Ben Hollins

Gilbert Ramsay

Mr Whyte, I quite understand why you offered no further reply to John Richards, but I hope you won't object if I don't allow him to have the last word on the 'problem of evil' debate. Mr Richards, it seems that you're running the serious risk of a future equivocation. You say that God is good. But clearly, as Whyte's logic shows, assuming God exists and is all-powerful, God is not good in the human sense of the word. You reply by saying this is irrelevant. God is good in God's own sense of the word. Fine. But just as Whyte suggests that we should talk of 'Mexploitation' so as to avoid the confusion likely to arise from a word Marx used in two senses, so I suggest that in future discussions on the nature of the Supreme Being you should refer to God not as 'good', but as something like G-good: an entirely different property. So you win - God is G-good. But since we mere humans can have absolutely no idea what the word G-good means (clearly, it's not the same as what we mean when we say '"Bad Thoughts" is a good book' or 'Gandhi was a good person'), it's really not very helpful to anyone.

Atalanta

When I was on the threshold of adulthood, an elderly gentleman, a retired schoolteacher, told me to offer three replies when someone made a claim.

" Says who ? " A claim about the constellations sounds very different coming from either an astronomer or an astrologer

" Prove it ". If ‘ Suddso ' washes whitest of all, you'll be able to prove it by every kind of comparison, won't you ?

" So what ? " Even if ‘ Suddso ' does wash whitest, maybe I don't care. Maybe I don't want to have to do the ironing with sunglasses on. It might wash whitest and cost three times as much as other powders, or it might ruin my clothes after six washes.

These three responses have served me very well, and have earned me a reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool cynic. That's one reason I enjoyed J Whyte's book, " Bad Thoughts ", and why I read it twice. It reinforced my dedication to logic. However, I should like to make a couple of small points.

Mr Whyte did not distinguish precisely the meaning of "I have a right to my own opinion". There are at least two meanings, only one of which he may attack as he has done. Of course, nobody "has a right to an opinion" where facts are concerned. If Jack believes the world is flat, he has no right to that opinion, because the roundness of the world is a long-proven fact. Presumably if we could strap George W Bush to a reliable lie-detector, we could then discover his true motives for attacking Iraq. Either he had ulterior motives or he didn't, but whether he did or not is not a matter of opinion. We just don't know for sure. Yet.

However, when opinion is a matter of personal reaction, or emotion, if you prefer, I think I have got a right to my opinion. For instance, it is my opinion that men who do stage acts dressed up as women are performing clownish mockeries of women; the more they indulge in drag and its trimmings - jewels, feathers, sequins, satins and padding, and all the rest, the more grotesquely and clownishly do they mock women. I find such drag acts a nauseating and insulting experience, and I truly believe that here I am entitled to my opinion.

As to the MMR vaccine/s and the public reaction to this and other health scares, the public's attitude seems to be :

"Even if the government is right ( and they never seem to publish convincing evidence - they just keep SAYING they are right, which is not at all the same thing ) that doesn't mean to say that they haven't got an ulterior motive anyway !

" Begging the question " strikes me as an odd expression for one point Mr Whyte is making; I and people I know do not use it with quite the same meaning as Mr Whyte. If I had been writing that section of the book, I might have used the expression " building one's house upon sand ".

By the way, a bibliography and an index would have been welcome.

Gerard Farmar

I know that this is introducing an idea that was not in your book, but since your book is about learning to look out for sloppy thinking, I thought that I would mention it for your collection of bad thoughts. Don't you think that the expression "the exception that proves the rule" is utterly absurd?

Presumably it comes from the aphorism "every rule has an exception", which of course contradicts itself. And of course, invoking this aphorism when you encounter a contradiction would be akin to the argument A implies B, B is true, therefore A is true, which is fallacious logic.

In fact exceptions and counterexamples are often used in mathematics to disprove a statement. Exactly the opposite of what the aphorism claims.

OK OK so all of this is obvious but the expression does represent sloppy thinking. Hopefully it is not used at all in serious arguments. However, I have just seen an article by a professor and consultant psychiatrist that uses this expression. I don't make any claims for the truth or falsity of what he has said in his article and it is not a formal academic article so I don't mean to be overcritical. But I do think that the expression "the exception that proves the rule" should be made to go the way of the dinosaurs.

You can find the article to which I refer on the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3699826.stm

C.C. Longthorp

John Harvey   

David Barnard

Cut taxes: spend more. You suggest this is an inconsistency and follow it
up with a footnote to amplify your contention. Now, I only have an MSc
from the economics dept. at London University (and, even worse, it arises
only as a consequence of a management degree from London Business School); but I think that you have missed the concept of growth in your syllogism. It is perfecly possible to cut tax and spend more if the economy grows. You also ignore the "black economy" (my quotation marks merely indicate an acknowledgement of a way of expressing an idea) - i.e. when you reduce the benefit from evading or avoiding taxes, you collect more marginal tax.

By the way: in your footnote on p.86 are you guilty of what you call
"weasel words" in using the phrase 'over the long run' in note 4?

And finally: when you say 'spending must be funded by tax revenues' you are
being rather parochial. Spending in Africa nowadays is often funded by
international aid (ultimately funded by tax revenues). Spending in other
times was often funded by theft (perhaps it still happens).

Simon Prosser

Firstly, your new word "Mexploitation" is a good one. Marx was certainly not
averse to using emotive words for rhetorical effect. However, although you
(rightly) point out that truth is the same in all cultures, the meaning of
words is not and, in a communist culture, the word "exploitation" would mean
the same with or without the M. Someone who lived in a society where his
work contributed only to the general welfare of himself and other workers
would see his work contributing to a private individual as unreasonable and
unjust - adjectives we attribute to exploitation. I think many of Marx's
readers would understand this.

Secondly, at the end of the chapter on "Coincidences" you say "Our existence
is not due to the preferences of some fabulous Being: it's just dumb luck."
Surely that conclusion claims more than the argument of the chapter where
you convincingly show that the fabulous Being creator is no more likely than
any number of highly unlikely explanations, but not impossible. Your
argument was agnostic, but your conclusion atheistic.

Robert Watts

Congratulations on an excellent book which I thoroughly enjoyed and almost completely agreed with, and which I found very thought provoking. Even though I am someone who takes logic and reasoning very seriously and thinks about these things a lot, it still discussed issues which hadn't occured to me and were incredibly interesting.

I do have a possible minor correction, and it would be on page 68 of the 2003 edition. My concern is about the motive fallacy, and more specifically about the discussion of probability. I believe there has been some confusion on this page
between standard probability (the chance of something happening) and conditional probability (the chance of something happening given some particular
information).

