Such distinctions escape me. I have repeatedly asked (never receiving an answer) in what way someone’s own religion differs from the particular splinter sect named in the news. Now, in all fairness, it’s important not to over-generalize, lumping things into broad categories specifically to avoid the distinctions that make significant differences, something that people are far too prone to doing in the first place. Yet, it’s not enough to draw a line in an arbitrary location and say, “but this happened on that side of the line.” Such a thing can be done ad nauseum, as Zeno demonstrated pointlessly, but does this actually address the cause in the first place?

If we ask, “Why did the haredim abuse little girls?“, the answer is, “Because their books told them that this was right.” If we then ask, “What makes them think their book is right?”, we receive a lot of vague answers about personal revelation, tautological referrals back to the book itself, or demands to respect a belief system. The kicker is, we can apply this to any religion named throughout the world, making distinctions among faiths, sects, and facets rather pointless, wouldn’t you think?

Lest anyone goes off on me for broadening the field unnecessarily, I’m going to point out that one of the most frequent arguments I hear in favor of religion is, “So many millions of people around the world can’t be wrong.” It seems that broadening the field is just ducky when it’s used in favor of one’s own practices, and that the distinctions between religious sects aren’t significant enough to warrant a more accurate count when it comes to supporting numbers.

Before I continue, I also want to highlight another interesting aspect of belief. I have yet to come across any particular religion not supported by claims of personal revelation, miracles, and the authenticity of their holy book and artifacts; however, the only ones that seem to count for religious folk are those that support their own religion. All others are roundly ignored – because they’re false idols? Because everyone else in the world is now delusional? Again, I’ve asked, but somehow this question falls on deaf ears. Of special note is the whole ‘respect’ angle, where religious folk decry how their beliefs are not being respected, beliefs that almost invariably involve not respecting others in one way or another. It’s very hard to see this as anything other than egocentric special rules, and frankly I’ve given up on trying – I realized that, in considering such arguments for more than a second, I was pursuing a concept of ‘fairness’ that actually involved being grossly unfair to everyone else who fell outside the argument. Religion, with too few exceptions to bother bending over backwards to highlight, involves little more than selfishness to an astounding degree. Even those who ‘selflessly’ limit themselves to “spreading the good word” do so from the standpoint that they’re doing something good, without in any way establishing support for this belief in their own special position.

Returning more to the original point, we can attempt to see excessive behavior (of any kind) in terms not of arbitrary distinctions, but of measurable ones. When it comes to abuse, what comes up with significant frequency is the underlying idea that the abuser holds a higher position than the abused; a privilege, as it were. [The alternate motivation of abuse is that the abuser feels threatened by the abused, which bears its own separate examination.] While our competitive minds latch onto anything supporting privilege far too easily, it results in little more than petty bullying until there is a greater cultural emphasis on such privileges – in other words, until there is more support from greater numbers of people, reinforcing the idea that this must be ‘right.’ As numerous examples throughout history demonstrate inarguably, rational support of such ideas isn’t really necessary; more often, some weak justification is accepted quickly on the sole basis that it serves to support the emotional concept of privilege.

Now, we turn to considering what happens when a few factors are established in a culture, such as:
a) considering personal revelations and older texts as reasonable ‘evidence’;
b) respect for belief systems and spirituality;
c) the idea of a greater authority that lacks demonstrable evidence or value.

What this establishes is a situation ripe for abuse, since little more is needed to generate a sense of ‘privilege’ than calling it a religion. The values that are claimed for religion are immeasurable, and subjectivity rules. Objective values to distinguish one from another are specifically avoided.

Worse, a special situation is created, where actually asking for something measurable, some distinctive benefit (much less reason for privilege in the first place,) is frowned upon, sometimes to the point of crying “persecution!” The very concept of value, that not only our society, but our whole social structure is based upon, gets discarded in lieu of some ‘diplomatic immunity’ called religion. A frequent defense of supernatural authority is, astoundingly, that we can’t prove it doesn’t exist. We also get to see, with alarming frequency, the abuse of others not on the basis of strengthening a community or even ‘saving’ people, but as demonstrations only of personal piety.

Thus, when someone tries to claim, “It’s not my religion!”, I have no issues with saying, “Yes, it is. The very rules that you depend on are the ones that provide for abuse, and your own belief structure enables every other.” Like the post title implies, does anyone really need to differentiate one fairy tale from another to make the argument that following fairy tales isn’t really beneficial to us?

