Lawrence Krauss recently wrote a book explaining how modern cosmology and quantum mechanics can answer the question of how our universe could have arisen from empty space. However, this book is not without criticism. David Albert submitted one such criticism as a book review in the New York Times. The problem is Albert failed to fully think through his argument.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
What is "nothing"?
The definition of a fundamental word is often the most
important part of a philosophical debate.
This is especially the case in the debate over how “something” arose
from “nothing.” The word nothing is the tricky word here because it is hard to imagine what "nothingness" would actually be or what we actually mean when we say the word nothing. This difficulty can be seen in a recent criticism of a book by Lawrence Krauss.
Lawrence Krauss recently wrote a book explaining how modern cosmology and quantum mechanics can answer the question of how our universe could have arisen from empty space. However, this book is not without criticism. David Albert submitted one such criticism as a book review in the New York Times. The problem is Albert failed to fully think through his argument.
Lawrence Krauss recently wrote a book explaining how modern cosmology and quantum mechanics can answer the question of how our universe could have arisen from empty space. However, this book is not without criticism. David Albert submitted one such criticism as a book review in the New York Times. The problem is Albert failed to fully think through his argument.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
CAM trying to break into Oregon
Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is a belief system based on faulty reasoning and poor logic. Take for example this article discussing integrating CAM into the Oregon healthcare system. As usual the article is full of non-sequiturs arguments that sound compelling but do not really support the overall claim. The reason CAM promoters use non-sequiturs is that an actual discussion of whether CAM treatments worked would lead any reasonable person to choose to not use CAM.
Remember the first question we should ask prior to using a treatment is: does it work? Then if it does work we should implement it. The problem is that most of CAM has not been proven to work and for much of it to work it would need to contradict some of our most trusted scientific ideas.
Jamie Sewell, the author of an article discussing Oregon's new Coordinated Care organizations (CCOs) (part of Oregon's Health care system) wants to see CAM used in these new CCOs. Her reasons are all flawed. First she cites the flawed idea that CAM treats the whole patient where modern medicine does not. This is simply a misunderstanding of modern medicine. Modern medicine treats underlying cause of disease when possible and when not it treats the symptoms. CAM often claims to provide treatments for things that modern medicine currently cannot treat. But when closely scrutinized these CAM treatments are almost universally shown to not work. In reality CAM preys upon those who desperately want treatment when none exists by offering them false hope. Sewell points out that Oregon's CCOs are designed to reduce costs. Providing useless CAM treatments won't make patients any better and will just increase costs. Hardly the outcome intended by the CCOs.
Sewell also points out that CAM often costs less and often results in better patient satisfaction. Well, even if true those points are not relevant. If a cheap treatment doesn't work then every penny paid for it was a waste. A patient who is "satisfied" by a fraudulent CAM cancer cure is no healthier than a person who took no cure at all. Even worse, they may have delayed getting real medical treatment and thus decreased their chances of surviving.
Science has weighed in on CAM and shown most of it to not work. Thus, CAM has retreated to using rhetoric rather than evidence to support its position. Those promoting CAM need to stop and take a deep look at their arguments. If all your arguments are based on misleading rhetoric it might be time to change your opinion.
Remember the first question we should ask prior to using a treatment is: does it work? Then if it does work we should implement it. The problem is that most of CAM has not been proven to work and for much of it to work it would need to contradict some of our most trusted scientific ideas.
Jamie Sewell, the author of an article discussing Oregon's new Coordinated Care organizations (CCOs) (part of Oregon's Health care system) wants to see CAM used in these new CCOs. Her reasons are all flawed. First she cites the flawed idea that CAM treats the whole patient where modern medicine does not. This is simply a misunderstanding of modern medicine. Modern medicine treats underlying cause of disease when possible and when not it treats the symptoms. CAM often claims to provide treatments for things that modern medicine currently cannot treat. But when closely scrutinized these CAM treatments are almost universally shown to not work. In reality CAM preys upon those who desperately want treatment when none exists by offering them false hope. Sewell points out that Oregon's CCOs are designed to reduce costs. Providing useless CAM treatments won't make patients any better and will just increase costs. Hardly the outcome intended by the CCOs.
Sewell also points out that CAM often costs less and often results in better patient satisfaction. Well, even if true those points are not relevant. If a cheap treatment doesn't work then every penny paid for it was a waste. A patient who is "satisfied" by a fraudulent CAM cancer cure is no healthier than a person who took no cure at all. Even worse, they may have delayed getting real medical treatment and thus decreased their chances of surviving.
