The Untruth movement

"If the Truth movement's only job is to uncover discrepancies, it's dooming itself to forever pulling facts apart. It's kind of a Zeno's arrow of illogic: Truthers will never come to a reasonable conclusion because there's never going to be an absence of doubt. It's time for them to put up or shut up, in other words—it's been six years since 9/11 and they've yet to produce anything coherent."

"Towers of Babble", Utne Reader, January-February 2008 (Reprinted from the Stranger Sept. 6, 2007)

I don't usually do 911 stuff, but this is an interesting article and the excerpt above shows what the real problem is. They can never be satisfied. It's a bit like creationists who are never satisfied with transitional fossils, because between two transitional fossils, there's always room for one more - "and it can't be found".

Anyway, here's another lengthy quote showing that this unreasonable way of doubting leads to a fragmentation of religious proportions:

"There are almost as many notions about what happened on September 11 as there are members of 9/11 Truth organizations. To add to the confusion, the movement is home to not a few eccentrics. After the coffee shop meeting with We Are Change Seattle, I got the first in a series of e-mails from a woman named Rebecca. Rebecca was angry that she wasn't allowed to take part in the group interview, a decision that Konrad justified as a way to present a "more united front" to the media.

Rebecca and three other original members of 9/11 Truth Seattle— the umbrella entity that makes communication between various Truth groups in Seattle possible—had decided to abandon We Are Change Seattle anyway after a disagreement. Most recently, Rebecca has decided to stop being part of any 9/11 Truth organization. In her words: "I have instead decided to give priority to my creative work with political satire and performance poetry."

This tiny schism is emblematic of larger rifts within the Truth movement. Its first few years have seen a number of organizations come and go in a flurry of arguments and personality clashes. For instance, last year, after a prolonged argument about whether the towers were felled by miniature nuclear weapons, some members of a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth voted to disband and reform as the new, improved Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Many Truthers rejected a man named Webster Tarpley as a major public face of the movement because of his previous work for the LaRouche Connection, a news service funded by the LaRouche organization. "Many of us felt like he took some credibility from the movement," a Truther who wanted to be anonymous told me. Tarpley is rumored to be considering a run for president on a 9/11 Truth ticket, which could draw some of the Truth votes from both Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, who seem to be running neck-and-neck in popularity with the primarily Libertarian-leaning members of 9/11 Truth groups."

I said religious proportions quite deliberately, because just as various religious branches within the same religion will disagree on infalsifiable things that a priori can never be settled, so the truthers' constant doubt can never be satisfied.

If there really was a conspiracy (and not just a stupid government) then it should be possible to put pieces together, but that's not what the truthers are here for. Their mission in life is to take things apart, and their hyper-scepticism runs rampant, like a Sceptic-Midas who has to doubt everything he touches. They're looking for untruths, not truths. And they find them, just like any paranoid can discover that he is indeed followed.

And so they doubt each other as much as George W. Bush.

You Can Prove a Negative

"A principle of folk logic is that you can’t prove a negative. Skeptics and scientists routinely concede the point in debates about the possible existence of everything from Big Foot and Loch Ness to aliens and even God. In a recent television interview on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, for example, Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer admitted as much when Stephen Colbert pressed him on the point when discussing Weapons of Mass Destruction, the comedian adding that once it is admitted that scientists cannot prove the nonexistence of a thing, then belief in anything is possible. [...] There is one big problem with this. Among professional logicians, guess how many think that you can’t prove a negative? That’s right, zero.

[...]

So why is it that people insist that you can’t prove a negative? I think it is the result of two things: (1) Disappointment that induction is not bulletproof, airtight, and infallible, and (2) A desperate desire to keep believing whatever one believes, even if all the evidence is against it. [...] Meaning: your argument against aliens is inductive, therefore not incontrovertible. Since I want to believe in aliens, I’m going to dismiss the argument no matter how overwhelming the evidence against aliens, and no matter how vanishingly small the chance of extraterrestrial abduction.
If we’re going to dismiss inductive arguments because they produce conclusions that are probable but not definite, then we are in deep manure. Despite its fallibility, induction is vital in every aspect of our lives, from the mundane to the most sophisticated science. Without induction we know basically nothing about the world apart from our own immediate perceptions. So we’d better keep induction, warts and all, and use it to form negative beliefs as well as positive ones.
You can prove a negative — at least as much as you can prove anything at all.