The inevitable response to this accusation, naturally, is that some good comes from religion. I could be nasty and ask how one could tell it isn’t some good coming despite religion, but that’s not even necessary. It’s much simpler than that: if you’ve got some good bits, then you actually know how to find them. Perfect – you have a working brain! Keep the good bits, and get rid of the bad ones. If there are important distinctions to be made, I would certainly think that one qualifies above all others.

Most especially, while privilege is a nice thing to have, perhaps it should actually come from hard work and the efforts to improve society as a whole, rather than self-indulgence. You know, status granted by others, not by professing a personal belief system. Just a thought.

Which is, naturally, why so much of this blog deals with critical thinking; it is (part of) my own contribution towards correcting this, and an exercise in reaching people. Not to mention that critical thinking has also been remarkably informative, about nature, about behavior, and about how things work overall, so I find it pretty cool, actually. The crankiness is what led to skepticism, as I struggle to understand why people are so spastic sometimes. Belief in things without firm evidence is rampant in our society, and it does make you wonder why. Herewith, some of my musings on why this is so often seen, and how it works out that way.

First off, people are complicated. Our minds are very dynamic, having to deal with the rigors of everyday living, the propagation of the species, and the vagaries of abstract thought. A simple solution to irrationality is too much to expect, much as we’d like one, and we have so many influences on our decisions that knowing exactly what the motivation of any one aspect is would be impossible. Yet there must be at least some pattern for such behavior to be common. Much of our daily behavior, regardless of what we’re actually doing, can trace back to instinctual influences that formed the backbone of our development as a species.

This list is probably incomplete, and I may add to it later on. Not all of the items are required for belief in questionable things, and some of them are actually contradictory. While many of the influences on our behavior are the same, individuals may emphasize some over others due to their own personal experience, for example. That’s part of what makes tracking these down so hard. But take a look and see how many you recognize:

The need for simplicity: Probably the biggest contributor. We want things to be simple, understandable, easy, validating, and so on, so when we find something of this nature, we tend to stop looking. For instance, the various cancers are widespread illnesses that crop up for reasons we have little understanding of, and so we cannot plan to avoid them very well. This is frustrating, and it makes many people seize onto the false claims of alternative treatments and preventive measures. Moreover, we don’t like ambiguity, and prefer to see firm, well-delineated choices, so anything that provides this is preferable to something vague, regardless of accuracy. In reality, it’s actually safer to say that firm answers are extremely rare, and anything promising such is suspect.

Importance: Not surprisingly, we have a drive to be important, to have some kind of impact, to “make a difference.” We’d be hard-pressed to find someone who has no desire to be better than they are (and would probably worry about their mental health if we did.) From hanging out on forums about UFOs and paranormal phenomena, one of the more frequent aspects seen is the idea that believers hold a special position, able to see that which the average person cannot. In other words, they have a higher status because of their knowledge of the subject. In this way, they stand out from the “sheeple,” the masses who remain ignorant of the True Order Of Things, whether by ignorance or manipulation from some organization – the secret government, Big Pharma, Bilderberg/Illuminati/Zionists, aliens, and so on. An interesting sidenote is that our folklore is rife with the lone hero who blows apart the conspiracy or causes the collapse of the power structure, yet our history yields almost no instances of this ever happening.

“Specialness”: While related to ‘importance,’ above, this one deserves its own attention. Many of us treasure some unique experience, something that sets us apart from others, giving us knowledge and insight that they do not have. This is reflected in the near constant one-upmanship that takes place among any group of people. Note that such experiences do not have to be positive, either, and that a certain cachet is obtained from going through something traumatic or injurious – this is perhaps a reflection of how strong we are. When it comes to, for instance, seeing a UFO or surviving an illness, we tend to resist explanations that would reduce the special quality of this experience, so ideas that we were fooled by a star or recovered without the assistance of green tea are anathema.

The puzzle drive: We want answers, and we get a sense of accomplishment from finding solutions. We engage in silly games and have a fondness for mysteries precisely because of this. It would also appear that we get internal negative feedback when we cannot find answers, or are wrong. These are fantastic drives and lie behind virtually everything we’ve added to our knowledge. So when something out of the ordinary is noticed, like a puff of ‘smoke’ from the side of a collapsing building, we have some impetus to figure it out. Of course, the more complicated and difficult the puzzle, the greater the sense of accomplishment we have when we find the solution. It’s easy to see how conspiracy theories fit into this aspect, and why such elaborate machinations are advanced as solutions.

