Bitbutter

Basic

Theists who subscribe to the presuppositionalist school of thought say that atheists can't 'account for' inductive reasoning. They claim that in fact, whenever an atheist uses inductive reasoning, she is borrowing from the Christian world view, because according to them, it's the only world view that can 'account for' the the uniformity of nature, which is needed for inductive reasoning to work.

But, even if the Christian is correct in his claim that an atheist can't 'account for' a given facet of nature that she nevertheless depends upon; this is not the urgent, deal breaking problem that the presuppositionalist tends to paint it as.

Imagine a primitive society where most people believe that spirit ancestors reward the ritual act of watering a plant by causing that plant to grow. A person in this society who didn't believe in the existence of spirit ancestors would still go ahead and water his plants because otherwise they would die.

The skeptic's peers might ask him: 'how can you account for the fact that applying water causes the plant to grow in your world view?'. The skeptic, ignorant of plant biology, would have no answer. His peers might then say 'Every time you water your plants you're borrowing from our world view, because ours is the only system that can account for the connection between applying water to a plant, and that plant's growth'.

I hope the points I wanted to illustrate with this analogy are already clear, but I'll spell them out:

1. Having an explanation does not make your position superior to that of those who may lack one.
2. Not being able to explain a phenomenon doesn't preclude you from legitimately assuming the reliability of that phenomenon
3. Assuming the reliability of a phenomenon without being able to 'account for' it does not mean that you implicitly accept the world view of people claiming that theirs is the only explanation of that phenomenon.
4. The failure of a person to explain a phenomenon doesn't invalidate their world view or render it inconsistent.
5. Acknowledging that you don't have an answer is better than making things up.

Extra credit

Presuppositionalists hold that a theistic world view is the only one that can account for knowledge. In particular, they claim that atheists cannot justify their use of inductive reasoning while God provides a firm epistemological basis, in other words a firm foundation for knowledge.

Uniformity of Nature

The Uniformity of Nature (or the UN as it's often abbreviated) is the name given to the apparent consistency of the universe's physical laws over space and time. Without Uniformity of Nature, the universe would be a chaotic place where the past wouldn't resemble the future.

Inductive reasoning

To use Inductive Reasoning is to make an estimate of how likely a general statement is to be true based on specific knowledge. Inductive reasoning is used when trying to predict future events from knowledge of the past. In a universe without Uniformity of Nature, where the past didn't resemble the future at all, inductive reasoning would be useless.

Presuppositionalists say that god guarantees the Uniformity of nature, and in doing so, provides justification for inductive reasoning.

Van Til, one of the most well known presuppositionalists said:

the existence of the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs.

Fallacy 1: The uniformity of nature needs 'accounting for'

When Van Til says that the uniformity of nature needs accounting for he assumes that a chaotic universe is more likely than a uniform one, and that a god is necessary to provide uniformity. But since van til has never seen a universe other than the one we all live in, this is an unfounded assumption. For all we know, it may not be possible for a godless universe to be anything but uniform.

Fallacy 2: The Biblical God is the only presupposition that can 'account for' the uniformity of nature

Far from the Christian god being the only presupposition that can 'account for' the uniformity of nature, it's one of many. There are an infinite number of unlikely sounding assumptions that 'account for' the uniformity of nature such as 'the flying spaghetti monster guarantees the uniformity of nature', or 'the biblical god guarantees the uniformity of nature'. There are also some far more parsimonious presuppositions. Perhaps the simplest one is 'UN is true'.

Fallacy 3: The uniformity of nature is enough to justify inductive reasoning

Presuppositionalists think they have a firm foundation of knowledge that the rest of us lack. But here they are making a double error, because as well as mistakenly believing that the uniformity of nature needs 'accounting for' they seem to believe that the uniformity of nature is sufficient to provide a rational basis for inductive reasoning, when it isn't.

Even in a universe with UN, inductive reasoning can never be epistemologically justified: just because the pen dropped to the floor yesterday doesn't mean that a previously unknown universal law will prevent it from falling to the ground today.

