Weight Loss Progress: 159.5/163

Well, today the scale is telling me my weight is 159.5 lbs (72.3 kg).  Here’s the graph:

That’s 3.5 lbs (1.6 kg) less than last week, which is a relative large change in weight for a single week.  However, I’m a bit skeptical that I actually lost this much weight: my weight loss, although trending down, proceeds along a path with peaks and valleys.  My Monday morning weigh-in is sensitive to the vagaries of my diet on Sunday, so we’ll have to see what the scale tells me next week to be sure of anything.

My BMI is 21.6.  That puts me in the normal weight category.

I said that 160 lbs (72.6 kg) was my goal weight, and that when I reached my goal, I would begin pumping iron in earnest.  This week at the gym, I’ll cut back a little on the cardio, in order to budget extra time for strength training.

Who Is A Christian?

David Heddle presents a Venn diagram of the demarcation that St. Augustine made between those who identify as Christian, and those who are really Christian.  There are several problems with Heddle’s analysis.

The diagram names two overlapping sets, the “visible church” and the “invisible church,” but it doesn’t tell us anything about the universal set.   Does the “invisible church” include people who aren’t Christian?  Heddle defines “invisible church” as the set of people “who have been redeemed,” but he doesn’t specify what that means, nor does he say who decides.  However, without providing a method for us to determine who is in each set, the demarcation becomes arbitrary, and thus the diagram isn’t very useful.

After presenting the diagram using Augustine's formulation, Heddle goes on to say:

We can extend this using some modern internet terminology. "Self-Identified Christians" and True Christians™. The little trademark symbol is used in a pejorative manner—atheists will tack it on to mock the notion that only some Christians are legitimate. It is used as a tiny symbolic form of the "No True Scotsman fallacy" charge.

But the introduction of atheists here is a red herring, intended to deflect attention away from the fact that it is Christians themselves who disagree about who is a True Christian.  The problem is that, unlike science, religion doesn’t have a methodology for arbitrating among competing claims.  Invoking theology or scriptural interpretation only defers the problem, because Christians do not agree about whose theology is correct.  As  Grace Hopper said:

"The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

So it hardly seems necessary to drag atheists into a debate about who is a Christian, since Christians actively debate the issue, as Heddle himself admits.  Those of us who aren’t Christian can only sit on the sidelines while the skirmish among Christians plays out. Instead of inserting ourselves into endless theological debates, the pragmatic course is to simply refer to as “Christian” anyone who identifies as such.  Whether a person is a “legitimate” Christian is not a useful distinction (to those of us not steeped in theological esoterica, anyway), since there’s no empirical way to decide the matter; a golden crown this is not.

But this explanation of the pragmatic reasons why atheists don’t make a distinction among different Christian sects, each of which claims to be the only authentic one, most likely will not satisfy Heddle, who gives a different explanation:

That is, they self-righteously make no distinction between those who claim to be Christians and those who have a saving faith. Whether this is out of actual ignorance or feigned ignorance for convenience I can't say—but I suspect mostly the latter. For it allows them to say: Fred Phelps claims to be a Christian, who am I to say he is not? As far as I'm concerned he just as much a Christian as anyone else. But atheists read the bible, they know that a Christian is to be judged by his fruit—so neither we nor they are at the mercy of accepting someone's word.

But it’s not proper to single out atheists here, since the set of people who “make no distinction” about such claims could include just about anyone (including other Christians!).  Distinctions are made by human observers, to serve human purposes.  They do not exist in some Platonic realm, like ripe fruit ready to be plucked from the tree.   If atheists don’t make the same distinctions about Christians that Heddle does, it’s because they don’t find those distinctions to be useful.  There is nothing “self-righteous” about this.

Consider a different example.  I’ve been reading Physics as a Liberal Art, by James Trefil, about the history of science.  Trefil notes that Aristotelians explained the motion of a projectile by making a distinction between “violent” motion that causes the object to go up, and “natural” motion, that makes the object go down, as the violent motion weakens.  But with the birth of the scientific revolution, these categories of motion were swept aside by the work of Newton:

We have already discussed one of these resolutions -- the solution of the problem of natural versus violent motion. We saw that the "solution" to this problem found by Galileo didn't really "solve" the problem at all. We still can't say when a projectile motion stops being "violent" and starts being "natural." What we can say is that the categories "natural" and "violent" have nothing to do with the motion of real particles in the real world. The attempt to impose these categories on projectile motion resulted in an impossible problem. Instead of asking "How does a projectile move?" scientists have been trying to classify projectile motion and were making very little progress in doing so. What the scientific revolution did was to dispose of the old categories and to ask the correct questions.

It was impossible to determine when one kind of motion stops and the other kind of motion starts, so the distinction between violent and natural motion was not useful.  It did not provide any traction for solving the problem projectile motion, and so it was discarded.

