Conspiracy Theorism on Facebook

Like the rest of the Wild Web Facebook is the stamping ground for a lunatic fringe who promote all sorts of off-the-wall ideas, in particular, need I say it, conspiracy theorism. They are exploiting a general malaise of counter-culture disaffection and distrust of the establishment, political and academic. In fact I have two Facebook friends who, although far from being originators of this claptrap, have nevertheless been attracted by and toyed with these ideas in their posts. So, let me introduce my two FB friends Frank Saucepan and Fred Shed (not real names of course) whose posts, with my comments, I reproduce below. It may be that their posts are no more than trollish mischief, hence some of my comments are themselves a little tongue-in-cheek. In response I used the simplest and most straightforward argument against conspiracy theorism; Viz: that it has a self-referencing instability; i.e.: If you accept the world view of conspiracy theorism then it becomes possible to continue multiplying entities to the point where any particular conspiracy theory itself is believed to be a false idea put about by another covert conspiracy for purposes of their own! What you might call a conspiracy of conspiracy theorism! See here for more on conspiracy theorism.

1^st May 2017

Frank posts on Flat Earth, an idea he is getting into!

The following is a partial repeat of the discussion on Frank's FB page I blogged on here

Frank Saucepan: All I did was say this flat earth business has caught my interest!

Timothy V Reeves It caught mine too, but it only works if you add huge dollops of conspiracy theorism. But conspiracy theorism has inner contradictions: Once you believe conspiracy theory A you can always find conspiracy theory B which explains conspiracy theory A as a product of a conspiracy of deception. In short conspiracy theorism completely phux-up any attempt to arrive at the truth. Any so called "truth" arrived at via conspiracy theory A is easily undermined by conspiracy theory B. Here's a video showing how easy it is to invent fanciful but plausible conspiracy theories : 

https://vimeo.com/61930750

5 July 2017

Frank posts a "Loose Change" video on the 9/11 conspiracy theory and adds the comment

Frank Saucepan: And people think others are mad for questioning things (My Comment: That's exactly what conspiracy theorism doesn't ask you to do - question things!)

Timothy V Reeves: "Luke's Change":  https://vimeo.com/61930750

Timothy V Reeves Just because you can construct theory which joins the known data dots by multiplying entities doesn't make it true.

Timothy V Reeves I'm not against conspiracy theorism for the sake of it but because it's a crap epistemic and can be evoked to explain away absolutely anything even itself: Its problems are: a) it arbitrarily multiplies entities and players as the pattern of data dots gets more complex to join. b) It doesn't take cognizance of randomness c) It requires a very water-tight cooperation between its imagined players - very unlikely with human beings d) It is motivated by human tribal and identification factors - "I don't identify with those guys, they are not in my tribe, therefore they are lying" e) Conspiracy theorism can be evoked in so many ways that it's possible to invent completely conflicting theories which "explain" the same facts.

Timothy V Reeves See "Luke's Change" for a very plausible sounding conspiracy theory, which of course in this case we know must be a piece of imagination. Just shows what the imagination can do! i.e. concoct crapola!

Jul 18^th 2018

Frank posts the "matrix" meme: 

Frank Saucepan: What if!?!

Timothy V Reeves WHAT IF I TOLD YOU: There are covert web agents putting these thoughts into people's heads in order to sow despair, disillusionment, disaffection and defection, thus promoting social breakdown and Apocalypse, from which point they will grab the opportunity to take control! 🤔🤔😁😁

Timothy V Reeves .....be careful: nothing in this world operates as you think it does:🤣

Timothy V Reeves Can't you see Frank that the kind of critique that this thesis is offering can be called upon itself? It is self-undermining! That is, it is liable to disappear up its own a*se!

June 10th 2018

Fred Shed posted on the moon landings. In this case I opted to "play the game"!

Fred Shed: Moon landing is fake:

Timothy V Reeves Must have been! We all expected them to bring back cheese: What did we get? Just a bit of dirt! I can get that from my back yard!

Fred Shed: Also in a vacuum there would be no way to stear.

Timothy V Reeves Rockets work in vacuum so that argument doesn't work; it's all to do with Newtons 3rd law. But the absence of quality Moon cheese is sufficient to clinch it as far as I'm concerned.

Fred Shed: Timothy V Reeves how do the rockets work though coz there's zero friction in space so surely rockets would not work.

Fred Shed: I get you could launch a rocket and generally aim it at the moon but that would be about all.

Timothy V Reeves Have you designed an experiment to show that rockets need friction in space? If rockets didn't work, neither would your motor bike.

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves my motorbike is attached to the ground by gravity though.

Timothy V Reeves ....but your internal combustion engine pistons aren't attached to the ground!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves true but They are in a different type off vacuum

Timothy V Reeves ...what do you mean?

Fred Shed In space there is nothing in engine pistons there is everything.

Timothy V Reeves OK, so you're in space and you light up a barrel of gunpowder right in front of your space helmeted face (gun powder doesn't need oxygen, since it's got its own supply of oxygen). What do you think is going to happen to your space helmet?

Timothy V Reeves PS: Don't try this at home!!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves not a lot really

Timothy V Reeves .....OK, so now try lighting up a stick of dynamite that is INSIDE your helmet! What's going to happen?

Fred Shed: Head would get blown up

Timothy V Reeves ...right! So one bit of your head will travel toward the earth, another bit will travel toward the moon, another toward alpha centauri etc..... and so voila! We have succeeded in spreading the contents of your head to the four corners of the galaxy and it's all done in a vacuum!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves spose.

