Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

There have been more and more atheist advertisements popping up recently, now it’s still no where near the saturation level that Christian or even other religious already have, but it’s increasing. You can take this one of two ways (actually many other but just live with my false dichotomy): You can see this as people practicing free speech… or you can take this as an attack on religious freedoms.

Let’s talk about the latter. So atheists are advertising their lack of a belief in a god. Most people wouldn’t see this as a big deal, but just wait until you see what they’re saying in these ads: “You can be good without god.” Oh my fucking god, what the fuck is this shit? That is a direct attack on Christianity. Holy shit we have to stop this immediately! We can’t have these ass holes telling people that they can be good without an irrational belief in some sick fuck who likes to punish people and make people attack people ordering them to rape and murder entire cities (including women and children… even their oxen)!

Of course the other way to look at it is that since there are so many advertisements for religions, an advertisement for atheism is just fair. Just look at how Christians react when they’re shit gets banned… yet they want to ban everyone else…

What is the greatest difference between knowing something and thinking something? What is the difference between opinion and reality? What is the difference between a proposition and a theory? What is sufficient evidence? Often when we as humans use these terms, we have a very different meaning in mind than the scientific community. Our ideas of these terms are even very different than you’d find in legal documents. But the problem is not that people’s definitions and conceptualization of these terms are so different than that of professionals, the problem is of scope.

Knowing Vs. Thinking

On a personal level knowing something and thinking something are the same: you think what you know and you know what you think. The problem is that we are not isolated to ourselves because we as humans have discovered that by communicating with, learning from and teaching others, we can rapidly become more technologically advanced and protect ourselves. When another person relies on your knowledge or you’re relying on the knowledge of someone else, knowing something and having an opinion starts to become more different the more people that are involved: if you’re talking to just one person, you may not need to have verified your opinion at all, but when you’re speaking to a large group of people then it becomes very important to have verified your opinion. The context is equally important to the amount of people you’re talking to. If it’s well understood that you’re just expressing your opinion, then it isn’t very important to verify it, however if you’re taken as an authority on what you’re talking about, then it’s very important that you verify your opinion.

So when can you say that you “know” something? You should only say that you know something after you can demonstrate predictions, show the facts that back up your opinion and have shown that someone other than yourself can verify it for themselves. Also after both you and others have attempted to discover an alternate explanation for the predictions.

Propositions Vs. Theory

The difference between propositions and scientific theories is the same as the difference between the common use of the word theory and and scientific theories. The common use of the word theory is used as a possible concept of how something works… a proposition if you will. While a scientific theory uses gathered facts and is used to explain why those facts happened, the theory is heavily tested against other possible explanations as well as predicting the cause of the facts as well as how the things will happen. A proposition is like an untested theory, while a scientific theory is an accurate representation of reality.

The reason why we bother with scientific theories is so that we can fix things, make things better and avoid bad things. So the next time you hear someone say, “it’s only a theory” let them know how wrong they are… unless they’re referring to the Layman’s definition of theory.

Sufficient Evidence

Some people say that the idea of sufficient evidence is a constantly moving goal post that can never be attained. So what’s the point? The point is that not only do you need to have evidence for your ideas, you also have to be able to connect that evidence to a theory. Like the theory of gravity. No one can provide absolute proof that everything falls to the Earth, I mean have you tested everything on the planet? I didn’t think so. Have you witnessed the beginning of gravity? I didn’t think so. So what gives you confidence in this scientific theory? Evidence. Not just hearsay.

You can test out the theory of gravity yourself: measure some spot a specific distance from the ground… say 15 feet from a roof, and release a somewhat dense object that will encounter little resistance from other forces… like a rock. Then release the rock and time how long it takes to reach the ground. Anyone who has a mild understanding of gravity will be able to tell you how much time it will take for the rock to hit the ground, because the theory provides predictions. Some one with a better understanding of gravity will be able to tell you how fast the rock will be going when it hits as well as it’s acceleration. Without even having to watch your specific experiment. This is known as verifiable and demonstrable evidence. If you want to challenge the theory, you must first show where the theory is wrong and be able to demonstrate your evidence. So to challenge the theory you need to have a good understanding of the theory.