Personal accounts: We are heavily biased towards stories and experiences from someone that we know, or have simply seen (on TV for instance,) and this even extends to someone we haven’t met or seen a photo of, but that we can converse with online. Very frequently, such anecdotes will take precedence over any scientific findings or research study, regardless of how many sample points and rigorous tests such sources utilize. Perhaps this is because we trust face-to-face encounters more, and believe that better information comes from ‘real people’ and not ‘data,’ despite the fact that it is thousands of times easier for ‘real people’ to lie to us. Too often, an eyewitness account or a personal success story is viewed as sacrosanct, something that many salespeople know very well.

“It’s not my fault”: Strange as it may sound, a very significant amount of beliefs are built around the idea that, if true, it would absolve the believer of certain responsibilities, and/or explain why their lot in life wasn’t as good as it could be. The sudden surge of ‘repressed memories’ and ‘childhood sexual abuse cases’ a few decades ago was actually a symptom of this, as is a certain number of ‘alien abduction’ cases, and the idea that ‘toxins’ can explain everything that keeps us from feeling 100% healthy. The believer latches onto such things as an explanation because it gives them a reason why they might have problems with success, fitting in, and so on – something that we all deal with from time to time.

“We are being controlled”: There is a certain amount of resistance to the idea of a larger-scale society, perhaps the thought that this is a denial of free will. Governments, large corporations, and other such entities are thought to have the ability to control a populace, which to some extent is correct. While this is obviously a problem if it’s for selfish or nefarious purposes, such attributions may simply arise from the resistance to being controlled in any manner. It’s easy to see the resentment over any government that requires contributions, such as taxes, but does not act in the interests of the contributors. It’s but a tiny step into government conspiracies, which can then be used to explain the lack of evidence for any other belief as well, such as the US military suppressing the evidence of aliens.

Lost childhood: When we were young, many things were ‘magical,’ including talking on a telephone to someone thousands of kilometers away and watching batter turn into cake. So much was fascinating and ready to be discovered. As we got older, we began learning how most of it functioned, and the magic went away, replaced by science and physical laws. This sense of wonder and fascination often disappeared, and is usually missed. So when something is introduced that retains this ‘magic,’ too often we’re influenced by this desire to accept such things at face value, rather than examining it critically. This is seen in such common topics like ‘spirituality,’ and ‘other ways of knowing,’ and various realms beyond our reach. That such ideas are supported only by ancient stories or blurry photographs doesn’t ever register.

The land of milk and honey: This is a tricky one, and one that I’m not aware of any research done in the field, so a lot of this is speculation; bear with me a bit.

There is a direct relation to the ‘Lost childhood’ section above, where something fantastic or mystical lies just outside of the realm of our senses, or just beyond the reach of science. But it’s not just the pining for the awestruck days of youth – it also incorporates the drive to explore, and seek new experiences.

Many cultures are also rife with the concept of someplace nearby that is much better than normal; paradise, Avalon, valhalla, through the wardrobe, over the rainbow, behind the mountain, in the next valley, across the water, down to Ft Lauderdale, and so on. A few centuries ago, explorers sought all sorts of magical lands, from El Dorado to the Fountain of Youth, Hy-Brasil to the Kingdom of Saguenay. We are a species that explores almost entirely due to such beliefs – something pretty damn cool is just waiting to be found. Curiously, while probability indicates that the chance of finding something bad is at least as great as finding something good, we’re often more convinced that such explorations will be beneficial.

Is this a survival trait that we evolved? It’s hard to say – even though it seems to have worked, this might only be because enough of the land surrounding the African continent where mankind first arose is temperate enough to be hospitable; bear in mind that the planet is littered with failed expeditions as well. But it’s easy to see where a belief that something better is just around the corner can lead to some questionable practices, especially when so much of our planet is explored and no longer mysterious.

Is there a pattern to all of this? Unfortunately, yes: virtually everyone possesses the above traits and instincts to some degree. It seems clear that ‘belief’ isn’t a defined trait, and that we can’t pin down what makes some particular topic ‘fringe’ or ‘irrational’ – and by extension, no way to classify people as such either. The crucial factor seems only to be how well we can examine our reasons, and/or recognize that subconscious desires and emotions can affect our thinking. And as mentioned before, our ability (or lack thereof) to examine alternatives and see what might hold the most weight.

