Linkfest

-- David Thompson's blog has some very interesting posts of late. Here's one on the attempt of many academics to inculcate their students with their political views, which always turn out to be leftist. It scares me, and I'm not even a conservative. Here's another which deals with the attempt of some feminists to abandon logic and science as "masculine" and erect (get it?) a more feminine mode of thinking in its place. And here's one more on Stanley Fish.

-- The Volokh Conspiracy has an excellent post (and discussion in the comments) on whether "they" and "their" can be used to refer to the third person singular of unknown gender.

-- "The presidential candidate than whom none greater can be conceived". Heh.

-- Finally, Cake Wrecks. Professionally made cakes that are atrocities. Here's my favorite; they only had to spell three very short words on the cake, and the only one they got right is "a".

Origins

Reasons to Believe is a Christian ministry that deals primarily with science apologetics. A common objection to using science to defend Christianity, or any religious claim, is that appealing to supernatural causality is not falsifiable, since it does not make risky predictions, and hence is not really science. (Of course, many people who so object tend to see science as refuting -- that is, falsifying -- Christianity. This is a rather striking inconsistency.) To counter this objection RTB has come out with several books in the last few years which present models that make predictions that future scientific discoveries can verify or falsify.

The first book they published is entitled Origins of Life by biochemist Fazale Rana and astrophysicist Hugh Ross, RTB's vice-president and president, respectively. Origins of Life addresses ... wait for it ... the origin of life. The book's subtitle notwithstanding, they write

This is not a book about evolution per se. That is, it is not about the theory by which life accumulates changes over time, so that simple, early organisms change over eons into more complex, advanced ones. It is not about the entire history of life on Earth either. Rather, this book has a narrower, yet crucial, focus ... This book is about the origin of life -- the first appearances of living organisms on Earth. We address such questions as: What was first life like? When did it appear on Earth? How did it get here?

Rana and Ross contend that natural processes are incapable of bringing life into existence out of non-living material, and thus life's origin requires a supernatural agent. To this end, they take the baton from The Mystery of Life's Origin written by Thaxton, Bradley, and Olson in 1984. Rana and Ross attend the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) conferences held every three years, so their knowledge of the field is extensive and up to date.

Rana and Ross specifically make eight predictions based on their interpretation of Genesis 1 which they say can be falsified. Some might suggest that basing their model on the Bible immediately excludes it from consideration as scientific. But how one comes to hold a model or hypothesis or theory is irrelevant in science; what matters (at least according to contemporary philosophy of science) is whether it can be verified or falsified. Friedrich Kekulé came up with the ring structure of benzene after daydreaming of a snake biting its own tail, but no one would use this to suggest that benzene isn't characterized by a ring structure. Of course, I don't consider the Bible to be as fanciful as daydreams; my point is that even if you think it is as fanciful, or even that it is anti-scientific in the extreme, this is no argument against Rana's and Ross's model. If it can be verified or falsified by evidence, then its origin is simply irrelevant.

At any rate, these are the predictions that Rana and Ross offer:

1. Life appeared early in Earth's history, while the planet was still in its primordial state.
2. Life originated in and persisted through the hostile conditions of early Earth.
3. Life originated abruptly.
4. Earth's first life displays complexity.
5. Life is complex in its minimal form.
6. Life's chemistry displays hallmark characteristics of design (they discuss what these hallmarks are in their conclusion).
7. Early life was qualitatively different from life that came into existence on creation days three, five, and six.
8. A purpose can be postulated for life's early appearance on Earth. ("[Our] model bears the burden of explaining why God would create life so early in Earth's history and why (as well as when) He would create the specific types of life that appeared on primordial Earth.")

They contrast this with what they claim are the predictions from a naturalistic (i.e. non-miraculous) perspective. They acknowledge that there is great diversity here, and that often the predictions made from a particular model are based on that model's specifics. Nevertheless, they are able to derive nine general predictions made by naturalistic models:

1. Chemical pathways produced life's building blocks.
2. Chemical pathways yielded complex biomolecules.
3. The chemical pathways that yielded life's building blocks and complex molecular constituents operated in early Earth's conditions.
4. Sufficiently placid chemical and physical conditions existed on early Earth for long periods of time.
5. Geochemical evidence for a prebiotic soup exists in Earth's oldest rocks.
6. Life appeared gradually on Earth over a long period of time.
7. The origin of life occurred only once on Earth.
8. Earth's first life was simple.
9. Life in its most minimal form is demonstrably simple.

