The Case for Atheism

[Esquilax]

Sorry I didn’t intend to arrogantly tell you what you believe. Apologies for any misunderstanding on that account.

It's fine, it just happens a whole lot in religious debates.

You’re arguing you ‘don't have to assume anything in order to come to conclusions about the world. You just have to critically examine all the claims that come in…’

From a Bayesian perspective there’s always a prior belief – no one comes to the data without prior knowledge. These prior beliefs are then tested and updated in the light of the data we observe.

Well, of course. But beliefs that change in accordance with new evidence aren't assumptions, they're just... beliefs. It's impossible to come to any claim as a totally blank slate, but the idea is to accept new claims if they come with a certain degree of evidence and support, and they don't hinge on logical fallacies to function. It's unfortunate for the theistic side, but every one of the arguments they make, including yours, are either fallacious or not supported to the extent that they should be believed.

Again, this isn't a presumption of naturalism, however. If you could show me a repeatable miracle with a reliable result and I could rule out cheating through natural means, then I'd give equal chances to supernatural origins as anything else. But I would be comfortable in just saying I don't know what caused it until we actually found a cause, too.

What is a flat prior (all weight in the analysis of evidence given to the data and no or minimal prior assumptions) in the context of our discussion? If you want to make no prior assumptions then mathematically you express this by parametising metaphysical naturalism and theism as equally probably explanations of the world. Whether you hold that assumption to be true or not, if you want your interpretation of the evidence to be determined by the data mathematically you have to make that assumption.

I agree. It's just too bad for your side that the more evidence we gather that requires no gods, often to the contrary of what various religious books claim, the probability of a natural universe increases.

However, if I’m fairly stating your position that the burden of proof is on theism then by definition you don’t have a flat prior (I think you are saying they’re not equally probably explanations of the world).

The burden of proof exists for all ontologically possible claims. Both "there definitely is a supernatural world featuring a god," and "there definitely is only a natural world without any gods," would entail the same burden of proof. However, my position is "I don't know what this universe is yet," and thus doesn't have a burden at all. That's why I- and most of the others in this thread, if I recall- are agnostic atheists and not gnostic ones; the purely gnostic naturalist claim overstresses its case just as much as a theistic one does.

The anostic atheist position, however, doesn't prevent us from finding fault with any given argument that comes in.

If I’m being true to your position, this is in Bayesian terms technically called an informed prior – which means you have a view about what explanation is more likely. It would be for you to tell me how much more likely you think metaphysical naturalism is compared with theism. But obviously the more likely you think it is- the greater weight is given to this prior belief and less weight to the data when evaluating the evidence.

Well, I have no experience with the supernatural at all, and plenty with the natural. That's why, say, when there's a storm I'm more willing to accept a claim that it's happening in line with natural meteorological patterns, than that it was created wholecloth by magic. I don't know that there is magic, after all. I do know that storms naturally occur.

Now, if the person with the magic claim can demonstrate the spell, then... fine. Methodological naturalism, not metaphysical naturalism.

What I’m saying is there are at least two opposing informed priors about which explanation is a better understanding of the world. This is quite a common situation – so how do Bayesian analyses take this into account when examining the data? Generally, they analyse the data comparing conclusions using different priors. At a minimum they look at the impact of using each of the opposing priors as well as flat priors. Which is to say the burden of proof argument for me is simplistic and in many senses misleading way of interpreting the evidence.

Only if you're under the impression that the burden of proof only lies on your claim. But it lies on every positive claim made: it's just having evidence for a thing, really. This is simpler than you're making it.

If we can’t really agree about what prior beliefs we’re factoring in and what weight they have in our interpretation of the analysis – then in my view there’s not much common ground to discuss the issues. We end up talking past each other.

I provided very brief responses as I’m sure you’re aware to discuss even one of these issues in any detail takes time. If we can’t really agree on a starting point why would we take the time to argue these points in detail?

My starting point is "I don't know," but that doesn't mean I can't see a shitty argument when it's put in front of me. And I'm sorry, even if I had a completely biased starting point, the arguments you listed are all logically invalid, regardless of where you hang your soteriological hat.

