How the profiteers who market Thermageddon offend against the principles of formal logic
Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley
LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion. Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.
Is Private Fraser’s proposition that “We’re a’ doomed!” logical? I say No. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.” The belief that Thermageddon will arise from our altering 1/3000th of the atmosphere in a century is in-your-face illogical, rooted in a dozen fallacies marked out by Aristotle as the commonest in human discourse.
“Consensus” is the New Religion’s central fallacy. Arguing blindly from consensus is the head-count fallacy, the argumentum ad populum. Al-Haytham, founder of the scientific method, wrote: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any mere consensus. Instead, he checks.”
Two surveys have purported to show 97% of climate scientists supporting the supposed “consensus”. In both, 97% agreed little more than that the world has warmed since 1950. So what? One involved just 79 scientists, hardly a scientific sample size. Neither was selected to eliminate bias. Neither asked whether manmade global warming was at all likely to prove catastrophic – a question expecting the answer “No.”
Claiming that the “consensus” is one of revered experts is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority. T.H. Huxley said in 1860, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Believers talk of a “consensus of evidence”. Yet evidence cannot hold opinions. Besides, there has been no global warming for 18 years; sea level has risen for eight years at just 1.3 in/century; notwithstanding Sandy, hurricane activity is at its least in the 33-year satellite record; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; global sea-ice extent has changed little; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice; and the U.N.’s 2005 prediction of 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010 was absurd. The evidence does not support catastrophism.
Believers say: “Only if we include a strong warming effect from CO2 can we explain the past 60 years’ warming. We know of no other reason.” This is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental fallacy of argument from ignorance. Besides, natural variability is reason enough.
They say: “Global warming is accelerating, so we are to blame.” Even if warming were accelerating, this non sequitur is an instance of the argumentum ad causam falsam, the fallacy of arguing from a false cause. They go on to say: “CO2 concentration has risen; warming has occurred; the former caused the latter.” This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc sub-species of the same fallacy.
They say: “What about the cuddly polar bears?” This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of needless pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly, as you may think, the profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. No need to pity the bears, and they are not cuddly.
They say: “We tell the models there will be strong CO2- driven warming. And, yes, the models predict it.” This is the fallacy of arguing in circles, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, where the premise is the conclusion.
They say: “Global warming caused extra-tropical storm Sandy.” This inappropriate argument from the general to the particular is the argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Individual extreme events cannot be ascribed to global warming.
They say: “Melting Arctic sea ice is a symptom of global warming.” This unsound argument from the particular to the general is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. Arctic sea ice is melting, but the Antarctic has cooled for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.
They say: “Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk says he isn’t, so he’s not credible.” This is the argumentum ad hominem, a shoddy sub- species of ignoratio elenchi, the fundamental red-herring fallacy of ignorance of how a true argument is conducted.
They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.” This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.
These numerous in-your-face illogicalities provoke four questions: Has the Earth warmed as predicted? If not, why not? What if I am wrong? And what if I am right?
Q1. Has the Earth warmed as predicted? In 1990 the IPCC predicted that the world would now be warming at 0.3 Cº/decade, and that by now more than 0.6 Cº warming would have occurred. The outturn was less than half that: just 0.14 Cº/decade and 0.3 Cº in all.
In 2008 leading modellers wrote:
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the observed warming rate.”
Yet the linear trend on the Hadley/CRU monthly global temperature anomalies for the 18 years 1995-2012 shows no statistically-significant warming, even though the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about a tenth in that time.
The modellers’ own explicit criterion proves their scary predictions exaggerated. Their vaunted “consensus” was wrong. Global warming that was predicted for tomorrow but has not occurred for 18 years until today cannot have caused Sandy or Bopha yesterday, now, can it?
Q2: Why was the “consensus” wrong? Why do the models exaggerate? The climate-sensitivity equation says warming is the product of a forcing and a sensitivity parameter. Three problems: the modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the sensitivity parameter are not falsifiable; and their claims that their long-term predictions of doom are reliable are not only empirically disproven but theoretically insupportable.
Modellers define forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, with surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change surface temperature. So the definition offends against the fundamental postulate of logic that a proposition and its converse cannot coexist. No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus” disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.
Direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per CO2 doubling, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. So the modellers introduce amplifying or “positive” temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, triple the direct warming from CO2. Yet this dubious hypothesis is not Popper- falsifiable, so it is not logic and not science. Not one of the imagined feedbacks is either empirically measurable or theoretically determinable by any reliable method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have justifiably excoriated its net-positive feedbacks as guesswork – uneducated guesswork at that.