It is stated that if someone who likes to agitate people with falsehoods told you your sister has won the lottery, then you should compare the probability of him lying to the probability of the event happening (namely winning the lottery).

Obviously not a lot of information has been put forward about this prankster, and if my interpretations of what is being discussed are wrong then I apologise. What I read into it is that there is a certain constant probability when he makes any
statement (or any important statement) that he is lying about it (let's say for  arguments sake he consistently lies 90% of the time, and knows when he is lying. That is to say, he understands the real truth of the situation completely and has made a conscious decision to convey either the truth or a lie. If this was not the kind of implication being made then my following correction is invalid, but this is how I saw things.

Given this premise, when this prankster tells you something (important) there is no need to compare the probability of the event in question actually happening with the probability he is lying, in fact it would be misleading to do so. If he tells you something that is for arguments sake usually 99% of the time true, by comparing the probabilities directly you would assume based on evidence that he is telling the truth this time because 99% is greater than 90%. But in fact this is not true because 90% of the time he will lie to you regardless of the topic at hand, and the fact he has told you this information gives it only a 10% chance of being true, and this makes it certainly not the most likely outcome as you would
conclude by directly comparing the probabilities.

If in fact the pranksters probability of lying is variable and dependent on the subject matter to which he is trying to convince you then obviously the
probability of that particular event would come into question, but reading the page carefully many times it seemed to me that the prankster in question would lie with consistent probality (because of the quote from the page "the probability that he is lying" makes it sound constant).

Ray Sandom

You clearly do not understand homeopothy, it being well outside your comfort zone. Your discription of the preperation of Homeopathic remedies misses one important action, namely the secussion of the preperation at every dilution. This I understand transfers into the water an image of the remedy. As to the notion that homeopathic remedies should stand up the same kind of double blind testing to which pharmacutical medicines are subjected to raises an interesting point. You make the asumption that the double blind testing of humans is valid. Unlike Doctors who treat people with convayor belt medicine, ie this sypton that pill, Homeopaths recognise that every patient is different, so they treat everyone differntly. So because everyone is different, the test you suggest cannot be valid for any remedy, be it pharmacutical or Homeopathic. As far as I can see the only way that a valid test could be carried out would be to use identical twins, one twin taking the remedy with the other the dummy pill. That in itself poses an insuperable obstical, where on earth can anyone find say fifty pairs of twins all with the same symtoms. So lets not perpetuate the nonsense that homeopothy dosn't work because of the alleged failure in double blind testing. There is only one valid test, cause and effect. Potion is administered, sytoms go, what more can anyone want? We all make asumptions, often wrongly, as Ithink you have done with blind testing.  Incidently, I otherwise liked your book.

Christopher Tipper

This book would be only half as amusing if there weren't so many ridiculous applications of two-valued logic in the first half. If the object is to amuse then full-marks, but I must say I was surprised to see this in the philosophy section of Waterstones. It does however get much more cogent after p.96 (``Equivocation''), and I particularly relished the chapter on statistics. I have included some further
suggestions at the end (below).

`` The Unity of the Trinity '' pp.23-25

Whyte argues that the Catholic doctrine of the ``Unity of the Trinity'' is logically unfounded. I can think of examples where trinities are undoubtedly anifestations of the same unity. For example take three 2-dimensional projections of a cube, (1) looking from above a corner (2) looking from above an edge (3) looking from
above a face. Viewed as two dimensional images, the three viewpoints do not seem to have anything in common. However, when projected into three-dimensional space the projections are obviously manifestations of the same object, namely a cube. Ian Stewart, in his book ``From Here to Infinity'' exhibits three similar 2-D projections (p.249), a circle, an equilateral triangle and a square, and asks us to imagine what object they represent. Believe it or not there is a polyhedra that matches the specifications. The conclusion that we draw from this is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not logically inconsistent, even if one is an atheist.

``Pascal's wager'' pp.27-29

Pascal's wager is a bet that the prospect of salvation by adhering to Christian beliefs is a sure bet. If one were not Christian there would be a chance that Christianity is true and that one would be peremptorily be delivered to Hell. Whyte argues that this is as good an argument to believing in any religion that offered the prospect of posthumous salvation, and since there are an infinite number of such religions conceivable the certainty of salvation would be reduced to an in infinitesimal probability of salvation, effectively zero. Thus atheism is preferable. An interesting philosophical argument could ensue that an
infinitesimal positive probability is better than exactly zero. More important than that, the hypothesis of an infinite number of salvation seeking religions is quite clearly false. Paganism, for example offered no such concept. If one adds together Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and possibly Hinduism, that still leaves a modest positive probability of winning Pascal's wager. A better bet would be
to `get religion', before you are condemned to eternal damnation.

``Right to Your Opinion'' pp.74-82

This chapter is well argued, but I would question the example of the woman crossing the road on page 81. First Whyte has already stated the right to life, as enshrined in European law, and surely it would be your duty to warn someone who was at risk of losing her life by stepping in front of a car. Secondly, is it really a matter of opinion that there is a car approaching--surely this is a matter of fact? But going back to chapter 1 we see that opinions and facts can get
strangely confused in the philosophical mind.

``Inconsistency'' p.86 -- Tax rates

It is a feature of democratic debate that people want inconsistent things, and I am sure the frequently noted paradox of voters demands for low taxation and higher spending will remain with us until Judgement day. From the point of view of this item it is worth asking if these things are demanded by the same people at the same time. It is also worth pointing out that it is technically possible, due to the mechanism of economic growth to raise spending without raising tax rates. This is the current stance of the Conservative Party, but given that this platform went down like a lead-weighted balloon in the press I see no signs of economic sanity among pundits and their public.

``Inconsistency'' p.89 -- Fox-hunting

I was hesitant to include this point, because this issue bores me to death and has seen too much sanctimonious claptrap thrown into the arena (not to mention outrageous squandering of parliamentary time). However, equating gun-shot wounds and being mauled to death by a hound as forms of cruelty does seem a bit of a stretch. At least a gun is likely to kill the fox instantly. I must add though that the idea that foxes have any rights is ridiculous, and this sport must be
allowed to continue.

Other fallacies not mentioned:

``The Lump of Labour Fallacy''

In recent reporting on French municipal elections, which Socialists won in 21 out 22 Metropolitan Area last Sunday, a Socialist spokesman was quoted as saying that the (Right-of-centre) government should stop trying to balance the budget and ``create more jobs''. The assumption presumably being that the government has in its power to capacity to create economic wealth and thus boost employment. The problem is that these left-wingers seem to believe that jobs are a right and can be dished out by any politician worth his salt merely at the flourish of a signature. That cutting the working week to 35 hours for example
will encourage me to give up part of my job and give it to somebody else. That one man's job is another man's unemployment. Thankfully this pernicious lie seems to have been dumped by New Labour, and is now widely regarded in the Anglo-Saxon world as economically illiterate. The French however seem to have missed the entire debate that Margaret Thatcher unleashed about economic realism.