Bring It All Together

The purpose of all this is not to sound smart, isolate the uneducated masses or to trick people into believing things that are false. The purpose is to provide everyone a better understanding of reality. The purpose is to prevent people from just saying things that sound like they make sense. Everyone that is interested can research and test out any scientific theory. If you can’t understand a concept, do not worry, there are authorities that you can question. I have yet to meet a person that is not enthusiastic to find people genuinely interested in increasing their understanding of the field they are researching.

TLDR: The purpose of evidence is to ensure that we all have the most accurate understanding of reality that is currently possible.

Objective morality is a moral code of conduct that has consequences that exist outside the known universe and that can be applied the same to all people in all circumstances. The Ten Commandments are and example of what is intended to be objective morality. “Thou shalt not murder” is an example of something that most people will agree is always wrong, however there are several problems with this that don’t include the times the god of the bible told his followers to murder people. What is murder? Murder is killing someone without the need to kill them, killing in self-defense is not considered murder, killing in war is not considered murder but killing someone just because he said something mean to you is considered murder.

Let’s continue with the subject of murder and break it down to it’s moral basics. Defining the word murder in a way that separates it from other forms of killing is, in its most basic form, creating a moral standard around killing. Killing is the action, the reasons to kill are the morals. So saying that killing is ok in some circumstances but not in other circumstances is showing that the moral code is not objective, but subjective based around the circumstances. To clarify: if justification is allowed around the reasons one kills, then the action is not an objective moral.

Of course this line of reasoning is based around the concept that an action in itself is not moral or immoral. This concept derives itself from reasoning: when one discusses what is moral, one discusses the action itself very little and discusses the consequences of the action in great detail. This means that the action has very little to do with the moral decision, only the consequences. Of course the action is very important because, without the action, there can be no consequences. So in the commandment about murder, the morality is not the action of killing, it’s the justification for killing.

Now for the evidence. There is no evidence that there is any objective codes of conduct. None. Where do people get the Ten Commandments from then? From a bible written by men. Yes, the bible was written by men and not by a god. Men claim that the moral “laws” came from god, but the same commandments existed long before the bible came around, giving evidence that the god of the bible is either a plagiarist or the men that wrote the bible were. Not to mention there is no one coming back from the afterlife to let everyone know that a god did in fact give men a set of moral codes that have consequences after death. There is evidence that men wrote all the books of god, however there is no evidence that god had anything to with the books. The inaccuracies, contradictions, concepts in defiance with the known world and loss of material only serve as evidence that the books are not from a god, but from men.

Now a much easier question: how can one who blindly follows a set of morals without regard to situations, call themselves moral? In short: they can’t. They in themselves are acting without a moral conscience, they are acting out a script that was written for them. If god did tell them to always or never do a set of actions and those people acted without consideration of the consequences of those actions or inaction, then they themselves are not a morally conscious being. Those who act without respect to the consequences to their actions are immoral. So the question of their morality falls not to how they behave, but to whether or not it’s moral to blindly follow the rules of authority. In the case of the people who lied to Nazi Jew hunters, I don’t think that anyone would say that blindly following the authority of the Nazi’s would’ve been the good thing to do. So we can see that blindly following authority is not always good. So what makes following rules supposedly given by a god any different than rules given by other authorities? The answer is: blindly following authority means that you are acting immorally.

So how does one, despite the overwhelming lack of evidence, declare that objective morality exists? On faith. Because the “objective” morals themselves are subjective, there is no evidence that the morals come from some other source than humans and blindly following instructions is amoral: objective morality does not exist.

There is apparently a big debate over what atheism is, there are many and varied descriptions: atheism is the lack of belief in a god, atheism is the lack of belief in any god, atheism is the belief that there are no gods, atheism is a set of philosophies that one must have in order to be an atheist, atheism is a religion… etc. I will cover the semantic definition and why many sources have it incorrectly defined, why every atheist mustn’t subscribe to the philosophies of other atheists and why it’s intellectually dishonest to think that an atheist must have a certain set of philosophies.

