Irreligious Definitions

Because those of us without an organized religion don't have, well, an organization to label us by, the terms to describe us can be a bit nebulous and confusing.  As with most discussions, having common definitions is critical to moving on to the actual merits of your arguments, so here are some of the common terms that help define the landscape.  I've tried to keep them both accurate to both the academic and the common usage as much as possible.

God - A little-g god is, generally, defined as a being outside of space and time, and capable of inexplicable power.  Exceptionally hard to nail down a more specific definition.
God - Big-g God is commonly used to refer directly to the Christian or Abrahamic god.

Allah translates to English to mean "The god", making it also Big-g God.
Yahweh is old enough that we can't be certain, but current thought is that his name is actually more descriptive, coming out as either "The Creator" or "He who falls (storms and enemies)".  I think this is probably because he originated before monotheism was "a thing".

Theism - The belief in at least one god.  This also carries strong connotations of the god or gods intervening in our universe.

Deism - The belief in at least one god.  By contrast, this usually means that the god or gods are no longer around; they created the universe and then left.


Polytheism - The belief in at least two gods.
Monotheism - The belief in exactly one god.  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all go here.

Pantheism - I got this one wrong when I first posted it.  It's the belief that the universe is the physical manifestation of God, rather than a separate creation by God.

Gnosticism - The belief that you can know and/or do know whether there is or is not a god or gods.
Agnosticism - The inverse, that you cannot know and/or do not know whether there is a god or gods.

Anti-theism - The belief that there is no god.

Atheism - Commonly means the belief that there is no god.  Since that's actually the definition for anti-theism though, atheism is a bit more subtle - it's the lack of belief.  If you think of Innocent or Guilty, atheism is "not guilty".  In short, there isn't enough evidence to believe that a god actually exists.

Most persons of strong faith are Gnostic Theists, where they 1) believe there is a god, 2) believe they can, and do, know that there is a god, and 3) that this god is a "personal" god, and has intervened in the universe, and likely, their own lives.

Irreligious - A person who does not follow organized religion.
Religious - A person who does follow an organized religion.

These have no distinction for a god belief.  If someone believes in a god and that Jesus was probably divine, but is separated from the codification of any particular Christian church, they are irreligious.
Buddhism, by contrast, is structured and codified and organized.  It does not, however, make any claims about a god at all, making it compatible with other religions.  This makes Buddhism inherently atheistic, though you can add theism to flavour.

Agnostic - A person who does not believe we know, one way or the other, that a god exists.  In my personal experience, including when I used this to describe myself, persons who use this label generally hold faith to be a deeply personal issue with no right or wrong, and say "to each their own".

Atheist - A person who doesn't believe in a god.  In my personal experience, persons who use this label generally hold the merits of faith to be open to debate and scrutiny, and find those merits lacking.
Arrogant atheist - Aside from being an ad-hominem attack (calling someone names, essentially), these are atheists as described above who feel the merits are so lacking as to deserve ridicule and mockery.

Superstition - A belief in the supernatural.  Atheism only responds to the god claim, so there are still atheists who believe in ghosts and such, but they are often among the minority for self-described atheists.

And now, a brief history lesson:


Christian is a relatively new term to be brought into common use.  While it had meaning, the term was largely empty and unused before the 1960's.  Prior to that time, Christians usually identified as their sects - Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and so on.  As such, Atheism was actually one of the largest "religious" sects in the west, and politicians attempted to distance themselves from their religion and befriend atheists in an attempt to show that they would not mess with the other Christian sects.  With the 60's though came the fight against legalized abortion, and sparked the great reunification of Christianity.


Before the industrial revolution, atheists as we know them today were exceedingly rare.  Because there were so many unknowns even in day to day life, it was mind boggling how there could be no god at all.  The skepticism often took the form of deism, rather than atheism.  This conceeded that perhaps the universe was started by a god or gods, but that they have either left or choose to not interfere with our world.  As science has filled in many of the gaps, with sanitation and germ theory, up to geology and cosmology, it's no longer impossible to believe in no god at all.

Evolution Definitions

I wrote this post up a while ago in relation to a discussion I was having about evolution.  I posted it on Facebook at the time, but I forgot to put it up here.  So... here it is.  If nothing else, at least I can reference it later.

Not that a million other people haven't done this, but I doubt most anything I post is all that original. I've tried to make sure all terms and definitions are real, accurate, and succinct. I mean brief. Right, I also tried to use as much normal English as reasonably possible.

Evolution - The build up of changes in a species of organism over generations.

Micro evolution - Smaller changes that do not change the "essence" of a family of organisms, and do not cause speciation.

