How Science Works (And Why Creationism Doesn't) - The Peer Review Process Explained

What exactly is peer review?

Flickr/AJ Cann, CC BY-SA

10 Stages of the Peer Review Process: A Step-by-Step Guide for Authors | The International journal of Innovative Research & Development

Creationist frauds tell their dupes that the scientific process of peer review, is a device to ensure conformity to scientific dogma and to prevent unorthodox (i.e., creationist) opinions from being published in respected journals.

This helps maintain the delusion that there is real scientific support for creationism and that many more scientists are really creationists than is apparent from the scientific literature.

It also plays to conspiracism, which is a normal component of creationism, caused by the same childish teleological thinking defect in an adult, by helping to maintain the delusion that scientists and publishers of scientific journals, periodicals and books, and their staff, are all part of a gigantic international Satanic conspiracy to turn people away from God and destroy people's trust in the church and the Bible.

The truth is that peer review is simply a device to ensure the research was conducted with sufficient rigor and proper controls, that the authors have provided the required standard of evidence to support their claims and that their conclusions are indeed supported by the evidence. It also helps insure against plagiarism since the expert reviewers will very likely be aware of the work of others in their field of expertise.

Here, for example is the peer-review process as outlined in a blog by the International Journal of Innovative Research and Development (IJIRD):

Basic Logic for Creationists - Lesson From Pompeii

As a service to creationists, I decided to provide a little explanation, by way of an example, of how deductive logic works.

No doubt, inspired by Ken Ham's stock method for dismissing historical evidence as an explanation for the present, by dismissing anything that hasn't been directly witnessed by the person advancing it with, "Were you there?", one creationist recently made the astonishing claim on Twitter in the tweet below.

"Timothy", known variously as "Dim Tim", "Dimmy" and "Tiny Tim" uses multiple accounts to try to advance creationism, usually making himself a laughing stock in the process. He appears to be a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, being incapable of ever admitting that he could be wrong, no matter how blatantly he is so.

You Can't Blame Loonies on The Full Moon

OMG! The Lamb of God has appeared on the end of the Isle of Wight!
This must be a sign!

Stop blaming the moon: Intelligent people can develop strong entirely incorrect beliefs -- ScienceDaily

An article published a few days ago in Nursing Research shows how easy it is for people to misinterpret data to see a pattern where there is none. Professor Jean-Luc Margot took the data used in a 2004 paper which purported to show a correlation between the number of people admitted to an emergency department suffering from gastro-intestinal bleeding and the incidence of full moons.

The errors came from imprecision with the method

Maths For Christian Students

Inspired by the introduction to the two-volume Biology for Christian Students, I thought I would produce a little maths primer for Christian students based on the same principle. Creationist homeschoolers will find it especially useful.

The introduction to the Christian biology book, written by creationist Stephen S. Pinkston and publish by Bob Jones University, states on page 1:

1. 'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take..."
2. If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.
3. Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible.

The Bottle of Milk Delusion - Why Prayers Always Work.

I don't claim original authorship of the argument here, but I think it's worth a little elaboration. I'm assuming, by the way, that an Islamic argument to prove Allah always answers prayer would be very similar if not identical. Indeed, there doesn't appear to be any other possibility for what could happen as a result of prayer.

No doubt some Christians will argue that there are more ways that their god answers prayers, such as the five here, where there are three yesses (somethining else happens; something happens and them something else happens; the thing happens) or the four here ("I can't hear you!" although how that differs from "No", and how the faithful tell the difference is beyond me). I wish they would make their mind up. Perhaps they are talking about different gods.

But in any case, all of these can be arbitrarily ascribed to a bottle of milk too, or any other object, animate or inanimate, animal vegetable or mineral or any combination of those for that matter.

Wandering Stones - A Lesson for Creationists

'Wandering stones' of Death Valley explained : Nature News & Comment

The 'mystery' of the 'Wandering Stones' of Death Valley, California has been definitively solved by, surprise! surprise!, science - and there is a subtle but crushing lesson for creationists and other magical thinkers in the mystery. Actually, the stones aren't in Death Valley but in Racetrack Playa in a valley in nearby mountains. The mystery was how they move across the flat dried-up lakebed, apparently without any assistance.

