If more people understood Bayesian statistics, fewer people would believe in the Bible.

How does that work? Well, see, I don't know who wrote the books of the Bible, really, and neither do you. We weren't there. We have to take the hand-me-down credits at face value, or we have no idea at all.

But let's go back a few thousand years to the time of nomadic goatherders, etc. We're in a loose group of people united by - something. Family, tribe, you know, style of fur clothing, etc. They get into arguments and fights and people steal things and have sex with each other's mates and get jealous and hit each other over the head and whatnot. We need rules.

What are you going to tell them?

You probably do something like what you do with kids. You can't do this. You can do that. You must do that. WHY? Because... I said so. SO? Well, all right. If you behave, then... THEN WHAT? ...then you'll get some ice cream. WHAT IF I DON'T? Get ice cream? You will. NO, DON'T BEHAVE. Then you'll get eaten by the kickibocaca. WHAT'S THAT? You don't want to know, trust me. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ONE? Of course I have. BUT YOU GOT AWAY, SO IT CAN'T BE THAT BAD. Oh, you think you're so smart? Ha. Well, look at this scar. THAT'S OBVIOUSLY A SNAKE BITE. No, that's a kickibocaca bite. But don't even get me started, there's also the ... and the ... and the ...

You get the idea. People make crud up. We can guarantee that humans were making up rewards and punishments for their kids thousands of years ago. And we can guarantee that some invented or superstitious rewards and punishments worked their way into the earliest laws.

So when the first books are written, and they include some of those earliest laws and moral codes, what would we EXPECT to find in them?

Of course. We already have a good idea. You would expect to find ossified stories for children to get them growing up to follow the law, which would have developed from those early beginnings.

Given that we WOULD TOTALLY EXPECT for early books to have EXACTLY THIS TYPE OF CONTENT, how remarkable is it, actually, that an early book like the Bible has this type of content?

Bayesian statistics, looking at the above, if you could put some decent numerical estimates on probabilities, would say "It's very unremarkable that this book has this kind of content."

So when you ask the question "How likely is it that this book was actually not written by humans, but rather handed to them by a being that sounds to me like a fairytale but maybe actually does exist in reality?" the answer is "EXTREMELY FUCKING UNLIKELY."

And if we all were comfortable with Bayesian statistics, we'd all know it.

But when atheists-to-be come to the realization that the Bible must have been written by humans, they are actually, in my opinion, doing Bayesian reasoning informally in their heads. This is not surprising. While it sounds fancy and sophisticated and abstruse, brains have been shown to rely heavily on Bayesian processes. So basically, if you're smart about how you look at the Bible, your brain will naturally suggest what is almost certainly the truth: it is not holy in origin. 

I don't like to be boring (if I can avoid it; God help me), but sometimes you can take the dullest topic, write about it in detail, polish it later with a bit of humor, and what seemed like a terrible "scribble op" becomes a solid piece. Poems can work this way. Essays. Almost anything.

Honestly I have no trouble understanding why people off themselves. None whatsoever. Sometimes I have significant trouble understanding why most people continue. Sometimes I object to what goes down in this world so much that I feel tarnished by sticking around in it. That's probably irrational but it's a way I've often felt. If you really can't understand suicide, think of it as a protest vote. Think of it as walking out of a movie that you think really sucks. Think of it as disgust with what you've been force-fed—or what you've chosen to eat—and making yourself throw it all back up. Think of it as an abortion that happens years late. Suicide is self-abortion as a means to get away from what's intolerable in the world. I can't not understand it. Maybe I was destined for it. Or maybe I simply understand. There's a lot I understand. I wish I didn't understand this, but I do.

I try to avoid what I think of as the catholic fallacy. The term is inspired by—but not a comment on—the Catholic Church, as it's a very human error. Hence I didn't capitalize. (More on the name in a moment. Maybe you can think of a better one! Also, it's possible I read this phrase somewhere, but Google turns up nothing.)

The error is in confusing the implications (or possible implications or even misinterpretations) of a statement with the statement. Referring to the Catholic Church might help our brain tissue hook into the idea's kernel, by way of the Church's historic stance that the masses can't handle the truth (given the sparsity of education back then, this makes some sense), and the appointment of authorities to filter it for them. "The Bible is the truth but we can't really trust you to understand it, so you need us to explain it. And actually, go ahead and listen to us whenever you're in doubt." [Offensive continuation: "Also, do what we say or you'll burn in Hell. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. We didn't make the rules! God loves you infinitely; it's all for your own good. Oh yes, absolutely. Even eternal 'torture,' as you put it. That doesn't make sense? It doesn't have to make sense! The ego of thinking it should make sense! Shame on you!"]

