UFO pseudoscience by Daniel Brito

Sadly, it's at Ken Silverstein's Washington Babylon

(Sigh). Well, Daniel Brito, after a smooth intro, spills the beans on what he really thinks with his comments about Roswell, which are all wet. The reality of the explanation, and why previous mis-explanations were offered up due to Cold War reasons, by Occam's Razor, etc., makes good empirical and logical sense. 

Beyond that, per the Skeptic's Dictionary entry, what is called "Roswell" is actually a conflation of events over several years.

But, Brito would rather settle for illogic and even hoaxes, like the hoax pic largely behind "Belgian triangles." That's it, pictured at left.

I’ve also been (for free, wouldn’t pay) to the tourist trap museum in Roswell, and having grown up in New Mexico, am familiar with the land, the soon-to-be Air Force air bases, missile tests etc. 

And, yes, it's a fucking tourist trap. And, when the director or someone overheard me decades ago, saying, sotto voce, words to that effect, he said, "You have to believe." That's exactly it. Belief. Like religious belief, and like it, per the book of Hebrews, in the absence of actual evidence seen.

Reality? Contra Brito, without bothering to look for the actual skeptical info on any of his specific UFO reports?

I've also been more than once to other sights of allegedly unexplained phenomena, like the Marfa Lights. The skeptical explanation there, from my personal knowledge of the highway, fits fine.

As I said at Ken’s site, and expanding:

1. The lack of understanding of actual physics that would be involved by many people confident that UFOs are actually alien visits.

2. The arguably personality-disorder level of narcissism that leads many to thing "hey, UFOs visited ME!" Erm, and not Biden, Putin, Xi, UN General Assembly, etc.? (Daniel, you may claim the book addresses that; I highly doubt that. In addition, the creator of X-Files said last week in an NYT column that the Pentagon's new releases don't say what most people claim they say. It's true that pilots may not have that problem, but, Kean's, and UFO enthusiasts' in general, take on military spottings, overestimates military training outside what's narrowly necessary to get a military job done. And, that one too is not original with me.

3. The lack of understanding of science research in general; if there are aliens within our galaxy, they'd be able to learn plenty about us without leaving home, and for a lot less, with massive telescopes etc.

4. Related to that? The economics of interplanetary manned spacecraft. Oops, forgot that one! (This is new to me, but, I'll be adding it to the narcissism argument and others in the future.)

5. As for specific claims he makes? I'm not wasting time googling for the skeptical take on everything, as noted above, but Rational Wiki has a perfectly rational explanation for black triangles in general. As for the Belgian Lights triangles? The "base" photo, touted by UFOlogists for 20-plus years, was a hoax, as noted at actual Wiki.

6. The assumption that, of ALL these aliens, all have just stopped by for curiosity, chit-chat and an alien cup of coffee. Really? NONE of them are like the aliens in the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man"?

7. The appeal to family trees, in the book’s author, and other prominent touters such as Hillary Clinton is a form of false appeal to authority, or appeal to the crowd or popularity and as such, logically fallacious. Just because RFK Jr.'s uncle was JFK doesn't make his antivaxxerism any more true. 

8. As for Part 1 of his series? Harry Reid pushed UFO study as a tourist gold mine for Nevada. Ted Stevens was a warhawk bordering Russia and wanted unknown objects studied for military reasons. Not sure about Inouye. 

Re Reid? Laughing boy Brito doesn't ask if the Pentagon periodically gets in an apparent UFO tizzy to gin up its budget. Of course now, the Air Force and Navy have to fight for anti-UFO dollars with Space Force! UFOs, the final frontier!

9. Speaking of? Chris Carter, the creator of the X-Files, says he rejects the new UFOlogy. Beyond that, the Pentagon report says little about UFOs and much about us, says Adam Mann. 

Mann has several good things to say. I'll give you two excerpts:

Though it contains no indication that any of its incidents could have been caused by things not of this Earth, it will be seen as a major victory by those who have been pushing for increased government disclosures about strange lights in the skies.