Does this sound familiar?  Atheists don’t make a distinction between “self-identified” Christians and “true” Christians, because it is impossible to determine to which category a putative Christian belongs.  Trefil continues:

After all, we really aren't so much interested in developing philosophical categories for phenomena in the world as we are in trying to develop an understanding of the basic laws the govern them. The tremendous success of the scientific method in the time since Newton is a testimony to how far the human mind can go when it is freed from false categories.

Atheists aren’t “self-righteous” or “ignorant,” they’re just freed from false categories.  Heddle’s categories about who is a real Christian aren’t practical, because there’s no way to make such as distinction.  “Those who have a saving faith” does not name an observable class of events.  So, for atheists, that leaves only a single equivalence class, “those who claim to be Christians.”

Heddle uses Fred Phelps as an example of someone who claims to be a Christian, but isn’t really one.  Now Heddle knows that if he denies that Phelps is a Christian, he will be accused by atheists of committing the "No true Scotsman" fallacy, but he doesn’t explain why the fallacy doesn’t apply.  Why isn’t Phelps a Christian?  Heddle does not say.  All he does say is that atheists will accuse him of committing the fallacy (another red herring).  But again, atheists have no way to adjudicate between Phelps’ own claim that he is a true Christian and Heddle's claim that Phelps is not. This has nothing to with "actual or feigned ignorance" but with the simple fact that theistic claims lack a methodology for arbitrating between competing claims.

The SBC does have a statement about Phelps, saying that:

We share concern over the unbiblical views and offensive tactics of Fred Phelps and his followers. His church is not in any way affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, and his extreme position not only stands in contrast to ours, more importantly they stand in contrast to God's Word. God has stated clearly in His Word that homosexual behavior is sinful, but He also clearly states His love for sinners, including homosexuals, and that He offers forgiveness through Jesus Christ for all who repent and place their faith in Him.

But even the SBC doesn't go so far as to say that Phelps is not a Christian. So which is it?  Atheists (and other secularists) have concerns about the “offensive tactics” of Fred Phelps too, so why does Heddle single out atheists?

Does Heddle believe that homosexual behavior is sinful?  Does he believe that homosexuals are sinners?  Would he welcome homosexuals as members of his local church?  Does he believe that homosexuals should have full equality under America law?  Is there anything that Heddle thinks homosexuals should do differently from what they’re doing now?  (One can easily imagine what Fred Phelps would say, but I’d like know where Heddle himself stands on the issue of homosexuality.)

It would have been better if Heddle had simply said that he doesn’t agree with Phelps, or doesn’t think that Phelps’s behavior is very Christian, and then stopped there.  But no, he has to use this as way to say bad things about atheists.  Oh, well, turn the other cheek and all that.  He does something nice about one atheist, however:

Not all internet atheists are so silly. Jason Rosenhouse once gave an example that I have used many times since. He argued something along the lines of this: if someone claims I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus. And I believe in Elvis. And I believe Elvis is Jesus then it would make no sense to accept his claim of legitimate Christianity. Bravo Jason.

But Heddle is knocking down a straw man here.  No one is arguing that people who claim to be Christian, but who also believe Elvis Presley is Jesus of Nazareth, are legitimate Christians.  (We all agree they’re probably crazy.)  What is being argued is whether people who merely claim to be Christian are actually Christian.  Atheists argue, given no practical alternative for deciding otherwise (certainly none was given by Heddle), that they are.

Heddle now attempts to identify by example who is not a true Christian:

The fascinating groups are those who, on either side, fall outside the intersection. The Self-Identified Christians who are not True Christians™ come in at least two groups: the charlatans and the self-delusional. Where is Benny Hinn? My guess: in the charlatan category. Where is Fred Phelps? My guess: in the self-delusional category. Based on his fruit I judge him, as commanded, this way: that unless, someday, he is truly regenerated he'll one day hear those frightful words: I never knew you. Of course my judgment doesn't count for squat--it only means that I refuse to accept Fred Phelps as a Christian. The point is: I am supposed to judge--I am am supposed to withhold the holy from dogs.

Heddle hedges a bit: he guesses that Benny Hinn is a charlatan, he guesses that Phelps is self-delusional.  But knowing what Heddle thinks doesn’t help us, as outside observers, since Hinn and Phelps would simply argue that they are Christian.  Again, what does this internecine battle between different Calvinist sects have to do with atheists? 

(Heddle judges a man by his fruits.  But that argument could be turned against Heddle himself.  He used the example of Fred Phelps as an opportunity to disparage atheists, who have nothing to do with theological debates among Southern Baptists.  If we were to judge Heddle by his own fruits, one might conclude that he’s not  Christian either. Memo to David: God made atheists too.)

