Jeffrey Dahmer: serial killer, rapist, cannibal and world-famous criminal, blames his atheism and evolutionary naturalism for not giving him the sense of moral responsability and accountability for his actions. Reflections on the moral poverty of contemporary atheism

Some people could think that Jeffrey Dahmer was appealing to a silly excuse when he blaimed his atheism for not giving him any sense of moral responsability for his actions. 

Think again: Was Dahmer inconsistent with his atheistic worldview when he decided to kill or rape other people? In order to answer this important question from a rigurously objective, serious, impartial viewpoint, we have examine carefully what contemporary atheism holds in these regards. And this can be done only by reading carefully what leading contemporary atheists thinkers and intellectuals say and argue regarding the relevant topics.

Contemporary atheism is materialistic, physicalistic, deterministic and impersonalistic (i.e it reduces everything what exists, including human beings, to the blind impersonal forces of physics, unguided evolution and in the case of humans also to the deterministic laws of brain funtioning and enviromental influence), and these factors seem to be at variance with free will, moral responsability, moral accountability  and objective moral values (which are person-relative properties or features which are likely to exist objectively, that is, as part of the fabric of reality, in a worldview ultimately grounded on a powerful personal creator, like the theistic worldview, but that are extremely unlikely in a worldview based entirely on blind, mechanical, deterministic, unguided, unintentional, impersonal forces or energies like the atheistic-materialistic-naturalistic worldview), by the reasons explained by atheistic intellectuals themselves:

Tom Clark, who's the Director of the Center for Naturalism, in one article on liberty, commented:

In a deterministic universe, we understand that a criminal's career is not a matter of an unconditioned personal choice, but fully a function of a complex set of conditions, genetic and enviromental, that interact to produce the offender and his proclivities. Had we been in his shows in all respects, we too would have followed the same path, since there is no freely willing self that could have done otherwise as causality unfolds. There is no kernel of independent moral agency -- we are not, as philosopher Daniel Dennett puts it, "moral levitators" that rise above circunstances in our choices, including choices to rob, rape, or kill"

For Clark, a criminal's career (e.g. the career of Jeffrey Dahmer) is not a matter of free personal choice, because in a deterministic universe "no kernel of independent moral agency" exists. According to naturalism, Dahmer's behaviour is fully determined by purely physical and blind causes which have nothing to do with "free will" or other etheric or intangible spiritual matters.

Was Dahmer's wrong in his own opinion that his atheism stole him any sense of moral responsability and ultimate moral accountability?

Richard Dawkins, the most influential metaphysical naturalist and world's leading defender of atheism, in his article for the Edge magazine entitled Let's all stop beating Basil's car, wrote (I quote him fully in order to avoid quote-mining or unintentional misrepresentations):

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'. Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software. Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes? Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me). But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car? Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment. (emphasis in blue added)

Again, on Dawkins' explicitly and extended argument, was Dahmer inconsistent with the atheistic worldview when he felt not responsible for his criminal actions? Wasn't Dahmer the foremost example of an "enlightened" man when he understood that moral responsability and "indeed evil and good" are, given atheism and evolution, pure "mental constructs" and "useful fictions", and therefore he felt free to make his own personal rules of behaviour?

Keep in mind that Dahmer blamed atheism AND evolution. Now, look what Richard Dawkins says regarding rape, morality and evolution:

Think again, was Dahmer inconsistent with his atheistic worldview when he committed his crimes?

Massimo Pligliucci, atheistic naturalist and evolutionist, in his debate with William Lane Craig, explicitly argued:

Finally, the problem of morality, which I'm sure we'll have more to say about--oh yeah, I agree with Dr. Craig when he cited Dr. Ruse, a philosopher of science. There is no such a thing as objective morality. We got that straightened out. Morality in human cultures has evolved and is still evolving, and what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and so on. And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong? Now a better way of putting this is that it is not the same as to say that anything goes; it is not at all the same. What goes is anything that works; there are things that work. Morality has to work. For example, one of the very good reasons we don't go around killing each other is because otherwise the entire society as we know it would collapse and we'd become a bunch of simple isolated animals. There are animals like those.

While denying the existence of any objective morality, Pligliucci appeals to a pragmatic defense of morality, i.e. morality has to work!. But obviously, something "works" only in connection with the purposes of an agent (e.g. rape "works" to produce pleasure in the rapist; and atomic bombs "work" to kill people and win battles; and medicines "work" to cure diseases). The pragmatic notion of "working" is a relational property which always refers (implicitly or explicitly) to one or several ends or purposes in regards to which the means in question "work" (i.e. are effective).

If your subjective purpose is avoiding the collapse of society, then Pigliucci is right that we have "good reasons" to avoid killing each other. But what happens if your subjective purposes have nothing to do with the collapse of society? Or worst, what would happen if your subjective purpose is precisely to destroy the social order? Then in these cases, killing and raping other people is a fine and effective instrument which "works" to your purpose (i.e. destroy the social order).

 

Since for naturalistic atheism, there is not objective purpose in the universe, the only purposes that exist are subjective purposes (i.e. individual-relative purposes). In words of  Richard Dawkins: "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference... DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music". (River Out Of Eden, p.133)

See also the debate between Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer and other atheistic naturalists in one hand, and William Lane Craig, Douglas Geivett and other theists in the other hand:

Again, was Dahmer inconsistent with his atheistic worldview?

