Should I?

I'm going to Skepticon 3 this year, and I've been thinking about ordering 10-15 copies of my book. I'm not sure if I will, but here are the pro's and con's, as I see them.

Pro's :
Might get to give a few copies to the speakers, who might read it and review it, and a review would expand my audience.

Might get to sell a few copies, which would offset the expense of the trip.

Con's :
Might get seen as a shameless self-promoter.

Might spend over 80-100 dollars and never see anything for it, if I'm not able to sell any copies or give them away.

Might be very awkward to find a way to sell the book. Do I just tell people that I meet about it or what?


So: What do you guys think? Should I do it or not?

Eight Questions...

So, I haven't been posting a lot in the past few months. It's because I've been very busy, and had limited access to the computer. But I'm coming around again, I really am. And so I thought I'd take the time to answer Michael Egnor's "Eight Questions for Atheists". Bear in mind that, as I answer these questions, I am not always totally sure that my answers are right. Also: As I started writing this, I realized it would be necessary to break this post into several parts.

One more thing: I realize that what I am writing today is very deep and hard to convey. To some people it will look like rambling, incoherent nonsense. Well, it isn't. It's damn difficult to understand or to write about in a clear way, but I did my best. Rest assured that my mind is still completely fine ; )

Here is the answer to the first question:

1) Why is there anything?

Something must exist.

To elaborate: What is the difference between things that exist and things that do not exist? We say that things exist when we can, at least possibly, interact with them in some way. Things that we cannot possibly interact with in any way are things which do not exist, or at least do not exist to us.

Let's do a thought experiment: Imagine that you "invent" your own universe. You write down the physical laws of your imaginary universe, and you work out the equations to figure out how it would evolve over time. Eventually your equations show that your universe develops planets and life at some point in its history. Further equations prove that intelligent, humanoid creatures would evolve in this universe. Working even more equations reveals that a pair of these humanoids are having a conversation about their universe, wondering why it exists. They are not troubled, or even aware, that their universe "doesn't exist." In their eyes, their universe does exist. It is quite real to them. Their "imaginary" universe seems just as real to them as our "real" universe seems to us. We have no way to tell what "exists" except our experiences. And yet experiences exist within universes that we would call "imaginary": For as our thought experiement shows, 'imaginary' beings in 'imaginary' universes still experience their universe as real. And therefore they have the same evidence that their universe exists as we have that our universe exists.

That leads us to the conclusion that there is no objective difference between real and imaginary universes. The only difference between our "real" universe and other "imaginary" universes is that we directly experience and interact with our universe, but we do not do so with things that are "imaginary". The inhabitants of "imaginary" universes also call their universe "real" and have every right to: It is real to them. Our universe is real to us. "Real" cannot be defined in any other meaningful way.

With that in mind: A completely objective and impartial judge would look at this universe (which would be called "imaginary" by those who do not live in it) as well as other universes (which we say are "imaginary") and would conclude that there is no fundamental difference between them. They are just as "real" (whatver that means) as we are, and we are just as real as they. And if that's the case, then our universe is truly are the same as imaginary universes.

Think about imaginary universes: How would we classify them? We could classify them as abstract objects. Extremely complex abstract objects. Since our universe is the same as they are, our universe is an extremely complicated abstraction. This seems strange at first, but think about it. Think of another imaginary object: for example, a pink room with ten aliens having tea. The room does not exist, yet you could say that the aliens do exist WITHIN the pink room. It's the same for us: our universe doesn't "exist" although we exist within it.

Think of how well this whole idea fits in with "I think, therefore I am." If I can think, I must exist in some sense. Beings in imaginary universes can also think within that universe. Therefore, they exist within that universe.

If this is right, then our universe is essentially just a complex abstract object. Those things "within" the abstract object "exist" (in the proper sense of the word) even if the abstract object itself does not "exist" in any sense of the word. All of this is very interesting, and has profound implications. Christian apologist William Lane Craig often talks about how the universe must have been caused by something immaterial, and that the only things which are immaterial are spirits and abstract objects. Craig says that abstract objects cannot cause things to exist, and so the only possible cause for the universe is a spirit. Yet my line of reasoning would throw Craig a huge curveball: The universe was not caused by an abstract object, it IS an abstract object. Abstract objects do not need to be caused. Therefore, the universe does not need to be caused.

And the implications continue: Abstract objects are not simply things that don't need a cause. Abstract objects cannot be caused period. If abstracts cannot be caused, and our universe is an abstract, then our universe cannot be caused.

God is defined as the cause of the universe. The universe does not and cannot have a cause. Therefore God cannot and does not exist.

Those who are perceptive and have followed this the whole way through will realize, without my having to our articulate, that the ideas presented here mean that there is logically no way at all that we could fail to exist. And our universe does not possess any status of existence which would require explanation. At long last the two ultimate questions of philosophy have been solved.

P.S. I must thank Gary Drescher for explaining the core idea of this post. He writes about it very clearly in the last chapter of his bookGood and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (Bradford Books).

Looking Forward to Skepticon

I will be attending Skepticon 3 this year. And I am super psyched about it! James Randi, Richard Carrier, PZ Myers and more will be there. I'm even thinking about designing a few "AiG Busted" T-shirts to wear to the event. I mean, plenty of skeptics know my blog, and it'd be cool to let 'em know who I am right off the bat.

What a Tangled Web We Weave in Our Flight to believe

Anthropology Scandal

This is just bizarre and astonishing. I can't really sum it up, you'll have to read it yourself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews

Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design

The Grand Design

Looks Awesome. Here's an excerpt from amazon:

How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Over twenty years ago I wrote A Brief History of Time, to try to explain where the universe came from, and where it is going. But that book left some important questions unanswered. Why is there a universe--why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator?

It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. And by the time I had begun writing A Brief History of Time, there were still several key advances that had not yet been made that would prevent us from fulfilling Einstein’s dream. But in recent years the development of M-theory, the top-down approach to cosmology, and new observations such as those made by satellites like NASA’s COBE and WMAP, have brought us closer than ever to that single theory, and to being able to answer those deepest of questions. And so Leonard Mlodinow and I set out to write a sequel to A Brief History of Time to attempt to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The result is The Grand Design, the product of our four-year effort.

In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a "model-dependent" theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse--the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. And we assess M-Theory, an explanation of the laws governing the multiverse, and the only viable candidate for a complete "theory of everything." As we promise in our opening chapter, unlike the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life given in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer we provide in The Grand Design is not, simply, "42."

The Amazing Atheist is on a Roll

I have so been saying the same shit to people for the past couple of weeks. And BTW, all of this video is great for pointing out how muslims have the right to build whatever they want wherever they want, however, the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" isn't exactly on Ground Zero and it isn't exactly a mosque.