Did Bob create BhTV Commenters, or did BhTV Commenters create Bob?

Haven't watched yet, but I am reminded of when we were discussing -- before Bob's book came out -- who should be his interlocutor. I don't remember if anyone came up with Tyler's name, but I think (I'm predicting) that it's a really good choice.

All this talk about "The Evolution of God", and no mention of "The Evolution of Dog"? Shameful.

You mean IF Me&theBoys isn't available to grill him ;-)

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: You mean IF Me&theBoys isn't available to grill him ;-)

Excellent point. I should have said Tyler was a great choice for first interlocutor.

Quoting Stapler Malone: Did Bob create BhTV Commenters, or did BhTV Commenters create Bob?

Dingalink of the week!

Quoting bjkeefe: Dingalink of the week!

And how! Yes Bob, we exist, and we are judging you.

Haven't listened to it yet, but I bet we'll hear about signaling. Time to rev up the Extreme Ironic Commulibertarianism.

Quoting Stapler Malone: Did Bob create BhTV Commenters, or did BhTV Commenters create Bob?

If we didn't exist, Bob would have had to create us.

And we are REALLY FREAKIN' MOODY!!! (thunderclaps) Awesome DL, Stapler!

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: And we are REALLY FREAKIN' MOODY!!! (thunderclaps)

We work in mysterious ways, our wonders to perform.

bob, there "are some hallmarks...."? what's the point in hedging? i say "show me the money" or just let go 'cuz if it's not there then it's not there. it's kind of like saying "we're probably not alone." whenever anyone says this i think: "ok, then where are the aliens?" there very well could be some out there but until we see some scrap of evidence i really don't see the point of trying to hedge your bets. there's really nothing wrong with saying "there's no solid evidence for it."
you can't really be mostly rational about this question....it's either all or nothing. it's somewhat similar to michael moore railing against lies and deception in Farenheit 9/11 and then proceeding to be extremely misleading in his own movie.

The cashier at the super market yesterday looked at a concert tee shirt I was wearing that features UFO's and she said "I think there are aliens out there...at least I hope there are." I think that says it all.

exactly! and hell, i want there to be aliens (as long as they don't torture us It'd be the most bad ass youtube video of all time. but wanting isn't enough. i suspect that bob, being somewhat old school, is doing a bit of "wanting" when it comes to the god question. and, oh yeah, where's all this "evidence" he keeps mentioning? is he just talking about the CC still or what?

Did you notice at the end when Bob talked about Tyler being godlike, Bob's face was suffused with a bright white light, while Tyler's was shrouded in darkness? Was this a proxy diavlog between the forces of good and evil? Order and disorder (note the disheveled books behind Tyler)? Clearly Bob's book has garnered him some sort of divine mandate.

I'm not saying TC is a plagiarist or anything, he just obviously isn't a rabid reader of our comments: From my Close Encounter thread:

(Oh I just remembered, I asked if he had considered including Buddhism in his framework and he said he wrote a little about it in the book but that largely it's spread wasn't as easily traced or matched to the nonzero idea. I added that Buddhism also isn't nearly so exclusive as the Abrahamic faiths are which he agreed with. He did say that he thought Buddhism is really on the mark as far as just teaching people how to deal with stuff and have healthy, happy lives and not get caught up in our mental shackles that the brain so naturally provides us and mentioned the retreat he did (at Sharon Salzberg's center I added, and he nodded but continued on for the rest of the people around us. Did I detect a little mini eyeroll...that woulda been pretty cool.) And he pointed out the challenge between being mostly designed to look out for our personal interests, and yet realizing when it's

If atheism is true & what they were saying about self-deception is true, we can't know anything. We can't trust our reason. And this multiverse hypothesis leads to all sorts of silliness, which is nice to see the blogger admit. But some honesty is needed. The main driver for accepting the multiverse is to avoid the theistic implications of the fine-tuning of the universe.

