Spelunking the Universe
Archive for March, 2009
1000 Hits!
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Thank you for helping us reach 1000 hits!
Here is to hoping we see you in another thousand!
(Hope you enjoy your wittle present)
Black Holes and Human Brains
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
This is a bit of a thought experiment but I’ve come to think that perhaps the human brain is an example of evolutionary pit falling. I’d use a better term but my brain is kind of not running on all cylinders at the moment itself!
In the universe there are many objects of varying sizes and gravitational pulls. It would seem obvious that at a certain point that gravity becomes so great that it just continually compounds upon itself and creates an extremely massive singular point. Essentially whenever you are dealing with variable systems there seems to be a real world situation where there is a runaway train effect that creates otherwise seemingly impossible (or extremely unlikely events).
The Human brain seems to be another example of this. I have a strong feeling that the evolution of the human brain works in a similar fashion. This may be an event that is unlikely to happen again for quite sometime. When the original mutations hit and the earliest humans did grow larger brains (in whatever manner or region that they did) it must have been an extremely helpful mutation. This was much like that first bit of mass past the critical threshold in space. As more and more generations of this species reproduced the changes were reinforced more and more and the brain kept growing progressively larger.
I imagine larger brains are evolutionarily extremely handy (extreme being the popular theme this post) however they are not biologically primary mutations. There is some sort of required event, perhaps a very large amount of food to help lessen the necessity of other advantages (like strength or senses). The human skull did change allowing more space for the brain and that change was the weakening of the jaw muscles. Perhaps the major food source of Humans changed in some great manner and that change increased the amount of food ingested per human per life.
It’s an interesting question, while mutations are hardly intentional it does seem that certain mutations do cause absolutely amazing continual mutations that lead to extraordinary organisms.
Extra Note: I will warn you in advance. If these existential posts are a bit annoying for you the next week might be difficult for you! 
I’m on vacation so it’s probably going to be a week of thought experiments. I will try my best to make them as inspirational as possible.
The Sweetest of Things
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
No Longer Maligned, Sugar Now Sells (NY TIMES)
I must say that this is some very good news. I’ve never been a fan of high fructose corn syrup and it became alarming to find the same food product in nearly 95% of all the stuff I found myself eating. It was not because I was attracted to the substance but much like “made in china” it became almost impossible to avoid.
Something in the article that I found rather interesting was the possible correlation of HFCS with Obesity in the US:
But the most common argument has to do with the rapid rise of obesity in the United States, which began in the 1980s, not long after industrial-grade high-fructose corn syrup was invented. As the amount of the sweetener in the American diet has expanded, so have Americans.
I must stress that correlations do not necessarily entail causation (as many politicians would want you to believe) but this does seem to be an unusual coincidence. There does appear to be some sort of consistent correlation with obesity and highly processed foods. Now this may in fact be just a coincidence that ties in with the people who enjoy highly processed foods also being the people who detest exercise, however I’m a nip skeptical.
What troubles me is the desire to use cheap alternatives in food products. Yes food is just another market however food is one survival critical outlet for humanity. You cannot survive without food-period. When all of your food products have a related ingredient that creates a very precarious position. It doesn’t require a genius to note that devising some means of destroying massive amounts of corn farms would greatly cripple the US (possible economically but certainly agriculturally). You should never have all your eggs in one basket, or count them before they hatch, or any of those other weird egg-chick related monikers (I believe that’s the word I’m looking for).
I personally like sugar because of its natural occurrence. I don’t believe anyone has ever seen high fructose corn syrup naturally occurring. I’m not a health nut but I do think it is safe to assume if it is a food product that works for hundreds of thousands (millions…billions?) of non-human animals that it probably is also a healthy or safe choice for humans. Mind you this doesn’t always work, a day old deer carcass may work for a vulture but I’m not to keen on it neither is my intestinal tract.
However I would not say to anyone to go out and down 90 lbs of sugar (albeit you’ll apparently consume nearly that much a year between HFCS and Sugar), I will say that of the two options it happens to be the one I personally like. The important thing to remember is that exercise is vital to living a long and healthy life, you may find the occasional person who lives long, happy, and healthy without it but you would have likely seen them live even longer and happier had they been more physically active.
Give it a few months, we’ll start seeing advertisements on television for how Sugar makes you go blind (care of the corn producers). It’s getting ridiculous these days in advertising, first the terrible smoking commercials, now the painfully obvious commercials that coal is never clean (I always figured that was like saying blue is blue but some people apparently don’t realize it), and I foresee this battle being next.