I think the answer is obvious, and keep in mind that I've quoted exclusively leading representatives of the naturalistic-atheistic worldview, not their critics.

I've provided more evidence for the moral implications of metaphysical naturalism and atheism in this section of my blog.

For more philosophically minded readers, keep in mind that the above considerations about worldviews and morality have a counterfactual character which is often misunderstood (as I've explained in this post). The discussion is not whether atheists are bad or good, or whether theists are bad or good (obviously, there are exist good and bad people in all human groups). 

Rather, the question is whether given the basic and essential premises of the atheistic worldview, we WOULD expect objective morality to exist. As proved above, consistent naturalists who understand this question clearly say NO. According to naturalistic-atheistic philosopher Keith Augustine: 

It seems to me that all ethical codes must ultimately be man-made, and thus there could be no objective criteria for determining if human actions are right or wrong. Admitting that moral laws are man-made is equivalent to acknowledging that ethical rules are arbitrary and therefore human beings are not obligated to follow them... If objective moral laws are part of the natural universe (not part of some supernatural realm), then the universe cannot be unconscious--it must be, in some unknown sense, sentient. Few naturalists would want to accept such a nonscientific pantheistic conclusion... But given that moral subjectivism is just as logically viable as moral objectivism and that moral objectivism is implausible if a scientific naturalism is true, I think that there is a good case for the nonexistence of objective moral values.

Like Clark, Pigliucci, Dawkins and many other atheists, Augustine (who is a trained philosopher) correctly understand the implications of (and counterfactual questions related to) metaphysical naturalism.

As Keith comments, if naturalism is true, then plausibly the ethical rules are ARBITRARY. Therefore, human beings are not obligated to follow them. Such ethical rules are useful human inventions which don't come from any ultimate or senior moral authority which is legitimate to impose such rules upon us.

Dahmer understood this, and consistent with such view, he felt free to commit whatever crimes or immoral acts he wished. Being man-made and arbitrary, no ethical rule was obligatory to him. He made his own rules.

In this brief video, an atheist asked William Lane Craig about moral values and atheism (notice carefully the formulation of the question by the atheist: it actuallys confirms the subjectivity and ego-centered morality implied by atheism):

Atheist philosopher of science and biology Alex Rosenberg confirms all of these contentions and summarizes them:

One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours)... Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality. Alex Rosenberg, in his article "The Disenchanted Naturalistic Guide to Reality". Emphasis in blue added

Rosenberg defends in detail the atheistic-nihilist position on morality in his book The Atheist's Guide To Reality:

Ask yourself with absolute objectivity: Does the atheistic worldview provide firm, ontologically solid foundations for the existence of an objective moral realm (i.e. a realm which is a essential part of the fabric of reality, not a mere projection of our minds, desires, emotions or opinions), normative and authoritative ethical rules, free will, moral responsability and ultimate moral accountability for our actions?

Chris Carter: Does Telepathy Conflict With Science? Many are starting to think not

Does Telepathy Conflict With Science? Many are starting to think not

by Chris Carter
(originally published here).

Recently, journalist Steven Volk was surprised to discover that leading skeptical psychologist Richard Wiseman has admitted that the evidence for telepathy is so good that “by the standards of any other area of science, [telepathy] is proven.” Mr. Volk goes on to write, “Even more incredibly, as I report in Fringe-ology, another leading skeptic, Chris French, agrees with him.”

Mr. Volk might even be more surprised to learn that back in 1951 psychologist Donald Hebb wrote this:

“Why do we not accept ESP [extrasensory perception] as a psychological fact? [The Rhine Research Center] has offered enough evidence to have convinced us on almost any other issue … Personally, I do not accept ESP for a moment, because it does not make sense. My external criteria, both of physics and of physiology, say that ESP is not a fact despite the behavioral evidence that has been reported. I cannot see what other basis my colleagues have for rejecting it … Rhine may still turn out to be right, improbable as I think that is, and my own rejection of his view is—in the literal sense—prejudice.”

Four years later, George Price, then a research associate at the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, published an article in the prestigious journal Science that began:

“Believers in psychic phenomena … appear to have won a decisive victory and virtually silenced opposition. … This victory is the result of careful experimentation and intelligent argumentation. Dozens of experimenters have obtained positive results in ESP experiments, and the mathematical procedures have been approved by leading statisticians. … Against all this evidence, almost the only defense remaining to the skeptical scientist is ignorance.”

But Price then argued, “ESP is incompatible with current scientific theory,” and asked: “If, then, parapsychology and modern science are incompatible, why not reject parapsychology? The choice is between believing in something ‘truly revolutionary’ and ‘radically contradictory to contemporary thought’ and believing in the occurrence of fraud and self-delusion. Which is more reasonable?”

So, here we have two skeptics in effect admitting that if this were any other field of inquiry then the experimental data would have carried the day by 1950.