But the most bizarre category distinction Heddle makes is that there are people who don’t claim to be Christian, but who are Christian anyway.  This is sort of like saying that, even if you don’t hold a French passport, don’t identify as French, or have never even heard of France, you really are French!  He explains it this way:

On the other side are equally fascinating people: True Christians™ who are not Self-Identified Christians. We have reason to be hopeful that this includes dead infants and the mentally handicapped. I personally believe it also includes people who have not heard the gospel but who have been evangelized by creation. And people who have been mislead. In any event, the bottom line: it can include anyone God wants it to include.

Heddle says this (probably) includes infants and mentally handicapped, but how wide do you cast your net?  What about Hindus or Buddhists?  Judaists or Catholics?  Atheists?  He states no rules for deciding who are members of the equivalence class.

He also “personally believes” that the set of actual Christians includes “people who have not heard the gospel but have been evangelized by creation,” but he gives no reasons for why he believes it.  (What does “evangelized by creation” even mean?)  The equivalence class also includes people who have been "misled.”  Misled how, and by whom?  Heddle does not say.

Heddle concludes by saying that the set of people who are Christian can include anyone whom God says.  But what good does that do us?  We have no way of knowing who God has named a Christian (all we are told is that he can do so), so how is this putative fact useful?

This conclusion is very odd, however, because it undermines Heddle’s entire argument.  The set of Christians could, in principle, include not only Fred Phelps and Benny Hinn, but anyone else, because God says so.  The demarcation between self-identified Christians and true Christians would thus collapse.  But not making this distinction is exactly what Heddle criticized atheists for.  So which is it?

If we were to take Heddle’s conclusion seriously, then it would be meaningless to debate who is a “legitimate” Christian, because God will save that person anyway (well, he can, but we aren’t told whether he will).  If God can just choose who’s a Christian willy-nilly, then why have theism at all?  Who gets saved would just be something that happens in the background, outside of our knowledge or control.  Presumably God will even save the atheists against whom Heddle spends so much time fulminating.

Surely we don’t need the imprimatur of religious belief to judge a person for his anti-social behavior.  The gay community (and, I might add, the atheist community too) has been plenty vocal about pointing out Fred Phelps’ bigotry.  In a secular democracy, here in the 21st century, hatred of gay people is simply not acceptable, and we don’t need religion to tell us this.  Of course, if Heddle has religious reasons for believing that Phelps’ behavior is wrong, then he is free to enunciate them.  Just leave atheists out of it, OK?

Weight Loss Progress: 163/164

Well, unlike last week, there were no surprises this week:



My target weight for this week was 164 lbs (74.4 kg), and my actual weight is 163 lbs (73.9 kg).  I was better this week about sticking to my eating and exercise plan, and so I lost the right amount of weight (1 lb = 0.45 kg).  I like it when things go according to plan!

Weight Loss Progress: 164/165

My weigh-in for this week was 164 lbs (74.4 kg), 1 lb (0.45 kg) under my official goal weight of 165 lbs (74.8 lbs) for this week.


 I did do more eating this week (there were a couple of birthday parties), and less exercise (I attended a meeting of our local photographers group, and a concert by Paco Pena), so there’s nothing unexpected here.  I went off my plan, and I didn’t lose weight.

The only thing that’s surprising is that my weight seems to have gone up.  I checked my weight a couple times during the week and it held steady at 162.5 lbs (73.7 kg).  I find it hard to believe that I would have gained 1.5 lbs (0.68 kg) so suddenly.

Oh well, no big deal.  I’m still on the schedule I set for myself 2 months ago, so I’m not really complaining.  This week I’ll stick to my plan and see what happens.

The Week’s Hit-and-Run on Richard Dawkins

 Richard Dawkins is the Author of the Week (article for subscribers; cached version) in this week’s issue of The Week (dated October 2, 2009).  Like many of the articles in The Week, this was a summary of an original article, an interview of Dawkins by Stephanie Marsh that appeared in the August 22, 2009 issue of The Times. Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show On Earth, is about the evidence for the theory of evolution.

The summary article in The Week begins like this:

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins is currently offering America a remedial education on the subject of evolution, said Stefanie Marsh in the London Times. [my italics]

First of all, why is the author of a book on evolution described as an "outspoken atheist"? Dawkins is a professional zoologist and a professor at the University of Oxford. Why aren't his academic credentials cited? The article could have been written to say "Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins...", but the author didn't do that. Marsh's original article certainly doesn't begin that way, and her first description of Dawkins is as  Britain's leading intellectual.

When the subject of atheism is broached,  instead of mentioning what Dawkins himself has to say (apparently too much, by The Week’s standards), Marsh describes what others say about him:

...when the day came, Britain’s "angriest", most "vituperative" atheist -- as his many critics like to call him, along with "belligerent", and even "mad" -- greeted me in a cheerful if rather delicate mood...

Here she's poking fun at these descriptions of Dawkins, because he’s nothing like that.  As it turns out, Dawkins is somewhat of a shy man, and on the occasion of the interview, he was a bit sad over the death of a favorite pet.  Without reading the source article, the reader of The Week’s summary would assume that Dawkins was some kind of atheist fire-brand, instead of what he really is: a passionate advocate for the public understanding of science.  If Dawkins rubs people the wrong way, it’s simply because he has little tolerance for the kind of obfuscation favored by religious advocates.