The answer had been proposed earlier but observation - the basis of all good science - has finally proved that thin ice sheets form when the normally dry ancient lakebed floods to a depth of a few centimeters and then freezes

Eelgrass And Circular Reasoning

Mysterious rings explaines

ScienceShot: Mysterious Underwater Circles Explained | Science/AAAS | News

The thing about geometric shapes like circles is that they look designed. They look as though something intelligent made them deliberately.

A few years ago a tourist took some photographs of mysterious rings that had appeared in the sea near the chalk cliffs of the island of Møn in the Baltic Sea and a host of magical theories, conspiracy theories and other wacky notions sprang up, all claimed to be the cause of the circles and the circles to be evidence of the cause. Each theory (and I use the term in its non-scientific sense here) claimed to be the cause of the rings and claimed the rings to be proof of the theory.

Is God Omni-Irrational?

Enjoying the sun on the terrace of our gite in France the other day (sniff) I came across the following passage in The Grand Deception: Fallacies in Theology and Faith, by Christopher Kragel:

In order for God to be considered as the complete manifestation of goodness, he would not be able to do anything considered evil. Since God is omnipotent, he should be able to do anything, even that which is considered evil. We see contradictory traits here, as being omnipotent conflicts with that of being completely good. Can God do an evil action? It would seem that one of his bestowed traits of omni-ism has failed him here, since he is in fact incapable of committing certain actions. Either God is not completely good or he is not omnipotent; these are not cohering traits.

Kragel, Christopher (2012-12-25). The Grand Deception : Fallacies in Theology and Faith (Kindle Locations 865-869). Kindle Edition.

Of course he is right: if there is anything a god can't do, it is not omnipotent. Conversely, an omnipotent god can think and do evil. This is just one example of the muddle theists get themselves into when they try to flatter their imaginary gods with unbounded characteristics like omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, etc., but fail to apply even a modicum of logic.

With this in mind I started to compile a list of logical fallacies theists have got themselves into with this lack of clarity of thought and insistence on omni everything for their own favourite god or gods.

Omni-merciful.
Muslims especially are fond of telling us how their god is all or infinitely merciful yet they also tell us he is also the most just. As Dan Barker pointed out in Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists, a god can't be both. If it is infinitely merciful it will forgive everything and not exact any punishment for anything, yet to be perfectly just means that the punishment will be exactly proportional to the crime. Clearly, it can't both punish and forgive everything so one or the other claim must be false.

Incidentally, an infinitely merciful god would forgive non-belief and even belief in another god. No behaviour would exclude you from Heaven so there would be no need to worship, rituals, or even basic standards of behaviour to get to Heaven. It would make not one iota of difference how you behaved in life.

Omnipotent
Not only does being omnipotent mean that a god can't not think or do evil, it also means it could both make an object too heavy for it to lift and not be able to make such an object, at the same time. In either case its power would be constrained, and a god with constrained powers is clearly not in full control and is subject to some superior power or principle.

Omniscience
Christians, Muslims and Jews, almost without exception, will claim their god knows everything. This means it not only knows everything that has happened but it also knows everything that will happen. But knowing everything that will happen means the god in question has no free will. Combine this with omni-infallibility or inerrancy and you have a totally powerless god with no free will. It is merely an observer of events and had no more power than a rock on the Moon. It exists in a pre-ordained, unchangeable Universe in which all the future is fixed, otherwise something could happen that the god didn't know would happen so it would be neither omniscient nor infallible.

Claiming their god has the power of prophecy is another form of the claim to omniscience. A god which can accurately prophesy the future, either directly or via a prophet, must exist in a predictable Universe, yet a predictable Universe can't be changed in any way after the prophecy is made or the future becomes unknowable, so the god is rendered impotent and ineffective. If the Universe remains changeable the god won't be able to make accurate prophecies.

Yet all three major Abrahamic religions as well as Sikhism, and many minor sects such as Mormonism, claim to have been founded by prophets!

Omnibenevolence
This claim is perhaps the most obvious example of a religious claim being made which simply defies glaring evidence to the contrary, especially when, as it it invariably is, it is combined with a claim of omnipotence and omniscience. It is indisputable that suffering and want exist in the Universe, not just for humans but for all forms of life, yet an omnibenevolent, omnipotent god would not permit them to. It follows from the existence of suffering and want that, if a god exists it:

• Is aware of it yet is powerless to prevent it, so is not omnipotent.
• Is aware of it but is indifferent to it, so is not omnibenevolent.
• Is unaware of it, so is not omniscient (nor omnipotent since an inability to know shows a lack of power).