Timothy V Reeves There's a rumour going about that the Illuminati are creating youTube videos to make us believe that the moon landings were a faked: After all , they want us to believe that the Earth is flat and screw up our understanding of science so that they alone have access to valid science.

Fred Shed That I can believe  (Woops! I didn't mean him to respond like that!)

Timothy V Reeves As I always say: Kill a conspiracy theory with another conspiracy theory and so on ad infinitum!

June 15 2018

Fred Shed mischievously posted the following  picture from "Flat Earth Research": 

This picture can be found on FB "Flat Earth Research" here:
https://www.facebook.com/flatearthresearch/photos/a.1628044087506793/1953022505008948/?type=3&theater. In a response to a query as to why the dinosaurs appeared on this picture two Young Earthers left these comments on Flat Earth's FB page:

Michael McCarrey Leviathan and Behemoth. We called them "dinosaurs" There are more. They were on the Ark, probably as eggs. Some called them Dragons. Most died from being hunted or because the climate was different after the Flood. But, when half the FE proponents can't even figure out how to use a camera, this is not unexpected.

Reuel Zaire In ancient times they were called dragons and they are also mentioned in the holy scriptures. The term dinosaur was only created in the mid 19th century and its from the greek deinos(terrible)+sauros(lizard). Dinosaur theory was also used to support the fossil fuel term. And now they control the oil, whoever they are...

Reuel Zaire In ancient times they were called dragons and they are also mentioned in the holy scriptures. The term dinosaur was only created in the mid 19th century and its from the greek deinos(terrible)+sauros(lizard). Dinosaur theory was also used to support the fossil fuel term. And now they control the oil, whoever they are... Sam Clark Dinosaurs existed, they just didn’t go extinct MILLIONS of years ago like mainstream “science” says. They only died out thousands of years ago, which goes hand in hand with the biblical creation account. https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/

However back on Fred Shed's FB page I responded as follows:

Timothy V Reeves ...ahh Fred me ole son! Those Flat Earth web sites are just part of a fake news conspiracy perpetrated by the Illuminati in order to befuddle your thinking and prevent you from grasping science. After all if you don't grasp science it means that you become less of a threat to their rule!

Timothy V Reeves ...What you've got to wrap you head around Fred is that there is big conspiracy to get us to believe in conspiracies. This is called "meta-conspiracy theory". That makes me a meta-conspiracy conspiracy theorist!

Timothy V Reeves ....but some hold the theory that meta-conspiracy theory is itself a conspiracy to stop us believing in conspiracies. But others point out that this can't be true because a meta-conspiracy theorist believes in a conspiracy theory, namely the big meta-conspiracy!

Timothy V Reeves ...hope you got all that Fred .....because I've totally confused myself!

POSTCRIPT

Interestingly, the QAnon conspiracy theorists in the following YouTube video used their conspiracy theory to dismiss the  Flat Earth conspiracy in a way similar to the way I sketched out above!

Intelligent Design and God of the Gaps

The following appeared on the Intelligent Design website "Uncommon Descent" in a post entitled: "Frequently raised but weak arguments against Intelligent Design" (See here: https://uncommondescent.com/faq/#gaps_god)

39] ID is Nothing More Than a “God of the Gaps” Hypothesis

Famously, when his calculations did not quite work, Newton proposed that God or angels nudged the orbiting planets every now and then to get them back into proper alignment. Later scientists were able to show that the perturbations of one planet acting on another are calculable and do not in aggregate skew the calculations.  Newton’s error is an example of the “God of the gaps” fallacy – if we do not understand it, God must have done it.

ID is not proposing “God” to paper over a gap in current scientific explanation. Instead ID theorists start from empirically observed, reliable, known facts and generally accepted principles of scientific reasoning:

(a) Intelligent designers exist and act in the world.

(b) When they do so, as a rule, they leave reliable signs of such intelligent action behind.

(c) Indeed, for many of the signs in question such as CSI and IC, intelligent agents are the only observed cause of such effects, and chance + necessity (the alternative) is not a plausible source, because the islands of function are far too sparse in the space of possible relevant configurations.

(d) On the general principle of science, that “like causes like,” we are therefore entitled to infer from sign to the signified: intelligent action.

(e) This conclusion is, of course, subject to falsification if it can be shown that undirected chance + mechanical forces do give rise to CSI or IC.  Thus, ID is falsifiable in principle but well supported in fact.

In sum, ID is indeed a legitimate scientific endeavor: the science that studies signs of intelligence

The foregoing is just a rehash of the "explanatory filter" epistemic used by IDists. I have criticized this rather simplistic epistemic before:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2015/06/idists-heres-another-fine-mess-theyve.html

It's not that I particularly disagree with any of the above; the problem lies in where it stops: Once we identify the presence of intelligence, explanation doesn't stop there. For example, we find an object buried in the earth and identify it as of archaeological interest. But then some effort is made to take the matter further: Viz: What kind of minds created it and why? What was the social milieu in which the object was made? What was its purpose? How was it made? Taking the questions even deeper, we may ask ourselves what is it about an entity that classifies it as intelligent? Above all, what processes are entailed by intelligence?