``The Naturalist Fallacy''

Another argument that drives me potty is the ``That's the way it's always been argument''. Richard North, a director of the I.E.A. wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Wednesday 31 March, 2004) a rather weird defence of hereditary peers. It was weird because he appealed repeatedly to notions of the mystical ineffability of the crown, and the unity of something or other that I'm not quite sure what because what he was saying was balls. But one thing did stick in my craw. He
appealed at one point to our hallowed traditions and cited as an example universal free health care. This wasn't a tradition 60 years ago. And yet he is defending an unelected House of Lords on the basis that it's worked quite well for several centuries, they seem a bloody good crowd, and well it worked in my grandfather's day, and nothing has changed since I was born. Nonsense. Things change. That's a fact.

Reply

Richard Campbell

I wondered whether your scorn of Cultural Relativism ('Shut Up - You're Boring' p45) has led you into a slightly over-simplified rejection of their case:

"This Relativism about truth is inconsistent with some very well-known facts, such as the fact that the earth orbited the sun in 900AD. Cultural Relativism entails, on the contrary, that in 900AD the sun orbited the earth. This is what people then believed, so it was then true...Far from flinching, most Relativists reply that yes, in 900AD the sun did indeed orbit the earth. What fun!"

If I may play DA for a moment, and unless you want to insist that you have deliberately used the technical word 'orbit' where ordinary conversation might have used 'goes round' (and even then one can talk of 'irregular orbits'), it seems to me that they are correct in the sense that the statement 'E orbits S' is only a more useful, efficient and economical account of the relative (that word again) motions of S and E with respect to each other, i.e. from most of the possible observational-positions throughout the universe 'E orbits S' makes better sense; but from a point on the surface of E in 900AD?

For more fun with this notion see Robert Park on the problem of the propagation of light 'waves' through the 'ether', Voodoo Science p.99 - when Michelson and Morley in 1887 observed the speed of light to be the same in all directions it "was as if the Earth was sitting motionless in the ether with the sun and stars rotating about it, just as the Catholic Church had insisted to Galileo in 1633". And yet, it moves, you will say (shut up - you're boring?)

Isn't competitive pedantry fun? I liked (p.25 in your book) "The idea that the sun rises in the evening and sets in the morning is not mysterious, it's just plain false" but then the relativist pedant in me wants to say "ah, but it does - it just does it somewhere else (while earth rolls onward into light - one woman's morning was another woman's evening)".

Finally, as one whose use of "beg" in relation (and again) to "questions"
is refreshingly scrupulous, you might enjoy the title of a pamphlet I
recently found on the shelves of a charity shop in Tadcaster:
"Who Pilots the Flying Saucers" by Gordon Cove, pulbl. M.I.Cove, Lytham,
Lancs (no date of publication)
To be fair, Chapter 1 is entitled "Do the Flying Saucers Exist?" (elegant
use of the definite article there) but turning to the final page the
seeker-after-enlightenment finds that the work concludes with another
question:
"Have you deliberately and trustfully placed the control of your heart and
life into the Hands of the Lord Jesus Christ?"

Well, have you?

Median vs. Mean

Phil Barrett

You misunderstand (or to be more charitable, misuse) the meaning of "median" in the definition of poverty. The median household income is found by ranking all households in order of their income, and taking the income of the middle household. It's the income which half of households are above, and half below. The median, unlike the mean, is not affected by billionaires. It would be unchanged were the income of the above-median 49.99% households to treble, or were that of the below-median 49.99% households to drop to zero. It is probably seen as a good measure to use because (again, unlike the mean) it avoids becoming a moving target should the incomes of the poorest increase or decrease in isolation, provided they don't increase to exceed the (old) median income.

p99: "a policy that reduced your income could lift you from poverty, provided it reduced the incomes of the rich by more. Equally, no increase in the incomes of the poor could lift them from poverty unless accompanied by a lesser percentage increase in the incomes of the rich." - both false: since your poverty status is determined by the median income, the incomes of the rich are absolutely irrelevant - by remaining above the median, they have no effect upon its value. You would only be lifted from poverty were the income of the middle-earning household to change to bring your new income above 60% of its value. (You may argue that you were talking about an across-the-board income change, and by "the rich" meant "the non-poor", in which case I claim sloppy language, since as "the poor" in this contect clearly means "those in poverty", "the rich" implies those at the opposite end of the income scale, not the middle.)  

p100: "the proportion that live in poverty has increased, because the difference between low and high incomes has increased." - false (more false than the previous quote): it's the difference between low and middle incomes which presumably has increased. The high incomes have no effect upon this measure of poverty.  

Your reader Jonathan Sims takes the confusion one step further: he writes "One extra fundamental flaw in the government's measurement of poverty is that it is based on a percentage (household income less than 60% of the national median). This ensures that poverty will always exist" - false: because the definition is 60% of the median income, it is possible to eliminate poverty. If you have 99 households, the median income is that of the 50th household (49 are worse-off, 49 better-off). Let's say the median is £100, so any households with an income of less than £60 is therefore defined to be in poverty. But if the income of these households can be raised to £61 without affecting the 50th-highest income, there is no longer any poverty at all - however there can still be households with vastly higher incomes, whose taxes may well be the source of the poverty reduction. (Mr Sims' statement would still be false, though less so, were "under 60% of the national mean income" to be used as the definition. It is harder to reduce poverty when the mean increases as a result, but it is still possible to have a distribution where no value is below 60% of the mean.) 

It's worth noting that nowhere do we learn how many households are in poverty - only that 35% of all children live in such households. With an even distribution of children across all households, this puts 35% of households below the poverty line. But if we can determine that poorer households tend to have larger than average families, we actually find fewer than 35% of households are in poverty. In the extreme, only a tiny proportion of households might be actually in poverty, if they had an extrememly large number of children each.

Reply:

You are right. My discussion assumes that I am dealing with a mean rather than a median. Thank you for spotting the error, which I will correct in the new version coming out in America in September.

However, my material point -- about equivocation -- is unaffected. The point was that the Labour government uses ëpoverty' to mean something that ordinary people do not mean by the term. In discussions of poverty policy, they slip between the two meanings: their technical definition of ërelative poverty' when stating the number of poor households or children, and the ordinary absolute notion when saying that something must be done to reduce the number living in poverty. This slippage would not matter if the two notions were not importantly different, but in fact they are.