Like Price and Hebb before them, both Wiseman and French hold that the claim of telepathy is so extraordinary that we need a greater level of evidence than we normally demand. Why should this be so? Most people believe in the reality of telepathy based on their own experiences, and are puzzled by the description of telepathy as “extraordinary.”

It is even more puzzling when surveys show that a large proportion of scientists accept the possibility that telepathy exists. Two surveys of over 500 scientists in one case and over 1,000 in another both found that the majority of respondents considered ESP “an established fact” or “a likely possibility”—56 percent in one and 67 percent in the other.

Polls such as this suggest that most scientists are curious and open-minded about psi. This, however, does not seem to be the case in one field: psychology. In the former study, only 3 percent of natural scientists considered ESP “an impossibility,” compared to 34 percent of psychologists.

In fact, the most prominent skeptics of psychic abilities today—such as Wiseman, French, James Alcock, Susan Blackmore, and Ray Hyman—are psychologists. An exception is biologist Richard Dawkins, but like Wiseman and French, he is also on record as saying that the existence of telepathy would “turn the laws of physics upside down.”

Failure to Jibe With Other Areas of Science?

Psychologist James Alcock recently wrote that the claims of parapsychology “stand in defiance of the modern scientific worldview. That by itself does not mean that parapsychology is in error, but as the eminent neuropsychologist Donald Hebb pointed out, if the claims of parapsychology prove to be true, then physics and biology and neuroscience are horribly wrong in some fundamental respects.”

But neither Alcock, Hebb, Wiseman, nor French ever bother to explain how the claims of parapsychology “stand in defiance” of science, or how “physics and physiology say that ESP is not a fact.”

Indeed, it is rare for a skeptic to ever back up this claim with specific examples. As I show in my new book “Science and Psychic Phenomena,” on those rare occasions that they do, they invariably invoke the principles of classical physics, which have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a century.

However, a number of leading physicists such as Henry Margenau, David Bohm, Brian Josephson, and Olivier Costa de Beauregard have repeatedly pointed out that nothing in quantum mechanics forbids psi phenomena. Costa de Beauregard even maintains that the theory of quantum physics virtually demands that psi phenomena exist. And physicist Evan Harris Walker has developed a theoretical model of psi based on von Neumann’s formulation of quantum mechanics.

Ray Hyman’s 1996 argument (in the Skeptical Inquirer) that the acceptance of psi would require that we “abandon relativity and quantum mechanics in their current formulations” is thereby shown to be nonsense. Contrast Hyman’s statement with that of theoretical physicist Costa de Beauregard, who has written “relativistic quantum mechanics is a conceptual scheme where phenomena such as psychokinesis or telepathy, far from being irrational, should, on the contrary, be expected as very rational.”

As mentioned earlier, adherence to an outmoded metaphysics of science seems much more prevalent among psychologists than physicists. Skeptics such as psychologist Susan Blackmore are fond of saying that the existence of psi is incompatible “with our scientific worldview”—but with which scientific worldview?

Psi is certainly incompatible with the old scientific worldview, based on Newtonian mechanics and behaviorist psychology. It is not incompatible with the emerging scientific worldview based on quantum mechanics, the neurosciences, and cognitive psychology.

But even before quantum mechanics began to supersede classical mechanics in the 1920s, many physicists were much more open to investigating psi phenomena than most psychologists seem today. An astonishing number of the most prominent physicists of the 19th century expressed interest in psychic research, including William Crookes, inventor of the cathode ray tube, used today in televisions and computer monitors; J.J. Thomson, who won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for the discovery of the electron; and Lord Rayleigh, considered one of the greatest physicists of the late 19th century, and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1904.

Of course, for their efforts in investigating these and other unusual phenomena, these men were often criticized and ridiculed mercilessly by their colleagues.

But modern physics is very different from the classical physics of the 19th century, and it is time the skeptical psychologists realized this. The great psychologist Gardner Murphy, president of the American Psychological Association and later of the American Society for Psychical Research, urged his fellow psychologists to become better acquainted with modern physics.

Murphy wrote in 1968: “… the difficulty is at the level of physics, not at the level of psychology. Psychologists may be a little bewildered when they encounter modern physicists who take these phenomena in stride, in fact, take them much more seriously than psychologists do, saying, as physicists, that they are no longer bound by the types of Newtonian energy distribution, inverse square laws, etc., with which scientists used to regard themselves as tightly bound.… psychologists probably will witness a period of slow, but definite, erosion of the blandly exclusive attitude that has offered itself as the only appropriate scientific attitude in this field. The data from parapsychology will be almost certainly in harmony with general psychological principles and will be assimilated rather easily within the systematic framework of psychology as a science when once the imagined appropriateness of Newtonian physics is put aside, and modern physics replaces it.”

Chris Carter was educated at Oxford University and is the author of “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics” (Inner Traditions).

Sources:

Alcock, J.E., 1981.  Parapsychology: Science or Magic? New York: Pergamon.

Alcock, J.E., 1985.  “Parapsychology: the Spiritual Science”.  Free Inquiry, 5 (2), p. 25-35.

Costa de Beauregard, Olivier, 1975. “Quantum Paradoxes and Aristotle’s Twofold Information Concept,” in Laura Oteri, editor, Quantum Physics and Parapsychology (New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1975), pages 91 – 102.

