species’, which is commonly explained as ‘Two individual forms of life who can produce fertile offspring together if and only if in the same species.’ this isn’t even a definition of the concept of species and what is an ‘individual form of life’ isn’t even defined. Is an ant-hill one invidual or not, that is the question? But we need no more to quite simply show the concept of species cannot exist. Using the argument of clines.

A cline in biology is simply a group of related organismes diverge continually over a large area. Its inhabitants can most likely produce fertile offspring with its neighbours, and the whole street. But not much further than that, and this applies for every inhabitant of the cline. Assume members x,y,z in a random cline X. It occurs that x can produce fertile offspring with y, and y with z, but x not with z. x is then of the same species as y and y likewise with z, since in biology. An individual can only belong to one species. We may conclude that x is of the same species with z. But x cannot procreate with z we first established, so it’s also not of the same species. A contradiction to with what we started. Q.E.D. the concept of ’species’ cannot exist. And of course, given with that biology has shown continuous evolution of species and common ancestors, we may also conclude that the Mushrooms I have on my Pizza are in fact of the same species as I. Cannibalism is tr00 kids.

Diseases

Biology seems to postulate the existence of ‘diseases’, what are they? I’ve yet to read a good definition thereof, some common once we encounter. ‘Every-thing that is substantially different from normal’. Assuming we can take averages in some-thing as complex as ‘life’. How much is ’substantially’ then? Are extremely intelligent people born with a disease? Extremely pretty people? Furthermore. It’s probably extremely rare for all people to be in the room you read this in right now, it’s a disease to be in your room…

So let’s sharpen that definition to ‘Every-thing that is substantially different from normal which causes a disadvantage to the organism’. Like being on a deserted Island, that’s disease now.. and still being exceptionally intelligent. Or being homosexual in Iran, or wait was a disease.. or wait, it’s not.. or is it? Yeah… we haven’t even been able to define what we mean with ‘disadvantage’ by the way.

On that homosexuality issue, DSM used to consider a disease.. not any more, and now people get offended if you call it a disease… what the hell, first get a good working definition of disease, then prove them wrong and get angry at them. It’s like getting angry at some-one for not liking the Mona Lisa… also, calling people with Autism, Depression or whatelse mentally ill is still politically correct to do it seems. Psychiatry seems to fail at point 1 here, not objective, clearly they are influenced by culture.

Life itself..?

The entire fundament of biology, the existence of the elusive concept of ‘Life’, the very start. And they still can’t show there exists such a thing in the first place. Namely, they can’t define it. Every definition they try ends up with unwanted stuff like mules not being life, or fire being life. Give up, admit it, there is no distinction between lifeless and dead matter. It’s such a naïve distinction you cannot make into a scientific one. Seriously, biologists are amateurs, never have they made a valid logical step and a complete idiot like myself can use valid informal logic to prove them wrong. Oh boy.

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