In one television advertisement, a mother pours fruit punch into a cup while another scolds her because the punch contains high-fructose corn syrup. When pressed to explain why it is so bad, the complaining mother is portrayed as a speechless fool.
Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said consumers were being duped.
Ah…it would appear I’m already late 
. They already have obnoxious commercials. Nothing quite says “We have nothing good to say” like fabricating some loudmouth fool in your commercials to label anyone who disagrees with you as completely ignorant. I know that gets me supportive.
I hope this was able to satiate anyone who was hoping for something a little deeper, my vacation began today and I had to travel for most of the day to get back home. On the bright side there is an entire week before it is back to the grind!
32 Thousand Years Old and Still Kicking
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I wonder just how large of a cake you should buy for an organism that is 32,000 years old? I know for the Galapagos Tortoise they have some mighty fine parties around a century and a half (not living much longer than that) and to be perfectly serious here you have not lived until you’ve seen a Tortoise dancing around with shell tassels.
So what on earth am I talking about? Well in 2005, beneath the nose of many (myself included) there was a discovery in a frozen Alaskan pond of some bacterial life. Well that in itself was hardly interesting, the bacteria had been frozen for 32k years and again while that’s a long time finding really old frozen matter is not exactly uncommon. However, and here is where it gets interesting, once they thawed out the organisms they began moving. It would appear that another wonderful tag to slap on to extremophiles (Organisms that live in extreme circumstances) and that would be the ability to reduce genetic damage caused from oxidation when frozen (and likely some other biological degenerates I don’t understand at this point).
So what does this entail for people? Well from what I’ve read nothing immediately, on my birthday (as usual) there were some skeptics that said it was fake. However there are always skeptics, for some reason anytime something challenges previous held views people get extremely militant and rarely for good reasons. That short rant to the side I’ll provide the curious with some sources.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7064
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-8444250_ITM
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/131785/32000yearold_bacteria_found_in_alaska/
For the interest of Fairness here is the Birthday Complaint:
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/August/28080702.asp
So with that out of the way this gives me a new goal in life. I would like to see this sort of technology take off so that I could potentially experience cryogenics! How amazing would it be to freeze yourself in time and return at a predetermined time in the future? It certainly would be an interesting proposition. Albeit it would be terrible to be frozen and have some sort of religious war cause the end of humanity (I have heard in the last few years that biological weaponry is becoming a target but that may just be propaganda).
I’m also curious to see if discovering how this organism halts (or retards) oxidation could create a process for humans to slow our own oxidation rates. This would, other factors aside like injury and disease, make us live a good deal longer. While with current reproductive rates that would not be a good thing (unless people start in large actually caring about their education and global impact) however if there was some control brought to reproduction it would be absolutely amazing to live for hundreds of years. However as it stands my understanding of this sort of thing is very limited, so I suppose it’s another topic I need to add to yee old Amazon wish list.
If anyone else finds some more informative sources I’d be interested in them. Feel free to drop them (or input of any kind) by the comments section.
Faceless
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in Poetry
I feel so faceless
a mask
colorless
whiteness
I feel so spacious
empty void
devoid
divinely decided
rhapsody retired
this muses mire
digging deep
stealing all
that is me
how hard
it is
cold lonely
faceless
Searching for the Middle
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Well with the fiery hellscape that was my finals over I suppose we (being myself and either you the reader or just the other voices about my head) can get back to some more intellectual digging. I would also implore anyone who is going to comment to think before you speak. There are a few things that I really detest in this world, stealing, sexual assault, violence against those who cannot properly defend themselves, and lying. If you are going to accuse me of any of these, even as a joke, it is not going to pan out well. If ever there was something that could be classified as a ‘dick move’ that sort of commentary sewage would be it. I already have dozens of daily spam comments automated out I don’t need real people adding to the mix.
So back to the topic at hand. At some point between laying down and attempting to get to sleep I suddenly had an epiphany and discovered exactly how I would like my first book to end. So I found myself now grasping full the end and the beginning but without a proper solid middle. It occurred to me further then that this tied in with a previous topic I had ranted about which was testing and education. You may be asking yourself how the hell these two are related and if it has anything to do with medians (which in this case it doesn’t).
