Author: Gene

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The Reason for No God

The Reason for No God (Evil and Suffering May Be [If Anything] Evidence for God)

Keller sets up this argument in the, “if you don’t buy my last argument, that’s okay because of this,” position. It is the notion that the existence of suffering is equally a problem for atheists. A C. S. Lewis favorite, he is quoted in the argument, it asserts that without God any notion of good or evil is personal and therefor can’t be used as a critique of God. The argument asserts that if you are an atheist there cannot be anything good or bad, just things you like or don’t like.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t matter. The atheist does not need to provide reasons to disbelieve in god, the theist needs to provide reasons to believe.

But besides that, another problem is that it is actually somewhat testable, and is almost certainly wrong. We can check to see if people who don’t believe in God are more prone to doing bad things than those who do. Of course, this get’s complicated in a hurry, because nobody agrees on what god says is good, what to do on the Sabbath(s), what can’t I eat etc. etc. And even supposedly the same god has changed his mind over time. Beating your children and wive(s) used to be morally obligated, owning people used to be fine, etc. etc.

But even if you ignore all that, and focus on just the things the various gods seem to agree on things don’t go the theists’ way. There are societies that had laws against stealing, killing, lying, etc. before modern gods were even thought of. The countries today with the highest number of atheists have the lowest rates of those crimes.  There are even studies suggesting “moral” behavior in other social animals, such as apes.

So probably, the assertion is false, but even if it isn’t, that just is evidence there’s not absolute good, not that there is a god.

The one line refutation of this argument goes something like, “You’re saying the fact that I detect suffering proves there is a god? So there is suffering. So he’s not the nice Christian God.” See previous argument.

Personal Thoughts: This argument is very popular and comes up over and over. I have a few notions about why.

Some people seem to think that this argument uses evolution against the atheist, but this is based on a misunderstanding of evolution. These people say that it’s impossible to evolve a sense of cruelty since evolution (or natural selection) is itself cruel, so evolved creatures would be used to it. Basically that’s just not how evolution works at all, and it’s totally possible to evolve so as to be unhappy with the way evolution works, or anything else for that matter.

Some people like this argument because it sorta shifts the question from “does god exist?” to “do absolute truths exist?” Some people just feel like there should be an absolute good, and an absolute evil, and using this argument you can suggest to them that if they believe in those absolutes they have to also believe in god, preferably the arguer’s version. This is not true, though. Just as there are infinite number of supernatural possibilities as the source of this absolute good, there is also the possibility that there is no source, that it is just an intrinsic law of the universe. Belief in an absolute good is certainly not evidence of any specific god or supernatural belief.

Another reason I think this argument is popular is that theists think that atheists are under the same restrictions they are. They forget that atheists don’t actually need there to be an absolute good and evil, so they think the argument is more powerful than it is.

Also, if anyone cares for my personal opinion, I don’t think there is some sort of absolute good. I also am not a complete moral relativist. I think humans, and other social animals, have evolved behaviors that manifest as moral inclinations. Also, I think we can/could use the scientific method to devise systems of behavior (a morality) to achieve agreed upon goals as a society. We could study different populations with different behaviors and determine which presents desired results. Actually, I think we do this already informally, just slowly.

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The Reason for No God

The Reason for No God (Evil and Suffering Isn’t Evidence Against God)

A while ago a friend left The Reason for God by Timothy Keller at my house. I dunno their intentions exactly, but it might have mostly just been the irony of setting it next to The God Delusion on my shelf. I flipped through it a bit a while ago and found it boring and unconvincing, but I have not read even a tenth of it.

I thought I might give a shot at addressing all the various arguments presented in the book. The book is around 270 pages, but the arguments in it make up about 2% of that. Mostly he drones on with examples from his congregation and such, so addressing the arguments will not take me very many pages. I will take them on one at a time whenever I can and post them here. I will not attempt to be complete in my rebuttal, just adaquate. By this I mean I will not elucidate all the ways he is wrong, just one or two that spring to mind and that I can articulate quickly.

Also, it is possible there will be some arguments in the book that I can’t address, at least not directly. In fact, I’d be sorta surprised if there weren’t. This does not mean that I believe there is a god, or that there is one. It is simply the nature of logic. There are sound arguments for all sorts of false things. Normally we would do experiments to create definitive arguments, but in the case of god this is not possible, so we’ll just have to judge for ourselves what the most reasonable conclusions are.

