It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a coincidence

Jason’s post about conspiracies reminded me of several books that support Jason’s argument. 

The first book is How We Know What Isn’t so: the Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, by Thomas Gilovich (1991). Gilovich points to a number of experiments demonstrating that people strive to find order in the world where there is none.  We don’t find random distributions easy to process.  Rather, we allow our imaginations to run wild on randomness:

With hindsight it is always possible to spot the most anomalous features of the data and build a favorable statistical analysis around them.  However, if properly trained scientist (or simply a wise person) avoids doing so because he or she recognizes that constructing a statistical analysis retrospectively capitalizes too much on chance and renders the analysis meaningless. . . . unfortunately, the intuitive assessments of the average person are not bound by these constraints.

Here’s another good example of people finding order where there isn’t, on Mars.  

People are also “extraordinarily good at ad hoc explanations.” Our motives and fears ignite our imaginations:

Once a person has misidentified a random pattern as a “real” phenomenon, it will not exist as a puzzling, isolated fact about the world.  Rather, it is quickly explained and readily integrated into the person’s pre-existing theories and beliefs.  These theories, furthermore, then serve to bias the person’s evaluation of new information in such a way that the initial belief becomes solidly entrenched. . . . people cling tenaciously to their beliefs in

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Conspiring To Theorize

I've seen a couple of those independantly produced DVD "exposes" about the 9/11 disaster--you know, the ones attributing sinsister intent to the United States government, that, in fact, we "knew" and did nothing in order to promote subsequent insanity.  I've been taking these things with large grains of salt for…

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Teach secular morality in public schools

Silence implies acquiescence.

We live in a culture that is rife with moral controversy, but public education is largely silent with regard to many of these controversies.

In a Free Inquiry article titled “Wanted: Moral Education for Secular Children” (December 2006), Paul Kurtz asks why we aren’t doing a better job of stepping into the moral void to give our children a secular moral education:  “Secularists, humanists, and naturalists face a pivotal and deeply practical challenge: how to develop educational curricula and institutions that can provide moral guidelines for our children.”

Kurtz crowns pop culture as a prime contributor to the problem:

“banal and demeaning values often permeate the mass media: popular television, movies, music, radio, the Internet, and literature read by children. These values can herald violence, greed, vindictiveness, and immorality.”

Teaching children to be moral without reference to religion is easier said than done, of course.  Secular versions of morality conflict with many authoritarian versions of morality:

[The authoritarian tradition] holds that “deference to authority” is essential and stresses moral commandments that children simply need to accept and obey. The primary emphasis is on obedience to ancient creeds and codes. Second is the liberal tradition, which encourages young people to be responsible and to think for themselves. This approach stresses personal autonomy and freedom of thought. It is part of a new morality that has become influential since the Enlightenment: an effort to improve the lives of individuals in the current world.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to

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Scorched-Earth Politics

Greetings to the readers of Dangerous Intersection! My name is Adam Lee, though on the internet I usually go by Ebonmuse, and I’m the owner and proprietor of the weblog Daylight Atheism. Erich Vieth has given me the opportunity to write a guest post here, and I couldn’t turn down his generous offer.

As it happens, there is a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while. In particular, I was inspired by Michael Moore’s wonderful op-ed, A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives, which I came across from a recent post on this very site. Say what you will about Michael Moore – many people have – but his essay, to me, stands out for its compassionate and gracious tone. It contains no gloating over the Republicans’ defeat, no mocking them for their loss. On the contrary, it empathizes with them and assures them that they have nothing to fear.

Especially noteworthy, I thought, was this point:

We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

Now, the question: Does anyone believe for even a moment that, if the Republican party had won these elections, we would be hearing the same tune from their pundits and spokespeople? The answer, which I hope should be obvious to everyone, is: Of course not.

Had the Republicans won, they would be gloating to high heaven, mocking and ridiculing their …

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The “arrogant claim” of Sam Harris that the universe just happened “by chance”

Published here, you can read the ongoing lively debate between Sam Harris and Dennis Prager, who hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show. 

Here’s how Harris responded to the common claim that atheists are arrogant believers that everything “just happened”:

Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the extraordinary ironies of religious discourse can be seen in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other nonbelievers for their intellectual arrogance. You have done a fine job of this above. And yet, there is no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: The Creator of the Universe takes an active interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell…

An average believer has achieved a level of arrogance that is simply unimaginable in scientific discourse—and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists.

Prager argues here that God’s existence is proved by the alleged lack of moral fiber found in secular societies.

My argument is that unlike Judeo-Christian America, secular societies—generally meaning those of Western Europe—lose their will to survive (by not reproducing), and

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