I am a strong believer that the average professor at a United States University is an absolutely terrible tester. If you are attempting to write a documentary on how to most improperly test a class I think you can look no further than just about any class at your local college. It’s odd especially for someone who spent most of their career in college in the field of Psychology (yes I look at it like a job because that is how it is setup hardly academic anymore). You might not be able to tell given the amount of content I’ve brooded over from philosophy since I started updated daily however my first and likely lifelong passion with be that of Psychology (and its close relative in the family that is my cognitive passions Astronomy).
My brain seems to blue screen anytime I think about how professors who have gotten their masters in Psychology (So any professor in the Psychology department) can teach and test so improperly. It may not seem immediately apparent the paradox till you set back and realize these are the people who study learning and behavior for a living. If ever another form of verbal emphasis is added for fonts like underlining, italics, and bold I would ask that you mentally place that tag on the above line. It requires as much emphasis as possible because it leads me to the conundrum. Why in the hell do we have thousands and thousands of people spending hundreds of thousands of hours studying learning and behavior if we never implement it in education?
I think the greatest dissonance came in the actual course Learning in Behavior when the professor had us read a book that for an entire chapter explicitly stated why, and here is the kicker, the exact way our professor was teaching and testing was not only wrong but even counter productive to the process of learning. When I brought it up she said “We teach as we were taught.” which lead me to believe strongly that she hadn’t even read the book herself. I just found it startlingly upsetting that a professor teaching a course in behavior and learning would be acting and testing in a manner that was entirely in conflict with the slides and discussions (as well as the textbook).
I had proposed in that same class that it would seem more effective to me to have weekly smaller exams, these exams would make sure that students are quickly refreshed in the material and because of their common nature there would be little testing anxiety (as each is worth alone very little) resulting in a much more accurate portrayal of how a student is comprehending and less on how they deal with stress (which is essentially all modern exams do anymore). Likewise this system results in students understanding each professors unique (and generally widely varied) testing style so that the student can adjust their studying habits to better cope with each course.
Do you know the actual result of this proposition? The professor asked the class if they would like a system like that and everyone for the exception of two people (so basically 28 students, 27 not counting me of course) raised their hand. Of the two that didn’t one was sleeping so I count that as a possible victory . The professor in turn had the following complaints about the proposition.
“Well if I were to test once a week that’s an entire class period lost.” To which I responded “Weekly tests result in smaller tests. You would still have most of the class to continue.” I even gave her the example of my Greek Mythology* course which was tested in this manner. The course had an exam every Monday, the students all took the exam (which was almost entirely essay questions) and afterwards we discussed our reading and continued on for the next week of learning. To this she responded “Well Greek Mythology works like that, unfortunately Psychology can’t hold peoples attention.” I thought to myself; of course it cannot if your opinion of it is so dry. So we continued the class as all Psychology courses do, 2-3 exams, each of which determines by itself if you will pass the course or not. The interesting note is that it doesn’t matter what Psychology professors tell you will be tested on, the exam never matches the pre test information. I have joked with many non-psychology professors that I suspect it is a large scale long term study on the effects of cognitive dissonance and stress on young adults.
A professor should examine where they want to end in a course with their students. What important information they want them to gain, they should also look back upon their own time and see what information was actually vital to them further understanding the field and not simply expecting their students to be masters of the field from their class alone. Once this has been established they should examine where best to start. This places them in a field with a beginning and an end, finally they look at how best to bridge the middle.
As it stands each course expects you to leave as a master of the field and because of it the majority (I say this without reserve by looking at class averages) of students leave barely average in their documented understanding. We constantly improve the medical field (albeit its difficult to see at times with pill companies) and yet the educational field looks to be doing nothing but committing seppuku. So if you are a university professor, for the sake of your students and for a course that is not merely wasting the time of all involved, examine your testing structure and look for something that works not simply something you are comfortable with.
If you are a psychology professor and you teach in the exact same manner as your professor did 20-30 years ago (as my learning and behavior professor did) you should seriously rethink your field. Because if decades of examining the phenomena’s involved with learning and behavior have not made their way into your own educational structure then I’d say it’s utterly wasted. Knowledge that is never applied is no more valuable than ignorance.