Sometimes, finding out that something is ‘human nature’ causes people to think that it’s inevitable or uncorrectable, but this is hardly the case; we have numerous traits that are human nature, yet easily controlled by rational thought. Think of our sex drive, desire for certain foods, and even the various behaviors that we vicariously enjoy through movies and books. Those things that subconsciously influence us are easily overcome by conscious action. Unfortunately, a lot of people respond to these subconscious influences by rationalizing instead, thinking that if they hold a particular view, they must have arrived there for a good, conscious reason, and this is perhaps the hardest thing to overcome. There is often a mutual support structure in place within the mind, one that isn’t going to collapse with a single piece of good evidence or a strong argument. But, these things can start the decay, and as long as someone doesn’t expect to see immediate results, these are still among the best tools to help bring about critical examination.

Seen this way, however, the crankiness with which I (and likely others) view such instances of fatuous belief is lessened considerably. People, while not exactly victims of their instincts, are nevertheless influenced in ways that they may not even be aware of, responding to the same kind in inherent goads that make birds build nests and cats bury their feces. Most, if not all, of these traits have specific benefits in the right circumstances, and evolution simply hasn’t achieved enough specificity to temper those traits in inappropriate circumstances. That’s where the rational parts of our brains come in, though sometimes it takes some gentle (or not so gentle) reminders to engage them.

Some decision-making shortcuts are this way. In all honesty, we use shortcuts all the time. Every time we use a credit or debit card, especially online, we usually have no idea if the process is truly secure, or even how to determine this other than a websearch. When we see a new food item or pharmaceutical in our local stores, we not only assume it’s safe, but effective as well. And all I really have to do is mention the word, “politics”…

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins relates a test given by psychologist George Tamarin to Israeli adolescents, just some simple questions. Presented with the scriptural account of god commanding Joshua’s followers to wipe out an entire city (but keep the valuables for god), the children were asked if such actions were actually moral, or ‘right’; it is perhaps unsurprising, yet still disturbing, that a majority considered genocide okay, largely because it was commanded by god. This is a pattern that is often repeated in discussions of religious morality with adults as well: it is moral because god commands it. When such statements are put to the test, a significant number of religious folk admit that yes, they would kill someone if commanded by god.

The interesting twist was presented to a different group of kids from the same background, where the situation was identical except for changing the circumstances to a Chinese general in ancient China. Now, however, the answer was different: a larger majority said that the actions were immoral and wrong.

The key difference here being whether god decrees it or not. So, suppose we change it from the classic ‘god/allah’ of Abrahamic scripture (‘yahweh’ or ‘YHWH’ if that helps,) to another deity: baal, or vishnu, or xuan wu, or !xu? Do the actions related within the scriptures now sound rather barbaric? Does, for instance, the complete drowning of all life on earth, save for a select breeding population, because of the sins of humans (and one must presume that it certainly could not have been all humans save for Noah’s immediate family) sound like a petulant and psychotic action, from a deity with some serious issues? Does the idea of someone who sacrifices his daughters to a horny gang to spare two total strangers the same fate sound like rewardable behavior?

The argument, when such scenarios are presented, is that god is the one true god, and god is good. But how do we even determine that? “Well, it says so right there in the scripture, which is the word of god.” That’s what we call a circular argument, exactly the same as my typing, “Al is absolutely correct in everything that he says.” No one would buy this for a second, and quite frankly, I’m glad. Yet, they build their entire lives around it when it comes to religion.

If we bother to apply just a smidgen of thought to it for a second, we find that there seems to be two definitions of ‘good’; one that deals with treating people with respect and mutual beneficence, and one that says, “what god wants,” regardless of the affect on people, even those too young and naive to understand any adult issues. As hard as this may be to believe, there are people (a lot of them) unthinking enough to hear a simple statement like, “god is good,” and actually accept that as an infallible rule over everything that common sense tells them. Imparted to them long ago as “truth,” there was never a reason to revisit it and seek support.

Isn’t that cool? All you really have to do is repeat something, especially if you call it “traditional” or “virtuous,” and you have no need to do silly little things like establish a line of reasoning or a body of evidence. It doesn’t matter how fucked up the statement really is, just keep repeating it. For good measure, tell someone that they’re good if they believe it. Start early, or course, before the child learns that adults have a tendency to lie; that way, you might be lucky (the odds are, fortunately, in your favor) and the child won’t ever revisit the statement with a thinking brain.

There are some snags, of course – you have to take the good with the bad (a ha ha.) For example, it works even with such ludicrous concepts as islamic terrorism, Irish nationalism – well, nationalism of any kind, really – and come to think of it, racism, sexism, classism, tribalism, brand loyalty… gosh, it pops up a lot, doesn’t it?