It is questions like this that lead me on to the subject of "intelligent creation", an endeavor which involves at least making an attempt to take the question of intelligence and the nature of the processes behind it a little further. In contrast the IDists have explicitly stated that their task ends once intelligence has been detected, thus leaving a hiatus or "gap"; hence their work very comfortably fits a "natural forces vs divine agency" dualist philosophy (See links below).

The irony is that even atheist evolutionists will tell us that evolution is far from a random process thus implicitly admitting to an information gap an: See here,  here and here:  This is, in fact, consistent with William Dembski's work. See here. Thus, so-called "natural forces" as conceived by standard evolutionary theory can hardly be classified as "undirected chance and mechanical forces" (sic) if they are sufficiently resourced to do the job of life creation.

As I have said before information can be created, provided we allow exponentially expanding parallelism and teleology to occur "naturally".  For example, the human mind is a "natural object" (sic) which generates such information on a routine basis. See here. I also touch on the subject of "Complex Specified Information" (CSI) in the same link.


Links on De Facto ID
De facto ID's God-of-the-Gaps (Small sample)

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/2001-space-idyssey.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/intelligent-designs-2001-space-odyssey.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/deistical-god-of-gaps-thinking.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/western-dualism-in-north-america.html

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!

Please free us from the drivel of
Alex Jones filthy mouth!

In a concerted move by Facebook, YouTube, iTunes and Pinterest. crackpot conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been banished from the domains of these service providers. Predictably this is portrayed on Jones website as vindication of his theories, theories which assign him the role of hero in an apocalyptic struggle against covert anti-Christian and Satanic forces. (See here for the reaction on Jones website)

I feel ambivalent about the ban: Jones has had it coming for a long while; he's a vile disseminator of delusion and must rank as one of the most vicious and merciless slanderers of innocent people: For example, the parents of the child-victims of the Sandy Hook massacre had to endue insult as well as injury when Jones accused them of lying about an event he claimed never took place. Such a nasty paranoid fantasist well deserves to be shut-up. And yet as with all such fantasists no matter what one does or says it is assimilated into an increasingly ramifying delusional narrative; so you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. The best policy may be just to ignore him. Trouble is, like a badly behaved child some restrictions have to be placed on their anti-social activities, at least for the benefit of those around them who have to endue their obnoxious behavior.

I some ways I see Jones and his retinue of fundamentalist followers as a kind of anti-Christ, an anti-Christ whose job it is to make a mockery of the Christian faith. Therefore anything that restrains this debauched group can be applauded, but in my case I only applaud half-heartedly: For it is clear that this censuring move is only dealing with the symptoms and not the underlying diseases of disaffection, disillusion and alienation coupled to the breath-taking gullibility and misunderstanding among his following about the way the world actually works (See here).

As an illustration of how the world really works let's take this group of people:

Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Kent Hovind, Steve Anderson, Eric Hovind, William Tapley, Ken Ham, Glen Beck, John Mackay. 

These right-wingers have a lot in common and are linked into a close nexus of associations. Viz: Trump and Jones have engaged in mutual support. Ken Ham is a Trump supporter. Kent Hovind is a "sovereign citizen" and conspiracy theorist. William Tapley believes himself to be an authoritative Biblical prophet and supports Trump. Eric Hovind and Ken Ham are mutually supporting young earth fundamentalists. Glen Beck is a Christian conspiracy theorist. Steve Anderson is an uncompromising angry fundamentalist who supports Kent Hovind's young earthism. Fanatical fundamentalist John Mackay is Ken Ham's friend and ex-business partner.  But in spite of these links there is no coherent background conspiracy behind this clutch of like-minded partisans; they come together because they share interests and a common mental malady which imagines "liberal-left" depravity lurking in the shades. They see themselves as clean & clear minded heroes sent to bring revelation as they fight the good fight against the evil enemy of contemporary mores. And yet there is diversity and disparate division here as well: Anderson and Eric Hovind are at loggerheads. Ham and Tapley would fall out over who has the greater authority. John MacKay's extreme fundamentalist antics were even a stretch for Ken Ham.  Ken Ham (I hope) wouldn't go along with many of Jones theories, although I have never known Ham to disown him, as he has disowned Kent Hovind. Jones and Tapley, although perhaps the most crackpot of the group, nevertheless in some ways capture the flavour of the group by caricaturing it.

Pence is symbolic of Trump's
fundamentalist following.

Presiding over all these bizarre personalities is the figure of Donald Trump, a man who has succeeded in mobilizing them and their followings for his own purposes through their shared discontent with  the conspiratorial "establishment swamp" which Trump claims he is going to drain. They all reflect a malaise of dissent from established culture and this holds them together, although an all too human tendency toward epistemic arrogance causes sharp divisions between them. This is the way of world, a kind of pathological unity in chaos. You don't need conspiracy theorism to explain it; they all contribute in their own inimitable ways to poisoning the atmosphere of discourse, causing mass defection from science and reason.

A sample of Alex Jones' "infoWars":

A sample of William Tapley: He supports Trump & Pence

ADDENDUM 12/08/18

See this BBC article for the harm Jones and his following are doing to people's lives

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45142881

Brennan Gilmore witnessed and filmed the vehicle attack by a white supremacist on a crowd protesting against the fascist rally in Charlottesville. The article makes it clear that the people who attacked Gilmore (and the protesting crowd for that matter) intend to do harm. These are kind who, if they get into power, will come knocking on your door ready to take you away. Let's make no bones about it: They are fascists. And they support Trump and Pence.