Fallacy 4: Christians can justify the use of induction without begging the question

To demonstrate that the atheist has no basis for assuming the validity of inductive reason, the presuppositionalist asks how we can know that the universe will continue to be uniform. If the answer involves appealing to knowledge of the past then it uses induction to try to validate induction, which is begging the question. The presuppositionalist mistakenly thinks he has a solution to this problem: through revelation, God lets him know that the universe will continue to be uniform.

But how can he be sure that God won't change his mind about UN? The presuppositionalist might cite God's unchanging nature as a guarantee that he won't change his mind.

But what grounds does the Christian have to conclude that god's nature is in fact unchanging?, and that it will continue to be so? Whether he gained knowledge of god's unchanging nature through direct revelation or through scripture, the only way he can say anything about God's nature in the future is to use induction. Appealing to god to solve the problem of induction merely postpones the point at which induction has to be invoked to justify itself–thereby begging the question. Presuppositionalists can't rationally justify their use of induction any more than the rest of us can.

See all posts relating to presuppositionalism.

Incinerating presuppositionalism

An easy argument to refute: Van Tillian, Calvinist, Presuppositionalism

Don't respect my beliefs.

Be courteous and patient towards me while you do your best to demolish them, and I'll try to do the same.

Imagine that you're carefully explaining to a member of the flat earth society why you're convinced that the earth is roughly spherical. You wouldn't be doing him any favours if you respected his belief; if you did, you wouldn't be able to show him why he's wrong.

Is it even meaningful to talk about respecting a belief that you are convinced is false? I don't think it is. It seems to me that 'respect for peoples beliefs' is often nothing more than a virtuous sounding code phrase that really means "anything for a quiet life".

Are there any beliefs deserving of respect? I don't think so. Even beliefs which it's widely agreed are true, or ones held by people who you trust, or ones you're personally convinced about the truth of. If we expose all ideas to thorough analysis and criticism, the best ones will survive and we'll be learning.

When we 'respect' each others beliefs we rob ourselves of the chance to learn, to test our reasoning and to get to know one another by talking frankly about the things that are most important to us.

So don't respect my beliefs, and I promise I won't respect yours.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=prTC-ZvsHgU

If you're an atheist please consider supporting the OUT campaign launched by Richard Dawkins. As a start you could buy a teeshirt, or add the A logo to your website.

I admit, I sympathize with those sceptics on this site who fear that we are engendering a quasi-religious conformity of our own. Whether we like it or not, I'm afraid we have to swallow this small amount of pride if we are to have an influence on the real world, otherwise we'll never overcome the 'herding cats' problem.

Politicians follow where the votes are. They can only count atheists who are OUT. Some atheists are defeatist in thinking we'll never be effective simply because we're not a majority. But it doesn't matter that we're not a majority. To be effective, all we have to be is recognizable to legislators as a big enough minority. Atheists are more numerous than religious Jews, yet they wield a tiny fraction of the political power, apparently because they have never got their act together in the way the Jewish lobby so brilliantly has: the famous 'herding cats' problem again. And the argument applies not just to politicians but to advertisers, the media, merchants across the board. Anyone who wants to sell us anything caters to demographics. We need to stand up and be counted, so that the demographically savvy culture will come to reflect our tastes and our views. That in turn makes it easier for the next generation of atheists.

–Richard Dawkins

<div style="text-align:center">
<a href="http://outcampaign.org/">
<img src="http://outcampaign.org/images/scarlet_A.png" border="0" alt="image" width="143" height="122" />
</a>
</div>

Copy and paste the above code into your website or blog to display the A logo.

Our visual experience of the world can be described in terms of negative space and positive space. Positive space corresponds to the area 'inside' an object's edge. Negative space is the geometry that's left over if we were to cut out the object of interest from a photograph. Generally negative space corresponds to what we would call 'background'.

Graphic interface design uses visual conventions based on our familiarity with physical machine interfaces. The two-dimensional representation of a button is a staple of contemporary GUI design.

GUI designers have various ways of suggesting to a user that a particular group of pixels affords clicking, that they should be read as being a button. Several of these techniques depend on mimicking the look of a real button. In real life, buttons tend to protrude from their casing, they are usually the 'figure' rather than the ground, so several techniques for making pixels look button-like depend on creating the illusion that the top surface of the 'button' is closer to the viewer than its immediately surrounding 'casing' is.

