The Atheism Guild

God and Phase Space

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:50:11 GMT

Take a system - say, throwing two dice. The set of all possible results of that action is the 'phase space' of that system - in the case of throwing two dice, it's the numbers 2 through 12. This definition is a little simplistic, but it'll do for the purposes to which I'm putting the concept. Wikipedia has a more precise definition.

So, phase space is simply the set of all states of a system - take every variable that can change, stick it on an axis, and that's your space. Obviously, for a reasonably complicated system, that's going to be massive - a set of N particles has a phase space with 6N axes.

Let's consider the most massive phase space of all - the phase space of universes. Take any variable that a universe could conceivably vary upon - say, the value of G, or the existence of gravity - and stick it on an axis. In short, imagine the set of all possible universes.

You know something about the world when we can narrow down which bit of that phase space we exist in. If you can say "Our world appears to have gravity", you've immediately cut out the infinitely many universes which do /not/ have gravity. When you can say "Our universe has gravity, and it works like this", you've cut out all the universes that have gravity that works like that.

Unfortunately, certainty with these statements is very difficult. There's a whole set of universes that /appear/ to have gravity that works like this, but actually don't.

Science sidesteps that issue - instead of saying "The universe is definitely in this set, we can ignore everything else", science says "The universe is definitely not in that set, we can ignore it". There are less universes that appear not to have gravity that works like this that have gravity that works like this than the opposite. You gain some explanatory power.

There is, however, a catch - science can never eradicate that universe in which you are the only being that exists and everything is a figment of your imagination, because that variable is unobservable. The concept is unfalsifiable.

But we don't worry too much about that, because it also means that that concept - solipsism - has no explanatory power.

Let me explain further - if you know that we are in a universe without slood, we also know that we are not in a universe with slood that works like this, that, or the other. In short, there is a constraint on the possible universes in phase space - they must be consistent. That means that we can derive further information about the universe from simple observations. If we know via deductive argument that in a universe where the strong nuclear force works like this, the weak nuclear force works like that, and we show that the weak nuclear force doesn't act like that at all, we have excluded some of the points on the strong-nuclear-force axis from the set of universes that we could be in. That is because phase space is not completely full - there are 'empty' points, where a combination of variables cannot possibly exist.

Solipsism has no such 'empty' points that we can observe - it must not, or we could determine whether or not solipsism is in the set of universes we might live in by observing the empty point. For all possible universes, there is another possible universe which is exactly the same, except that it's got a different value on the solipsism axis. Solipsism is a concept which cannot help us further understand the world, because it does not cut out anything from phase space.

I would allege that god, as a general concept, is the same as solipsism - it is unfalsifiable, and, therefore, it has no explanatory power - it does not remove any points in phase space from the set of universes we might exist in.

Consider the phase space of gods. It's pretty big. Certainly, some of these gods are falsifiable - if Zeus exists, for example, Mount Olympus must have certain properties. We can observe that Mount Olympus does not have the properties suggested, and, thus, conclude that Zeus does not exist. The concept of Zeus also, therefore, has explanatory power - if Zeus exists, we know Mount Olympus must be in a given state - some part of phase space is excised.

Consider the Christian god. He/she/it certainly doesn't require Mount Olympus be in a certain state, but I would allege that the combination of some of his claimed properties requires the world to be in a certain state - that would be the problem of evil - regardless, I think we can agree that the Christian god is, also, falsifiable, and thus has explanatory power - his/her/its existence makes a difference to the world.

But consider god as a general concept. Consider all of god-space. Is there anything in common between all gods that could feasibly be observable?

I do not think so. I can certainly come up with a deity that exists, but cannot be detected by any means. God is, at its most general, unfalsifiable.

And thus, this general concept of god has zero explanatory power - alleging that a god of some sort exists tells us nothing about the universe, unless you add additional properties that make that god falsifiable.

I would argue that as the existence of an unfalsifiable god has no impact on the world - much like the truth or falsity of solipsism - then I should pay no attention to the concept.