Rana and Ross then test the predictions of both models against the scientific facts as we now know them, and argue that their model receives strong support, while naturalistic models are undermined. Moreover, they point out that their model can continue to be tested as future scientific discoveries will either support or undermine their predictions (as well as those of naturalistic models).

They address whether life arose early in Earth's history or late; whether it arose quickly or slowly; whether there is any evidence for a prebiotic soup; whether chemical pathways can account for the origin of proteins, DNA, and RNA; the difficulty of accounting for homochirality (that proteins and sugars must be uniformly right or left "handed"); the information content encoded in DNA and RNA; the origin of cell membranes; the lower limit of complexity that a cell must have in order to survive and propagate; the role of organisms that thrive in extreme environments (extremophiles); the possibility of life on Mars, Europa, and other extraterrestrial locations; and "directed panspermia", the theory gaining in popularity (due to the problems outlined in the preceding chapters) that an advanced alien civilization intentionally seeded Earth with life. (Indeed, it seems to me that any supernatural explanation for the origin of life amounts to divinely directed panspermia).

Origins of Life is a fascinating discussion of the subject. Several chapters are worth the cost of the book all by themselves. Their chapter on cell membranes, for example, addresses a subject that is rarely raised. "To date, no studies have been conducted on the long-term stability of octanoic and nonanoic bilayers." ... "Despite its importance to naturalistic origin-of-life scenarios, researchers in this field focus only limited attention on membrane origins."

Other examples are their chapters on alternate life-sites in our solar system, including Mars, Europa (one of Jupiter's moons), and Titan (one of Saturn's). The latter is particularly interesting, since the Huygens Probe landed on Titan a few years ago, although (unfortunately) several months after Origins of Life was published. Again, this book is very comprehensive in its approach, so to discuss their arguments at length would take pages.

Other books they have published employing this model are Who Was Adam? by Rana and Ross which deals with human origins; Creation as Science by Ross which deals with their creation model in general; The Cell's Design by Rana which deals with the complexity of individual cells; and just released is Why the Universe Is the Way It Is by Ross. I have not yet read these books and don't know anything about them beyond their general descriptions. But I'm looking forward to them.

(cross-posted on Quodlibeta)

Chinese space mission

Three Chinese Astronauts, one of whom performed the first spacewalk of China's space program, have returned to Earth. Hopefully a little friendly competition will kickstart us Americans into getting our act together.

Brilliant

Once upon a time, there was a group of people who lived on top of a very high mountain. Because they lived so high up, there was always snow and ice everywhere, which was constantly evaporating and forming a fog or cloud that completely covered the top of the mountain. This resulted in snow and sometimes hail being showered down on the people. You might think that it wasn’t a very wise place to live, but the group of people insisted there was no other place, since the cloud prevented them from seeing very far in any direction, including up. They maintained that the people from other groups that came to the top of the mountain from time to time just lived a bit further down the side of the mountain.

Every time the group of people heard a word they particularly liked, they would use it to describe themselves by adding it to the words they had previously used. Eventually, they were calling themselves the “Brilliant, Undaunted, Learned, Liberated, Sophisticated, Highly Intelligent Tribe.” However, this name lent itself to stammering, and the word “Tribe” sounded too primitive for them; so the people eventually just took the word “Brilliant” and changed from “Tribe” to “Society.” The other words were confined to their official creed and their official anthem.

Now the top of the mountain, as incredible as it may seem, was a trade center where people from outside the Brilliant Society would come to barter. You might think again that this wasn’t a very wise place to have a trade center, but the Brilliant Society had demanded that it be so -- and when the members of other tribes argued that the Brilliant Society should send its people to the trade centers already established all over the world, the people of the Brilliant Society would laugh and say there were no such places, and if the others didn’t come and trade on the mountain they were being discriminated against, and complained, and threatened, and whined, and eventually it just became easier to make the top of the mountain a trade center than it was to listen to them anymore.

