The Opposite Side Literally Thinks We’re Trying To Kill Them

Photo Credit Below

Take the idea of evolution.

I’m no scientist, but organisms adapt to the environments that they’re in, and that’s why the polar bear is white, and why some animals grow legs, and why some people are funnier than others.

And while we have shared a notoriously short portion of earth’s 13 billion year history here on the pale blue dot as the human species, we’ve acquired and lost certain needs along the way. Back in the days of saber-toothed tigers and life spans of certainly not 80 years, I’m assuming that intelligence wasn’t what kept you alive.

They had no GDP, and didn’t need to structure the nation’s finances. They didn’t have to worry about Benghazi, or tsunamis in places they couldn’t pronounce, and they couldn’t use Skype to know that their friends were covered in snow while they were bathed in sunlight.

As the world changed, we changed.

So, since a completely different set of favorable traits was necessary to not die, those were traits that developed in people. They involved quick thinking, reasoning, and strong bodies, and that was what developed.

But it wasn’t all that we needed forever.

Imagining The Human Species as One Lifetime

If you fast-forward to where we are right now, you’ll see a viciously partisan political environment. Whether it’s senate Republicans who vow that sitting President Barack Obama should not appoint a judge when he’s got a year left in office, or baffling things like a public official holding up a snowball as proof that climate change isn’t real, you see people that are not willing to work with each other.

And I think I know why. It’s because they’re having a biological reaction to intelligent problems.

If you go back to the original scenario, you will remember that quick reaction times and thinking were the cornerstones of not dying or becoming something’s lunch. Malcolm Gladwell even talks about this in his book Outliers, where students at the University of Michigan re-create, in everyday interactions, dynamics of the American frontier based on professions like husbandry or farming, despite the fact that none of them grew up raising livestock.

What this kind of study shows is that traits are both individual and hereditary.

What I suggest we do is take this idea of traits, reactions, and ideas being both individual and hereditary and stretch them out to “the length of human existence.”

Luckily, because I don’t know when we’re all going to die, I don’t know how old the human race is yet. But, because of what we’ve discussed, I know what we have learned. And what I’m suggesting is possible is that we learned things in our infancy as a species that do not serve us in the future, or that the nature of our lessons has changed, as happens to us all with age.

They Really Think You’re Trying To Kill Them.

And here’s the crux of it: I think we can better understand irrational behavior if we understand the other side literally thinks we’re trying to kill them.

If you think of it in this way, it makes much more sense. People are living in bodies that are not 30, 40, 50 years old, but instead millions of years old.

Is it possible that while we no longer live in a situation where our death is consistently imminent, that this adherence to ideas that are more irrational and ill-founded is the product of bodies that DO still live in that time?

Think about this.

When someone says “Well, growing up…” and then explains their behavior, they are admitting that a past action directed at them or a situation they were in is currently affecting their decision making or actions, though the initial conditions are gone. Given what we know, doesn’t it make sense that therefore, we would still be very heavily influenced by the initial conditions from whence we came, whatever the realities of those were?

I think so.

And I’d be interested to see the implications of such an idea and how we treat irrational beliefs or behaviors. What if you understood that when you suggest gun control measures that seem completely reasonable to you, the other side feels actual physical, present danger, and so they react in ways that appear irrational, but are consistent with good behaviors for avoiding physical danger? Immigration, ISIS, police brutality – what would this idea look like translated to other topics?

We might get somewhere interesting. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.

Feel free to comment, like, share, and follow below!