Macro evolution - Larger changes that do change the "essence" of a family of organisms, and/or does cause speciation. This is what my post this morning was about.

Aristotelian essence - "Of Aristotle". In this case, he is credited with creating a whole school of thought around what "it"-ness is, what makes something itself, and not something else. If you're reading this, you might enjoy reading up on it more here.
Also, you now know a 6-syllable word.

Speciation - The point where two populations with the same ancestor can no longer interbreed. All modern dogs can interbreed, but they cannot breed with bears despite the common ancestor.

Ring Species - These are populations that blur the line of speciation. A can breed with B, and B can breed with C, but A cannot breed with C. They get their name from a population breeding and spreading around a valley or an island, in a circle, so that when the two groups meet on the other side they can no longer interbreed, even though they can both still breed with the original population.

An explanation with pictures can be found here.

Mutation - A change in the structure or placement of genes. Common types are:

Deletion - When copying strands of genes, a chunk is skipped and doesn't get copied.
Duplication - When copying strands of genes, a chunk is copied twice.
Translocation - When copying strands of genes, a chunk is copied but put in the wrong place in the strand.

Selection Pressures - Any condition that changes whether a specific trait is negative (reduces reproduction rate), positive (increases reproduction rate), or benign (does not change reproduction rate).

Natural Selection - The primary means of selecting mutations in nature. The traits commonly positively selected here will be related, but not limited to, nutrient collection, energy efficiency, predator deterrence/protection, and mate selection/attraction.

Selective Breeding, aka Artificial Selection - One of the forms of human selectivity. Obvious examples are dog breeds and race horses, or selective plant pollination. Less well known are cases like Aurochs, the predecessor to the modern day cow, and bananas, which are a mutation of the plantain and aren't actually speciated.

"More evolved" - The idea that one species is more adapted than another. This usually involves a lot of judgements about the current environment or applies human values (such as thinking more gooder) to the target species. Because of the subjectivity of the claim, I feel it's generally meaningless. You could argue that it's based on the number of genes present, but that also has problems: what about genes that don't do anything? Anyway, there are plenty of other organisms that have way more genes than humans. These include a plant with 50x more genes, or an ameoba that has >200x more genes than us.

Aneuploidy - Having too many or too few chromosomes. Common examples are Down Syndrome, or XYY males. This was something I cited in this morning's post without knowing the name.

BONUS - No promises about normal English here.
Teleology - Any claim that nature has a goal or intent, in the way that humans do. In this case, that evolution is trying to make the most highly evolved organisms possible. Evolution is thought to be a byproduct of accidental mutations, guided by a selection process of current adaptations in the current environment, rather than a consciousness that has a specific life form in mind.

I normally come across this concept in theology, in the form "God created the universe so that we would be here today." Without knowing God, we cannot know that this was his intent rather than a butterfly-effect, some accidental happenstance from his actions. Assuming of course that God is real, an assumption I don't usually make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

Property

Property rights are core to our way of life, or so we've been told.  It's a fundamental reality that we have to accept, and we are rewarded quite well for it.  Of course, there have been a few times with my philosophy ramblings that people have responded with "Are you even sure property exists?" And I've always responded with "yea, duh."

Well... maybe not.

I have property.  You have property.  We can trade that property with each other, or with other people.  It works fine for all the people and property you magically add to the system.  It's completely consistent with the abstract concept of currency.  Things seem to get flaky when you try to claim property though.  To start, a definition of property rights.

A monopoly of access to an idea or an object.

Traditionally in the west, I believe we have solved property claiming with homesteading.  You own yourself and your labour.  You mix your labour with unclaimed property and suddenly you own it.  So property rights become:

A monopoly of access to an idea or object because of labour involved with the harvesting, collecting, or manipulation of the object or idea.

But then the contradictions fracture.  What happens when someone else also mixes their labour in, with or without your permission?  What if it was a joint project?  What happens when you abandon it?  How long do you have to abandon it?  How does it persist through death?  Suddenly, our definition of property rights looks more like this:

A monopoly of access to an idea or object because of labour involved with the harvesting, collecting, or manipulation of the object or idea, within a set time frame, that you have not abandoned, and where your labour is greater than any other persons.

And suddenly we have variables: when does the time frame start, when does it end, what constitutes abandonment, and what unit are we measuring labour in?  Property is no longer universal, but has variables that someone has to set.  And if you set those variables to infinitely small volumes, or the authority of any other person to set those variables -- property goes *POOF*.