 Here are some quotes form the article:

The conspiracy theorists falsely alleged that Gilmore was an agent of the so-called "deep state", who had planned the crash as a way of discrediting President Trump and his supporters. They claimed, again falsely, that he was in the pay of liberal financier George Soros.

The first sign that something was wrong was when Gilmore's sister called him on Sunday 13 August, to let him know that their parents had been 'doxxed' - their address was posted on far-right message boards, and threats were made against them.

[Gilmore] is taking action against 11 people or companies for "defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress", saying articles and videos were posted online "with reckless disregard of the truth".

Among those he is suing are Jim Hoft, the founder of the far-right website Gateway Pundit, and Alex Jones, who set up Infowars. Jones' lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

This is not the only case of defamation Jones is facing. Infowars has published stories falsely claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut in 2012 - when gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults - was staged.

The relatives of nine victims are now taking action against Jones, saying they have been harassed by people who believe his conspiracy theory.

The Infowars host has sought to get the lawsuit dismissed. This week, a number of tech giants, including YouTube and Facebook, deleted his content, citing hate speech

Should I really be laughing at this?

Alex Jones with a full head of steam

...trouble is I can't help but laugh. I have said it before and I say it again: As PZ Myers, the cleverly sarcastic, cynical and abrasive atheist confronts and comments on some of the cheerfully weirdest fish who float around on the web, I find a sublime form of comedy. I sometimes wonder if the anti-theist Myers is in a kind of  hell already and is having paraded before him, for his utmost torment, some of the most annoying, frustrating and crankiest characters the world has ever produced.  An endemic crackpotism seems to be part of the human predicament and Myers has a particularly low tolerance for it: Anticipating and watching his reaction and reading his comments as he is tortured by the latest extreme wackaloon who flits across the line of sight is some of the best humor I can think of. Perhaps I'm just sadistic. 

Two of his latest stories don't disappoint (See here and here). Firstly there is the ever vile and utterly debased Alex Jones with a line of conspiracy theorism only rivaled and exceeded for crankiness by the deranged David Ike. Myers latest blog on Jones tells us that Facebook wants to crack down on fake news and yet is allowing Jones to remain on Facebook peddling his line in baroque fantasy.  Quoting Myers:

Which one of these InfoWars claims can’t be demonstrated to be false? How stupid are the people at Facebook?

• Hitler is still alive, under the protection of the US government
• Human-pig chimeras are talking
• NASA is running a child slave colony on Mars
• The Democrats are running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza parlor
• Michelle Obama is actually a man
• Sandy Hook was a false flag operation
• Barack Obama is the global head of Al-Qaeda
• Kids are being turned gay by juice boxes
• Lady Gaga used the Superbowl halftime to perform a Satanic ritual

I would like to know which of these Mark Zuckerberg thinks might be true. I want to see his personal testimonial for each and every one of them, or I’m calling shenanigans on the frauds at Facebook.

I was aware of some of the daft delusions listed above, but not all of them. Nice to have a list for the record. Thanks PZ! Well, I might agree with Facebook actually; if you crack down on people like Jones you may be playing into their hands. That's the dilemma. In someways Jones, who professes a Christian faith, is a caricature of the fundamentalist Christian witness which has a tendency toward conspiratorial fantasy and a sense of being surrounded by total & utmost depravity. For example, Jones gross and fantastic stories are reflected by Kent Hovind and the like. See here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcV5acuYic

And of course Ken Ham does not mince his words when it comes to accusing even "fellow" Christians of heinous sin. See here.

The second post by Myers informs us that the Turkish Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar has been arrested by the Turkish authorities. Oktar is a rabid anti-evolutionist who appears to mercilessly crib much of his material from US creationism.  Oktar doesn't have a large eye catching exhibit like Ken Ham's ark-shaped shed. No, Oktar has another way of catching eyes with a different kind of shape but nevertheless with the emphasis remaining on bows and stern: Viz:

Accompanying Oktar in this picture are, let's call them Oktar's "educational assistants". They help present his anti-evolution programs. When I watched one of Oktar's videos these assistants don't come over as people of independent conviction and frankly these videos are embarrassing and disturbing to watch. Bearing the scars of cosmetic surgery Oktar's "kittens" look like Barbi clones. They move and speak in an highly orchestrated and contrived way; they come over as awkward self-conscious bad actors who are performing under orders. Oktar makes a point of speaking highly of women, but is there more to this than a man speaking highly of the treasures he owns? These women have been turned into sheer ornamentation and yet they must, of course, have their own inclinations, ambitions and aspirations which, no doubt, have been corrupted and exploited by Oktar. I would cry buckets if one of these girls was my daughter. 

One interesting little side-light is how Oktar repsponded when asked why he was being detained. See below:

dokuz8 NEWS

 @dokuz8_EN

 Jul 11

Leader of Islamic creationist cult Adnan Oktar and 235 of his followers have been detained with dawn raids in 5 provinces in Turkey.

"The British deep state has ordered the operation; I am not upset but surprised" said Oktar in an interview to Cumhuriyet during his detention.

....there is also this:

dokuz8 NEWS

@dokuz8_EN

Adnan Oktar was asked why he was detained while being taken to health inspection at Haseki Training & Research Hospital, "A game of the English deep-state"

I'm not quite sure why Oktar should think the UK "deep state" should be involved, unless it's something to do with Darwin being an upper crust English country gent. It may also be because the UK, along with France presided over the demise of the Ottoman empire. 