For there is a very powerful theoretical reason why the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74]. However, process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is far too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification function.
At high gain, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling. Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long- run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether inconsistent with a loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as modellers’ estimates imply.
Surface temperature changes little, for homoeostatic conditions prevail. The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air: one reason why 3000 bathythermographs deployed in 2006 have detected no significant ocean warming. The atmosphere’s upper bound is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away. Homoeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Thus the climatic loop gain cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will be a harmless 1 Cº.
Yet the overriding difficulty in trying to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never measure the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in the evolution of all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term modelling of future climate states is unattainable a priori.
The IPCC tries to overcome this actually insuperable Lorenz constraint on modelling by estimating climate sensitivity via a probability-density function. Yet PDFs require more, not less, information than simple estimates flanked by error-whiskers, and are still less likely to be reliable. The modellers are guessing. Their guesses have been proven wrong. Yet they continue to demand our acquiescence in an imagined (and imaginary) consensus.
Q3: What if I am wrong? If so, we must travel from physics to economics. Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the cost of failing to prevent warming of that order this century will be about 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by typical CO2-mitigation schemes as cost-ineffective as Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of acting now exceeds that of adapting in the future 36 times over.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade, abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. In turn predicted temperature will fall by 0.00006 Cº. But the cost will be $130 billion ($2 quadrillion/Cº). Abating the
0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP. Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will thus be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
Q4: What if I am right? When I am proven right, the Climate Change Department will be swept away; Britain’s annual deficit will fall by a fifth; the bat-blatting, bird- blending windmills that scar our green and pleasant land will go; the world will refocus on real environmental problems like deforestation on land, overfishing at sea and pollution of the air; the U.N.’s ambition to turn itself into a grim, global dictatorship with overriding powers of taxation and economic and environmental intervention will be thwarted; and the aim of science to supplant true religion as the world’s new, dismal, cheerless credo will be deservedly, decisively, definitively defeated.
Any who say “I believe” are not scientists, for true scientists say “I wonder”. We require – nay, we demand – more awe and greater curiosity from our scientists, and less political “correctness” and co-ordinated credulity.
To the global classe politique, the placemen, bureaucrats, academics, scientists, journalists and enviros who have profiteered at our expense by peddling Thermageddon, I say this. The science is in; the truth is out; Al Gore is through; the game is up; and the scare is over.
To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.
To men of goodwill, lovers of logic, I say this. It is our faculty of reason, the greatest of the soul’s three powers, that marks us out from the beasts and brings us closest in likeness to our Creator, the Lord of Life and Light. We will never let the light of Reason be snuffed out.
Do not go gentle to that last goodnight – Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Expectations and statistics equates to depression. Logic!
Goldie says: January 7, 2013 at 9:19 pm
“…. I expect to see some reasoned science logic and philosophy in regards to the climate debate. … ……Whilst I accept that the latter can (and should) stray into questions of religion on occasion, I cannot believe that this thread has been allowed to degrade into such a sorry state.
If I wanted to get into questions of religion, I would go elsewhere. Folks this makes us a laughing stock – please stop!…..”
Ah, c’mon… I disagree … this range of ideas and exposure to the characters within makes the place interesting.
Far more so than, say, Skeptical Science, which prefers to stick strictly to the science (albeit only if it matches their view of it) and strictly edits any off topic discussion (unless it is by one of their acolytes) and will allow no personal criticisms or adhoms whatsoever (unless delivered against an “unbeliever”, and more acceptably delivered by one of the moderators).
There is plenty of science in here, and this would be a far less interesting site if it followed those types of guidelines.
@sparks
I only believe in those statistics that prove my point! 🙂
@Goldie
🙂
While I enjoyed this essay I must correct one statement by Lord Monckton: Chesterton does not seem to have uttered what can generally be regarded as the most famous statement attributed to him. I and other Chestertonians have searched in vain for the statement, and it seems it has been constructed by some biographer and morphed into various statements later. The main point is a play with the words ‘something’, ‘anything’, and ‘nothing’: “When men cease to believe in something they will not then believe in nothing – they will believe in anything.”
The meaning is thus not connected with Christianity per se, but with the necessity of belief.
@Goldie
Three engineers walked into a cabin, Ten Years later the cabin walked out.
