Hate Mail

Michael Miller, Page 3

[Editor's note: this one starts on a surprisingly audacious note: he tries to defend the idea of the appeal to authority! Naturally, he bases this on the isue of morality, even though I had already written extensively about the fallacy of the "divine moral authority" issue in this site. He then goes on to repeat his claim that his life was saved as an infant by the prayer instead of the surgery. However, you may be more interested in what is not in this message. Most of the previous post was taken up with very specific arguments on matters of scientific method, creation, and evolution, none of which are addressed in this post. The only one which survives is the Occam's Razor argument, which is one of his worst arguments and which he simply repeats without alteration, as if I had never written the rebuttal at all]

March 14, 2001:

I decided to get to heart of the debate here. After reading your last email I think I know what the debate is really about. As you said you have a problem with Authority.

I have a problem with appeals to authority. An argument is either logical or illogical. It is either based on valid information or it is based on unsupported speculation. You cannot validate or invalidate an argument by simply calling on an authority, unless you are willing to openly admit that you are irrational, and your position is irrational.

The argument has a simple thread, all right. You believe in irrational appeals to authority. I believe in the use of logic and observation. These are inherently irreconcilable approaches. However, since the scientific method is based on my approach, it is a foregone conclusion that evolution theory, which is based on my approach, is scientific, while creation theory, which is based on your approach, is not scientific.

That is your problem in a nutshell; you want to redefine science to permit the use of appeals to authority, but the scientific method absolutely prohibits such appeals. Therefore, it is a simple, outright lie for you to claim that creationism is scientific, or that evolution theory is unscientific.

You can't accept the fact that you are not the end all of your existance.

There you go, describing your unsupported belief as "fact". If it's a fact, then provide the evidence. If you have no evidence, then you cannot describe it as "fact".

You don't want to have to answer to anyone else.

I answer to the principles of humanist morality. I answer to the laws which are based on those principles. Principles which God himself refuses to answer to, because God is not moral. A moral person is one who holds himself accountable to the principles of morality, but God will not do that. Not only does he ignore humanist morality, but he won't even obey his own rules (eg. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" ... "I will kill everyone with a forty day flood"). By defining your ethical framework in terms of obedience and allegiance to this openly immoral authority rather than acceptance of the principles of morality, you are openly admitting that you do not obey morality. Instead, you support the principle of appeasement, which is to do whatever pleases the biggest, strongest military power.

You are holding your own self-interest above all else; you will do whatever you think pleases God, because you hope he will reward you after death and you fear that he will punish you if you don't do his bidding. Rather than doing things because they are moral, you do things in the hopes of receiving a reward someday. That is not morality. That is shallow self-interest, motivated by the same combination of fear and greed that drove Nazi collaborators in WW2 France. It is no more noble than the crowd of hangers-on who attach themselves to the biggest, meanest schoolyard bully in the hopes of gaining his favour and convincing him to smite their enemies.

[Editor's note: I think it is important to point out that morality is not about "answering" to anyone. If you know what is right and what is wrong, you will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and not because you're worried that somebody will come along and punish you otherwise. If your only basis of morality is fear of punishment, then you are not a moral person]

I believe I am more than that. I believe that I am not some random accident but the product of a Creator.

Again, you resort to the "I believe" argument, if it can even be called an "argument".

Being a random occurance means you don't have to answer to anyone, there is no foundation for what is right or wrong except for what you believe to be right or wrong. If someone thinks differently what right do you have to tell him how to behave and vice versa, if all we are is some random occurance?

Obviously, you didn't bother reading my article, because this exact bigoted attitude was described and criticized explicitly in that article (but thanks for demonstrating that I'm 100% right about the fact that you are an anti-atheist hate monger who would paint us all as immoral for the crime of not following your religious beliefs).

Humanist morality is the morality of human societies. Human rights and the good of human society are the motivating principles. These principles are agreed upon by international convention, and accepted by all civilized societies. I have thought about these principles, I understand them, and I obey them, which makes me a moral person. If someone such as you thinks differently, I can explain why he is wrong, because I can explain how his actions violate someone else's rights or harm society.

You, on the other hand, are incapable of explaining any of your moral positions except to say that your God says so. Because you are incapable of explaining any position without a fallacious appeal to authority, you are completely consumed by the mindset of the mindless appeal to authority and you can't understand how anyone else can function without it. You must learn to break free of the confines of your religious indoctrination and think for yourself.

In the end, the good of mankind is the root of humanist morality; to attack humanist morality is to argue that you do not believe in the good of mankind. This isn't surprising, since God does not believe in the good of mankind either; his stated intention is to butcher us all someday in a great cataclysm, murdering everyone but those who will obey him. That is not the attitude of an entity that cares about the good of mankind.

