The Lexicon of Believers

First off, science is NOT a belief system. One doesn't nor needn't accept the Theory of Gravity or the Germ Theory of Disease on Faith.

“Without a lexicon of all knowledge, you have no basis to make any kind of truth assertions.”

“Well, see… the thing is, you don’t have the complete lexicon of all knowledge, so actually, you can’t make an opinion or an assertion on anything.”

“Faith is easy to prove. You exercise it every day. Have you ever flown on an airplane?” 

“No, what I’m sitting here saying is until you have a complete lexicon of all knowledge you can’t assert that anything is true, because…”

From the mouths of ‘Believers’, we learn that the lexicon – the vocabulary, the word choice – is vitally important. Just as one must be aware of the technical connotation for ‘believe’ and ‘faith’, when talking with theists, it’s essential to avoid language which might infer agency. For example, saying that the sun and moon ‘obey the natural laws’ is problematic because the ‘Believer’ will think that ‘to obey’ infers a master; a god, and ‘natural laws’ then infers a law-giver; again, god. It would be better to say that the movement of the sun and the moon are determined by the natural properties which brought them into existence.

In that same vein, the word ‘create’ implies ‘Creator’ to the ‘Believer’. Any talk of the ‘creation of the universe’ induces the ‘Believer’ to assert that a Creator must be involved proposing with certainty such nonsequitous examples as; 'a painting has a painter; a watch has a watch-maker, a building has a builder'. 

Speaking of Life, the Believer nearly, invariably conflates cosmology with biology. In his mind, life on earth springs from the same source as the cosmos and in a similar way. The notion of ‘abiogenesis’ immediately reverts (for the Believer) to the book of Genesis when the kit and caboodle came about over the course of a short week after a magic incantation was spoken by the Creator-deity. 

To the Believer, life, the cosmos and the order thereof is all done with divine intention. This substantiates the Creator/Creation argument addressed above. This false concept lies at the root of the ‘Believer’s’ difficulty in understanding evolution. They intuit that there was a ‘prime mover’ who at the least, set evolution into motion. BTW, cosmological arguments will always revert to ‘first cause’. Fore-warned is fore-armed.

Another dog-legged bolt in the quiver of ‘Believers’ is the ‘Fine Tuning’ argument whereby they assert that ‘god’ made the universe for us specifically. If the reader is unfamiliar with this argument from the ‘Intelligent Design’, feel free to google it and take two aspirins before reading on.

The ‘Fine Tuning Argument’ is handled by Douglas Adam’s puddle analogy from ‘A Salmon of Doubt’. It addresses the Fine-Tuning’ notion that the universe was made to accommodate us homo sapiens. (Nota bene: Most often, ‘Believers’ will fail to grasp that it undermines their specious argument.)

‘This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in; an interesting hole I find myself in. In fact, it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it.”  This is a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky, as the air heats up and gradually the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything is going to be alright because this world was meant to have him in it. It was built to have him in it. So, the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this is something we need to be on the watch-out for.’

Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes (two published apologists) offers this rationalization on why this analogy should fail to sway or influence ‘Believers’.

‘Consider more closely the puddle’s reasoning. Let’s name our puddle, Doug. He has noticed a precise match between two things: 1) his shape and 2) the shape of the hole in which he lives. Doug is amazed! What Doug doesn’t know is that, given A) the fluidity of water, B) the solidity of the hole, and C) the constant downward force of gravity, he will always take the same shape as his hole. If the hole had been different, his shape would adjust to match it.’

Their attempt to debunk Adams’ analogy fails. It fails because the two who attempted to debunk the analogy fail to establish that another universe with different properties of fluid dynamics is possible or likely or would in any way effect the puddle/hole dynamic other than represented in the analogy. 

Point of fact, having another universe isn’t even necessary to undermine the analogy; a different puddle/hole dynamic would be observed on any other planetary body of the solar system as it – the puddle/hole dynamic - is dependent on the gravity, density of the planetary body, the possibility of liquid of any kind, atmospheric pressure and whether or not there is ‘air’ which would warm throughout a ‘day’!

Adams made a wonderful point with his earthly puddle. Does it disprove ‘fine tuning’? NO. Analogies are never required or expected to do the heavy lifting of being the crux of an argument. (It’s a bit like calling the game because the mascot’s costume was torn.)

Another side note: Apologist are forever inventing brand-new ways of being ironic. How do apologist support ‘Fine Tuning’ and Intelligent Design and at the same time hold as True the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, Exile in Babylonia, the Exile (and enslavement) in Egypt, the 40 years in the desert, Sodom & Gomorrah and the entire Jesus story? Massive cognitive dissonance, that’s how. Notice that all of these ‘finely tuned’ and ‘intelligently designed’ events were either total fuck ups or ragged responses to despicable circumstances. 

To wit: World kind of gone sour? 
Flood the place and kill everything.

Good plan! Clean, efficient, focused, ethical. LOL!

Once again, the ‘Believers’ come with a quiver full of ‘intention’. Where there is intention – in their addled pate - there is a prime mover with intention; a ‘divine one’. With that ‘divine intention’ comes the old saw about ‘working in mysterious ways’, the ineffable plan, infinite inerrancy, uber-ethicality and doing shit way above our pay-grade and beyond our comprehension. 

However, there is no evident intention to the formation of the universe or for life to form on this small iron-cored rock in an inconsequential star system in a non-descript spiral galaxy. No hand or finger of ‘god’; no ‘breath of life’ stirring a man of mud to be father of humankind. No talking snake, No magic fruit trees in a magic garden. Not really much of anything substantive at all in the ‘Wholly Bobble’ as far as verisimilitude goes. Ne’er mind evidence of Moses or Aaron or Abraham or Adam or god.  

The Hubble and the Webb space telescopes have shown that there are trillions – TRILLIONS - of galaxies each having billions of stars and further trillions of planets. It must be remarked that these two astounding kits of technology (Hubble and Webb) do not reveal every single galaxy, star or planet to us on earth. That is; the trillions upon trillions of now visible stars and star systems are not the sum total in the universe in which we find ourselves (much like Adam’s sentient puddle)

Time for a bit of science…

The earth formed from debris about 4.5 BILLION years ago (4, 500,000,000); the human species (homo sapiens) didn’t appear until about 150,000 years ago (give or take). That means for almost the entirety of the earth’s existence, humans were absent and more than likely unable to exist on the planet –even after it had formed in a solid.  If this place was made for us, it had almost 4.5 Billion years of renovation to undergo before it was habitable by our species.

Compared to this single series of facts alone, the Wholly Bobble cannot provide even circumstantial evidence of a ‘god’. The circumstances of our existence do not include a ‘designer/creator’. That entity is NOT part of the circumstances and thus any argument that introduces such an entity is dealing with circumstances that do not evidently exist. (As if investigators would provide circumstantial evidence inculpating the butler but never establishing that the butler was there or even existed. Tantamount to blaming a baby for a murder (or a symphony!) that occurred before the baby’s birth. Ludicrous!)

Only a ‘Believer’ would stand by their ‘Faith’ and assert the immeasurable universe was ‘created’ just for us. 

For more on the ludicrous lexicon of ‘Believers’, be on the look out for the forthcoming ‘Word Tics’ and ‘The Atheist Experience Quotes’.