Goldie:
Matters are worse than you assert in your post at January 7, 2013 at 9:19 pm which says
People are often loved into a belief but there is no evidence that anybody has ever been argued into a belief. Indeed, arguments about faith tend to solidify people in their existing views because an argument inclines them to justify their own words instead of considering the value of an ‘opponent’s’ words.
Hence, arguments about faith are narcissistic nonsense when conducted in a forum such as this. The arguments do not cause anybody to gain constructive doubt in their existing beliefs but, instead, solidify those beliefs.
As you say, this is obvious to onlookers who perceive the zealots who insist on such arguments as being fools.
However, such stupid behaviour is an effective method to destroy a thread, and this is the second thread where atheists (or people purporting to be atheists) have used it to obtain such destruction.
This is why I warned against it in my post at January 6, 2013 at 12:19 pm and when that warning was ignored at January 6, 2013 at 4:00 pm I objected to it. Subsequently, because the idiocy continued, at January 7, 2013 at 4:03 am and January 7, 2013 at 9:38 am I commended
I again repeat that commendation.
Richard
John Whitman says:
January 6, 2013 at 3:13 pm
‘I think religion is not natural based on a rational assessment thus I have logically identified it as mere supernaturalism and superstition.’
‘Please explain the source of your omniscience claim that everyman profoundly believes in or has faith in the supernatural.
I am sincerely interested in the source of your views.’
John Whitman.
You can have personal thoughts and personal conclusions, but this is not relevant for the discussion on logic and truth, simple because your thoughts are your own possession and nobody else.
A philosophical discussion is free from personal claims, because logic and/or truth are not to be owned by a person or a group of persons or a king.
I have asked you what supernaturalism is, but you haven’t shown, that supernaturalism has an existence, and as you agreed with that there is only one nature or only one naturalism (order), you have agreed that a supernaturalism cannot exist beside nature.
‘Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any physical process linking the two events that contradicts natural science.’
In the above logic superstition cannot exist, because nothing can contradict nature, because there is only one nature and nothing else.
Logic can be taken as a tool to make conclusions from premises, but logic is not able give proof for an identity like a physical force. Rational thinking depends on an input like a premise, and cannot give any absolute truth about nature.
The consequence of this flaw on perfection is that any personal claim which is not to be shown as observable in nature has no existence.
Regarding your question this means that any idea that has no existence in this way is a juxtaposition of personal thoughts out of the memory of a conditioned mind, and because you have spoken your personal claim, for that you cannot give any proof, the source of the point of lacks in logic which people used to call faith is your personal mind.
Coming to a conclusion in this thread, there are these points. Beginning with the point to acknowledge that nothing can be true and false at the same time it means that that what is to be recognised as true (or false) is not to determined by nobody and not by ‘science’. The next point is, because it is possible to recognise structures, physical laws, logic structures, the order of particles in physics, there must be a reference on that it is possible to recognise the order of nature and the truth of arguments. The last point is an essential point. Nobody is able to differentiate between what is true and what is false, without the reference as a fundamental part of nature or the order of nature. And if this is true, then it means that nobody can argue that he is able to make use of the method of science without the reference that told him what is to recognise as true resp. false. Philosophy is the basic science and means the love to the Sophia, the truth. There may be thoughts in the social community with lacks on the basic science, but I think this is a general problem of people of lacks of perfection, to be found in arguments from climate panics as well as from end of the world panics.To ‘love the Sophia’ philosophia is not the same as to reject philosophy as presumed faults in logic out of a conditioned mind, but the latter is the social spirit of this time.
V.
richardscourtney says:January 8, 2013 at 2:16 am
“…. WUWT also needs a policy of restricting discussion of atheism. I again repeat that commendation…Richard..”
Forgive me if I am wrong (yet again)…
But does it not take two points of view to have a discussion? So, why target only one of those?
….. or do we simply assume here that it is the “wrong” point of view?
Do scientists also believe in supernaturalism? In fact, they do, at least once. The point they are forced to believe it is at and just before the big bang, first there was not only no nature, but no possibility of nature (not even empty space), and then there was, the before point being by definition supernatural. There is the further problem that the universe as we know it, with it’s natural laws, appears to be (statistically) impossible from a big bang. When they found the background radiation which was exactly as predicted, thus proving said big bang, they said “we are stuck with this preposterous universe”. Scientists then try to get around the problem that it appears so impossible that it would have to be planned by inventing an infinite number of universes outside this one, by definition supernatural, and do so without any evidence and no chance of getting any, by definition blind faith. I thus present as evidence of scientists believing in the supernatural our current crop of scientists and the set of evidence that is the entire universe and everything in it.