But you have to question whether these universal claims made by all major religions about their gods' qualities and character are genuinely believed or merely attempts to flatter and mollify the gods in question. If they really believe them, why do they pray to these gods? Prayer is only necessary if you don't trust the god to made the right decision or to be aware of what is happening.

It betrays a lack of trust in the god's omniscience to tell it about something, such as your love for it or your gratitude, or that something unwanted is happening, like a disease or a natural disaster. An omniscient god would be aware of these things.

It betrays a lack of trust in the god's benevolence to request it to change something for the better because an omnibenevolent god would ensure only the best best was happening anyway.

It betrays a lack of trust in the god's omnipotence to think that it needs human intervention and praise to empower it.

So the only omni which seems to fit gods accurately is that of omni-irrationality, or rather omni-irrationality is the belief in such gods in the first place.

But maybe Christians, Jews, Muslims or Sikhs can explain away these beliefs and show how belief in such gods is rational. I think people will understand if you can't. Religion is nothing if not irrational, hence the need for 'faith' in the absence of any evidence and the need for apologetics when even faith isn't good enough.

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Circular Reasoning

I'm amazed that anyone needs to explain the logical fallacy of the circular argument but the frequency with which you see it being employed, often in all seriousness by (presumably) otherwise normally functioning adults to defend religion, suggest many people either genuinely don't understand it, or are using in dishonestly, hoping their audience won't understand it.

Circular reasoning (also known as paradoxical thinking or circular logic), is a logical fallacy in which "the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with". The individual components of a circular argument will sometimes be logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, and will not lack relevance. Circular logic cannot prove a conclusion because, if the conclusion is doubted, the premise which leads to it will also be doubted. Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.

God's Inerrant Omniscience Revisited

I wonder if Christians can do any better now.

Almost three years ago I wrote a blog pointing out the logical impossibility of an omniscient, inerrant god coexisting with free will - see On The Logical Fallacy Of God's Inerrant Omniscience. Despite several comments varying in absurdity, and many comments demonstrating a lack of logical thinking, no one has yet managed to refute the logic of my argument.

It might be worth recapping the salient point again, to see if any believers can explain how these two central tenets of Christian dogma, which appear to be mutually contradictory, are logically consistent. Failing that, perhaps an explanation of how holding two mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously is not indicative of intellectual dishonesty and of the self-deceiving nature of the mental process involved in religious faith.

To recap:

• An omniscient (all-knowing) god would know every detail of your future, including the outcome of all decisions you will ever make. It will have known this for eternity. If not, then it isn't omniscient.
• An inerrant god would never be wrong so it cannot 'know' something which turns out to be untrue.
• Given these two conditions, it is not possible for you to make a decision which this god has not always known you will make.
• Given these two conditions, such a god can not 'know' a decision which you do not in fact make.

To apply this to a trivial, everyday example: suppose this god has always known that you will have eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Can you chose not to have eggs and have cereal, or toast or waffles, or anything else instead, or even decide to skip breakfast altogether? If you do, this god cannot be omniscient. If you can't, you do not have free will.

Remember, this god can't, as some have argued, 'know' all your possible decisions so whichever you chose will be right. This would mean that whatever decision you make, the god would be wrong about all the others. In fact, given that there are masses of possible 'right' answers for every real right one, it would be far more often wrong than right - which is never good for the reputation of an 'omniscient' god.

But, if you believe in a god like this and also believe you have free will, how can you do something your god hasn't always known you will do? If you can't, in what sense of the word 'free' do you have free will?

Here then is a simple challenge for Christians (Muslims and Jews who believe in the same god might like to try it too):

Give a single example of someone exercising free will by not doing something an omniscient, inerrant, eternal god would always have known they would do.

Or give a single example of someone exercising free will by doing something an omniscient, inerrant, eternal god would not always have known they would do.

Simple, eh? All you have to do is to give a single example of something happening that is central to your faith, and which you have probably taken for granted.

Why is this important?

Because, if the Christian god isn't omniscient it doesn't know what's going on and is not in control of the Universe. Such a god is not worth praying to because, to change events it would have to be aware of them and in full control of them. This god would be a mere observer, having no more power than the spectators at a ball game have.

If you don't have free will, then everything about the Universe is pre-determined. It makes not one iota of difference what you do or say and you cannot be held responsible for anything you do, let alone be accountable for the 'original sin'. There is no 'sin', no need for you to seek 'redemption', no need for forgiveness of sin, and so no reason for Jesus. Whatever you do or say was merely what you were predestined to do or say.