Costa de Beauregard, Olivier, 1979.  “The Expanding Paradigm of the Einstein Theory”, in A. Puharich, editor, The Iceland Papers (Amherst: Essentia Research Associates, 1979), pages 161-191.

Evans, Christopher, 1973.  “Parapsychology – what the questionnaire revealed”, New Scientist, 25, January 1973, page 209.

Hyman, R. 1996b.  The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1996, pp. 24-26.

Price, George, R. 1955.  “Science and the Supernatural”, Science Volume 122, number 3165, August 26, pages 359-367.

Wagner, Mahlon, and Mary Monet, 1979. “Attitudes of College Professors Toward Extra-Sensory Perception,” Zetetic Scholar, 1979, 5, pages 7 – 16.

Walker, E.H. 1979.  “The Quantum Theory of Psi Phenomena”, Psychoenergetic Systems, Vol. 3, pages 259 – 299.

Kari Enqvist: chairman of the scientific advisory board of Skepsis ry (Finnish association of organized skeptics) debates the existence of God with William Lane Craig. One of the the worst debates that I've ever watched

Kari Enqvist is a professor of cosmology and the chairman of the Finnish association of pseudoskeptics known as SKEPSIS RY. (Yeah, atheistic pseudo-skeptics exist in Findland too...).

Since he is a professor of cosmology and one of main arguments for God's existence is the kalam cosmological argument, I expected a lively and entertaining discussion about the cosmological evidence for the universe's beginning in the debate between Enqvist and William Lane Craig, which you can watch here:

But things turned out to be very different.

As you can watch, Enqvist didn't presented any argument for atheism at all, since for him the problem of God's existence is meaningless (note that if Enqvist is right, then atheism is meaningless too, since atheism is the denial or negation of the proposition "God exists", and you cannot affirm or deny a meaningless proposition... just try to affirm or deny the following sentence: dxhsttsiwossp usns doosmsos hahaha). As philosophers of language and semantics and logicians have realized, the meaning of a proposition is a necesary condition for it to have truth-values.

Moreover, Enqvist (like his fellow skeptic and atheist Lawrence Krauss), decided to attack formal logic in order to make his case. Remember that Krauss has embarrassed himself forever as the world's leading atheistic defender of obviously absurd, necessarily false, logically, metaphysically and mathematically impossible and incoherent propositions like 2+2=5 or "the universe came from nothing" or "nothing is unstable":

Since contemporary cosmology has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that the universe had a beginning (which is strongly suggestive that the universe had a trascendent cause of its coming to being), some atheists have changed their strategy: Defeated by empirical science, reason and logic, they are forced challenge the laws of logic and reason itself in order to avoid any inference to theism based on science. Therefore, we cannot be surprised of finding a certain tendency among contemporary atheistic physicists and cosmologists to challenge the laws of logic (this is also evidence for Jime's Iron Law) in order to defeat theism. 

Note that atheists present themselves as the champtions of "logic", "reason", "science" and "critical thinking", but when logic, evidence and critical reasoning support theism over atheism, then... to the hell with logic!. Sheer atheistic deception, rhetoric and charlatanism!

This debate was supposed to be about the existence of God, or more specifically, about whether God is necessary to the universe's existence. 

For everybody's astonishment, the debate turned out to be mainly about the validity of formal logic (Enqvist appealing to physics in order to destroy formal logic, and Craig trying to defend it).

Moreover, the debate was totally one-sided, with Craig being the only person presenting arguments relevant for the topic under discussion. To my astonishment, since Enqvist didn't presented any argument for atheism, Craig was forced to provide arguments for atheism for the sake of the debate!. What a weird situation (just imagine a debate between Dean Radin and James Randi about the evidence for ESP, in which Dean Radin is forced, by Randi's passivity and red herrings, to present evidence and arguments against ESP!). Absurd.

The world's leading philosophical theist posing arguments against the existence of God! Absolutely weird!.

This is one of the worst and most boring debates that I've ever seen in my life.

Richard Dawkins vs Karen Armstrong debate on God and Dawkins' objection to skeptic Michael Shermer's Last Law. Who's the greatest and brilliantest atheistic thinker?

Michael Shermer is a well-known skeptical writer. One of the reasons why he so well-known is by being debunked in his own TV debunking program by master of Eastern Wisdom and vedic astrologer Jeffrey Armstrong, who passed sucessfully Shermer's skeptical test, as you can watch here:

The results of Shermer's test with Armstrong implies one of the following possibilities:

-Armstrong is a fake psychic/astrologer/paranormalist, and he passed Shermer's test because he fooled Shermer. In this hypothesis, Shermer is an incompetent scientist and skeptic, who is unable to design correctly a scientific test in which no fraud can be made. This incompetence is even more objectionable, since his Tv program was designed to promote skepticism and exemplify proper controls while testing paranormal claims.

-Armstrong is a true astrologer with paranormal knowledge, in whose case Shermer's skepticism regarding the paranormal has been refuted. In this case, Shermer is not being intelelctually honest in admitting this, and he's misleading the public about  the paranormal.