As for supernatural happening since then, there is only one way to tell if they are possible or not, and that is if they happened or not, based on the evidence they happened, witnesses, physical evidence, that sort of thing. The current way use to tell if supernatural things have happened since the big bang (by definition supernatural) goes as below:
The first two prepositions are the always unstated ones’
(We know there is no God.)
(Therefore we know that miracles cannot happen.)
Since miracles cannot happen, we know they did not happen.
Since they did not happen, we know there is no God.
This argument assumes, without proof, a priori, that there is no God. It is a nonsense argument without that prior assumption, and an argument from blind faith with it. The only way to tell if miracles or any supernatural event happened is if they did, from the evidence. Kinda like science, and say, just saying it was the hottest November ever, and looking at the actual temperature record and seeing that the same agency that said so has actual evidence that it is not. The ‘there is no God because the supernatural is impossible” argument above is the argument being made on these posts. Since we know that at least one supernatural event, the big bang, has definitely happened (look around you, see anything, proof), then this does not look like a very good argument. You might then say “well, there have been none since then”, but have you actually checked out the evidence for same, rather than assuming that it is impossible on blind faith?
Conclusion, from the evidence of at least one definite supernatural event, the big bang, and the possibility of others since then, we can say “There May Be A God”.
As such, it is perfectly OK for Monckton of Brenchley to bring it up in his article, he may, after all, be right.
markx:
Your entire post at January 8, 2013 at 3:56 am says
Don’t be ridiculous!
My entire statement said
Discussion of creationism is restricted because creationists take any opportunity to promote their belief to the destruction of any thread where they are given an opportunity to evangelise.
As this and the other destroyed thread demonstrate, discussion of atheism needs to be restricted for the same reason.
I could not have been more clear about the matter and your pretense that my recommendation was for any other reason is as egregious as the rest of your behaviour on this thread.
Richard
richardscourtney says: January 8, 2013 at 7:01 am
” …..Creationism. …[and] …..restricting discussion of atheism…
…….I could not have been more clear about the matter and your pretense that my recommendation was for any other reason is as egregious as the rest of your behaviour on this thread….Richard…”
Well, you could perhaps have been clearer Richard.
If you meant “restrict discussion on aspects of religious belief or disbelief”, perhaps you could have said so.
I foolishly assumed that when you said “… on creationism and atheism” that you meant “…on creationism and atheism…”.
Though I concede that perhaps I missed the unstated point that if one has a belief in a god, it must follow that the said god is necessarily ‘the creator’… ie a discussion on creationism …(ie, that sure slipped past the mods then…!) .
Apologies for being egregious, and thanks for the useful word (yeah, had to look it up!) (and it is rather more flexible than I imagined).
e·gre·gious /iˈgrējəs/ Adjective
1. Outstandingly bad; shocking.
2. Remarkably good.
or
1. archaic : distinguished
2. conspicuous; especially : conspicuously bad
and“…behaviour…” My stating a viewpoint, and a state of belief, differs from your similar behavior how, exactly?
[snip . . OT . . mod]
richardscourtney:
markx:
I concluded my post addressed to you at January 8, 2013 at 7:01 am saying
You have replied with your post at January 8, 2013 at 8:11 am.
Quad Erat Demonstrandum.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 8, 2013 at 7:01 am
Dear Richard,
You call this a “destroyed thread.” It is not; it is (even after so many days!) an important discussion.
These discussions are very necessary, if those of us who oppose the perversion of science into political correctness, but have differing views in other areas, are to learn to work together.
And that the discussions are public, is a huge boon. We won’t need to repeat them next time!
But I have a big problem when you say, “Discussion of atheism needs to be restricted.” I read that as, “I want to restrict discussion of atheism”. Or, put another way, “I want to muzzle den**rs.”
Richard, in this forum, it is Anthony who says what discussions may or may not be restricted, not you. Here, Anthony is god! And the moderators are his angels.
I would remind you that this is a US website. And Americans have, at least for a little while longer, something called the First Amendment. And it begins thusly:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,…”
Richard, I give you this quote from your comment on the Christmas thread at December 29, 2012 at 10:50 am, talking about rgbatduke: “And, as do most atheists, he fails to recognise that his religion is as faith-based as any other: agnosticism rejects faith but belief that no deity exists (i.e.atheism) is a religious faith of identical kind to belief in the existence of one or more deities (i.e. theism).”