Curiously, this is actually pretty much what the Bible says too:

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.

All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope — even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-5:

In other words, unless you can meet this simple challenge and resolve the fatal contradiction between free will and an omniscient, inerrant god, you have no basis for your faith because your faith has no basis and the Bible has lied about one or the other, or both.

The other little problem for Christians (and Muslims and Jews for that matter) is that if the presence of an omniscient god means there is no free will, then that also holds true for gods. An omniscient god must also exist in a predestined Universe and so would have no free will either.

A god with no free will is no god at all. A god with no free will cannot have decided to create anything.

Another little problem for Christians of course, is that if they can't answer these questions they are showing the world, even if they can't admit it to themselves, that they know their 'faith' is phoney.

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Top 10 Reasons to Take Pascal's Wager

Blaise Pascal (1623-1672)

Pascal's Wager (or Gambit) basically argues that, since you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from believing in God (Pascal never specified which one), your safest bet is to believe.

Here are the top ten reasons you should play Pascal's Gambit:

1. Gods are not really all-knowing and don't know what you are thinking, so they won't realise you are just pretending.
2. Someone told you Pascal's Gambit is a good idea and you just can't be bothered to think through the consequences of it.
3. The Gambit works on any god, so you don't need to bother which is the real one or even if any of them are. Just talk about 'God' and it'll think you're talking about it.
4. The Gambit works best on gods which admire dishonesty so chose one which has shown itself to be dishonest and proud of it.
5. The less intelligent the god the better the Gambit works, so it's best to chose a really thick god although playing the Gambit in the first place shows you think none of them are too bright.
6. The Gambit assumes you can put one over on the god in question, so chose a god who doesn't mind you thinking you are smarter than it is, or one which is too stupid to realise that you think you are.

Why Your God Doesn't Exist

It's quite easy to prove logically that your god doesn't exist.

The proof is a simple deduction from certain basic assumptions which themselves are only assumptions in the sense of assuming the description you use for your god is true in the first instance. It goes without saying that if your description of your god is false then the god you are describing is also false.

Let's assume your god is real and has the following notional characteristics.

God is:

• Omnipotent - all powerful - there is nothing your god can't do.
• Omniscient - all knowing - there is nothing your god doesn't know.
• Omni-benevolent - all-loving - there is nothing your god wouldn't do to defend and protect its creation.

Okay so far? Is there anything you disagree with here? Is there something your god can't do if it has a mind to? Is there anything your god doesn't know? How about all loving? Is there anything or anyone your god doesn't love and for whom it has anything less than the greatest possible concern?

If all these were true there would be no suffering in the world because your god would be aware of it, would want to prevent it and would have the power to do so.

It also follows that, if there is suffering in the world, at least one of the above must be false and if one of the above is false, the god you believe in does not have the characteristics you believe it has; in other words, the god you believe in does not exist

And yet we can see suffering exists. This is an observable, undeniable, inescapable fact.

For suffering to exist, your god must be deficient in at least one of the above. At least one of the following must be true. God is:

• Unable to prevent it, so it isn't omnipotent.
• Unaware of it, so it isn't omniscient.
• Unconcerned about it, so it isn't all-loving

So, the undeniable existence of suffering in the world proves your god as described above does not exist.

Strange then that so much of your time is spent asking your god to either stop, reduce or prevent suffering, which is nothing more than tacit acceptance that an omniscience, omnipotent, omni-benevolent god doesn't exist.

Of course, you can escape the above logic by saying your god isn't omnipotent, isn't omniscience and/or isn't omni-benevolent, but a god who can't change things, doesn't know when they need to be changed and/or isn't bothered anyway, isn't much of a god and certainly not one worthy of worship. In fact, it's hard to imagine how we could distinguish such a god from a non-existent one.

I love these simple little proofs that gods don't exist. They are so much more elegant and simple than the cumbersome, convoluted and illogical 'proofs' which religious apologists have to try to get away with. That's the great thing about being supported by evidence, reason, logic and truth, and so not needing to fall back on the fallacy of faith and having to employ charlatans to make you feel better about being superstitious.

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Cutting Out Gods With Ockham's Razor

Many readers will be familiar with the logical device known as 'Ockham's Razor' and how it can be used to eliminate bias and unnecessary complexity in the explanation of anything. This is aimed at those who aren't, and especially those who don't understand how, properly used, it invariably removes gods or other supernatural entities from any explanation of any phenomenon.