There was a particular member of the Brilliant Society who enjoyed arguing with the people from other tribes and insisting that there was nothing except the top of the mountain. He would contrive extensive arguments to prove that all of the stories the people from other tribes would talk about weren’t true. When, for example, he would tell someone his scientific proof that the structure of plants would not allow them to grow more than a few inches above the surface of the ground, they would say to him incredulously, “You mean you don’t believe in trees?” He would then chuckle quietly (though not so quietly that they couldn’t hear him doing it), and say, “No. Nor do I believe in fairies or hobgoblins or Hottentots.” Most people would simply walk away at this, which gave him and his followers the impression that he had won the argument.

One day, this Brilliant Society member, or BS’er, was out strolling alone through the snow and ice during a particularly nasty hailstorm when he saw someone from another tribe who was looking around him with a frustrated, confused, and melancholy look on his face. The BS’er had encountered many people making this facial expression before when they were overcome with the pitiful environment at the top of the mountain. He saw this as an excellent opportunity to approach the individual who was making the face, and demonstrate to him that the top of the mountain was the only place there is.

“Hail, friend!” said the BS’er. “You look distraught. Is there anything I can help you with?”

The individual responded the same way everybody did when the BS’er said this: “Me? Oh no. Well ... yes, perhaps there is. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, this area seems like a remarkably unpleasant place. Why exactly do you and your people choose to live here?”

The BS’er smiled widely and said, “Well, as to its unpleasantness it certainly doesn’t compare to our dreams and imaginations -- but this is hardly something to hold against reality. And as to why we choose to live here, where else would you have us live? The top of the mountain is all there is.”

The individual’s facial expression changed to surprise (which was what everybody’s face did when the BS’er said this), and he responded, “Oh, sir, you have been sorely misinformed. There are many places beyond here. I myself live on the bank of a river in a beautiful wood twelve days journey south of here.”

“River?” said the BS’er. “Yes, I believe I’ve heard visitors speak of this before. Isn’t that a place where the snow and ice move sideways instead of falling from above? This seems to violate the law of gravity, does it not?”

“Well, not exactly.” said the individual. “It’s not really snow and ice, but water, that is, ice that has become warm and is no longer solid.”

“But when the snow and ice become warm they turn to steam and go back up into the cloud.” said the BS’er. “If you’d care to stay here until this storm subsides, I’m sure you’ll see it happening. It is a fairly common occurrence. But then, I’m sure you’re already aware of this affair, since you live on the mountain yourself.”

“Well, no sir, I don’t.” responded the individual. “I live on the bank of a river. I just told you that. And the river is neither snow nor steam, but water. This is usually what happens to snow and ice when it gets warm. It changes from snow to water then from water to steam. Sometimes, it does indeed change directly from snow to steam, but that only happens up here on top of the mountain.”

“Ah!” said the BS’er. “So the laws of nature only apply to the place where we just happen to be right now! Elsewhere, the elements behave differently! How convenient! But of course, this is not true here and now, but in some magical land of centaurs, minotaurs, and matadors! I hope, sir, that you will forgive me for saying so, but this ‘river’ of yours seems a remarkably unpleasant place -- since I do not wish to have much in common with non-existence!”

“But ... look here,” said the individual. “Surely you know that water exists in liquid form, do you not? What do you drink?”

“We make wine from snow and moss, and sometimes we drink milk brought from the other tribes. We also eat snow at the end of every meal. But if you wish to bring us some of your ‘water’ feel free to do so, and I shall immediately recant of all I’ve said. Or would it ‘just happen’ to become ice again once it comes in view of the mountain?”

“Yes, of course it would freeze by the time it came up to the top of the mountain!” said the individual in an annoyed voice.

The BS’er only chuckled, and said very condescendingly, “Sir, I beg your indulgence. I had no intention of depriving you of your dearly-held doctrines. But surely, you have some affection for truth? All of the visitors from further down the mountain have claimed to love what is true. Would you do me the courtesy of listening to me a bit longer?” Then the BS’er told the individual a scientific proof he had contrived which proved that water was inherently unstable in liquid form, and thus could never occur as such. “Well?” said the BS’er when the individual had a sufficiently puzzled look on his face, “What do you think? Can you refute my argument?”

