Category Archives: Skepticism

My Take on the “Straw Vulcan”

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I was thinking of doing a bit of a writeup on the “Straw Vulcan” talk but it looks like Greta Christina beat me to the punch. I hate to merely regurgitate what I have read on someone else’s blog, but I do have a bit to add from personal experience. I have always been a bit puzzled and irritated by depictions of reason and logic as being cold, inhumane, and totally oblivious to all human desire and opposed to all emotion. Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek is a good example (though I think the character has improved with time), but I can think of another more recent example in the movies. I am thinking of a scene in I, Robot (2004, staring Will Smith).

The movie is not based exactly on Isaac Asimov’s book I, Robot but it does borrow from his famous “Three Laws of Robotics.” A robot in Asimov’s model must obey these laws because they are built into their positronic brains. If a robot were to somehow fail to obey one of these laws, for instance if a robot fails to prevent harm from coming to a human being, it causes a conflict in the brain that can totally destroy the robot. Most of Asimov’s stories center around robots being put into situations where they face a dilemma in obeying the Three Laws.

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

To make a long story short, the society in which Detective Spooner (Will Smith) lives is manufacturing and using a bunch of pretty humanoid robots to do errands, housework, etc, for their human owners. Spooner does not like the robots, and it turns out he is right to be a bit paranoid. The robots are all hooked up to a huge super-smart, super-logical supercomputer called V.I.K.I. (acronym for something, but I do not remember what), who, after much thought, comes to the conclusion that humans are a danger to themselves and that the only way for “her” to obey the First Law of Robotics is to make all humans captives in their homes so that they cannot harm themselves or others. She claims that her logic is perfect, and no one ever challenges her on that front. (Sonny, BTW, is a robot in the story who was programmed to “evolve” by his maker and has developed human-like feeling and self-identity. For more information, just watch the movie.)

V.I.K.I.: Do you not see the logic of my plan?
Sonny: Yes, but it just seems too heartless.

Movie quotes from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/quotes

This bothered me. V.I.K.I.’s logic is NOT perfect here, as it is clearly based on a two-dimensional misunderstanding of humanity. Locking up humans against their will does do them harm, but no one seems to think of explaining that to V.I.K.I. Maybe if they had, she might have frozen up from inability to obey the First Law. Her conclusions were way off, and therefore her logic was clearly not perfect.

But is this how our society views logic and reason? I should hope not.

Anyway, here is a link to Greta Christina’s blog post, and below I have also posted the video of the original talk at Skepticon. Enjoy :)

What does “non-traditional” Christian mean?

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From such conversations and from my observations of church signs and such, it appears that the big trend in Christianity is to disavow old stuffy traditions and be cool and current and trendy. It’s nothing new to me–in fact, it was going on all though my teen years (the 1990′s). Apparently, from what I hear, church used to be boring and haughty and judgmental. The new radical Christianity is just all about loving people and accepting them the way they are. But what is particularly Christian about that? You get the same thing with other religions too, and in secular humanism! Human kindness is a human attribute, not some other-worldly spiritual attribute. Continue reading →

What does atheism have to do with evolution?

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In actual fact, very little. Let me explain.

At the American Atheists convention I wrote about in my previous post, I got a hear a few very good and thought-provoking speakers. One was Massimo Pigliucci, a scientist and professor who has advanced degrees in both biology and philosophy. There was something he said in his talk that was not shocking at all to me, but does disagree with the statements of some other big atheist names. That is, that atheism is a philosophical conclusion, not a scientific one. You can not infer that there is no god by looking only at the natural world. Which is not to say that he disagrees with the atheist position. He is one himself, and calls atheism a “imminently reasonable” conclusion, but a philosophical rather than scientific one.

I have put some thought into working out how evolution and religion have been set up against each other, and can offer some insight from my experience. My first exposure to the words “Theory of Evolution” was in a book called It Couldn’t Just Happen. I found it on a table at a convention for the Church of the Nazarene that I went to with my parents. I loved science, and this book had pictures of planets and animals and had beautiful glossy pictures like the science books I used at school. So I got my parents to buy it for me, and proceeded to practically memorize the entire text. I remember major points out of it even today, though I’ve not cracked the book open in about twenty years.

Here is the gist of the book: Life on the earth is far to special and complex to have just happened by chance. The theory of evolution is therefore impossible and is nothing more than a rebellion against God. Either the Earth and universe evolved (which we have demonstrated is absurd) or God created it. The God of the Bible, of course.

It was not until years later, in my college years, when I learned about the big bang and then read about evolution on my own that I discovered how totally wrong this book was. One of the multiple huge disillusionments I had about Christianity is that I realized I had been lied to and mislead about the scientific facts of the matter by a Christian author, for Christian purposes. And is was to me a huge betrayal of my trust.

My point here is that it was not authors like Richard Dawkins that linked science and evolution with atheism in my mind. It was authors like Lawrence O. Richards, who very early in my life linked evolution with rebellion against God. Richard Dawkins just confirmed what I had already been taught. And I think it bears some mentioning here that for fundamentalist believers, religion is a matter of scientific fact. If you take the biblical stories literally and seriously, it has to be. It’s not like it is that way for everyone, but the point needs to be made.

Now, if you are a non-fundamentalist Christian believer don’t get it into your head that since I accept that a religious believer can also be scientific that I’m going to convert back. There are lots and lots of other issues that would have to be addressed before I would give any religion even a sideways glance. Atheism may be a philosophical conclusion after all, but it is still one that is well informed by and consistent with scientific fact. In a way that religious belief is not.

Faith and Evidence in Avatar

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I saw Avatar a few days ago, and thought it was a wonderful movie and a thrilling fantasy story. Just after watching, I described it as a kind of mash-up of The Matrix (in the sense of being able to plug into a machine and enter a different reality), a book by Issac Asimov called Nemesis, and Fern Gully.

I liked the objective, evidence-based view of the scientists, especially that of the main scientist Dr. Grace Augustine. I also noticed the way that she came to believe in the mystical environmentalist religion of the Na’vi. And I’d have to say that if I observed the things that she observed that I would have believed too. Continue reading →