Twitter: https://goo.gl/MtDBa8

Instagram: https://goo.gl/2OAoVF

[Photo Credit]

Photo: https://goo.gl/0lxkvO

Photographer: DonkeyHotey

License: https://goo.gl/sZ7V7x

Why Christians Lie – The Gruth Creed, Part 1

‘Bout to investigate the Sherlock Holmes outta some claims, right here…

Recently, I visited my home church for a presentation called “Evolution’s Achilles’ Heel.” I was invited by a church member named Bob, ostensibly because Bob knows that I’m an atheist. I don’t mind that sort of thing, even if many atheists do. I’ve spent too much time in the church to have that unbridled, uncompromising animus towards church people and their ways. I understand them too much. Like Ender.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. – Ender’s Game

So I sat down in the Friendship room, with a pad of paper and a pen for notes, and watched this thing with an open mind. What I was treated to was a sack of unrepentant lies.

The video featured a slew of Ph.D. scientists from various universities talking about the fatal flaws of the theory of evolution. They deftly blurred the line between an atheist and an evolutionist, suggesting that evolution is not compatible with a belief in God. Also thrown in to the line-blurring montage was the line between completely separate and distinct scientific theories like The Big Bang and evolution. They mentioned that we don’t really know what a kind is, and then proceeded to say later in the video that creationists see the growth of life as “within kinds.” They repeated mantras of missing transitional fossils, distinctions between micro and macro evolution, fables of people losing tenure because they don’t support evolution (great review on Ben Stein’s “Expelled” here), and the ever popular, Hitler’s “atheistic” regime.

Bob…thought he was imparting truth to me, but how could that be true if nothing in the video was?

What I was more confused about than the presentation, which was the festering boil on the body of truth that I expected it to be, was why no one in the room could see it. Every minute or two of the video was punctuated by thoughtful Mmm’s, deep nods, and tsk tsk-ing at how the evolution nuts twisted the facts. Did it not matter to anyone that not one of these 15 Ph.Ds was an evolutionary biologist, that that was not their expertise? Did it not matter that the number 15 comprises a supremely small number of scientists in the scientific community? Did it not matter to them that all of these objections have been dealt with before quite deftly and conclusively?

They deftly blurred the line between an atheist and an evolutionist, suggesting that evolution is not compatible with a belief in God.

It comes as no surprise to atheists that Christians lie. And I’m certainly not referring to the fact that we have differing viewpoints on a lot that goes on in the world. I mean straight-up, bald faced lying, as in saying things that are not true. At first, this can dismay atheists and other non-believers. Bob wanted me to see that video because he truly thought that he was imparting truth to me, but how could that be true if nothing in the video was? Answer: Bob’s playing with a different deck of cards than I am.

It all comes down to one simple fact: In the Christian paradigm, God is truth. This is different than saying that God reflects truth, that truth is something independent of God against which He can and has been measured, and which He accurately reflects every time. This instead is the claim that God is the literal embodiment of truth, which changes everything. Take it back to grade school with your fractions for a moment:

 God/Truth = _____/False? The answer’s ‘Not God.’

The weapons in the atheist’s arsenal are powerless here, because atheists do not accept the foundational presupposition that God is equal to truth. It’s not even that they say that God can’t be, either. It’s that they view God, as all other things, as something independent of truth, something to be reasonably tested against it, and they find that He fails.

Bob’s playing with a different deck of cards than I am.

This unfortunate God-Truth Position (which I will subsequently be referring to as The Gruth Creed) is the probable cause of Christianity being as impervious to logic as dragon’s skin to magic. I’m certainly not the first person to suggest that Christianity damages important portions of critical thinking, and some might say that this view is condescending, saying that the little sheep just have no idea what they’re doing. I see it differently. I see this instead as a reason to teach our children how to discover rather than what to believe. In doing so, we can engender beautiful inquiry about this fantastical actual world that we live in – without making things up.

Next time, we’ll talk about why Christians accept bad arguments.

Feel free to like, comment, share, and follow below! If you appreciated this blog, please consider becoming my Patron!