Now compare Oktar's words with this: On Alex Jones' wiki page Jones is reported as follows:

In March 2018, Brennan Gilmore, who shared a video he captured of a car hitting anti-racism protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, filed a lawsuit against Jones and six others. According to the lawsuit, Jones said that Gilmore was acting as part of a false flag operation conducted by disgruntled government "deep state" employees in furtherance of a coup against President Trump. Gilmore alleges he has been receiving death threats from Jones' audience.

Here we have two conspiracy theorists, one Christian and the other Islamic who share a similar paranoid theory about a "deep state". Remember also that Donald Trump hasn't exactly discouraged this line of thinking with his talk of the "swamp" he is going to drain. It is no surprise that Trump and Jones have engaged in mutual support. That Trumpism, Farageism and the appeal to an almost xenophobic nationalism have gained traction is, I suppose, evidence of a more general malaise, a malaise that in some quarters is far more extreme than even conceived by Trump and Farage. To the xenophobic paranoid conspiracy theorist the whole social system is knit together and controlled by covert malign intelligences (See relevant link I give at the end).

We seem to be living in times when a pathological tribal xenophobia is fertile ground for the fantasy narratives promulgated by the likes of Kent Hovind, Steve Anderson, Ken Ham, David Wolfe, William Tapley and various flat Earth fundamentalists and newagers, not to mention Jones and Oktar; it is noticeable that these are all men with a lucrative public power base to satisfy, a power base that competes to a lesser or greater extent with the state. They no longer trust that state and in fact see it as conspiring to pull one over on them and their followers. However, I believe it's not a safe policy to screw down on their delusions with censorship, for if anything the resulting sense of persecution helps justify their distrust and adds credence to their baroque delusions. Baroque these delusions may be but in whatever doctrinal dress they come, whether Christian, Islamic or new age they nevertheless have at their heart a simple us vs them tribalism which catches the disaffected and alienated mood of the day. This malaise can, I believe, eat away at civilization and bring the apocalypse for entirely different reasons:

Relevant links:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/04/anti-conspiracy-theorism-theory.html

https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/inside-the-weird-world-of-an-islamic-39feminist39-cult/560c7b1d4fd5a3935ee01a40

No Progress on Young Earthism's Biggest Problem: Startlight, Part 2

All is not well with the fundamentalist*¹ project to solve their self-inflicted star-light problem; they are in a mother of a muddle over it and they are arguing between themselves.

The contention of the fundamentalist ministry Answers in Genesis is that the cosmos is a mere 6000 years old. This creates an immediate and obvious issue if one is to accept that the majority of stars are far more than 6000 light years in distant. Few people today would question this finding of astronomy any more than they would question that the Earth is a globe. For we are not dealing here with an abstruse question of mathematical astrophysics such as the precise details of the Big Bang (or even if it is in fact a distant reality), or how the Moon was formed long ago, or how cometary statistics can be explained with the hypothesized Oort cloud. Rather, we are dealing with something that is relatively elementary;  in fact the experimental data can be gathered by anyone who walks into their garden at night, perhaps armed with a telescope or binoculars, and looks up at the sky and observes the Milky Way: You don’t need a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator or state of the art telescope to gather this very elementary data and you don’t need a PhD in mathematical astro-physics to interpret this data: This data can be gathered and interpreted by any intelligent layman. On the assumption that the Milky Way is composed of stars then a few calculations will confirm that these stars are a lot further than 6000 light years.  This is about what you can observe and interpret in your garden and not about tentative & abstruse theoretical astro-physics. Everyone agrees that here we have strong evidence of a cosmos whose age runs into billions of years.; everyone, that is, except Christian fundamentalists. Cue the fundamentalist star-light problem: How does that light get to us in less than 6000 years?*²

In this second part to my series on the latest developments in fundamentalist attempts to address this issue, I will be looking at John Hartnet’s criticsm of fellow fundamentalist Danny Faulkner; as I related in part 1 Faulkner has proposed his own “solution” to the Genesis literalist’s star-light conundrum (See here for part 1). However, since my post on Faulkner’s “solution” a year ago other articles have popped on the AiG starlight page; in particular the latest article, written by Faulkner himself, is for lay readers. In this article Faulkner summarises his thinking (my emphases):

We need to recognize that God used many processes during Creation Week that are different from processes today. He didn’t make Adam instantaneously out of nothing, but instead formed him from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). God used a similar process to make the land and flying animals (Genesis 2:19). And he caused the plants to grow rapidly out of the ground on Day Three (Genesis 1:11–12). In other words, God rapidly and miraculously matured many things during Creation Week. It seems both logical and theologically consistent that, in a similar manner, God could have rapidly “matured” the universe, bringing the light from distant objects to the earth in a way similar to trees instantly sprouting and rising to full height.

In addition to creating the physical universe during Creation Week, God also created the laws that govern it. What if these laws were not in full effect until the end of that week, as we see when God created mature plants, land animals, and the first two humans?

Instead of bringing starlight to earth according to physical laws, God could have miraculously solved the light travel time problem on Day Four, before putting the laws that govern light travel into effect. After all, nearly everything about creation was miraculous.

