"[T]o keep the populace alarmed..."

Charles Cooke has a superb commentary on a recent scientific study that suggests that the apocalyptic global warming climate change global climate chaos scenarios proclaimed by climate scientists are grossly exaggerated.

The Climate Cataclysm Is Not Nigh 

“We have some room to breathe,” a scientist reports.

In 1783, William Pitt warned the British Parliament about the dangers of those who would reflexively employ “necessity” as an argument in favor of their preferences. “Necessity,” Pitt exclaimed, “is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves!” These are wise words indeed. But in a purely Machiavellian sense, the tactic is also a risky one. Those who shout “or else!” tend to be left in the role of the boy who cried wolf if their apocalypse fails to turn up on time.

The environmental Left has long neglected Pitt’s admonition and is starting to pay the price. Having careered wantonly from “global cooling” to “global warming” to “climate change,” the greenies eventually settled on the rather dramatic “global climate chaos,” a neatly eschatological term that has the delicious benefit of being so vague as to be unfalsifiable. For years now we have been told that this week, or month, or year — or conference, or junket — is our last chance to save the world.

Such an approach is rapidly losing its efficacy. What the global downturn has done for prioritization, science is doing for perspective. Enter Andreas Schmittner, a professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Schmittner headed up a major study recently published in Science and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, which baldly concludes that the sort of doomsday scenario readily thrown around by the scaremongers is simply not rooted in reality...  

... In other words, we’re not all going to die.

By painting Armageddon as the price of inaction, the green lobby has sought to achieve two goals. First, focusing in on an extreme scenario allowed advocates more effectively to play the we-should-do-something-just-in-case card. Second, with all nuance removed from the discussion, even the slightest evidence in favor of an anthropogenic contribution to climate fluctuations could be tied to eschatological imagery, and “climate moderates” could be portrayed as being just as complicit in bringing about the end of the world as the evil deniers. “Necessity” would thus become the mother of intervention.

“The whole aim of practical politics,” wrote H. L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” It is still a matter of debate whether there are any hobgoblins at all (the very existence of a “consensus” is rendered comical, given the existence of new papers such as Schmittner’s), but if they do exist, the tallest among them are disappearing at a rate of knots.

As they go, we must insist that so too do the invitations to be led to safety, for without necessity we have no reason to be slaves.

Please read the whole thing. Cooke discusses the study, and points out that the invocation of impending catastrophe unless you do exactly what the Cassandras say-- which invariably involves empowering and enriching the Cassandras-- is the oldest political trick in the book, and is usually a lie. 

Don't all of the real atheist governments have something to teach us about morality-without-God?

From Reuters:

Humanists, atheists drive for wider global impact

By Robert Evans

GENEVA, Oct 10 (Reuters) - When Switzerland goes to the polls to elect a new parliament later this month, voters in Zurich will for the first time in the country's history have the chance to cast their ballot for a slate of Freethinkers.

"We decided we had to stand up and tell our politicians that it's time they recognised that there are a lot of non-religious people in their electorate," says 42-year-old Andreas Kyriacou, who heads the list.

"We, and probably a lot of Swiss people who have never thought about humanism or atheism, are tired of the influence the churches and religion still exert in this country," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Nearly all organized atheist political activity since 1917 has been to destroy democracy.

But from now on everything's gonna be different.

Kyriacou, a management consultant, was speaking at a "Denkfest", or "Think Festival," that the Swiss Freethinkers Association held in Zurich last month, attracting scientists, philosophers and even comedians from around the world.

Lots of comedians.

The Swiss Freethinkers -- a term that covers atheists, agnostics, secularists, rationalists, sceptics and just plain critics of religion -- argue that the country's political parties and leaders run scared of religious voters.

"Scared of voters" is another name for "democracy".

In atheist governments, voters have traditionally been scared of atheists.

"There is a group for Bible study in our parliament, but no cross-party humanist group, though we know many of the deputies are non-believers," he says. "On right and left, they prefer to keep their heads down."

What could atheists 'study' in a group?  It would all go swimmingly well with Dawkins' God Delusion, but then somebody would foolishly propose reading Gulag Archipelago, and everybody would get testy.

And Kyriacou points to the failure of politicians to take a stand on social issues like assisted suicide and abortion, where the Catholic church in particular has strong views, and on the powerful place of religion in education in parts of the country.

Somebody has to speak up for killing! If not now, when. If not atheists, who?