Of course, that does not mean that, say, the Christian god should be implicitly ignored. But then, I think he's been falsified.

Belief is not a choice

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:39:34 GMT

I cannot believe in a deity of any kind. I can no more choose belief than I can choose to sneeze. Belief or nonbelief is an involuntary action. You can certainly fake either-or - but you always know.

I never made a conscious decision to be an atheist when I was growing up. I just realised that I didn't believe that there was a God. It wasn't via lack of exposure - when I was young, and incapable of holding a religious opinion (I hadn't matured enough that I could think about such things), I used to go to church regularly - my mother is Catholic. I just didn't believe. I have some suspicions about why this is so - early exposure to science and critical thinking is my best guess - but that's mostly irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make here, which is that I am literally incapable of belief in God, in just the same way that I cannot fly unaided.

Why is this important?

Consider how much religious apologetics depends on belief being a choice. The 'free will' argument commonly asserted as the reason for the existence of evil in a world with a benevolent God and the reason he doesn't make his presence more obvious, for starters. If I cannot choose belief, God's presence doesn't reduce my free will in the slightest - although it certainly means that I'd be a believer.

Consider, also, what it does to the concept of Hell - already a pretty brutal concept that's damned hard to explain in a way that makes God a moral character (The best one I've heard is that Hell is simply the absence of God, and that I'm not going to want him around because I don't believe in him. This rather sidesteps the obvious point that it's not that I don't hate God, I just don't think he exists, although he'd have to give some pretty good answers to a few questions before I'd be happy). Now, Hell is no longer even a punishment for making a bad decision - it's a punishment for a property you had no control over. If Hell was the mandated punishment for all people with blue eyes, or all myopic people, it'd be pretty obvious that it was stupid. If belief is just as much not your choice, why is it any different?

Does this make argument and debate useless? Well, no. I'm not saying your beliefs can change - I'm simply saying that you can't consciously decide to change them.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:17:04 GMT

I made a post a little while ago about morality under atheism - I'd like to consider the flipside this time around. That is, morality under theism.

A common thread in several arguments I have had with theists is this idea that morality cannot function under atheism - the implication is that it does function under theism.

The Euthyphro Dilemma is an argument directed against the most common formulation of morality under theism - divine command ethics.

Divine command ethics is pretty simplistic - the basic idea is that god/s tell you what is good and what is bad, and that is then morality - it's just ethics straight from the deity.

The Euthyphro Dilemma is a very simple argument - it goes like this:
"Does God command actions because they are moral, or are actions moral because they are commanded by God?"

One of those responses must be true in a divinely-commanded ethics system, and both present a problem - the former response implies that morality is independent of God - that is, there is an absolute morality separate from God that God is bound to - which makes God's involvement in the whole morality thing somewhat unnecessary. The problems with the second option are somewhat subtler - first, it implies that what is moral is arbitrary - God could make a world in which murder was good and charity was bad, and that would be morality in that world. This is an issue for a system that purports to establish absolute moral rules - in particular, because God's 'divine commands' need to be interpreted. Secondly, it implies that the statement "God is good" is tautological - it is meaningless for Christians to tell us that "God is love", etc. etc., because he's the definition of the emotion. In such a world, a God who commanded the slaughter of innocents would also be 'good'.

Think about it. I'd be interested to hear your conclusions.

The Problem of Evil

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:38:08 GMT

The Problem of Evil (also known as The Problem of Pain) is a (mostly) deductive logical argument against the existence of omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent beings. It's one of the big arguments for strong atheism (The claim that there are no gods, as opposed to the claim that you see no reason to believe in any god - weak atheism). Just quickly, 'omnipotent' means 'able to do anything logically possible', 'omniscient' means 'knows everthing' and 'omnibenevolent' means 'perfectly moral' or 'perfectly good'. Your standard monotheistic god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - the Christian and Islamic conception of God certainly is. I don't know enough about Judaism to make a claim one way or another.