Second of all, if they’re going to immediately refer to Dawkins as an atheist, then why as an outspoken atheist?  It’s not enough for The Week to simply mention that Dawkins is an atheist (although atheist itself could be considered a pejorative) – they have to say something bad about him too.  So outspoken atheist it is.  (Usually atheist-bashers say that you’re militant.  Perhaps outspoken is progress of a sort.)  What is Dawkins’ crime, exactly – that he wrote a book about atheism?  (Gasp!)  So what: I have a shelf full of books about atheism, by a bunch of different authors.  Does that make those authors outspoken too?  How would the editors at The Week know that Dawkins is an atheist, unless he, um, spoke about it?

The summary article goes on to describe Dawkins’ motivation for writing the book:

Alarmed that 40 percent of Americans now believe that the world is less than 6,000 years old—and that a rising share of his British compatriots are also creationists—Dawkins decided to present the "evidence" that makes evolution undeniable.

I see that the word “evidence” is put in scare-quotes.  Why?  Are the editors at The Week skeptical of the theory of evolution?  (If so, they don’t deign to give reasons why.)  Maybe they were just trying to be funny.  I could understand if evolution-denier Wendy Wright tried to gainsay the evidence for evolution (video interview with Dawkins here); she is cited in the original article as an example of someone who holds steadfast to her creationist beliefs in spite of the evidence for evolution.  Marsh’s point is that Dawkins new book won’t help people like Wright.  But if you only read the summary article, then you wouldn’t get the joke, and you would conclude that it’s The Week itself that is denying the evidence.

By some dubious logic, the summary article makes the claim that Dawkins himself isn’t a “strict rationalist”, saying that:

He readily admits that human beings may simply never be capable of explaining everything about our universe. "I think we all think that there’s something else out there. I do, certainly. It’s just not supernatural."

But there is nothing here that buttresses the claim of him being an anti-rationalist. He's simply saying that science doesn't have all the questions answered yet.  Solving outstanding problems is what makes science interesting.  (It’s what we pay scientists to do.)  The full quote from the original article is:

As to the big unanswered questions: “I think we all think that there’s something else out there. I do, certainly. But it’s not supernatural. It’s ... I think there’s a lot that science doesn’t know and indeed may never know, and that’s exciting.”

There is no controversy about any this, and these statements are exactly what I’d expect a public advocate for science to say. There’s nothing anti-rationalist about it.  The summary article goes on to say:

For instance, Dawkins says, somewhere beings may exist that are "superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp".

But they pulled that quote from a completely different article about God and evolution that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences.

This is a factual, succinct explanation of how evolution works.  Again: there’s nothing here that would lead one to claim that Dawkins himself isn’t completely rationale. In fact, that bit about superhuman life isn't even original to Dawkins. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

My recommendation to readers of this blog is to go read Marsh’s original source article instead of The Week’s confused summary.  There’s also a link to a video interview with Dawkins on that page, about the evidence for evolution, the subject of his new book.  Reviews of the book from The Times are here and here.

Weight Loss Progress: 162.5 / 166

My weight this week was 162.5 lbs (73.7 kg).  My original target was 166 lbs (75.3 kg), but I’ve been losing weight faster than I had originally planned.

 

Last week I weighed 165 lbs (74.8 kg), so my unofficial goal for this week was really 164 lbs (74.4 kg).  I’m happy, since I am meeting my weight loss targets, but I think losing 2.5 lbs (1.1 kg) in a single week is a little too much.

I had weighed myself last Sunday morning, and the reading was 164.5 lbs (74.6 kg).  My wife and I went out for dinner that night, and it’s possible I ate something that had salt, so I retained water and that threw off the measurement last Monday.  Water weighs 8.3 lbs per gallon (about 1 kg per liter), so just a single cup (8 oz) of water would account for the 0.5 lb (0.2 kg).  (This kind of fluctuation is the reason why you should only weigh yourself once a week.)  So maybe I really only lost only 2 lbs (0.9 kg) this week.  But still, that’s too fast.

I estimated that meeting my ultimate weight loss goal would take about 4 months, and planned to give up non-essential food items for that time.  But maybe I don’t have to be so abstemious.  Tonight, I’ll have a bowl of ice cream or something…

My BMI is 22.  That’s considered normal.

I have been going to the gym most days of the week, but this week I only had time for cardio.  In order to pump iron too, I’ll have to manage my time better, budgeting at least 1 hour at the gym.

The Logic of God’s Sovereignty

Calvinist theologian Robert Charles Sproul defines God's sovereignty this way:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;

David Heddle helpfully explains what Sproul means:

What ever happens either a) God decreed it (Let there be…) or b) God permitted it to happen, with no implied endorsement or divine sanction. God could have prevented it.