The new report is less a major turning point in our understanding of life in the universe and more a product of our current cultural climate, a time when expertise and authority are increasingly being called into question. The debate over UFOs instead highlights the limits of knowledge and humanity’s continued need to believe in something beyond our mundane experience of the world.

To me, that ties in with the psychological angle of narcissism on those who claim to have actually seen UFOs that must be aliens. People in an America of 330 million and world of 7-plus billion are looking to escape the mundane.

That said? There's this one group that hasn't really seen such things and doesn't expect to.

But before rushing off into such flights of fancy, it might be good to consider that another group of sky watchers, astronomers, rarely report seeing unidentified aerial phenomena. “No one would be happier than astronomers if UFOs turned out to be alien spacecraft,” says Andrew Fraknoi, a retired astronomer and member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), which promotes critical investigation of extraordinary claims. “Imagine getting to talk about astronomy with creatures that traveled through the stars.”

Mann has more in that vein. But, astronomers are "experts," and possibly part of the dreaded "them," and get government money, etc., so must be distrusted. Besides, Fraknoi IS a member of "them" — skeptics! Right, Daniel?

In addition, Mann notes what I noted about Roswell: UFOs arose out of the Cold War. 

A new piece at NY Mag goes back further, to chaff and other early anti-radar measures in World War II. Stealth bombers, whose triangle shapes match these non-bogie bogies on modern radar screens, is just an extrapolation of that technology. The piece also, interestingly, raises not only the possibility of "but Russians" or "but Chinese," but says, more possibly so, is "but defects in software powering modern American radar."

And, kind of undercutting Brito's breathlessness about Leslie Kean, she wasn't sole author of the 2017 NYT story about the Pentagon's research.

In addition, as Poynter notes, there's questions about just what the Pentagon program actually was and why the enthusiasm right now.

That said, contra Mr. Blumenthal? In the past, hallucinations and fabrications have been part and parcel of UFO reports. Publicity seeking certainly has been. Whitley Streiber presumably has been doing both! Why would anything be different now?

And, he and the other three "expert witnesses" for Poynter should take note of the economics, as at the link above. They note the tech level, if any of these things are actually real, are (apparently) beyond the level of the US, Russia, and China. They don't even look at the cost issue if any of these things were real. Nor do they note the sociology and public policy angle — if any of these things are real, why aren't world leaders getting visits?

Or, as Michael Shermer said a decade ago, it's not UFOs OR UAPs, it's CRAP. Shermer covers some of the inflations of the original description of the Belgian Triangles by some of its military by later persons, including the Leslie Kean so beloved by Daniel Brito.

(I had originally had Part 1 linked as part of this week's Texas Progressives roundup along with other pieces on the new Pentagon report, thinking, per Reid, that Brito was writing a "follow the Congressional grifting" piece, until Part 2 rudely disillusioned me.)

Finally, note to Ken Silverstein: I know you've got Part 3 scheduled. Please, no more after that. Had Brito done something halfway along the lines of Poynter, we could talk.

Update, July 9: Brito has done it and written that Part 3. (I wouldn't be getting big payout click-link bucks anyway, so the "no follow" is turned on.) Among many failings of motivated reasoning, Brito calls proto-New Ager C.G. Jung a crank (and he is) but touts Apollo 14 astronomer and later parapsychology touter Edgar Mitchell as a serious guy for writing the forward to a UFOs book when in reality, he's also a crank.

Apparently, Ken isn't listening. Brito now has a podcast with Stephen Bassett, which goes FAR over Ken's 11 minutes. Rational Wiki doesn't have a page for Bassett, but it does have for a co-loon. As for Brito saying Bassett is serious. So was that German guy writing about his struggle. And, Bassett expanding from UFOs/UAPs to an alleged Presidential statement that the "ETs are here" (Alleged, because no actual Presidential statement saying that actually exists) shows the type of claims inflation that happens with UFOs is a good example of retrospective falsification or similar.

