For example, global warming is a fact; it is a law of nature called the greenhouse gas effect. If gas molecules absorb energy, they will radiate that energy back out. Without the greenhouse gas effect, Earth’s temperature would be a balmy 0 degrees F. I want to say that ALL scientists agree on this; but that would be incorrect. If just ONE doesn’t, then I can’t say ALL. So, while most (99%?) of scientists agree that global warming occurs, there are several working theories which describe how this effect is occurring and how to measure the effect. Regrettably, the layman views this healthy, necessary disagreement among scientists the wrong way.

It is incorrect to say a well established theory is a fact. When people state that “evolution is not a fact” they are making the mistake that this whole blog entry is about. The same mistake you are making when you say theories are facts.

What you fail to understand is that we can no more act as if God does not exist than you can act as if He does.

Then don’t work in a school. QED.

A few days ago, I flipped through Rushdoony’s manifesto. (I couldn’t bear to read beyond the summaries.) I saw how he framed the entire universe as a battle between God and “humanism”. I saw how he set out a plan to take over the world.

Today, I looked at the mission statements of CFI and I saw the same thing. CFI is clearly not a secular organization — at least not by their own definition of secular.

I firmly believe, despite most of the Bible to the contrary, that God is absolutely not a warrior. I’m Jewish, and I pray in Hebrew. I respect the Hebrew prayers, not just in the religious sense, but also as an heirloom of the Jewish community.

When the media accused Richard Dawkins of being descended from slave owners, he missed the point. It wasn’t about insulting him. It was about pointing out an inconsistency. The Bible verse they read to him as he hung up, the one about “sins of the fathers”, was brought up as an irony. Most people (I hope) disagree with that verse. Richard Dawkins, however, uses the same principle in his arguments — except referring to memes instead of people.

CFI makes a brief mention of an ontological, cosmic God such as I believe in, and then calls it a huge dishonest leap to identify it with the God of the Bible. But there’s nothing timeless about the Bible. It was adapted from myths of other tribes who interpreted the themes very differently. And these interpretations continue to evolve. In fact I’ve read that even the supposedly immutable Torah scrolls have been found by computer analysis to have slight differences from one Jewish enclave to another.

It is, of course, entirely illogical to preserve the Bible in a form people mostly reject. But I don’t consider the Bible the foundation of anything, I don’t read it, and I don’t attend a Synagogue. So it’s not my business to try to change something I have no stake or expertise in.

In my Hebrew prayers, I use the Hebrew words for God, because I feel an attachment to the ritual. To me, these words do not refer to the Bible. To me, they are semantically unmarked, except for the meaning I choose to co-opt them for.

Despite some people’s claims to “revealed” understanding, every believer is doing some co-opting.

(It would also be a good idea if in Muslim communities where the women wear a veil and a burka, the men also wore a veil and a burka.)

Free will is the only belief endorsed by American law. And it’s this belief that prevents American government from interfering in any other belief.

Secondly, your argument can easily be turned against itself:

Neuroscience shows no evidence of non-physical activity in the brain. True, but meaningless. Every experimental result is physical. That proves nothing.

The big flaw in arguments against free will is the unchallenged assumption that it would require something outside of physics. This gives a predetermined result of finding that it doesn’t exist before anything else is considered.

Matter is not deterministic on a small scale. The only reason a computer behaves deterministically is because it’s designed to suppress randomness. A brain is not designed. It has randomness simply because matter has randomness. Every process in which small-scale randomness is amplified to a classical level could be said to have free will, even if it isn’t even alive.

We are free to be ourselves because there’s no supernatural essence controlling us. So the more you argue for a physical cause of brain function, the more you demonstrate that a brain is indeed free from spooky influence.

What broke me out of this was just a few days ago when I read an article about astroturfing. It was the first I’d heard of the word. It was an awesome moment, when I realized all these people I was struggling not to hate were not real people, just sock-puppets created by a think-tank to spread antipathy. For now, it seems that the spam-filters have silenced them, but I’m afraid they’ll find a way to come back. Critical thinkers like you need to make people aware of this evil campaign, which seeks to destroy free thought and reshape the world into their apocalyptic nightmare.

Once you get past this block, you can see that the fruit was actually the gift of human rational decision-making, and that God intended his command to sound unconvincing. If Adam and Eve had merely an animal-like intelligence, they wouldn’t have caught on. They would have obeyed, and they and their descendents would be in perpetual blissful ignorance. In other words, humanity, and all the perks of being a rational species, would never have started. Despite being referred to as furious to be PC, it’s obvious from the context that God was actually glad to have created beings that could think for themselves.

This theme is repeated when God tells Abraham to kill his son. This represents the beginning of objective morality, and it counts against Abraham that he had to be physically stopped.

Yet another repetition is when God told Moses to talk to the rock. This represents the beginning of critical thinking. Moses correctly realized that a rock is an inanimate object, and that if there’s a pocket of water inside of it, the way to get at it is to carve away the rock.

Scientists are people, just like everyone else. They don’t have a special purity that allows them to find good theories while everyone else flounders in ignorance. Indeed if they were, they would be the priesthood rightists imagine they are.

The evidence is out there, and scientists find it and piece it together. Their ability to do this is due to the evidence itself being self-consistent, not the people. Some, like me, attribute that self-consistency to God. But that is our choice, not a necessary conclusion. We feel — however wrong it may be — that modern scientists are afraid to admit to an objective reality because of the fear that it would be an acknowledgment of what we call God. This is why otherwise liberal believers get up-in-arms about articles like this. If critical thinking is to survive, feelings like mine must be addressed head-on.

I shouldn’t be ashamed to say that well-established scientific theories are facts. Especially in the case of evolution, when the slogan “evolution is not a fact” is used to attack science. I also shouldn’t be ashamed to say I believe in evolution, because this follows from my belief in the supremacy of evidence. To shy away from such pronouncements is, frankly, post-modern.

You sure showed him!

I can see the tears welling up in his eyes, across these years, miles, and Ethernet cable. You can too, but chose to ignore it. The important thing here, in your eyes, was being right. You couldn’t swallow a bit of pride, and show a bit of tolerance to humor your father?
So, how was your relationship with your father after that?