As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting as much as I usually do. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will recognize that this happens from time to time. This time I have an explanation. Part of it is I’ve been sleeping better. If you suffer from sleep related problems, Melatonin works wonders. Sure my sleep is not perfect, nor do I ever expect it to be, but it definitely has improved. This in turn has improved my mood. This coupled with the fact that I haven’t been perusing the internet as much, has resulted in less posts. Overall it comes down to me being less angry. Anger fuels this blog. Almost all of my posts are angry rants about whatever has happened to piss me off recently. I aim to rectify this as soon as possible. I will strive to be more angry; for you my reader.

Today I have a guest post from Alexis Bonari.

Most atheists find out very early in their deconversion experience that they hold a minority opinion. The vast majority of the human population believes in some sort of deity or divine force, if not in a personal god. For that reason alone, reading intelligently written books detailing our varying philosophies can be intellectually engaging and uplifting. Better yet, such books serve to explain the atheist point of view to a general public who often assumes that atheists live lives without direction or a true sense of morality. So, for your reading pleasure, here are five of the best contemporary books on the subject of atheism:

1. Why I Became an Atheist by John Loftus

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Became-Atheist-Preacher-Christianity/dp/1591025923

Loftus is no lifetime atheist. He was a long-time minister who studied with William Lane Craig, one of the foremost Christian apologists in the world. While this book is written to Christians and believers in general, atheists will also enjoy the story of his deconversion.

2. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
(http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278952859&sr=1-1)
Dawkins attempts and succeeds at doing the nearly impossible: taking a comprehensive, broad-brush, approach to arguing against religion without losing focus. He makes logical arguments against the probability of a supreme being. Further, he highlights the negative effects of religion from a historical and psychological standpoint.

3. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
(http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278953111&sr=1-1)
Harrisí book is primarily directed at American Christians, but still holds interest for foreign atheists who are interested in American-style Christianity. This book is a response to the letters he received following the release of his previous book, The End of Faith. After receiving hundreds of correspondences from concerned Christians, Harris took it upon himself to address their questions and beliefs head-on.

4. God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. by Victor Stenger
(http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278953166&sr=1-1)
What sets Stengerís work apart is his exclusive reliance upon science. Instead of getting embroiled in one philosophical go-round after another, he simply weighs the claims made by proponents of religion against the most current scientific truths. The outcome, while predictable, is well supported.

5. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett
(http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278953235&sr=1-1)
The ìspellî Denett hopes to break is not religion. Instead, he hopes to open religion up to scientific inquiry. For most of human history, science has been hands-off when it comes to religious quesitons. Dennett argues that there is no reason to exempt religion from scientific inquiry.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching online college degree programs. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Guest blog by Kenny Wyland:

My girlfriend’s cousin got married yesterday and we attended the ceremony. They are both religious and it was a religious ceremony held in a Catholic Cathedral, but neither the bride nor the groom are Catholic which confuses me and I will never understand.

No matter how many ceremonies I attend, even the ones that try to give the impression of a modern mind, they always manage to include inequality between men and women. The woman is still described as a servant who should care for her husband while the husband is told he is the one in charge. They usually try to soften the sound of it and tell the husband to be a fair and gentle ruler, but in just about all major religions the woman is required to be subserviant to the man.

Even though I run into it consistently when speaking with Christian women it always catches me off guard when I talk to a woman who feels her husband is supposed to be in charge of her. While discussing politics the other day a Christian woman said to me:

Men are supposed to be in charge in the church, and, honestly, I think it should be that way in politics as well. … We women are too dang moody to be trusted with that much power! lol … God created men to be leaders. If my husband told me not to vote for someone, I would ask for his reasons and we would discuss it considerably. We’re both thinkers so I’m sure one of us would manage to convince the other of our reasoning. So far, in our almost 15 years together, that has not happened. If we still disagreed after much discussion, I would probably go with his choice.

I don’t know that I’ll ever understand women who feel this way and cede this kind of power to a man. I don’t know of any atheistic women who place themselves in a subserviant position to men. In my experience this is a purely theistic point of view.

Guest blog by Kenny Wyland:

My nerd community is gathering in San Diego, CA this weekend for Comic Con, but it wasn’t just nerds this time. The infamous Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Comic Con to protest and let all of these comic book nerds know that they were immoral and that God hated them.

If you aren’t familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church, they are widely known for their remarkably offensive protest signs:

My beloved comic book nerds decided to mount a counter-protest… which turned out to be much funnier.

