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The parallels between gods and aliens are striking

3 December 2013 / / 1 Comment

I’ve just rewatched this snippet of a debate between the atheist Christopher Hitchens and the conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza.

Transcript

Now the argument really comes down to this: the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In other words, if we don’t know about something we should believe it doesn’t exist. I want to suggest why this is actually an unscientific and very foolish way to think.

We can sort of see it by stepping outside the debate and applying it to some other issue. Let’s consider a simple question that’s a very relevant question today: is there life on other planets? And the answer is: we’re not sure. We don’t know.

Along comes the atheist, who says the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. We have not found life on other planets, so there’s no evidence. Therefore, there is no life on other planets.

Is this an intelligent position? No, it is stupid and premature. Why? Because we may not know how to look. It may be that there is — So the fact that there is no evidence is evidence of nothing! It may be evidence of the poverty of our imagination, the ineffectiveness of our instruments. The bottom line of it ultimately is when we look at the evidence we find the religious believers are right. Thank you very much.

This is a wonderful analogy! But not for the reasons D’Souza thinks it is.

If the god debate were transplanted to the domain of extra-terrestrials, here’s how it would play out.

The atheist — or should I say ‘an-alienist’? — would say, “We can’t prove that aliens don’t exist. But no one has ever shown convincing evidence of their existence, so until we get some, there’s no reason to believe in them. Of course, I’ll change my mind if more evidence becomes available.”

On the other hand, the alien-believer would say, “I know that aliens are real! I know this because I’ve had a personal experience with them. It’s really more of a relationship.

“They left a book which tells all about them. And I am so certain that my understanding of this book is correct that I am prepared to persecute and wage war with other alien-believers whose understanding of the aliens differs slightly from my own.”

Would you believe this person? Or would you simply feel pity for them, and end the conversation as soon as you could?

It’s fine to entertain the notion — even the hope — that life exists on other planets. But to be as certain of it as theists are of god begins to look like madness, and we should recognise both as such.

There’s another similarity between god and aliens. They’re both what Robert Sheaffer calls ‘jealous phenomena‘ — they show a preoccupation with not being discovered by humans, which makes it convenient for their respective apologists. They also both tend to appear to people when they’re alone.

I don’t think it was very smart of D’Souza to push this the god/aliens comparison, but I’m glad he did. It’s one of the few times he’s said something useful.

Talk the Talk: Esperanto

26 November 2013 / / 1 Comment

I’ve never been an Esperantist, but ever since finding out about Esperanto at a young age, I’ve always kind of wondered about it. So this was a good chance to find out more. Will it ever take over the world? Or will it fizzle out? My prediction would be fizzle as lots of minority languages are losing ground, but at this stage in history it looks robust.

Many people emailed me about selfie becoming Oxford Dictionaries Online’s Word of the Year. I just think it’s cool that a) this is an Australian word, and b) we can trace it back so far. But we still don’t know who the ABC poster ‘Hopey’ is. Hopey, if you’re out there, get in touch with us! We want to know how you heard the word.

And here’s my favourite selfie. Because cheeky.

One-off show: Here

Show tunes:

‘Because Before 2’ by Ulf Lohmann
from the album Because Before

No video, but check out this cool player. We played Track 2, but you might like the whole thing.

‘Free of This World’ by Guided by Voices
from the album The Best Of Jill Hives

Also no video, but listen at the Juno Records site. It’s track 2.

Atheist church: My experience with the Sunday Assembly

17 November 2013 / / Comments Off on Atheist church: My experience with the Sunday Assembly

I occasionally run into atheists and (more often) agnostics who say “Atheism doesn’t provide a sense of community. How are we providing a sense of community?”

Well, I was part of the Mormon community for 38 years, and let me tell you: Community sucks.

No, seriously, it’s way over-rated. If I’ve learned one thing from my Mormon days, it’s that just believing the same thing as someone else is not a very good indicator of whether you’ll get along in other ways. And my experience with other atheists has not done much to contradict this. There’s only so many times you can say ‘Yep, Sagan/Minchin/Dawkins/Doctor Who is awesome.’ Maybe it’s just not something I need, or I can get it from online communities, or something. Also, I’m afraid of echo chambers.

