Cogito ergo I am right #10: Naturalism, Science, and Religion

Hello, you philosophically-minded fuckers out there! I want to talk to you about naturalism today.

Naturalism has something going for it when compared to non-naturalism: predictive power and rightness! Naturalism implicitly assumes there are only natural causes in the world and so sets up the entire possibility of science because science can only give us testable predictions when steered by this implicit assumption. Naturalism is itself unfalsiable but naturalism makes up for this by setting up an entire enterprise that holds that each naturalistic statement, individually, is falsifiable. Man, that just makes naturalism uber-badass!

Thinking in terms of non-naturalistic terms, the proposition “God did it” or “God made it” has no predictive power. It can’t be incorporated into science. Naturalism is the necessary condition of science and not the other way around. You have to think of it this way – if you have a science, that is, an enterprise that bases all of its findings on the empirical realm and makes predictions, then you have naturalism, a belief that everything can be understood in terms of natural efficient causation. It’s that simple!

“God did it” explanations must remain outside of science simply because the essence of science is predictive power and this only implies naturalism and not both naturalism and non-naturalism. Sorry intelligent designerists, your theory is non-naturalistic and so it sucks!

If you guys want “God did it” explanations, just stick with theology. As a matter of fact, theology is where “God did it” explanations should be anyway. Unfortunately in the history of evolution and creation debates, people got all confused and presupposed that science had won the battle over theology and so that meant they could and should modify their faith with science. Religious dolts out there, don’t modify your faith with science! You’ll only undermine your own faith by requiring it to have a burden of scientific testability!

What “God did it” people don’t realize is that by making their faith rest on science, they are severely setting themselves up for total destruction of their own faith or some kind of silly denial or overt form of mental gymnastics (throwing out assumptions that scientists are all liars or that fossils were created by Satan, for instance).

What non-naturalists and religionists should do is think, “maybe science didn’t win against theology since science is just a different interpretation of the world than theology.” Maybe, as Nietzsche said, science is just one interpretation of many. Science is a damn good interpretation but just one out of the many. So maybe theology still has something to it. Theology has its own perspective and science has its own. Nietzsche, the guy who said that God is dead might be the last best hope for religious people. What an interesting concept. Actually, it’s not really that interesting. Boring!

The great thing about science is that it is definitely open to the possibility of implying, if given sufficient reason, a worldview of non-naturalism. It’s just that it never has arrived at a situation where non-naturalism has served the simplicity and the predictive power of science. So currently, science only implies a naturalistic worldview. Although this isn’t necessarily a necessary implication, now is it?

Currently as standing. (The arrows stands for implication.)

Science —> explanation —-> predictive power —-> naturalism

Non-naturalism —> lack of predictive power —> lack of explanation —> pseudo science.

Non-naturalism + naturalism —> lacking in the predictive area —-> barely an explanation —> pretty pseudo scientific.

Precision Horoscopes #6

Aries (Mar. 21-Apr.19)
When teaching your children how to thumb wrestle, you will forget that the game does not begin with the phrase “One, two, three, four, I declare fist war!” And your attorney will be powerless to help you.
Taurus (Apr. 20-May. 20)
Your gung-ho attitude toward censorship will be revealed for what it really is next week, when you are caught masturbating to a magazine full of black bars.
Gemini (May. 21-Jun. 21)
When you attend the church dinner on Thursday, it will behoove you to remember that it is considered rude to bring your own deity.
Cancer (Jun. 22-Jul. 22)
Your upcoming 30th birthday will be ruined when every person you promised to marry when you turned 30 decides to cash-in all at the same time.
Leo (Jul. 23-Aug. 22)
The stars wanted to tell you that your friend is not suicidal, but rather has a phobia of hemophobes.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Being unemployed sucks, but seriously:have you even applied for that wizard iternship yet? Show some ambition dammit.
Libra (Sep. 23-Oct. 23)
It would be in your best interests to stop calling whales the ‘gentle giants of the deep’. Did you even once think about all the dead krill at the fins of these genocidal fucks?
Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 21)
Due to the ascent of Neptune, your doctor will discover that you have a massive tumor. Its big, and hairy and has teeth in it. Did I say tumor? I meant cat.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
Your life-long dream of owning your own pet shop will crash and burn shortly after fruition, when you make the mistake of hiring Edwin Schrodinger as a clerk.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
The stars predict great terror in your future when you meet Stan, the local beekeeper. Beekeepers. Holy fuck, beekeepers. These fuckers scare the ever living fuck out of me. These guys are badasses. They just walk right up to mother fuckin’ bees.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
This Tuesday, you will get the nicknames, “Horsepecker,” “Penis McLong” and “Phallus Giganticus.” This surely would be good news, if only you were a man.
Pisces (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)
You will drown in sorrow next Friday as your website on proper English is devastated by grammatical e-terrorists.

After President Obama Mandates Healthcare, He Should Mandate Work For All!