Like, let's take Kalam for example. The premises aren't even valid; for one, can I just mention how utterly insane it is that this argument still has any traction? The initial cosmological argument ran into the pretty clear infinite regress problem because the first premise, "everything has a cause," is invalidated by the fact that therefore god would need one too. And so, without any new information being discovered or anything, the argument was just changed by definitional fiat with this "begins to exist" crap so that the contradiction no longer exists. That demonstrates, to me, how completely unconnected that argument is to reality: there's a problem with it, so just define the problem out of existence, despite nothing in the real world having changed.

Besides all that, the premises themselves don't work. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist-" Whoa, stop right there! That doesn't make any sense. How can something begin to exist if the point before it began lacked any spacetime? You're just talking gibberish now. Not to mention, you haven't demonstrated that everything that begins to exist has a cause, you've just asserted it. It's a fallacy of composition to suggest that things true of the parts of a thing are also true of the whole.

Oh, and the conclusion? "Therefore, the universe has a cause." Okay, let's accept that, just as a hypothetical. How the hell did you get from "cause" to "christian god," or even "supernatural cause"? There's nothing in that conclusion that would get you to either of those things. At most it would get you to "cause." And yet you're here as a christian, using this as an argument for the existence of your god. That's the reason I have a problem, not because I have a different starting point. I have a problem because your arguments begin with flawed premises and use them to reach conclusions that don't even support the position you've taken up.

Maybe you missed my previous comment, I was saying Paul was referring to 500 witnesses – I wasn’t including Paul in that list.

So, you've got a guy, writing about an event he was never at, and had no method by which to observe the event. And this is evidence to you? It's the equivalent of "a friend of a friend saw..." It's hearsay, and it's hearsay from a man with a vested interest in promulgating it. Conmen use the same trick.

If you claimed 500 witnesses had seen an event and that most of them were still alive and that I could contact them – I think that’s a strong claim.

... Except that none of them are alive, and you can't contact them. Given that Paul didn't include a list of names or anything, you couldn't have contacted them even if you were alive when the event was purported to have happened. It's just a claim: "500 people saw this thing." So what? There are people living today, in far greater numbers, who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Do you believe them? So why does the story get any more reasonable to believe, on the claim alone, when we add in that all the supposed witnesses are dead and unnamed?

Paul makes a claim about Jesus resurrection based on a large number of eye witnesses – most of whom were still alive who people could check with. Why would he make such a claim if he was lying?

Maybe the entire thing was fabricated. Maybe a real, mundane event was embellished. Maybe he knew, since he never listed a single name of a witness, that they wouldn't or couldn't be checked. At any rate, the mere claim that a resurrection happened and 500 people witnessed it is not compelling merely because if you assume it was written based on a factual account then there would be no reason to lie. I mean, bloody toothpaste ads do that: do four out of five doctors really agree that Colgate whitens and prevents decay better than any other? Are these the same four out of five doctors who say the same about some other brand, or a different four out of five doctors?

Claims are claims. Stop mistaking them for evidence.

It would be very easy to refute – particularly as many who made claims for Jesus resurrection were killed - yet I don’t see any evidence that his claim was refuted. Do you consider all other eyewitness testimony of historical events beyond a 100 or so years ago invalid?

So you need evidence that a claim was refuted before you stop believing it? That's definitely a shifting of the burden of proof. And again, how was anyone supposed to refute it when Paul didn't see fit to list who these 500 witnesses were? What you're saying is, why would Paul write down such an easily refutable claim if he was lying? Except that you're skipping the point where his claim isn't easily refutable at all. I'd go so far as to say it was unfalsifiable even during the time it was written.

And I don't credit extraordinary claims as true based on the claim alone, even if that claim also contains within it a further claim that lots of people saw the details of the claim. I don't care if it happened ten thousand years ago or yesterday, the claim itself is not evidence of it happening.

Incidentally, where's the writings from these 500 people who saw this miracle? I guess they didn't think it was important enough to jot down.

[frasierc]

Thanks for engaging with my responses, your responses are really interesting and helpful. I'll try and respond briefly to your responses on interpretation of evidence. As I said before - discussing the evidence when we don't agree on what evidence is admissible nor how to interpret it is unlikely to be productive. I think this is a generalizable concept on all questions - regardless of the topic.