So, atheism is an establishment of religion, no? You deny the First Amendment, no?
Neil
Clearly, you are not aware that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 each provides a different creation myth: one is from the Northern tribes and the other is from the Southern tribes. One of the two stories
Richard, I’ve written and published an entire novel (The Book of Lilith) based on the midrash developed to explain the discrepancy. You have no idea how carefully I’ve studied the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamash, The Hulupu Tree, and early Sumerian and Mesopotamian myths, so please do not make assumptions. You are relatively enlightened and recognize these as myths. I agree. On the other hand, just about half the surveyed population of the United States does not think that the Book of Genesis is a myth. Neither did Jesus (if the NT reports correctly).
If you do not think that this is a problem in the realm of social and political discourse (in addition to being a national disgrace) — well, we disagree.
Dearest phlogiston (great handle, BTW:-),
FWIW, my own sons went to a Catholic school for at least half of their K-12 education. One of my son’s favorite teachers in the Catholic school was a Quaker. I have little beef for the most part with idealized Christian morals, in part because in many (but not quite all, and there are many more) branches of Christianity they have been purged and sanitized of most of the crap. So no, Christians no longer carry out pogroms against the Jews, conduct apocalyptic crusades against the Muslims — well, I’m not so sure about that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism — the Pope apologized about the whole Galileo thing (but not for Bruno), and some branches of Christianity have even embraced evolution. Since Thomas Jefferson invented the “right” to religious freedom (including freedom from religion) and managed to get it firmly entrenched in the Bill of Rights and by extension and adoption much of the world’s political basis we no longer hold trials for blasphemy, stone people for breaking the Sabbath (although North Carolina still has “Blue Laws” on its books in a clear violation of the Constitution). Homosexuality is still heavily persecuted (by vote if not by the occasional fist and club) by some branches of Christianity (and by Islam — this isn’t all about just Christianity). Women are still often suppressed by the Christian churches — notably Mormonism and the Catholic Church.
There isn’t one Christian church, of course, so it is difficult to point this out without appearing to make a no true scotsman sort of argument, which is not my intention. Rather it is to point out that if one picks, often quite literally church by church, paster/priest by paster/priest even within a denomination one can often find very reasonable Christians and ministers/pastors/priests/bishops etc., who, like Richard and I would guess you as well, recognize at least some of the Bible as being a myth, or even a collection of myths. The same is true for Jewish people, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, various flavors of spiritualist, syncretics such as Voudou, and if any yet survive Paganists or whoever. In every case — quite possibly every individual case — there is a line, however, where the scriptural texts are e no longer treated as myth. It can be a very open line — Quakers take only God literally and treat everything else as open to individual interpretation (and have my greatest respect — they are even happy to include Quaker Atheists or Quaker Buddhists — even Jesus and God are in some sense optional to them). It can be narrowly prescribed by a convocation of old men who set the boundaries of heresy. It can be completely inclusive, embracing a literal interpretation of nearly all of the mythology. Precisely the same range holds for the moral teachings and beliefs, which range from literal belief in the ten commandments (which I would argue is absurd).
To go through them in order:
1) No other gods before me.
I suppose atheism qualifies, as I certain worship no other gods. But this law quite literally prohibits critical thinking as far as the Bible is concerned. If one waited until children were adults before exposing them to arguments for adopting one or another faith, that would be fine because compliance would be voluntary, but teaching children this as part of their moral package is wrong in so many ways.
2) No graven images (and by the way, if you break the commandments I’m punishing your great-grand children, not just you).
You have got to be kidding me. Not that I don’t agree, worshipping statues is dumb. Of course nearly every Christian church in the world contains graven images of Jesus galore, not to mention Mary and a pantheon of saints, and the Bible itself is often the thing that is really being worshipped as a “graven” image of the Logos if you will. But again, is this a moral issue? Simply teaching a child that a statue is an inanimate object without any sentience seems like it would suffice.
3) Do not take the name of the Lord in vain.
For God’s sake, I can’t, as there is no Lord, and if there were I have no idea what Its name would be. But this is again hardly a moral issue, and besides is nearly universally abused in our culture as part of the language itself. My mother used to slap me if I said damn it or God as a cuss word. Muslims beat you and kill you if you wear a tee shirt with a picture of Mohammed on it. This is the same thing! There is nothing immoral about using the name of a deity real or imagined any way you like. It may violate the rule of the religion, in which case the God if that religion is welcome to take any action It wishes in response, but that hardly is a moral issue and cannot possibly apply to unbelievers, including ones who are so moral that they qualify is saints.