Mind you, I’m lucky. I have a great bunch of people online and off that I get my people needs from, and some people don’t. And some people just groove on having a community, and we need a multiplicity of approaches in atheism anyway, so I was not entirely displeased to learn that the Sunday Assembly was coming to Perth. It’s the project dreamed up by a couple of UK comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans. They’re on a ‘Forty Dates and Forty Nights’ tour, getting Sunday Assemblies started in major cities around the world. Apparently there’s a bit of comedy, games, and some rock music. Oh, and community. So… it’s like a born-again church? Ew.

Some people haven’t been as keen on the idea of Sunday Assembly, and I understand why. After you’ve had your millionth boneheaded ‘atheism is not a religion’ conversation, now here comes Atheist Church! Oh, great. But don’t be like that — let’s come on down to mingle with the godless and see what it’s about.

***

We’re in a lecture theatre at UWA, 150 of us, including some children, clapping and bouncing around, singing “Walking On Sunshine”. Yes, that is as daggy as it sounds. But Sanderson is here leading the singing, and he’s so enthusiastic and boisterous that I don’t mind playing along for a little while. Is this what happens at charismatic churches? It seems like it — there’s a reading just like at church, there’s Sanderson being the likeable and wise-cracking leader figure just like at church. Oh, and there’s a collection just like at church. It cost the UWA Atheist and Skeptic Society a bit to hire the venue, and some of the money will also go toward the next meeting. One thing I don’t think they do at church is a game: Danish Clapping. Everyone pairs up with different people a few times, and I chat a bit with my game-partners between rounds. Next, a physicist explains a bit about the origin of the universe and the cosmic background radiation. It’s all light-hearted, kind of enjoyable, and certainly more fun than a dreary Mormon Sacrament Meeting.

***

Sanderson says Sunday Assembly wants to use all the good things about religion, but leave out the god bits. It reminds me of that approach to curing cancer that involves giving the patient AIDS (or sort of). Doctors take HIV, remove the part that destroys your immune system, and patch in something that kills cancer cells instead. Now imagine that we do the same thing with religion — take all the mechanisms that religion uses to help itself propagate, and then strip it of its toxic theistic payload. Done that way, atheist church would act as something like immunisation, since the churchy aspects of theism — whatever attraction that holds for some people — would have been safely co-opted. Or would this backfire, reifying the whole ‘church is fun’ concept? Not sure, but it seems to be a good imitation. I can’t really see anything here that would be out of place in a church meeting, except the conspicuous absence of anything to do with a god. There isn’t even any religion-bashing. Sanderson explains that they want to keep it positive, or as he says, “Nothing that would make my religious granny uncomfortable.” So maybe this would do for someone who likes the feeling that they get from church, and the exhortation to — as the Sunday Assembly motto has it — “live better, help often, wonder more”. Maybe people stumble into churches with those ideals and like what they find, whether they believe in a god or not. Sunday Assembly could offer that, but with no supernatural ingredients.

***

Sanderson leads us all in a moment of silence, and suggests that we think of what we have. What we have? I’m pretty lucky. I have a good job, a beautiful and loving wife, two smart and strong boys. My health and a home. Sometimes I think of my frustrations and disappointments, but here in the silence, they seem small compared to those of (say) people in the Philippines, hit by disaster. I feel a bit more grateful, and make a mental note to donate more to people who have lost everything.

The theme for today is ‘Impromptu’ because the whole thing has been arranged at the last minute. The venue was only arranged a couple of days ago. Sanderson is about to give a small talk on today’s theme, but he can’t think of anything relating to ‘Impromptu’. Someone in the audience helpfully suggests ‘Live in the moment!’ There it is; there’s his topic. And he speaks about being aware that we’re alive, and one day we’ll be dead and not able to be aware of anything. He gets us to clench up our fists — something he liked to do as a kid — and feel the tension spreading to our arms, shoulders and chest. Then we let it go. Aaaah — release and relaxation.