Well, of course. But beliefs that change in accordance with new evidence aren't assumptions, they're just... beliefs. It's impossible to come to any claim as a totally blank slate, but the idea is to accept new claims if they come with a certain degree of evidence and support, and they don't hinge on logical fallacies to function. It's unfortunate for the theistic side, but every one of the arguments they make, including yours, are either fallacious or not supported to the extent that they should be believed.

Again, this isn't a presumption of naturalism, however. If you could show me a repeatable miracle with a reliable result and I could rule out cheating through natural means, then I'd give equal chances to supernatural origins as anything else. But I would be comfortable in just saying I don't know what caused it until we actually found a cause, too.

This is slightly jumping the gun I think we get to the discussion of how presuppositions relate to evidence further down.

You argued in your previous post you base your conclusions purely on the data. From this response you're now saying you have some assumptions but you're willing to revise these in the light of the evidence.

This is reasonable and I would say also reflects my position. The question which I think we will come to below is how informed your prior is (by which I mean how much more likely do you think your current position about the explanation of the world is than theism). That will determine how much your interpretations are impacted by your prior beliefs and how willing you would be to revise this belief.

What is a flat prior (all weight in the analysis of evidence given to the data and no or minimal prior assumptions) in the context of our discussion? If you want to make no prior assumptions then mathematically you express this by parametising metaphysical naturalism and theism as equally probably explanations of the world. Whether you hold that assumption to be true or not, if you want your interpretation of the evidence to be determined by the data mathematically you have to make that assumption.

I agree. It's just too bad for your side that the more evidence we gather that requires no gods, often to the contrary of what various religious books claim, the probability of a natural universe increases.

Again, I think this jumps the gun - we're still at prior beliefs. Your assertion about the evidence requiring no gods - I think you need to define that more clearly.

Whether this is convincing or not depends very much on your prior belief.
Do you mean by this evidence about the world that can be interpreted as being consistent with a naturalist worldview regardless of whether it can also be interpreted as consistent with a theist worldview? If not please let me know - if this isn't what you mean then by all means ignore the argument below.

If this is your interpretation of evidence then we're back to the burden of proof argument and strongly informed priors that naturalism is true.

If you're assuming a flat prior you have to show that the evidence is better explained by naturalism that theism. Not simply that if its consistent with both that this makes naturalism more likely.

However, if I’m fairly stating your position that the burden of proof is on theism then by definition you don’t have a flat prior (I think you are saying they’re not equally probably explanations of the world).

The burden of proof exists for all ontologically possible claims. Both "there definitely is a supernatural world featuring a god," and "there definitely is only a natural world without any gods," would entail the same burden of proof. However, my position is "I don't know what this universe is yet," and thus doesn't have a burden at all. That's why I- and most of the others in this thread, if I recall- are agnostic atheists and not gnostic ones; the purely gnostic naturalist claim overstresses its case just as much as a theistic one does.

The anostic atheist position, however, doesn't prevent us from finding fault with any given argument that comes in.

Thanks that's helpful clarification. So in that sense your gnostic atheist position is a flat prior? That is, there is great uncertainty whether naturalist or theist explanations of the universe are valid explanations of the world?

But see responses below which seem to me inconsistent with what you've said here.

If I’m being true to your position, this is in Bayesian terms technically called an informed prior – which means you have a view about what explanation is more likely. It would be for you to tell me how much more likely you think metaphysical naturalism is compared with theism. But obviously the more likely you think it is- the greater weight is given to this prior belief and less weight to the data when evaluating the evidence.

Well, I have no experience with the supernatural at all, and plenty with the natural. That's why, say, when there's a storm I'm more willing to accept a claim that it's happening in line with natural meteorological patterns, than that it was created wholecloth by magic. I don't know that there is magic, after all. I do know that storms naturally occur.

Now, if the person with the magic claim can demonstrate the spell, then... fine. Methodological naturalism, not metaphysical naturalism.

That's a helpful illustration. I think this is very useful as this seems clear to me your not using a flat prior to interpret the evidence.

Of course I would also come to the conclusion the storm is due to meterological patterns and that explanation would be totally consistent with my theist position.

The question is why do you think these meterological patterns have a naturalistic cause and don't just reflect the world God creates and sustains?