Leaving behind the sarcasm for a second, I have to point out two interesting things about this post. The first is, it’s been in draft form for a while because it wasn’t coming out as I liked; meanwhile, I had the visitor that I mentioned here, and I thus had the opportunity to bring it up with her. It’s also the reason why I make no distinction between moderate and extremist faith, regardless of what affect they seem to be having. When the primary support for a belief system (religious or not) is based upon some assertion or assumed value, then the system has a critical, fatal flaw. Moreover, there’s the bit where anyone with an agenda can manipulate people as desired, because all it takes is a new assertion. Can you say, “splinter sect?”

Worse, however, is how often this actually is recognized, not only by priests and evangelists, but by political parties in the US. Have you noticed the frequency with which the religious card is played? This is only because it is widely known that people drop all pretense of rational thought when it comes to religion, so it’s an automatic win. The candidates don’t have to worry about their policies, past record, future goals, or anything else – just mention their fealty to god, regardless of how little this has to do with the office they’re proposing to fill, and more than enough unthinking automatons will start salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. Barnum had it all wrong: there’s a sucker baptized every minute. Even among those that, as preposterous as this sounds, might have actually thought about whether merely mentioning god is sufficient, far too often this thought gets pushed away by the realization that they would then exempt themselves from being able to flash their own ‘good’ card.

It’s not just religion that exploits this trait (though by far it’s the worst offender) – the same might be said for appending the word “spiritual” to something, or “holistic,” or even “natural.” Many things are natural, including snake venom and poison ivy, salmonella and brain tumors. Yet when applied to food, for some reason, it changes definition to indicate “healthy.” Even more interesting, the very application of any of these words seems to automatically imply, to a majority of people, that anything not bearing such adjectives must therefore be unnatural, unhealthy, or some other unsavory attribute.

However, if we decide that the definition of ‘good,’ to return to the original example, reflects how we get along with one another, then distinguishing good from bad might require something more than skin color or nationality, or allegiance to a god or sports team or city where one was born. It would require seeing that some action was, oh, I don’t know, beneficial in some way. Admittedly, this is a very difficult thing to determine, and might require the consumption of three calories in thought. Here’s a wild and crazy idea to entertain, though: if someone cannot spare the effort, maybe they shouldn’t be making any decisions in the first place?

What becomes clear is that decisions are a process, a process that probably should be followed all of the time for every situation, rather than seeing if some variable factor can be jammed into a category with predetermined characteristics. Not every shortcut is a benefit; not every rule can apply to every situation, nor every pattern free from inconsistency. In the centuries that we’ve been expanding our scientific knowledge, we have only a handful of steadfast rules that appear unbreakable, most applying to physics reactions and ratios. Not one, ever, has been found to apply to human behavior – hell, we can’t even count on perfect consistency with evidence-based medicine, the kind that brought us anesthetics and decongestants. No political party could be said to be composed solely of morons, hippies, communists, or corporate shills; no scientist can ever be said to be right all of the time.

In fact, consistency and rules are so rare that it could almost be said that any time some distinct assertion is offered, it is certainly wrong. While we’d really like something dependable that never requires examination, some shortcut to save us even a tiny smidgen of time or effort, such things almost never exist – we’re better off knowing how to avoid such crutches and applying a judicial eye to everything instead. Not only does it lead to better decisions, it can save us from being pawns or schmucks as well. Even natural ones.

The first is, “How unfathomable were your odds of coming into being?” This one is annoying in that there are countless ways that this question can be interpreted, and only one is displayed. Especially painful is the tagline at the top of the infographic which reads, “…and reveals that the odds of you existing are almost zero.” This is a classic case of misinterpretation – since you’re reading this, you exist, so the odds of you actually existing are 1 in 1, alternately listed as 1:1, 1/1, or simply 1, otherwise known as “guaranteed” (Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers get it right.) The question implied by the solution is more along the lines of, “What are the odds of known variable factors within common knowledge leading to exactly your point in time, rather than some other?”, which isn’t even accurate in itself. Start with, the odds of your dad meeting your mom being, as listed, 1 in 20,000 – that’s not true at all. You have to factor in how much your dad and mom might have traveled, how big the town they lived in was, how many people worked in the same place, and so on. And since a certain percentage of people marry their childhood sweetheart, you can run some figures on how many people were in the school they attended, within a few years of age, or in the immediate neighborhood. It’s way, way off base to create a random figure of available women (or men) and assume that anyone could have met any of them, like they were playing Spin The Bottle in a very large room…