Guest Blog by Kenny Wyland

I used to believe in the Bible. When I went to college, started learning about the world, and began to really think critically about my beliefs I started questioning the Bible. I eventually came to the question: Why do I believe in the Bible? After much thought, I realized it was because my parents told me it was true. So, I removed their influence from my equation and thought about it again… and wasn’t really left with anything. Sure, real events and real places are referenced in the Bible but that is obviously isn’t proof of anything. Plenty of fiction is grounded in real places or real events.

The Odyssey and the Iliad were written long before the New Testament, hundreds of years before Jesus was supposedly born. That mentions Greek Gods as well as real places, but no one today considers it to be real. It’s considered myth. So, why does the Bible get a different treatment? Either you were introduced to the Bible as a child or you came to it later in life. As a child you probably just believed your parents when they told you it was true, just like you believed that Santa was real. Eventually though you stopped beliving in Santa, but didn’t stop believing in Jesus. Why is that? Because other adults don’t believe in Santa, but other adults still DO believe in Jesus. It’s a type of group-think in which people feel comfortable holding irrational beliefs as long as other people around them also believe it.

What caused you to believe in the Bible? Why do you believe fantastical stories in the Bible are real events, but you don’t believe the fantastical stories in the Iliad are real events?

Guest Blog by Kenny Wyland:

I’ve heard it countless times, that without God to define a moral code that there can be no moral code. If you can’t set rules for yourself, then you scare me a little bit. If a supernatural authority figure is the only thing standing between you and murder/rape/theft/etc… then you scare me because if in the future you suddenly lose your faith and stop believing in God then you’re about to spiral down into an amoral, uncaring monster. If you play the mental chess starting from the position that we as humans have no moral code without God, then if you lose your faith in God, you are no longer restricted by his authority and will become an amoral monster. Do you think that of yourself? If you stopped believing in God, would you indiscriminately kill people because it didn’t matter?

Guest Blog by Kenny Wyland

I posted this on my blog last year and thought it might be of interest to the readers here. It’s a bit long, but don’t be scared off by the numbers.

A theist friend recommended a podcast to me called “Conversations with a Skeptic” because he felt it was the best series on the subject of “reasoned faith” that he had experienced. If you would like to listen, it goes pretty fast. I listened to about 1/3 of it during my morning exercise. I’ve uploaded the mp3s so you can listen to Conversations With A Skeptic if you’d like. (Be aware though that it’s poorly named, there is no conversation with a skeptic. The Preacher in the podcast essentially holds up an atheist strawman.)

In response to Conversations with a Skeptic Podcast.

At one point when the Pastor is talking about evidence. He very quickly mentions Noah and the Ark. He asserts:

If you want to study it from a mathematician’s standpoint, it’s pretty obvious. You can take 2 of every species and you can put them in that dimensions and have plenty of room left over. You could even take 2 of every dinosaur. You could put every single species we’re aware of and you could put them 2 by 2 in that.

When he said this it struck me as strange, because that’s an awfully bold claim to put forward without any support. I really had no idea how the math would work out, so I thought it might be fun to sit down with some back-of-the-envelope calculations to see if he’s just repeating some claim he’s heard before without checking it. So, let’s check it! What follows is a SUPREMELY ROUGH AND ARBITRARY SET OF NUMBERS. Got it?

I did some quick web searches and found four different sites that gave numbers for the number of species on the planet:

Obviously there would be no need to include Fish in our equations, because they could just continue swimming. We’ll also assume that Amphibians would be able to survive the storm without needing to be on the ark. Insects present another problem to the equations… you can’t really bring two of each insect and expect them to survive a full year on the ark (it rained or 40 days, then the water remained for 150 days, then during another 150 days the waters receeded before everyone was let out of the ark). Many insects don’t even live that long and some need queens, etc, so the calculations involving insects and other arthropods are a little complicated for now. Let’s leave that until later. I’m going to use the Wikipedia numbers because those numbers are sourced while the other web pages aren’t (and they aren’t radically different anyway).

There were also 8 people on-board. Noah and his wife, Noah’s three sons and their wives.

Assumptions:

Mammals – Mammals range from the size of mice to the size of elephants, but the distribution of sizes is going to weigh more heavily toward the smaller. I’m going to arbitrarily choose my cat as the “small mammal” size. She’s about 6″ wide, about 14″ long, and about 8″ tall. I’m also going to assume that each mammal will require some space to move around in. We’ll be charitable to the math and horribly cruel to the animals by giving them double their body size, so my theoretical average mammal will get 12″ x 28″ x 16″ of space in which to exist.