Final Note: For those that feel I’ve addressed the problem without giving a personal solution here is how I would personally teach and test a course. First I’ll address you to read the part that begins with “A professor should” because that would be the groundwork. From there I would have weekly exams, each week I would take what I felt was the most important of the information from the previous exam and add a similar question to refresh the students memory on the next exam. Continuing this process each week until by the end of the course there is an exam with all the most essential information from earlier and the final questions from the final week. Likewise I would have an essay that asks the student on the final (since they’ll have 2 hours) to explain to me the most interesting things they’ve learned from this course. This may sound superfluous but every time I’ve seen it in action it seems to sincerely result in deep thought by a good majority of students. If I felt that I didn’t have enough time in a week to do these tests and teach I would rethink my teaching style and the material I’m covering, there is something superfluous in my information. I will end these thoughts (and be glad to clarify any unsaid information to any commenter who is curious) with a quote that was mentioned in one of my favorite video game series: Civilization IV.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I hope that the extreme importance of this quote is easy to grasp when discussing the problem at hand.
*(The course was and is taught by a fantastic professor by the name of Diane Johnson, if you are ever in Washington and want to meet someone whose enthusiasm for their field will inspire you regardless of initial interest, she is certainly your woman. I cannot say enough good things about her to ever do her justice.)
One More Day
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
While I don’t do this very often I have quite a bit of reading to do for my final exam tomorrow. Might I suggest to anyone who desires an in vigorous reading to grab Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries. It may seem like a cheap advertisements but I’m quite sure nobody who reads it will hold it against me.
For the college bound or college fleeing I hope you enjoy your spring break, I’m going to try to enjoy mine.
Psychology of the Arts: Final Exam Questions
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
It is a crime indeed that this course is being canceled at my college after this quarter but I was blessed with the +1 to hit rolls as well as the chance to take the course. Here are the final two questions to be turned in when we take the final exam (not looking forward to that in particular but I hate exams in general) likewise my answers to the questions.
I cannot stress enough that anyone here should see these movies, if nothing else Il Postino is an amazing movie that is easy to enjoy.
Question 1: About Pablo Neruda and the film Il Postino – The Postman.
Neruda writes about anguish and solitude. “We live in an absurd world, with no sense of society. In such a world a man/woman loses the prime qualities of life and heads toward nothingness.” Are these themes detectable in the movie? What is important in life according to Il Postino? What is the meaning of life?
As I watched the movie I felt that it was not a case that we are inevitably heading towards nothingness but that instead we can if we do not change our ways. The postman had no sense of natural beauty around him, he had no sense of just what he desired most in the world. To him it was more a case of getting out of the land he called home. He didn’t feel understood nor did he understand the importance of the smaller things. He was overlooking the joys of a sunset and merely noticing the unfortunate workload of a fisherman. Essentially spotting a Rose and calling it a weed.
What I established as the important factors in life were the collection of various unique traits his island had. The breeze that traveled along the land and danced within the bushes. The night sky and its endless swath of stars. The dancing of the sea against the shore. The sad fishers nets reaching boat wards to escape the frigged waters. The ring of the church bell crawling across the air and all the other things that inspired him. Of course when everything was said and done there was also the beauty of Beatrice Russo, while easily overlooked it was her passion and grace that lead the postman to desire Poetry as well and to finally see the world for all its graces. As I understood it from the movie, the meaning of life is to live. I don’t recall any exact quote to that point but I’m almost sure I heard them. I think it was ironic that we were examining this movie considering one of its staple characters said the following:
Man has no business with the simplicity or complexity of things. – Pablo Neruda
Question 2: About Akira Kurosawa’s film “Dreams.”
1. Select two dreams and analyze their psychological meaning.
2. Address why Kurosawa thinks “man is a genius when he is dreaming?”
3. Why does Kurosawa stress humankind’s need to harmonize with nature?
The humorous nature of psycho analysis is that there is really no relevance in the end. Each person can quite easily examine something and see a truly different meaning and still be entirely correct. However considering that I’d much rather acquire a good grade on this I’ll take a stab.
The first dream that I would examine would be the dream of the soldier entering the tunnel. It seemed to me to embody the inner turmoil that every properly functioning human being befalls when coming back from a war. To watch your own friends and family members dying, sometimes in your very arms, is an experience that nobody should wish upon anyone else. Yet it is a common event that happens every single day all over the world. The commander (I forget his actual position) seemed to be facing his own demons, the dog to me representing the primal responses that follow us after such a grave event ready to explode at a moments notice (if you noticed the 6 pack of hand grenades strapped to it).
It’s a torture that few escape in the midst of war, a permanent scar upon our minds that lasts until the very last breath. Survival guilt absorbing the few small glimmers of joy that should have been gained from surviving the widespread murder all around us.