One way this can be achieved is by simulating the effect of light falling on the button by creating highlights and shadows. Giving a button rounded corners is another way.

Why should rounded corners suggest greater proximity than sharp ones?

Look at your surroundings as if you were looking at a photograph, closing one eye may help to see things this way. Look at the visual boundaries of the objects you see. The corners that make acute angles along the outer edge of these shapes are almost always rounded to an extent that is visible to the naked eye–even the corners of most machine-made objects are at least slightly rounded.

In your field of view you will also be able to see some very sharp 'corners' but these will almost always belong to the negative space that surrounds overlapping figures, and not to the figures themselves.

The brain, when experiencing a rectangle with sharp corners, can 'read' the shape as representing a recessed plane or a protruding one. To me it seems that when the rectangle is given rounded corners, the likelihood that it represents a protruding plane is increased because of a subconscious rule of thumb: figures tend not to have sharp corners, but negative spaces often do.

The power of this principle is I think demonstrated by examining graphical user interfaces that rely almost entirely on the shape of control elements to suggest their affordances. One example is the digital music application Tracktion. The softened rectangles used in Tracktion are instantly recognisable as buttons (we don't mistake them for 'recessed' input fields for instance) even when the subtle lighting effects are removed.

Google favours pages when important keywords are reflected in their urls. Normally a page in a rails application that shows a single record has a url that looks like this recipes/show/12. If this particular recipe is for pasta sauce, Google would prefer the url to be recipes/show/12-pasta-sauce. Because rails isn't interested in what appears after the number in the :id part of the url, we are free to add words there to help search engines without affecting how our application functions.

The seo_urls plugin aims to make it easy to create more descriptive urls for 'show' pages and increase your application's visibility to search engines.

Install from the root of your application like so:

script/plugin install http://svn.redshiftmedia.com/svn/plugins/seo_urls

Apply the plugin to a model like this:

# Apply it to a model like this:
class Recipe < ActiveRecord::Base
   seo_urls
end

# Or to use an attribute other than name or title:
class Recipe < ActiveRecord::Base
   seo_urls "shortname"
end

The plugin looks for 'name' or 'title' attributes and if they are available it uses them to generate a search engine friendly string. to_param method is overwritten so that it returns the the numerical id of the record with the search engine friendly string appended to it.

# An example model
@recipe=>{:id=>12,:title=>"pasta sauce"}

# Without the plugin:
recipe_url(@recipe)=>"/recipes/show/12"

# With the plugin:
recipe_url(@recipe)=>"/recipes/show/12-pasta-sauce"

It can be a little tricky to get code in your Wordpress blog to look as good as it does in TextMate. I began with this article as a guide but departed form it in a couple of places. The following steps describe how I set up code formatting on this blog.

First, install and activate the wpuntexturize Wordpress plugin to suppress curly quote transformations.

In TextMate select the following menu option: Bundles > Textmate > Create CSS from current theme.

Run Edit > Find on the resulting document and replace all instances of '.yourthemename' (eg. '.cobalt') with an empty string (").

Save the resulting file as mate.css inside your WP theme folder and upload to your site.

Modify the header.php file for your theme to include the mate.css file. Add a line beneath the first stylesheet link so that the first two stylesheet links look like this: (substitute the example values here with your own site url and theme name)

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/themes/mytheme/mate.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

To include some code in a blog post, select the code portion in TextMate and then choose Bundles > TextMate > Create HTML from selection (don't use the line numbers option, it makes it fiddly for people to copy and paste your code).

Copy the contents of the generated file and paste them into the Code view of your WP post.

I've noticed that not all code inserted in this way will be faithfully highlighted as it is in TextMate, but most of it is.

Wars, invasions, civil strife and genocide are not caused by religion. Nor are they caused by atheism, rationality or science. Every war in history has been fought for the same reasons - power, influence, control of wealth, control of resources (including human resources). Some people attempt to exercise power by wielding religious belief. Some attempt to exercise power by wielding political ideology. Some attempt to exercise power by wielding money. Some by claiming legal or moral authority. But it's all about power and influence in the end.