-Armstrong is fake but he passed the test just because he had luck. In this case, intellectual honesty demands that Shermer tests Armstrong again, something which Shermer didn't dared to do. Moreover, if a single test is inconclusive, then the same can be said of the other single tests made by Shermer in which negative results for paranormal claims were gotten (otherwise, an unscientific double standard would be being applied in order to favor the skeptical position).

By the purpose of this post is not to evaluate Shermer's pseudoskepticism. Rather, I'm interested in Shermer as a thinker or intellectual. I've commented before that, in my humble opinion, Shermer is the less sophisticated and most crude thinker among  professional"skeptics". He tries to look like an expert in everything (from spiritualism, to UFOs, to alternative medicine, to parapsychology, to biblical criticisms and New Testament scholarship, to religion, etc.), but he deals with them in a very superficial level. 

For example, in a previous post, I discussed about the so-called Shermer's Last Law, which states "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God"

Shermer's law is amazingly inept, and it is telling of the point I'm making about him. Even the crudest atheists will realize this.

One of such atheists is Richard Dawkins. In his written debate with religious pluralist Karen Armstrong, Dawkins wrote this:

But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.

Even such an crude thinker like Dawkins realizes that whichever other properties we posit to "God", one of such essential properties is being the CREATOR of the material universe. In fact, the most sophisticated and discussed philosophical argument for God's existence is precisely the kalam cosmological argument for the universe's beginning and putative creation:

Since an essential property of God, if He exists, is that He is the creator of the material universe; and since it is NOT essential to the concept of advanced aliens to be the creators of the material universe (because, among other things and presumibly atheists will agree, aliens are material beings who are the product and effect of a material universe), it follows that that, contrary to Shermer's Law, God is conceptually distinguishable from advanced aliens.

So, Dawkins' point, despite of its intellectual crudity, is correct: Shermer's Law is false.

The above point underlies my initial contention about Shermer: Intellectually, he is even below crude atheists like Richard Dawkins. What is obvious to even intellectually unsophisticated thinkers is far beyond the reach of Shermer.

You can watch Shermer's crudity at its best in his debate about God's existence with John Lennox:

Regarding the debate between Dawkins and Armstrong, I was dissapointed by Armstrong's arguments (some of which were self-refuting) and not much need to be added to the exchange between them.

Rebecca Watson (Skepchick) on sexual harassment and rape threats coming from skeptics and atheists. Evidence suggestive of organized skeptics as a HATE group

In a previous post, I provided solid empirical evidence for the claim that sexism and misogyny seems to be rampant between organized "skeptics" and atheists. I provided evidence from insiders and outsiders alike.

The amazingly beautiful pseudoskeptic girl, Rebecca Watson (aka Skepchick), is one of such insiders who have commented about her first-hand experience with the sexism and misogyny which seems to affect many of the "rational", "critical thinking", "enlightened", "scientific" members of organized skeptical and atheist groups.

In a must read article, Watson describes an atheist who told her:

"honestly, and i mean HONESTLY.. you deserve to be raped and tortured and killed. swear id laugh if i could”

According to Watson, "I started checking out the social media profiles of the people sending me these messages, and learned that they were often adults who were active in the skeptic and atheist communities. They were reading the same blogs as I was and attending the same events. These were “my people,” and they were the worst."

Watson's first-hand testimony provide us with interesting insights about the psychology of hard-core pseudoskeptics and atheists. 

As I've mentioned, some polls suggest that atheists are the most distrusted minority in U.S., and testimonies like Watson's support the conclusion that such distrust is not simply due to bigotry or prejudices, but that it is strongly rooted in the behaviour of (many) atheists.

I've researched for years the pseudoskeptical movement (mainly in its philosophical and ideological structure and working), but just recently it has became evident to me that there is a certain connection between organized atheistic skepticism and sexual misbehaviours. Some of the leading representatives have been linked with sexual scandals and misbehaviours.

For example, according to critic of pseudoskepticism Tim Bolen, you can hear in this link how one of the world's leading skeptics, James Randi, is soliciting sex from a YOUNG BOY.

In another post, I documented in some detail how the leading skeptical publishing house named Prometheus Books sells a lot of book promoting or justifying (in the name of "reason and science") pedophilia, zoophilia, infanticide, abortion and other moral atrocities.

British journalist and writer for TIME magazine, Jonathan Margolis, in researching for his book on Uri Geller, has commented regarding it: 

"Although Prometheus still a claims a strictly rationalist ethic, rationalism has come to include libertarianism, and from there on, pretty much anything goes. Prometheus Books, rationalism's brave riposte to Uri Geller and the forces of medieval darkness, has had to diversify, a demonstration, perhaps, of the ultimate truth of Randi's assertion, which I earlier challenged, that the sceptical world is all done with Geller. Even Randi calls some of what Prometheus publishes today 'awful stuff' - so 'awful' that Mike Hutchinson recently felt obliged to ask the local Obscene Publications Squad to adjudicate over one. It said it couldn't recommend the book, an avowedly anti-paedophilia work, but with some passages Hutchinson thought 'were a little bit too descriptive', be distributed in Britain. 