The second part of this is, you can provide any particular scenario, compared against the number of variations, and marvel lightheadedly at the number involved. What are the chances, for instance, of the atoms within your body being at exactly such-and-such coordinates at some particular picosecond, compared to anyplace else in the universe? I could produce a number even greater than that displayed by the infographic, but again, this is meaningless; in another picosecond, the atoms have shifted position and attained yet another astoundingly high number, which turns your entire life into a series of events so improbable that you should cease existence almost immediately. Then again, it’s a fairly high probability that you will be someplace on the surface of the earth, wherever it is in the universe, and so that astoundingly high number drops drastically. In grim reality, the atoms within your body are very likely to remain in the immediate vicinity, within a fraction of a millimeter of where they were before. The variations that take place, for virtually any action or process, are usually quite small from moment to moment, often influenced by environmental factors. When your body moves at all, it moves to an area immediately adjacent to where it once was, often influenced by the trend of how you had been moving previously – you don’t reverse direction or shoot off at random angles. While your overall path can vary greatly from a starting point, how it gets there is through a series of tiny variations, many of which are extremely likely. Interestingly, this is a great analogy for evolution, which produces significant changes in small increments over long periods of time.

The likelihood of you being you, as in, thinking and behaving in a certain way, is actually much higher than implied by this whole situation, as well. You probably received your education at the nearest school, and from the same parents as any siblings, and from whatever situations you might have found yourself within (say, being shipped off to summer camp.) Those factors all serve to narrow down the chances of certain outcomes; if you were born in the US, for instance, the chances of you speaking nothing but Farsi are pretty slim. The chances of you attending a summer camp in Australia, also slim – the camp you attended is probably within easy driving distance, just due to common convenience. You probably look human, breathe air, eat protein, and shit shit. If you were truly as unique as implied by the quoted figure, you probably wouldn’t even have offspring yourself, because you wouldn’t be able to find a spouse that you had anything in common with ;-)

The other post is not as bad, and even better, the commenters are doing a good job of correcting it. Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog presents a chestnut that challenges some assumptions while falling blindly into others, making kind of a mess of the whole thing. As he mentions, there’s a probability puzzle called the Monty Hall Problem, where the actual probabilities are different from what intuition tells us it should be – mostly because “Monty” knows the goal that the contestant seeks. Very briefly: you choose one of three doors that might have a prize. Monty opens one of the two remaining that you did not choose, revealing no prize. Are your chances better with switching, or staying with your original choice? Look at it this way: you had a 2 in 3 chance of being wrong initially, and if so, Monty just showed you which one to pick. The chances are slightly in your favor by switching, as long as you don’t pick the door Monty already opened…

So, a man comes up to you on the street and says, “I have two children and one is a son born on a Tuesday.” What is the probability that the other child is also a son? Most people would say 1 in 2, or 50%.

Now it gets screwed up. Jason points out that,

It follows that the sexes of his two children, ordered from oldest to youngest, are either BB, BG or GB.

But this is wrong, because the other scenario, not listed, is also Boy/Boy, only this time the son named is the youngest and not the eldest. The oldest/youngest factor is a red herring. In other words, there are only three scenarios for two kids (both girls, both boys, and one of each) and one has been eliminated. It’s still 1 in 2.

Then, he goes on to speculate what affect Tuesday has on the situation, and the chances of the other child being born on whatever day of the week. This is called needlessly multiplying probabilities, because adding further options (hair color, time of day, and so on) does not change the original factors at all.

Then, he introduces the factor of how this particular man might have been selected. Now, we’ve ventured outside of the realm of simple word problems and into real-world scenarios that we have not been given information about. “What if the man was selected because he had one son born on a Tuesday?” Yes, you can start adding in contingencies, but all this does is show that probabilities can only be calculated within rigid circumstances. I can immediately ask, “Selected from where?” and find that this experiment was done in a town with more girls than boys in the population, and the probabilities are thus biased from the 1 in 2.

The problem, for instance, never allowed for the probability that one of the children was a hermaphrodite. We have to consider that the man might be insecure (probably over the concern that his child would turn out both gay and lesbian) and thus want to prove himself Mr. Clever Dick by putting one over on a total stranger, so the likelihood that his child is hermaphroditic is even higher than the normal percentage within any given population – it’s a great opportunity for such a trick question (though rather taxing on the child who is usually called upon to prove it.) And since you are either a dick or you’re not, the chances of the man being a dick are 1 in 2, right? Unless the man is a driver in North Carolina, in which case it’s 17 in 19…

[Okay, you're going to love this. I paused and saved the draft right here, and checked my spam folder for its frequent new additions. There were two messages in there, one from a commenter with "shemale" in the name. What are the chances?!]