Briefly, 'Ockham's Razor' says entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily - in other words, no explanation should include unnecessary steps or the existence of unnecessary components; the most parsimonious explanation in competing hypotheses is most likely to be the correct one.

First the background:

William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham, or several other spellings; c. 1288 – c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey.^[1] He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although he is commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April.^[2]

Source: Wikipedia - William of Ockham

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William of Ockham... is remembered as an influential Roman Catholic philosopher and nominalist, though his popular fame as a great logician rests chiefly on the maxim attributed to him and known as Ockham's razor. The term razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions.

This maxim seems to represent the general tendency of Occam's philosophy, but it has not been found in any of his writings. His nearest pronouncement seems to be Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate [Plurality must never be posited without necessity], which occurs in his theological work on the 'Sentences of Peter Lombard'.^[3]

The words attributed to Occam, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem [entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity], are absent in his extant works; this particular phrasing owes more to John Punch.^[4] Indeed, Ockham's contribution seems to be to restrict the operation of this principle in matters pertaining to miracles and God's power: so, in the Eucharist, a plurality of miracles is possible, simply because it pleases God.

This principle is sometimes phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate [plurality should not be posited without necessity]. In his Summa Totius Logicae, i. 12, Ockham cites the principle of economy, Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora [It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer].^[4]

Source: Wikipedia - Ockham's Razor

Which is a long-winded way to state the basic principle, "keep it simple, stupid".

So how does that get rid of gods and other hypothetical supernatural entities from the explanation for natural phenomena?

Take, for example, a common theological argument that the Bible or Qur'an were dictated or inspired by a god and that their survival over a long period of history is due to their divine status - which is itself evidence of their divine status.

Apart from:

• The circularity of the argument;
• The fact that there are many other surviving documents and inscriptions not claimed to be divinely inspired, some older than the Bible and Qur'an;
• The fact that it can be used for literally any old books;
• The fact that there appears to be no particular date before which divine intervention is needed to ensure conservation but after which supernatural intervention need not be hypothecated.

there are of course many possible perfectly natural explanations for the survival of ancient documents, including the operation of pure chance. Indeed the explanation may, and probably does, differ for different documents, but let's stick to the Bible and Qur'an and construct a pair or hypotheses to see how Ockham's Razor can be used to separate them and point to the most vicarious (therefore most likely to be correct) one.

1. People considered them sacred and so looked after them and made copies of them.
2. A god told people they were sacred and that they should look after them and make copies of them.

We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us mortals. It seems better to employ the principle known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory which cannot be observed.

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

The difference between 1 and 2 of course is that 2 includes a god, yet this adds nothing to an already complete explanation and indeed it had to include 1.

Including a god simply adds an additional entity. It also includes an entity for which no explanation is possible and which is untestable and unfalsifiable. Indeed it is now necessary to explain something vastly more complex than the phenomenon originally being explained - the survival of (copies of) old documents.

To reach a complete explanation which includes a god we also need to produce independent evidence for the existence of this god and an explanation of its origins and modus operandum. How exactly did it communicate this instruction and where is the evidence that it was ever conveyed? To whom and when?

So, in addition to the god the explanation now includes a whole lot of new entities, all needing to be there to justify including a god in the first place, when the natural explanation in 1 was perfectly adequate.

This is precisely what religious apologists do when they insert gods into gaps in scientific theories, real or imaginary. Including an infinitely complex god in any explanation simply because you want it to be there invariably adds an infinite complexity to the explanation when the natural explanation, whenever it has been found and a god has been evicted from yet another gap, has always turned out to be relatively simple and rational in comparison to a hypothetical god.

Ockham's Razor, properly applied, will invariably pare gods away from any explanation because the inclusion of gods multiplies entities infinitely and unnecessarily. There is never an excuse for insisting an entity be included in any explanation just because you like it and want it to be included.

In pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, necessity has nothing to do with your superstition, your need for an imaginary friend, your need to excuse otherwise unacceptable attitudes and behaviour and/or your need to earn a living selling superstitions to gullible and vulnerable people. And it has nothing to do with your inability to accept that your mummy and daddy could have been wrong.