Anyway, in general I’ll try to keep the posts short and sweet. If you feel that more time should be devoted to the argument, then ask a question or make a point, or elaborate for yourself in the comments.

For anyone following along at home I am skipping to page 23 in Chapter 2 where he makes his first argument. Also, throughout this series I will use capital ‘G’ God to refer to the Christian notion of a omnipotent, omniscient, merciful god, and lowercase g to refer to a more general god concept. Since the book is Christian apologetics, I will likely usually be  referencing the capital ‘G’ type.

Evil and Suffering Isn’t Evidence Against God

Keller states that the atheist position is that a good god would not allow pointless suffering, and since there is pointless suffering there is either no god, or no good god. Then he correctly points out that just because we can’t think of a point to the suffering, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Then he lists some cases where he thinks suffering has been beneficial.

The problem is that God is God. He can do anything. Meaning, whatever benefit was gained by the suffering, God could bestow without the suffering. Thus, all suffering is pointless. Thus, there is no God.

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Things I've learned

D&D Next Advantage/Disadvantage Math

I have the public beta package for D&D Next that has been released so far. Just the first batch. I haven’t play tested it, and I don’t intend to write a review, now. This is just a quick post for people looking for a bit of math regarding one of the new mechanics they’ve revealed, Advantage/Disadvantage.

A brief description: the guide states that if the DM declares you, the player, to have Advantage in a situation any d20 roll you would normally make you instead roll 2 d20’s and use the highest roll. If you have Disadvantage you use the lowest. The DM can determine Advantage or Disadvantage for any number of circumstances, but a common one would be during a surprise round, or if the target of an attack was unconscious or something.

So, I was curious so I did some calculations and I’ll share my results. The average d20 roll is 10.5. The average result from an Advantaged roll, basically the max of 2d20, is 13.825. The reciprocal average Disadvantage roll is 7.175. That’s a change of 3.325 on average. If you have advantage against an opponent with disadvantage you have on average a 6.65 bonus.

Still, the nature of the system is pretty volatile. The standard deviation of a normal single d20 roll is 5.916. The standard deviation of an Advantage/Disadvantage roll is 4.717, so you don’t lose much of the luck factor. I don’t have all the numbers, and don’t want to calculate them now, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this system introduces and uneven distribution. Basically, it’s not an even benefit for each number. With 1d20 you have a 5% chance of getting any result, so if you have to roll more than 1 you have a 19/20 chance, higher than 2 a 18/20 chance, and so on. If you have Advantage it’s not so simple. You have a 399/400 chance to get higher than 1 and a 396/400 chance to get higher than a 2, and a 391/400 chance to get higher than a 3. See how the differences in odds aren’t increasing evenly? This means that depending on the DC the boon/bane of Advantage/Disadvantage varies. But that’s as deep as I want to get into that subject.

Anyway, there it is. Hope you find it interesting/useful.

Edit: Well, this was bugging me and I can’t sleep so I ran some more numbers. I have created a public doc here. Please check it out if you want all the numbers related to the asymmetrical distribution mentioned at the end of the original post. I have graphed the benefit of Advantage compared to a normal roll for each possible required roll to make it as clear as possible. All the raw numbers are there as well, so you can see that Disadvantage’s curve would be identical, just upside down.

One additional thing that comes to mind is critical hits. So far the rules for criticals are that if you roll a 20 you do maximum possible damage. Pretty simple. But the Advantage system tied into the critical system though. If you have Advantage you have almost 2x the chance to crit, and if you have Disadvantage you have almost no chance, 1 in 400. Still, the effect of Advantage/Disadvantage is minimized at the extremes of rolling, so Advantage is much more likely to make you hit when you would have missed than to make you crit when you would have hit. Of course, if you have a 15-20 crit range, like is possible is some systems, then this is dramatically no longer true. I suspect they don’t intend to allow this, however.

I think this pretty much covers all the math related to the mechanic.

 

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Uncategorized

Well, G+ is broken for me for some reason. I can do anything but make a post, so I guess blogging it is. Just a couple little things.

I just got back from my walk in the park and noticed a team of like 5 or 6 year old girls practicing soccer. Their coach was having them do something confusing, but apparently if they messed up, their punishment was to have to do some push-ups. Couple things with that…

1. 6 year old girls do really poorly formed push-ups

2. Soccer requires very little arm strength, so I’m not sure what the coach was getting at with this

Kinda weird.