First the etymology of atheism comes from France… at least as far as we have records. It’s derived from the Latin prefix ‘a’ which, “denotes the absence of” (or Ancient Greek as without or not), and theos which means god. So basically the etymology of atheism means, “without god” but also with the ism it means “without the belief in god.” Even with a different definition of theism, the “a” prefix still denotes “not that.” You could spend fifty pages defining theism and all atheism means is “without or absence of that.”

So what does it take to be an atheist? Well that is more simple than you may think. Just like all it takes to be a theist is that you have to believe in a god of some kind, all it takes to be an atheist is to not believe a god of any kind. While the term was originally used in a specific context in that if I was a Christian I would call non-Christian atheists because according to my beliefs, they are without god. But the modern self labeled definition of atheist means that one does not believe in any god. So just don’t believe in a god and you’re an atheist, believe in a god and you’re a theist.

As simple as it is, many people feel like making it more complicated than that, by saying that an atheism is a belief. The only way atheism can be a belief is if it meant that an atheist believes that there’s no god. However given the meaning of the word, this is inaccurate. While one who believes there is no god is an atheist, the only thing required to be an atheist is to not believe in a god.

The most dishonest tactic employed by some theists is that atheism is a specific world view and set of philosophies that every atheist must follow. The problem with this concept is that if equal standards are applied to theism, then every theist must have a certain world view and set of philosophies. This goes beyond the scope of the words and should just be ignored as an attempt to sneak in a Trojan horse definition. Also, if every atheist must agree with every other atheistic view, then equally every theist must agree with every theist view. Clearly that is impossible, so this idiotic concept needs to be dropped.

So if you’re a theist, remember that you don’t share the same world view and philosophies as every other theist, so don’t expect or attempt to force every atheist to have the same world view and philosophies of every other atheist.

Patton Oswalt – Sky Cake

A good description of religion.

Ok, I am addicted to internet arguments. I don’t have to have them, and the only reason to have them is to strengthen and question my assumptions and to force me to re-examine my evidence, possibly fight off some dishonesty, but other than that there is no reason.

So here is a hilarious argument I had with some wannabe philosopher about whether raping babies is morally wrong  and why it is morally wrong. Now I had hoped to get deep into this discussion by actually discussing moral implications, possible good benefits (like raping the babies will cure cancer and AIDS), or whether since the babies won’t remember the experience and may be healed by the time they will start to retain memories, that it doesn’t “harm” the baby in the long term view. But instead I got this:

—-Learn the Meanings of the Words, Please—

DavinCreed: Anyone that has the ability to? stop someone from raping babies, but would stand by and just watch someone raping babies, is a bad person. That includes any god.

larrycastle: You talk about a “bad” person. Says who? [...]Bad based? on what?

DavinCreed: Bad is a negative. The negative effect in this case would be the damage caused to the babies[...]

larrycastle: Your reply tells me that you haven’t really thought this through. Either you believe in a transcendent morality which is in conflict with your views as an atheist or you view morality as relative.

DavinCreed: I think you may have not thought it through, otherwise you would not be using a false dichotomy I.E.: Transcendent morality or relative morality. To show that you used a false dichotomy, here are other types of morality: societal morality and empathetic morality.

larrycastle: There’s no false dichotomy in my statement. Societal morality and empathetic morality are merely versions or subsets of relative morality.

DavinCreed: It’s a false dichotomy because other possibilities exist other than the two you mentioned.

larrycastle: First, a subset of the thing is still the thing. No false dichotomy.

DavinCreed: So self imposed morality is no different than socially imposed morality? If you add in transcendent morality I could add in equally unverified moralities. So it’s a false dichotomy no matter how you? look at it.

larrycastle: Self imposed or socially impossed morality are both conventional.

DavinCreed: Ah, so you don’t know English, or at least what “conventional” means. I guess if you are to abstract yourself to where you can make an agreement between yourself and yourself it could work, but that is just redefining words too much for rational discourse.

—-In the Absences of Evidence, I Can Make Up My Own—-

This next one much funnier, I really just included that first part so that you can see the response that he couldn’t see.

DavinCreed: Unless someone can explain how? it isn’t bad, to have the power to stop babies from being raped but instead do nothing but watch, then god is a bad person.

larrycastle: [I]f I said that homosexuality is wrong uless someone can explain how it isn’t you’d reject my premise as you should. You know better. Things you dislike are not wrong unless proven otherwise.?