Twitter: @Ame0baRepublic

“BOP Goes The Weasel” – Why The Burden of Proof Fails

In terms of really being able to debate someone about anything, you have to be able to understand what their axiom is. If you don’t know what an axioms are, they are the groundings of beliefs, or things that are self-evidently true. You know, like “Leonardo DiCaprio is the peanut butter to my jelly”, or “Quinoa is abhorrent”. Okay, okay, I’ll give you a real example: “Murder is wrong.” It’s important to note at this point that axioms are not technically beliefs. They are what are under or inside of beliefs, whatever metaphor suits your fancy. Beliefs are the things that arise from axioms.

You know, like “Leonardo DiCaprio is the peanut butter to my jelly”, or “Quinoa is abhorrent”.

For example, having a conversation about whether someone should get first degree, second degree, or manslaughter for killing someone with a baseball bat is a conversation based on the axiom “Murder is wrong.” Asking what punishment they deserve is impossible when the other participant in the conversation has not conceded that they deserve any type of punishment at all, not to mention you’ve thrown in the extra axiom that “Wrong deeds require punishment.” Another grand example of axiomatic differences is the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, where we can debate until the cows come home about the color or fabric of his clothes, but the truth is that he’s not wearing any.

The Burden of Proof

Here’s where I want to present one of the most basic claims of skepticism and of atheism: The burden of proof. BOP is levied against Christians all the time, in an effort to properly orient them to the ways of logic and skeptical reasoning. However, if we take what we know about axioms and apply it, it should be pretty easy to show why BOP falls flat.

BOP goes something like this: “There’s a infinite ‘mount o’ thangs we dunno, an’ we can’t just go ‘round essepting erry claim that comes along! Whenever sumun makes a positive claim, the burden of proof is on THEM to provide evidence, not the person that don’t believe ‘em. Ya can’t prove a negative. Can’t nobody prove the non-eegsistence of the Flyin’ Spaghetti Monster, but it ain’t up t’us to disprove it. It’s up to y’all to PROVE it.”

I know you may have thought this post was going a different way, but the truth is that this is a pretty sound argument. How else do we protect ourselves and conserve our energy? How else do we respond to a world that is clearly much bigger than ourselves, with a possibly infinite amount of things that we don’t know about it? Answer: By not trying to definitively disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. By not really testing the veracity of claims and instead testing the likelihood of them, and reserving our research and thorough testing for claims that seem more likely.

Ya can’t prove a negative. Can’t nobody prove the non-eegsistence of the Flyin’ Spaghetti Monster!

The Achilles heel of BOP is that it’s a logical argument, but it’s applied to people, who behave much differently than logic. One thing I’ll always see floating around the Internet is sentiments like this: “I don’t believe in evolution, I accept the overwhelming scientific fact of evolution.”

I also see many atheists talking about the “claims of Christianity” or the “claims of God and His divine nature” and other things of that sort. But what these don’t take into account is that Christians do not truly believe that they are claiming anything. In essence, Christians and atheists are talking past each other because they have not agreed on a fundamental axiom.

Christians do not truly believe that they are claiming anything.

In much the same way as someone might feel that they are not “believing in evolution”, as pictured above, Christians do not particularly feel that they are “believing in God.” They believe that they are only accepting something that is already self-evident. Even the holy book says so: “For since the beginning of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen.” (Romans 1:20) This is the axiomatic difference between the atheist and the Christian: God is self-evident.

BOP, while a fantastic argument, does not resolve this axiomatic tension, and in many cases, as seen by atheists all over, ultimately fails. Maybe it would’ve worked with the very first person that ever claimed that there was a god, but by now, it’s something that people are born with, and something that they’re taught. It’s not to say that people are brainless automatons, but it is to say that your basic assumptions about the world affect and color how you debate these topics. This is crucial to understanding what belief is. The burden of proof argument, while valid, only works on someone who understands themselves to be making a claim that requires evidence, not on a person that believes themselves to be accepting evident fact. Understanding axioms is the first step to understanding belief, and the first step to being able to convince someone that maybe the emperor doesn’t have on any clothes at all.

Be sure to like, comment, share, and follow!