His stance -- as measured by comments at other conferences around Europe over the summer -- reflects growing determination among humanists and atheists on all five continents to make themselves more visible and their influence felt.

Atheists have been practically invisible in the 20th century.

MOUNTING INTEREST

At the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August, delegates from India, Uganda, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil -- all countries where belief in a supreme deity or deities has a strong hold -- reported mounting interest in their philosophy.

Attendees even spilled out of the telephone booth into the street.

Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, they argue that morality is based in human nature and does not need a father-figure god to back it up with punishment in an afterlife, in which they do not believe.

Why didn't they mention their godless counterparts in Central Asia, the Korean peninsula, and Indochina? Don't all of the real atheist governments have something to teach us about morality-without-God, too?

"There are more godless groups in the world than ever before," Sonja Eggerickx, a Belgian schools inspector who is president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, told the Congress.

If you don't count really huge godless groups like Stalin's Supreme Soviet and Mao's Chinese Communist Party and Kim's North Korean secret police.

U.S. delegates, including a serving army major who has just established an organisation for atheists in the military, spoke of a surge of rejection of religion in all its forms among young Americans -- a point some recent opinion surveys back up.

In Manchester in May, British Humanists -- one of the world's oldest groupings -- were told of a sharp rise in humanist birth, marriage and death ceremonies, and strong growth in their association's four-year-old student wing. 

Aren't four-year-old students a little young...

In Ireland, a country where the influence of the Catholic Church was for decades dominant in all areas of life including politics and government decision-making, an optimistic national humanist association met in Carlingford in late August.

Someday the population of "humanists" in the West will reach 5%, or even more! But since they have .003 children each, it will be a brief spike. The only way atheists can keep their numbers growing is to suppress religious expression and indoctrinate religious people's children in schools.

Thank goodness they're not doing that.

With the latest census showing that atheists, agnostics and humanists are the largest group in the country after Catholics,

Ireland is 99.998% Catholic,  0.002% atheist. Atheists are the second-largest group.

One guy in County Cork sometimes believes in god but thinks that he is Richard Dawkins.

association president Brian Whiteside said numbers were growing fast in the wake of the "pedophile priests" scandal.

Every humanist press release has to mention "pedophile priests". It's in their charter. They used to mention "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", but that's been updated.

In Nigeria, where the openly non-religious face Christian preacher-inspired public opprobrium as "immoral reprobates" or "Satanists" and in the Islamic north are treated as apostates, the humanist movement held its Congress in Abuja in September.

Condoms, upside-down pentagram tattoos, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali coffee cups sold like hotcakes.

REASON AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Its founder and chairman Leo Igwe, once a seminarist who set up the group 15 years ago and has helped form groups in Uganda and Malawi , called on delegates to work for "a new age of Reason and Enlightenment" across Africa.

The new age of godless reason and enlightenment worked so well in revolutionary France, in Russia, in China, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Cuba, in North Korea...

Why shouldn't Africa get a crack at it...

He has been campaigning hard against the persecution and often killing of so-called "child witches" -- children perceived, often with the encouragement of Christian preachers, to be possessed by the devil.

Atheists don't kill children because they are witches. That would be barbaric.

Atheists kill children because their parents are Xian Reactionaries, or spies conspiring against the godless People's State, or because they stubbornly hold onto their family farms when the godless commissar tells them it belongs to the proletariat, or because they are just generally in the way of the godless remaking of humanity.

You say dead kids.

I say state atheism:

This is a mugshot of one of thousands of prisoners processed at the Khmer Rouge's S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Approximately 14,000 prisoners passed through S-21 between 1975-79. Seven survived. This child was most likely murdered in the killing fields at Choeung Ek. He was probably not old enough to speak, much less have a political ideology, but he was still murdered so the Khmer Rouge could protect their regime.

State atheism in a century has killed orders of magnitude more kids than all religions combined.

...In India, where humanists and rationalists fight the influence of popularly revered "miracle-working" gurus as well as Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism, an Atheist University was founded last month in the south-east city of Vijayawada.

Atheist have an aversion to irrational idol worship.

And in Israel this month, secularists who say they suffer from religious coercion despite a conviction that they represent a majority of the population, won a court ruling that they cannot be forced to list Judaism as their religion.

I guess atheists aren't the chosen, after all.

In Muslim countries where renunciation of belief can be punished by death but always ends in social ostracism and persecution, the existence of an organisation of atheists is almost unthinkable, says Roy Brown of the IHEU.