Heddle divides the set of all events into two equivalence classes:

• A: Events that occur because of direct intervention by God.
• B: Events that are permitted to occur. (Direct intervention would happen only if God did not permit the event to occur.)

We can now write Sproul's original definition of God's sovereignty as an implication statement:

God is sovereign => A or B

Sproul asks his seminary students whether they agree with that definition.  Those who agree with it (“affirm” the statement) he labels as theists, and those that disagree with it (“deny” the statement) he labels atheists.

It's not quite clear what Sproul means by a "denial" of the statement. Is the implication false, or just the consequent?  But Heddle does give us a clue:

Sproul argues that if there is something, anything that happened outside of God’s decree and his permissive will—then God is not sovereign.

If we parse that, we realize that that there's a third equivalence class:

• C: Events that happen that are neither directly caused by God, nor given his permission to occur.

Equivalence class C is simply the set complement of the union of the equivalence classes A and B. This allows us to write it in the form of an implication:

C => God is not sovereign

This is simply the contrapositive of the original implication. They are logically equivalent, so affirming one is the same as affirming the other.

If subset C is empty, the implication tells us nothing interesting about God's sovereignty, so we can ignore that case.  So Heddle is saying that if subset C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. Yes, that is indeed true; that's what Sproul's implication meant. There is no room for belief here, so it's not clear what Sproul is asking his students. If the implication is true (and that's what Sproul is asserting), then the contrapositive is true, and so if C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. QED. But Sproul is making a distinction between theists and atheists: what is the distinction?

I think the distinction Sproul is making is this. If you're a theist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B

If you're an atheist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B or C

In his model, you're an atheist if you believe that some events can occur that God hasn't permitted. What this means is easier to see when the implication is written in its contrapositive form:

not (A or B or C) => God is not sovereign

The antecedent is false (the union of A, B, and C is the entire set, so its complement is empty), which means that whatever happens in the universe has no bearing on God's sovereignty.

One issue is that it's not clear whether Sproul believes subset C is empty. He says that if it's non-empty, then God would not be sovereign. But if subset C is empty, then he's not saying much of anything, since the issue of God's sovereignty doesn't come up. (It's like warning me that if I drink a bottle of dish soap, I'll get sick. Yes, that might be true, but since I have no desire to drink dish soap, the status of my health as a consequence is never an issue.)

The real problem with Sproul's schema, however, is that it's impossible to identify to which equivalence class an event belongs. There's no way for us, as non-privileged observers, to identify the set membership of an event.

Suppose I toss a ball into the air. The ball rises, slows down, and then falls back into my hand. Does this event happen because God made it so (it's an A event)? Or did this event happen because God permitted it to happen (it's a B event)?  We don’t know, nor can we know (because it’s a metaphysical question).  Why an event "really" happens is opaque to us, so the distinction between classes A and B is not meaningful. All we can do is construct models that allow us to make reliable predictions.

Finally, there is the matter of Sproul's idiosyncratic labels. He labels as atheists people we would normally consider theists, but who don't happen to believe that God is some kind of micro-manager, involving himself with every detail of the universe. (Once I put the battery in my watch, then my watch doesn't require much maintenance. Isn't that a good thing?)

Calling them atheists reminds of the quote ascribed to Abraham Lincoln:

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

Most theists wouldn't call themselves atheists simply because they do not affirm Sproul's definition of God's sovereignty. All their denial means is that they're not Calvinists.

What Does “Jesus Loves Me” Mean?

David Heddle doesn't like philosophy. About proofs of theistic claims, he says:

I don't even like the proofs of God from Aquinas and Anselm. I prefer: Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so. [italics in original - MJH]

Christians often say "I know Jesus loves me." They say it as if it were perfectly obvious, but I don't what it means.

The statement is identical in form to the statement that "I know my wife loves me." But I do know what that means: my wife is here with me, right now, in our home. She's a living person, and she actually tells me she loves me. If I am in doubt, I can simply ask her.

Heddle's statement is also identical in form to "I know Julius Caesar loves me." What meaning should one assign to this sentence? Caesar lived in Rome, around 2000 years ago. I live in Albany, in the present. He didn't know me then (because I wasn't born yet), nor does he know me now (because he's not living anymore). Why speak of him in the present tense? If the statement "Julius Caesar loves me" is read literally, then the statement is either false or meaningless.

So in one case, we have a statement that is meaningful and true, and in another case we have a statement that is either meaningless or false. Which is it for the statement "Jesus loves me"?  Is it meant in the same sense as saying that my wife loves me?  My wife is a living person, with whom I have actual social intercourse.  But Jesus of Nazareth died 2000 years ago, so "Jesus loves me" cannot mean the same thing as "My wife loves me”.

