Apparently, atheism is "only for us rich folks"

A guy calling himself an atheist, called  Chris Arnade, has written a (fairly terrible!) article in The Guardian about how atheism is, and I quote, "an intellectual luxury for the wealthy".

This position is troubling, and problematic for several reasons. Thankfully, I've found a couple of places where my initial thoughts were expanded upon. See The Scathing Atheist diatribe and Atheistically Speaking podcasts for more details.

I wanted to put this down in a post as I strongly disagree with Arnade's sentiments. It is, fundamentally, an intellectual investment, and not a financial investment that precedes one's conclusion that atheism is the best (non) belief system to follow. You do not need to be rich to be an atheist. Hell, I'm hardly well off myself.

It's strange that Arnade thought that drug addicts would be atheists. This sounds like a crude rhetorical set-up to me, and not a justified opinion. It's pretty obvious that vulnerable people turn to God to get some relief from their cycles of problems, and drug addicts are no exception. 

Now, it may be that some financial resources are required in order to foster sufficient intellectual investment in the first place, but the arguments against faith are hardly so complex that you need an advanced master's degree to understand them. The wide availability of information these days, with the internet, smartphones etc. means that unless you are pretty much living in the stone age, you are only ever a few clicks or taps away from the best arguments against religious belief. One does not need to be particularly intelligent, nor wealthy, to have quick access to or the ability to understand the power of the Euthyphro dilemma and the argument from evil.

It seems to me that this is just a guilt trip for Arnade. He wants to apologise for being an atheist, or maybe justify his non-belief in a politically correct way. He is playing right into the hands of Contemporary Academic Leftists, a group who I will expand on more later. It suits the Guardian journalists to play the social justice card (this was posted at Christmas after all!), to the extent that one is not even allowed to question whether the comfort that poor, disadvantaged and vulnerable people derive from their religious beliefs may actually be, in some cases, the very thing keeping them in that disadvantaged position. Such aversion to free thought is exactly the thing that the Guardian is supposed to resist. And yet, with the advent of Contemporary Academic Leftists, it is welcomed in the arena of Religion.

Realising that you alone have the power to rise above your problems, can sometimes be the answer. I'm not trying to sound like a capitalist here, espousing the power of the self; but this is why constant left-wing groupthink, which sometimes seems to take place at The Guardian, is harmful. The "other side" does occasionally have a point. We can't rule out the option of ever considering if you may sometimes need "to be cruel to be kind". Especially if that "cruelty" is merely espousing what you yourself subscribe to, and believe is correct.

Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, is shockingly drenched (!) in religious thought, to the extent that they require entrants to their programs to admit that they can have no control themselves, and only God can get them out of the hole, the cycle of up and down. I call Bullshit on this. It is always the user, with help of professionals of course, that beats the addiction, not God. It is possible to become stuck in a rut where the "comfort" derived from religion is the one thing keeping you from moving on, and getting past the problem at hand, because it makes the problem "livable". 

To me, Arnade needs a better reason than this to explain why atheism is good enough for him, but not good enough for drug addicts. Only one of them (at most) can be right. No one would be such an asshole as to knock the Bibles from the hands of believers (indeed, I recommend that all believers carefully and critically study their Holy books). However, this does not mean that we should not ask whether supporting (or excusing, as Arnade appears to be doing) such fervent religious belief is really in these poor people's best interests, if only to give them the personal confidence to break free.

Incoherence by Design

I've been considering the incoherence of Creationist arguments.

The same Creationists who approve of the Fine Tuning argument also use the "Constant decay assumption" argument. Ken Ham espoused this argument in his recent debate against Bill Nye the Science Guy which I linked to in my previous post. He pushed it as "historical science vs. observational science" but it's really the same thing - asserting that science didn't used to work like it does now. However, this dual-pronged approach is utterly incoherent and fallacious.

Central to the Fine Tuning argument is the idea that the Universe's fundamental physical constants have had their values finely tuned by a deity in order to create the correct conditions for life. These are such things as the fine-structure constant of electromagnetic interactions. But we don't know what different values for these Universal constants are even possible. Victor J. Stenger is a prominent physicist who has written extensively on fine tuning. You may want to look at his book "The Fallacy of Fine Tuning".

There is nothing logically preventing  any fundamental physical constants being different, but it would change the laws of Physics in fundamental ways, so is very difficult to predict. It may be that different values of the Universal constants lead to an unstable framework which is too short-lived to produce life. 