The important difference between the government's relative notion of poverty and most people's absolute notion is that on the former, changes in other people's income can shift you into poverty (or out of it), even when your own income doesn't change. You are right that changes above the median make no difference. But changes below the median do, as do and changes in the median itself. Since 1979 every income decile has got further ahead of the decile beneath it. Income is wider distributed right through the income distribution. So, even though no decile's real income has gone down, more households now earn less than 60% of the median income. They have got relatively poorer but not absolutely. Relative and absolute poverty really are different things, and it is equivocating to slip between them during policy discussions. That is the substantial point that was being made. It seems to me to be unaffected by your 'median versus mean' point.

What's more, 'income less than 60% of the median' isn't even a good definition of relative poverty, as I show later in the book (where the mean vs. median mistake is not repeated).

Your final point about inferring the number of poor households from the number of children living in poor households is again technically right but somewhat unserious. As you say, the percentage of poor households could be 'tiny' if poor households have many more children than non-poor households. But this seems unlikely. For although it may be true that poor young families with children have more children than non-poor young families with children, a large portion of poor households comprise pensioners with no children at all.

Unfair to Politicians

Revd. John Barrett

Two Quibbles and One Substantive Point

Oliver Conolly

On page 14 a distinction is made between literal and metaphorical authority.  Literal authority is self-validating, so that what a parent says goes, as does the law.  Metaphorical authority is the authority of experts.  It is unclear why the latter sense of the word is held to be metaphorical.  It seems to be just as literal as the former, but different. 

On page 38 it is said that candidates for self-evident truths include propositions such as "The tea is hot."  But there is a distinction between a self-evident proposition and an evident one.  The only evidence needed to grasp the truth of the former is contained in the proposition itself.  The latter simply means 'obvious' and may include propositions that require empirical observation.   Both concepts of course imply a certain ease with which the proposition can be grasped.  Thus a highly complex mathematical truth would not be self-evident.

On page 110 it is said that the paternalist believes that the net cost of snorting cocaine must outweigh the pleasure it brings.  Against this you point out that this is a mere assumption, because the paternalist "cannot know how much others value their pleasures."  You further say that the assumption is sure to be wrong because "those who continue to snort cocaine after considering all the costs must value the pleasure more.  Otherwise they wouldn't prefer to snort."  Two points.  First, people are not necessarily infallible as to their pleasures.  The libertarian could say that it is a necessary truth that whatever people are drawn to is pleasurable, or least more pleasurable than the alternatives.  If that is a necessary truth however, it is by no means a self-evident one.  It seems that one can deceive oneself about what one finds pleasurable just as one can deceive oneself about many things.  In which case it would be the libertarian who is begging the question.  Second, your point is internally inconsistent.  You say that the paternalist cannot know how much cocaine users value their pleasures.  You then say that one can deduce from the behaviour of cocaine users that they value their pleasures highly.  From which it follows that the paternalist can know how much the users value their pleasures.

Reply:

More Various Comments

John Thomas

1. 'Sneer Quotes'
Given your views expoused in the surrouning text, the following look suspiciously like sneer quotes: p130 'hard facts', p116 'star traders', p145 'moral method'

2. Flawed logic
p116 "Yet there is no reason to believe these people possess any skill worth paying for". The fact that their results MIGHT be explained by chance does not refute other (potential) "reasons" that do support possession of said skills. Until you provide robust evidence that these people do no better than luck, you cannot refute the fact that they do not have special skills. You could, however, get away with saying "no immediate reason to believe"

3. "All They Eat In England ..."
Many sons hate the idea of turning into their fathers, but alas your frequent choice of expansive language leaves you vulnerable to the equivalent of "what about Bisto"

p61 "democracy ... Ideals that everyone embraces." What about dictators: they do not embrace democracy. Try instead "almost everyone".

p57 "the only test for market sentiment". What about a survey? This is an alternative test (even if not as accurate), hence rising prices are not the only test. Try instead "best test".

p84 "only the infuriating, the mad, or the intoxicated." What about the stupid? Might they not assert inconsistent statements? Try removing "only".

p84 "everyone can see". What about the aforementioned mad and intoxicated? If they are not "the infuriating" (i.e. those knowingly being inconsistent in order to be annoying), then the reason the mad and intoxicated might assert inconsistent statements is because they do not in fact "see" that they are being inconsistent. Try instead "everyone else ..."

p53 "charging £3,000 a day". What about second tier consulting firms, I'm sure they charge less than first-tier firms, and thus not all charge precisely £3,000 a day. Ditto for junior versus senior consultants. Try instead "as much as £3,000 a day"

p16 "Eurosceptic politicians do it all the time". What about when they are asleep? Perhaps "repeatedly" maybe "nearly all the time" but not "all the time"

p120 "everyone knows". What about your new-born daughter, and tribespeople in Papua New Guinea, do they all know this?

4. No!

p29 "an infinitesimal chance is no chance at all". Not quite: infinitesimal might approach zero but it is not zero

p29 "earth orbits the sun". Not quite: it is more accurate to say that the earth orbits the common centre of gravity, which is not the sun per se

p32 "being strange but true, quantum mechanics..." Thoughful physicists would argue that quantum mechanics (and its associated metaphysical interpretation) is not "true" merely that is the best hypothesis yet, and given that it is contrary to the other pillar of 20th Century physics (general relativity), it is likely to be superceeded at some point by a better theory - perhaps with a different metaphysical interpretation

p32 "cannot simultaneously measure". One can measure both simultaneously, the prohibition is against joint precision. If I recall correctly, the formual is delta-x * delta-p >= h-bar and hence one can measure x and p simultaneusly but with reciprocal precision (i.e. if one is measured accurately, the other is meaningless)

p60 "AAA institutions have a 0.01% chance of defaulting". Really: how many AAA defaults did you (or the researcher you are citing) study to ensure that the confidence interval supports 0.01%, and not say 0.00%-0.02%? I believe there has only ever been one AAA default, and thus no analysis could support a precise probability. I presume the figure you cite is in fact only an estimate, and thus deserves to be cited as "roughly 0.01%"

p114 "how much capital his bank must hold as insurance". No: capital is merely a buffer against the consequence of said coincidence(s)

p117 " guarantee that, in a large enough sample, the average score will be zero." 'Fraid not: perhaps "close to zero" but no guarantee of precisely zero (central limit theorem: variance will tend toward infinitesimal, but not be precisely zero)

5. Miscellaneous remarks

p36 "do not display such signs". How do you know? Have you visited every such pub? Even if you have, how do you know one has not added such a sign since your visit?

p109 "£50 a gramme". How do you know it is invariably that price? Try instead "roughly £50 a gramme".

