On the matters of faiths, beliefs, sciences and worldviews.

So I just finished watching Ben Stein’s horrible documentary on Intelligent Design, “Expelled: No Intelligent Allowed“, and about how there’s a big conspiracy in the scientific society to suppress any and all mentions of ideas that challenge the theory of evolution. I spent most of the 90 minutes yawning, and shaking my head at the TV, but here are a few things that I wanted to highlight for those who’ve watched this film and think it’s important.

Unarguably the most important criticism of this film is the fact that it contains no facts. The entire 90 minutes consist of Stein (or someone else) interviewing people who feel they’ve been wronged by science, and are left without jobs or, in some cases, without the possibility of ever even getting a new job in their field. Sure, there’s a valid point in investigating the circumstances of these people’s claims to have been ostracized from science in general, I’ll admit that much. But does Stein even do that? No, of course not. The few cases he even felt the need to investigate were done sloppily so, and without any depth or reasoning whatsoever. He’s content with the assumption that these people lost their jobs because of their opinions.

The validity of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design, then. Does Stein actually bother to find out if it really is what proponents claim it is? No, not that either. He assumes, throughout the entire film, that the mere fact that the idea of Intelligent Design exists means it is on equal ground to the theory of evolution in any debate over the two. He disregards the scientific scrutiny either due to gross ignorance in the subject, or malicious intent.

For 90 minutes, the people he interviews talk about holes in the theory of evolution, gaps in many fields of science, great controversy and all kinds of disturbing notions. Disturbing, had they been true, that is, and which is something that he doesn’t bother at all to verify. When asking about one certain idea of how life might have evolved from non-life, he dismisses the answer simply because he doesn’t understand it. Admittedly, the interviewee didn’t exactly make himself very clear, but doesn’t that just mean that Stein should have sought a more detailed explanation elsewhere? Of course, he didn’t.

Near the end, he interviewed Richard Dawkins and asked some pretty much non-essential questions that had nothing to do with anything else in his film, and had some very telling reactions to his answers. At 1hr and 31 minutes he seems baffled at the idea that Dawkins rejects all possible gods (by contrast, Dawkins is also equally baffled at the reaction to his answer). The problem here is one that is central to those who call themselves ignosticists rather than atheists or agnostics, and that is that it is meaningless to discuss the existence of a term you’ve not yet clearly defined the meaning of. In the same interview, Dawkins tries to explain the possibility of Intelligent Design by creator that itself is a product of natural evolution, and it is doubtless this that confuses Stein. He goes so far as to express his confusion in a voice-over during the interview clip. What he probably doesn’t understand is Dawkins’ definition of God in scientific terms, as applied to the context of Intelligent Design. The idea of an intelligent designer is plausible even within evolution if that designer itself was a product of evolution. However, science can not, and will not, ever allow the idea that the designer is “magic” and came out of nowhere. This is not a fault in science, but rather it is the very point of science.

Overall, the film left me rather irritated. The intent of the film was to show that the freedom to express ideas and have them taken seriously is under attack. What he didn’t mention, however, is that Intelligent Design is an idea that has only ever been expressed, but never scientifically verified by either side. Surely Stein isn’t proposing that we assign equal scientific value to any idea proposed, no matter how ridiculous? Of course not, he only proposes this when it comes to the thinly disguised version of Creationism, a religious and non-scientific movement, that is renamed and rebranded as Intelligent Design. Even early on in the film, Stein wants to assign credibility to ID’s secular validity by stating how many theistic religions there are that accept it and back it up. Surely, finding a single atheist to support ID would have been more constructive, but I also suspect that it would have been much, much harder.

By all means, watch this film if you want to. Just keep your mind alert while you do, and I guarantee that you won’t miss the glaring holes, gaps and fallacies in the arguments that he presents, nor the suspiciously missing facts to support the very claim of validity for Intelligent Design that he’s repeatedly making through the 90 minutes of it.

Atheist Revolution wrote a pretty good definition of what atheism is really about, what the term atheist really means, but missed out on explaining one of the most frequently misunderstood concepts of atheism: the strong atheist.

An atheist is simply an individual who do not hold the theistic belief claim (i.e., that god or gods exist)

This is all well and true, but many people seem to think that it’s the atheist making the claims and assertions that they know for a fact that God or gods don’t exist. This is especially frequent among believers, since naturally their current natural state is one of belief. That’s why when a strong atheist comes along, it might very seem like he’s actively asserting the non-existence of God or gods, which is not true. Wikipedia defines strong atheists like this:

An explicit atheist has made an assertion regarding belief in gods; such an individual may eschew belief in gods (weak atheism), or affirm that gods do not exist (strong atheism).

Hmm, that doesn’t sound right… It seems strong atheists do actually affirm that gods do not exist. But how can we possibly do that, without being believers ourselves? Let’s take another look at the Atheist Revolution article.

In Atheism: The Case Against God, George Smith argues that such a definition reminds us that the burden of proof lies with the theist because this is the person making the belief claim. When the theist says, “God exists,” we are correct to expect evidence in support of this claim. Without such evidence, the claim cannot be accepted on rational grounds. The atheist is saying, “I don’t accept this claim,” and this rejection requires no evidence precisely because it is the default position where no positive assertion is being made.

This is crucial to the understanding of the atheist position. A weak atheist may look at the claim for God or gods, and say ‘this is not good enough’, but a strong atheist might add ‘and the evidence for a natural explanation far outweigh the evidence provided for the existence of God or gods, thus tipping the favor against their existence’. This is the strong atheist position. It is not one of belief, but of more certain disbelief. A strong atheist not only rejects the theist position due to lack of evidence, but favors the atheist position due to the existence of evidence for a natural explanation.

This is not about faith, nor belief, but only about the evidence. A person who claims that atheists have as much ‘blind faith’ as believers have not understood the atheist position at all.

“Tell me,” the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, “why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?” His friend replied, “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth.” Wittgenstein responded, “Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted by Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’

Christian creationists are often very eager to claim the great thinkers of our time for themselves. They think that, if someone is both intelligent and Christian, it not only lends credence to religion, but it also implies that Christianity has something to do with intelligence. XKCD made a wonderful comic about the notion that “correllation implies causation“, which is the same mistake which can be seen made by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron in this video:

[youtube]V4DgsB7wciw[/youtube]

At first glance, it might seen that not only was Einstein not an atheist, but he was also a devout Christian who believed in a personal God. However, you’ll know more about Einstein from the quotes they didn’t read, including his famous one where he directly and explicitly denies a belief in a personal god:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

So, in Einstein’s own words, he expressly denies belief in the same god as Comfort and Cameron, which they so insidously implied he did believe in. Make no mistake, the quotes chosen for this video were carefully picked for maximum implication that Einstein was a religious theist. Here are some more of Einstein’s own words, refuting much of what Ray and Kirk want you to think:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954

During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man’s own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world.

Albert Einstein, quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief, James Haught

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2

…I can keep quoting him, if you want. However, five seconds worth of Googling will give you multiple results, all of which show us the same thing:
Einstein had so much more to say about God and religion than Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron want you to know about.

Albert Einstein may not have been an atheist, but he definitely wasn’t what this video portrays him as either.

“Gods don’t kill people. People with Gods kill people.”

David Viaene