DavinCreed: I explained why raping babies is bad which could be argued against, but instead you bring up a straw man fallacy about homosexuality? For that to be an equal example, you would have to explain why homosexuality is bad.

larrycastle: You’re pulling a bait and switch. Everything is relative until you want to convict God of immorality. Then you argue based on a transcendent morality. Did you? What is the reason again? You have not explained. You? have begged the question.

DavinCreed: I condemn God by the same standards I would condemn myself and others. Transcendent morality is not needed. I have not begged? the question, explain where I have.

larrycastle: You continue to beg the question. When I ask you to restate it since I must have missed it, you answer, “I condemn God by the same standards I would condemn? myself and others. Transcendent morality is not needed.” So now I know what your answer is NOT. What IS it? Esplain Lucy!

DavinCreed: Learn to read, it’s still there. You accused me of begging the question,? provide the evidence for your accusation. I have provided the evidence for the fallacies of which I have accused you.

larrycastle: I’m telling you, I DO NOT SEE IT. How else do I say it. Maybe my browser is having issues, maybe YouTube is being persnickety (both of which are very possible), or maybe you have not given a reason.

DavinCreed: If you can’t? see it, then why did you accuse me of begging the question? How could you possibly accuse someone without the evidence to back it up? You flat out accused me of being illogical then asked me to present your evidence for you.

larrycastle: Sounds like a copout to me. Yes. Now I’m accusing you of lying. [...] It’s really suspicious that you don’t want to answer the question.

DavinCreed: What’s really suspicious is that you accused someone without evidence.

larrycastle: Look, I’ve gone over every post you have made in this thread and I don’t see the response you say you’ve made. The absence? of that response is my evidence.

DavinCreed: The absence of? my begging the question is your evidence of me begging the question?

Youtube Argument

A simple question that can have a very complicated answer depending on the depth and philosophical route you wish to take. This is not some kind of mid-life crisis or existential crisis video, its an explanation of how you cannot fully answer who you are no matter how deep your answers may be, how you cannot fully know another and my advice for dealing with it.

While this fad is all but over, there are a few people who still believe that NDEs are evidence of an afterlife. When examining these experiences it is very important to remember that, despite a lot of progress, we as humans are very far from understanding how the brain works.

How do we objectively study these experiences? Simple, do not resort to fallacies.

Lancet Study

That study of 344 people that were resuscitated from heart problems shows that only 18% have NDEs and only 12% have significant NDEs. Another result of the study showed that 70% of the people that experience NDEs are religious while only 10% of the people that did not have NDEs were religious. This shows that religious people are more prone to NDEs. I won’t speculate what religion has to do with it, I will just let it sit at that.

The study also had some stories in it, but they were only recorded, not verified. They are just stories as far as objectivity goes. Several people make the mistake that because a story is logged in a scientific study that the stories themselves are scientific fact. They are not, unless they had been verified. None of these stories were verified beyond that the people had the stories.

This doesn’t mean that these people are lying. I highly doubt that they would lie, and because of that, I fully believe that the experiences are real. I also don’t think that people that are hallucinating from taking LSD are lying about their experiences, but I would be insane to think that their experiences are reality. This is were we must remain objective: just because they had these experiences, doesn’t mean that it is evidence of an afterlife. You can trust that they had these experiences, but that doesn’t mean you can trust their conclusions of them. Several pilots that blackout from extreme g forces experience the same kind of experiences, but they are not dying. This suggests that NDEs are caused by lack of oxygen to the brain no matter what the cause is.

There are people that say that the experiences of extreme gravity blackout out of body experiences are different than ones resulting from heart failure. The problem with this is that no one can verify that there is a difference because there is no objective measurement. Just asserting that they are different is irrational.

Then there are those that have NDEs when their brain is in a state of inactivity. This would mean that the brain is not recording anything because it is not functioning. Some people propose that because there is no brain activity at the time of the experience, it shows that there is something other than the brain that provides consciousness… a soul perhaps. The problem with this illogical leap is that no one knows when these NDEs are experienced. It is far more likely that the experience happens as the brain begins to receive oxygen again rather than when the brain is inactive. This is not too far fetched as anyone who has ever had a dream should know, because the state that which the brain is providing images while dreaming is an extremely short period of time while the dream may seem to last for years.

