Daniel Goldman

Bill Nye, YHWH’s Pawn in Science Miscommunication?

By Leave a Comment

For 25 years, Bill Nye the Pseudo-Science Guy has been miseducating people on the nature of science. Is he simply ignorant? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Prologue: In order to help understand this discussion better, we suggest that our readers look through the following two papers on the philosophy of science and research methodology: “The Basics of Hypothesis Testing” and “Reforming Science.”

Bill Nye has benefited from a conflation between celebrity status and expertise. While people listen to him, because he is a celebrity, he has not earned his status, through extensive formal education or contribution to science. He has not published any scientific or philosophical papers, in either a peer reviewed journal or even any open publication database like OSF.

He has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. That is it. He is an inventor, and has contributed to exploration through his inventions, but this contribution would not grant him expert status, if not for him being a celebrity. And while science communication is very important, what he says is contrary to the very nature of scientific inquiry. He speaks of settled science, and various theories as if they were facts. He speaks of consensus among scientists, rather than consensus between theory and evidence.

Such positions take science and turn it into dogma, and he has been doing so for a quarter of a century. We need people who can promote the love of science. But why is his explanation of science so far off from the foundations of how it actually works? Is he simply ignorant of the philosophy of science and the mathematics behind it? Perhaps.

Or perhaps he is a pawn in YHWH’s evil plan. Creationists often reject evolution and other related theories, because they are just theories, and not proven fact. They compare theories of evolution to theories of gravity, thinking that gravity is proven true. It is not. No theory is proven true. All science is in a constant state of flux. But for that reason, it is never appropriate to reject a position, simply because it is not proven.

Bill Nye, and others like him, also have fought a war against religion. Their position on the topic is fairly unscientific in nature. But why would YHWH wish to fuel a war against religion? The answer could be “divide and conquer.” While we believe that YHWH wishes to be worshiped as a god, if he can keep people fighting with each other, it will make it easier to control them. The First Church of Penguinism seeks cooperation between science and religion, because it is through cooperation, rather than war, that we have the greatest chance of survival and prosperity.

And hopefully, over time, people will come to understand both science and religion, and we can peacefully coexist.

Further Reading

The post Bill Nye, YHWH’s Pawn in Science Miscommunication? appeared first on The First Church of Penguinism.

Why is YHWH Evil?

By Leave a Comment

Penguinism suggests that YHWH is evil, but this statement should be justified. Here I will use general concepts from western morality to argue this claim.

First, a universal objective morality may not exist, but we can still argue that something is or is not moral, within a given framework. In this case, it will be within a general moral framework commonly used by YHWH’s followers.

Punishment is at the core of this argument. When someone receives a punishment, it generally serves one of three purposes. The first is correction. We punish in order to correct negative behavior so that it does not happen again. The second is recompense. We punish to fix damages caused by the action. The third function of punishment is retribution.

Eye for an eye falls into this final version of punishment. But even in the case of retribution, which is essentially quite selfish, there is a sense that punishment should not be more severe than the transgression warrants. This form of punishment has been discussed extensively, and even finds its way into the Talmud (Eye for an Eye).

Human limits prevent us from being able to influence reality in a way that is infinite in nature. Humans are finite beings, at least according to Christian doctrine itself. Only god is infinite, or so it is said. Therefore any transgression committed by a human must be finite, unless aided by an infinite being, like a god.

Eternal punishment, in the form of hell, becomes a punishment that violates our norms of what constitutes equitable punishment. Furthermore, it is also definitely not corrective, as it is eternal. It is pure retribution. It is reasonable to assume that a being which tries to enforce such punishment is either ignorant of it severity, unable to refrain from such action, or is willfully punishing people in a way that is wrong.

YHWH is evil, or at least a false god, because it threatens to engage in punishment that is far more severe than the transgression, and does so without any attempt to make the punishment corrective. Of course, this only works for biblical interpretation where YHWH does exist and in which YHWH is truly threatening people to eternal damnation.

Further Reading

The post Why is YHWH Evil? appeared first on The First Church of Penguinism.

Penguinism and Atheism

By Leave a Comment

In this post, I will talk about Penguinism and atheism and why many Penguinists do not hold a position in either direction regarding a god’s existence.

I have come across many theists and atheists alike who seem to think that if you don’t believe a god exists, then you must believe that there are no gods. Penguinism teaches us that neither Sq’wak, The Divine Penguin, nor YHWH, the evil usurper, are gods. They are both natural entities. A god, in general, must be above/beyond natural order. And Penguinism itself holds no position on the matter.

But only claims of existence suffer burden of proof! Unfortunately that is not the case. Both claims of existence and claims of nonexistence suffer burden of proof. I won’t go into too much detail here, because I have addressed the issue in depth elsewhere. However, ideas like “you can’t prove a negative” are not valid rebuttals that can be used to avoid suffering burden of proof.

But aren’t gods impossible? It is a common belief that a god is impossible, because a being cannot be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, as assuming any two of those omnis leads to the third omni being false. However, there are a number of issues with this view, and these issues make the “hypothesis” in works like “The God Delusion” straw man arguments.

The simplest issue is that a god does not have to follow strict omnis. A lot of theists believe that god can only do that which is consistent with its nature. It cannot therefore create a box that it cannot lift. Likewise, a lot of theists believe that a god can only know that which can be known. A god which knows all possible outcomes, and their probabilities, but not which outcome will be realized, is still for all intents and purposes, is omniscient.

The second issue is more complicated. Strict omnipotence is internally inconsistent. A strict omnipotent being could do something which is impossible to do. Yet most arguments used to attack god claims assume that strict omnipotence is a property that something could have. Similar issues exist with the other two strict omnis. The moment we assume, for the sake of argument, that any one of these properties can indeed be a property of something which is real, we have to relax consistency.

This issue gets into one of my areas of interests, nonstandard mathematics. One field of nonstandard mathematics is inconsistent math. In this field, we no longer assume that every theorem is consistent: some theorems can be both true and false at the same time. There are a number of good articles covering inconsistent mathematics. Here is one. The point is that, for inconsistent theorems, we can no longer use proof by contradiction. So omnipotence leading to a lack of omniscience does not necessarily present a problem: we could be dealing with a bizarre reality where something can be omniscient and not omniscient at the same time.

But isn’t god evil? This is another interesting point. A god which allows suffering is not immediately evil. For one, a god may not be able to prevent suffering, or might not be able to do so without costing something even more important. For instance, it may be less benevolent to never allow existence in the first place, than allow existence where suffering could occur.

There are exceptions. The actions of YHWH, as discussed in The Basics of Penguinism, are evil. Why? YHWH seeks to punish those who do not obey, for all eternity. A punishment, for it to be good, must serve a corrective purpose, otherwise it’s just an act of revenge. A punishment also should not be more severe than the transgression. Eternal punishment cannot serve a corrective function, as it is eternal. Human actions are also seemingly finite, and so the punishment is well beyond the severity of the transgression. A being that willfully and knowingly issues such punishment is reasonably considered evil.

Summary. So in summary, Penguinism is not a theistic religion, nor does it assert that there are no gods. There may be a god, such as “El” but Penguinists just don’t generally hold a position in either direction.

The post Penguinism and Atheism appeared first on The First Church of Penguinism.