The second dream I would examine would be the blizzard. It seems to reveal the personification of our world as we get closer to death. That blizzard that just seems to grow in force until the bitter last moments when the final euphoric thoughts hit our fading minds. The cold beautiful death that blankets the man seems to be the ultimate visual of that, the seemingly ultimate form of compassion releasing him from the difficult reality that surrounds him. Yet even with Death’s embrace all around him he decided to push on. The real question I wondered by the end of it was whether that tent was their salvation and the continuation of life or merely the final mirage as they walked off into the final stretches of death.
In our dreams we are not bound by natural law, we are allowed to flow freely, to think outside the boundaries of our fears. While we may have nightmares even they are wildly hyperbolic providing us with the pure essence of our thoughts, of our many shortcomings. It is in our dreams that we discover ourselves to see what we truly are and not what we want others to think we are. For those that fully accept their dreams they are given an infinitely large canvas to paint a beautiful scenery upon even if only for a few fleeting hours till they awake and return to the reality of constraints. Albeit with the proper mind I believe that the genius of the dreaming man can easily transcend the world of the waking.
There are roughly 36,000,000 miles between us and the next reasonable choice for habitation if our own planet were to die. Even that would require amazing levels of technology and overhauling and thusly could not be done as a last ditch effort. For every decade that we try harder to establish dominance over nature we strike another century off the habitable time we have left. For every species that dies off because of poisons or massive (and genuinely unnecessary) expansion we lose even more because of the chain that is broken.
It may seem somewhat exaggerative to say that we are killing the single place in the vast universe that currently can provide us with the vital components of life but it is truly mind boggling. If you were provided with a single source of water I imagine nobody would be crapping in it and yet that is essentially what we do now. We have a single planet, who’s two closest neighbors have been wrought with destruction. Venus has an atmosphere so thick that the surface of the planet can cook a frozen pizza in seconds and Mars a planet that once had water is entirely barren on the surface. Either route could be a likely outcome for us if we do not take a moment to step back and think about our actions.
There is only so far any variable can be stretched before the equation falls apart, indeed even gravity has a tipping point at which nearly nothing can escape. Once we hit that point on this planet there will be nothing we can do but watch everything around us die, and really what will we have gained up until that point? There is no greater fear than to be nothing and it is almost ironic that our actions are quite possibly going to lead to the entirety of human history being lost forever.
Metaphysics Finale (Part 4 of 4)
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
With my final coming tomorrow it appears it is time to finish the last of the topics to prepare for what will likely be a very unhappy examination. Seeing as what is the proper way of achieving an A (Carbon copying what the professor says to the book) is not how I like to learn I’m probably looking at another C.
That mini rant out of the way lets collect the 4 parts in a series of links for you:
Part 1:
Formulating and Explaining: Determinism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility.
Part 2:
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: The Kid Patriot Argument Against Soft Determinism.
Formulating and Explaining: Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Indeterminism.
Part 3:
Formulating and Explaining: Volitional Indeterminism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: Volitional Indeterminism, The Ernest Patriot Argument Against Simple Indeterminism, The Vera Patriot Argument Against.
Part 4 (Below):
Formulating and Explaining: The Theory of Agency, Fatalism, Theism, and Atheism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: What I take to be the best argument against The Theory of Agency, The Argument for Fatalism, What I take to be the best argument for Theism, and What I take to be the best argument for Atheism.
— — — — — — —
So with that out of the way lets begin with a slew of formulations and explanations!
Externally Determined is defined as A being made physically necessary by events outside of A’s agent.
Example: Once you have jumped it is Externally Determined that you will come back to Earth. (via Gravity)
Libertarian Actions are defined as Actions that are not Externally Determined and are caused by their agent.
Example: The act of jumping is not externally determined (you don’t have to jump) and doing so is caused by the agent (you).
These definitions are important to help further understand the Theory of Agency:
The Theory of Agency
(1) There are some Libertarian Actions.
(2) People are acting freely whenever they perform Libertarian actions.
(3) People are morally responsible anytime they perform Libertarian actions.
The first tenant of Agency states that not all actions in the universe are forced by nature or natural law. It is not a universal statement and because of this even if a single action is Libertarian that would entail that some sum of actions are libertarian thusly making the first true. Secondly by the definition of Libertarian actions any action performed by oneself without external demands is a free actions. Finally the last tenant states that when you act of your own agency without outside forces you are morally responsible.