In the end, NDEs are not reliable, verifiable or rational evidence for an afterlife.

I keep hearing people say that the U.S. protects freedom of religion and not freedom from religion. How is this possible? This is a self defeating concept. If people are not protected from religion, how would they be able to have their freedom of religion? If a religion is able to walk all over people because those people are not protected from religion, what is protecting their freedom of religion? I know I asked the same thing twice and I do personally hate repetitive argument tactics, but I feel this is a very important question.

These people that don’t want people protected from religion are happy because they think their religion is the one that is right. They don’t need protection from religion because it is their religion that is the one that others need protection from. I am talking about the U.S. and Christianity. The religion of the majority doesn’t need protection from itself, but they want to go a step farther and start pressing their religion into laws and onto everyone that believes differently.

Let me tell you (and go ahead and please research this), it was a hell of a lot different when the U.S. declared independence from England. They were not allowed to practice what ever religion they wanted because they didn’t have protection from religion. Yes, without protection from religion, unless you want to practice the major religion, you will not have the freedom of religion. Let’s say that we take away the protection from religion in the U.S., what flavour of Christianity should the state support? Southern Baptists? Catholic? Seventh Day Adventists? Born Again? Mormonism? Jehovah’s Witness? Well you better be ready to convert because if there is no freedom from religion, then one of these is going to be the one you will not be protected from.

Freedom from religion is not just about protecting the minorities rights, it’s about protecting everyone’s right to practice or not practice any religion or lack of. Because if you don’t protect the minority, then the majority calls the shots. This is one reason why the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy. Yes we have democratic elections, but we elect those people into a republic. The founding fathers could see, by the example of the Britain they freed themselves from, that a monarchy didn’t work anymore, they also could see that a democracy could not work. So they decided to create a completely new form of government, a democratic republic.

If you say that Muslims cannot go to a school and spread their word, then Christians also don’t get to go to school and spread their word. Because if you say that Muslims can’t spread their word in schools but Christians can, that is a law respecting a religion (read the first amendment). However, if you say that no religion can spread their word in schools, then that is a protection from religion that protects the peoples freedom of religion. In order to comply with the first amendment, you need to either spread the word of all religions or not allow any religion to spread their word.

Freedom from religion is the most important way to protect peoples freedom of religion. Also, remember any right you take away from someone else is also a right that you take away from yourself. In the U.S., everyone’s rights are affected by taking away rights. So quit being idiots and understand that in order to protect your freedom of religion, you need to provide protection from religion.

Now I know that many of you will undoubtedly be true believers and will probably not be swayed, but let’s have a little faith shall we? The genealogy of Jesus is important to note because if he were not of the line of david then he would surely not be fulfilling the prophecy as put in Jeremiah 23 5 saying “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.” Now, lets first put to rest that his line to David is seriously in danger according to the contradicting genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Matthew has 28 generations and Luke has 43! you can’t call that a typo there’s seriously something smelly there… now lets also consider the fact that the names in the accounts have almost no names in common! read for yourself it’s despairingly inaccurate and it is really doubtful that each translation of the bible would correspond with this inaccuracy.

Oh and did I mention that both Matthew and Luke place Jesus’ adopted father Joseph as the descendant of David and if you’re a Christian you know that Mary conceived without Joseph’s help so, that would place him nowhere on the line of David because there was no donation from Joseph to Mary’s egg. So how you ask could he be of the line of David as prophesied in Jeremiah that’s a toughy… oh yeah it’s because he’s NOT OF THE LINE OF DAVID and the lineage connecting him to David is made up lies by disciples after the fact trying to make him fit into the prophecies of the old testament so, sorry your bible is either fallable and therefore not worth the read because you can’t be sure of the facts or because it’s all just fairy tales and old wives tales about things that either didn’t happen or happened and then were expounded upon to make them supernatural.

Attempting to enlighten the misguided,

Poor Richard