Helmet

This is the best thing I've seen all day:

Apache Trail

Took a 175-mile run yesterday with my friend Todd. Apache Trail to Tortilla Flats, Fountain Hills, Rio Verde, (almost) Cave Creek. I took a crappy camera phone picture of our bikes parked at the pavement terminus of the Apache Trail (mine's the white one on the right).

Preserve loop

This is a nice eleven-mile loop I like to run when I just want to cruise for a half hour or so:

Egotism

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."
- Einstein


"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."
- Nietzsche

Pair of Fours

I did a poker run today, took about six hours to do 161 miles. Terrible cards, but fun run... got a little chilly on some of the long stretches, especially up north at the (relatively) higher elevations.

Note to the Reader

According to a recent Gallup poll, only 12 percent of Americans believe that life on earth has evolved through a natural process, without the interference of a deity. Thirty-one percent believe that evolution has been "guided by God". If our worldwide view were put to a vote, notions of "intelligent design" would defeat the science of biology by nearly three to one. This is troubling, as nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design. But the current controversy over "intelligent design" should not blind us to the true scope of our religious bewilderment at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The same Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans are actually creationists. This means that despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of earth, more than half our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect our presidents and congressmen - and many who themselves get elected - believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.

Among developed nations, America now stands alone in these convictions. Our country appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.

The truth, however, is that many of us may not care about the fate of civilization. Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophesy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves - socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant portion of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.

Sam Harris
May 1, 2006
New York

I want his hair

check this kid out. the O-face, the droopy eyes, the splayed fingers. how cool is this dude. and i want his hair.

Atheism

The reason atheists shouldn't be embarrased about espousing their views, when theists should be embarassed, is the simple fact that atheists aren't trying to make any claims about reality, while theists are.

The mistake is that people don't make the distinction between hard-line atheists (there cannot be a god) and normal atheists (there is no evidence for god). These are distinguished from agnostics (there is no evidence for god, but nonetheless god might exist). In other words, agnostics make a minor claim - that a god is a reasonable concept - whereas atheists refuse to make any claim about the existence of a god.

There is no other area in life - whatsoever - where people are allowed to make positive claims about the empirical nature of reality, provide no argument or evidence for those claims, and then complain that people ridicule their claims as foolish. Yet, theists constantly take umbrage when their claims are derided.

To paraphrase two of Dawkins' arguments, if I were to claim the Flying Spaghetti Monster both existed, and lived deep in the cloud-planet of Jupiter, I'd be making both empirical claims. These are testable claims, in theory, but our current science leaves us no way to deeply penetrate the planet and search for the FSM (especially because he can be invisible!). Now, should my claims about the FSM be put on equal footing with claims about the existence of Yahweh, Thor or Allah?

Believers in those three gods would say no, my claims are specious. I, and all other persons being honest, would admit that the FSM as I've phrased him must be given equal footing in all ways with those other gods.

By definition, the only basis for religious beliefs is personal revelation, a message which by also by definition cannot be communicated in whole to another person. This means that if your actions or claims are motivated by revelation, you cannot reasonably ask anyone else (who hasn't had a parallel revelation) to (a) agree that your actions/claims are reasonable, or (b) agree that your actions/claims are correct.

In the same way that we don't need to be tolerant of racists - who make unfounded empirical claims about the qualitative aspects of different "races" - we don't need to be tolerant of theist - who make unfounded empirical claims about the nature of the universe.

Only positions with argumentative and/or empirical verification (to some degree, at least) need be afforded tolerance, because only those positions have any value. All other positions - those positions who rely entirely on assertion by fiat - are valueless.

You should be condescending of stupid ideas. As I've already explained, the only things that should be respected are ideas that have some argument and/or evidence. If we afford equal respect to ideas with argument/evidence as we afford to those ideas without argument/evidence, we render argument/evidence meaningless. To do this utterly invalidates both the scientific method in general and science in general.

If religious claims have any value - and perhaps they may - then those claims will have some sort of a priori argument, or evidence, for them. The fact that not a single religious claim has such argument and/or evidence is a strong indication that such claims are in fact meaningless and valueless.