One more song — ‘Down Under’, of all things — and we’re done. Sanderson will have moved on by the next meeting in a month. Legend has it that he will return, perhaps in 2,000 years. In the meantime, it’s up to us to keep it going and he gives tips on the format to those who stay to form a committee.

***

I wouldn’t want Sunday Assembly to be the only way I get my atheism on, but it could be a part of this complete breakfast. I’d think about going again; I probably will go to the next one, though I might not get evangelical about it. It may not be to the taste of all atheists.

Tell you what, though. I saw someone there that I knew. He’s a guy who’s attended lots of churches for a long while, tried to be a Christian; he’s sort of a seeker. I said hi, and asked him what made him want to attend. His response, paraphrased, was “Well, I like going to church, but I no longer think there’s a god. I realised that what I needed in my life was more positivity and joy. So that’s what I’m here for.” (I asked if I could share that here in this post, and he said that was fine.)

More positivity and joy. Couldn’t we all use some of that? So I don’t begrudge the concept. If it takes off in Perth, I’d say that’s what he’d be likely to find at a Sunday Assembly.

School bans texting at breaks

2 November 2013 / / 3 Comments

Most school administrators are doing a great job, and are generally motivated by concern for their students. But this concern sometimes makes them do silly things. Like this:

School bans phones at breaks

Prestigious girls’ school Penrhos College has banned students from using mobile phones during their lunch and recess breaks because of concerns students are losing the art of conversation.

Principal Meg Melville said, even though girls were sitting in groups during breaks, teachers had become aware students were texting their friends instead of talking to each other.

“We decided we wanted to really encourage them during their break times at school to have conversations with one another, face-to-face,” she said.

Mrs Melville said technology was embedded in the curriculum and mobile phones had become an important part of that.

But it was just as important for students to develop conversation skills such as understanding the nuances conveyed by people’s reactions and body language.

“You can gauge how a conversation is going by looking at the way people are responding – you can’t do that in texting,” she said.

Schools can make their own phone policy — that’s valid. But here’s what I think is wrong with this.

First, electronic communication is still communication. I don’t know why people think it’s not valid, or needs to be restricted.

Second, we don’t have to worry that young people will somehow become unable to read people’s reactions and facial expressions. Human brains have been good at doing this for 200,000 years, and someone’s not going to lose that ability if they text on a phone for fifteen minutes a day. (Or, if they are going to lose it, they’re not going to get it back by having an extra 15 minutes of face-to-face.) Is f2f important? Sure, but they’re already getting some from their teachers and friends at school — their teachers are doing a great job at that.

There is no empirical evidence to show that texting makes people worse at reading facial expressions, at least not that I could find with diligent searching. On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that digital communication (including texting) correlates well with literacy, including spelling.

Finally, while these educators are trying to help kids communicate, this won’t do it. They’re simply banning a form of communication (in writing, nonetheless), and then assuming that whatever’s left over will be the right sort of communication. That’s not how it works. If they’re serious about teaching communication — which is a laudable goal — then they’re going to need to do some modelling, with examples of the kind of conversation they want to see. I’d definitely get behind a programme like that; hell, I’d help them write it. But banning phones? An irrelevant distraction.

I’ll tell you what’s going on here. This is adults looking at kids with new technology, and thinking, “Oh, I don’t like that.” It’s bringing all their preconceptions to the front. And why do they have these preconceptions about texting? Unfortunately, a lot of adults are of the opinion that young people are kind of dumb. (And some of them maybe are, but I think they’re smarter than we give them credit for — and that’s true of most people.) Then they try to figure out why they’re dumb, and they leap on the first answer they can find: it’s those damn phones! Adults routinely blame texting for turning kids into morons, just like they used to blame television, comic books, and the fountain pen.

So let me be the voice of reason here: Smartphones are not some scary magical brain-draining thing. They’re getting students to communicate in writing like they never did a generation ago. Schools can and should have policies about their use, but these policies can be informed by data, and not by irrational fears.

Is ‘morality by consensus’ the same as ‘mob rule’?