One book on Prometheus's list is a British academic text on child abuse. Children's Sexual Encounters With Adults, republished in the States - with a bright red jacket on which the title is printed in bold black letters three quarters of an inch high, for the benefit, presumably, of short-sighted researchers into child sex. The book consists of hundreds of pages of detailed case histories of adults having sex with children. Others Prometheus texts have little claim to being academic. Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival, The Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile [person with a sexual attraction to animals], Whips and Kisses: Parting the Leather Curtain (by Mistress Jacqueline), The Breathless Orgasm: A Lovemap Biography of Asphyxiophilia, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz ... It is all some way from magicians' arguments over spoon bending." (Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic, chapter 16)

Margolis, even though not being a philosopher, intuitively realizes that something is seriously wrong with the atheist's "rationalistic ethic", which is actually a rationalization of the atheistic libertarianism in moral and sexual matters.

I've tried to explain and document in detail with the atheist literature at hand the philosophical foundation for the hard-core atheist/skeptic's sympathies for these sexual practiques, in the section of my blog entitled "The moral poverty of atheistic materialism", and I suggest to you to read carefully the evidence provided there.

ORGANIZED ATHEISTIC SKEPTICISM AS A HATE GROUP

Think for a moment in the rape threats coming from "rational" atheists suffered by Watson. Notice carefully that the atheist mentioned by her suggested that she deserved to be "killed".

I ask you: What kind of people is going to say something like that? Clearly, there is something seriously wrong in the moral, ethical, spiritual and psychological nature of individuals like that.

According to this article by Tim Bolen, pseudoskeptics fits with the pattern of organized HATE groups, and he mentions as an example the rape, mutilation and death threats suffered by another woman, Meryl Dorey.

Philosophically, we have to understand that scientific materialism and scientific naturalistic atheism cannot provide any foundation for condemming rape or murder. In fact, according to the leading defender of scientific naturalism Richard Dawkins, rape is morally arbitrary:

However, even if  it is a philosophical fact that contemporary atheism cannot ground objective condemmation of rape (nor any other moral atrocity), it doesn't mean that atheism per se positively stimulates rape actions. Something more is needed: Strong emotional, spiritual and psychological unbalance and even some kind of mental disorder.

I'm sure that some atheists and naturalists are going to justify philosophically those moral atrocities. For example, they can say that free will doesn't exist and hence those atheists had no choice in attacking Watson.  These atheists can appeal to Tom Clark,  who's the Director of the Center for Naturalism, when he wrote in this article:

In a deterministic universe, we understand that a criminal's career is not a matter of an unconditioned personal choice, but fully a function of a complex set of conditions, genetic and enviromental, that interact to produce the offender and his proclivities. Had we been in his shows in all respects, we too would have followed the same path, since there is no freely willing self that could have done otherwise as causality unfolds. There is no kernel of independent moral agency -- we are not, as philosopher Daniel Dennett puts it, "moral levitators" that rise above circunstances in our choices, including choices to rob, rape, or kill"

Obviously, normal, sane people will know that Clark's atheistic ideas (and their use to justify actions like "rob, rape or kill") are DANGEROUS ATHEISTIC NONSENSE.

Actions like the ones suffered by a girl like Watson are moral atrocities and they tell us a lot about the psychology of many hard-nosed atheists and "skeptics". 

Perhaps it is wise to keep them away from us, specially from the females in our family.

I have a strong disagreements with Watson's views on philosophical and scientific matters, but I strongly respect her, not just because she has the civil, moral and legal rights to express freely her opinions, but (and above all) because she is a WOMAN, and women deserve all our recognition, admiration and foremost respect.

This is a basic ethical principle for any REAL man, a principle which, apparently, is far beyond the reach of super-intellectual, "scientific" and "rational" atheists. They are NOT real men, and to be honest, individuals like these coward bastards deserve to have their butts kicked.

Skeptic James Randi comes out as homosexual or gay at 81. The website of D.J. Grothe (President of the James Randi Educational Foundation) provides the information

In the website "For Good Reason" (interview program hosted by D.J. Grothe, who is the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation), you can read an article entitled "A Skeptic Comes Out at 81", in which you can read:

James Randi comes out as gay. He discusses his life as a closeted gay man, and why he is now at age 81 coming out, and why he hasn’t been publicly open about his sexuality sooner. He describes the possible impact his coming out may have on his tireless work advancing skepticism and critical thinking. He discusses his atheism, and whether it, or his sexual orientation, influences the mission of the James Randi Educational Foundation. He talks about gay rights issues such as marriage equality.  He discusses his detractors and what they might make of the news of his homosexuality. And he explores the relevance of gay rights to the skeptical movement

You can download the audio here.

In a previous post, I commented that Tim Bolen (an experienced critic of pseudoskeptics), has suggested, according to his research, that there exists a strong connection between homosexuality and organized skepticism. Bolen says that these organizations have a large number of (in Bolen's words) "angry male homosexuals" and also that "the skeptics particularly like to attack women", , the latter being the kind of misogyny that I've discussed in a another post (see here).

Despite of Randi's declared homosexuality, I cannot draw yet any reliable conclusion about the statistical prevalence of homosexuality among male "skeptics", but this is a topic what we'll have to research in depth..

Stay tuned.