Don't get me wrong, I think property rights are amazingly progressive, and possibly required for modern society to sustain itself.  But I think property rights are an illusion, and thus violation of them is no longer a morally-charged act.  It's neither moral, nor immoral.

I think this has ramifications to ownership of self even, and pretty well everything else.  Did I miss a step in here, or over-reach an assumption somewhere?  And here I thought shedding Statism was a whole different world... eep.

I value...

"I value believing as many true things and as few false things as possible." -- Matt Dillahunty

This is, at it's heart, the core of Skepticism.  Part of the value of this quote, to me at least, is something a bit more subtle than it first seems.  Valuing truth and an aversion to falsehood is so deeply ingrained in my nature, that it's easy for me to assume that anyone who differs is faulty in some manner.

That's where I find the real value in this quote.  It's the start, where he begins with "I value..."  I believe that faith is a vice, rather than a virtue, and I believe that comfort will come naturally to most who understand the world around them.

My recent trip home to Alberta, and specifically to Calgary, really drove this home to me though.  While I had a chance to visit with two dear friends from college who are ardent skeptics as well (though perhaps not as vocal as myself), I had a long drive with someone who is superstitious as a form of comfort, and was reminded of many other friends who were never skeptics in the first place.  Many were certainly bright, but it just didn't register on their radar as something that was missing from their lives.

And maybe it isn't.  While this trip hasn't exactly convinced me to dress in my finest attire and visit a congregation every Sunday to eat little bits of Jesus-bread, it certainly has made me hesitate a bit when I catch myself foaming over some particularly grandiose show of ignorance from my friends.

What other core values are there that I haven't recognized yet?  Do you have these values yourself, and if so, why?  Of course, these are not exclusive, but I think each of us will, generally, have one of these at the core of our endeavours.

My brief list so far:
- Skepticism (believing truths and disbelieving falsehoods)
- Faith
- Comfort (family/security/superstition... perhaps this one could be unpacked a bit more)

Crazy Claims

In the last few days, I have had some stunning claims placed before me. These all come from people that I respect, each in a different capacity. That they have all come at the same time is surely coincidence, but might also be in reaction to my growing propensity to be outspoken about morality, ethics and religion.

The three claims are as follows:
1. Children are the property of parents. Corollary: anything a parent does with their child is immune to criticism.
2. Children are born sinful. Corollary: this aligns with Original Sin, and therefore supports the "moral authority" of the Bible.
3. The only objective view on morality is that every view on morality is subjective. Corollary: an individual has as much right to kill another as the other individual has right to live.

The only reasonable course of action I can see in light of these claims is to bring them into the light, to discuss and explain why I think each of these are not just incorrect, but damaging to society, and perhaps venture into why I think they persist. I expect #3 to be the most challenging, but also the most interesting -- and, I hope, the most rewarding if I succeed in changing opinions.

I thought this would be both a good way to lay out their relation to each other and to encourage myself to actually talk about them.

Broken Road Fallacy

A few weeks ago, on Facebook and elsewhere, I asked "Are taxes theft?"  Among the answers I received, one of them was "Only if you don't like roads."  While I feel that response does not actually address the question, as it speaks to economics rather than morality, I have thought about it further.  In essence, I believe it is fundamentally flawed - a victim of the "Broken Window Fallacy".

To briefly explain (longer explanation in the video), the theory goes like this: When a window is broken, it stimulates the economy.  The window must be replaced, which employs the glass maker, and the sand harvester, and the farmers who must feed them, etc.  This is a fallacy because, drawn to it's conclusion, we should employ people to break windows, purely to stimulate the economy.

There is more to it though, especially in regards to the road response.  The reason one would even consider the broken window "stimulating" is to only look at what happens, not what could happen.  Collecting taxes to pay for roads creates a better world, because we gain all the benefits of having a road.  But what would happen without collecting the taxes (breaking the window) in the first place?

While the specifics of any given situation are outside the scope of this post, think about what is removed.  By creating a guaranteed source of road growth, there will be less innovation spent on reducing the need for roads - better or alternate forms of travel such as mass transit or industrial rail.  There would also be less sprawl, as it would be more difficult to drive to work from 3 suburbs outside of city limits.  Less travel distance, so reduced gas consumption, so prices wouldn't rise as rapidly.

In the end, from an economic standpoint, I find the road response (and the general line of thinking behind it) to "Are taxes theft?" still wanting, and lacking any serious persuasiveness.  If individuals and businesses are unwilling to pay for roads on their own, I do not find it economically logical that the population should be taxed en masse to pay for them.


Broken Window Fallacy more completely explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erJEaFpS9ls