I like Tyler's version of agnosticism, I think, because I have a similar view. I think absolutist atheists throw a lot of very significant questions out with the bath water. Whereas, a lot of the speculations made by some contemporary physicists seem to leave open a lot of possibilities. And those set against the logically impossible fact that we exist demand, I think, a very open mind about the true nature of reality and our world.

Quoting holyworrier: Karen Armstrong comes immediately to mind as I listen to Bob talk about his book, which I haven't read. I have read Armstrong's A History of God and her biography of Muhammad. Both books I would have to brush up on to be able to comment on any similarities between her and Bob's ideas. Just wondering if she wouldn't be a good partner in a discussion of this nature.

Bob interviewed Karen Armstrong for his old website meaningoflife.tv.

I second Armstrong's "History Of God" and also suggest "God: A Biography" by Jack Miles. The latter focuses on the personality of God and won a pulitzer. John

Another great interview in the Tyler tradition. Just as he did with Peter Singer, Tyler was able to pose deep questions to the authors and get them to reveal aspects of their spiritual and intellectual journeys they otherwise might not have. (Not that Bob is very reticent to begin with).

There's something to that. Jack Miles in his book says that Western atheists may well not believe in God, but the God they don't believe in is unmistakably the Judeo-Christian Bible character who parts the sea, kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden and eventually has a boy named Jesus. It behooves us to understand Him (and thus understand ourselves), even though He is fictional.

I have just started reading "The Evolution of God". I found this intriguing in light of the aformentioned commitment to a materialist approach to religion: "(1) The story of this evolution points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity; and (2) the "illusion," in the course of evolving, has gotten streamlined in a way that moved it closer to plausibility." I am interested to see how he pulls this off. His evolutionary approach to religion and God is not unlike the belief in the Baha'i Faith of "progressive revelation". They both believe that religion must needs evolve to meet the progressive evolutionary capacity of humans. They also both believe that the purpose of religion in this day is the promotion of a universal ethic of peace and unity, as well as promote moral growth more generally. If indeed religions best days are ahead of us, instead of behind us, as Andrew Sullivan suggests in his review of this book, it seems to me it will be not unlike the Baha'i Faith.

I'm looking forward to reading it, Bob. When I first heard the electron comparison, I was like eh sure why not. But then I thought about it and realized that I'm an electrochemist. This means I deal every day with matter dissolving and yielding a current, which is electrons. Before physicists got a hold on electrons, people had guessed the charge wrong, so for example they thought it was a positive current to the right, rather than a negative current to the left. But, whether it is one or the other, I don't think the reality of electrons could ever really be in doubt. Perhaps the mass is in doubt, perhaps the wave-particle nature, but the part you can easily observe in daily life, the fact that your batteries work, it is not a question. I'm sure the analogy is more complex than that, so I am full of it at this point. But: that's what the internet is for. Thinking out loud in an embarrassing fashion.

A modern-day version of the God of Abraham as described in Genesis: the fairest and most beautiful possible thing consistent with everything we know about the world. The last part is crucial. What would that be? How about poetic justice: everybody gets what they deserve in the end? You get back what you put out, if not while you live when you die? Dostoevsky once pointed out (or did he report) that it is possible to have an experience in a single instant that makes up in intensity what it lacks in duration, sufficient to counterbalance an entire lifetime of ordinary experience. Who is to say that the last moment of life might not be like that? The mere neurological possibility is enough to give a bad person pause. And faith that it is indeed (or probably) the case could inspire good people to heroic sacrifice. OTH, if we could prove there was a God everyone would behave and life would be a bore. Somehow a mixture of uncertainty and possibility are required in order to give life the possibility of any moral grandeur. I think this is what William

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: bob, there "are some hallmarks...."? what's the point in hedging? i say "show me the money" or just let go 'cuz if it's not there then it's not there. it's kind of like saying "we're probably not alone." whenever anyone says this i think: "ok, then where are the aliens?" there very well could be some out there but until we see some scrap of evidence i really don't see the point of trying to hedge your bets. there's really nothing wrong with saying "there's no solid evidence for it."
you can't really be mostly rational about this question....it's either all or nothing. [...]