Steven D. Hales, Skeptic.com, 7. December 2007

Real Atheism Requires Omniscience?

"Myth: The only logical basis for atheism is to know everything — in other words, to be God!

[...]

However, such knowledge is not necessary in order to make other negative statements. Examples of this latter type include "no married bachelors exist" or "no round squares exist." We can prove each of them with logic, primarily based upon the definitions of the terms involved. To assert the opposite of either statement entails asserting something which is incoherent — and we are rationally justified in denying something incoherent. If an atheist believes that the statement "God exists" is similarly incoherent, then that atheist can say "no god exists" with certainty and without being ominscient."

atheism.about.com, 20. September 2007

Some more reasons given. It's a must-read if you're unfamiliar with the issue.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Presents our Top 20 Logical Fallacies

"What is a logical fallacy?
All arguments have the same basic structure: A therefore B. They begin with one or more premises (A), which is a fact or assumption upon which the argument is based. They then apply a logical principle (therefore) to arrive at a conclusion (B). An example of a logical principle is that of equivalence. For example, if you begin with the premises that A=B and B=C, you can apply the logical principle of equivalence to conclude that A=C. A logical fallacy is a false or incorrect logical principle. An argument that is based upon a logical fallacy is therefore not valid. It is important to note that if the logic of an argument is valid then the conclusion must also be valid, which means that if the premises are all true then the conclusion must also be true. Valid logic applied to one or more false premises, however, leads to an invalid argument. Also, if an argument is not valid the conclusion may, by chance, still be true.

Top 20 Logical Fallacies (in alphabetical order):"

See article for the full 20!

See also this post!

[Comment] Extra! Extra! Atheists Whip Christians in Debate! Again! And Again

"For one, nobody out-rationalizes Sam Harris. The guy has a brain the size of Europe — and all of it is connected to his mouth. He also seems entirely compassionate and utterly Pro-Human, two qualities I know I enjoy in a person. I think Sam Harris stands as pretty much the ultimate example of what a person can be and think when they insist that rational thought, above all, should be respected. And I can respect that. It's certainly not the worst thing for a person to stake their claim on.

[...]

But we've got to understand that once we decide, for whatever reason, to Vote God, we necessarily mark ourselves, in the eyes of someone who's gone with option No God, as extraordinarily irrational. At that point we can't help but seem to them as fundamentally (so to speak) bonkers.

[...]

So Rick Warren loses the debate. In the end, we Christians will always lose the debate with atheists. Because they're using the language of logic. And there are no words for the essence of the Christian experience. And there never will be, thank God."

John Shore, Crosswalk, 19. May 2007

[Philosophy] What Atheism Isn't, Part 1: Atheism and Religion

"Ultimately, atheism is about arguments, about justifying what one believes – whereas faith is belief without regard to justification."

Thenewhumanist.com, April 2007

[Sam Harris, philosophy] The Empty Wager

"As many readers will remember, Pascal suggested that religious believers are simply taking the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined for hell. Put this way, atheism seems the very picture of reckless stupidity.

But there are many questionable assumptions built into this famous wager. One is the notion that people do not pay a terrible price for religious faith."

Newsweek, April 18, 2007

[Science] Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

"The phrase "medical miracle" is a newsroom cliche. It means a situation in which a person makes an unexpected recovery despite great odds or a pessimistic prognosis. Yet often the phrase is used much more broadly to describe a seemingly supernatural or paranormal healing or curing event such as faith healing. While to many people it may seem obvious that a miracle has occurred, in reality such miracles are rarely as impressive as they seem."

Livescience.com, 29 July 2006

[Logics] Answering believers

A very good summary of Atheist arguments, by Hume's Razor at the Sam Harris forum. If you're well read, you may know them, but this is a keeper for reference!

Answering Believers