For those of you who haven’t been reading my G+ I did a few posts in a format where I quote/paraphrase a scene from some media I’ve recently watched and then re-write the lines as I wish they had gone. Here’s the most recent.

Taub: There were two things we thought were impossible. One of them wasn’t. That’s all we know.

Anybody: We don’t know anything else? Nothing about physics, chemistry, biology, medicine? None of our generations of scientific endeavor has provided us with any useful insight into this question? I don’t think that word “impossible” means what you think it means. … … You’re an idiot…. … You’re fired.

–House M.D. Season 8, Episode 18: Body and Soul

Yeah, bold means I wish it was there. 😛

Also, I’ve updated the Tetris game a bit. The old link goes to the newer version. Now has high scores, and if you play Zen mode, should be easier on you.

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Uncategorized

I present… Tetris

a ground breaking game for its time, I have released my own version only… what… like 25 years later… 30…

Lauren plays a lot of tetris. She played at lot over at Tetris Friends but I got sick of her having to wait for the commercials so I wrote my own version. I figured I could tweak it to her hearts content, but she doesn’t seem to be very picky. Anyway, it’s available for all you windows people over… here. Let me know if you have any troubles or feature requests. I might be able to help you out.

Just a heads up, though, she plays Tetris Ultra. It’s a two minute round and you try to get as many lines as possible, so that’s what this tetris game does. It’s not classic tetris. I’ve added a setting where you can turn of the timer and play as long as you want, but it never speeds up on you. Oh, also, left shift is how you store a block for later use. 🙂

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WIDLM

WIDLM: Hygiene Technology

I recently watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which the artificially intelligent, self aware, solid holographic doctor gave himself a holographic disease to help him better empathize with his patience. One of the symptoms of the disease was a runny nose which he alleviated with holographic tissues. Everything else in Star Trek is phasers and anti-protons and they’re still using tissues for runny noses?

This is how I feel most times I have to use a tissue. I’m basically doing the same thing every human has done when mucus leaks from his nostrils for the past hundred years. The only major advance has been to make it disposable, which is good, but that is like 90 or something years old1. Why are we using the same old technologies for these basic functions that everyone needs to use so frequently? Why isn’t there a better way to wash my hands, or wipe my bum, or clean the goop out of my eyes?

I want real innovation on these fronts, and I want the general public to be more open to change in these intimate areas of their persona lives. Together we can avoid the dystopian 24th century where our holographic doctors still have to use holographic tissues.

[1]: History of Kleenex Tissue: http://inventors.about.com/od/kstartinventions/a/Kleenex.htm

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Links

Relating to Security Lines hatred

I thought I’d share this link.

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WIDLM

WIDLM: Cords

I have a lot of cords in my life, and I wish I didn’t. In like 5 years everything will be cordless, and people will take it for granted most of the time, but every once in a while something will make them think of the days before everything was cordless and they will look at nothing and bask in the knowledge that those days are behind us, and that life can never again be as bad as it was then.

I can’t wait for those times. Cords ruin the simplest things I want to do and irritate me so constantly that it’s hard to describe. I think many of you probably think I’m blowing things out of proportion or over reacting, but I think deep down you all feel my pain. You are repressing you’re hatred for the cord because you don’t deal with it so consistently as me, perhaps, or because you think it is the way it must be. But it is not the way it must be. Cords will be gone soon and should be gone now.

Never again will there be tangling, knocking, disconnecting, twisting, fraying, tugging, too long, too short, lost, hidden, hard to reach, ugly cords everywhere. Just imagine that world, and you will hate cords as I do.

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WIDLM

The WIDLM year (partial) in review

I missed a few weeks of WIDLM over the holiday season because everything was so perfect I didn’t even understand the concept of not liking things. The thought of blogging about something I couldn’t comprehend didn’t cross my mind. But, now that’s over and I’m sure you’re feeling ripped off so to try to make it up to you I’m going to take a look back at all those things I didn’t like between July and December of 2011.

I started off with Security Lines. I haven’t had to fly since the trip that inspired the initial WIDLM, but I imagine I still don’t like them. I know I don’t like them in concept. Those guys are trying to get the right to arrest people now… /rolls eyes.