No, finally two: Mr. Brito has an interesting recent past. He's also full of himself as well as shit if he thinks this is an "indispensible guide." And, he joined Twitter only last month, and to tout his indispensible bullshit, I'm sure.

No, finally part three, and Ken, you should already know this yourself. —Brandolini's Law, that is, the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than the amount needed to peddle it in the first place. Brito's podcast shows that by the amount of stuff he simply throws around.

Of course, Ken might be a true believer himself, by the amount of space he's given Brito already, with more to come.

More SJW pandering: High Country News still doesn't want me back

I think it's been three full years now since I cancelled my digital-only subscription to a magazine I once loved but with which I now have a love-frustration relationship. (That applies, IMO, to some relationships you and I have with other people, too; love-frustration is much more the thing than stereotypical love-hate.)

Anyway, just after New Year's, HCN offered me a rock bottom buck an issue digital only subscription. I pondered a few days, then said "no" to myself. 

Thank doorknob.

The magazine that pandered to Melanin Base Camp a couple of years ago and let it run a passel of lies under guise of an opinion piece is back again.

This time, it's over a piece, one co-published elsewhere, I believe (like elements of Melanin Base Camp) that dives into social justice warrior pandering. It's about state CROWN acts that would let Black women wear their hair in "natural" ways and would also require more transparency on "natural" hair products for Black women over possible toxicity.

There's both hypocrisy and an elemental logical fallacy in the piece.

The hypocrisy? For Blacks, "straightened" hair is not natural, no more than Whites getting a curling iron and more for Afros. (Indeed, two of five pictures in a slide show at the piece show Black women with straightened hair.) And, many Black women's "natural" hair care products, especially many with the most toxicity? Straighteners.

The elementary logical fallacy is of course the naturalistic fallacy. As I tweeted back to HCN, and the author after tagging her in a follow-up tweet, angel-cap mushrooms and arsenic are both perfectly natural.

And, I said "no" to the same $12 subscription offer last summer for myriad other reasons. They include failure to distinguish between carbon cap-and-trade and carbon tax, failure to correct errors in a story about inland ports, and (additional hypocrisy and irony alerts) running a puff piece about "real Cherokees vs Elizabeth Warren" that .... ignored Black Cherokees! (I forgot to link, in that "myriad" piece, publishing Indian legend and noble savage myth as truth.)

Half of the good stuff, or at least interesting stuff, they do have anymore, comes either from The Climate Desk at The Guardian or from Hakai Magazine as co-published. There's also issues about claiming their website was/is clunky while already, years ago, it had Javascript warnings whenever you'd right-click a picture, warning you that copying was not allowed.

Stephen Hawking perfectly illustrates false appeals to authority

Stephen Hawking: Exhibit A on what
constitutes false appeal to authority.

Fallacious appeals to authority are a classic error of common-sense, informal logic, and Stephen Hawking continues to make statements that others give credence that might not be warranted. (Per the first commenter, it's the "others giving credence" that's a fallacious appeal to authority, per the third paragraph and following.)

His latest? We're about to wipe ourselves out.

Maybe we are, maybe we're not, but he brings no special scientific credence to the table on the issue, unless there's a previously undiscovered black hole hurtling toward earth, and even then, that would be the black hole wiping us out, not we ourselves.

Look, he may be right.

But, that's not because he says so, it's because the most pessimistic climate scientists turn out to be right, or the most pessimistic students of nuclear weaponry turn out to be right.

On the former, while I'm no Pollyanna, I'm no James Howard Kunstler, either. On the latter, while I'm no modern day Atoms for Peace type, I think the world, by slow fits and starts, continues to become slightly less nuclearized.

Back to Hawking.

He's been wrong in something halfway approaching his sphere of expertise before, which further undercuts his credibility outside that sphere.

