How I Became a Liberal

It may be a surprise to some to learn that I once considered myself a conservative.  I come from a conservative family.  Growing up, Ronald Reagan was our hero.  I was too young to understand anything about politics, but I had a great childhood and I had confidence in my parents and there reasoning (I still do actually, my mother is racing to the left at the moment).  I continued on my conservative bent on through college; fighting off the revelations of reason I was receiving.  As we got into the thick of the Bush administration, and I began to lose arguments badly, I backed off a bit and changed my views to "moderate, with right leanings".  This was really the beginning of the end for my life as a conservative.

 I fought the good fight, but at the end of the day, none of the ammunition that I was provided with by right wing ideology was doing the trick.  Those who I was debating held the high ground on almost every issue.  I began to realize that things I was arguing for weren't convincing me either.  When faced with that kind of cognitive dissonance it seems that the only options that one has are to change your mind about some things or plug your ears and double down.

Ironically, it was a theology professor of mine who told me that an extremist is someone who when they get lost, drives faster.  I am not sure where he got the quote, but it stuck with me, and has always reminded me that we cannot be afraid to change our minds when the facts don't match our world view.  And that is really why I have become the godless liberal I am today, no matter how I tried, I couldn't make reality fit the image I had had of it.

Fun with selection!

Today I thought of an easy and fun way to understand the process of selection in evolution.   I believe it would be a good way to teach children about evolution and a good response to anyone dragging out that tired old metaphor about the parts of a jumbo jet coming together randomly.

Just to cover my butt, I am sure someone else has come up with this idea before, but a quick google search didn't reveal anything.  If you know someone wrote about this before me, please let me know so I can attribute it to them.

Anyhow, here is what you do:  get five dice.  Rolling all five dice at once, try and get the same number on all five on the same roll.  This is unlikely to happen.  According to Wolfram Alpha, the odds of getting the same number on all five dice on the same roll are 1 in 1296.  Now try getting not just five of the same number, but five of a specific number, say one, on the same roll.  It is not going to happen unless you are very very lucky.  

Now let's change the rules a little.  Now, when you roll all five, any dice that come out a one you can set aside.  Roll the remaining dice and set aside the ones.  Repeat until all the dice show a one.  As I am writing this, I gave it a try and it took 14 rolls to get all of the dice to show one.  This is in keeping with the numbers I got earlier when I did this same thing eighteen times.  The average number of rolls was between twelve and thirteen (five was the lowest and twenty-two the highest).  

So in a fairly small number of rolls through the mechanism of selection, we are able to accomplish something that would otherwise be very improbable.  

Anyhow, I am sure you have heard of similar examples.  I just thought this one was fun because you can actually do it.

There is crazy...

...And there is crazy.  And then, there is this.  Sun goddess???  What?!  Does the empress know?  Compared to this, Russell's Teapot seems pretty down to earth (yuk yuk yuk).   

Climate Change

I am sure that I am not the first one to hit on this topic, but I wonder what percentage of climate change deniers are religious.  I would be interested to know.  It seems strange that someone can take something as unlikely as the existence of God on faith, but require absolute evidence for something that is very likely.

Okay, faith and what else?

Today, for the second time in my career as an atheist, someone has presented me with the argument that they believe in god because of faith.  I don't know why people think that this is a good argument.  Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't faith mean basically the same thing as belief?  I know there are variations on the definitions of faith that give it some different shades of meaning, but essentially it is the same thing, right?  If I told someone I believe something because I believe it, I am sure that I would be met with blank stares and derision, but if I replace the word "belief" with the word "faith", suddenly it becomes an argument. 

I find this argument especially annoying because everyone has faith is something or someone, but we do it because there are reasons that we have that faith.  I am not talking about anything supernatural.  I am talking about things like faith that friends care for you and family members love you.  Maybe it is all a lie, but I have reason to believe it is not.  Sometimes the reasons for faith end up not being reliable, but they are there.  I am sure it is the same for religious peoples' faith.  Has it been instilled in you from childhood?  Are you afraid of god's wrath?  Is it the sense of community you feel in church?  Do you believe the Bible is the literal word of god?  Is it a feeling you get when you are alone?  Does god talk to you?  Have you been visited by angels?  You are not likely to convince me, but at least we can have an adult conversation about it.  So if you are religious and you insist on talking to me about religion please tell me the reason that you have faith, not simply that you do!  The thing worries me is that people might not know why they have this faith, and they are unwilling to really think about it.

The word of god?

Just wanted to share this article that I happened upon today.  I found it interesting, although not surprising to read about many books in the New Testament being written by people who were not who they claimed to be.  This by itself would not discredit the Bible as being true, but it certainly weakens its claim of being a primary source.  Given that it is the primary source, or as I called it in the entry about Stephen Hawking, the "evidence" for Christianity, I would say that Christians are standing on some shaky ground when they make truth claims.  I guess that is not so surprising.