13 October 2013 / / 1 Comment

When I discuss morality with Christians, they often claim that their morality is superior because it’s ‘absolute’. I don’t know what they mean by an ‘absolute’ morality, but if their god did create an absolute morality, he sure did a lousy job of communicating it, since Christians all over the world disagree on what actually constitutes moral or immoral behaviour.

But when I think of ‘absolute’ morality, I always think of Dawkins’ response:

I don’t think I want an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed, and based upon what you could almost call an intelligent design.

I like the idea of a morality based on consensus. I think most people are good moral agents, although we could always do better. And over the centuries, we do become better as we slowly expand our circle of awareness, become horrified at the injustices of the recent past, and grow a little.

But when I talk about morality by consensus, some Christians aren’t keen on that at all. “Isn’t that kind of a dangerous slope to go down?” they ask. “Why, that’s just the same as mob rule,” say others. I don’t think it is; consensus-driven morality has arrived at principles that are not a part of mob rule, like reciprocity and fairness. There’s no comparison.

This got me wondering: why are Christians so set against the idea of morality by consensus? Then I realised: it’s a way of making moral decisions without involving a god at all. Or, more to the point, a priest. For centuries, they’ve become used to dictating to the rest of us what’s moral, issuing proclamations — and being believed. With consensus-based morality, the priest is just another actor, and how this must rankle them.

I think for them ‘sophisticated’ means ‘you believe in it’.

20 September 2013 / / 1 Comment

This criticism is known as the Courtier’s Reply: How can you say that the Emperor has no clothes, when you clearly haven’t studied imaginary textiles?

Your understanding will never be as sophisticated as that of someone who’s wasted their whole life studying it. Not only that, if you point out nonsensical or contradictory bits of the Bible, the Courtier takes this as evidence that you simply don’t understand it. If you understood it like he did, you’d have constructed an elaborate apologetic to defend it, like he has.

When do you really use ‘who’ and ‘whom’?

14 September 2013 / / 5 Comments

The Oatmeal has made a cartoon about when (and why) to use who and whom. This is not his first foray into grammar; he’s got a number of others. This one’s funny, and I like his examples.

Who/whom did you invite to this FABULOUS Slip ‘n’ Slide ‘n’ Mayonnaise party?

He also points out that we sometimes use the faintly archaic word whom if we want to be fancy. Couldn’t agree more. I’d say that’s a major reason for using whom these days.

But there’s something about this cartoon that’s a bit off, and I thought I’d comment.

Why do we have grammar?

Or rather, why do languages have grammar? A linguist sees grammar a little differently than most people. For a linguist, a grammar is a way of explaining how the parts of language fit together — how words get built up into sentences, and how the parts of words attach. A grammar is a description of the patterns that speakers use. People don’t use these patterns to be polite, or correct, or to maintain the social order. They do it because without arranging words into orderly patterns, too would to the be interpret sentences hard. Sorry! I meant that ‘the sentences would be too hard to interpret’.

And there’s a really interesting fact about the grammar of a language: it’s mostly unconscious to its users. Consider the way we use the 3rd person singular -s:

I eat.
You eat.
He eats.
She eats.
It eats.
We eat.
They eat.

You might not have thought about what that little -s is doing, and that’s my point: you don’t have to. Over and over again throughout your life, you’ve used it correctly without even thinking, never getting it wrong (except for slips of the tongue). That’s your internalised grammar of English at work.

Now to the cartoon.

In explaining who and whom, the Oatmeal has decided to start with an explanation of subject and object. This is kind of tricky for grammar n00bs, but he’s got some great examples, and if you’re fuzzy on the difference, you should check it out.

So the explanation goes: if your who (whoever it is) is the subject of its sentence, use who; if it’s the object, use whom.

The Oatmeal even gives a mnemonic:

If you can say that he does it, it’s who. 
He punched you. Who punched you?
If you can answer that question with him, use whom. 
You punched him. Whom did you punch?

Good in theory.

