Ontologists Discuss the God Meme & Its Arguments

By Gary Berg-Cross

The ontolog-forum can be a fun thing to read about semantic topics and our understanding of reality. 

It can also generate off-topic discussion thread and a recent one concerned Dennett’s God meme ("an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.) as the primary application of memes that seems to interest both Dawkins and Dennett.

Memes were already being discussed when someone through in a reference to Giussani's "The Religious Sense" 

some reflection of an driving need for truth, goodness, and beauty. Giussani is the founder the lay Catholic ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL), similar to the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Foculare, and Opus Dei. He writes popular books to spread memes, I guess, and in "The Religious Sense" his pushes the idea that values of truth and beauty constitutes the fabric of the religious sense, which is evident in every human being everywhere and in all times.

Ontologists on the forum are not shy about taking shabby arguments to task. I thought that 

readers of this Blog be interested in here some of the argument and exchange.

Polymath John Sowa responded briskly, and tongue in cheek, as it were:

I'm willing to grant that all arguments for the existence of God are unscientific. 

But I also believe that all arguments *against*  the existence

of God are equally unscientific.  It's actually harderto develop

a solid proof that something does *not* exist.   

That's why I recommended that any exploration of the "god meme"

should be based on a study of gods such as Zeus, which don't

seem to be tied up with much emotion, either pro or con.   

An equally deep and insightful Pat Hayes added to the put down with an appeal to the flying spaghetti monster. 

The basic scientific argument against the existence of God is that there is 

absolutely no observational evidence for the existence of a God,  nor any reason  to hypothesize such an entity in order to explain anything that is observable.  A very straightforward application of Occam's principle then suffices. Of  course this is not a *proof*, but it is a sound *scientific* argument. Proofs   are irrelevant here. There is no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does  not exist, but that does not shake the faith of the true Pastafarian.   

Matthew West picked up in the proof idea to add:

All one can say scientifically is that the existence of God is a hypothesis that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to prove or disprove scientifically, because there is no experiment that we can conduct (or at least I cannot think of any) that would prove or disprove the hypothesis. (Of course you can always set up God hypotheses that you can disprove, but they are not generally ones the "faithful" actually believe in).   

As to Pat’s There is no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist, but that does not shake the faith of the  true Pastafarian.  

Matthew added:

And that is the essence. It is a matter of faith, not science. So any

scientific argument is irrelevant. Irritating though that may be to those

who believe only in science.    

Pat disagreed a bit here saying

No, this makes the situation seem symmetrical. But science is not symmetrical
in this way: one only has a burden to show something that is hypothesized in
order to explain something else. God does not explain anything that cannot be
explained better without using that hypothesis. Every attempt throughout
history to offer an argument for the existence of God (e.g. to explain the
cosmos, to explain life, to explain morality) has turned out to be wrong. Every
one, without exception. I would say that this was pretty convincing argument, myself.
As for experiments, how about the recent empirical tests of the efficacy of prayer? (In sum: it has zero effect.)

Oh brave freethinking people out there.

Images

 

God Meme: http://www.memecenter.com/fun/830699/troll-god

John Sowa: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/

Pat Hayes: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/phayes/

 

A View of Secular Perspective Activities

by Gary Berg-Cross

Viewers and readers of Secular Perspective get to see content, but may have no idea of how busy and growing the blog site is. This was a point made at a recent get together in Rockville. So here are some statistics available to editors of the site.

First a view of this past week shows the jagged path through the week peaking on Satureday browsing. The top five blog articles visited - a recent one on "Complex issues" that had 48 views (6 per day) , while a post almost a year old on Memes still got 34 views.

Most of the visitors come as a result of Google queries and these are from North America although some stories grab attention from Europe. The numbers for the week were:

United Kingdom 13 Canada 11 Russia 10 France 8 India 7 Australia 4 Italy 4 Japan 4 and Germany 3

A snapshop of the day's activity show that recent articles have grabbed some attention. "Poor reasoning" had 22 reads in the last day, while "Religion and the Arab Spring" has had 12 views.