4) Keep the Sabbath.
Not a moral rule, a religious rule. Should Hindu children be taught to keep the Sabbath? Which one?
5) Honor your parents.
Sure. One doesn’t need the Bible for this, and there are exceptions where one should not honor them (such as when one of them is sexually abusing you) but overall a fine idea. A nearly universal one as well, not just the OT.
6-10) Don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness (or more generally, lie), or covet that which belongs to your neighbor.
I’m down with all of this. Again, hardly unique to this culture or text. They are not religious statements. The OT specifies horrendous punishments, of course, for those who violate them, and the rule about “coveting” things is presented as a religious rule instead of a broader mental discipline (in Buddhism, one is warned against attachment to even one’s own possessions) but still, generally pretty good stuff and children should absolutely be taught about it. Adultery and coveting are rules that I think could use a fair bit of moderation from OT rigor, given that the one is violated so very often anyway and the other describes a mental state, but in general I think adultery is a bad idea and wish more people (including Christians!) would live up to it.
This enormously complicates any discussion of the religion, because there isn’t one. Christianity’s name is Legion, at this point.
A last anecdote. My five year old son had started his mandatory religion class at his Catholic school. We had a long drive over to Raleigh together to visit my sister, and we started talking about life and love and all that. He turned to me — at age five, mind you — and asked “Daddy, if God is Love, why do bad things happen?”
I had no answer for him. I don’t think there is one. Do you?
(But a damn good question from a five year old, eh?:-)
rgb
Legatus says:
January 8, 2013 at 6:25 am
Do scientists also believe in supernaturalism? In fact, they do, at least once.
Wait. There are two points topic here. The first point is the dignity of the thread opener, which is untouchable as the dignity of all men. The other point is the logic of science.
The point they are forced to believe it is at and just before the big bang, first there was not only no nature, but no possibility of nature (not even empty space), and then there was, the before point being by definition supernatural.
Each scientist is an individual person, and nobody is able to judge on all scientists of the world. You can speak on statements of individual scientists and you can give counter arguments to their individual statements.
The nature of the universe is in a discussion by physicians and philosophers. Physicians are working with time and causality but also with the recognition of the law of conservation of energy, which is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. This statement is also valid, if one states that energy exist timeless, because time is not an observable in physics. A discrete time is, as well a discrete space, philosophical nonsense; because logic tells space cannot have and end and cannot have no end. Energy can neither destroyed nor created out of nothing. Energy is.
Mathematicians cannot describe the physics of the universe for a time of zero, but that does not mean that there is no timeless energy; it is a problem which comes to the physicians back, because they have taken the social terms ‘time’ or ‘space’ into physics.
One may say that the terms of time or space used in physics is not physics, but that does not mean that physicians or scientists believe in supernaturalism. Structures or elements of no matter like a circle or a square plane or a defined sequence of numbers and their ratios are parts of nature as music listeners know. The nature of a chord includes not a known physical force. There are scientists who do argue with logic on that one nature.
The lack of the description of a timeless nature but therefore to show nature by logic does not mean that scientists believe in supernaturalism. It is a straw man. ‘The straw man fallacy is when you misrepresent someone else’s position so that it can be attacked more easily, knock down that misrepresented position, and then conclude that the original position has been demolished. It’s a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made.’
The wrong directed claim that there was ‘not only no nature, but no possibility of nature (not even empty space)’ is senseless, because it is senseless to argue on nothing (s. Parmenides).
V.
Volker Doormann,
I don’t know where you are from or if you are a native English speaker or not.
In the US a physician is a medical doctor. The term you are looking for is physicists.
Moncton of Brenchley’s essay offends against logic in several respects in its introduction:
”LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion.”
1. it starts with two vague metaphors “the heartbeat of all true learning”, and “the soul of the Classics…”, which provide no footholds for logic at all,
2. it lumps together three equally vague concepts “Classics, Sciences, and Religion”, and associates them with “LOGIC”, further muddying the waters
3. and it makes the inherently unclear concept of learning even more mysterious by suggesting there is a type of “learning” other than “true” (which presumably is powered by some other “heartbeat” than LOGIC).
Excuse me for not reading further. But to my presumably ilLOGICal and soulless mind, this is typically jesuitical verbiage, which is guaranteed to be entirely devoid of any scientific content.