The problem is that in practice, English speakers use who instead of whom all the time. These are all okay:

Who did you give the present to?
Whom did you give the present to?
or perhaps To whom did you give the present?

though that last one is a bit grand for everyday conversation. And the Oatmeal says as much in the cartoon.

But here’s the thing: it works the other way, too. People use whom even when it’s the subject of the sentence. I took a look through a corpus — a body of language data. I used wordandphrase.info, which gives you lovely charts like this:

Click to enlarge.

This is part of the chart that you get when you search for whom, and you’ll see that whom appears in blue, right down the middle column for each sentence. You’ll also find that the words that appear nearby are coloured by part of speech (nouns, verbs, and so on). Here’s the funny part: if you hunt around through these sentences, you can actually find lots of examples where the writer has used whom, even though it’s the subject. Here are some:

yes , the economy goes up and down , but whom do you think is going to protect you the most ?

Who will protect you? He will (not him will), so by the Oatmeal rule, it’s a subject and it should be who. Nope, it’s in the corpus as whom.

mother ‘s harsh stares and accusations . He , a man whom I later found out had not one drop of blood running through

Who didn’t have one drop of blood running through something-or-other? He didn’t (not him didn’t), so it should be who, but again, here it’s whom.

patient probably had hostile wishes toward her older brother , whom she felt was always her mother ‘s favorite child .

Who did she feel was the favourite child? She felt he was, not him was, so it should be who, but it’s not.

And on and on.

Now you could say, well, these writers are getting it wrong. Maybe. And this is my point. Doesn’t the fact that native English speakers don’t obey the subject/object rule indicate that the who/whom distinction is not really a thing that English speakers are doing? Remember our -s example. No one has to sit down and make cartoons explaining that we say ‘I eat’ but ‘she eats’. It’s automatic. Who and whom isn’t.

The classic case of who/whom swapping is “Whom shall I say is calling?”

He is calling.
Him is calling. ???

Obviously he sounds better, so people should really say “Who shall I say is calling?” And yet if you look through Google Ngram Viewer, you can see that people have been conflating the two for the better part of a hundred years. The subject/object rule isn’t explaining the data.

So when should you use whom?

Let’s go back to the blue chart again. According to the data, there’s a really obvious indicator of whom. Look at the word just before whom, and see what colour it’s painted.

A lot of these words are in yellow, and that’s the colour they use for prepositions. There’s by whom, for whom, to whom, of whom, with whom, and even against whom. When you say that, doesn’t that just sound right? Kind of natural? That’s a sign to you that this is a real pattern in English that you’ve internalised.

So my rule would be: after a preposition, use whom. In other cases, use what sounds good. Using who is always okay, but you can use whom if you want to impress. The Oatmeal would surely approve.

Daniel font rundown: Artistic edition!

29 August 2013 / / Comments Off on Daniel font rundown: Artistic edition!

More people are using the Daniel font in a variety of creative endeavours.

Looks like I’m not the only one who uses my handwriting on cartoons. There’s also Bianca, who uses the Daniel font on her toons at Pushing Buttons. They’re funny!

Marianne has featured Daniel Bold on her site ‘apnea me‘, and boy, does it ever look tranquil. Watch out — you could float away, looking at this.

Artist Michelle Abernathy has used the font in a painting. She says:

About the piece: the title is Liquid-Gold, in acrylic on canvas. I am an advocate for physiological breastfeeding and this piece is all about how I felt nursing my oldest daughter and also about some of the amazing components in breastmilk. Now that she has a sister, I plan on doing a continuing piece to make a series.

Update: The series is done, and has been exhibited. Here are the artist’s comments.

Liquid-Gold II

Acrylic

A depiction of my 2nd daughter, my current nursling.  The largest words describe my own thoughts and feelings about our nursing relationship, which has been surprisingly different from the first. The middle-sized words describe her personality as a nursling, as well as obstacles we faced or events unique to her. The smallest words are some of the awesome properties that scientists currently, and even very recently, have found in breast milk.