So maybe it means something else.  The statement "Jesus loves me" seems more analogous to the statement that "Julius Caesar loves me," but there's no sense in which that statement could be considered true.

I don't want to commit a fallacy here, so I will assume that the statement "Jesus loves me" must mean something else. But what is it? I don't know.

There is also the matter of epistemology. Heddle says he knows that Jesus loves him, because the bible says so. Is this a deductive claim? It sure looks like one, but we seem to missing a premise. (Perhaps it has been omitted, because it's obvious among Christians.)

Or is it an empirical claim? If so, it would be odd to use the bible to justify the claim, since empirical claims are usually verified by actual measurement (that's how we know the claim is meaningful). For example, I could justify my claim that Boston is east of Albany by reading a map of New England, but that's because the map is a simplified model of the terrain, and I can verify the claim easily enough (and I do!) by actually driving east from Albany. But one cannot do this to justify claims about whom Jesus of Nazareth loves, so there's something else going on here. What is it?

Weight Loss Progress: 165/167

Just had my Monday-morning weigh-in, so I can now officially report that I’m 165 lbs (74.8 kg).  That’s 1 lb (0.45 kg) less than I weighed last week, and 2 lbs (0.9 kg) less than my goal for this week, 167 lbs (75.7 kg).

My plan is to lose 1 lb (0.45 kg) per week, through a combination of diet and exercise.  I don’t really want to lose weight faster than that, since that would mean I’m probably not eating enough, and not maintaining a healthy diet.  So this past week, I did well.

I’ve also started some strength-training, mostly concentrating on chest and triceps, in order to try to boost how many push-ups I’m able to do.

As a side note, I wrote this post using Windows Live Writer. It supports both WYSIWYG editing and direct HTML editing. I like it so far (although the built-in editor at Blogger is pretty good too).

The Rhetoric of Albert Mohler

Some time ago here in the US, there was a television commercial for Jif peanut butter, featuring a mother making some peanut butter sandwiches for her children. The advertisement ends with a voice-over that says, "Choosy moms choose Jif."

This is a classic example of prejudicial language (more here), suggesting that any woman who doesn’t buy Jif peanut butter is an unfit mother.  It’s never explained why Jif is better than other brands, nor admitted that a mother might have good reasons for choosing something else besides Jif.

I was reminded of this by when I read the final paragraph of Albert Mohler's post about an essay in the WSJ on the subject of God and evolution. Mohler ends by saying that:

Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one. Careful readers of The Wall Street Journal will come to the same conclusion.

(my italics)

Mohler would lead us to believe that only careless readers would consider Armstrong’s theistic views legitimate. The savvy readers of the Wall Street Journal (and presumably, Mohler’s blog) obviously know better. 

He attempts to undermine her credibility right away, introducing her by saying:

She is a critic of "fundamentalism" on whom the media can depend for comment.

Here Mohler is suggesting that the reason the media can depend on her is because she's a critic of fundamentalism, as if she were a mere talking head.  Mohler doesn’t mention that Armstrong’s criticism of religious fundamentalism is taken seriously by the media because she’s a respected scholar of religious history and philosophy.

Notice also that Mohler puts the word “fundamentalism” in scare-quotes, as if there were no such thing, and only an unserious person would describe religion as such.  But on we must go.

Armstrong is advocating a form of theistic instrumentalism, which has a long pedigree (as she herself explains). Models are judged by their utility, instead of by their correspondence to objective reality (which is what theistic realists advocate).  It is a position that has been famously articulated by British theologian Don Cupitt. (More info here.  I learned about Don Cupitt and theistic instrumentalism by reading the book reviewed here.)

Note that Dawkins is saying what theists will say about you if you tell them that God's existence is not important:

Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

Mohler responds by doing exactly what Dawkins predicted he would do: call Armstrong an atheist.  He doesn't attempt to refute Armstrong's argument (well, not directly); he simply calls it "superficial" and "theologically reckless" (whatever that means). Nor does he bother justifying his own theistic philosophy - its rightness is simply assumed. You would think that Mohler would use this opportunity show how his own religious philosophy resolves certain theological problems that Armstrong’s does not, but he doesn't do that. Instead all he does is accuse her of being an atheist, just like Richard Dawkins!

Mohler's argument is that if you accept Armstrong's theistic views, then this bad thing will happen to you (you'll be an atheist, because Richard Dawkins says so). Therefore Armstrong's theistic views are false (and, by extension, Mohler's own theistic views must be true). But this is a logical fallacy, known as the appeal to consequences (more here and here).

On God and Evolution

Commenting on Albert Mohler's reaction to an essay in the WSJ about God and evolution, Andrew Sullivan says:

It's telling that both Mohler and Dawkins are both dedicated to the maintenance of a certain brand of doubt-free, doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist versions of faith. There are other kinds. And fighting for that center is an important task in a world being torn apart by politicized religion.