Reptiles – Reptiles range in size from 0.5″ to 20′ and again the distribution of sizes is going to weigh more heavily toward the smaller. Adult iguanas are about 4-6′ long, but that seems too large for my assumed small size. I’m going to use the same calculations I did with my cat. My guess is that is smaller than the average.

Birds – I was originally not going to include birds in my calculations, because I figured that birds could just fly around and land on top of the ark when needed. However, the Scriptures clearly state that birds were to be brought into the ark. Birds range in size from 2″ to 10′ in length (Ostrich). We’ll go with parakeet-ish size about 8″ in length. They are only about 3″ wide, but with wing-span they’ll be more like 10″.

Now let’s talk ark dimensions. 450′ x 75′ and it had 3 stories (45′) which is 101,250 sq ft. Obviously with smaller animals it will be possible to stack several of them on one deck so we’ll need a 3 dimensional calculation. Let’s use an 75%/20%/5% split for small/medium/large sizes of animals. For Mammals we’ll roughly go with cat, big dog, and horse for small, medium and large. Remember we’re giving them a highly constricting space that is only double their body size for a full year.

That leaves us 94,961 cubic ft over the limit. I really had no idea how these numbers were going to pan out and please let me state once again they are entirely based on guesses of animal size and distributions of sizes throughout the species. On the surface of these incredibly loose numbers, my feeling is that there isn’t “plenty of room to spare.”

Even though the above numbers are based on a very restrictive amount of space…

… they don’t take into account the structures necessary to partition all the animals which would take up more space…

… they don’t take into account that you would need walkways among each of the animal pens so that you could care for them…

… they don’t take into account the immense volume of animal dung that would need to be scraped out of the ark and tossed overboard daily or weekly for an entire year…

… they don’t take into account the immense amount of food you’d have to bring on to the ark to feed 8 humans and almost 24,000 animals for an entire year…

… they don’t take into account the common misconception that only 2 of each animal were brought on-board. The story of Noah says 2 of each unclean animal was to be brought on the Ark, but 7 of each clean animal was to brought on-board…

… and we didn’t even include all of the PLANT species that Noah had to bring on board as commanded by God…

… and we didn’t even include all of the insects, spiders and other arthropods that should have been included!

My point here is not “the ark is mathematically impossible” because as I’ve stated several times so far, these numbers are REALLY ROUGH. Like, super duper rough. My point is that the Pastor’s simple assertion of “plenty of room left over” isn’t so simple. Especially when you complicate ALL of the above factors in with his assertion that “You could even take 2 of every dinosaur.”

The true goal of my post is in the heart of the title. Skepticism. How many people listening to this Pastor preach or listening to the podcast afterward heard him make this HUGE assertion in two simple little sentences and didn’t even think twice about it? He said it, passed it off and moved on in the span of like 15 seconds as if it was no big deal. It’s true, there ya have it, let’s move on. That’s not the kind of intellectual caution and verification that comes along with a skeptical mindset.

If we put together a sufficiently complex mathematical model and were able to gather all of the data needed to properly feed that model (real animal sizes, quantities of food, etc), perhaps the numbers would work out. Perhaps it is possible to house that many plants and animals in that size structure for an entire year. I don’t really know. The point is that I’m asking those questions along with questions about the other fantastical stories in the Bible.

If you believe the Bible is correct… if you believe that these stories are all true… then you should have no fear in asking these questions because you’ll always come back with the answer that you are right. You have to do it honestly though. You can’t approach the question without honestly accepting the possibility that you might be wrong. To answer the questions honestly, when you are presented with a finding or an answer that indicates you might be wrong, the appropriate response is to delve further and discover the truth instead of saying “God is all-powerful, so if He wanted to then He could make it work like that.”

Being right is not the goal. Finding the truth is the goal.

Guest Blog from Kenny Wyland

My last in this series on secular values focuses on Fairness. This wasn’t one of the ideas put forth in Derek James’ work, on which I’ve been basing these entries, this is just something personally important to me.

I find inherent value in Fairness. Fairness is a BIG thing for me. I’m not advocating a communist society with forced materialistic equality or anything, but I value a fundamental Fairness in all things. Amusingly, I learned this playing D&D as a kid. Whenever I would ask the Dungeon Master (my brother) if I could use some ingenious way for my character to use his skills, he would say, “Sure, you can do that, but keep in mind that if I let YOU do it then I’ll let them do it YOU too.” It stuck with me and as silly as it was, it helped shape my view of the world. I’m not inherently better than anyone else so why should I have different rules for myself and for others?