Muslims are actually pretty easy on atheists, compared with other "apostates", unless the atheists get too lippy about Islamic degeneracy. Muslims understand that they share with atheists a common enemy.  'The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Praise Allah and Darwin.'

But in Europe, an association of ex-Muslims is growing, with national chapters in several countries. Some British Asians who have abandoned the faith were in Oslo, and found themselves arguing with Islamists who came to picket the gathering.

The European Association of Present and Future Muslims is growing even faster.

Back in Zurich two weeks before the elections, Kyriacou says there has been a good response to the campaign he and his youthful colleagues have fought. "It is young people who are mainly interested, and that is good for the future," he adds.

What happens, atheists, when you run out of young people?

"We don't think for a minute we will overcome the party machines. But there is an outside chance, if the mathematics are right, that one of us will get elected. That would be a victory indeed for humanists everywhere." (Reported by Robert Evans)

But will it be a victory for the rest of us?

Why does anyone pay attention to P.Z. Myers?

P.Z. Myers has a characteristically incoherent post on free will. I've included my comments:

I was compelled to post this

December 6, 2011 at 2:04 pm PZ Myers

I said I didn’t want to say anything about free will, and I still don’t, but Massimo Pigliucci weighed in, and Jerry Coyne responded, and so did Sean Carroll, and of course I created a free will thread for everyone else to talk about it, so I guess there’s a fair bit of momentum behind it all.

I don’t understand why free will was getting all tangled up in indeterminacy vs. determinism, since that seems to be a completely independent issue.

There are philosophers who believe that free will and determinism are not incompatible. I think they're wrong.

Free will and determinism are linked. If all human acts are determined-- i.e. completely in accordance with past events and the laws of physics-- then there is no room for libertarian free will. Human will can change neither the past nor physical laws.

Myers:

I’ll sum up my opinion by agreeing with Jerry Coyne:

[Coyne] Of course, whether the laws of physics are deterministic or probabilistic is, to me, irrelevant to whether there’s free will, which in my take means that we can override the laws of physics with some intangible “will” that allows us to make different decisions given identical configurations of the molecules of the universe. That kind of dualism is palpable nonsense, of course, which is why I think the commonsense notion of free will is wrong.

Absolute gibberish. Coyne's idiotic view that we have no genuine libertarian free will entails three consequences:

 1) Our acts are determined by agency (history and physics) over which we have no control. We bear no responsibility for our acts.

2) Our acts are determined by agency (history and physics) which have no reference to truth. A neurochemical reaction isn't "true" or "false". It just is. If our acts and thoughts are neurochemical, and we have no genuine choice in our opinions, then our opinions can be neither true nor false, anymore than  mixing chemicals in a beaker can be true or false.

If determinism and lack of libertarian free will are true, we can't meaningfully argue that they are true.

3) If the past and physical law fully determine our future, then what happens to us has nothing to do with our "choices". Just history and physics. What happens, happens. The future is set- only one outcome is possible, and we can't choose it.

So why bother to do anything? Why does Myers bother to post on his blog? What shows up on his blog is determined by the history of the universe and the laws of physics. He can change neither. Why do anything?

Myers:

My mind is a product of the physical properties of my brain; it is not above them or beyond them or somehow independent of them.

If Myers' mind is a product of his brain, it is by definition something other than his brain. What is it?

... birds chirping...

And how is it that a physical object (Myers' brain) has reference to something external to itself? This is the classical problem of intentionality. Myers brain doesn't mean anything. It's just a few pounds of meat. But Myers means things. He writes about them daily.

Where does the meaning come from?

Myers:

It doesn’t even make sense to talk about “me”, which is ultimately simply yet another emergent property of the substrate of the brain, modifying the how the brain acts. It is how the brain acts.

Perhaps Myers can inform the payroll department at the university that his "me" doesn't really exist. They can stop cutting paychecks to emergent properties of brain substrates.

I think consciousness is a product of self-referential modeling of how decisions are made in the brain in the absence of any specific information about the mechanisms of decision-making — it’s an illusion generated by a high-level ‘theory of mind’ module that generates highly simplified, highly derived models of how brains work that also happens to be applied to our own brain.

Let's take it one bit of gibberish at a time:

I think consciousness is a product of self-referential modeling of how decisions are made in the brain...

A self-referential model presupposes a self. Decisions presuppose a decider. Myers' explanation for self presupposes self. Back to the drawing board.

...in the absence of any specific information about the mechanisms of decision-making —...