Anyway, the argument. I've yet to hear a response to it I consider reasonable.

There are a few that make logical sense, yes - but they generally involve concessions that, in my view, do interesting things to morality.

So, I'm going to present a version of the Problem of Evil, and then my argument against various theodicies (A solution - or alleged solution - to the Problem is referred to as a theodicy. I don't know why.)

A1 - There is a God.
A2 - God is omnipotent
A3 - God is omniscient
A4 - God is omnibenevolent
A5 - Bad stuff happens to people (Or, to put it in a more loaded fashion, evil exists)

D1 - As God is omniscient, God knows about evil.
D2 - As God is omnipotent, God can do something about evil.
D3 - As God is omnibenevolent, God would want to do something about evil, as soon as possible.
D4 - As God can do something about evil, and wants to do something about evil, God will do something about evil, as soon as possible.
D5 - This means God would have ensured that evil never occurred.
D6 - Therefore, evil does not occur.

Clearly, D6 and A5 contradict each other. Therefore, at least one of assumptions A1 through to A5 are incorrect. Either God does not exist, God is not omniscient, God is not omnipotent, God is not omnibenevolent, or evil does not occur.

Either that, or the chain of logic is broken, but it's hard for me to see how one could argue against the logic - indeed, I find most theodicies attack assumption 5.

To express the argument another way: The existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being requires that the world be as perfect as possible (however perfect is defined), because an omnibenevolent being would want the world to be as perfect as possible (however perfect is defined). As the world is not perfect, no such being exists.

I've heard a lot of arguments that essentially come down to 'the world is perfect' - probably the most common is the free will theodicy - "The world has to be this way because of free will".

My response to this is simple: Does free will cause disease? How about natural disasters?

Another response I've heard (from IainPeregrine) is to suggest that suffering is not, in and of itself, evil - my response is that any moral system in which suffering is not necessarily evil is not a moral system I want a part of.

More to the point, any responses in this general category - alleging that the world is perfect, when viewed with this understanding, or that moral system, must fall over when made by a Muslim or a Christian - or by any other member of a religion with some version of Heaven or Paradise.

Heaven is, by definition perfect. That's what it means. At the very least, it's better than here. To claim that Earth is as good as it gets rather punctures the whole afterlife thing. People still get raped in Heaven? Tsunamis still occur? People die? Then why bother?

There aren't many other responses I've heard - occasionally, someone claims God isn't omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent, but is, instead, very knowledgable/powerful/good. Unfortunately, the Heaven response comes in here - if your God can create a Heaven, and cares enough to put people in it, then we should be there too.

I'm quite willing to clarify any points that I've expressed badly, and I'm interested in seeing the responses and thoughts of theist and nontheist alike.

The Golden Compass - A Review

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:57:02 GMT

This isn't the sort of thing I expect to happen often - reviewing movies aren't generally relevant to the whole nontheism thing - but since the movie in question is "The Golden Compass", based upon Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series - well known for essentially being an atheist's version of Narnia - I thought it was probably a good idea.

Throughout this review, "The Golden Compass" refers to the movie, and "The Northern Lights" refers to the first book in the series. Why? Because I know the first book as "The Northern Lights". There was a name change at some point - possibly a country thing - and I'd prefer to stick with the name I know.

I'll start with my conclusion - as mentioned in the summary, skip the movie, read the book instead. The book is worthwhile and interesting. The movie is badly edited, did a few interesting things to the storyline, and also removed any and all philosophical depth.

I will attempt to flag spoilers where possible, but if you'd really prefer not to know anything, you should probably stop reading now.

Still here? Good.

The movie certainly has its good aspects - the acting, I think, was reasonably well done - Lyra was brilliant, Mrs. Coulter was creepy. We didn't see a great deal of Asriel, but he came across as a very snow-leopard type of personality, in my opinion. The daemons were handled reasonably well - the golden monkey, in particular, was creepy. The panserbjorn were excellent. Some of the scenes were very pretty. They did stick to the storyline pretty well.