[Editor's note: ethics can be complicated, and disagreements on the finer points abound. However, like many other concepts, it is easier to define what it is not, as opposed to what it is. In other words, acts of evil are easy to identify, and one consistent thread throughout all acts of evil is a lack of sympathy for fellow human beings. Whether evil is motivated by religion, nationalism, or tribal hatred (eg. most wars), racism (eg. American importation of African slaves), greed (eg. murder or kidnapping for profit), mindless anger (eg. road rage), callous indifference or irresponsibility (eg. drunk drivers), or the desire of the coward to feel power over others (eg. wife and child abusers, serial killers, school shooters, and rapists), one common element is a failure to sympathize with the suffering of others.

So if the fundamentalists would compare humanist morality with God's morality, then we must retort by asking: does God sympathize with the suffering of others? If you have read the Bible, you will know that the answer is an emphatic no. He tortures and/or massacres men, women, and children repeatedly in the Old Testament, and even his "kinder, gentler" New Testament incarnation is still perfectly willing to sentence all nonbelievers to an eternity of suffering without mercy. Is that the behaviour of one who feels genuine sympathy for others? Absolutely not, therefore God (as envisioned by the fundamentalists) is evil. This is why many modern religious scholars have proposed the heretical notion that there is no Hell, because they cannot conceive of a merciful and righteous God being so cruel]

Christianity is the cause of sorrow and misery? Yes there were those who did many things in the name of Christianity but I can guarrantee that it was not true Christianity.

It most certainly was. They were following the Ten Commandments, and Moses' example. Or didn't you know that he slaughtered 3000 people immediately after being given the Ten Commandments, because they were not following God? Try reading Exodus sometime.

Moderate Christians (the nice guys who believe in God but don't try to ram it down other peoples' throats) are the ones who aren't following "true Christianity"; they are trying to improve upon it, because the original version was morally indefensible. I have known some very nice Christians in the past. They would never suggest that science teachers be forced to teach something which is grossly unscientific, or that everyone who doesn't follow Christianity must be immoral because they don't accept the "authority" of God.

Do you even know what true Christianity is?

Of course I do, because I've studied it from the dispassionate viewpoint of an observer rather than a mindless follower. You, on the other hand, refuse to examining its history or beliefs rationally, as you have so clearly demonstrated in this debate by insisting on appeals to authority.

You have appearently examined it through a thick haze of secularism.

You mean the "thick haze" of reason; something which inherently militates against mindless appeals to authority.

We all have our preconcieved ideas and assumptions which taint our interpretation of observations. Example: A study conducted (sorry I don't have a reference. That actually was not good of me but I didn't get to search for it yet. I had seen it and it is online somewhere) had results that sex between adults and children is not harmful but may actually be helpful.

What is this vague and probably faulty reference supposed to prove? That people can concoct bizarre interpretations if they are motivated enough, and irrational enough? You are already providing plenty of evidence to that effect, without having to call upon this study. Your interpretation of your own survival in the face of a serious heart defect is an excellent example.

School is an organ of the state? Are you kidding? The idea of schooling was a religious one first till the secular state took it over.

Yes, schools were once organs of religious indoctrination rather than secular education. I believe that era was known as the Dark Ages. You know, that period when all of your cherished notions about the union of state and church came true, and human rights were trampled underfoot by totalitarian Christian theocracies. Or as you probably think of it, the good old days.

[Editor's note: again, he mutilates history. There were schools in ancient Greece and Rome, long before the Christian church even existed. One can only wonder at the amazing arrogance of a man who would publicly claim that his religion is responsible for inventing the concept of schooling]

I should be thankful to science and doctors for they help me and not God? Your kidding right? You didn't read my story right? Maybe I didn't explain it properly. Science said I should have died. I was getting no blood to my lungs and I was like that for about a week or so. Science was gonna let me die, till my mother appealed to a higher Authority (God) and then they decided to do something else.

Wrong. Science never "said you should have died". The doctors gave you a poor chance of survival, but exercised every bit of their will and skill and knowledge to try to keep you alive. You survived the odds, thanks to your body's recuperative abilities and the efforts of those doctors. If you had died, then you mother would have simply said it was God's will. Since you survived, you think God saved you. Either way, it was pre-destined that God would somehow get credit. Pretty good deal for the church, but it doesn't really make any logical sense.

Actually I am quite grateful to the doctors for what they have done.

But you don't give them the credit they deserve, even though you would have died without them. Here's the problem with your thinking: it is absolutely guaranteed that you would have died without the doctors' intervention and multiple procedures. It is not guaranteed that you would have died without your mother's prayer. In fact, you have no evidence whatsoever that it would have made any difference at all. But you still credit God for your survival and spit on science even though God's contribution is unverifiable and the contribution of science is undeniable. That is ingratitude.

But I believe God interviened numerous times in my life.

There's your "I believe" argument again. It is my experience that Christians who speak of personal miracles tend to be the exact sort of right-wing fundamentalist that I describe in my bigotry page. Does it occur to you that most of the men who fought their way onto the bloody shores of Normandy prayed? It didn't stop the bullets, did it? Prayer has never been demonstrated to accomplish anything beyond the boundaries of the placebo effect. Mind you, the placebo effect can be surprisingly powerful, but it is hardly miraculous.