While I am inclined to think Bob is seeing patterns that are likely illusory (a common human failing), I don't agree with your reaction as a general principle. It seems to me irrational to say it's "all or nothing," and much more rational to admit at least the logical possibility of existence. It might be the best strategy to live your life under the assumption that something doesn't exist if you've never seen evidence for it, but it is probably not the best strategy to close

yeah, it was just an example

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: The cashier at the super market yesterday looked at a concert tee shirt I was wearing that features UFO's and she said "I think there are aliens out there...at least I hope there are." I think that says it all.

If the band was UFO itself, i think you win 900 points. (If it was Boston, you maybe lose 1?)

Like you, Bob, I grew up in a fundamentalist environment. I was baptized when I was nine in the Church of Christ, the denomination which insists it isn't a denomination, but the True Church, in which you have to be a member in order to go to heaven. You Baptists are going to Hell because you play the piano in church and don't baptize for the forgiveness of sins. Once I finally came to grips with the fact that I'd lost my faith, the fallout for me and my family was cataclysmic. Perhaps the question of whether religion has any redeeming social value or not depends on how one has been schooled in religion as a child. For myself, I have come to regard certain aspects of my early religious schooling as tantamount to abuse. The taboos on sexual contact and teaching about eternal damnation were instrumental in my making a foolish decision to marry at twenty because I was a virgin and wanted to fuck. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn't want to go to Hell. Again, the fallout was eventually cataclysmic in my and my ex's families. You never get

Quoting holyworrier: [...]

Still think the "New Atheists" are being shrill, Bob? Thanks for that post, HW. I know exactly where you're coming from, even though the consequences of my religious upbringing and transitions away from belief weren't as drastic. The residuals that remain after being indoctrinated when you're too young to make up your own mind are very hard to get rid of, especially the bad ones.

How to not answer a question That sounds like a bloggingheads call to prayer!

Quoting osmium: I'm looking forward to reading it, Bob. When I first heard the electron comparison, I was like eh sure why not. But then I thought about it and realized that I'm an electrochemist. This means I deal every day with matter dissolving and yielding a current, which is electrons.

Before physicists got a hold on electrons, people had guessed the charge wrong, so for example they thought it was a positive current to the right, rather than a negative current to the left. But, whether it is one or the other, I don't think the reality of electrons could ever really be in doubt. Perhaps the mass is in doubt, perhaps the wave-particle nature, but the part you can easily observe in daily life, the fact that your batteries work, it is not a question.

I'm sure the analogy is more complex than that, so I am full of it at this point. But: that's what the internet is for. Thinking out loud in an embarrassing fashion.

I guess the question would be whether if you could believe another explanation, other than "electrons" and QED. Just because you observe an effect, and you understand a theory that seems to consistently account for it - should you

Tyler Cowen is SO Hal 9000! "Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move."

Quoting AemJeff: I guess the question would be whether if you could believe another explanation, other than "electrons" and QED. Just because you observe an effect, and you understand a theory that seems to consistently account for it - should you assume, therefore, that the theory accounts for reality? It seems like there's a fair distance between the "observables" you deal with professionally and the specific reality of electrons.

I agree that's an important point, and I haven't spent all that much brainpower on it. But electrons do have observables. So it's something, even if it's not the exact thing we're envisioning that fits all our data so far. But what are God's observables then? I'm having trouble thinking the metaphor is good. There's no natural selection to account for charged electric current. If it's not "electrons" then fine, it'll be something else we discover called electroniums. I think God is one extra step removed from the material world than electrons, which have a definition that can shift to match reality. An electron is as an electron does. God, however, has requirements baked into the cake we call "God." I know Bob's God isn't G-O-D. I'm gonna read the book. Maybe then, dot dot dot.