He has claimed, for example, that aliens could wipe us out. Given that we've not discovered any evidence of such aliens so far, and given that, IMO, many touters of SETI have overestimated the values of most variables in the Drake equations, may have psychological reasons for so doing, especially in America, and are deservedly spoofed, I highly doubt his claims.

Of course, his answer has been manned colonization elsewhere.

Per the commenter below, if use of sarcasm is an ad hominem
then we've opened the French window Overton Window.

Well, first of all, Prof. Hawking, if aliens attacked Earth, they'd attack Mars, too, and we certainly won't have the ability for interstellar colonization for thousands if not tens of thousands of years.

Second, given that you've been wrong about manned travel to Mars, overlooking the dangers of cosmic radiation, and other costs, your credibility in this whole area is kind of shot.

I'll grant a slightly higher likelihood Hawking is right about high-tech robots, but, to the degree I do, it's not because of his say-so, it's the say-so of experts in the field.

Back to the main point.

False appeal to authority is just one of a couple of dozen fallacies of informal logic. I encourage people to bookmark that link.

Update: I'm going to tackle the aliens part in further depth.

First, by when our first big radio telescopes were built, we know pretty well that there's no intelligent life within 100 light years of Earth.

Second, alien civilizations advanced enough to travel 100 light years or more probably wouldn't even bother wasting their time on us.

Third, if they did want to wipe us out, they'd have Star Trek-type cloaking devices or something. We'd never know what hit us.

Update 2: Per the second round of comments, I've tagged this post with the tag "salvific technologism." To explain, that's the idea that technology will always be the cavalry, always riding over the hill to save human nature. Having seen the massive problems with importing one invasive species to battle another, the idea that humans would go beyond that, the idea that human control of biology will always save us (it won't always fail us, though, and this should not be read as something anti-GMO), to the idea that human technological engineering will always save us, like in geoengineering against climate change, or blasting off to another planet after wrecking this one, is appalling, as well as being about as likely to be true as biological controls I mentioned at the start of the sentence.

And, for either of the commenters, or others, who have not read through my blog otherwise, those thoughts aren't just mine. I strongly suggest reading the likes of Evgeny Morozov.

==

Update, Oct. 20, 2018:

And since it's my blog, Seeker, I get to weigh in two years later with the next word, based in large part on John Horgan's review of Hawking's last book.

Hawking does practice scientism, though perhaps not as badly as other scientists. (I'm looking at you, Tyson.)

And, Horgan is right on another issue, which he touches on indirectly — the energy cost to settle any significant number of humans on Mars would be massively more than to address climate change or pandemics here. A Yucatan-like asteroid we should be able to deflect by the time one gets here. Hawking is far from alone in making these mistakes, but ... he's made them.

Beyond what I posted in comments below, I wish you so-called "scientific skeptics" would stop practicing scientism yourself, stop indulging others who practice it, and actually give yourself at least a basic acquaintance with philosophy.

I realize I might as well wish for Ted Cruz to support national health care, as far as the likelihood of that happening.

I will still wish and hope. 

Modern logic, modern atheism, and proving a negative

Tis true, as Gnu Atheists, and non-Gnus who lean somewhat this direction point out, that in certain varieties of modern logic, one can prove the non-existence of something, ie, in this case the non-existence of god.

But wait, that's not all.

At the same time, one can also prove modern logic spinoffs of some classical arguments for the existence of god. Ask Alvin Plantinga about that. Well, actually, if one calls Satan perfectly evil, one can prove the existence of both, if you know from reading some discussions about that. So, yes, Gnus and others, you do get a "baby" with modern logic. You also get various sorts of "bathwater" that go along with it.

Hence, I still reject these arguments that say, "Hey, I can prove the non-existence of god." You can prove lots of things in modal logic and other modern logic systems which engage in multivariant thinking.

If you want your "baby," please be honest about accepting your "bathwater" at the same time.

Fallacious reasoning is ultimately about philosophy

Fallacies, per Wikipedia, which actually is decent on this, are either formal or informal, and thus part of either formal or informal logic. And, logic as a whole is a major field within ... philosophy.