Next was WordPress… but my issue with them they fixed… so never mind that. 🙂 Then the anti-rangers, which is people who are inconsiderate of nature, especially at national parks. They are forever a problem, but at least now I don’t have to watch them in action.

After that I complained about commercials. I think there was a specific one that was bugging me from Arby’s or something, but man I hate commercials. Every time I see them I hate them more. I hated them when I was young, and I hate them 10x as much now. Commercials are strange in that the less I see them, the more I hate them. I guess I can’t maintain that level of hate, so I get numb to it in cases of constant exposure. Anyway, die commericals, die.

Then I waxed philosophically about the unnecessary letter Q, and the unnecessary mammals dogs. Then how being sick while unemployed has no silver lining. After that I wrote about the dual monitor cursor glitch I was experiencing, which I since resolved. Another off the list.

After that I wrote about reality TV. That was after Pat’s bachelor party. Man I hate reality TV. Basically anything I said about commercials can be said for reality TV, except at least commercials occasionally fund worthwhile entertainment. Way to ruin that reality TV.

Then I moaned about Miro, which I have since uninstalled, so that problem is sorta gone. 😛 Cleaning, in it utter futility, I cried about after that. Then dancing… it it’s utter uselessness.

The next was corner cutting, which was a bit self reflective… a bit self critical. A rarity. I haven’t noticed much corner cutting in my life recently, but perhaps I’ve just not had many opportunities. Maybe the post helped me better myself.

I got a jump on complaining about the holidays and ranted about people who diminish the importance of Thanksgiving by moving on to Christmas too quickly. I poke you guys in the eye. Then I complained about the rich… oh, I remember now. Really I was not liking when people are too wealthy to feel societal penalties… like parking tickets or fraud charges.

The next one was fad diets, which I don’t like because they prey on the desperate and confuse the public for the purpose of making money. This rant went a little of script and turned into my own diet advice piece, so that’s noteworthy.

I took on the education system next and tackled grades. Then the post office and snail mail. Down with ancient government institutions!

After that I mentioned that I don’t like aging. I hope we cure that soon. My next complaint was a little simpler, my computer chair. Mother made me a cushion for Christmas, so that’s another problem from the list that has been solved.

My most recent two were lag and lines. Two of the most troublesome problems of the modern first world. Roughly 90% of all sadness can be traced to those two things. I suspect they will plague us for years to come, but I haven’t felt their sting lately, so that’s good.

Well, there you have it. 6 months (almost) of what I don’t like. Keep them in mind and try to make my life better. Looking over the list I can tell it is far from definitive, so I will try to keep you updated in this, the year 2012.

Categories
WIDLM

WIDLM: Lines

I don’t like lines. Big deal. Nobody like’s lines… queue’s in the UK. Just one of life’s minor problems.

Well, I have to say, I certainly prefer lines to the system we had before lines, the mob. Where the strong and violent went first and some people might never get a chance. The line is certainly more fair and civilized, and all around less destructive. But it’s been like, I dunno, many hundreds of years since the advent of the line and little has improved upon it.

There was the “take a number” innovation sometime in the past, so you didn’t have to physically save your spot. And a more modern version of that is seen at some restaurants, where you get an electronic devise that starts beeping at you when it’s your turn. Those are both great, but we can do better.

This is the 21st century. I want that devise to constantly be updating with an estimated time and error bars. It knows how many people are in front of me, and it could have access to a massive database to extrapolate the time each person is likely to take. That data would also be useful to providing a margin of error, so I could err on the side of caution in I wanted to. The devise should alert you if there is a dramatic change in it’s estimations for some reason. It should also be possible to use the devise to make slight adjustments. Like… say, if I’m in line for something, and it says that it’ll take 45 minutes. So I go off shopping (this is clearly hypothetical) and time passes and then all of sudden my estimated time goes from like 20 minutes to 10, and I’m not going to make it back in time. I should be able to use the device to say, I can’t get back until 15 minutes, so try and arrange it so that I don’t hold up the line, but that I don’t loose my place entirely. That way maybe 1 or 2 people could cut in front of me, maximizing efficiency, but I’d still have the freedom to use my time. This power should have limits, though, or else people would abuse it and then the estimated wait times would be constantly inaccurate.

There are other possible tweaks to the classic “line” we could make. Maybe they could start auctioning spots in line. Or making it a game. People try and answer trivia questions or something for chances to move ahead in line. I look forward to the glorious future queue.