$ye TenB - it's all about the $$$

I really don't understand why people are still spending so much time debating (or talking about debating) with the likes of $ye TenB, a wannabe celebrity Christian who goes around spewing non-arguments under the guise of 'presuppositional apologetics (PA)', when his real goal is simply to make a few quick bucks. I've encountered him many times myself in blogs or forums, and he has challenged me to debate him multiple times, but to do so is quite simply a waste of time because, as we have seen again and again, he will never EVER change his dishonest debate tactics. But more to the point, doing so simply serves his purposes of making money and becoming a celebrity Christian.

$ye does not care a jot about converting people to Christianity, and he certainly has no desire to save anyone from suffering the torments of hell. He is simply OUT TO MAKE MONEY. I'm not saying he doesn't necessarily believe what he says (although I'm skeptical to say the least), but it is quite clear from his actions that his primary goal is to become a celebrity Christian and make a big pile of cash in the process.

Look at what he has done in the past as clear evidence of this...

$ye has always claimed that using evidence to prove the existence of God is 'unbiblical', and that the only apologetic that is truely 'biblical' is his own brand of PA. This has caused much controversy between Christians on a few forums over the years, with one especially insulted evidentialist Christian called John Fraser (who writes vast volumes of nonsense on other issues) taking $ye to task on this over multiple posts.

So for someone who is severely critical of evidentialist apologetics, you would expect that $ye would also be severely critical of Eric Hovind, son of convicted tax-fraud Kent Hovind, and thus a member of one of the most well-known evidentialist apologetic families in the Christian world. A quick search on YouTube provides a plethora of examples in which the Hovinds attempt to use scientific evidence to prove the truth of the bible, despite not having the first clue about science.

$ye must really disapprove of this, right? I expect he would refuse to deal with such 'unbiblical' people.

But no.

On the contrary, $ye has whipped off his clothes, jumped into bed with Eric Hovind, turned off the light, fully locked on his spoon and is currently whispering sweet nothings in his ear (see here for one example of many).

Why?

Simple. Because Eric Hovind is a big famous rich celebrity Christian with a TV show.

$$$$ Cha-ching!!! $$$$

To add to this, some people who have actually agreed to debate $ye have found out the hard way that his ultimate goal was, again, to make money (see here for a thorough explanation). An obvious example of this is that you can listen to every debate he has had with Paul Baird for free, and yet $ye still approved of the production of a DVD containing the debates to be sold for $19.95. This is a purely greed-driven tactic by $ye and his cohorts to make money. Why do they need to make money off the back of such debates? I thought the whole point was about speaking the truth. Clearly not.

So, by all means continue to refute PA in blogs and forums, but don't bother engaging with the cash-hungry $ye TenB in the types of debates he continually demands. They are simply a strategy by him to promote his self-inflated ego and fill his pockets by flogging DVDs to not-very-smart Christians (of which there are many => $$$).

As for the PA argument itself...well it's a load of old rubbish, but we've been through all that before (see here here and here for my three-part series on the subject). I might post an update soon collating all the various refutations.

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Analyse religion, and you'll reject it

An article in the latest issue of Science has investigated the hypothesis that a propensity for analytical thinking over intuition is linked to a disbelief in a god or gods. I was quite surprised to see a paper on this topic make it into such a prestiguous journal, as I don't find the results all that surprising, but nevertheless it made for interesting reading. The hypothesis the authors set out to test was as follows:

If religious belief emerges through a converging set of intuitive processes, and analytic processing can inhibit or override intuitive processing, then analytic thinking may undermine intuitive support for religious belief.

Not only did they want to find a correlation between analytical thinking and disbelief, they also designed experiments to test a causal relationship. To do this they tested whether persuading someone to think analytically about an unrelated topic and then 'measuring' their religious belief, causes them to favour disbelief over belief.

The first test was simply to show correlation. They asked the participants three questions in which the immediately obvious answer is wrong, meaning that those who are more prone to analytical thought will arrive at the correct answer more often than those who rely on their intuition. Here are the questions (scroll down for the answers*):

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2) If it takes 5 machines 5 min to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

They also scored the participants for their religious belief using three different scales involving their agreement with certain statements about god and faith. The results were very clear. Participants who got the correct answers, and hence were more prone to analytical thought than relying on intuition, were significantly more likely to not believe in god. As the authors state:

This result demonstrated that, at the level of individual differences, the tendency to analytically override intuitions in reasoning was associated with religious disbelief, supporting previous findings.

Next they wanted to see if this was a causative relationship, not simply a correlation. They designed four experiments to investigate this, all of which involved subtlely promoting the participants to either think analytically (the test group) or not (the control group). Following this, they were questioned about their religious belief to see if their primed mindset would influence their religiousity.

The four tests were as follows:

1) "...a visual priming paradigm in which a sample of Canadian undergraduates rated their belief in God (from 0 to 100) after being randomly assigned to view four images (samples provided in Fig. 1) of either artwork depicting a reflective thinking pose (Rodin’s The Thinker; N = 26) or control artwork matched for surface characteristics like color and posture (Discobolus of Myron; N = 31)."

2) "...participants received 10 different sets of five randomly arranged words (e.g., “high winds the flies plane”). For each set of five words, participants dropped one word and rearranged the others to form a meaningful phrase (e.g., “the plane flies high”). The analytic condition included five-word sets containing target analytic thinking words (analyze, reason, ponder, think, rational), and the control condition included thematically unrelated words (e.g., hammer, shoes, jump, retrace, brown, etc.)."