Another thing that bothered me in this diavlog was this continuing of the Evil New Atheists meme, which Tyler and Bob both embraced. First of all, judging all atheists by the words and actions of a half-dozen authors who are trying to sell books (sound familiar Bob?) is about as fair as judging all Christians based on the rants of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. The head speakers of a "movement" which I don't really see the new Atheism as in the classic sense of the word, don't necessarily speak for the people who read their books. But you also run into the mistake of conflating the actions of a few with the beliefs of many. This idea that Atheists are rude and judgmental and mock the other faiths, therefore we should disregard them or look down upon them is rich in that it willfully neglects the fact that those same annoying tendencies (yes, I agree they are annoying and counter-productive) can be seen in spades in every other religion too. Turn on the televangelists sometimes and tell me you don't see the same thing

Quoting holyworrier: Like you, Bob, I grew up in a fundamentalist environment. I was baptized when I was nine in the Church of Christ, the denomination which insists it isn't a denomination, but the True Church, in which you have to be a member in order to go to heaven. You Baptists are going to Hell because you play the piano in church and don't baptize for the forgiveness of sins.

You and I may be from the same hometown, holyworrier. I'm serious. Ever since I moved up north 17 years ago, no one else has ever heard of the Church of Christ.

Quoting osmium: You and I may be from the same hometown, holyworrier. I'm serious.

Ever since I moved up north 17 years ago, no one else has ever heard of the Church of Christ.

And not to be confused with the liberal United Church of Christ.

I just finished the book. I was hoping Tyler or a commenter would express my criticism of it, but no one has yet, so here it is. The central theological claim of both this book and Nonzero is that "the algorithm of natural selection" has produced a history that suggests a "higher purpose" of a moral nature, and therefore at least weakly suggests that God may have designed the algorithm of natural selection. But how could the algorithm of natural selection have been different? I can imagine a universe in which there is no life because the physics do not allow it. But I cannot imagine a universe where life is still an emergent property of simpler phenomena but evolved by a different algorithm than natural selection. God had a choice between natural selection and no life. He did not have a choice between natural selection and other algorithms that could evolve life but which lacked the "higher purpose" that Bob sees in natural selection. It is not as though God could have made the Planck length a little longer, or the speed of light a little slower, and then

Quoting claymisher: And not to be confused with the liberal United Church of Christ.

Absolutely night and day.

Quoting Wonderment: Another great interview in the Tyler tradition. Just as he did with Peter Singer, Tyler was able to pose deep questions to the authors and get them to reveal aspects of their spiritual and intellectual journeys they otherwise might not have. (Not that Bob is very reticent to begin with).

I'm very much in agreement with this. This was a great diavlog. Tyler's thoughts about the dilemma between our conceptual understanding of reality through common sense and the immediacy of what's available to our senses, and comprehending what isn't that readily available to everyday experience, was compelling. I found myself nodding as I was listening to the last part of the diavlog when Tyler reflects on this issues.

Quoting bjkeefe: If we didn't exist, Bob would have had to create us.

No doubt.

lol tyler cowen looks exactly like the fat greasy shut-in blogger I expected him to be hmm the economics of personal grooming well you see,

Tyler makes an interesting and old argument--the Platonic view that our views of right and wrong are more fundamental than our belief in God. He says that if we say that God precedes the categories of good and evil, then the theist would have to be open to the possibility of an evil God. What he failed to point out was how much Christian thought has been devoted to this question (in fact, he claims that most theists haven't thought about it). Note that this is the primary sin in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve wanted to be "like gods," and to have the knowledge of Good and Evil for themselves, rather than deriving it from God. Orthodox Christian theology, best illustrated by Augustine, teaches us that we must accept that our views of morality are distorted by the well-known flaws in human psychology and epistemology, and that we cannot rely on human reason or emotion to generate categories of good and evil--rather, we must take an active faith in a God who has created us and whose will alone is