The mental health and mass shooter debate is a good example of this "catholic fallacy."

That is, when someone picks up a gun and shoots themselves in the head, we all know that's a mental health issue.

When a person picks up a gun and shoots someone else in the head—someone innocent who really didn't deserve it and had no choice in the matter—this should, by most any measure, be an even worse mental health issue. (If the person then shoots themselves in the head, it seems unambiguous.)

Yet we can't trust you with the truth, so we're going to say it isn't a mental health issue.

The fact most mass shooters have not been diagnosed with a condition does not prove that they had none. How many people go undiagnosed? And how many conditions haven't been adequately named, described, or understood yet? Here the eventual behavior strongly suggests disorder. If going out in a blaze of fury killing as many people as possible for no reason isn't "insane," what is?

The fact OCD (etc, etc, etc) has nothing to do with shooting people does not prove that mass shooting has nothing to do with mental health. (It doesn't even particularly suggest that. Many mental health issues are drastically different.)

I understand the social and legal considerations (the need to avoid unfair and damaging stigma and prejudice, or on the other end, to avoid encouraging or excusing violence), but those do not and cannot replace science. Allowing them to would be an example of what I'm calling "the catholic fallacy." Brain tissue seems to produce, and certainly mediates, behavior. Diseases of behavior fall under psychology, neurology, and mental health.

 

To give a different example of "the catholic fallacy," if you're late for work and spent 30 minutes in a traffic jam when usually it's 10 minutes in a traffic jam, then that is a factor in your lateness, regardless of whether someone feels you ought to be allowed to use it as an excuse or not. To blot out the traffic as "just an excuse" and somehow not real or worthy of any consideration is "the catholic fallacy," because objectively it was a factor. Its existence and its implications should not be confused for each other. Maybe you could have left earlier. Maybe you could have checked Google to see traffic conditions. Maybe you could have called ahead. Maybe maybe maybe, yes, but it was a factor, and "excuse" or "not an excuse" on some very basic level ceases to carry relevance and becomes a matter of opinion. Science is concerned with facts and factors, not "should" or "excuse." To confuse the two areas is the catholic fallacy.

To put all this in a nutshell—to sum the fallacy up—it's "You can't handle the truth; therefore it isn't true." Or "Someone else might get the wrong idea; therefore I will insist the truth isn't true and yell at people who speak it." Or "This is a possibility for all I know, but I don't like the way it looks to say so, so I will deny it and believe my denial."

"Catholic" means "universal," so I'm generalizing from that meaning and not trying to grind an axe with religion (the historic inconsistency I pointed out above seems fair to mention in passing, but I'm not judging people themselves for believing things that I think don't make sense). Again, maybe you have a better term. This is related to "political correctness" or "hypercorrectness" but need not involve either. It homes in on a specific and common logical error. "Out of the universe of all people, someone's gonna misunderstand." And that's true. But it doesn't change the truth.

As time passes, the list of details to know about your body gets longer and longer. Same about your mind, less visibly.

When you're a kid things just heal, and you know they will and rely on it.

As an adult you become aware of all the things that won't ever heal, or only so slowly that it's an incredible nuisance.

They pile up like notches on a calendar stick.

As you age, your mind fills up with things wrong with your body. Things to watch, things to remember, things to keep an eye out for. Things to fix, but maybe they can't be fixed. Things to try to endure. Slowly, "getting to know yourself" turns into a long list, a body map, in fact, of fractures, pains, dysfunctions, weaknesses, fears. Your mouth is not a mouth, it's a topography of chips and dents and ulcer-prone spots and odd what's-thats and places food gets stuck and festers until you floss.

That's just a mouth, and barely half of one. It goes on and on, and you hope it keeps going on, but it keeps getting worse, and you wonder why you would hope for that descent to endure. You take it near infinity and imagine a football field, a mountain, a moon, a planetoid of proprioceptive and other defects, all compounding, all gelling into habit, yes, I remember that, and that, and that, I know how to mitigate those pains well enough for now, and here come more, and more. Do you see? You become an architecture of lonely perils, of "character" up the wazoo.