By Liberal Political Columnist Wallace ‘Che’ Crandall

There are a lot of conservatives out there making a comparison between mandated health insurance and the Berlin Wall. Basically, the penalties you face for trying to drop your government enforced medicine insurance is comparable to being punished for trying to leave the Soviet Union. I couldn’t agree more with this comparison! It just makes mandated healthcare all the more convincing to me because the Soviet Union was so awesome!

Seriously, why would you want to leave your insurance company, especially when it’s mandated? Are you out of your mind? Government healthcare will be amazing. To drop your mandated insurance would be like trying to leave heaven. God wouldn’t let you do that, so why would Congress let you drop your private insurer?

Getting back to my earlier point about the Soviet Union, there’s one important lesson we can learn from them in these troubled economic times. Mandated healthcare won’t fix all our ills. There’s a gigantic rate of unemployment. But guess which country never had unemployment? The USSR! Just like the USSR, I think President Obama and Congress need to mandate work for all Americans age 15 and up. This will solve all our problems.

 

One Day We Might Never Have To Fear Losing Our Job

Just think of an awesome society where everyone works together because they have to. You’d never get fired because the government would make it illegal for your employer to fire you. Sure, you might get annoyed at the government when you get fined for showing up to work a little late but at least you’ll be employed and forced to like it.

My conservative brother Tony tells me that mandated anything is unconstitutional. Jeez Tony, don’t you know that the US Constitution is so 1990s? No one listens to that anymore. Look, all you have to do is put the right people in charge of the government and everything will be fine, no matter what laws and individual rights they disregard. Duh!

I think mandated healthcare is the best thing since mandated sliced bread. But you know what President Obama? You need to get Americans employed again and the easiest way to do that is to force them to be employed. It’s pretty obvious.

Random Cowboy #1 – A Friendly Tarot Reading

Click to enlarge!

Cogito ergo I am right #9: Overanalyzing

By Amateur Philosopher Penny Ham

I have a friend who thinks that analyzing has its limits. He told me that I analyze things to a degree that is unnecessary. Yeah, that’s just not possible! I analyzed the possibility of over-analyzing things and, yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s just not possible!

I stated back to my friend that the concept of over-analyzation is ridiculous! It is impossible to pick things apart too much. However, I did tell him that I should learn to control what I say outloud as I analyze things (that he or anyone else would consider unnecessary analyzation). I suppose severe levels of analytical thought are ok as long as one does not do this among fellow hominads who do not enjoy this activity.

Someone once said that things lose their beauty once you begin to apply theories to them. That person clearly has no interest in thinking! I must admit, things are beautiful by first impression but things are also as beautiful or more when you theoretically explain or understand them. Of course, I could make the claim that first impressions are theory-laden, that is, you can’t have first impressions without having theoretical concepts attached to them. But, boy would that claim be annoying to someone who didn’t want to think about it!

I would like someone to point out to me where analyzing becomes unnecessary. Unfortunately, if they did that, then they’d be analyzing to a degree that would annoy even them. How self-defeating! The only instances where I can think of analyzation becoming unnecessary is in fun situations that involves group activity.

Also, there are situations where analyzation becomes a problem when it is irrelevant to the task at hand. If you are solving a problem in physics, and you are analyzing an object in terms of its genetics or non-genetics, rather than trying to, say, determine the velocity of the object, then your analysis is irrelevant to the problem at hand. Perhaps this is fundamentally why people get bothered when people overanalyze. They are annoyed by those who analyze objects or concepts that are irrelevant to their own goals of understanding. Oh well!

I suppose I should rethink everything I just wrote. I am definitely right given what I currently think but I could prove myself wrong later. Probably will. Well, whatever the answer is, I’ll definitely be right about it once I determine it!

The Establishment Zone

Click on this link or anywhere below to view The Establishment Zone.

We here at Carl Sagan’s Dance Party find it important to educate you on the Thought Crimes committed by Big Science, Big Logic, and Big Anything. So we thought we’d educate you about sites and videos out there that preach Big Science and Big Logic. Learn how Big Science and Big Logic indoctrinate people daily. Learn their tactics and work against them!

Warning: Some Of These Sites May Seem Convincing. Make Sure You Are In The Right State Of Mind Before Viewing Them.

Podcast #4 is up!

In this episode, Harry Trunckles takes on secular science, Jasper Pennies reviews the Paranormal Activity, John Titor tells us about the future of books, Michelle Glasshappy tells you how to kill your boss, On this week’s Bunker Pundit and Pals, Wilhelm Blitzkrieg is joined by his liberal counterpart to explain the healthcare bill. Nicola Novakowsky explains how water on the moon is a Reptilian lie, and you get your weekly horoscopes.

http://carlsagansdanceparty.podbean.com/2009/11/14/carl-sagans-dance-party-4/

Cogito ergo I am right #8: Lazy Philosophical Nitpicker

By Amateur Philosopher Penny Ham

I was thinking just the other day. You can still be a great philosopher without having to create some great philosophical worldview. Basically, you can be a great philosopher and simply be a nitpicker.