Skeptic Richard Wiseman, remote viewing and the principle Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence: A refutation in the light of Bayes' Theorem on Probability

I ask the readers to read this post carefully, because some complex philosophical concepts will be discussed. Some ideas will seem to be hard to grasp, but actually you will get them if you read the post carefully. This is fully necessary to expose one of the most common skeptical objections. 

Intellectual honesty implies that we have to understand objections to our positions accurately, in order to address them objectively. For example, if you think that the evidence for psi is good, you have to understand exactly why the skeptical objections against it fails.  You have to fully understand the objections against psi posed by professional critics and skeptics.

If you are familiar with the pseudo-skeptical literature, you will know that the principle Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, is often used in order to explain away any evidence for PSI presented by parapsychologists. No matter that evidence they present, the skeptic will say that such evidence is insufficient, because the psi claim is extraordinary and hence it requires much more scientific evidence than the one provided by the parapsychologists. Therefore (so conclude the skeptic), we have to conclude that no (sufficient) evidence for psi exists.

This skeptical principle is extremely comfortable and appealing, psychologically speaking, to skeptics, allowing them to keep their skepticism even in the face of positive evidence against their position.

The most egregious example of this approach can be seen in Richard Wiseman, who candidly conceded that the evidence for ESP meets the standards of any other area of science, but given the extraordinary nature of ESP, extraordinary evidence for it is needed. In Wiseman's words: "Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence"

Wiseman is saying that given the extraordinary nature of the claim for remote viewing, the evidence for it has to be equally extraordinary in order to be scientifically acceptable.

 

Most critics of pseudoskepticism ignore that the above skeptical objection is a modern version of Hume's Argument against Miracles, an argument that in his original formulation has been refuted and exposed as fallacious by philosophers in the 19th century.  In his book An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume argued: "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established those laws, the proof against a miracle, from the same nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined

In other words, the uniformity of experience about as the world works suggests that certain exceptional events which contradict such uniformity (e.g. miracles or, for example, outslandish cases of remote viewing or the paranormal) cannot happen or at least they're so extraordinary and unlikely (compared with the "uniform experience"), that any evidence for such extraordinary claim has to be equally extraordinary in order to be accepted.

Can you understand the Hume's objection? Can you see the structural equivalence with Wiseman's objection? I assume most of the readers can.

An event is extraordinary in relation with a previous background considered as ordinary (= Hume's "uniform experience"). For example, if experience shows that consciousness is always connected with the brain, then the claim "consciousness exists independently of the brain" is extraordinary (and unlikely) in that context.  This is why materialists reject near-death experiences.

Philosophers of religion deal with Hume's argument because many religions claim the historicity of miraculous events (e.g. the resurrection of Jesus). So, if the uniform experience (or ordinary knowledge) shows that dead people cannot back to life (i.e. cannot be resurrected), then any claim for a resurrection is extraordinary on that context and the evidence for it has to be extraordinary too. This is why liberal New Testament scholars don't address the resurrection and cannot accept any evidence for it.

So, the property of being "extrarordinary" is a function which is established in relation with the previous accepted knowledge of how the world works. Against the background of given accepted knowledge, any piece of evidence can be considered "ordinary" (if it fits with the background) or "extraordinary" (if it doesn't fit well or is at variance with the background).

Note that the structure of Hume's objection is the same structure of the argument used by contemporary skeptics (like Wiseman) against paranormal claims (Not suprisingly, Chris Carter addressed Hume's argument against miracles in his book Science and Psychic Phenomena, precisely because as a trained philosopher Carter understood the structural logical equivalence of both arguments)

BAYES' THEOREM, MIRACLES AND THE PARANORMAL

Bayes' theorem was devoloped by probability theorists in order to evaluate how much evidence is needed in order to accept a given explanatory hypothesis for a set of data (or evidence). Keep in mind that this theorem was developed AFTER Hume wrote. Roughly, the theorem is the following:

Nonetheless, I think there is the germ of a serious objection in Allison’s remarks to the historical argument for Jesus’ resurrection. The so-called “odds form” of Bayes’ Theorem states:

Pr(R/E&B)		Pr(R/B)		Pr(E/R&B)
_________	=	_________	⊆	_________
Pr(not-R/E&B)		Pr(not-R/B)		Pr(E/not-R&B)

The odds form of Bayes Theorem gives us the ratio of the probability of the resurrection on the total evidence and the probability of the resurrection’s not occurring on


Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dale-allison-on-the-resurrection-of-jesus#ixzz2CbLHE12D

Pr(R/E&B) Pr(R/B) Pr(E/R&B) _________ = _________ ⊆ _________ Pr(not-R/E&B) Pr(not-R/B) Pr(E/not-R&B)

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dale-allison-on-the-resurrection-of-jesus#ixzz2CbKsTXmi

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dale-allison-on-the-resurrection-of-jesus#ixzz2CbKsTXmi

In the above graphic, you can see how the overall probability of a given hypothesis is calculated. 

P(h/D) is called "posterior probability" of h (where "h" is the hypothesis), because it is the probability obtained after (posterior to) the evaluation of all the factors in the theorem. This is the overall probability of a given hypothesis.