I think from your illustration (but as I say this may be a misinterpretation so you can correct it) you are saying you hold a strong informed prior that naturalist explanations are more likely.

If you start with a flat prior the illustration doesn't show that either the naturalist or theist position is a better explanation. If you start with a strongly informed prior that naturalism is more likely then you'll conclude naturalism is a better explanation. Which means by definition your conclusion is determined by your prior beliefs.

Your informed prior that naturalism is more likely is probably less stronger than a gnostic atheist but that still doesn't imply that you don't have an informed prior.

What I’m saying is there are at least two opposing informed priors about which explanation is a better understanding of the world. This is quite a common situation – so how do Bayesian analyses take this into account when examining the data? Generally, they analyse the data comparing conclusions using different priors. At a minimum they look at the impact of using each of the opposing priors as well as flat priors. Which is to say the burden of proof argument for me is simplistic and in many senses misleading way of interpreting the evidence.

Only if you're under the impression that the burden of proof only lies on your claim. But it lies on every positive claim made: it's just having evidence for a thing, really. This is simpler than you're making it.

I've tried to show in the above example prior beliefs matter whether your a gnostic atheist, agnostic atheist, or theist. So I guess I'm saying I don't think there is a neutral position on this question - by all means show me that I'm wrong.

I'm a little confused by your responses. On some you are saying you
just want to take the evidence into account and therefore consider the flat prior to reflect your agnostic atheism.

But at the same time the illustration you've given suggests a strongly informed prior that naturalism is more likely. So I suppose I'm not sure what position you're taking regarding prior beliefs before interpreting the evidence.

Its almost impossible to understand how you interpret the evidence if I don't understand your position on prior beliefs.

[Esquilax]

This is slightly jumping the gun I think we get to the discussion of how presuppositions relate to evidence further down.

You argued in your previous post you base your conclusions purely on the data. From this response you're now saying you have some assumptions but you're willing to revise these in the light of the evidence.

You say assumptions, I say observations, because the fact that the natural world exists, and the natural causes we've determined for events are a part of the data set. Those things are evidence, that we can factor into our rationales.

It's actually a little weird, to be told that my observation that the natural world exists is an assumption.

This is reasonable and I would say also reflects my position. The question which I think we will come to below is how informed your prior is (by which I mean how much more likely do you think your current position about the explanation of the world is than theism). That will determine how much your interpretations are impacted by your prior beliefs and how willing you would be to revise this belief.

But I don't have a current explanation of the world, beyond known scientific facts. I'm suspending my judgement pending the arrival of additional evidence. I mean, I know how the planet formed because our understanding of gravitational mechanics and so on have shown that. And I know how certain phenomena on this planet occur because our understanding of them is comprehensive. But as for universal origins, the evidence seems to point to a big bang, the point before which is simply a mystery.

There is no evidence that's particularly strong for what happened before the planck time, and so from that point I'm willing to simply step back and say I don't know. I have no position on universal origins, beyond that I don't find the arguments presented so far to be compelling. Theism/naturalism is not a binary; I don't believe any of the naturalistic explanations either.

Again, I think this jumps the gun - we're still at prior beliefs. Your assertion about the evidence requiring no gods - I think you need to define that more clearly.

Whether this is convincing or not depends very much on your prior belief.
Do you mean by this evidence about the world that can be interpreted as being consistent with a naturalist worldview regardless of whether it can also be interpreted as consistent with a theist worldview? If not please let me know - if this isn't what you mean then by all means ignore the argument below.

Well, what I mean is that the things that were once the work of the gods, in every case, have later turned out to have natural explanations. If you want to argue that those causes have a supernatural architect, or are caused by a supernatural agent working through natural means, well... I don't really have a way to detect if that's true, and so no reason to believe it. If it's the former, and you're arguing in terms of an initial cause for the universe, then that's fine, but if it's the latter and each of those natural events require a supernatural motivator behind the scenes, then I'm pretty satisfied to just accept that rainbows are light refraction, for instance, and not light refraction because god ordered it so.

What I meant is, for as long as our knowledge of how the world works has grown, so too has the territory of what god is responsible for causing directly, shrank. Is that conclusive evidence of godlessness? Not at all. But it's the kind of thing I think about when someone tells me about some new thing that must be caused by god.