Additionally, we don't know how large a range of values the Universal constants could adopt. There is no real evidence to support the idea that "they could be almost any figure and the fact that they are as they are and have produced life is evidence for God". It may be that changing the values simply means that other, very different forms of life would have been created. It may also be that the current values are near the centre of a bell-curve (or similar) of values that are interdependent on one another. When you alter one, another changes also. But no, the religious apologist insists that the constants could have been any value but were fine-tuned by God to their current levels.

The "constant -decay assumption" argument that Ken Ham espouses, states that we do not know that the rates of nuclear decay were always constant. However, this is pretty unreasonable -  the decay constants have not changed in the experience of humankind, and there is no obvious way in which they even could change.

1) It is not clear to me that the decay constants, once established, even COULD change in principle

2) Creationists have posited no valid mechanism for how the constants WOULD change if their argument was correct

There is one way that I can think of that would definitely give a change in the rates of nuclear decay. It is about the only possible way to achieve it (that I can think of). This is by changing the values of the Universal physical constants discussed above!

Notice that changing the Universal physical constants AFTER the Universe has been created, giving a stable world,  also means by extension, that it would have been theoretically possible for the Universe to have adopted these changed values from the start. This is because they also lead to a relatively stable Universe. 

So by the Creationists' own admission,  we now know of at least 2 different values for the Universal physical constants, and they no longer seem so "fine-tuned". Therefore, these two arguments are internally inconsistent. Accordingly, I would prefer to dismiss them both without much further thought.

Bad ideas and Red Flags

On various previous occasions on this blog, I've mentioned "red flags" as signs that there may be a serious problem with the truth value of a claim, belief, or theory.

A solid system of beliefs, belief structure or theory will probably exhibit certain features from a set of positive signs, or green flags, and almost certainly exhibit very few features from a set of negative signs, or "red flags".
As a disclaimer, this method is of course not the ultimate arbiter of truth. It may be possible, (although it is probably very unlikely) that something showing many red flags and few green ones is actually true. This is consistent with the "fallacy fallacy": just because your opponent has committed a logical fallacy, it does not automatically mean he or she is wrong. 

Also, this is my own list and by no means an exhaustive one. Still I would Say that overall it is a usable guide to deciding whether some idea is potentially OK to subscribe to or whether there should be serious doubts about its legitimacy.

Green flags:

1) Developing a viable mechanism for how the model, idea or belief comes into being in objective reality

2) Making positive arguments for your case as well as negative arguments against your opponent's case

3) Actively investigating where your own claims lead, the validity of the conclusions and what issues this may cause in the future

4) The idea can (at least in theory) be disproved by further study

5) Making clearly defined and testable predictions from your model, the outcomes of which, if not favourable, result in criticism of and possible amendment to the model, and not just criticism of the predictions themselves

6) Entertaining the possibility that you could be wrong; accepting valid criticism

7) Engaging with dissenters in a constructive manner; not resorting to insults

8) If fellow subscribers to the idea wish to change their minds and leave the group, for any reason, they are allowed to do so and not pressured or threatened into staying

9) Always being concerned about "how you know what you know"

10) Being open and transparent about your reasons for subscribing to the belief, even if they include vested interests

11) Not holding up any particular individual as the ultimate paragon who is much greater than his or her peers

Red Flags:

1) Not being interested in developing a viable mechanism for how the model, idea or belief comes into being in objective reality

2) Failing to make positive arguments for your case, and only making negative arguments against your opponent's case OR Only espousing your own ideas without justifying how they are fundamentally different to another's

3) Not being interested in investigating where your own claims lead, how valid the conclusions may be or what issues this may cause in the future

4) The idea cannot be disproved by further study, no matter if much more investigation is carried out

5) Not making predictions from your model, or only making poorly defined or untestable predictions, the outcomes of which, if not favourable,  only result in criticism of the predictions themselves (equivocation) and no change in thought surrounding the central premises 

6) Not entertaining the possibility that you could be wrong - you MUST be right and any criticism can never be justified

7) Refusing to engage with dissenters; or engaging in a non-constructive manner - resorting to insults or worse

8) If fellow subscribers to the idea wish to change their minds and leave the group, for any reason, they are strongly discouraged from doing so and may be pressured or threatened into staying

9) Being reliant on saying "I just know!" without making substantial efforts to demonstrate how you do in fact know what you claim to know

10) Pretending that you subscribe to a belief because you believe it and not because it is in line with other ideologies or interests you may hold.