Science has weighed in on CAM and shown most of it to not work. Thus, CAM has retreated to using rhetoric rather than evidence to support its position. Those promoting CAM need to stop and take a deep look at their arguments. If all your arguments are based on misleading rhetoric it might be time to change your opinion.
The birth control mandate has nothing to do with religion
A common news topic in this election year is the controversy surrounding the birth control mandate in Obama's health care bill. The religious, especially Catholics, claim that the mandate to provide health insurance that covers birth control free of charge violates their religious rights because it goes against their beliefs. Well, they are wrong it does not violate their religious rights.
The bill does not tell Catholics that they must change their beliefs. It does not require them to use the contraception that would be provided free of charge. It does not even require them to personally provide such contraception. It merely says they must have a health insurance plan that provides birth control for those who wish to have it. The Catholics thus are mostly complaining that their funds might be used to cover something they don't believe in but that their employees want.
Well, we have plenty of history of forcing people to do things they don't believe in. We forced racist employers to stop discriminating when hiring. We all need to pay taxes which support wars and public programs many do not believe in. Part of being in a society is realizing that we will not all agree on every program that is ran by our government. That is not to say that we should not fight those programs that we believe are wrong. But claiming that a law discriminates against you because it violates your beliefs shouldn't be taken seriously. The proper argument is to try to show that your beliefs should be accepted by society as a whole.
The Catholic church faces a problem. Society as a whole is largely beginning to disagree with them on the issue of contraception. They cannot win the battle against contraception so they have fallen back and are desperately clinging to a sinking ship and trying to plug the round hole with the square peg of a religious discrimination claim.
Think about what the Catholics are trying to deny. If they have employees who want birth control they want to reduce access to birth control for those employees. They are thus attacking the right of those who believe in birth control to use birth control. If Catholics wish to claim that their religion is being discriminated against they must also admit that they wish to discriminate against their employees who believe in and wish to use birth control.
But discrimination is really not the issue here. This is simply an issue of social policy debate: is universal access to birth control and other contraceptives a good thing and should we mandate it? That is the true debate. The issue of religious discrimination is merely a sideshow attempt to draw attention away from the real issue because that battle is one the Catholics likely cannot win.
The bill does not tell Catholics that they must change their beliefs. It does not require them to use the contraception that would be provided free of charge. It does not even require them to personally provide such contraception. It merely says they must have a health insurance plan that provides birth control for those who wish to have it. The Catholics thus are mostly complaining that their funds might be used to cover something they don't believe in but that their employees want.
Well, we have plenty of history of forcing people to do things they don't believe in. We forced racist employers to stop discriminating when hiring. We all need to pay taxes which support wars and public programs many do not believe in. Part of being in a society is realizing that we will not all agree on every program that is ran by our government. That is not to say that we should not fight those programs that we believe are wrong. But claiming that a law discriminates against you because it violates your beliefs shouldn't be taken seriously. The proper argument is to try to show that your beliefs should be accepted by society as a whole.
The Catholic church faces a problem. Society as a whole is largely beginning to disagree with them on the issue of contraception. They cannot win the battle against contraception so they have fallen back and are desperately clinging to a sinking ship and trying to plug the round hole with the square peg of a religious discrimination claim.
Think about what the Catholics are trying to deny. If they have employees who want birth control they want to reduce access to birth control for those employees. They are thus attacking the right of those who believe in birth control to use birth control. If Catholics wish to claim that their religion is being discriminated against they must also admit that they wish to discriminate against their employees who believe in and wish to use birth control.
But discrimination is really not the issue here. This is simply an issue of social policy debate: is universal access to birth control and other contraceptives a good thing and should we mandate it? That is the true debate. The issue of religious discrimination is merely a sideshow attempt to draw attention away from the real issue because that battle is one the Catholics likely cannot win.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Am I agnostic or atheist? Well I'm both and yes that does make sense...
In a recent debate Richard Dawkins (who has become a common subject on this blog) stated that he was not 100% sure that a god does not exist to the extreme surprise of the moderator. This is a position he has often stated and anyone who has read his books will know this is Dawkins' position. However, most people assume that an "atheist" completely denies the possibility of any god's existence. This is a general misunderstanding of the position of most skeptical atheists. By skeptical atheist I mean one who comes to atheism due to scientific skepticism.