The best objection to the theory of Agency is the one of Unintelligibility. Which looks as follows.
The Mystery Objection to the Theory of Agency
(1) The Idea of Agent Causation is Unintelligible.
(2) if (1), then the Theory of Agency is Unintelligible.
———————————
(3) The Theory of Agency is Unintelligible.
The above argument states that the concept of Agent Causation is unintelligible. A simple example is the phrase “The baseball broke the window.” Whenever people say such a thing what they really mean is that the child who hit the baseball in the direction that they did broke the window. However even this statement is missing out on various other agents at play in the situation. Our languages functional level is not at a range of detail to properly detail a proper Agent Causation paradigm. Because of this any attempt to address the Agent Causation omits important factors that render it unintelligible. Furthermore in order to make the concept intelligible it requires the omission of a confounding amount of information. Intuitively when examining the idea of agency we find ourselves being very ambiguous.
Next we have the wonderful world of f..f…Fatalism! *gouges out his own eyes* Ok. Calm down Rico…We’ll make this quick because I’ve already ranted about this particular topic for 2 full days before.
Fatalism
(1) There exists now a set of propositions that explains exactly what might happen in the future.
(2) All propositions are either true or false.
(3) If (1) and (2), there exists a set of true propositions already depicting the future.
(4) If there now exists a set of true propositions the future is already Unavoidable.
——————————
(5) The future is Unavoidable.
The first tenant states that if you were to take every possible set of events and combine it in inverse manner with every other possible event that inevitably one of the near infinitely many possible outcomes would cover all of what might happen in the future. In Layman’s the idea is that you start with TFF, then TTF, then TTT, and so on until you’ve hit every combination. Except that you have unimaginably large quantities of lines instead of I believe the 9 possible from a series of 3 events. Properly written all propositions are either true or false, however it goes further than that, all propositions are false until true. This is the staple behind the concept of sanity, when you start believing in false propositions you are clinically insane. The third tenant states that there exists now a set of true propositions, it is only a half true statement. There exists now a set of propositions that will be true in the future. Tenant four simply states that if we already have defined our future than our future is unavoidable. Originally I felt that this argument was valid and perhaps sound. Now I would state that it is merely valid, IF all the above lines were true the conclusion would be true. However the above lines are not all true.
Quite simple the second Tenant is false (or at least gravely misstated). All propositions are false until they become true. While there exists a set of false propositions that will someday all be true that is only because there is a set of false propositions for all possible outcomes. Because of this it is impossible for one set of these propositions to not be filled entirely. That is the nature of infinity, it covers all possible ranges and because of this it governs absolutely nothing. The future is in no way unavoidable, however a future is. But really there is nothing fatalist about a future in that manner, unless you take the point that you’ll likely die someday. But that’s an philosophical thought for another day. For those who want a further explanation the breaking of the second tenant likewise breaks the third and fourth tenant. Leaving Fatalism with only a single tenant (tenant 1) that in no way concretely leads to tenant 5.
Now lets move on to the mightiest of all arguments (supposedly) the arguments of theism and atheism.
Theism: There is a god.
Atheism: There is no god.
There it was good to get that out of the way. Oh…wait you wanted more? Like a definition of what god is perhaps? Alright.
God as we will use it in the following arguments is a contingent being that is omniscient, Omni benevolent, and omnipotent. However it pays to define these four terms as well.
A Contingent thing is something that exists necessarily.
Omniscience is defined as knowing every true proposition. The reasoning behind this definition is a being knowing that red is green (a false proposition) is nonsensical and pointless. It is easy to argue that there is no reason to believe that God doesn’t know that as well but lets stick with what will keep the professor from grading me down .
Omnipotence is defined as being able to bring about any possible state of affairs. For those of you firing off the “God creating something larger than god can lift” this was meant to snuff out your hopes and dreams. Frankly I don’t see how a being can create something from nothing (IE exist in a universe where natural laws don’t exist) and yet cannot do other impossible things in this realm where all things are possible. But again…I have to omit that problem because I’ll see a big D on my final.
Omni benevolence is defined as always preferring what is best for the world. Why such an ambiguous definition? Well when you have 150k children a year (in the US alone I believe) for unknown reasons being still born or having other birth defects that lead to lifelong pain, early death, and terrible things like heart existing outside the infants chest you need to say that its not out of love. Those babies needed those hearts outside their bodies to help them remember they are born sinners. ANYWHO…those are the important definitions.