“No I can’t,” said the individual. “I’m not much of a scientist, I’m afraid. But surely you don’t expect your argument to counter my experience of living on the riverbank, do you? I’ve been there. I know it exists. I’ve often swum in its waters.”

“You may have experienced it, but I have not. How ever shall we get past this stalemate? If only there was evidence to support one of us over against the other ... oh wait! There is! My scientific argument which you cannot refute!” As the content of this sentence makes clear, the BS’er said this in a very sarcastic tone of voice.

“But your lack of experience doesn’t argue against my positive experience. The fact that you haven’t experienced a river or liquid water doesn’t mean that they don’t exist -- it means nothing more than that you haven’t experienced it. The fact that I have experienced it proves that they do exist; otherwise I could not have done so.”

“I exhort you sir, please do not bring your dreams and fantasies to court and defend them as real. If I grant that you are not lying, which I do not, the fact that you have ‘experienced’ them proves that you experienced something -- precisely what I don’t know, though a breakdown seems more likely than not. Moreover, what becomes, then, of my scientific argument?”

“Well, what becomes of my experience?”

“Delusion, illusion, imagination, hallucination, take your pick. Now again, what of my argument?”

“Well ... just because I cannot refute your argument off the top of my head doesn’t mean that it is true. Isn’t it more reasonable to believe in the river (seeing as how I’ve been there) than it is to disbelieve or even doubt it?”

“Reason, sir? You speak of reason? I have heard many stories of ghosts, banshees, and pygmies but I don’t believe them despite the ‘experience’ of those who tell them. Pray, what difference is there between these stories and your ‘river’?”

“Did you not say that you have met many other visitors from other tribes before, sir?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And have any of them spoken of liquid water?”

“They have indeed. It is a most powerful myth,” said the BS’er, and chuckled (he really enjoyed chuckling).

“Well,” said the individual, “shouldn’t we prefer to accept what they claim to have experienced rather than hold that everyone who challenges our world view is either lying or delusional?”

“What that fails to take into account, sir, is that, while their stories are similar, they are never the same. Some speak of liquid water being still, like glass. Others speak of it as a small trickle moving delicately. Others (such as yourself) describe it as a deep river, in which we can immerse ourselves. Some even tell of the ‘sea,’ where the water is constantly ‘waving’ towards the ‘shore.’ (They don’t realize that nearly all the ancient myths have stories of the ‘sea’ in them.) Obviously, all of these stories cannot be true.”

“But surely, just because all of them cannot be true, it doesn’t mean that none of them are true. It would be very odd to insist that, since everyone tells a very similar story, the truth must lie in precisely the opposite direction, would it not? Besides, I’m not sure the stories do contradict: perhaps they are just describing different aspects of the same thing.”

“And yet, they all maintain that they are describing the whole. No sir, thank you sir, I prefer not to give anymore credence to these stories than to those describing dragons, gargoyles, and Eskimos.”

“Um ... is there anyone else in the Brilliant Society I can speak to about this?” said the individual. “I hope you will not be offended, but I don’t find this conversation very enlightening”

“How dare you sir! I’ll have you know that I am considered one of the more brilliant members of the BS! I have BS flowing through my veins! I have BS coming out of my ears! I’m completely full of BS! Look, even my eyes are brown!” (Brown was the official color on the official flag of the Brilliant Society.)

“I don’t understand.” said the individual. “Why don’t you come walk with me, and I’ll show you my river.”

“I would be happy to, sir, as long as I am home in time for supper.”

“Well ... it is a long journey of nearly two weeks, and one must pass through many hazards to get there.”

Once again, the BS’er chuckled. “Of course. One can only experience your river by undergoing a long and dangerous trip away from one’s hearth and home. And one cannot know whether he is being made a fool of until he reaches the end of the journey. One must step out blindly, with no assurances. Why should I have expected more?”

The individual shook his head as if to clear it. “Why are you so intent on not believing this?”

“Because, sir, I have my pride. I do not want to make myself a simpleton who could be taken in by childish stories of werewolves, ogres, and Rastafarians!”

