First and foremost, I would like to thank Mitchell for being an absolute champ in filling the void while I was AWOL.  Despite our obvious need for new contributors (whom we will ALWAYS be happy to hire), Mitchell did a good job keeping our site afloat with new content!

There are many things I’ve learnt throughout my absence per se, the first being that life can be unrelentingly unfair.  Theologians and apostles can often find comfort in the belief that our lives, and indeed the world itself is governed by some divine formula culminating in– by my understanding– an apocalypse somehow orchestrated for our benefit.  As an atheist, I find the image silly. As someone who has seen his sister undergo five separate cancer-related surgeries, I find it vulgar.  The overall point (and one which I’ll probably elaborate on in the not-so-distant future) stands that were human suffering part of an omnipotent being’s master plan, that realization alone would be reason to rebel (were it sane to rebel against an imaginary character).

Another thing I’ve learnt is that despite the overwhelming stress one can face in life, to back away or otherwise neglect one’s own projects (as I, admittedly, have), you end up losing your only source for normalcy.  This, above all else, is a mistake I’ve learnt never again to repeat.   While it certainly hasn’t held much time in the spotlight (yet), Lintbox is a pride and dedication of mine I’m not soon planning to turn my back on.

To avoid any more fluff, I’m back, and back I shall stay…  But that’s not all there is to say.

While updates haven’t necessarily been flooding in over the past several months, the aim to expand Lintbox is as strong as ever, which brings me to an announcement:

We’ve recently provided new special features for the site, namely the Panel Discussions (which, though delayed, will receive a new submission tomorrow), there’s an entirely new, exciting special feature to keep an eye out for:  Skepticles.

“But what is/are Skepticles” you may ask?  Skepticles is an idea I’ve been toying with since Lintbox’s conception; A weekly/biweekly-updated comic strip featuring a Skepticism and/or Scientific focus.  Though I’ve already spoilt the surprise, I won’t divulge any more details until the coming updates!

And so, be on the lookout for updates as they should now be much more frequent, and thanks for sticking around throughout the dark patches!

-Paul

Rallies are a good way of drawing attention to issues, but in order for them to be effective, the people first need to know what the issues are. The meaningless charts and statistics in the UTSU fliers are meant to make it look like the students are getting ripped off, but very few people are aware of the actual budgetary situations faced by both the government and the universities. Education funding is not a simple issue, and student politicians do everybody a disservice when they try and pretend that it is. Critical thinking is not just about science and pseudo-science, but also applies to your day-to-day life. The next time somebody hands you a flier and tells you to join their cause, take a moment to ask them why they think their cause is important; if they aren’t able to give you a satisfactory answer, then maybe you should take their claims with a grain of salt. The burden of proof is on them to convince you of their position. The worst that can happen is that you become more informed.

I say “for the most part”, because the article’s headline and the picture captions (undoubtedly not written by the author) trumpet this discovery as “‘Proof’ David slew Goliath”; the implication being that this discovery verifies the biblical tale of David and Goliath. Needless to say, even verified high resolution video footage of King David’s existence would not be enough evidence to validate his heroic biblical feats. Yet another example of a perfectly good article ruined by a sensationalist headline.

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• Dailymail.co.uk: ‘Proof’ David slew Goliath found as Israeli archaeologists unearth ‘oldest ever Hebrew text’

Link: http://stopsylvia.com

I would highly recommend coming out to this event if you’re in the area. It only costs $5 for students if you pre-order or your tickets. More information can be found below:

The War Between Science and Religion

Toronto, Ont. (October 10, 2008)—The University of Toronto Secular Alliance, in coordination with the Centre for Inquiry-Ontario, will present “Science Education: The War Between Science and Religion” with Dr. Paul Z. Myers, PhD, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 31 at the University of Toronto’s McLeod Auditorium, 1 King’s College Circle. A catered reception with the speaker will precede the event from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m at 216 Beverley St.