I call myself a skeptical atheist by which I mean I do not believe in god because I have never found any evidence presented to prove his existence to be convincing even in the slightest. However, at the same time I call myself an agnostic because I cannot know for sure whether or not a god exists. This is not a contradiction or a paradox though, on its face, it may seem to be one. To explain lets start with the definition of each:
Note the difference. Atheism is a statement of belief while agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. There is a somewhat nuanced difference between these two terms. The difference lies in the degree of certainty we apply to each. We generally say believe when we are less than certain about the truth of an issue because we lack the evidence to really be sure we are correct. Knowledge on the other hand generally refers to ideas that are supported by so much evidence that we feel absolutely sure they are true.
Take Santa Cause for example. I do not believe in Santa Clause and most adults would say that they do not believe in Santa clause. On the other hand most children do believe in Santa Clause. But can we say that we know Santa is not real? Some people might say yes because Santa is obviously a fictional human invention. I would disagree. Despite the fact that the modern version of Santa as a Jolly old white bearded man living at the north pole was an invention of fiction this does not mean he does not exist...
I call myself a skeptical atheist by which I mean I do not believe in god because I have never found any evidence presented to prove his existence to be convincing even in the slightest. However, at the same time I call myself an agnostic because I cannot know for sure whether or not a god exists. This is not a contradiction or a paradox though, on its face, it may seem to be one. To explain lets start with the definition of each:
- Atheist: a person who does not believe in god.
- Agnostic: a person who does not know whether god exists
Note the difference. Atheism is a statement of belief while agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. There is a somewhat nuanced difference between these two terms. The difference lies in the degree of certainty we apply to each. We generally say believe when we are less than certain about the truth of an issue because we lack the evidence to really be sure we are correct. Knowledge on the other hand generally refers to ideas that are supported by so much evidence that we feel absolutely sure they are true.
Take Santa Cause for example. I do not believe in Santa Clause and most adults would say that they do not believe in Santa clause. On the other hand most children do believe in Santa Clause. But can we say that we know Santa is not real? Some people might say yes because Santa is obviously a fictional human invention. I would disagree. Despite the fact that the modern version of Santa as a Jolly old white bearded man living at the north pole was an invention of fiction this does not mean he does not exist...
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The ghost owl...
A few nights ago I awoke from a deep sleep, groggily looked around my room, and found a pair of menacing dark orange eyes staring at me from outside my window. After a few moments it faded away. My initial thought was that I must be imagining it but when I cleared my eyes and looked again the eyes had returned, yet again they only lasted a second before they disappeared. After a few more repetitions of the disappearing and reappearing eyes occurring at regular intervals I decided it must be caused by a reflection in the window from a light in my room. So I jumped up and looked around. Immediately when I stood up the eyes disappeared yet no lights were pointed at the window so I sat, pondering for a second.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Outlandish Rhetoric of the week: Lord Carey
All week long I have been reading ridiculously dishonest, misleading, or just plain incorrect articles (such as this one) by people promoting or representing religion. My frustration at reading these poorly thought out articles in major publications has left me wondering which ones are worse, more dishonest, misleading, and wrong. So I decided to make an award for the most outlandish rhetoric of the week to award the person who makes the most dishonest, misleading, or simply incorrect argument of the week. I know it is Monday and thus the beginning of the week but I have to start sometime so I'll start today.
Today's choice was a tough one. On the one hand there was a Daily Telegraph article trying to smear Richard Dawkins with the absurd connection that he had a single extremely distant ancestor who owned slaves. I almost picked this one, but as absurd and dishonest as that was I have to give the award to Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey for his recent comment on the movement in the UK to legalize same sex marriage. He says:
Today's choice was a tough one. On the one hand there was a Daily Telegraph article trying to smear Richard Dawkins with the absurd connection that he had a single extremely distant ancestor who owned slaves. I almost picked this one, but as absurd and dishonest as that was I have to give the award to Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey for his recent comment on the movement in the UK to legalize same sex marriage. He says:
I was baffled because this Government’s proposal [to legal same sex marriage] constitutes one of the greatest political power grabs in history.This trumps the misleading Dawkins slavery smear merely because of the absolute absurdity of Carey's misleading statement. At least the Dawkins smear was based in truth even if it was completely irrelevant and dishonest.
‘The state does not own marriage... The honourable estate of matrimony precedes both the state and the church, and neither of these institutions have the right to redefine it in such a fundamental way.
Hutton and Dawkins separated by equivocation
A recent article at the Observer covers a short debate between Will Hutton and Richard Dawkins. The two spar back and forth (among other things) over the issue of whether secularism requires atheism. However, reading their arguments I see that they really just differ on their definition of secularism. If either had taken the time to define the word they wouldn't have had the argument. So before I provide you with quotes from each let me show you the definition of secularism being used by each.
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