I apologize in advance because the next part requires me to take the best argument that was given in class to defend Theism. Don’t get me wrong I have heard some wonderful arguments but the following pool of options is terrible. So if you have a better one I’m sure I’ve heard it before and frankly I might even like it (I don’t agree with it but I may like it). So without further adieu here is the best argument for Theism from our class.
The Traditional Cosmological Argument
(1) Many contingent things exist.
(2) Every contingent thing has a cause.
(3) if (1) and (2), then there was a necessary first cause.
(4) If there was a necessary first cause, then there is a God.
— — — — — — —
(5) There is a God.
Indeed there are many contingent things existing in our universe. It is the nature of contingency that gives us the balanced chaos that surrounds us. For everything that is contingent, that means that there must be something that happened to cause that thing to exist, thusly every contingent thing has a cause. If the first two tenants are true then it seems apparent that there must be a first cause. If there was a first cause it must have been god.
Now I’m not sure if this is a valid statement. I do not see how the first three lines lead definitively to a god in the fourth. Because of this I personally will say that it is invalid. Unfortunately this is a problem with all the arguments that I had available. They essentially say something like “Plastic is used in some bags, if this is true then there are planets made of marshmallows.” I do not see how the first observation leads to the second assumption.
I would further query as to why it is acceptable for God to be an uncaused cause and yet in that same breath say the universe cannot be. Likewise if nothing can be an uncaused cause what caused God to exist? We tend to look for causes for all physical things and yet nobody asks what the reasoning behind the lord (or any god) existing is in the first place. Why would some thinking being just exist? It seems reasonable to assume that a stone can exist, all it does is exist. Yet for an organism to exist in all known cases means it has a purpose, the most universal of purposes being to extend its genetic code for as long as possible. What is any God’s reasoning for existing? Is it reproducing? If not why exist at all? An eternity without any real non manufactured purpose seems exceptionally upsetting. Might explain the previously mentioned birth defects however (just a very bitter individual maybe).
The next and final piece to this long winded post is the best argument we were given for atheism. I in no way picked a poor argument above and then took the best argument below just to make theist look like fools, it was sort of forced upon me. Had I had the option I would have taken some amazing argument for Theism, unfortunately in my course it was entirely absent and I apologize to anyone feeling short changed.
To begin the final piece you need a short definition.
Principle for Ontological Parsimony: It is irrational to believe in the existence of anything unless the overall evidence supports your claim.
For those keeping count this is essentially the previous point about propositions, it is literally and definitively insane to believing in a false proposition as true.
The Argument from Ontological Parsimony
(1) There is no good empirical evidence for the existence of God.
(2) There is no a priori evidence for the existence of God.
(3) If (1) and (2), it is irrational to believe in the existence of God.
— — — — — — —
(4) It is irrational to believe in God.
The support for tenant one comes from the fact that there is no repeatable test that can provide evidence for the existence of God. Likewise with tenant two there is no a priori evidence for the existence and as time moves on and technology advances to give people a better perspective of the world and surrounding universe the previously considered a priori evidence “Like our existence at the center of the universe and other false beliefs.” is devolving and vanishing. Finally the support for tenant three is that if you are believing in anything that the overall evidence does not support you are doing so irrationally.
It is important to note that this does not state that God exists or does not Exist, it merely states that believing in the existence of a being that there is no physical evidence supporting the existence of is irrational. Indeed all evidence that is physical is contradicted by other equally supported evidence (such as various religious texts) and all physical events that are used to support the evidence fall apart under scrutiny (such as the flood). The latter being explained by the fact that in early civilizations people lived near areas that were prone to having large floods and that if you had no access to cars or horses it would indeed appear that the entire world had flooded.
A good thought experiment is to look at the events in New Orleans and imagine how the native Americans would have explained it had they been in the center watching everything in all directions getting submerged beneath a massive wall of water. Or anyone who is victim to a large tsunami watching their friends, family, and some of the unfortunately contained livestock being consumed by a massive wave of water. Of course it appears the world has flooded.
So that’s it. I believe I’ve hit every topic that needs to be hit for the exam. Here is to hoping that this time around I don’t get a C. For those that noticed some inconsistencies with the Vera and Kid Patriot in my previous posts I will clarify.
Vera was supposed to simply be the volition of killing the president.
Kid Patriot was supposed to be the desire to kill the president.
Ernest was supposed to be the unfortunate victim of random events that lead to killing the president.
I hope that helps.