In fact, I enjoy roaming worldviewless just critiquing philosophical ideas all the time. I think maybe someday I will get bored with philosophy and just retire with some worldview. Maybe great philosophers build worldviews because they need a worldview to retire on. Typical great philosophers build their own worldviews but I’m not going to be a typical great philosopher. I’m most likely just going to retire on some other great philosopher’s worldview. In that sense, I’ll just be some great philosophical freeloader.

Picking a philosophical worldview can be quite difficult. For instance, I find myself arguing for positions that I’m not necessarily certain about because I just want to see how far I can stretch my position until it snaps. Let me tell you, for a while I was really liking universals and it felt like I almost found a philosophical dream-home. I was really considering Leibnizian Rationalism there for a few minutes. But Quine’s holism is really speaking out to me. Also Putnam has a paper specifically on destroying the distinction between facts and values. I think that is really neat in itself. I would recommend that essay to anyone. The name of it is simply Fact and Value. I seem to be pretty comfortable with an analytic school inspired pragmatism. I’m not sure though. I’ve had too much fun lately trying to go a day without the law of non-contradiction. Too many uses of the word ‘not’. Let me tell you.

My indecisiveness about my philosophical position has increased almost as much as my dogmatic way of arguing about some position that I’m really just underneath indecisive about. Wow, what a sentence, but that’s just the way I feel.

My firm beliefs only go this far.

I believe induction to be quite reliable.
I pretty much just hold causality to be true on the macroscopic level.
I believe in the law of non-contradiction. Otherwise I’d be using a bunch of is and is nots, now wouldn’t I?
I don’t think we can know that our representations match the external world. (from my understanding of problems with the correspondence theory)

What I’m trying to get at is that it’s very easy to be a lazy philosophical nitpicker. But I think you can be a great philosopher and be a lazy one at the same time.

A Response To Concerning Alien Abductions Reports And Their Reptilian Fabrication

This e-letter was submitted to Carl Sagan’s Dance Party by Anonymous as a response to Concerning Alien Abductions Reports And Their Reptilian Fabrication.

This afternoon, as I was getting dressed, I noticed a cut on my foot. There were two parallel lines that looked like they had been healing for a few days. Only–here’s the thing–I don’t remember hurting my foot a few days ago! How could I have, when I never leave the house without putting my shoes on? So it must have happened when I was unconscious last night. What’s more is that the cuts are almost completely healed. It’s as if several days have passed for my foot while only a few hours passed for my brain. Freaky stuff.

I’ve been trying to recover memories from my apparent alien abduction. I remember being on some kind of ship, looking for something or someone. For a while, I seemed to be someone else besides myself. Suddenly later I was myself without the feeling of anything having changed. Looking back now, I know something was different, but at the time switching bodies didn’t seem noteworthy. Then the next thing I know–in the middle of everything–I suddenly woke up at home in bed. I’m not sure at this point whether I have missing time between the moment on the ship and when I woke up in bed or whether I was instantaneously transported. But either way it was not a normal event!

Cogito ergo I am right #7: Deductive And Inductive Logic

By Amateur Philosopher Penny Ham

I know many people who think that deductive logic is somehow superior to inductive logic.  Those people are idiots.  The main reason these people believe inductive logic is inferior usually is due to fact that inductive logic relies on the assumption that the future resembles the past. But if this is the problem with inductive logic, then why isn’t the fact that deductive logic relies on the fact that you believe in logic enough to be problematic as well?

First let me discuss what inductive and deductive logic is. The common way of thinking about deductive logic is that it reasons from the general to the specific and inductive reasons from the specific to the general. But actually, deductive reasoning can be usually understood better by the fact its premises 100% guarantee its conclusion. And for inductive reasoning, the reasoning’s premises guarantee its conclusion less than 100%, it’s just probabilistically determined.

Anyway to get to my point, deductive logic usually involves modes ponens an argument that has this form:

P implies Q
P is the case
Therefore Q is the case.

Well, what logically proves that to be true? Nothing. You just accept that it’s true. That’s how deductive logical reasoning works.

So what’s wrong with accepting inductive logic if deductive logic doesn’t even have a foundation?

Honestly, inductive logic in someways is actually superior to deductive logic. For one thing, we use inductive logic far more often than deductive logic. We hardly ever encounter situations where our reasoning leads us to a conclusion that is 100% valid. A lot of science has progressed through using reasoning that’s not 100% guaranteeing any conclusions.

Deductive logic is going to come in handy in mathematics, philosophy, logic puzzles, and trying to falsify something. But inductive logic is going to come in handy when dealing with experiences ranging from the personal and private to the impersonal and public. Deductive logic is important in science when falsifying things. But still, a huge amount of our ideas and thoughts and theories can hand their credibility to our use of inductive uncertain logic.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that people who do not believe in the goodness of inductive logic, should probably pay more attention to the world around them. They should figure out if they were right that their experiences led them to inductively conclude that inductive reasoning is so inferior.