“But surely you want to believe it, don’t you? Don’t you wish you could be taken out of this horrible place and go to a more favorable climate?”

“Why would I want to go to some land where the snow moves sideways and smother in it? Your river sounds ghastly, and I won’t believe it. I won’t! I believe in reality!”

At this point, the individual made another facial expression which the BS’er saw at the end of all his debates, and recognized as victory -- although it was, in fact, pity. Then, the individual turned and walked away shaking his head. The BS’er went back to his home, very pleased with himself for winning another argument, to have a dinner of moss wine, bear meat and snow. That night, as he drifted off to sleep, he muttered to himself, “Water ... river ...” and chuckled again as he fell asleep.

Theistic Solipsism

I tend to think that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was at its best as a radio show, that it was very good as a series of books, not bad as a movie, and godawful as a BBC television show. One of the great things about the radio show was that the story line was so different from everything else. Here's one example, although I don't remember the books well enough to know whether this was eventually reproduced therein. Arthur, Ford, and Zaphod confront the ruler of the universe, only to discover that he's a solipsist.



This idea was not original to Hitchhiker's. Fredric Brown wrote this very short story with the same basic theme. But it still makes me smile.

Quote of the Day

"Perhaps the Great Architect intended for him to cross over."

"Huh? Good heavens, Doctor, surely you don't believe in divine predestination!"

"Perhaps not in those terms. But, Howard, you mechanistic skeptics make me tired. Your naive ability to believe that things 'jest growed' approaches childishness. According to you a fortuitous accident of entropy produced Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

"I think that's unfair, Doctor. You certainly don't expect a man to believe in things that run contrary to his good sense without offering him any reasonable explanation."

Frost snorted. "I certainly do -- if he has observed it with his own eyes and ears, or gets it from a source known to be credible. A fact doesn't have to be understood to be true. Sure, any reasonable mind wants explanations, but it's silly to reject facts that don't fit your philosophy."

Robert A. Heinlein
"Elsewhen"
Assignment in Eternity

Space news

The new Carnival of Space is up. Check it out. Incidentally, I get these via Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. He also points to this article about Japan planning to build a space elevator. I'm down with that.

A Case of Projection

Part of the whole "science vs. Christianity" metanarrative is that science has consistently shown that human beings aren't as significant as religion claims. Thus, Copernicus showed that the earth isn't at the center of the universe, astronomy has shown that we're a tiny speck in a vast cosmos, and Darwin showed that the human being is just an animal. Freud then appealed to this idea in order to validate his psychological theories, since they presumably showed that the human being is merely a sick animal.

For now I'll deal with the last link in this chain, and save the other links (as well as the chain taken as a whole) for other posts. Freud argued in The Future of an Illusion that people who believe in God were projecting a father figure onto the universe, motivated by a sense of helplessness. And, if religious beliefs are merely the result of psychological and sociological factors, then there's no point in asking whether or not they're true. This was considered by many to be proof from medical science that religion is bogus, in particular, Judaism and Christianity. The reason these two were singled out is because they most clearly define God as a father figure.

While Freud suggested that religion has a stabilizing effect on society as a whole, for the individual, belief in God should generally be treated as a psychological dysfunction. I say "generally" because psychological theories are never absolute; there are always exceptions which don't necessarily refute the theory. Nevertheless, Freudian psychologists have often held that treatment could only be considered successful once the patient has relinquished belief in God.

Of course, there were a few problems with this. Probably the most obvious is that it is a textbook example of a classic logical fallacy. The genetic fallacy is committed when you think that by explaining how a belief originates, you are thereby showing the belief to be false. But this is obviously not the case. If I was raised to believe that murder is bad, pointing this out does not show that murder is not bad.

The point here is that it's necessary to make a distinction between how we come to believe something and whether the object of that belief is true. Any belief has to be judged on its merits, not on the alleged psychological predispositions of its proponents. Freud's projection theory is guilty of reasoning in a way that has been recognized as sloppy thinking by virtually all the great intellects in human history.

Another problem with the projection theory is that Freud didn't have any actual evidence for it. As Os Guinness writes in The Long Journey Home, "the founder of psychoanalysis had astonishingly little experience either in probing the psychology of belief in God or in caring for patients who were religious." To his credit, Freud privately acknowledged that the projection theory was just his personal opinion.