This is an essentially layman’s summary of what Faulkner has already proposed: Viz: Star light problem? No problem! God “matured” everything miraculously during the “creation week” so that by the end of that week the cosmos was all but indistinguishable to the one we see. In Faulkner’s model star-light was, during the “creation week", miraculously rushed to its destinations all over the cosmos (including the Earth). Faulkner’s model is only a tad more honest than Whitcomb and Morris’s in-transit creation of photons, a suggestion they made in their 1961 book The Genesis Flood. Since then some fundamentalists (including AiG, - but not fundamentalist John Byl; see here) have become uncomfortable with this doctrine because it blatantly cuts across the integrity of the creation, a creation Christians see as the work of a God who does not lie: Signals created in transit would effectively have been created to “lie” about their origins and deliver a false report about the events in the distant cosmos.

Unlike Whitcomb and Morris, Faulkner is saying that star-light has truly traversed its way across billions of light years of space, albeit miraculously hurried along by God himself during the creation week. But…and this is the big “but”….  as we saw in my first part Faulkner’s model, nevertheless, also has built into it bogus histories: Distant cosmic events like supernovae, which have been observed by humans over hundreds if not thousands of years, either would have to be all crammed into the creation week or deceptively pre-embedded in the light rays that God “shoots” across the universe: So, we're back to light beams which at best create false impressions and at worst deliver false reports and fake news! Faulkner can claim that in his “solution” light signals are telling the truth as to where they are from, but his model would involve so much “creation week” special pleading and contrivance that he’s almost back to square one and forced to posit a model which employs bogus histories.

But in the final analysis Faulkner can just sweep all these concerns away; he can claim God is God and divine fiat means that God can do what He wants even if his activity effectively tells lies creates a false impression and deceives us about the way the cosmos works.  And yet it seems that Faulkner’s model is the (currently) preferred "solution" at AiG. Evidence for this is indicated by the fact that Faulkner’s boss, Ken Ham, promoted Faulkner’s work in a blog post (see part 1). Moreover, since part 1 there has been another article posted on AiG’s star light page by a fundamentalist called Lee Anderson. This article, as we shall see, also suggests that Faulkner’s ideas go down well at AiG. The abstract of this article reads as follows (my emphases):

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate such cosmological models from a biblical (exegetical and theological) perspective, seeking to determine if they are consistent with Scripture. The specific interpretive claims of these models will be examined, as well as their overarching implications concerning the principal focus of the Genesis creation narrative and the intent of the biblical author in light of his understanding of the text’s original readers. This paper concludes that these cosmological models are dependent on strained exegesis and that they introduce interpretations dependent on modern scientific ideas that would have been foreign to the original readers.

I’ve only dipped into this paper but the general impression is that this fundamentalist theologian isn’t too impressed with the efforts made so far by fundamentalist anti-scientists to solve the star-light problem and that they kowtow too much to modern science. In Anderson’s view fundamentalist astronomers should spend more time interpreting the Bible according to fundamentalist hermeneutic rules before they move onto the science. Anderson has at least got one thing right: Viz: Modern scientific ideas would have been foreign to the original readers. But it never occurs to this kind of writer that perhaps that is why the ancients generated a mythical creation account rather than a literal account; a literal account would have been well beyond their concept range. All they needed to know was the essential theology of creation; i.e. the order and purpose of creation and that it was God who made it and organised it, contrary to many of the pagan ideas at the time.

Anderson is very critical of Russ Humphreys’ time dilation “solution” which in the final analysis admits to the existence of billions of years of time in the universe at large, although gravitational time dilation is supposed to slow time in the vicinity of the Earth so much that only 6000 years have passed on Earth since creation. Russ Humphreys' efforts represent another failed fundamentalist attempt to solve their star-light problem. Near the end of the article Anderson comes out in favour of Faulkner’s model:

It is critical to foster a commitment to a sound grammatical-historical hermeneutic and to a robust theological method (moving from biblical theology, to systematic theology, to worldview development, to interaction with scientific data) so as to avoid inadvertently imposing on the biblical text models that are foreign to the Scriptures. Faulkner’s proposal for a new solution to the light travel time problem does this (albeit in a basic fashion; see Faulkner 2013b; Faulkner with Anderson 2016, 199–220). It would be encouraging to see more works that take a similar approach.

This, I think summarises where things are at with AiG: Namely, a fall-back on the cop-out of Creation Weekism. Problems? All the problems were miraculously solved during the creation week! As an aside: The quote above tells us how clueless Anderson is about Biblical hermeneutics. The connotational nature of natural language means that the resources of translation form a huge hinterland of information and processing power, a hinterland which exists well beyond the Biblical text: Scriptural interpretation accesses the resources of history, current cultural knowledge and common understandings of human nature. Therefore determining what is foreign to the Biblical writers must necessarily access the modern historian’s view of those ancient writers. Thus our interpretations of Biblical texts are necessarily a function of our own culture and knowledge; we cannot escape our world view and therefore we are epistemically responsible for getting that world view right, thus enabling us to deliver correct interpretations of scripture. Fundamentalist Jason Lisle also gets this wrong; see here. Fundamentalists read scripture with the motive of seeking absolute certainties, certainties which give them a pretext to condemn outsiders  in the strongest possible terms (especially “apostate” Christians!). Therefore fundamentalists much prefer a model of Scripture whereby they believe they can bypass epistemic doubts & difficulties thus justifying in their minds their highly authoritarian pronouncements.

***

So, after that long preamble I now wish to turn to Hartnett’s criticism of Faulkner’s star-light “solution”, the current favourite at AiG. Mercifully, Hartnett’s article is short: I have to confess that there’s a side of me which begrudges having to untangle the complex mental knots that fundamentalists tie themselves into with their anti-science! There are other more constructive things I could be doing with my time.