There are many examples of this double-standard behavior in politics. For example, with marriage equality. I find no value in heterosexual theists saying they are allowed to marry but homosexuals are not allowed to marry. It is arrogant and unfair (as well as completely ignorant of the history of marriage). Prejudicial discimination is not helpful or constructive. This particular issue is tightly bound with the core value of Freedom as well. Same-Sex marriage has no victims. It involves two adults who deeply love and care for each other and wish to dedicate themselves for life in exactly the same way as opposite-sex couples. If you vote to deny this to same-sex couples, then you are being unfair and denying freedom to these people.

Guest Blog by Kenny Wyland

We’ve discussed the secular values of Truth and Freedom, both of which are easy to understand as values. The third value I mentioned when I started these entries is Structure. The word “Structure” doesn’t precisely paint the image for the value I want to describe, but I borrow it from Derek James because I haven’t come up with a better choice. The idea is that things with order and structure have inherent value. Both physical and non-physical things can have structure and order. My computer is a physical thing, but the ideas I convey to you through it are non-physical. However, both of these things have a degree of structure.

Some structure is intentional and some is unintentional. Intentional structure is found all around us in anything that humans have designed and constructed–our houses, cars, planes, cameras, etc. Unintentional structure is often produced by the basic laws of the universe. Diamonds are formed when intense heat and pressure is applied to carbon atoms deep inside the earth. No one is intentionally sculpting each of these diamonds, they form very tight, highly organized crystaline structures based on natural, fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

I believe that ordered… organized…. structured things are inherently valuable. At the very least, they are certainly MORE valuable than their random, chaotic, disorganized counterparts. For example, cellulose and other chemical compounds in their constituent parts are far less valuable than wood made up of those parts. The wood is valuable, but not as much as a nice living room table that I could amateurishly make with it. That table would be valuable, but if I was to improve my woodworking skills and get the right tools and make that table with greater precision.. joints that are much tighter.. apply a stain with greater skill… it would be even more valuable. The order or structure inherent to the object increases its value to us.

With this in mind, several inevitable ideas flow from the value of structure.

The most complex forms of non-intentional structure that we know of are biological organisms. All life on earth is descended from a single common ancestor, a form of replicating molecule that duplicated sufficiently for the non-intentional process of natural selection to act upon the population, leading to single-celled organisms, then to multi-cellular organisms. Mutations provide sources of variation allowing natural selection to work, but while mutations are random, the process of natural selection is the very opposite of randomness. Natural selection is an optimization algorithm defined by principles as incontrovertible as the laws of gravity and motion. –Derek James

If we are to value Structure, then we must value Life. The more complex the structure, the more valuable it inherently is to us, which is why we value humans more than plants and plants more than simple bacteria.

Creating, building, ordering…. increasing the degree of organization and structure is inherently a good thing. This can sometimes be a complex consideration though. Clearing a forest to build housing for people is good as long as the improved value offsets the lost value. A controversial example is stem cell research. Many religious people want to ban stem cell research because they consider it loss of life. Life is important to me as well, however, the issue isn’t so clear cut as many theists would have you believe. Embryos used to harvest stem cells are generally the product of In Vitro Fertilisation which creates many viable embryos all at once. Most of those embryos are merely discarded, which is a shame. I consider the ability to use those extra embryos to be a good thing. Especially when it could increase our knowledge of life, disease, etc, (Truth is one of our core values)! Therefore, when I weigh the opposing points in the discussion I believe it is good and right to perform stem cell research. These types of resolutions are important because there will always be inevitable conflicts between the things one values.

If creating and building are inherently good, it follows that destruction and randomness are bad. Destruction or randomness can vary wildly from obvious concepts like murder to something mundane like littering. It’s important to understand the complexities of this core value though. I’m not saying that spontaneity is bad! Deciding in the spur of the moment to grab some friends and head to the beach for the day is a great thing! However, choosing your driving path to the beach randomly… or all individually arriving at different, random beaches at different, random times of day… these aren’t good.

There are also other times in which destruction isn’t the option we want, but is warrented or necessary. At times other people will become destructive. In these situations we need to consider all of the aspects of the situation. There will be times in which we will need to be destructive in order to defend order, truth, freedom and fairness in the long term. Just because we value life and structure does not mean we need to live a life of pacifism. These are the moments in which our core values can come into conflict with one another and we as reasoning human beings must make our own rational decisions… unbiased by irrational theism… unrestricted by a non-existent God.

Guest Blog from Kenny Wyland:

From one of my favorite web comics, XKCD:

XKCD always embeds a little extra funny if you hover your mouse over the image. This one reads:

Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly: I have two small corrections for your July issue. One, it's spelled "echinacea", and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.