Myers has no clue about how any of this works. None. Zippo. But he's sure it's materialistic, and people who disagree with him are fools who believe things on faith.

...it’s an illusion generated by a high-level ‘theory of mind’ module...

A delusion presupposes a self which is deluded. Thus the delusion cannot create the self.

[... it’s an illusion generated by a high-level ‘theory of mind’ module] that generates highly simplified, highly derived models of how brains work that also happens to be applied to our own brain. 

Myers is saying that consciousness doesn't exist in the absence of a 'high-level theory of mind module'. So module-less people who don't contemplate theories of the mind-- children, disinterested or uneducated adults-- aren't, by Myers theory, conscious.

Myers is a fool. Why anyone-- me included-- pays any attention to this idiot is a mystery. One of the unresolved questions of science...

George Mason Law School Dean stands up for academic freedom

From William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

George Mason University School of Law is considered “conservative,” at least by law school standards.

So when CAIR played the Islamophobe card and demanded that the school shut down a speech by Nonie Darwish , Dean Daniel Polsby said no thanks to CAIR’s attempt to squelch dissenting voices:

"It appears that there is need to clarify the policy affecting speakers at the law school.

Student organizations are allocated budget by the Student Bar Association in order to allow them, among other things, to bring speakers to the law school. Neither the law school nor the university can be taken to endorse such speakers or what they say. Law school administration is not consulted about these invitations, nor should we be. Sometimes speakers are invited who are known to espouse controversial points of view. So be it. So long as they are here, they are free to say whatever is on their mind within the bounds of law. They cannot be silenced and they will not be.

Just as speakers are free to speak, protesters are free to protest. They must do so in a place and in a manner that respects the rights of speakers to speak and listeners to listen, and that is in all other ways consistent with the educational mission of the university. Student organizations which hold contrary points of view have every right to schedule their own programs with their own speakers, and these speakers’ rights will be protected in just the same way.

The law school will not exercise editorial control over the words of speakers invited by student organizations, nor will we take responsibility for them, nor will we endorse or condemn them. There has to be a place in the world where controversial ideas and points of view are aired out and given space. This is that place.

Daniel D. Polsby

Professor of Law, Dean

Nonie Darwish is a Muslim apostate who converted to Christianity and who is director of "Arabs for Israel" and "Former Muslims United". CAIR obviously wants her silenced, and, like good Islamists, they use whatever means are at their disposal to censor dissent, including intimidation of the university. CAIR has deep roots in the Islamist Movement and has been credibly accused of funding Hamas.

Academia is the place in which controversial ideas should be aired and discussed. Yet soft totalitarianism infests most American universities today. Dean Polsby's eloquent statement defends our tradition of free speech and open exchange of ideas.

Bravo to Dean Polsby for his eloquent defense of academic freedom.

Why Cat is an atheist

P.Z. Myers has a series of guest posts by folks who have decided that they are atheists.

Here's "Cat's" story, with my commentary:

Why I am an atheist – Cat

I’m an atheist because I don’t “believe in” God. Yes, it’s as simple as that.

Calling a definition a reason is indeed simple.

I don’t see any evidence that such a being exists (or plays an active role in the world, which amounts to the same thing).

Classical philosophers for several millennia have pointed out that that existence of nature itself presupposes Someone who is uncaused existence. The evidence for an Uncaused Cause is massive-- you can fill a library with the arguments in its favor. Aquinas alone devoted hundreds of pages of Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles to meticulous explication of the argument. Atheist philosophers (Flew), pagan philosophers (Aristotle), Jewish philosophers (Maimonidies), and Islamic philosophers (Avarroes) have made the same argument. But that's not simple enough for Cat.

That’s actually stating things too narrowly: the truth is, I don’t believe in gods. Or spirits, or the supernatural in any form, really.

Notice the sloppiness, characteristic of the godless "Brights". What does Cat mean by "spirits"? Things that are immaterial? Of course, all sorts of things are immaterial. Universals are immaterial-- truth, beauty, goodness, love. Reason is immaterial. The aspects of Cat's intellect that use reason are immaterial. Matter can refer only to itself-- a particular-- and inherently cannot manipulate universals, which is the domain of reason. So Cat is making the argument against immaterial reality with her  intellect, which is immaterial (spirit).  Self-refutation is characteristic of atheist metaphysics.

If something is genuinely supernatural – truly “beyond” or “outside of” the natural world – then by definition it can’t affect us. If it can affect us, it isn’t supernatural; it’s just a part of nature we don’t understand (yet).