...That's about it, really.

On the minus side?

The movie is edited terribly. For the first section, it's not so obvious. But then, later on, you realise that important scenes get, maybe, ten minutes. If they're lucky.

The book is just too long to fit into your average movie format, if you're going to be this faithful to it - and I think they stripped out almost everything they could. The movie gives you the skeleton of the story, bereft of the meat.

There are some puzzling changes, too: The general technology level of Lyra's world appears to have been upped just a bit - Asriel shows the scholars at Jordan some sort of movie stored in a small crystal sphere, there are powered airship with some sort of rocket booster thing, and these strange glowing swirly sphere things that show up a lot.

As I recall, Lyra's world was steam-driven at best, and even 'anbaric' (electric) lights were a novelty.

I have no idea why they made that change, but it didn't really have a massive effect.

Storyline changes? Well, Lyra now visits the panserbjorn before Bolvanger (which is marvelously creepy). Possibly the scriptwriters thought this made the movie flow better.

Finally, most bizarrely, and in my mind, strangest, they didn't end the movie.

They. Didn't. End. The. Movie.

Instead of Lyra running into Asriel at the north pole, Asriel and Coulter making out, and Asriel using Roger to travel between worlds, the movie ends with Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison, Roger, and Lyra all in Lee's balloon, heading north - basically, the scene in the book before the panserbjorn, except they changed the timing.

That's one serious what-the-hell moment. Sure, they were pressed for time, but cutting the ending? Strange.

Hopefully there's some sort of extended release at some point - I suspect the movie would work a lot better with more time.

Of course, the general anti-religiousness of The Northern Lights was stripped out almost completely. It is always the Magisterium - never the church - and The Authority - never God. No religious statements are made anywhere - if this is a world with religion, we never see it. There are maybe two things I can think of that could lead a sufficiently observant and knowledgable adult who knew nothing of the books to determine that the Magisterium is, in fact, the Catholic church - a Magisterium 'office' that you see for a split second (Before Iorek smashes through the wall) has some painting on the walls that look like they are of Jesus - at least they did to me, for the short period of time I saw them, and a description of the 'whys' on intercision by Coulter that implies the doctrine of original sin.

This is clearly ridiculous. Removing the religious nature of the Magisterium practically guts the book - all of its philosophical teeth are pulled. Of course, the first book does nothing much more than set up themes for the rest of the series - but that's still important. The Northern Lights is not just a critique of authoritarian or dogmatic organisations - it's a critique of the authoritarian, dogmatic organisation, and is much less without it.

That would probably move it outside the realms of 'movie for the average child', however, and I can imagine the marketing issues it would cause in the US, considering the amount of controversy whipped up around an essentially innocuous movie. It's still disappointing.

I can't see the rest of the books being made into movies. The Amber Spyglass, in particular, would be impossible to sanitize while maintaining a story.

Anyway, read the books - they're lovely, they're deep, and they have themes and discuss issues that are rare in books at all, let alone "children's" fiction. You might want to give the movie a miss, unless you've got free time, nothing better to be doing, and can watch it for free.

Morality and Atheism

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:57:56 GMT

"Funny thing. I have a feeling that if I were atheist I would have killed somebody by now. So therefore... I won't even consider it. Christianity helps me keep my morals in check."
--Killerdragon, in the comment thread for the guild opening post.

(Killerdragon has since refined his position - I'd suggest reading the linked thread before commenting on the quote)

I've seen opinions similar to this in a lot of places - basically, this general idea that there is no sense of morality under atheism, or that there can be no morality under atheism.

I've always been mildly puzzled by this particular claim. It just doesn't make sense to me. I'll go into why soon.

As I understand it, the basic argument goes something like this:

- God gives us morality (or, alternately, god is morality. More later)
- Atheists don't believe in god.
- Therefore, atheists have no morality.

Of course, this is probably a gross oversimplification. I'm sure you can probably find more in-depth explanations elsewhere, and I'd suggest you look into it.