I don’t know about “true learning”, but in my view, the essential elements of scientific perspective owe absolutely nothing to either religion or “the Classics”, and consist of:
1. meticulous observation
2. comprehensive documentation, and only finally
3. scrupulously logical analysis
The chief role of religion and “the Classics” in this process has always been to throw a spanner into the works by restricting observation, suppressing documentation and logic analysis, and when the foregoing methods fail to suffice to maintain the established order of “knowledge”, to persecute the scientist economically and/or physically.
Aristotle and Isaac Newton ridiculed the possibility of comets, and the great majority of Amercian academics boycotted the Macmillan’s textbooks in order to suppress Immanuel Velikovsky’s exquisitely reasoned and meticulously documented theory that Earth had been subjected to catastrophic near collisions with Venus and Mars between 1500 and 700 BC.
All perfect examples of illogical thinking, in which “loyalty” to the accepted view of the world caused towering intellects, such a Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein, to betray science by suppressing (or in Einstein’s case, failing to champion) dissonant observations (ie. matching astronomical records from unrelated societies all over the world documenting repeated changes in the length of the year, the day,and the lunar month).
MattS says:
January 8, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Volker Doormann, I don’t know where you are from or if you are a native English speaker or not.
In the US a physician is a medical doctor. The term you are looking for is physicists.
Thank you MattS. In Germany a physicist is ‘der Physiker’. Sorry for confusion.
V.
To me the greatest ancient theologian was Pythagoras . ( My favorite 20th century one , Vonnegut . ) He actually abstracted one of the most profound relationships of existence : squares sum . His cult also was unique in disproving one of their founding beliefs : that all numbers can be expressed as ratios .
Although they did throw the discoverer overboard at sea as his reward for the discovery.
Heresy is never welcome.
rgb
Volker Doormann says:
Legatus says:
Do scientists also believe in supernaturalism? In fact, they do, at least once.
Wait. There are two points topic here. The first point is the dignity of the thread opener, which is untouchable as the dignity of all men. The other point is the logic of science.
I was not talking about any “dignity” of any kind, either pro or con, merely the logic of science and it’s conclusions, and whether those conclusions can allow something we call “supernatural”. Some men do indeed have no dignity, we discuss their indignity often on this site. Lord Mockton of Brenchley has too much dignity, he should learn to share. People like Peter Gleick have lost all dignity (I am not sure if Michael Mann ever had any), Peter is proof positive that dignity can indeed be “touched”, he did, and destroyed any he might once have had.
The point they are forced to believe it is at and just before the big bang, first there was not only no nature, but no possibility of nature (not even empty space), and then there was, the before point being by definition supernatural.
Each scientist is an individual person, and nobody is able to judge on all scientists of the world. You can speak on statements of individual scientists and you can give counter arguments to their individual statements.
There is no need to discuss the individual beliefs of individual scientists on this matter, since all the scientists who study the big bang and the time just around it are in agreement about this one thing. There was a time when the physical laws of this universe as we know them simply did not exist. There was no empty space, since empty space as we know it includes the laws of this universe which govern anything which is or is not in that space or moves through that space. The time of the big bang is a time when there simply were no physical laws to govern empty space or anything else, those came later. Thus, we have a time outside of the natural laws we know of, this time is by definition supernatural.
Also, you are wrong about time, time is a physical property of this universe, as physical, in it’s way as gravity (which effects it) and matter and energy. This is not just believed, but proven fact. They sent up a satellite with a very accurate clock, to test the theory that an object moving faster than another relative object (the earth in this case) would experience a slowdown of time. The clock on the satellite whizzing around the earth had a measured slowdown compared to an identical clock on earth, thus showing that time is NOT merely a social convention, but a physical property of this universe.
You are also wrong about “empty space”, in fact, scientists now know that there are degrees of emptiness. What you know of as “empty space” has the natural laws we know of operating in it, thus, if you could get there, everything would operate as it does here. However, at the time just of, and before, the big bang, there was no empty space with natural laws operating in it, because there were no natural laws. These laws came into existence in the period of time after the big bang, some of them well after. And empty space, as you know it, is not really empty, here is a quote about it:
The physical interpretation of the cosmological constant as vacuum energy density is supported by the existence of the “zero point” energy predicted by quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, particle and antiparticle pairs are consistently being created out of the vacuum. Even though these particles exist for only a short amount of time before annihilating each other they do give the vacuum a non-zero potential energy. This concept of the vacuum energy has been experimentally confirmed through the Casimir effect, where two uncharged conducting plates attract each other due to quantum fluctuations. In general relativity, all forms of energy should gravitate, including the energy of the vacuum, hence the cosmological constant.