p16 "if the promised referendum were held tomorrow". Not necessarily: see your own p135 on the flaws/follys of opinion polls

p111 "he must disagree". Why? Have I somehow missed an immutable law of nature? Try instead "Yet modern politics seem to dictate that he must"

p112 "none of this is discussed explicitly". How do you know, do you employ GCHQ to record every utterance of every politician? Try instead "yet this is rarely if ever discussed"

p55 "potential, which is always realised in the future". No: it might be "only realisable in the future" but sadly not all potential is in fact realised

p48 "ideas of an Arsenal supporter". Many rival supporters would not credit Arsenal supporters with the intelligence to have ideas. Did you in fact mean "ideals"

p145 "the most obvious". In the absence of evidence for uniqueness, surely you can only support "an obvious"?

p141 "costing each of them a less amazing $15" and "so each benefits by only £50". Much to the chagrin of Labour (and presumably Floridian socialists) such taxes and economic benefits are not distribute equally per capita, and thus each "each" needs an "on average"

p134 "I recently commissioned". Your honesty exceeds your market research know-how. Poor question phrasing ruins many a survey. Next time consider other, more robust approaches, such as indirect questions, conjoint, etc.

p141 "more or less the exclusive preserve of the old". What about in Africa, with its dying babies and AIDS victims? Try adding "in the UK"

p136 "which makes them more likely". How do you know this to be true? Consider "I assume" or "one might expect"

p62 "a simple test". Another simple test, one I personally prefer, is to ask whether sane people could agree with the opposite of what is being said: negating your example, "the Government should make people ill, poor and stupid"

Statistics

Tim Bedford

This refers to the discussion starting on p125. Jamies argument is
essentially that the observation that what happened was unlikely under the
null hypothesis (an intelligent civilisation when there is no god) does not
imply that that hypothesis should be rejected.

This type of reasoning is actually the basis of classical statistical
hypothesis testing, so we have treat it a bit more carefully than is done in
the text. In classical statistics the conditions for rejection (that is, the
set of potential observations which if actually observed will lead to the
rejection of the null hypothesis) are supposed to either be chosen a-priori
or are often considered obvious (as in the case of the one-sided or
two-sided tests for equality of means). (there is a - possibly apocryphal
story of a rocket engineer claiming that his rocket launcher has a zero
failure probability..." and if it fails, we fix the design and then it has
zero failure probability again"). What is actually going on in the case under discussion is not hypothesis testing, but incorrect probabilistic conditioning.
We are able to discuss the issue about whether our unlikely existence may or
may not imply the existence of god only because we do actually exist.
Therefore the probability under discussion should not be

P(an intelligent civilisation exists in the universe)

which is conceivably small but of course not measurable. Instead the
appropriate probability is

P(an intelligent civilisation exists in the universe given that are able to
talk about it, ie we exist)

which is clearly equal to 1 and hence cannot be considered a rare event at
all.

Poverty

Jonathan Sims

One extra fundamental flaw in the government's measurement of poverty is that it is based on a percentage (household income less than 60% of the national median). This ensures that poverty will always exist and provide work for those in the poverty industry. Should national economic circumstances become so dire that most of us are reduced to 2 bowls of rice a day, then the poverty industry will be targetting those with only one bowl. On the other hand, should things brighten up and most of us can live in four bedroomed detached houses with a Rolls Royce each, then we can work to relieve the suffering of those who have to slum it in a three bedroomed house and share a Mercedes.

Equivocation

Tim Thornton

Various Comments

Charles Mason, Bristol

Homeopathy

Geoff Landergan
Wimbledon, UK

On page 92 in footnote 8 in the chapter "Inconsistency" you say: "To get even one molecule of the active ingredient, you would need to consume tons of lactose pills."

However, consider that Avogadro's Constant is the number of atoms in exactly 12 grams of carbon-12, and is approximately 6 x 10^23. A sample of "n" grams of the homeopathist's active ingredient (where "n" is the molecular weight of the
ingredient) will comprise 6 x 10^23 molecules.

To put this another way, 1 gram of the pure ingredient will contain (6 x 10^23 / n) molecules. Let us plausibly suppose that the molecular weight is 360 (the molecular weight of lactose), then there are 1.7 x 10^21 molecules per gram of
the active ingredient.

A 20X dilution of this active ingredient would therefore be expected to have 17 molecules per gram. Each ton (or rather tonne) would therefore be expect to have 17 million molecules of the active ingredient. (I have no knowledge of how much actual homeopathic dilution would be contained in each lactose pill, but it seems unlikely to change the outcome of this calculation however small it
might be.)

Please don't think that I disagree with your conclusions on the value of homeopathy - 17 molecules per gram is so close to zero as to make no difference. And, of course, we are told by homeopathists that X30 dilutions are even more potent than X20 - in the case of an X30 dilution you would need 588
tons before you expected to find a single molecule. It makes me wonder why they bother with any dilutions beyond X30? All they are then doing is diluting water with water.

More From Chris Grey

In your redesigned website, you have cut out my reply to Jamie Whyte's
reply to my original posting (which you billed, for some odd reason under
the title 'the relativists awake'). Why?

Anyway, why has Whyte never responded to my response? Am I entitled to
assume that it is because he has no adequate answer? I have to say that I
don't really care given that the whole tone of his book and comments on the
site is ludicrous: an incredibly narrow, naive and philosophically
indefensible position which is only worth bothering with because of the
annoyance generated by his self-satisfied, smug but sadly deluded
arrogance. Still it would have been amusing to see his next feeble attempt
to defend himself.

Reply from the Editors:

Apologies for dropping your reply during the transfer to our new site.  It was not intentional and it is now posted again.  As for your comments about Whyte being self-satisfied, smug, deluded and arrogant, we have no comment but refer you to his book for debating techniques.

More From Luke Beeching

Your reply to Mr Slade regarding the trinity: your critique of his
mathematics may be justified but maintaining that Christians say something
they know can't be true, is simply wrong (as mentioned in my earlier
e-mail).

I would welcome a reply to my earlier points (which included a response to
your comments on the doctrine of the trinity, still left unanswered) Or is
your point merely that not all christians have fully thought through
christian doctrine themselves and base their trust in it on the word of
those who have (something I thought you covered well in your first chapter
on authority).

Your response to Daniel Hill (while interesting) doesn't cover my point
either. You seem to assume that if there were a God who created you and
everything else, you would be able to describe him at least in part. However
if he did create you, surely the constraint is not the arithmetical nature
of the universe he created on his ability to be what he's like, but the
constraint of the way he designed you on your ability to understand him.