Bummer - I go out of town for a week and all the good stuff happens (Joshua Greene/Joshua Knobe, Bob/Tyler, Reza Aslan, Michelle Goldberg, etc.). I'll never catch up. But I did have 40+ hours in airports and on airplanes to do some reading/thinking about Evolution of God. I read Demonic Males right after EOD - that was an interesting juxtaposition - and then the beginning and 2nd half of Non-Zero. Bob's divinity/logos/directionality theory surfaces in Non-Zero, where, in my opinion, it is much better suited. Bob's presentation of it in Non-Zero is far superior to that in EOG, and I kept thinking he should have made the last section of Non-Zero the introduction to EOG. For some reason the theory did not bother me as much in Non-Zero, perhaps because it seemed to flow a bit more logically from the rest of the content of the book. In EOG, it bothered me tremendously, and it seemed much more forced and lacking in Bob's usual self-skepticism and commitment to data-driven and critically examined conclusions. In addition to not spending any time in EOG considering less sanguine conclusions to be drawn from biological, cultural and religious history, Bob does not explore other

EXCELLENT questions from Tyler. Reminds me that I still don't see the non-zero-sum argument for organized religions today to become more tolerant of each other. Since organized religions are entities with interests just as individuals are entities with interests, it would be naive to assume that the interests of the two will always coincide, particularly with regard to third parties such as other religious entities, believers in other religons, atheists, political parties, etc. If global peace and harmony require religious entities to subsume their interests to the interests of their adherents, and as a consequence risk oblivion, that is a zero-sum relationship. And another question: In Non-Zero, Bob states that non-zero-sumness emerges from the dynamics of zero-sumness. So zero-sumness came first. Therefore, one could read the Gospel of John as follows: "In the beginning was Zero-Sumness, and the Zero-Sumness was with God and the Zero-Sumness was God." What are the implications of that for God and the divinity of non-zero-sumness?

Hey Me&TB, glad you finally got through NonZero. I really thought it was an excellent book, and Bob's writing was fantastic. 40 hours in airports?! Yikes, that's worse than sitting through a Jonah Goldberg diavlog;-)

M&, Your points about Bob's books are always interesting, but I think you're having difficulty accepting something I've found obvious from the beginning and that you may have some personal resistance to: Bob is a religious person. His upbringing and sensibilities are religious, and he never went through a crisis in which he discovered something horrific about religion and therefore rejected it. He was never betrayed by religion and thinks of it, on balance, as a positive force in the world. His Meaning of Live interview series -- a big project undertaken several years ago -- was about post-modern religious thought. His new book is apparently (haven't read it yet) another attempt to reconcile science, philosophy and theology. No surprise. Bob is the perfect Templeton Foundation guy. They owe him a prize. A lot of atheists -- like me -- find Bob's overarching theories about intelligence and moral direction in the universe somewhere between implausible and dubious. Like multiple universe theory or the possibility we're a simulation, it's not something we'll lose a lot of sleep over. Other readers may inch a little more toward agnosticism or at least become more tolerant of religion (I think

Quoting Wonderment: M&,Your points about Bob's books are always interesting, but I think you're having difficulty accepting something I've found obvious from the beginning and that you may have some personal resistance to: Bob is a religious person.......But if you expect Bob to be a secular atheist just because he created a website for secular atheists and comfortably hangs out with secular atheists, you're misreading the man, not the book.

Hmmmm.... I don't think that describes it quite right. My religious background is quite a bit like Bob's, and I did not experience any traumatic turning away from religion. I watched all of the meaningoflife.tv interviews years ago. I think HolyWarrior has well described the lingering religiosity that afflicts one who is brought up in a very devout family, so I completely understand Bob's quest to somehow reconcile all of this. None of the above about Bob is news to me, yet still EOG bothers me. I found Tyler's argument against being an atheist much more compelling intellectually than anything in Bob's book. And maybe that is the problem - that Bob chose to tackle that issue in EOG and yet did not take a more intellectual

Quoting Me&theboys: And maybe that is the problem - that Bob chose to tackle that issue in EOG and yet did not take a more intellectual approach to the issue of whether or not God exists and why one should believe he does/doesn't. Bob is obviously capable of making that argument - why he didn't, and why he didn't present the argument he did make in a more compelling and convincing manner, is the big mystery to me. Actually, I have my ideas, but this is not the forum for airing them.