P(h) is the prior probability of the hypothesis, that is, the probability of the hypothesis considered in relation with the background knoweldge alone (that is, regardless of the specific evidence for the hypothesis). This is called "prior" because it is the probability PREVIOUS to the examination of the evidence.

Astute observers will have realized that Hume's argument (and the skeptical contemporary version of it) is a statement of P(h) or prior probability, but P(h) is just ONE of the factors to be considered in the evaluation of any hypothesis, and not the most importat one.

In fact, one of the most important factors of Bayes' Theorem (and one omitted by Hume, Wiseman and skeptics) is the factor P (D/h), that is, the probability of observing the evidence D given the hypothesis h. This factor is so important that it could outbalance any prior/intrinsic improbability.

For example: suppose that a given explanatory hypothesis (e.g. remote viewing) is improbable regarding our background information alone, it still could be the case that it is very probable given the specific evidence for it (e.g the.SAIC experiments). In other words, the probability of getting positive evidence in the SAIC experiments  given the hypothesis of remote viewing could outbalance any prior or intrinsic improbability of the same hypothesis (prior improbability = the improbability of remote viewing given the background information alone, that is, prior to the SAIC experiments), making very high the overall probability of the hypothesis of remote viewing.

Can you see now where Hume's (and Wiseman) argument goes wrong? The Humean principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence fails because it only takes into account just one factor (the prior/intrinsic probability) to assess the probability of a given hypothesis. But it doesn't take into account the key factor P (D/h), that is, the probability of observing the specific evidence D given the hypothesis H.

So, according to Bayes' Theorem, Hume's argument is mathematically fallacious and demostrably wrong.

As consequence, I'm astonished by "skeptics" who keep repeating the Humean mantra, without realizing that, despite the appearences, it is a technically wrong objection and easily answerable. 

And this is not just the case in parapsychology, I've seen the same fallacious argument being used by skeptics in New Testament Studies (for example, regarding Jesus' resurrection).

Regardless of whether Jesus' resurrection was historical or not (this is besides the point in this moment), it is  true that the skeptical objections against it based on Hume's argument are demostrably wrong, exactly by the same reasons that such objection is wrong regarding parapsychology.

For example, in his debate against William Lane Craig, skeptic Bart Ehrman argued that Jesus' resurrection, being a miracle, is by definition, the "most improbable event". And since historians can only claim what is historically probable, they can't never accept any miracle as being historical. 

With the above explanations about Bayes' Theorem, you are in position to see where Ehrmar's error lies (he's conflating the prior probability of the resurrection hypothesis, which could be improbable in relation with the background information alone, with the probability of the resurrection hypothesis given the evidence for the empty tomb, Jesus' post-mortem apparitions and the origin of disciples' belief. The latter probability could be very high, even if the prior probability of the resurrection hypothesis is low, making the overall probability of the resurrection hypothesis very high).

In his reply to Ehrman, Craig showed exactly where Ehrman's error lies (which Craig calls Ehrman's egregious error and Bart's blunder) based on Bayes' theorem:

Ehrman's reply was saying that he was impressed with Craig presenting a mathematical argument for God's existence!

Ehrman's reply is astonishingly inept. Craig wasn't even arguing for God, he was clearly reconstructing Ehrman's objection to the resurrection in the light of Bayes' Theorem in order to show where Ehrman's blunder lies, but Ehrman didn't even understand that!

This kind of extremely low intellectual sophistication plus atheistic-materialistic prejudices underly the skeptical claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

This is another example of atheistic deception, pseudo-intellectualism and charlatanism, and I consider intellectuals who uncritically accept such a principle to be intellectually unprepared for sophisticated discussion of complex topics.

The most sophisticated technical discussion of Hume's argument in the light of Bayes' Theorem can be read in the book "Hume's Abject Failure" by an agnostic philosopher of science called John Earman, which I strongly suggest to you:

CONCLUSION

The main skeptical objection against "extraordinary claims" have been shown to be demostrably, mathematically, fallacious. Don't be fooled by the skeptical suggestion that even if such argument is fallacious regarding miracles, it could be true regarding the paranormal. The logical structure of the argument, as constructed by Bayes' Theorem, is exactly the same, and the reasons for it being fallacious stand regarding whether we're discussing miracles, the paranormal or even extraordinarily rare non-paranormal events.

Also, the key insight in this discussion is to realize that the skeptical principle doesn't take into account the P (D/h) factor, which is a very important factor which could counterbalance and even outbalance any putative intrinsic or prior improbability. In the minute 1:02 of the following brief video, Craig summarizes the whole point like this: "You must consider more than simply the inherent probability of that event, you also have to take into account the probability of the evidence being just as it is  IF that event has NOT taken place".

In other words, if you're critically examining the evidence for remote viewing for example, you have to consider not only the prior probability of remote viewing given our background information (a probability which according to skeptics like Wiseman is extremely, amazingly low), but ALSO the probability of getting positive evidence in the SAIC experiments IF remote viewing is NOT true. This latter factor could outbalance any prior or inherent improbability of the hypothesis of remote viewing, making the OVERALL probability of remote viewing given the total evidence and factors very high.

Don't be misled by bad skeptical arguments anymore.