As I'm sure you are aware, God can manage fine without my defence of his
nature (particularly if he didn't exist!). I'm writing to you because I
don't want a misunderstanding on your part (faith etc. see previous e-mail)
or a lack of thinking in Christians to stop you from throwing yourself at
Jesus. Frankly, whatever your preconceptions might be and whatever the
faults of the people who follow him, it must be worth seriously examining
what he said (and the basis for the bible reporting what he said) and what
he did (likewise), even if only on the slightly tenuous basis that he's
convinced many more people, much more significantly, for longer than even
the most dedicated atheist (Mao? Stalin? Bertrand Russell? - no comparison
intended, i've just noticed how that looks!), which (maybe unfairly) I
assume is your understanding. However irritating you may find the christians
you have met, most people would admit that there are many people clearly
inspired to great things (in almost anyone's book) by their salvation
(Francis of assissi, Dag hammarskold (probably spelt that wrong), Martin
Luther King, Mother Theresa (of course!), Gandhi (not a christian I know,
but inspired by Jesus' attitude none the less)) Doesn't that make it worth a
look?

Could I suggest you talk to God directly about your objections to the
trinity. He's probably got better answers than me and a bit of time talking
to him (and waiting for an answer) might be a bit of a break anyway.

That is assuming you would want to know the truth, if the truth is that he
does exist.

MoreTony Blair

Stephen J Bungard

At the bottom of page 88 Mr Blair is not claiming powers he does not possess. The only power he is claiming is the power to resign as prime minister.

Reply:

Good point. Somehow I failed to consider that very attractive possibility.

Tony Blair

Toby Barton

Tony Blair did not take us to war with Iraq to free an oppressed people but to destroy Saddam's weapon programme that was supposed to be an immediate threat to the West. You could still claim inconsistency in that other countries have WOMD and are anti-west . On hunting it seems logical to me to be anti fox-hunting but ambivalent about fishing and shooting. The latter could be for food and in any case are a quicker solution than a long chase which most commonly ends in the fox going to earth where it is then dug up and shot. More illogical is the landowners common argument that foxes are a nuisance. Why then do they encourage them to breed; either they are vermin or they are not? The Duke of Beaufort's book on hunting considered the bible of the sport has much to say about how to manage an estate to encourage foxes.

Reply:

Dear Toby, It is not clear why we went to war with Iraq. Certainly, weapons of mass distruction (WMDs) was the reason submitted to the security council. But security council approval was not obtained. The US and UK invaded Iraq without any official (i.e. security council sanctioned) justification. And in his speeches on the issue, Tony Blair was just as inclined to cite Saddam's dictatorship and human rights abuses as WMDs. But it is neither here nor there because, as you say, he is selective in his treatment of WMD threats as well as dictatorships. North Korea is both a dictatorship and a possessor of WMDs, but we are not at war with North Korea.

I'm not complaining. I don't want to be at war with North Korea. All I said was that if Tony Blair got off his moralising high-horse and admitted the practicalities of the situation (such as that he attacked Iraq because it is not a threat and won't attack North Korea because it is) then he wouldn't be as vulnerable to acusations of inconsistency.

As for fox-hunting, I don't quite follow you. Are you saying that blood sports are ok provided you eat what you kill? I don't see how eating is morally relevant.  Would cannibalism forgive murder? The point about blood sports is that it involves killing animals for fun. I see nothing wrong with it personally. But if there is something wrong with it, then I find it hard to see why birds and fish are exempt, as Tony Blair seems to think. He at least owes us an explanation of why his odd-looking view isn't really inconsistent after all.

Whyte's Own Logic

John Winterson Richards 

1. It is a gross offence against logic to suggest "because there are many opinions, all must be wrong" - but this is effectively the burden of your case against religion (page 29). There may be a wide variety of opinions on another subject - science, for example - but time and the development of knowledge will narrow the field. Meanwhile, the objective seeker of truth would be wise to start looking with an examination of those opinions which seem well-supported, and move on to others only when he has found them unsatisfactory. So the seeker of religious truth is well-advised to start with the major "revealed" religions before moving on to the obscure or making up his own - he will probably find there is no need to move on.

2. It is equally illogical to argue "because He does not share our human notions of love and evil, the Supreme Being does not exist" - but this is what atheists are effectively saying when the cite the "Problem of Evil" or the "Problem of Pain", which you mention (page 84). In fact, the God revealed in both Scripture and Creation, is loving in every true sense of the word, as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer - but not in the sentimental sense, in which some people have created their own image of God. Those who find it difficult to cope with God as He has revealed Himself - theological "liberals" as well as some atheists - should be honest enough to admit that this difficulty is an emotional feeling, with absolutely no bearing on the logic of His existence or non-existence. They are effectively saying "We do not believe in that which we do not like".

3. The Unity of Divinity seems to be implicit in the concept of the Supreme Being. So is the freedom to operate in different roles, forms, aspects, etc, analagous to our concept of "Persons", without loss of unity. Trinitarian Christians (and, I believe, theologians of other religions, such as Hinduism) may debate precisely how this is done, but, once again, many opinions do not make all of them wrong. "The LORD, Thy God is One", was quoted by Jesus Himself with approval and with no hint of an identity crisis. A disunited "Divinity" would imply superior being or beings, who are not the Supreme Being, but such intermediate players should be swiftly despatched by Ockham's Razor. Your human analogy of monarchy (page 25) falls victim to numerous human precedents - including Celtic, Roman, Jewish, and Greek - in which a united monarchy involved two or more persons in different roles.

4. In fairness to Pascal, (a) the famous "wager" was never intended as a "proof" of God's existence (Pascal explicitly rejected the concept of proof) but as a reason why one should be open-minded to God and positively seek Him, and (b) he certainly never considered Christianity "improbable" (page 27) on the evidence, but rather felt that reason alone could only take one so far and that faith should take over where reason leaves off.

5. There are two levels of "mystery" (page 23), which may be summed up as (a) that which we currently do not know but may well discover later, and (b) that which is essentially beyond human intellect. It may or may not be that science will reach a point where scientific method will be able to prove or disprove theological points. Until then, we cannot say for certain in which of those two categories  of "mystery" theological points belong, never mind whether they are true or not. We might find that God is scientifically verifiable - we might, almost literally, find His fingerprints on the Universe - or that He remains beyond human understanding. Meanwhile, all we can truly say is that our science is still at a relatively primitive stage, and nowhere near the level required to make definite pronouncements on such things.