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Hard Questions For Christians

It's obvious from watching the daily interchanges between Christians and non-believers in social media like Twitter and Reddit that there are several question which any but the most stupid Christians simply will not answer, not even to say they don't know the answer.

It seems what they crave more than anything is certainty. Anything, even thinking of how to answer some questions, will not be permitted if it would introduce the slightest uncertainty. Either that, or they know the question exposes an invalid assumption, even a lie, in their faith.

The closer you get to the heart of their 'faith' the more defensive they become and the less likely you are to get an honest answer without having to wade through torrents of prevarication and diversionary tactics, often descending into abuse, condescension, indignation and accusations of persecution, or excuses to break off the conversation and offers to "agree to disagree".

All Arguments For God Refute God

You have to pity religious people who get their religion from a book.

Consider the following statements:

All the evidence for [favourite god] is in [favourite holy book] which is the word of [favourite god].

Well, that isn't much good because no holy book has ever managed to convince anything like a majority of people so it can't have been written by an omniscient god. Besides, it should be manifestly obvious to anyone that no book or mere piece of writing can be proof of its own truth, not even when it claims it is, otherwise anyone could create truth merely by writing it down and saying it's true. For example, this blog is all true because I said so and I should know, I created it. Convinced?

So, no holy book alone can be proof of a god.

Creationism's Laughably Absurd Hypothesis

One of the most dishonest and yet probably the most frequent arguments religions use in support of their own particular creator god is the argument from improbability.

Briefly, the argument from improbability says that such-and-such an event is so enormously unlikely that it couldn't just happen by chance, so there must have been a creator, or, in the words of Creationism's under-cover wing, 'Intelligent Design', an intelligent designer (i.e the god they are trying hard not to mention). Events such as the origin of life, the origin of the first cell, a human body, the human brain, a tree, etc, etc, etc, will be cited ad nauseum. This argument is, of course, used for any god by any religion which has a creator god. The actual god doesn't matter; you're just expected to assume it's their favourite one.

The appeal of this argument seems to depend on both ignorance and arrogance for its success. It seems to give its proponents the spurious satisfaction of having an argument which simultaneously circumvents and dismisses the need to bother with all that learning and yet enables them to present themselves as knowing more and having greater insight and understanding than those who do so bother. And yet, as Richard Dawkins pointed out in "The God Delusion", properly deployed, the argument from improbability comes close to proving that God does not exist.

But it is, of course, invariably a straw man argument combined with a false dichotomy. Biology does not make any claim that cells or bodies, brains or trees, or even the first replicators spontaneously self-assembled by chance. So the choice is not between random and hugely unlikely chance or design/intent. It is between random chance, intelligent designer or a process of natural selection over a very long time. For some reason, religious apologists and Creationists conveniently forget to include Natural Selection either because they don't understand it or don't want you to.

I'll let Richard Dawkins, quoted from "The God Delusion" in Christopher Hitchin's book, "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For The Non-Believer", explain it:

The Ultimate Boeing 747

The argument from improbability is the big one. In the traditional guise of the argument from design, it is easily today’s most popular argument offered in favor of the existence of God and it is seen, by an amazingly large number of theists, as completely and utterly convincing. It is indeed a very strong and, I suspect, unanswerable argument — but in precisely the opposite direction from the theist’s intention. The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist. My name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit.

The name comes from Fred Hoyle’s amusing image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard. I am not sure whether Hoyle ever wrote it down himself, but it was attributed to him by his close colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe and is presumably authentic. Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility. The odds against assembling a fully functioning horse, beetle, or ostrich by randomly shuffling its parts are up there in 747 territory. This, in a nutshell, is the creationist’s favourite argument—an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas—in the relevant sense of chance—it is the opposite.

The creationist misappropriation of the argument from improbability always takes the same general form, and it doesn't make any difference if the creationist chooses to masquerade in the politically expedient fancy dress of “intelligent design” (ID). Some observed phenomenon—often a living creature or one of its more complex organs, but it could be anything from a molecule up to the universe itself—is correctly extolled as statistically improbable. Sometimes the language of information theory is used: the Darwinian is challenged to explain the source of all the information in living matter, in the technical sense of information content as a measure of improbability or “surprise value.” Or the argument may invoke the economist’s hackneyed motto: there’s no such thing as a free lunch — and Darwinism is accused of trying to get something for nothing. In fact, as I shall show in this chapter, Darwinian natural selection is the only known solution to the otherwise unanswerable riddle of where the information comes from. It turns out to be the God Hypothesis that tries to get something for nothing. God tries to have his free lunch and be it too. However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.