What all of this does serve to illustrate, however, is one way in which critical thinking can be applied, since probabilities are very frequently misused. And they can rarely be applied to a given situation with any degree of accuracy anyway, because environmental variables in real-world situations are too vast to calculate. I frequently remind people that math is an abstraction, and is only used with certain aspects being assumed or ‘given.’ Two oranges rarely ever equal twice the mass of one orange, and even the surface of the orange can only be calculated on a broad level, because at the atomic level there is little than can be measured…

This also puts paid to the claims, ever so frequently given, that the chances of such-and-such event (complex life, evolution, bacteria flagella…) occurring is a specific number, like one-in-a-billion. There is, literally, no way in which such a thing could ever be calculated, because there is no way to know all of the factors involved. Therefore, there is a 1 in 1 chance that any such quoted number has been pulled out of someone’s ass, and can safely be dismissed as a blatant lie intended to influence your thinking.

Glad to be of help.

But it seems the head honcho, Cecil Adams (which may be a pseudonym) has been slipping from such standards recently. I’ve already briefly dealt with his take on nuclear power, which completely dodged the largest issues and made some claims worthy of industry shills (look for the third highlighted link in that rather long post, if it helps.) Just a few days back, he gave his indications of wishing to rejoin lame-duck mainstream media with his slippery answer to the question, “Does god exist?”

For someone who claims to do research, Adams somehow never mentioned that his potential “proof” of god’s existence is widely known under another name, the Cosmological Argument (which I’ve also dealt with.) This is a shame, because anyone wanting to know more would find a wealth of information using that term in a search engine, most of it showing the Cosmological Argument to be the sophomoric failure that it is. Adams’ entire reason to trot this trope out is that, if we assume ‘first’ cause to mean ‘underlying’ cause, then there certainly could be something like that for the universe as we know it, and if you want to call that god, then you’re all set. As the message repeated from so many religious folk goes: stop there and don’t ask any more questions!

Because, of course, in the guise of an underlying cause, such a force is indistinguishable from the four fundamental forces, or ‘interactions’ if you prefer, that we already know and deal with constantly, two of which being gravity and electromagnetism (the other two deal with the binding of atoms.) Now, please note that Adams is not saying that something akin to gravity is created by god – he’s saying that it is god. Or could be considered that, if we found it, and we might, because there must be something.

Not a mention of how this really doesn’t represent any god that anyone invokes, ever, and even stretching like a child’s toy to elevate the mystery to supernatural status, still only constitutes a weak form of deism, unlike the monotheism that is sought in its place. Not a word about how theology is simply a method of finding a reason for an answer already decided upon. No exploiting of the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how learning, and science itself, really works, by bringing up the idea of using facts to lead towards a conclusion, and the actual existence of something (like electromagnetism) to lead into the investigations of the cause. No consideration that ‘proof’ is interchangeable with ‘preponderance of evidence,’ and doesn’t have anything to do with philosophy. Not even the simple analogy of Santa Claus and the Sandman, cultural concepts that are rampant yet, curiously enough, not supported in any way* – the reader may draw their own parallels.

I’ll be fair: Adams might have shied away (or been chased away by his editor) from simply saying, “No.” Even most atheists have been far too accommodating in allowing how a definitive statement of god’s non-existence is logically impossible, though we have no trouble whatsoever with saying the exact same thing about Santa and the Easter Bunny. We do this because the lack of evidence, and the historical sources of such stories, is enough to make the simple statement that they do not exist, and fretting about this being a definitive absolute truth statement is what we get to see instead of a decent argument for actual existence (much less evidence.) Most of the people on the planet do the exact same thing with god – just not the god they believe in, but each and every one of the other gods throughout history and cultures which they examined just as closely as their own (which is, “not at all.”)

But let’s be real, Adams’ answer is not dodging the issue; it’s actually paying lip-service to a puerile concept that is logically, rationally, and scientifically corrupt. It not only has absolutely no reason to be invoked, it doesn’t even work as intended. And in an age when fundamentalists are trying every trick in the book to get accepted, and with elections rolling around, what we really need is some straight-forward, hard-hitting commentary, and even just a simple demonstration that critical thinking is a good thing. Instead, we get Cecil Adams’ featherbrained sellout. And he gets paid for it, too.

* Yes, I know there is historical evidence for Saint Nicholas. That’s not who children think is supposed to be coming down the chimney, is it? Plus, I’m sure we can all agree that he’s gone now, right?