11) Asserting that a particular individual is much greater than anyone else, and must be obeyed  above all others
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I wanted to do a quick analysis of a few different ideas to show some of the areas in which they struggle, and how other ideas seem to possess more healthy characteristics.

For example, science as a whole generally displays all the green flags, and when done properly, none of the red ones. Scientology, by contrast, appears to be the complete opposite. 

Note that phenomena such as cults display many red flags. Cults tend to involve self-reinforcing belief systems which can become very difficult, if not impossible, to escape from once you have become invested. Hence I like to refer to cults as "Intellectual Quick Sand". I also argue throughout this blog that Religions tend to be other forms of "Intellectual Quick Sand". 

Conspiracy theories: 

Beliefs like the 9/11 attacks being an inside job, or mankind not really landing on the moon, or vaccines being intentionally dangerous, do not stand up to the available evidence, and yet you can come across legions of people who believe these things with all sincerity.

Of course, one of the central problems with conspiracy theories is the amount of international collusion which is often required for them to hold together. Authorities usually require more competence to do this, than if the official explanation were actually true in the first place.

"I have a theory that dolphins are actually alien spies from the planet Neptune - it is impossible to disprove that to me, since I can always develop some rationalisation to counter any problem you may raise." However, that does not mean that is reasonable to hold the dolphin belief, nor that there is, or could be, any plausible way in which it could have come into being.

It seems to me that the ultimate "theory that never dies" is simply one that can't be disproved. If it can't be disproved, you'll never know if it's wrong. I'd like conspiracy advocates to try and disprove that theory (!)

Conspiracy theories tend to be awful on most of the points, particularly 4, 7 and 10 , displaying big red flags there.

Creationism: 

Creationism goes by various guises including "Intelligent design". It is an alternate story of the creation of life, and deeply mired in religious belief. 

Creationists assert that life cannot come from non-life, however, this has neither been proven to be the case, nor is it logically necessary. There is just the interaction between groups of atoms, common to inorganic and organic chemistry. And of course using the labels of "life" and "non-life" is chicanery in itself - since biology is just the chemistry of complex biological molecules. 

The problems inherent with claiming things have been designed should be obvious. How do we tell if something is designed? Termite mounds and crystal formations look designed, yet they are not. In the thought experiment of finding a wristwatch on a beach, the creationist must answer the question of how we tell the difference between the human design of the watch,  and of the grains of sand, which are "God's design"  by their own admission.  The point of course is that we can't reliably tell if something is designed or not, just by looking at it.

The truth is that evolution just finds solutions in biological systems that work i.e. lead to greater chance of survival for the organism- they are not "designed". On the flags model, creationism often displays big red flags on the first 6 or so items at least, and the tenth.

I deal with other aspects of creationism elsewhere on this blog. Note that the recent much-anticipated debate between scientist Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham is available to view on YouTube - and I insert it below - I recommend that you watch it, and decide for yourself who is being more coherent, and more honest.

Finally, other ideas are more difficult to qualify on this scale. For example, political ideologies are blurred by the fact that they change so much with time, and play off one another - the left wing almost requires the existence of the right wing in order to provide a counter position. It's clear to me that  both the very far extreme ends of the spectrum are best avoided: radicalism usually results from surrounding oneself with groupthink.

To me, feminism scores intermediately well on the flags scale. The first five points are definitely green flags, the last four probably are mostly green, whilst points 6-8 can sometimes be red. I have seen examples of this myself.

The problem of "Skepticism of skepticism"

There is an inherent problem with on one hand claiming that you're skeptical (of anything, but especially of skepticism itself) and then asserting that there is "more to the universe than science can detect" which is one of spiritualism's central tenets. How do you know this? Everything that we do understand, requires no paranormal explanations and nothing outside of the physical world in order to explain. Of course, if religion or spirituality holds, there must be more to the universe than science detects, and so some people just won't let it go.

Skepticism of skepticism, if taken to its "logical" conclusion, can to lead to woo-woo beliefs and even "intellectual quick sand" like conspiracy theories or creationism. If someone is following evidence where it leads, is aware of the pitfalls of Red Flags, and attempting to steer clear of intellectual potholes such as confirmation bias, then they are being skeptical and applying critical thinking. Just asserting that you're "skeptical" of this approach may not automatically mean you're wrong, but neither does it mean that you are really being as skeptical as you claim.