Huh? Cat declines to inform us how she defines "nature". The classical definition is that nature is that which is a composite of potency and act and can undergo change. Supernatural is pure act.

She declares that she doesn't see any evidence for the supernatural, then defines supernatural as 'that for which there can't be evidence' (i.e. that which can't effect the natural world).

My head hurts.

So it’s fair to say that I’m an atheist precisely because I’m a materialist.

O.K. Cat, what's "material" about about your argument that atheism and materialism are true? The very act of asserting that your viewpoint is true is a repudiation of materialism, which entails the denial that immaterial entities (such as Truth) exist.

My head is throbbing now.

There’s a classic accusation leveled against people who’ve left their faith. “You were never a Christian (or whatever) to begin with!” That’s… actually kind of true, when it comes to me. I was raised Christian, but it was never a big part of my identity. It was just one more item in a long list of things that didn’t make much sense to me, but seemed to be very important to everyone else.

A lot of things don't make sense to Cat.

As I got older, and looked at it more critically, I quit identifying as Christian at all.

As you got older, you looked at things less critically. That's how you became an atheist. The usual story is that as one gets older, one begins to want things that Christianity says are bad for us. We face temptation.

Christians try to be good and pray for Christ's grace.

Atheists say 'Bye-Bye Christianity'.

The big turning point for me wasn’t realizing “I just can’t believe this” so much as realizing that the fact that I couldn’t believe it didn’t necessarily mean that something was wrong with me.

"Belief" is one thing, Cat. Logic is another. Belief is complex even for devout Christians. Even the greatest saints have struggled with faith. But the boilerplate atheist arguments-- 'there's no evidence... only material things really exist... science is the only way to truth...' -- are so transparently stupid that they deserve only derision.

That's where I come in.

Sunday Egnorance: God's Will; Martina McBride

A beautiful song from Martina McBride, From Mihai Caragiu at RO-THEORIA.

The problem of suffering is difficult for all of us. Why do innocents suffer? Why do even the guilty suffer-- often the suffering seems disproportionate to whatever evil we could have done. In my day job, I see a lot of innocents suffering. I don't fully know why God allows it.

Many years ago, before I was a Christian, I was caring for a 6 year old boy with a malignant brain tumor who was dying. He was a sweet little boy, from a lovely family, and I had been his doctor since the moment of diagnosis, when he had a seizure, just a few months before. I had removed the tumor, and it had recurred twice, each time traveling to a different part of his brain. Now it was in many places, and all of our treatments had failed.

It was the middle of the night, and he was not going to make it to the morning. I came in to be with him and his family. I didn't know what to say. I asked the nurses to make sure that he had enough pain medication to keep him comfortable.

Our hospital's chaplain was there, a Lutheran pastor named Steve. We had become friends. We sat in the pediatric ICU, and I told him that I wanted to believe in God, but that I found this kind of suffering inexplicable. How could God allow it? What sense of all of this could Christianity possibly draw out?

Steve told me his own story, of his own illness in his agnostic days, when he was on a respirator and not expected to survive. He said that for the first time in his life (he was in his 20's) he prayed, and he asked God to spare him. He got an answer-- God told him that he would live, and that He wanted him to devote his life to ministering to the sick and dying. He became a pastor and a hospital chaplain.

"But why does God allow suffering at all?" I asked him.

His answer startled me. "He never said that we will not suffer. Suffering is a part of what it means to be human. He only promised us one thing: that we would never suffer alone. He will always be with us, and especially in our darkness. He suffered. He understands. Suffering draws us to Him."

That shook me. It haunts me still. There is something about suffering that is fundamental to existence. He uses it to draw us to Him. He is most present in our weakness and our agony. Of course, from the beginning He told us. He is most with us in the least of our brethren.

I know my combox will fill with the usual atheist sneers: 'if He loves us so, why didn't he just cure the kid instead of letting him suffer?'

My answer to them is: if God doesn't exist, why do you care? Nothing really matters, ultimately, in a Godless world. Why would dust lament the passing of dust?

I find, in the Christian answer, a gleam of real truth. The truth is Love Himself, and to suffer in darkness is to know Love more intimately, without anodyne. In our desolation we know Him in a way we could not have known Him in our complacency.

Weekend Egnorance: Just in case you didn't already have a headache today...

A math problem.

My answer would be the same one Joe Carter endorses.

My head still hurts, though.