But since Freud's time, plenty of evidence has been collected, and it shows the exact opposite of what Freud thought it would. Guinness writes "Religious life, in fact, has been demonstrated to go hand in hand with better physical health, greater psychological well-being, and a generally positive social influence." It doesn't show any evidence of being the psychological dysfunction Freud believed.

A final problem with the projection theory is that it's actually a better explanation of non-belief in God than belief. Paul Vitz, a psychologist at NYU demonstrates in his book The Faith of the Fatherless, that the most militant atheists had major father issues. He lists Nietzsche, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Voltaire, Feuerbach, Ayn Rand, H. G. Wells, Stalin, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and Freud himself among many others, stating "We find a weak, dead, or abusive father in every case." Often, this connection was openly acknowledged by the atheist. There are, of course, exceptions to this, perhaps the most prominent being John Stuart Mill. But it certainly seems to be a valid psychological theory which explains a majority of cases.

Now, it needs to be stated as clearly as possible that this does not constitute an argument against atheism. Vitz recognizes this. To think it does would be to simply commit the genetic fallacy in the opposite direction. Atheism has to be judged on its intellectual merits, not on the home life of its advocates. Rather, the point of this is that the projection theory seems to be itself a projection. Those who had a problem with their fathers and projected this into a problem with God, then projected this projection itself onto those who don't have a problem with God. They tried to explain belief in God with the same categories that influenced their disbelief in God.

In other words, Freud committed another logical fallacy. The tu quoque fallacy is committed when you accuse your opponent of something that you're guilty of. "Tu quoque" is Latin for "Oh yeah? So are you! Nyaah!" This may make for good rhetoric, but, once again, it's sloppy thinking.

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Reposts

When I started this blog, I wrote that I would sometimes repost and rewrite some things I had already posted on OregonLive. Since then, they took the old site down, so my older posts can no longer be found online. Afterwards I reposted some items and just had an unlinked note at the end saying as much.

However, this just seems unnecessarily extreme. So since a) those posts now exist only on my laptop, b) I wrote the original posts, and thus have the right to do whatever I want with them, and c) very few people ever read them in their first incarnation, I'll just be reposting them without comment from here on out.

A Christian Apology

The Anglican church has recently posted several articles on evolution and Christianity online. One of the essays -- "Good Religion Needs Good Science" by Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown -- states that the Christian Chuch needs to apologize to Darwin for reacting so negatively to evolution (via the Guardian). Of course, there is a lot of truth in this. Many Christians just give knee-jerk reactions to any argument that supports evolution, and are willing to believe just about anything that seems to go the other way.

On the other hand, it needs to be pointed out that the Church didn't react negatively to Darwin en masse right away. A book on this (that I haven't actually read yet) is Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought by David N. Livingstone. Another good resource is the second chapter of Philip J. Sampson's masterwork Six Modern Myths about Christianity and Western Civilization.

Christian hostility to evolution built up because a group of atheists and agnostics in the late 19th century decided to initiate a cultural campaign representing evolution as the final nail in Christianity's coffin. After using evolution as a club to beat Christians over the head with, I think it's sad but understandable that some Christians eventually responded by getting mad at the club.

(cross-posted on Quodlibeta)

My Wasted Genius

When I was a kid I tried to write my own Choose Your Own Adventure story. It was (supposed to be) a spy thriller. My theme was that some people wanted to put huge solar panels in orbit which would then beam the energy back to Earth, thus providing humankind with all the energy they need; the point being that the plans had to be kept out of the wrong hands. I had to give it up because I had written about 35 pages and had about 12 distinct storylines going with no end in sight.

Well, the idea finally occurred to some science-type people, and they're actually thinking of trying it. And to think that if they had just had the foresight to ask an 11-year-old kid who didn't know the first thing about electricity, all of our energy problems would already be solved.