Informal fallacies are the ones you and I run across in everyday life, like the ad hominem, false appeal to authority (there IS a correct time to appeal to authority), and so forth.

Formal ones are like the old fallacy of the undistributed middle. Most formal fallacies, like it, relate to the good old Aristotelian syllogism.

What brings this up, other than me doing more philosophy-related blogging here?

A discussion on Facebook. Another person said that the gambler's fallacy, because it involved probability and statistics, was a scientific issue, not a philosophical one. I mentioned, in brief, the material above, and said that fallacious reasoning can involve different tools or material, but the actual fallaciousness was at bottom line, and thus, the gambler's fallacy like others was ultimately a philosophical issue.

I was eventually unfriended, even though I was polite about it. Had I been more direct, I would have said that she, in a small way, was doing something akin to Sam Harris, and a few other Gnu Atheists, in practicing scientism, which would have made her blood boil, probably. But, I believe that was the case. I did mention that I was a knight errant of philosopher Massimo Pigliucci in defending philosophy against such encroachments.

Or, to put it literarily? 

Mark Twain mentioned "lies, damned lies and statistics," not "lies, damned lies and philosophy," thereby indirectly getting at what I was saying. Misuse of statistics is the particular tool used to commit fallacious reasoning in the gambler's fallacy. Per Wiki's list of informal fallacies, misuse of history can contribute to at least one of them.

I will concede the point that a lot of people misunderstand statistics. But, they don't misunderstand, or misuse, in a way that would always be fallacious. They can misunderstand false positives and false negatives, and not commit the gambler's fallacy. Even if we do invent a new category of fallacy, fallacious reasoning in general, at least to me, implies deliberation, or logical malice aforethought. And, I don't see that happening in a lot of the misuse of statistics.

I know that this is something near and dear to movement skepticism; that's another reason I understand some of her upset. On the other hand, I've said before that scientific "movement" skeptics need more immersion in philosophy, too.

Skeptic's Dictionary creator Robert Carroll indirectly weighs in on this in his latest email newsletter:

My educational background is in philosophy, where 'skepticism' has little to do with people like Dean Radin, John Edward, or Sylvia Browne. Until I read an article by Douglas Hofstadter in Scientific American in February 1982 entitled "World Views in Collision: the Skeptical Inquirer vs. The National Enquirer," I had only a passing interest in the kinds of things that are featured in Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, and The Skeptic's Dictionary. When I thought of skepticism, I thought of Pyhrro, the Academic skeptics, Sextus Empiricus, or David Hume's "mitigated skepticism." Skepticism, to me and others in philosophy, is an epistemological position, a set of tropes or methodological devices intended to cast doubt on any proposition put forth. The most radical skeptical position was presented by Gorgias: nothing exists or if something exists it cannot be known or if something does exist and can be known it cannot be communicated. Ancient philosophical forms of skepticism denied the possibility of certain knowledge. Academic skepticism advised seeking the best probabilities. By the time Hume proffered his "mitigated skepticism," philosophers known as empiricists had recognized that the idea of "objective knowledge" was absurd: all we know of "reality" emerges from the interaction of our minds with whatever exists independently of our minds in the external world and with the inferences we draw from that interaction.

I, too, ultimately approach skepticism this way: "an epistemological position," but mitigated in a sense similar to Hume.

And, this is another reason I'm not part of the "tribe" of movement skeptics or Skeptics™any more than I am the tribe of Gnu Atheists. Beyond the issue of tribalism, too many members of each group, from what I see, don't have as much immersion in philosophy as they could stand. Also per Carroll, some of them may need to broaden their critical thinking base.

Also, this is why social media isn't always so good for we Lincolnesque cogitating reasoners. The part where I recognize this other person's concern over non-fallacious misuse of statistics, and its impingement on her professional background, came 36 hours after the defriend. Thus, while the likes of Facebook is real in a sense, it does show the problems with the Internet continuing to accelerate modern society.