6. Faith (page 26) is defined as the "conviction of things not seen". As such, it is not confined to religion or the religious. We must all take things "on faith" in order to function. I personally have never been to New Zealand. I am told such a place exists, and that pictures of it appear in "Lord of the Rings" - but I cannot be certain these pictures are not more of the superb CGI effects of the brilliant Mr Peter Jackson, who claims to be your compatriot. Yet, if you - a man I have never met - assure me that New Zealand exists, I am willing to take your word "on faith". Even those who do not have faith in a Creator must have "faith" - even if they do not acknowledge the word - in some alternative. As it happens, I am a natural sceptic, and faith does not come easily to me: I am simply less sceptical about the possibility of some form of currently unseen Higher Force as an explanation of my existence and experience than I am about the "incredible series of accidents" alternative.

7. If Heaven did not exist, people should be dissuaded from believing in it (page 152) - quite right! Personally, I would want to know at once, so I could start implementing my plan for a series of robberies - but I have not heard that any proof, or even evidence, that it does not exist has been advanced. Yes, yes, yes, I know - "it is hard to prove a negative" - but, equally, it is illogical to imply the negative is true simply because it is hard to prove.

Reply:

Dear Mr Richards, My main concern about your comments is that readers of the web-site will think that you use quotation marks in the normal way: that is, to show that you are quoting someone. In fact, you use them in a wholly novel way: namely, to attribute to someone arguments that they never made.

For example, I did not claim on page 29 that ëbecause there are many opinions, all must be wrong'. That idea is indeed ëa gross offence against logic'. I claimed that since there are infinitely many possible incompatible Heaven and Hell religions, then, before any evidence is considered, your confidence that any one of them will get you to Heaven should be infinitesimal.

Nor did I claim that ëbecause He does not share our human notions of love and evil, the Supreme Being does not exist'. I claimed that, because evil exists, an all-powerful and all-good being does not exist. How could the fact that something does not share human notions of love and evil possibly show that it doesn't exist? My dining table shares none our human notions of love and evil, indeed it shares none of our notions at all, but it pretty clearly exists. 

On the points of substance you raise, I have nothing further to add to my replies to other Christian correspondents on the web-site.

A Reply from John Richards

In fairness to you, I am happy to acknowledge that my use of inverted commas was in no way intended to imply that I was quoting you directly, but rather, quite legitimately, paraphrasing the burden of the argument - as should have been clear (in fairness to myself) from both the immediate context and the concluding paragraph, which was not posted on your website.

Your dining table analogy in not applicable because I trust I am correct that you make no claim that your table is a sentient being, but the Supreme Being, as a Being not a thing, must be, in some degree, sentient. Moreover, the point is that "evil", "all-loving", and "all-powerful" are all expressions subject to definition, and the Supreme Being's definitions must take precedence over our own.

Reply:

Dear Mr Richards, If I claim that John McEnroe was a great entertainer, will you judge the truth of what I say according to what I mean by 'great entertainer' or by what John McEnroe means by 'great entertainer'. Surely the former, since I am the person who made the claim, not John McEnroe. It is irrelevant that my claim is about John McEnroe; his definitions of words do not magically become the meanings of my words just because I am talking about him.

The same goes for humans talking about gods. If I say, 'God is good', the 'good' in this sentence obviously means what I (or at least what we speakers of English) mean by 'good', not what God may or may not mean by it. So if we aim to judge the truth of this human declaration, it is the human conception of good we should apply.

A Reply from John Richards

I take it that you are not implying that your subjective - if entirely defensible - opinion that John McEnroe is a great entertainer is proof of the existence or non-existence of Mr McEnroe. Yet that is effectively what is done by those who base "the problem of evil" on their own subjective opinions of God's attributes. You are well aware of the difference between subjective opinion (McEnroe great entertainer) and objective reality (McEnroe exists) - even if our perception of objective reality is limited (I have never met McEnroe: he could be a CGI). If the concept of existence means anything, it is a matter of objective reality, whether it is applied to Mr McEnroe or to God: your subjective opinion and my own have no bearing on whether they exist. It therefore follows that, if God's existence is a matter of objective reality, His attributes are a matter of objective reality - and that His perceptions of that objective reality are more likely to be accurate than our own. It is therefore God's definitions, not our own, that apply to any question of objective reality as opposed to subjective opinion.

Chances of Winning the Lottery

William Hooper

Suppose you sister's husband calls to say she has won the lottery... then you should begin to celebrate if the probability of his lying is much less than the probability of of her winning, which is 1 in 15,000,000. Well that not actually true - it's a common mistake in probability theory. It would be true if your sister played every week and one day, out of the blue, you called and asked him if she had won this week.

To see why it's not true consider this example: consider he calls and says I saw a car today driving past with the number plate "G340 KGP" at exactly 8:30am. Well, with the flawed logic above, the probability of that is essentially zero (since there are a lot of number plates out there), so it's almost certain he lying.

It's the mistake of calculating the probability of an event occurring after the fact as if it we were waiting for it to happen. It's a very common one, maybe it even deserves to be listed in your next edition of 'bad thoughts!

Reply:

Dear William, I do make a mistake in the passage you quote, but I don't think it is the mistake you claim I make. I certainly don't think that one's degree of belief in a hypothesis should be unchanged by evidence, and I don't think I suggest it either. But, as I say, I do make a mistake, which we can see by going into the kind of details that were inappropriate for a layman's book, like Bad Thoughts.

What we are trying to determine is the degree of belief you should have in the hypothesis that your sister won lotto (H) given the testimony of your brother-in-law (call this testimony the evidence E). In other words, we want to know the probability of the hypothesis conditional upon the evidence: i.e. pr(H, E). Bayes' theorem tells us that the this is a function of the prior probability of the hypothesis [pr(H)], the prior probability of the evidence [pr(E)] and the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis [pr(E, H)]. Roughly:

pr(H, E) = pr(H).pr(E, H)/pr(E).

Let's assume that pr(E, H) is 1: i.e. that if your sister won Lotto, your brother in law would certainly tell you. That makes pr(H, E) = pr(H)/pr(E). The probability of the evidence is high if your brother-in-law is a liar, low if he is an honest puritan. In the extreme case, where he would never lie, then pr(E)=pr(H) and the degree of belief you should have in H given E is 1. The more inclined to lie, then the more likely he is to say your sister won even if she didn't (i.e. the higher pr(E)) and hence the lower pr(H, E).

My mistake was in saying that you should not believe the liar when ëthe probability that he is lying exceeds the probability that your sister won lotto'. That would only provide grounds for not being certain: i.e. for pr(H, E)<1. If you believe anything when pr(H, E)>50%, then you should not believe the hypothesis when the probability that your brother-in-law is lying is more than twice the probability that your sister won lotto. Assuming that the chance of the latter is 1 in 15 million, then you should not believe that your sister won if the independent chance that your brother in law would say she had exceeds 1 in 7.5 million.