Anyway, the basic idea is that you can't have morality without some sort of supernatural being giving it to you (in stone tablets, or whatnot).

Obviously, I would disagree.

This particular argument/idea fails on several fronts. I'll just go through a few:

- Divine command ethics (God/s tell you what's good or bad) is not exactly a great ethical system. Firstly, it has to deal with the problem of the Euthyphro dilemma - does god/s command things because they are good, or are things good because they are commanded by god/s? If the former, there is morality external to god/s. If the latter, what is moral is arbitrary, which goes against the whole spirit of the idea to me.

To make matters worse, you then have to deal with the issue of deciding which particular divine command ethics you're going to follow - Catholic? Hindu? Sikh? It fails as an absolute ethical system because it isn't evident, in any form - the arguments for any of the divine command ethics systems clearly aren't extremely forceful, because people don't necessarily accept them.

- These arguments seem to be based on the idea that under atheism, morality must be relative - as someone who likes to think he has an absolute sense of morality, this is quite annoying.

Consider a few well-known ethical systems suggested by philosophers - utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Utilitarianism holds that an action is 'good' if it causes more happiness than sorrow - basically, you tally up all the 'good stuff' your action will cause, and all the 'bad stuff', and then decide based on what the tallies come to. Kantian ethics hold that an action can only be good if you could reasonably foresee everyone doing the same thing. Lying, for example, is bad under Kantian ethics - because if everybody lied, society would not last long.

Neither of those ethical systems even come close to mentioning God, god, or gods.

They're also both absolute.

Of course, they're hardly perfect - pretty much everybody sort of subscribes to a mix of those two with a healthy dose of intuition. But the point is that these are two well-developed, long-standing ethical systems that do not require a deity.

- Finally, the claim just doesn't match up with observed reality - atheists aren't less moral than other people, as measured by any reasonable standard. They don't murder more often, or steal more often, they don't donate less to charity, or lie more. At least, I've never seen any reliable statistics demonstrating this.

Basically, morality and atheism are entirely compatible - the idea that religions have a monopoly on moral thought is just wrong.

The Atheism Guild Opens - Again

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:05:14 GMT

As some of you may recall, I tried something like this earlier, on my own blog - it didn't work out so well, mostly from a lack of activity, I think.

This time, I intend to do things properly. I've divorced the guild from my blog, which removes some annoying issues. I intend to regularly make blog posts on various atheism-related subjects, and check the forums daily.

So, why an atheism guild? Well, there are two things I want to do with this:

Firstly, I want to foster discussion on atheism, religion, and related topics. I've been just a bit mocking when making posts on my blog on the subject in the past, and I don' intend to continue that. I want reasoned, open dialogue.

I will still be presenting my thoughts, conclusions and arguments, but I'll hopefully be doing it in a way that people find more acceptable.

Secondly, I intend to set up a place where nontheists may socialise. Specifically nontheists. There's no real common thread binding together all nontheists - although a love of science is reasonably common - but it's nice to have such a place nonetheless.

I've set up guild member ranks so that I can promote people to a level where they can make blog posts - I intend to use this feature. And not just for atheists. If some atheist on BYOND wanted to make a post on this blog, and I thought that they could write a good post, and could try to avoid mockery in the same way I am, they can. If a theist wanted to make a post on this blog - perhaps relating some issues they have with nontheism, or a discussion of some other topic, and I thought they could write a good post and could refrain fom mockery, I would give them contributor access, too. So don't feel that you're not welcome if you're a theist.

I will also be linking to interesting discussions and arguments occuring on other parts of the BYOND site, of course.

BYOND needs more guild activiy. Maybe a social guild can be something along these lines.

Finally, I really hope that this post doesn't get front-page blocked like the first atheism guild post. I can assure the moderators that my intentions are honest, and that I will try to avoid discussions that don't reflect too well on the site.

Jp out.

EDIT: Oh, also, I'm open to suggestions for the CSS. I don't know too much about it, so it'd be handy if someone that does could help me with this.