That's not meant as hand-to-forehead martyrdom or anything else, the Lincolnesque statement. It's just that, ideally, slower cogitation is how I like to think. Per the "36 hours," I started working on this blog post a full week before I had it scheduled to publish. I often get less snarky, or at least make a more conscious choice about it, with more thinking time.

Looking forward to Bob Carroll's new book

Carroll, the author of "Skeptic's Dictionary," both a basic go-to guide for skeptical thinking as a book AND a continually updated website of skeptical analysis and critique of claims in religion and theology, philosophy, alternative medicine, fallacious thinking and more, was kind enough to send me an electronic draft copy of his latest work, "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism and Science Exposed."

I'm near the end of this book, which explains and documents how and why skeptical, critical thinking activities are "unnatural acts."

Here's a selection from the start of Chapter 8, "The Fallacy-Driven Life":

Fallacies are errors in reasoning. They drive the thought-engine of most people most of the time. We did not evolve to seek truth, beauty, and goodness. We evolved to survive and mate. Everything else is window dressing, including our so-called noble reason. Shakespeare may have mesmerized audiences with his lines:

What a piece of work is a man!

How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!

In form and moving how express and admirable!

In action how like an angel!

In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!

In fact, man is an irrational animal, driven by his needs, fears, and wants, and following logic or reason only if it suits him. Our natural way of thinking, of making judgments, of identifying causal connections is to jump to conclusions on flimsy evidence. Critical thinking is unnatural. Following our feelings and emotions is more likely to motivate our behavior than well-reasoned arguments. We are as likely to be persuaded by irrelevant appeals as by relevant ones, and are more likely to produce slanted, selective, biased, one-sided, incomplete arguments than well-reasoned, fair-minded, accurate, complete arguments. We make assumptions that aren’t warranted, create straw man arguments out of fragments of opposing viewpoints, offer up false dilemmas, and draw conclusions hastily. It’s amazing we’ve made so much progress!

Carroll, from the point of a professional philosopher and skeptic, takes largely the same view of human nature as behavioral psychologists and economists such as Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky.

But, Carroll gets his terminology right. I can't mention the number of times I have pointed out that a global warming denier's claims should be pulled under the credibility microscope because he works for a place like the far-right think tank, the Heartland Institute. He notes, on that:

The ad hominem fallacy is often confused with the legitimate provision of evidence that a person is not to be trusted. Calling into question the reliability of a witness is relevant when the issue is whether to trust the witness. ... Good refutations of arguments try to undermine the accuracy, relevance, fairness, completeness, and sufficiency of reasons given to support a conclusion. ... The fallacy in the ad hominem argument is due to the irrelevant nature of the appeal made, not to its falsity.

Regardless of one's political stripe, whether, libertarian, conservative, liberal or left-liberal, Carroll exhorts us to be more critical in our thinking about political events, scientific claims, sociological and psychological pronouncements and more.

He also, by criticizing symptoms of uncritical thinking first, then criticizing holders of them only after they refuse to entertain new ideas, shows how to correctly do skepticism.

Being logical isn't the same as being right

You can slice and dice logical arguments to support all sorts of claims. That includes what evidence you include as warrants vs. what countervailing empirical evidence you exclude from discussion.

Especially in real-world informal logic, how you frame the parameters of the argument is another way of slicing and dicing an issue to an already-held conclusion.

Take Massimo Pigliucci's argument for bombing Libya.

Sure, in a vacuum of Libya and no other foreign policy worries, might be great. But, why Libya and not Yemen? Or, why not Cote d'Ivoire a year ago?

Massimo goes on, in what is nearly 100 posts down the list, in response to me, to say he has non-humanitarian reasons, as well, to support intervention in Libya. I've asked what they are, because I don't see any that aren't either directly or indirectly related to oil. Terrorism? Since we intercepted the ship with nuclear supplies headed to Libya several years ago, Gadhafi had become "our guy," so scratch that, even if Massimo makes that claim.

