User:DarkPenguin

Intro/Steve Milloy
I joined this site after coming across its Steve Milloy article and seeing that it failed to note Milloy's creationist sympathies. I added a section quoting his claim from 2007 that human evolution was "not likely to move beyond the stage of hypothesis or conjecture."

The full quote is provided and linked to in the article.

When asked:

"What's the real deal on evolution? Twenty years ago on "Cosmos," Carl Sagan said it wasn't a "theory" but a "law." My Christian friends tell me it's a theory shot full of errors. And my scientist friends tell me it's provable in the everyday world."

Milloy responded with:

"Explanations of human evolution are not likely to move beyond the stage of hypothesis or conjecture. There is no scientific way - i.e., no experiment or other means of reliable study - for explaining how humans developed. Without a valid scientific method for proving a hypothesis, no indisputable explanation can exist.

The process of evolution can be scientifically demonstrated in some lower life forms, but this is a far cry from explaining how humans developed.

That said, some sort of evolutionary process seems most likely in my opinion. But there will probably always be enough uncertainty in any explanation of human evolution to give critics plenty of room for doubt."

It's a form of the standard creationist ploy of accepting "microevolution" while denying "macroevolution". The former is often referred to by creationist as "change within kinds" (where "kinds" is used in the sense of the Biblical story of Noah) which they allow for, while denying the evolution of new species (often characterized contemptuously by creationists as "molecules to man" evolution).

That's a lot of ink spilled over an insignificant person, but I needed to write about something to get started here. I have no idea how active I may be here, but I will not write about Steve Milloy again. DarkPenguin (talk) 18:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The Semantics of Belief
As for myself, I describe myself as an atheist because I don't believe that gods exist, but I find the term "atheist" wanting. For one thing, the term is unnecessarily "theocentric"; my lack of a belief in deities is but one consequence of a rational, evidence based approach to things. It also leads me to reject the existence of Bigfoot, but I would never consider identifying myself in any context in terms of my non-belief in Bigfoot.

Another problem with the term is that it is often misinterpreted as being certain that there is no god, or of not being open to the possibility. However, being an atheist simply means that you don't believe in god, not that you are certain there is no god or closed to the possibility. Some prefer to identify as "agnostic" precisely because of this, since "agnostic" is popularly understood as the position that you don't know if there is or is not a god, which is seen as a less radical or more moderate alternative to atheism for those skeptical of theism.

But atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive (in fact neither are theism and agnosticism), a fact which even many highly intelligent skeptics are oblivious to. I have been frustrated more than a few times by well meaning people who are as skeptical of theism as me who say that they identify as agnostic because atheism is 'arrogant' because the only honest position is that we "just don't know". Well, the only honest position when it comes to the possibility of, say, present or past life on Mars is also "I don't know", but for some reason in that context people don't seem to have any difficulty in seeing how one can simultaneously be uncertain whether there is or was life on Mars yet not believe there is or was life on Mars.

Now, I'm not one to obsess on semantics, and there is some dispute on the matter of what exactly agnosticism is, but agnosticism is usually understood in philosophy not so much as the position that we don't know whether there is a god as it is that we can't know whether there is a god (neither of which is incompatible or mutually exclusive with atheism). In fact, whether or not we can know whether a proposed god exists or not depends entirely on how we define god. There are many very good reasons for not believing gods of the sort alleged to have written books for desert dwelling humans actually exist; to say "we just don't know" or "can't know" in the case of "the god of Abraham" is intellectually dishonest. We can be as certain that "Author Gods" who use humans as some sort of awkward writing utensils to write conveniently vague scriptures don't exist as we are of the non-existence of Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy.

If on the other hand, you have a pantheistic, impersonal notion of god, such as the idea that "the universe (i.e. in the sense of "all that exists") is god", than it's certain that the thing you are calling "god" exists (i.e. the universe exists), but there is no compelling or necessary reason to call it god. The pantheist impersonal god (hereafter "P.I.G.") is the inverse of the "Author Gods" in that there are arguably good reasons for considering the latter "gods" (omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.) but not for thinking they actually exist whereas the latter certainly exists but there are no good reasons for considering it "god".

So, the question is, what sort of being might actually exist that we could plausibly call "god"? I will address this issue to next time I log on here... DarkPenguin (talk) 18:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)