Are you talking about his "God is like electrons" afterword? I thought that that was reasonably intellectual. My problem with it was that it amounted to formally identifying God with that in virtue of which there is a moral arrow of time. That is, from a certain standpoint, the Universe, on the whole, has gotten better and better. So, we can formally posit a thing which is the reason for this, just as we can formally posit electrons as the reason for electrical phenomena. But Bob agrees that the thing responsible for the moral arrow of time is the mathematics of natural selection (in

I am hoping that through his answers he will prove me wrong. (Not that I expect any answers. So I guess talking to Bob is rather like talking to God ;-))

Yes, it would be cool if Bob did a monologue devoted to BHead comments on his book. Maybe he is planning to, or maybe he learned his lesson when he took on Bloggin Noggin last time

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: Are you talking about his "God is like electrons" afterword? I thought that that was reasonably intellectual.

Thanks for pointing that out, Tyrrell. I did not mean to write those words - I can only claim extreme sleep deprivation and jet lag. What I meant to write, and should have written, is:
"I found Tyler's argument against being an atheist much more compelling intellectually than anything in Bob's book. And maybe that is the problem - that Bob chose to tackle that issue in EOG and yet he sacrified what could have been a good argument to a desire to harness the embodiment of God to human culture and history." (Bold Italics represents my changes). On the first page of the Afterword, Bob writes, "But occasionally I've suggested that there might be a kind of god that is real. This prospect was raised by the manifest existence of a moral order......The existence of a moral order, I've said, makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a "higher purpose". And maybe the source of this higher purpose, the source of the moral order, is something that qualifies for the label "god" in at least some sense

Robert Wright, nontheologian. Is it the fate of nontheologians to deliberate endlessly on that which we do not believe?

Mr. Wright: Great idea for a book! I published a book by Trafford titled "the Evolution of God, a Concept" in 2004. I am anxious to read your version and see how it defers from mine. I feel your book will more parallel my new book, "Experiencing Existence." Get back to me if you want to compare notes Thanks
tsewre

Quoting tsewre: Mr. Wright:

Great idea for a book! I published a book by Trafford titled "the Evolution of God, a Concept" in 2004. I am anxious to read your version and see how it defers from mine. I feel your book will more parallel my new book, "Experiencing Existence." Get back to me if you want to compare notes Thanks
tsewre

Based on your handle, I have to ask: Do you sometimes wonder whether there really is a Dog? (others: cf.)

Quoting bjkeefe: Based on your handle, I have to ask: Do you sometimes wonder whether there really is a Dog?

(others: cf.)

That was very nice of you.

Very interesting. I'm wondering if this author is Palindromic Bob's literary reggnägleppod.

hmmmmmm! beware of causeless causes and animism!!!!! self-effulgence is an interesting term, "that which is a light unto itself, without beginning or end, simultaneously one(absolute) and many(relative), the brilliant contradiction of reality". as we(humans) dwell in the gination(the production) of images (or imagination) of things for our awareness, that which is no-thing(or nothing as we call it) doesn't register for our symbolic mental processing. in general, we function quite well with display values(words and pictures(thinking)). some people can interpret hex values in some matrix contexts(perception), but machine language(straight -up binary code(sensation)) eludes the best of us. when something is there or not there without some kind of context, human minds are lost. we think(search for context) about our perception of patterns of sensation as patterns of association of multi-level(dimension)arrays of scalar analogs(?). simply put, we create stories!! the elegant(or crude) streams of narrative possible in our awareness because of the instrument of language rest soundly on the curious thing(or process) that we call sensation. our stories are like condensed bundles of feeling. great story tellers create context, from which we can get meaning. some stories interest some people more then others. the more tightly weaved the stories, the more we tend to think