Massimo also limits the parameters of the argument by saying his support for air strikes doesn't mean support for intervention. But, given criticism of the Obama Administration, that it doesn't have an exit policy, and that our British and French allies have pushed going beyond air strikes, if necessary, that "restriction" might work in formal logic, but, in a real-world political situation, doesn't.

I drop by Massimo's blog regularly, and have totally agreed with his take on people like Sam Harris and Jonathan Haidt.

But here? Being logical isn't the same as being right.

At the least, without engaging in serious multi-valued logic, with answers that would include things like "maybe" and "maybe not." With that in mind, I wouldn't say Massimo is wrong on his support for Libyan air strikes. I would say that, to use the old Scottish jury verdict, he's only reached the "not proven" state.

And, I wouldn't say I, or others, are "right" to argue against air strikes.

At bottom line?

Not only is being logical not the same as being right, the use of bipolar western logic to try to "prove rightness" is often wrong.

Arguably, such situations are even a good example of Hume's famous dictum: "Reason must be the slave of the passions."

Again, there's not necessarily a "right" or a "wrong" involved. But, in this particular case, since Massimo is claiming non-humanitarian reasons for Libyan intervention, and I doubt he can name a good non-oil-related one, I think, on the passions, he's wrong.

Beyond that, I haven't even touched on the issue of "just war." (I believe, per Walter Kaufmann's evisceration of "justice" as an abstract concept, that "just war" as an abstract concept is a mix of philosophical non sequitur and invitation to political mischief in democratic or quasi-democratic societies, especially when inveighed with religious overtones.)

I should note that I've hinted before that Massimo practices "philosophism," the hyper-philosophic parallel to scientism.

Celebrity deaths, nostalgia, fallacious reasoning

The old folk saying about “it happens in threes” often gets applied to celebrity deaths. Well, today it’s true. After Ed McMahon’s death earlier this week, then Farah Fawcett’s expected passing
and Michael Jackson’s surprise death is the third.

All three mean something.

First, with Farrah, I’m the right age that she was pin-up material when I was in junior high school. And “Charlie’s Angels” was definitely watchable.

And, Farrah Fawcett Majors, if you will, please. That’s who the actress on “Charlie’s Angels” was.

Yes, Lee was jealous. Perhaps that did contribute to the divorce. Perhaps he had a wandering eye, too.

But, perhaps she was already into drugs by then. Coke or speed to stay thin, then Valium or similar to get some sleep.

And, from some of her late-life TV appearances, apparently never 100 percent, long-term, successful, in kicking various drug habits.

She did show poise, dignity, and more, though, in her battle with cancer, and yes, given its ravages and the type of cancer, I can understand her wanting it to end.

Beyond that poise and dignity, perhaps she can, in her death, get more Americans to open their minds more about assisted suicide legislation.

===

Michael Jackson? Thriller broke out when I was in college; that part of Jackson, before he plunged into the drained shallow end of the pool of weirdness, means nostalgia.

So, nostalgia related to Jackson is more about trying to do the moonwalk — and succeeding nicely — at college dances, and therefore, reflecting in larger part on college life at a small (less than 500 students) Christian college.

In turn, as Salon music critic Bill Wyman (NO, not THAT Bill Wyman) notes, Jackson had quite the screwed-up family life as part of being unprepared for celebrity and therefore having quite the screwed-up adulthood. Perhaps he, and Latoya, were sexually abused That said, as civil-case-settlement pedophile, his own childhood, if that is part of what happened, is neither excuse nor reason.

I know that from family history, both as an offered justification, and the fact that shit like that often ISN’T poured further downhill.

Beyond nostalgia, I look at Michael as having been “a kinder, gentler predator,” and shed not a tear for him.

I have no desire, therefore, to try Facebook’s “What Michael Jackson song are you” quiz. Or anything similar.

===

So, too, does Ed. Nostalgia for the “simpler time” of America, the time of my parents more than myself.