However, I feel sorry for Hartnett. As with Russ Humphreys Hartnett doesn’t want to patch in miracles willy-nilly to make it all work; rather he wants to do a bit of genuine science, something that fundamentalist culture with its emphasis on a God who “speaks stars into existence” does not favour. Of Faulkner’s proposal Hartnett writes the following (my emphases):

Firstly, this is not a new proposal. In my book Starlight Time and the New Physics, first published 2007, I mentioned this very proposal as a possibility, which I discounted immediately. I excerpt the relevant text here:

“There is a way around this issue, a really complex and ad hoc miracle that would enable the creation of a beam of light from source to observer so that the observer appears to see current information. For example, when the supernova named 1987a occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is about 170,000 light-years distant, God could have miraculously translated the light across 170,000 light-years’ distance of space instantly (as if the photons had passed through a wormhole) and then just outside the solar system let it move at the usual speed of light. This hypothesis is untestable and, though not impossible, seems implausible, to put it mildly. Miracles in the Bible are rare and special events, the purpose of which is clearly understood and/or revealed. This does not fit that category; it looks more like a convenient set of miracles invented ad hoc to overcome a difficulty”. (Hartnett 2010, p. 27)

Faulkner’s concept is that God miraculously did it, so it is exactly as I envisaged there. The most serious problem with his proposal can be broken down this way. If you say that while God did this He also suspended all the other laws of physics necessary to translate the light (the photons), from the source to the receiver, but only when it arrives in the solar system those laws again all apply, then the proposal is untestable. (There is nothing else to do.)

Hartnett then goes on to consider what he thinks might be the observable effects of Faulkner’s proposal: After all, Hartnett’s article is entitled:

Critique: Faulkner’s Miraculous Translation of Light Model Would Leave Evidence

Hartnett looks at the kind of mechanisms God might have used to carry out the miracle: If God miraculously accelerated the photons then we would expect that the light from across the inverse would  show “massive blue shifts”. Alternatively, if God did it by stretching space then we would see massive redshifts. At one point Hartnett is reminded of Setterfield’s failed light-speed-decay hypothesis where, he says, an unholy collection of improbable coincidences are needed. Presumably Harnett sees Faulkner's work as just as unholy!

But why should Hartnett’s otherwise reasonable call on the logic of physics carry any weight at all among fellow fundies when they are apt to use arbitrary divine magic fiat to contrive anything? (cf “God spoke the stars into existence!” - a variant on "hey presto!"). Why in the miraculous creation week should stretching or accelerating light result in spectral shifts if the laws of physics don’t apply during that week? Surely extrapolating physical logic into that week is a hazardous exercise; at what point do the laws of physics as a reliable guide to what has happened end and the inscrutably miraculous start? Faulkner has the freedom to rig up anything and he can simply wave it all away with a “God did it!”, end of story, no science is needed!  Hartnett, however, is aware that Faulkner’s thesis does provide a bottomless supply of ad hoc miraculous resorts waiting in the wings to bail out his “theory”, although clearly Hartnett doesn’t like it one little bit:

I am sorry to say that Faulkner’s proposal here is not new and it does not have any substance at present. Currently, therefore, it fails in what it sets out to do. Unless these objections are answered it is not a solution to the problem.

If you contain the substance of the model to the totally miraculous, in the sense that you postulate that none of the obvious observations are possible due to God suspending all relevant laws so that these known aspects of physics do not apply in this instance, it is an ad hoc proposal which can never be refuted. I included the idea in my book, along with several others, because I cannot be certain that God did not act that way, but in my opinion it is highly unlikely.

The science starved Hartnett craves a coherent comprehensible creation where light signals don’t deliver a set of unholy lies and where an underlying physical logic makes the cosmos comprehensible:

I expect a creationist solution to include the fact that everything we see in the universe obeys the current testable laws of physics, which are the creation of God (Hartnett 2011b). That does not mean He did not suspend laws while creating, but that what we observe can be relied upon using known physics.

Hartnett is making a forlorn call to physics but it’s not going to wash with the literalist ultras who so thoroughly enamored of divine magic. 

***

So this is the intellectual mess that Ken Ham presides over and yet he has the spiritual conceit to call down the utmost approbation on those who dare to disagree with his opinions; opinions which, of course, he believes have divine authority

In part 3 I will look at Faulkner’s reply to Hartnett, but we might have to wait another year: Fundamentalist anti-science is just not worth spending too much time with.

Footnotes

*1 I use the term fundamentalist to designate an attitude rather than plain Biblical literalism. Although Biblical literalism is often a condition of fundamentalism it is not a sufficient condition. For example Christians like Paul Nelson and Sal Cordova believe in a young earth but their willingness to form constructive relations with Christians who don’t agree with them makes them amenable parties and excludes them from a fundamentalist classification. The Wiki definition of "fundamentalism" sums it up well:

Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to be applied to a tendency among certain groups—mainly, though not exclusively, in religion—that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as it is applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group is often the result of this tendency.

We can see this cultic insider vs outsider ethos well developed in Ken Ham.

*2 As has been pointed out by Faulkner himself, the fundamentalist star-light conundrum starts as soon as Adam sees the stars!