An echo showed that my one heart valve was leaking very badly and the pulmonary arteries were getting narrowed by quite a bit. I saw it. It was very bad. They ordered a heart catheterization to determine pressures and if anything else needed to be done, including narrowing and or blocking pulmonary arteries. After prayer the cath showed no blockage and an extremely small insignificant leak. Later echos I've had showed this too.

I've heard this exact type of "miracle testimony" many times before. The wording is invariably designed to compress the timeframe of events and exaggerate the changes in symptoms in order to make it sound like you were bleeding heavily one day, prayed that night, and were miraculously healed the next day. In reality, there was undoubtedly more than enough time for natural processes to cause this change. Any time someone interprets something as a miracle, he is assuming that it was scientifically impossible, and that is simply never the case in any recorded instance that I've ever heard of.

[Editor's note: note that he is deliberately circumspect about the time elapsed between the "echo", or echocardiogram, and the "cath", or cardiac catheterization. In his on-line account at tchin.org, he says that the echo was performed "in 1993", and that the cath was performed in "September 1993". So how much time elapsed between the echo and the cath? He doesn't say]

In your case, you had internal bleeding and narrowing of the pulmonary arteries. They did a test to see if you had a blockage. It turned out you didn't, and the internal bleeding was already lessening because you were slowly healing. Where's the miracle? Are you going to seriously suggest that this was scientifically impossible, so God must have intervened?

That was not a miracle. A "miracle" would be my Buffalo Bills winning the Super Bowl next year :)

I know what this may make you think but I also, at age 7 the night before my second surgery I believe I was visited by an angel. I always thought that it was in my head until my mother told the story about how a nurse walked in and ask my mother what happened. She described me as extremely peaceful and calm compared to what she usually sees in kids before a major procedure and she said that my face was literaly glowing. So I believe that there is something greater then us and there is a reason for us.

Self-fulfilling belief syndrome. You were happy and serene because you thought you'd been visited by an angel. You can "prove" you were really visited by an angel by pointing out that you were happy the next day. Apart from confirming to me that you've been undergoing religious indoctrination from a very young age (not a surprise), what is this supposed to prove?

Do you realize that I could say the exact same thing about Santa Claus? When I was 7, I was visited by Santa Claus. How do I know? Because there were toys under the tree, and I was filled with the most joyous feelings of love and happiness the next day. Why don't we see his workshop at the North Pole? Because he exists in Santa's kingdom, which is invisible to human eyes. How does he visit all of those houses despite a grossly inadequate timeframe? Miracles. Why don't adults believe in Santa any more? Because they've been blinded by secular propaganda. They even engage in outright fraud, telling us that they put the presents under the tree instead of Santa. It's almost as bad as scientists telling us that they can explain the universe better than the Bible can.

If you really want to believe in something, you'll find a way. But when there is no scientific evidence for it, then it's an irrational belief. Just admit it's irrational and groundless, and you'll at least be able to say that you're honest. Otherwise, you're lying to me and you're lying to yourself. There is religion, and there is reason. The two simply do not mix. At least Martin Luther, as psychopathic as he was, could be honest about his hatred for logic, and he didn't try to pretend that his religious beliefs had a rational basis.

So that is the theory of creation for me. It is all I need.

Of course, because you would rather not think rationally. If you want to believe that all of science is crap, that reason and observation are useless, and that God created the Earth in six days, then be my guest. But those are your beliefs, and they have no basis in science whatsoever. In a science class, it would be wrong to teach anything but what the scientific community has demonstrated, which is that the Earth is billions of years old and that life slowly evolved here.

And in refernce to Occam's Razor: saying God said it and it was so is a much simpler explaination then the whole theory of Evolution. Don't ya think?

Obviously, you are incapable of understanding Occam's Razor. I already explained how you were hopelessly wrong about its definition, and you failed to address that criticism, in favour of mindlesly repeating your original argument.

For the second time, Occam's Razor is used to decide between two scientific theories that both fit the facts. Creation theory is not a scientific theory, and it doesn't fit the facts. Therefore, Occam's Razor is irrelevant. Furthermore, Occam's Razor defines simplicity in terms of the complexity of the mechanism, not the verbal complexity of the explanation. Since creation theory relies on an unexplained supernatural mechanism (so complex that it is supposedly beyond our ability to comprehend), it is obviously not the theory with the simplest mechanism, is it?

Are you going to insist that I repeat this for a third time? When someone makes a point, you're supposed to address it rather than ignoring it and repeating the argument that he shot down.

See ya!
Mike
PS I forgot to mention in my last emails, you got a lovely family!

Thank you, but I would appreciate the sentiment more if you did not have the goal of corrupting schools so that they can become tools of religious indoctrination, to shove your religious beliefs down my sons' throats.

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