Had he been aware of the resource, he might have answered his own question, via the following (the Catechism of the Catholic Church) although it might be above a 5-year old’s level; well, at least me at 5, I wouldn’t presume to speak for your son:
Providence and the scandal of evil
309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin, and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments, and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. (164, 385, 2850)
310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.174 But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” toward its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.175 (412, 1042-1050, 342)
311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.176 He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it: (396, 1849)
For almighty God… , because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.177
312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: “It was not you,” said Joseph to his brothers, “who sent me here, but God…. You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.”178 From the greatest moral evil ever committed—the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all men—God, by his grace that “abounded all the more,”179 brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good. (598-600, 1994)
313 “We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.”180 The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth: (227)
St. Catherine of Siena said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.”181
St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: “Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best.”182
Dame Julian of Norwich: “Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith… and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time—that ‘all manner [of] thing shall be well.’”183
314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God “face to face,”184 will we fully know the ways by which—even through the dramas of evil and sin—God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest185 for which he created heaven and earth. (1040, 2550)
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Nothing exists in a vacuum of course. If the catechism is to make any sense, you have to accept the dogmas or axioms of the faith, which I gather is your fundamental objection. But hey, you can’t prove two parallel lines in Euclidian space never meet, either (unless something has changed drasticly from sophmore Geometry).
In his opening salvo, rgbatduke advised Monckton of Brenchley with these words:
— If you did as I tell you ought to have done, you would “avoid irritating readers that are not, in fact, Christian. Not simply atheists such as myself, but it is at least conceivable that they might be read by Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews.”
Surely, when it comes to irritating readers (not simply agnostics* such as myself), rgbatduke should be awarded a prize, if only for endurance — certainly not for his glaring inability to read ancient texts. For example, if in his childish exegesis of the Ten Commandments he had noted that their author identified himself as one who had led his people out of slavery, he might have understood that the first table (1-5 in his list) is as morally relevant as the second is. Or are questions of condoning slavery versus accepting the responsibility of being free no longer morally relevant?
[* Simply in the hope of avoiding another self-righteous but irrelevant reply: agnosticism (not-knowing) does not rule out belief and it does not rule out disbelief. There are believing agnostics and non-believing agnostics. One can be agnostic about the foundations of mathematics and still believe that it is an empirical generalisation of playing with pebbles; one can be agnostic about Jesus Christ and still believe in Jesus Christ. However, it is vastly more difficult to be agnostic about God. Do not take my word for it. Bertrand Russell, of Principia Mathematica fame, who was mentioned in the comments above, tells us: “I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air, and exclaimed as I caught it: ‘Great Scott, the ontological argument is sound.” (Russell, “My mental development” in Schlipp, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, 1944, p.10). Isn’t it interesting that so many of the philosophers who accepted the ontological argument of Saint Anselm (1033-1109) about God’s necessary being were first class logicians and mathematicians: Descartes, Leibniz, Russell, Gödel, while its detractors (from Thomas Aquinas to Hume to Kant) were without any mathematical distinction whatsoever? Since “empirical scientists” cannot do much of interest without mathematics, they might perhaps start wondering if mathematical truths (which are not empirically observable) are more real than their own “Its just an hypothesis” beliefs.]
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richardscourtney,
Your argument should be with Christopher Monckton. If you do not like the discussion contrasting religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism to science then you need to stop him from posting with juxtapositions of science and religion. Alternatively, if you do not convince Monckton, your course of action can be with Anthony. If you do not like the discussion contrasting science and religion, then you need to ask Anthony to stop posting Christopher Moncktion’s juxtaposition of science and religion.
Personally, with his current post, I think Christopher Monckton wants the discussion to take place contrasting science and religion. Thanks to him a lively valuable dialog contrasting science and religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism happened . . . Viva!
When science is discussed then all aspects of science is and should be discussed, including contrasting it to what isn’t science.
Likewise, when religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism is discussed then all aspects of religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism is and should be discussed, including contrast it to what isn’t religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism. Atheism is often discussed by theologists within theology. Your position opposing discussion of atheism related to all religious matters appears to contain a degree of religious intolerance.
John