Relevant links
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2017/07/no-progress-on-young-earthisms-biggest.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/04/fundamentalist-agrees-with-astronomers.html

The AiG Star-light page can be found here:

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/

Jordan Peterson and the Wild Web

Male role model: Jordan Peterson debates some opponents

Chris Erskin, who wrote a comment to my post here, has urged that I get up to speed on the Jordan Peterson affair. The following is my first foray into this business and represents my back-of-the-envelopment thesis on the phenomenon. I have conceptualized this thesis on the basis of my rather limited sample of experience so far and I have quite intentionally banged it out as a quick pro tempore treatment before I learn too much about the good professor and the furore he is at the centre of. The reason for this is to see how well this first thumbnail sketch, which boils down my experience and thinking to date, bears up as I learn more; how well can the human mind form a conclusion on a small sample of data and get it right?

*** 

“Male” and “Female” are fuzzy multidimensional categories that have competing thematics. For example, at the extremes (and I stress "extremes") one can’t act as a single minded hunter and at the same time a multitasking child rearing gatherer. Competing thematics is common in a systems theoretic context. For example, armour and protection often compete with mobility; it's difficult to satisfy both. Ask a lobster.

However, I must stress the fuzzy multidimensional nature of the male/female categories from which, in advance, we can predict the possibility of such as thing as “blended gender”. As with other biological categories we are likely to find a moderately loose clustering around norms, norms that our conceptual vision often posterizes

OK, so let’s proceed on the assumption that there is such a thing as fuzzy & normative (and I stress "fuzzy" & "normative")  male-female gendering which is a complex and probably largely unknown function of nature and nurture. 

This is where Peterson comes in: My current working hypothesis is that our Western culture, no doubt as a result of societal role changes since the industrial revolution, has, in the long term, resulted in a situation where the normative clustering we find around male and female models is not 100% appropriate to the current societal set-up. This has led to hard feelings on both sides of the normative gender distribution: Females well able to take up tasks otherwise prejudiced to them have felt marginalized and males feel that their masculine dominating & leading role has become threatened.

Enter Jordan Peterson the cool fast talking champion of the male-leaning gender. Intellectually he looks to be incredibly fast on the draw and as well able to handle himself as Clint Eastwood is in the Wild West. A perfect male role model.

He’s applauded by both right wing atheist and Christian males who perceive him to articulate what they have been feeling in their guts for a long time, especially the threat on the polarized conceptions of gender and the denigration of maleness. Many men cheer him on as their champion as he expresses and argues so well for what they instinctively feel.

So summarizing: I see the Jordan Peterson phenomenon as a reaction to:

a)  A societal structure which isn’t a hand-in-glove fit for a polarised model of male and femaleness. The hunter-gatherer and pre-industrial agrarian societies might have been a better fit in this respect.

b) The fact that it has become increasingly apparent in recent times that when "God created them male and female"  this wasn't a clear cut binary distinction but two fuzzy multidimensional categories of a normative distribution.

There may be other aspects at play here as well: The up-and-coming eco-movement, which so often strikes a chord with the female gender, perhaps doesn’t sit so well with the stereotypical male go-out-conquer-and-exploit role.

Finally I must add that I’m not a Marxist social reductionist, Postmodernist or anti-free market. Marxism, certainly in its early forms, had a very weak conception of human nature and still has.  (I think Peterson is probably right about that). But then neither am I a libertarian. Relevant links in this connection are:  

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-free-marketeer-but-with-but.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/01/ayn-rand-paradox-paradox-paradox-irony.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/06/2001-spaced-out-odyssey.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-know-you-know-you-know-it.html

***

Anyway, that’s my current intellectual state play regarding the good professor. However, it's early days yet. No doubt more analysis to come! This is just my first shot!

***

ADDENDUM 10/7/18

The day after I drafted the above article my copy of "Premier Christianity" landed on my doormat. It featured an article on the Peterson enigma. Several times the article remarked on his young male following (Probably white males I suspect). e.g.:

Why are so many young men following him? And why should Christians care?

Perhaps by way of answer the article later remarked:

Comparisons have been made to the muscular Christianity that led so many young men to follow church leader Mark Driscoll at one time.

Letting males be males may have something to do with it although I doubt Peterson would be pleased to be compared to Mark Driscoll, and rightly so! (See here and here). The article quotes Peterson as saying:

 "Men and women are not the same"

That, in my view, is very likely true! As I have said above human nature is a largely unknown function of both nature and nuture with gender being fuzzy and normative. But I regard  the social reductionism of Marxism (i.e. positing human beings as economically interchangeable parts) as much an error as does Peterson.  And yet Peterson is also quoted as saying:

...the idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

Well, it's undoubtedly true that some parties may have an interest in overstating the historical oppression of women, but to my understanding of history these words by Peterson seem as much an overstatement as what he is speaking out against!

On the subject of Peterson's version of Christianity we read:

Peterson has consistently refused to be pinned down on his personal religious convictions. When I pressed him on it, he described himself as a "religious man" who was "conditioned in every cell as consequence of the Judaeo-Christian worldview".  The closest I could get to whether he really believed in God was that he lives his life "as though God exists", saying "The fundamental hallmark of belief is how you act, not what you say about what you think".

In a world poised to react to information what one says is in itself an act. Therefore the acts vs words dichotomy is a distinction difficult to maintain.

However I was interested in this quote from one of his books:

"I knew that the cross was simultaneously the point of greatest suffering, the point of death and transformation, and the symbolic centre of the world"

...and that reminds me of something I wrote on pages 4 & 5 of this document.