I am not sure that this is the mistake you think I made but, in any event, thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Weird Science and Weird Ideas  

Ted Dixon

You say (p.90) about 'weird ideas' that 'you will know the kind of thing I have in mind'  but, apart from your particular examples, no, I am not absolutely sure. Would you also include, for example, my belief in the phenomenon of extra sensory perception / communication of one kind or another? ( I also believe in the reality of poltergeist phenomena, the efficacy of some 'alternative' healing and many other 'weird' phenomena, but I'll stick with telepathy and similar for now). I guess you would, because you dismiss the whole of Lyall Watson's Supernature (p.30) as a 'foray into gobbledygook' when it seems to me (I have just checked it) for the most part written in plain English with reasonable conclusions drawn from the 'facts' as he presents them. (I put 'facts' in commas because of course some purported facts may not actually be facts, though I have no reason to doubt most of them.) For example, where phenomena as he describes them could be explained in terms of either telepathy or astral projection, he prefers telepathy as the more likely - as the nearer to what we know. If so, I wouldn't mind if you used 'weird' ideas as simply a descriptive alternative to 'strange' or 'puzzling' ideas. But you go on to describe 'advocacates' of 'weird' ideas as 'intellectually frivolous'. If you honestly believe in things on the evidence as you see it, how can it be intellectually frivolous to take them seriously and to look for explanations etc? And if you are going to do this, what is more natural and proper than to start with what we think we know about how the world works already, including 'weird science'?

You say that ideas in quantum physics should provide no comfort to 'gobbledygookers', but if you include people interested in how for example telepathy might work as 'gobbledygookers', then why not? The puzzle of telepathy seems to me no more extraordinary (or little more) than what I read (as a non-scientist) are some of the outstanding puzzles of quantum physics (and other 'established' science). But even if I have misunderstood what I have read of quantum physics and other science (or I have read misleading accounts), it is still the case that just because something can't be explained in terms of current scientific knowledge, it doesn't mean that if we are clear thinkers we have to reject what seems to us to be overwhelming evidence for it. To use telepathy as the example again, there is nothing in 'established views of the laws of nature' that suggests it doesn't or can't happen. It is just that we don't know, if it happens, how it could happen. At present we can only speculate and have the speculations discussed and challenged etc., like any hypothesis in science. But even if our present scientific understanding were to rule out the possibility of it happening, then if you are convinced of the evidence for its happening, the rational response is to question present scientific understanding rather than take refuge in a closed-minded " It can't happen, therefore it doesn't happen" view of the facts.

To return to Supernature, I can't deny you have grounds for complaining about the author's opening paragraph. But if, in the interest of impact and grabbing the reader's attention, he overstated his case or got a bit carried away in his choice of words, couldn't the same be fairly said of you? " 'Science no longer holds any absolute truths' is not true, as you demonstrate; but it is hardly an 'outrageous and obvious falsehood'  anymore than is your statement that 'It is a rare foray into gobbledygook that does not begin with a tribute to quantum physics'? Your statement is equally untrue if taken literally on any use of the term 'gobbledygook'. Name me any other book that you would describe as a 'foray into gobbledgook' that begins with a tribute to quantum physics, let alone justify that the great majority do! But most readers I guess will know what each of you mean and make allowances for a bit of hyperbole.

I wonder if I am being too generous to you, though? I am wondering if you are not just writing for effect in places, but actually wish to mislead.  On page 94, you dismiss the evidence for weird ideas as 'rarely more than a collection of anecdotes: about people with unlikely knowledge or who recover from flu in double-quick time'.  The evidence for 'rememberance of past lives' is very, not just slightly, unlikely knowledge. I happen to prefer explanations other than reincarnation or re-birth but I have an open mind: before coming to a firm view I would want to read more widely and think more deeply on the subject. As to recovery from illness, I guess you know as well as I that there are well documented cases of remarkable recovery from much more than flu. Again, I have an open mind as to the explanation.  In both cases, the fact that the evidence is anecdotal may make one wonder if whether to take it at face value and to consider the possibility of mis-reporting, fraud, coincidence and so on, but in the end one has to judge anecdotal evidence on the merits of the particular case - as with anecdotal evidence in court for crime and anecdotal evidence for anything else.

Reply:

Dear Mr Dixon, You begin by claiming that you are ënot absolutely sure' what I would include in the category of weird ideas. But I don't believe you. Because in the very next paragraph, you make a perfect guess, by mentioning your belief in extra sensory perception, poltergeist phenomena and the efficacy of some 'alternative' healing.

However, on the point of substance, you are right. I do imply that all advocates of weird ideas are intellectually frivolous. And that is certainly an overstatement.

As I make clear on p92, what I mean by a weird idea is an idea which is inconsistent (or at least apparently inconsistent) with established views of the laws of nature. Whether or not you are frivolous depends on how seriously you take the problem posed by this inconsistency. If you are intellectually serious, you will say where you think the established view goes wrong and why the evidence in its favour is not really as strong as others think. If an advocate of a weird idea does this then I have no complaint. And certainly some do ñ all the great new ideas of science were weird until the evidence accumulated in their favour was greater than that in favour of the previous view. It's just that most who deal in weird ideas don't do anything even remotely close to this. They really do just deal in anecdotes and bad statistics.

Your favoured weird idea seems to be telepathy. You claim that that the phenomena telepathy is invoked to explain are as compelling as the phenomena that the strange aspects of (the Copenhagen Interpretation of) quantum physics are supposed to explain. That is preposterous. The results of double slit experiment, which leads to the notion of superposition, can be reproduced by any competent scientist in any physics lab anywhere in the world. The phenomena that telepathy are supposed to explain are entirely anecdotal, and not at all replicable. The Koestler chair of Parapsychology at Edinburgh University has been spectacularly unable to produce any results. Indeed, its main results seem to be just to show how we can be mislead into seeing telepathy where it doesn't exist.

Good science is not a body of ideas, it is a method ñ or, at least, a number of reliable methods. At any time, the ideas most worthy of belief are those best supported by these reliable methods. All the crap that blows around these days ñ from astrology to reincarnation to financial forecasting ñ is both inconsistent with ideas arrived at via reliable methods and also not itself arrived at via reliable methods. Why would anyone serious about the truth want to believe it?

The Trinity

Ray Sacks

Page 24, The Trinity: 3rd para: "The Catholic Church...obvious facts?" I'm not sure that your charge of "inconsistent" and that "three does not equal one" is correct when the issue is viewed slightly differently. Suppose the three entities, God, the Holy Ghost and the Son, each represent an immeasurably large "world" (for want of a better word). Perhaps they can each be viewed as infinitely all-encompassing. Then the mathematical summation of these three infinities is still infinity. Thus the three can equal a unity since they are all part of the same infinity. The mathematics o