A prime example was recently discussed at EvolutionBlog and Why Evolution Is True. We have, yet again, some religious apologists making a case for biblical scripture being figurative, rather than either metaphorical or literal, and chastising anyone for not taking this into account. And this is simply a variation of every theological argument proposed in the last century. What’s missing, and what is always missing from every assertion of this kind, is any reason whatsoever to believe it. This discussion shouldn’t even be happening, but it is, solely because we’re being too goddamn nice about it.

Let’s pin it down specifically: the bible is wrong. The earth is not flat, the sky is not a ceiling, light comes from stars, humans evolved and are much older than scripture relates, birds did not form from the air and mammals did not form from the dirt, and on and on and on. Every last thing that it states, that was not obvious to the people living at the time, is wrong. That’s a hell of a lousy track record. We have tons of facts to support this rampant inaccuracy too. Tellingly, this is pretty well established now even among most theologians. Which is where the special cases start rolling in.

“But,” the theologians trumpet, “the bible is not meant to be taken literally!” Which is a crying shame, I think, for everyone in the fifteen to twenty centuries before they arrived at this remarkable conclusion, because every religious person did believe it was literal before then. Absolutely no one, not one theologian, proposed that scripture was not a (divinely dictated, mind you) accurate historical document – it was only when we ran into distinct issues with what was related therein that someone suddenly announced the particularly literary devices of “figurative” or “metaphor.”

Now, there are good reasons to use both figurative speech and metaphors, but only when the reader can actually see them for what they are. Mistaking them for fact means they haven’t been used effectively, which makes the bible the least successful piece of literature in history. Perhaps this means that god is indeed perfect, but his editors suck balls? [There's a straw for the theologians to grasp desperately at, free of charge.] Moreover, figurative and metaphorical writing usually have a particular structure to them, something that easily denotes “fable” but allows the reader to make a comparison to real-world situations. In other words, they’re used for fiction. There aren’t too many historical documents written figuratively, nor any freaking reason to do so. In fact, it’s probably the last thing you would want to do when providing historical information, except for perhaps writing it in Pig Latin.

So, cards on the table and– oh, look! An elephant, right here in the room! Such claims for literary devices within scripture are simply desperate measures to try and rescue a belief system from its fatal flaws. You know it; I know it; they know it. It’s infantile and petty. Why should we have to provide some kind of respect to anyone who proposes such, as if the idea has the least little merit? Why, even, should we listen to any explanation from someone before they have managed to convince all of the other theologians, so there’s at least consistency in the approach? Does it serve some purpose to listen to every insipid guess at why such scripture appears grossly inaccurate, from someone who does not even have the basic honesty to consider that it appears inaccurate because it’s simply made up? Why, pray tell, should atheists feel obligated to be the only ones in the room with an open mind? Is this getting us anywhere?

Just blurting out some excuse isn’t enough. There has to be a reason why such a situation would be not only evident, but preferred. Seeing such aspects as “the fall” and “original sin” as only metaphors means that they do not have the properties they had when literal, which completely trashes their value in the first place. Why should anyone need a savior when the threat isn’t real? Large sections of scripture are intended, so we’re told, to be the operating manual of mankind, yet they’re wishy-washy and vague? Okay, someone may be vapid enough to believe such a premise (or, more likely, too lazy to ever examine it in the first place,) but it’s insulting to expect everyone else to be as stupid. Worse, that we’re not being fair in considering it. I’m funny this way, but I think treating a stupid idea as stupid is the very definition of fair.

A theory is not composed of one stab in the dark. It must explain all of the evidence that we have, and logically produce the results. If that legwork hasn’t been done by the supposed masterbrain forwarding the proposal, there’s no point in wasting any time at all listening to them. We should feel completely free to tell them to go home, do the whole problem, show their work, and above all, convince the majority of chuckleheads who even want to believe scripture in the first place that this is a viable theory, before attempting to put it past those who really couldn’t care less and have absolutely no use for it. Because, and I know this comes as a shock, the world works just fine without mythology, and proving scripture provides value only to those who stand to gain some power or indulgence from it. Claims of moral guidance have had two thousand years to establish themselves as valid – that’s probably a sufficient length of time to see that they’re not working as planned.

Perhaps it’s time to stop being polite by letting every nitwit with a sudden idea blather about literary devices and special rules, and instead require some distinct benefit to be proposed, from the very start. Everything else works that way. I think it’s time for theologians to grow up and take responsibility.