3) Same as test 2, but done on a much larger scale as part of an internet-based experiment.

4) "...participants rate their religious beliefs on a questionnaire presented in fonts pre-rated by a separate group of participants (20) as either typical (N = 91; sample) or difficult-to-read (N = 91; sample)."

In each test, the results were the same and, when combined, the studies demonstrate that explicitly or implicitly primed analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief, suggesting that their is a causal relationship. So the study seems to suggest that those of us who are more analytical are more likely to be non-religious, while those of us who rely more on intuition than analysis will favour religious belief.

Although the authors take care not to spell it out the obvious conclusion, this means that people who actually analyse things carefully tend to find reasons to reject belief in supernatural beings and so they are less religious. On the flip side, people who prefer to rely mostly on intuition, and hence do not analyse seemingly far-fetched claims for their truth, are more likely to be religious.

There are some obvious caveats to the conclusions, which the authors outline at the end of their article. Nevertheless, this seems like a clear indication that religious belief does not stand up to analytical thought. Little wonder that the vast majority of scientists would declare themselves to be non-religious. It also explains why religious beliefs is more prevalent in areas with relatively lower levels of education.

*(1) Intuitive answer = 10, Actual answer = 5
(2) Intuitive answer = 100, Actual answer = 5
(3) Intuitive answer = 24, Actual answer = 47

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Intelligent design in the UK - a plea for attention!

I signed up to receive email notifications from the Centre for Intelligent Design ages ago. This was just out of interest - to see what sort of things they are up to. Today I got an email from the director, Dr Alistair Noble, asking me if I would like him to give a talk free of charge. The letter is reproduced below. Keep in mind that this is coming from a movement that claims it is growing every day and that a paradigm shift is imminent.

The email subject title was "No fee for ID presentation from Dr Alastair Noble‏"

Dear xxx,

I am being increasingly asked to speak to groups about Intelligent Design and I am writing to say that I am committed to expanding this aspect of the work of C4ID. I would be happy, therefore, to speak at any event, anywhere in the UK, which you may wish to organise. I am also happy to participate in more intimate settings like a dinner or supper event.

I have a number of illustrated presentations which are suitable for college, university, church or public audiences and which deal with various aspects of Intelligent Design. Although C4ID is not specifically targeting schools, I am also happy to give talks in schools, to classes or clubs, where appropriate. The current requests have been for talks on:

The scientific evidence for Intelligent Design
The Re-emergence of Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design and the case for faith
Evolution and Intelligent Design
Are we here by design or by chance?

Although these talks have differing emphases, each deals essentially with the evidence for design in nature. I also usually have some books and DVDs for sale.

If you wish to organise an event, please get in touch with me by email or call the Centre on 0141 331 1607. My PA, Rosalyn Goodfellow, will probably deal with your request. It would be helpful for scheduling if you could give me a few months' notice of your intentions.

I should say that the costs of this will be borne by me or by C4ID, though any contribution you can make will be welcome.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes

Dr Alastair Noble

Director
Centre for Intelligent Design

Does this really sound like the type of letter you would send out if you were truly being inundated with requests to give talks, as Dr Noble suggests? To me it sounds more like there is very little interest in ID at all, and this is a desperate cry for attention (and to hopefully flog a few DVDs).

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Venus and Jupiter FTW!

I just took these photos of Venus and Jupiter from my apartment window. I couldn't believe how clear the sky was given that I live close to the centre of Dublin. Venus is slightly higher and on the right hand side. They will be this close for a few more days and then not again until June 2015.

Amazing.

See here for more on the meeting of the two planets.

And here is one I annotated (click to enlarge):

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Everyone loves a flowchart

(click to enlarge)

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Higgs looking like-lier

In complete disagreement with my last post, it turns out that scientists at CERN might have actually found the Higgs boson. Separate experiments have independently confirmed the existence of something 'Higgs-like' at about 124-126 GeV:

Gianotti and Tonelli led two separate teams – one using Cern's Atlas detector, the other using the laboratory's Compact Muon Solenoid. At their seminar yesterday one team reported a 2.3 sigma bump in their data that could be a Higgs boson weighing 126GeV, while the other reported a 1.9 sigma Higgs signal at a mass of around 124GeV. There is a 1% chance that the Atlas result could be due to a random fluctuation in the data.

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Higgs looking unlikely

The search for the Higgs boson has apparently entered the 'endgame'. As I mentioned a few months ago, the mass/energy ranges in which Higgs was expected to be found have all but been ruled out. Since then, as this article in the latest edition of Nature explains, the searches in lower and higher mass ranges have been unsuccessful. The last remaining possibility is that the Higgs is lurking somehwere between 114–141 GeV.

Data from this range has been collected and is currently being analysed:

The answer to the Higgs question lies in the data now being crunched at CERN and other academic-computing centres around the world. The first 70 trillion or so collisions turned up intriguing Higgs-like decays in the ATLAS and CMS experiments, hinting at a particle of around 140 GeV (see Nature 475, 434; 2011). But the second batch of collisions showed nothing. If the collisions now being analysed show further evidence of Higgs decays, then the teams on the two experiments are likely to announce that they have found a tentative signal, to be firmed up in 2012. If not, the search will probably continue until the LHC is shut down for an upgrade at the end of next year.

Of interest, several prominent physicists were asked for their opinion as to whether Higgs will be found. Opinions differed (click image for larger and clearer version):

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