The argument for improbability states that complex things could not have come about by chance. But many people define “come about by chance” as “a synonym for come about in the absence of deliberate design.” Not surprisingly, therefore, they think improbability is evidence of design. Darwinian natural selection shows how wrong this is with respect to biological improbability. And although Darwinism may not be directly relevant to the inanimate world — cosmology, for example — it raises our consciousness in areas outside its original territory of biology.

A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance, and teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increasing complexity. Before Darwin, philosophers such as Hume understood that the improbability of life did not mean it had to be designed, but they couldn’t imagine the alternative. After Darwin, we all should feel, deep in our bones, suspicious of the very idea of design. The illusion of design is a trap that has caught us before, and Darwin should have immunized us by raising our consciousness. Would that he had succeeded with all of us.

Hitchens, Christopher (2007-12-10).
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For The Non-Believer (pp. 288-289). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

So:

1. We can agree with Creationists that random chance is far too unlikely to be the explanation. No argument there; it's just too daft for words. Invoking random chance as the explanation for anything of very much complexity is probably the daftest argument you can come up with. Let's call this 'The Laughably Absurd Hypothesis'.
2. We know that there is a perfectly well described and understood process called Natural Selection which we can observe, and which is probably the most tested, robust and evidentially supported theory in the whole of science and which we know is quite capable of producing huge complexity over time. Let's call this 'The Very Probable Hypothesis'.
3. We have a vague, very incomplete and poorly described Intelligent Designer Hypothesis. The problem with this is that it collapses immediately under the weight of the very problem it purports to solve. It requires us to abandon the idea that hugely complex things are very unlikely to spontaneously self-assemble - the thing we were trying to explain - and adopt instead the notion that 'The Laughably Absurd Hypothesis' is not only not too daft for words but that somehow it's now the best explanation available and a vastly complex intelligent designer, complete with all the information necessary to create the universe and everything in it, spontaneously self-assembled and did so before there was anything out of which it could be assembled - which is of course logically absurd on so many levels - and Creationists themselves are forever assuring us that you can't get something from nothing. Let's call this 'The Logically Impossible Hypothesis'.

Now, the task for those Creationists who have managed to get this far before closing the page in embarrassment is this:

Explain please, why your 'Logically Impossible Hypothesis' should be taken seriously by anyone with an IQ higher than that of a thick plank, and in what way it is superior to either of the other two.

If you can't, which of the other two competing hypotheses do you think is most likely to be the true description of how complex things arise: The Laughably Absurd one or The Very Probable one?

Take your time.

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Evolution For Creationists Who Can Recite Jack & Jill

Okay! If you're still having a problem understanding evolution, try this mind experiment. It should only take a few minutes.

Imagine you have thousands of robots which have only three instructions:

1. If you can, step up.
2. Never step down.
3. Otherwise move in random directions.

Now, place those robots randomly in a landscape which includes hills and valleys, a bit like the one on the right, and leave them to wander around for a few months.

Now answer these two questions:

1. Where will your robots be when you go and look for them?
2. Will they still be randomly distributed in the landscape?

Correct answers win the Grand Old Duke Of York Award for understanding evolution.

For those few who still don't get it, I'll explain it in a few days.

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Shifting The Burden

You see, if, in all seriousness, I claimed I have an undetectable hippo in my loft, challenged you to prove it didn't exist, and then claimed it must exist because you can't prove it doesn't, you'd probably think I was off my trolley and had lost my marbles.

Unless you're a religious fundamentalist that is.

If you are, you'd immediately recognise this argument as identical to the one you very probably use when confronted by Atheists. Almost invariably, you'll insist your god exists and challenge them to prove it doesn't, then claim it must exist if it can't be disproved.

If you're an honest religious fundamentalist, that is.

If you're a dishonest one you'll deny your argument is identical in logic to my silly hippo-in-my-loft argument and then try to bring in other arguments, change the subject and avoid dealing with the logical fallacy you've been caught trying to get away with.

Actually, it's not so much a logical fallacy as a dishonest tactic designed to overcome the fact that the perpetrator believe in something for which they have no supporting evidence. It betrays the fact that they know they have as much evidence for their god as they have for fairies, or I for my undetectable loft-hippo.