.. says AllyF in one of the hundreds of posts in a recent Guardian Unlimited thread. This is a sentiment I've seen expressed many times lately, and i can understand its appeal. There's something elegant about the idea that all the bad behaviour in the world can and should be traced back to, and ultimately blamed on, human desire for power. Maybe it's true, but even if we grant that, it doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't point out much more nearby causes as well.

Continue reading…

I was reading a transcript from a debate in the house of lords. Something that Baroness Andrews said prompted me to reply. I'm posting my reply here too.

My noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, alleged that religion is sometimes seen to cause and be at the root of conflict. I say right away that it is not belief that impacts so negatively on us or society more broadly, it is the actions and manifestations by small numbers of people who distort religious texts or hold fanatical views. It is essential that we make, understand and express those differences.

I strongly disagree. There are a number of serious problems with the idea that it is people's distortion of religious texts that leads them to act in anti social ways.

Firstly how can you determine that any of a set of rival interpretations of religious texts is a 'distortion'?

Secondly, taken at face value, the bible contains plenty of justification for 'fanatical' behaviour. To claim the bible as a guide for your life and yet to hold moderate views compatible with modern society is actually more of a distortion than to be interpret the book literally like the fundamentalists do.

Baroness Andrews' charge that certain groups distort religious texts is a non starter. We are outraged by fanatics not because they distort religious texts–religious texts are for the most part appalling guides for how to lead a moral life in the first place–but because their behaviour strongly disagrees with the moral zeitgeist.

Why the reluctance to acknowledge the (to me) plain fact that faith–certainty without evidence–is to blame for religious fanaticism?

Faith can be benign, usually to the extent that it is tempered with skepticism. Faith can also do terrible damage. The more certainty with which an article of faith is held, and the more explicit that article is, the more dangerous that faith makes a person.

Add your thoughts here.

The second Globalize post in as many days. Since I started I may as well through this one out there too, another one for the great Globalized minds of the interweb. I'm regularly bitten by this problem and didn't uncover a satisfactory workaround yet.

Globalize inelegantly flops when you ask it to load the collection attribute of a model instance if the instances in the collection have translated fields.

To illustrate the difficulty I'm having here's a simple Label <- Release -> Artist type data model that you might find on a multilingual music directory site.

class Label < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :releases
has_many :artists, :through=>:releases
end

class Release < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :label
belongs_to :artist
end

class Artist < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :releases
has_many :labels, :through=>:releases
translates :bio
# let Globalize handle translation of the artists bio's
end

>> Label.create(:name=>"Huge Ape Recordings")
>> artist=Artist.create(:name=>"Zombie Gunship",
:bio=>"Blah blah, the rest is history.")
>> Release.create(:label_id=>1,:artist_id=>1)
>> label=Label.find(1)
=> #"Huge Ape Recordings", "id"=>"1"}>
>> label.artists
StandardError: :select option not allowed on translatable models (artists.*) from
./script/../config/../config/../vendor/plugins/globalize_extension/lib/globalize/db_translate_ex.rb:31:in `find_every'

I have a feeling (hope) that this kind of thing ought to be possible with Globalize. In either case Google is eerily empty of relevant search results. Can anyone throw any light on this, how are you getting round it?

Localize Models to the rescue

Update: I've just demoed a delightful plugin by Saimon Moore called Localize Models. It's a system that can be used to replace Globalize's model translations. Rather than storing model translations in the main translations table, it uses additional columns with language code suffixes in the model tables. The big relief with this alternative is that there are no restrictions on :select options. Check his page for instructions (NB. The plugin threw errors in rails 1.1.6 but seems to work fine in edge rails).

>> l=Label.find(1)
>> a=l.artists.first
=> # Artist:0x33d4bc4 @attributes={"name"=>"Zombie Gunship",
"bio_nl"=>nil, "id"=>"1", "bio"=>"English bio here."}>
>> a.bio
=> "English bio here."
>> Locale.set(LOCALES['nl'])
>> a.bio="Dutch bio here"
>> a.save
=> true
>> Locale.set(LOCALES['en'])
>> a.bio
=> "English bio here."
>> Locale.set(LOCALES['nl'])
>> a.bio
=> "Dutch bio here"

Lovely!