Ed? Far more than “set-up man” for Johnny, he was a comedic star in his own right before pairing with Carson. And, Johnny knew it, too, even if he didn’t already admit it.

As part of being that set-up man, though, he bore Johnny’s jokes at and about him, including those that involved psychological displacement. (Ed was never a serious drinker, but Carson was, for many, many a year; the Budweiser jokes were example No. 1 of that displacement.)

Then, later, Ed made his own, post-Johnny second-act career, only to sadly show us at the end that being rich, famous, or both, is no guarantee against financial catastrophe.

===

At the same time, per my own self and people like Bob Carroll at Skeptic’s Dictionary, the “this happens in threes” is nothing more than an illustration of the bulls-eye fallacy.

Atheism no guarantee of rationality or critical thinking

At the often-lively blog of evolutionary biologist and atheist P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, his thread on the murder earlier today of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller offers yet more proof of that fact.

I’ve seen false dilemmas, unexcluded middles, ad hominem arguments, simply unsupported arguments, non sequiturs and more there in just an hour’s time.

I’ve blogged before about “village idiot atheism,” the type of atheism that lives only to poke a finger in the eye of theists whenever it can, and this is a prime example.

Strange Gods and Holbach are two of the most offending posters there

Strange Gods that any opposition to atheism must be supernatural is guaranteed not to win support. He then makes that as a specific allegation against Nat Hentoff, an openly proclaimed atheist.

Holbach (like his namesake French baron), has such a virulent, even vicious, anti-religion stance it hugely warps his thinking. (Holbach refused to accept religiously-themed classical music as worth listening to.)

In this thread, he claims that any opposition to abortion (no caveats) must either be emotion or religion. There’s both your unexcluded middle and your false dilemma. He then defines religion itself as ultimately being a form of religion, showing he’s never read Wittgenstein. (He, Strange Gods, and one or two others like to be Humpty-Dumpty with language.)

I’m surprised a few of the commenters there haven’t said it’s no surprise Tiller was shot, if he insisted on still being a Christian himself.

In short, as I’ve blogged before, there’s atheism, and there’s village idiot atheism. And, in a certain small subgroup of posters at Pharyngula, you have people approaching the definition of cultists.

You CAN prove the nonexistence of God

And, the proof is simple and elegant.

So much so that I can’t believe atheists even more philosophically versed than I readily sign off on the “you can’t prove the nonexistence of God” argument.

Per formal symbolic logic, the attempt to prove the nonexistence of anything is the equivalent of dividing by zero, basically.

But Bob Carroll, creator of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, goes back to classical times and the good old modus tollens.

To begin any such proof, we must begin with clarifying our terms. What do we mean by “God”? If you mean “eternal, all-powerful, all-good, invisible being who created the universe out of nothing but an act of will” then I would proceed thusly:

Premise 1. If God exists, then innocents should not suffer the horrendous torments of famines, floods, hurricanes, etc.

Premise 2. Innocents do suffer the horrendous torments etc.

Therefore, God does not exist.

All well and good. It gets directly at the problem of evil, and can be extended, with the proper subpremises/subwarrants, in the face of people who will quote the Yahweh of Job and Romans, or the kismet of Islam, etc, and say that “God’s ways are above human ways.”

(Those subpremises all hinge on the psychological suffering of a God who either can’t or won’t make his ways explicable to/understandable by human ways.)

Back to Carroll, who talks more about the argument in general and primarily about the first premise:

The above proof (by modus tollens) is valid. The second premise is indisputable. You and others will probably quibble over the first premise. Perhaps you will claim that God must have good reasons for allowing innocents to suffer so terribly, even if we don't understand them. Perhaps, but that seems to beg the question. It hardly seems an adequate justification for believing in God. In any case, whatever objection you bring up to my proof will hinge on your extending the meaning of “God” to include qualities that will seem contradictory to me.

Either that, or by “lowering your expectations” to a faith in a god who is either far less than omnipotent or else far less than omnibenevolent.