Quodlibeta

I've mentioned Bede's Library before, a blog primarily about science and religion written by James Hannam, who has recently earned his PhD in the history and philosophy of science. Last month he decided to make it a group blog, and asked if anyone was interested. I replied, and he asked me, along with several others, to join up. The blog is now called Quodlibeta, although it has the same address (bedejournal.blogspot.com); I've adjusted my blogroll accordingly. I'm very privileged to be able to post there as well as here, and I look forward to interacting with my fellow clerks.

Never Forget

In the aftermath of 9/11, one statement in particular encouraged me, and has continued to do so ever since. It was something to the effect of, "The age of al-Qaeda lasted one hour and fifty minutes. That's the time between when the hijackers took control of the first plane to when the passengers tried to take back the last one."

Modifying My Moniker

I explained a little while ago where I got my pseudonym "Tragic Clown Dog". I chose this intentionally goofy and random name because I wanted to make clear that by calling this blog "Agent Intellect" I wasn't arrogating to myself any claim that my opinions are by default more intellectual than those of others. Agent Intellect is a technical philosophical term from the De Anima tradition, something I tried to show by the Aristotle quote at the top of the sidebar. I'm not calling myself the James Bond of philosophy.

However, since posting the origins of my pseudonym, I've come to think that Tragic Clown Dog is entirely too goofy. I decided that I want to take the name of some relatively obscure philosopher -- someone that other philosophers would know but non-philosophers probably would not. I have preliminarily settled on Xenophanes, the pre-Socratic philosopher who is generally considered to be the first monotheist in the Western philosophical tradition (although this is disputed) and who criticized the popular gods of his day.

Update (12 Sep.): OK, I'm just going to keep it simple and blog as Jim S.

William Lane Craig Debates

I enjoy listening to philosophical and/or religious debates, but ultimately it's more for entertainment purposes than anything else. The problem with debates is that just because someone can't come up with a good response to something off the top of their head while on stage doesn't mean that there aren't any good responses to it. I was able to think up some remarkably witty comebacks to the bullies in grade school, but they usually came several hours after school let out.

One of the most prolific debaters in the last couple of decades has been William Lane Craig. He generally debates other scholars on the existence of God or the historical Jesus. His website had several transcribed debates in which he has taken part, and I also just discovered that many of his debates are on YouTube. So I thought I would provide links to them, stating who he debated, and the title of the debate in question. The videos are mostly in 10 minute increments, and most of them automatically go to the next one in the series when each one finishes. You should be warned, though, that it eats up your bandwidth.

His opponents vary in how well they do; Peter Atkins, for example, is just a caricature of thoughtless scientism. Here's a brief excerpt from that video to give you a taste of it:



So below are the debates separated by whether they are videos or transcribed. [Update (26 Oct): A much better, and more complete, summary of Craig's debates, with links to the texts or audio/video recordings, is here. Via DI1.]

On video:
vs. Peter Atkins: What Is the Evidence For/Against the Existence of God?
vs. Frank Zindler: Atheism vs. Christianity: Where Does the Evidence Point?
vs. Torbjörn Tännsjö: God and Morality
vs. Peter Slezak: Atheism vs. Christianity
vs. Bill Cooke: Is God a Delusion?
vs. Bart Ehrman: Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?
vs. James Crossley: Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?
vs. Shabir Ally: Did Jesus of Nazareth Physically Rise from the Dead?
vs. Shabir Ally: What Must I Do to Be Saved?
vs. Jamal Badawi: The Concept of God in Islam and Christianity
vs. John Shook: Does God Exist?
vs. Antony Flew: Does God Exist?
vs. Austin Dacey: Does God Exist?
vs. Theodore Drange: Does God Exist?

Transcribed debates:
vs. Kai Nielson: God, Morality, and Evil
vs. Richard Taylor: Is the Basis of Morality Natural or Supernatural?
vs. Michael Tooley: A Classic Debate on the Existence of God
vs. Ray Bradley: Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
vs. Bart Ehrman (also above): Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?
vs. Corey Washington: Does God Exist?
vs. Quentin Smith: Does God Exist?
vs. Quentin Smith: Does God Exist?
vs. Douglas Jesseph: Does God Exist?
vs. Massimo Pigliucci: Does God Exist?

This is random

Wikipedia in Esperanto. It has over 100,000 articles. That's more than most real languages. I'm still more impressed by the LOL Cat Bible Translation Project.