The problem here is that Sullivan hasn't actually addressed Dawkins' argument. All he has done is to accuse Dawkins of being a fundamentalist. (I don't know what it means for an atheist to have a "doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist version of faith," since atheists have neither doctrines nor faith, but never mind that.)

Dawkins is as much against religious fundamentalism is as Sullivan (more here from Dawkins), so it's not clear what Sullivan's argument against Dawkins is, since on that matter they are in agreement.

I suspect that Sullivan's actual reason for fulminating against Dawkins was that he had the temerity to suggest that we should just get rid of theistic belief (because it's superfluous). I don't see why that argument should be taken off of the table. If you're going to make an argument against religious fundamentalism, then Dawkins position is simply the logical terminus of the argument. Sullivan doesn't say why his own centrist position is superior. (Except that it's "not atheism" -- ironically the same argument Mohler makes).

False Dichotomy Fallacy

I have just finished The Refrigerator and the Universe by Martin Goldstein et al. It's a terrific introduction to the laws of thermodynamics, that goes very light on the mathematics. The first half of the book explains the laws themselves, and the second half of the book explains how those laws influence other fields of science, including chemistry, biology, geology, quantum mechanics, and relativity.

The chapter on biology contains a section explaining why the creationist argument that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics is wrong. (More explanation here and here.) The authors get all of the science right, but they do make one glaring error of logic. Commenting on an anti-evolution book by Robert Kofahl, Goldstein says:

Kofahl is raising two distinct points: one concerns the possible origin of life from inanimate matter; the second is the evolution of complex, many-celled many-organed creatures--monkeys, trees--from one-celled organisms. He is right that if either could be shown to violate the second law, the case for special creation by a deity would be stronger.

(my italics)

This an example of the False Dichotomy Fallacy. It is not the case that there are exactly two explanations for the origin of life, evolution or creationism, such that if you manage to falsify evolution then creationism must therefore be true. If the theory of evolution were falsified, it would only mean that the theory of evolution had been falsified. There could be any number of alternatives (that's why it's a false dichotomy). Creationists must still make the positive case for their own alternative to evolution; negative arguments against evolution don't count.

This is not unlike the procedure for hypothesis testing: you start with a null hypothesis, and attempt to prove with a certain degree of confidence some alternative hypothesis. If you fail to prove the alternative hypothesis, then this only means that you failed to prove the alternative hypothesis. The outcome of a test of the alternative hypothesis has no bearing on the truth of the null hypothesis, which must be established via some other means.

The creationist argument is wrong for another reason. When a scientific theory is falsified, it isn't simply discarded; rather, it gets subsumed into a larger, more general theory. This is especially true when the theory that has been falsified has had a long history of successful predictions. The new theory that incorporates the old one is able to make successful predictions too, but more of them, beyond the edges where the old theory failed. The canonical example of this is how Einstein's theory of relativity falsified Newtonian mechanics. Newton's laws been used successfully for over 350 years; it was so successful that 19th century scientists simply assumed that it was the final word on physics. But even though they have been falsified by the theory of relativity, Newton's laws still continue to be used (because they're a lot simpler) when relativistic effects can be ignored.

Goldstein et al make exactly this point on the last page:

Philosophers of science have tried to characterize the difference between the natural sciences and other fields of rational study by this feature of the theories we have described: they don't get replaced by new discoveries but rather get incorporated by them. Such sciences are said to be "cumulative."

All scientifically literate people should be familiar with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I can heartily recommend The Refrigerator and the Universe to anyone who desires to educate himself.

Weight Loss Progress: 166/168

 

My weigh-in this morning was 166 lbs, which puts me 2 lbs under my goal weight (for this week) of 168 lbs.

These past two weeks I have been losing weight at a rate of 1.5 lbs per week.  This is about as fast a rate as I dare go.  A rate of 2 lbs (or more) per week would probably mean that I haven't been eating enough.  1000-1200 Calories is the recommended minimum amount you need to consume each day.

I try to go to the gym several times per week.  Luckily I have a YMCA right down my street, so I have no excuse not to go.  I typically go there around 9 o'clock in the evening, and workout for an hour.  I've been using the stair-stepper for 30 minutes (my preferred machine, because I can read while I'm using it), then doing push-ups and crunches, and when time allows (the gym closes at 10 o'clock) pumping some iron.

Religious "Truth"

Commenting on Leon Wieseltier's essay in the New York Times Book Review, Andrew Sullivan says:

It's an important essay because within it, there pulsates a whole slew of vital issues where some level of contradiction and tension is far more defensible than their opposites: being a Jew and an American, being a conservative who can see the role of liberalism in the West (and vice-versa), and being a secular citizen with profound respect for and engagement with religious truth.

(italics mine)

What exactly is "religious truth"? Theistic claims are non-empirical (right?), so how does one assess the veracity of the claim?

I can understand if a theist makes a claim that he regards as an axiom of his religious faith, but then I don't understand why that merits "profound respect," since (religious) axioms are a dime a dozen. Labeling an axiomatic claim a "religious truth" doesn't make the claim profound somehow.