Double Gold

Acrylic

This painting pictures a unique nursing relationship, one very much less common in the Western world. The tandem nursing relationship. It captures one of my favorite aspects: sisters learning to love and share. The largest words describe some of my thoughts and feelings about tandem nursing, which has been quite a mixed bag. The middle-sized words describe the benefits of tandem nursing. And the smallest words describe the benefits of nursing a toddler/young child.

The Liquid Gold Series

Acrylic

Congratulations, and well done!

And elsewhere in the visual arts, Vincent Steenhoek shows the Daniel font in a theatrical work, where the words are projected onto the stage. Vincent was the video designer, and Alex Tintore is the photographer. I love it. Watch how the layers of type converge to make a garbled, almost suffocating wall of text.

Wow — thanks to all you creative people. I’m glad to be a part of your scene.

If you’ve used the Daniel font somehow, send me a photo or scan — email’s up the top — and you might see yourself here. You can always download my fonts from the Page of Fontery.

A lifetime script

18 August 2013 / / 2 Comments

I have this memory of climbing into my parents’ bed (which I used to do all the time) and talking to my dad. I must have been about six. For some reason, I was curious about how-many-years-old I was, and what would happen at the various ages I’d be. For every integer I gave him, Dad told me what would happen. At eight, I’d get baptised.

What about twelve? At twelve, you get the Aaronic Priesthood.
…
What about 18? At 18, you can vote.
What about 19? At 19, you’ll go on your mission.
…
What about 25? At 25, you might get married. (Dad got married at 25, so he thought that was the right age for me.)

And so on. I always liked that talk with my Dad because it gave me the idea that life could have a structure. Not having one kind of worried me.

Recently, I was clicking around the tools in my E*TRADE account (I have Tesla stock, thank you) and found an unusual timeline for retirement planning. Well, not exactly unusual, but it describes a perfectly planned, sedate life. But it was unusual for me to see it in this formulation.

Here’s the graphic.

If that’s too small to see, it reads like this:

Where are you in life?
Age 20–29 (Starting Your Career)
Age 30–39 (Building a Family)
Age 40–49 (Climbing the Ladder)
Age 50–59 (Planning for Retirement)
Age 60+ (Living in Retirement)

A life in five easy pieces, carved into orderly ten-year chunks.

I want to say, oh how sterile. A cookie-cutter plan for a boring life.

But I don’t feel that way at all. In fact, I love seeing this plan. It’s the closest I’ve found to a sensible cultural script. Doesn’t the career-then-family idea seem more like what people actually do, and probably should do? I wish I’d seen this simple menu when I was young and starting out. It would have given me a template to work from, maybe to deviate from. But something. Some much-needed direction. And it wouldn’t have been the Mormon plan I got, which was really dumb:

Mormon Plan for Mormon Males
Age 19–29 (Mission, Marriage, and Work, all at once)
Age 29–death (Endless String of Callings, Endure ‘Til the End)

Whereas what really happened was this:

What Daniel Actually Did
Age 20–29 (Mission, Marriage, Kids, Uni — Bumping Around Clueless)
Age 30–35 (Actually Figure Out Who I Was and What the Hell Was Going On)
Age 36–40 (Reboot; Divest Self of Unwanted Baggage, Do Things Properly This Time)
Age 40–45 (Starting Your Career)

And from here on out, it’s:

Age 46–60 (You’re Much Too Old to Be Climbing Silly Ladders, Just Keep Being Awesome)
Age 60+ (Most Interesting Man in the World)

Okay, so I wasn’t very good at following plans. But I’m glad I threw off the terrible plan other people gave me, and chose my own. Even so, I’m keeping an eye on the E*TRADE plan, just as a reminder that the clock is ticking, and there are some jobs to be done along the way, regardless of where I am now, or where I’ve been.

Why apologetics don’t really help

10 August 2013 / / 5 Comments

With the Internet, more and more Mormons are bumping into the bits of LDS history that you used to have to dig for. As a result, the LDS Church is trying to — if not come clean about its history — explain its history in terms that will placate startled members. But how do you acknowledge the weirdness without freaking people out?

Here’s what can happen when a doubting Mormon goes to an apologist.

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