In America schools are fighting to keep evolution in their science curriculum while others are fighting to keep the religious movement of creationism out of their schools. This isn’t a fight happening only in America. In Alberta schools are facing the same fight. Here in Ontario we have catholic schools that are funded by the public. The publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario frequently deny access to their schools to non-Catholic students, while we all pay for the schools to function. In fact funding to keep these separate school systems amounts to $200 million dollars for secondary schools alone.

Dr. PZ Myers has been a longtime critic of intelligent design in acedemia, and has written extensively on the topic on his popular website and weblog (http://www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula) devoted to scientific research of biology (specifically cephalopods), and criticism of religion and creationism. Earlier this year Dr. Myers was accused by the Catholic League of Anti-Catholic Bigotry, after he publicly criticized those who had sent death threats and hate mail to a young man who took a communion wafer back to his seat and didn’t consume it in traditional catholic behaviour. Dr. Myers job was threatened as the Catholic League asked the University of Minnesota to take legal action against his discrimination and anti-religious sentiments of the Catholic church. Dr. Myers has shown other signed of religious discrimination on his blog by ripping out pages of the Q’uran and throwing them in the garbage with “old coffee grins and banana peels”. Thankfully the school dismissed the call for action by stating that their faculty is allowed to express themselves however they see fit.

The Center For Inquiry Canada welcomes Dr. Myers October 31 for a presentation on the intersection of religion and science within education.

About the speaker:

Dr. Paul Z Myers, PhD is a professor of biology at The University of Minnesota, Morris campus. He works with zebra fish in the department of evolutionary developmental biology. His blog, Pharyngula is the most widely read science and atheism blog on the Internet. He is a self-avowed godless liberal and as such is one of the most vocal skeptics on all forms of religion, pseudoscience and superstition.

The Center For Inquiry Canada is devoted to the promotion of freedom of inquiry and expression in all human endeavors and as such this presentation is part of their ongoing Freedom of Expression Campaign which will host other such events such as a series of authors in November and December and a multi-faith panel on religion early next year. Please visit cfiontario.org for more information on these events. It was established in January 2007 as the premiere Canadian branch of CFI and as the nation’s first dedicated meeting and event space for humanists and freethinkers. The Centre for Inquiry-Canada is located in downtown Toronto, directly across College Street from the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.

For more information on the event and to arrange an interview with Dr. Myers, contact Katie Kish at (647) 267-5780.

Today, President Bush gave an eight-minute speech on the economy, which was meant to reassure the markets. “This is an anxious time,” said Bush. “But the American people can be confident in our economic future.” However, ABC News notes that during those eight minutes, the Dow Jones dropped another 107 points. The Dow was down 78.70 at the beginning of Bush’s address, but at 185.66 by the end.

Correlation occurs between two variables when there is a strong relationship between A and B, such that when A changes, B also changes. The tendency for most people is to assume that since there is a correlation between A and B, A must cause B. However, as anybody with high school statistics could tell you, it is a mistake to assume a causal relationship because of a correlation. It might be the case that A causes B, but it could also be the case that B causes A, or even the third possibility that there is some variable, C, that is causing the change in both A and B. Because of the number of possibilities, we cannot draw a conclusion about probable causation with the observation of a single correlative study.

In this case, we have good reason to assume that the causal relationship is incorrect. By the time Bush had made his address, the stock markets had already been losing value at a steady rate for weeks. Furthermore, he made his address specifically to address the financial crisis. In this case, it would seem that the most reasonable assumption to make would be that there is a third variable (or group of variables) that caused both the stock market to fall, and Bush’s speech.

This post’s author may or may not have been serious about the argument, but I have seen similar arguments made regularly enough to know that many people do not understand the difference between correlation and causation. I hope that the next time you hear somebody make an argument like this, you will recognize that it is incorrect, and demand more proof before accepting a causal relationship.

I describe myself as an atheist. This means that I do not believe in a god. The definition isn’t confusing to me, because I already know what my beliefs are. The problem arises when I try to explain my beliefs to others. My beliefs can be legitimately described as either atheism or agnosticism; however, these terms both have dual meanings. This leads to some confusion when I tell other people that I am an atheist.