Why I'm boycotting the iPod shuffle 3G

I have a 1GB iPod shuffle 2G ("second generation") that I have been using ever since it came out. I bought it as an upgrade of my 512 MB iPod shuffle 1G ("first generation"). The shuffle replaced various portable CD players that I had been fruitlessly attempting to use while at the gym.

I think the iPod shuffle 2G is pretty much the perfect device for listening to music during any kind of exercise, or during any other activity for which you cannot attend to the device itself. (When I'm out jogging on roads, I dare not take eyes off of oncoming traffic to fiddle with the controls of my music player.)

However, I really do think Apple got too carried away with the iPod shuffle 3G. It's smaller than the 2G model, but who cares? The 2G was an improvement on the size of the 1G (part of my motivation for upgrading), but the 2G is already plenty small enough.

But the 3G isn't really smaller than the 2G: Apple simply moved the button(s) off the device itself and onto the headphone cord. This causes other problems.

Firstly it wreaks havoc with the usability of the shuttle (the 2G passed my "can my mother figure it out?" test), as the control mechanism integrated into the cord is much more difficult to learn (you actually need a freakin' diagram to figure it out).

It also breaks compatibility with my existing headphones. Those ear buds they include with the shuffle are pretty much useless. I could barely get them to stay in my ears while just sitting down. For running or the gym (or merely standing up from a seated position!), forget it.

But that's only half the problem: the ear buds sound like crap. I ended up buying a nice set of Sennheiser PMX80 headphones, which both stay put and sound great. (I never imaged that the bass register could sound that good on those little headphones, especially after using the Apple ear buds, but Sennheiser made a believer out of me. My only complaint is that I had to buy the PMX80 to replace a set of PMX70 headphones, because the sheath of its green cord had disintegrated.)

So I'm not going to replace my headphones for the sake of upgrading to the 3G. Belkin does make an iPod 3G headphone adapter, so technically you can still use your existing headphones with the 3G. But if I need an adapter to use a shuffle 3G, then doesn't this just defeat the purpose of Apple having made the 3G model smaller? It's just more junk to have to remember to bring with me.

I'm not the only one who thinks the iPod shuffle 3G was badly designed. In fact, after yesterday's Apple event announcing this year's changes to the iPod line up, I went to the Apple store and immediately bought a refurbished 2GB iPod shuffle 2G, which comes with the same warranty as their new models. Alas, this is probably the end of the line for the 2G.

Here's hoping Apple will come to its senses and release a 2Gng!

Update 2009/09/11: I see here that Apple is aware of criticisms of its new design, saying that:

Answering critics of the previous iPod shuffle design which moved the shuffle control on to the cord, Apple says that it’s working with third-party headphone makers to integrate the controls into their designs as well, and that adapters are also available with more on the way.

But I don't really want a dedicated headphone solution - I want a button on the iPod. Bring back the 2G!

Weight Loss Progress

Yesterday was a holiday (Labor Day), and I was out-of-town, so I had my weigh-in this morning. Today I weigh 167.5 lbs, which is about 1 lb below my goal for this week, 169 lbs.

Weight Loss Program

My weight tends to creep up when I'm not paying enough attention to how much I eat, so I have decided to drop a few pounds. My goal weight is 160 lbs (I'm 6 ft. tall), and my target loss rate is 1 lb. per week, so at my current weight (I was around 175 when I started), I estimate that reaching my goal will take about 4 months. Just in time for Thanksgiving!

My weight loss progress is shown in the figure above. (I don't know how to use Blogger well enough to properly position the photo, so it's stuck above at the top of the post.)

I do my weigh-in every Monday (I have a digital scale at home, that reads to 1/2 lb. of precision), so expect a post once per week from me on the subject of my weight loss progress.

I am a computer programmer, so I'm rather sedentary, and I estimate my BMR at about 1800 calories per day. To lose one lb. per week, one must maintain a calorie deficit of about 500 calories per day (one lb of fat is about 3500 calories), which I do with a combination of calorie restriction (a fancy way of saying "dieting") and exercise (either treadmill, stair-stepper, or cycling to work).

I do need to do more strength-training. During my weight loss program, I have been giving priority (my time is limited) to cardio exercise.

I don't go crazy attempting to count calories. I guesstimate that my current caloric intake is in the 1200-1300 calorie range. (The exact value doesn't matter much, because I'm estimating my BMR too. The important thing is to maintain a deficit, so you figure out by trial-and-error how much food you can eat such that you lose about 1 lb. per week. I make a rough plan about what I'm going to eat during the day, and then stick to the plan.)

More info here about weight loss. See you next Tuesday!

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog of Matthew J Heaney! This is the place on the web where I ruminate about politics, photography, atheism, and anything else that strikes my fancy. Hope you enjoy it!