Perhaps the most interesting view is what is called "All Time" shown at the top of the article. This goes back a year to see the most visited blog articles. The winner is one on "Pyschological Harm of Traditional Christian Behavior" with 651 hits. An article on the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes in 2nd at 587 follwed closely by the "Binary Thinking Habit".

As you can see from the trend of use the site has jumped up from modest beginnings in the fall of 2010 and has grown to a steady rate of some 100 hits a day (3ooo+ per month). However with the new year in January, the site has exceeded 4000 hits for the first time

A Freethinker’s Inspiration of Atheist Posters

By Gary Berg-Cross

I ran across some new atheist posters at the recent Humanlight celebration. What got my attention there was a poster of the Last Supper with Jesus replaced by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). I’ve heard there another poster with the disciples replaced by famous freethinkers – sort of like below I guess but structured around a table. I haven’t run into that one yet.

But the experience got me thinking about what might be a list of some of the best posters. You tube has a good start on this and more than one although if you go there you get a warning that the content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate!!s just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Viewer discretion is advised, as they say.

Below are a few of the ones that grabbed my attention.

One type is is just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Another type is with Darwin in it. Side note, Darwin Day Feb 12 is here in less than a month and I hope the DC area has a good celebration.

Darwin gets into many posters, but so does the Last Supper theme. One shows imaginary figures.

As a side note I also like a take on OWS as a Christian assembly.

FSM makes an appearance again in a Sistine chapel creation poster.

I’m sure there are many good ones I’ve missed so perhaps readers will post comments on their favorites.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) goes viral

by Gary Berg-Cross

I heard on NPR this morning that a manifestation of the church of the flying spaghetti monster (FSM) has surfaced in Austria. Well at least the concept of this Church made popular by Richard Dawkins has an adherent who worships that god-like idea by wearing a pasta strainer on his head. His name is Niko Alm and he adopted FSM pose to test the recent Austrian law that allows head coverings to be used in official documents, like drivers licenses, for religious reasons.

The FSM, concept was used satirically in response to the Kansas School Board's irratonality over evolution education. Later it was popularized in Dawkins book The God Delusion as an illustration of how religious beliefs are based on irrational thought. What is the evidence for the existence of invisible beings controlling our world and judging our behavior? None for FSM and none for Yahweh either.

Niko, a self-proclaimed atheist, built on Dawkins’ construct by applying for a new driver's license wearing the strainer as "religious headgear. " He claimed to be a "pastafarian" from that Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Members in the Church firmly believe in the existence of a flying omnipotent Spaghetti Monster – one that can even hide its existence from us. The “you can’t prove I don’t exist” claims for such a flying monster fits Dawkins' dictum about irrational claims:

"To claim a supernatural explanation of something is not to explain it at all and, even worse, to rule out any possibility of its ever being explained. Why do I say that? Because anything ‘supernatural’ must by definition beyond the reach of a natural explanation. It must be beyond the reach of science and the well-established, tried and tested scientific method."

After a long 3 year fight Niko won the right to get his picture taken with a pasta strainer on his head.

Some people were put out by Niko’s success. It seems like an irrational thing to do and isn’t the whole point of being an atheist is the celebration of being all logical and reasonable? Well yes, and perhaps Niko could have stuck to being an atheist as defined by John Bucha’s definition that “An Atheist Is A Man With No Invisible Means Of Support.”

But Niko makes a reasonable point lifting up a mirror so others can see how foolish unreasonable claims are. Doesn't matter if you can claim to be a believer in the FSM or Thor or Yahweh. As Dawkins said “Nobody even thinks to calls themselves atheist, just as nobody thinks to calls themselves athorist now.”

I wonder if we can expect there to be a surge of Athorists next.