Atheism

There are two common definitions of atheism:

1. Lack of belief in a god.
2. The belief that god does not exist.

As I stated above, I subscribe to the first of the two beliefs. Though it is not obvious at first, there is a subtle distinction between the two definitions¹. Whereas definition number one refuses to accept the god hypothesis², definition two actively claims that the god hypothesis is wrong. The second definition is problematic, because it leads to the problematic situation of trying to prove a negative.

When I say that I do not believe in a god, I mean that the hypothesis “there is a god” is at odds with all known evidence, and therefore I do not think that there is enough evidence to accept the hypothesis. I am not making an existential claim about a supernatural entity, just like I don’t claim that unicorns and faeries don’t exist. It is merely the case that I have yet to be presented with compelling evidence to cause me to believe in the existence of a god. It is true that there are certain logical inconsistencies with the idea of divine, benevolent, and omnipotent supernatural being, but I don’t usually worry about such things in my day-to-day beliefs.

The second definition is one that no self-respecting atheist subscribes to, but one that is often used to describe atheist beliefs. This definition tacitly accepts that there are grounds for believing in the hypothesis “there is a god”, and goes on to state that the atheist knows that God does not exist. This definition is doubly problematic; both in assuming that there is validity to the claim “there is a god”, and in asserting that atheists have some proof or evidence as to why the hypothesis is wrong.

This belief would be dogmatic, because the idea of proving a negative is inconsistent with the rules of empiricism. Empirical evidence, and inductive reasoning, only allows us to think in terms of probabilities — as opposed to absolutes. We know that there’s a very good chance that both the sun will rise tomorrow, and that when we drop something, it will fall to the ground. However, we can never know these things absolutely, as all it would take is one example contrary to the rule in order to disprove the rule. In reality, the probability of something falling upwards when we drop it are very low (almost indistinguishable from zero), and so we say: “I know that when I drop this pen, it will fall to the ground.” The same is true with our belief about a god; whereas we do not know with certainty that there is no god, we do know that given the evidence (i.e. none) it is incredibly unlikely. Thus leading to the legitimacy of the phrase “there is no God” — it might not literally represent what an atheist actually believes, but it is consistent with the colloquial usage of the phrase “there is no ___.”

Agnosticism

Like atheism, there are two common definitions of agnosticism:

1. The belief that God is not part of the realm of empirical evidence, and therefore unknowable.
2. The belief that we might discover a God, but we have yet to find any evidence.

I, like many other atheists, subscribe to the first of these two definitions. Recognizing that science and empirical inquiry can only ever reveal facts about our physical world, any supernatural hypothesis like a god will always be sliced away by Occam’s razor. We have found a natural explanation for everything so far, and there’s nothing to suggest that the trend won’t continue into the foreseeable future. Coupled with the historical fact that all things that have been attributed to one or more gods in the past, have since been shown to have natural explanations, the first type of agnostic realizes that God simply has no place in modern scientific thought.

Many people use the first definition of agnosticism as a stand-in for describing themselves as atheists in order to avoid the above-mentioned ambiguity in the definition of atheism. There’s nothing wrong with this; however, I find that it has the undesired side effect of substituting one ambiguity for another. This leads us to the second definition of agnosticism.

The second definition is entirely different from the first. Whereas the first definition is characteristic of atheism, the second definition is characteristic of somebody who wants to believe, and is just looking for an excuse to do so. The second type of agnostics are usually religious people in the middle of a crisis of faith, or people who were raised without strong religious beliefs, yet hunger to be told that there’s some greater power in the universe. Neither of these people are skeptics, though some of them might be headed in the right direction. By choosing agnostic over atheist, you risk being labeled as a person on a spiritual quest, as opposed to being a person who simply does not believe in a god.

What does this all mean? Probably that whenever I tell somebody that I’m an atheist, it will still have to be followed up with a 5-10 minute conversation as to what that really means. Not that I really mind.