It's called shifting the burden. It's the tactic of making a claim you know you can't substantiate and then trying to divest yourself of the moral obligation to substantiate it. It's no different morally to going into court and claiming the accused is guilty, then challenging them to prove their innocence because you know you have no evidence. Another name for this tactic is 'bearing false witness'. It's implicitly claiming you have evidence for something for which you know you have no evidence.

Some examples of fundamentalists bearing false witness can be seen here:

For example, 18.How do we know the supernatural does not exist? The answer of course is that we don't. Dr Saunders is implicitly claiming it does and divesting himself of the responsibility of substantiating his claim, almost certainly because he knows he can't.

Dr Peter Saunders. Twenty questions Atheists struggle to answer

Here's the great Mat Dillahunty dealing with someone who's trying it on him:

To be fair to many fundamentalists, they probably don't realise they're being intellectually dishonest. They're probably just aping the tactics of the charlatan who fooled them with it in the first place and lack the intellectual integrity or ability to analyse the tactic and see it for the trick it really is.

You can see these unfortunate people almost daily rushing onto Twitter, Facebook, or other social media eager to try out their new killer argument having seen one of their heroes use it.

Hopefully, this article will help them see where they've been fooled and maybe come to terms with the fact that this is probably their best 'argument' for their god's existence and it simply serves to highlight the fact that they don't have one.

So, here's my top tip for fundamentalists who may be tempted to try this shifting the burden trick. If you can think of a logical reason why my claim to have an undetectable hippo in my loft isn't proven just because you can't disprove it, neither is your claim proven by me failing to disprove it. Your claim to have a god is only proven by you producing definitive, authenticated and indisputable evidence for it. Just because that is impossible for you does not excuse trying to fool people with a dishonest tactic and false witnessing.

If you ever feel tempted to try the shifting burden trick because you've been caught making a claim you can't justify, try changing the word 'god' or 'life after death' or 'sin' or 'soul' or whatever daft idea you're trying to get away with, for 'undetectable hippo in Rosa's loft' and see if it convinces you. If it doesn't, your trick won't fool normal people. It might fool another fundamentalist but that's kinda cheating. The tactic will simply betray your moral bankruptcy and the fact that you know you are making a false claim. The only way to escape that charge is to believe in my undetectable hippo, fairies, all the gods other people do or have believed in, pink unicorns and any daft notion you or anyone else can dream up because no one can prove a negative, which is why the trick is so beloved of religious apologists who need to earn a living somehow.

Of course, this will render you incapable of living a normal existence without close adult supervision but that's the price you may have to accept to avoid the charge that you tried a deception and failed to get away with it.

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Thinking Intuitively

Bat + ball cost $110; Bat costs $100 more than the ball

How much does the ball cost?

A recent piece of research published in Science suggested a correlation between analytical thinking and disbelief in religion. This article on boingboing.net illustrated the difference between the alanytical and intuitive thinking with a neat example:

Q: If a baseball and bat cost $110, and the bat costs $100 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

If you answered $10 you are inclined to believe in religion. If you answered $5 you are inclined to disbelieve.

To be honest, I answered $10, and for several minutes couldn't see what was wrong with that answer until I read the comments - which is rather worrying because I think of myself as an analytical thinker and earn my living at it - and yet, when I knew the right answer, I found it hard to understand why I found it hard to understand, if you follow me.

I've written a few times about how intuition is a poor measure of reality (see Xeno's Religious Paradox). This is particularly true in the realms of quantum mechanics and cosmology where the very small and the very large just seem to be counter-intuitive and yet the analytical tools of observation and mathematics tell us the counter-intuitive answer is actually the right one. A particle is also a wave and can be in several places at the same time; the universe is finite yet unbounded and everything really is nothing.

How does this translate to religious belief versus disbelief?

C.S.Lewis, You Cannot Be Serious! 3

The Argument From Objective Morality.

The third in a series looking at C.S.Lewis' arguments for the Christian God.

This argument can be dismissed fairly easily. In essence it goes as follows:

1. Objective morals can only come from God.
2. Objective morals exist.
3. Therefore God exists.

Objective morals can only come from God.

Of course, Lewis was writing and broadcasting before the discovery of memes as units of cultural inheritance. Like Paley with his watch analogy, which he devised before Darwin had discovered a far more vicarious and logical explanation for the appearance of design in living things, Lewis was not aware of a perfectly rational explanation of a cultural origin of morals and of their evolution and the evolution of cultures containing them.