If this is your interpretation of evidence then we're back to the burden of proof argument and strongly informed priors that naturalism is true.

If you're assuming a flat prior you have to show that the evidence is better explained by naturalism that theism. Not simply that if its consistent with both that this makes naturalism more likely.

Yeah, I think you're talking about something else here. All I was saying is that at one point in our past god was an all encompassing thing: he made the clouds, he made it rain, he made the continents we stand on and the planet they're all on, and so on. As our knowledge grew we discovered he didn't make the clouds, precipitation made the rain, the continents are caused by tectonic shift and the planet was formed via gravitational accretion. The point is that all the things that we once thought directly required miraculous intervention to occur later turned out not to. Whether a god designed the systems there or not, the observed track record we have to go on with regards to the discovery of causes for things leans pretty heavily on the "not magic" side.

Thanks that's helpful clarification. So in that sense your gnostic atheist position is a flat prior? That is, there is great uncertainty whether naturalist or theist explanations of the universe are valid explanations of the world?

Essentially. Regardless of the probabilities I choose to assign to various claims, my ultimate position is a simple "I don't know," coupled with an acknowledgement that additional information may drastically alter those probabilities. When the evidence is not compelling, the best bet is to simply not make a judgment until we get better evidence.

That's a helpful illustration. I think this is very useful as this seems clear to me your not using a flat prior to interpret the evidence.

Of course I would also come to the conclusion the storm is due to meterological patterns and that explanation would be totally consistent with my theist position.

The question is why do you think these meterological patterns have a naturalistic cause and don't just reflect the world God creates and sustains?

Ahh, I didn't say what I think about that, though. If what you're arguing here is that the natural patterns are a part of a grand system that god designed and set in motion, then I can't make a judgment on that one way or the other. All I can say regarding the storm is that it's due to X and Y weather conditions combining, that doesn't imply anything about the natural or divine architecture of those observations. It's simply what we see happening.

The tides are due to gravitational pull from the moon. Does that mean that the moon was placed in the sky without any foresight or intent from a divine creator? Not necessarily, but it if was ordered into the orbit of earth by god, he made that happen using naturally occurring gravitational mechanics. That could be a part of some immense system that god set spinning in nothing, or it could be a naturally cascading series of physical consequences, but all I can say about it is that I see gravity from the moon acting on the water.

I think from your illustration (but as I say this may be a misinterpretation so you can correct it) you are saying you hold a strong informed prior that naturalist explanations are more likely.

See above. Don't mistake what we see, with the ultimate cause for that.

I've tried to show in the above example prior beliefs matter whether your a gnostic atheist, agnostic atheist, or theist. So I guess I'm saying I don't think there is a neutral position on this question - by all means show me that I'm wrong.

I'm a little confused by your responses. On some you are saying you
just want to take the evidence into account and therefore consider the flat prior to reflect your agnostic atheism.

But at the same time the illustration you've given suggests a strongly informed prior that naturalism is more likely. So I suppose I'm not sure what position you're taking regarding prior beliefs before interpreting the evidence.

Hopefully I've cleared that up.

[pocaracas]

"prior beliefs"... there's a nice faulty wording right there!

prior - meaning "before". Before you can tell anything, you assume a certain set of conditions.

Where do such conditions come from? Genetics and Childhood.

Genetics build up your body and your senses, how you interact with the world, how you perceive it, how you interpret direct sensory stimulation.
Childhood fine tunes what genetics began and, in the case of humans, at least, also adds a new layer of learning from your elders.
You learn new ways to interpret the sensory input and learn how to interpret what you have no way to sense through your senses... you learn abstract concepts, such as logic or friendship... and gods.

The main prior, which exists at the time of birth (for the sake of argument), is solely naturalistic.
The supernatural prior will come later on, through teachings... and, when someone attempts to find how anyone ever came across any information about such gods, one finds ancient tales, passed on orally... that is... unreliably. Also, many such stories show clear signs of either faulty interpretation of natural phenomena, or straight out lies/cons, lending further traction to the notion that these teachings are unreliable, to say the least.
That's not to say that they didn't serve their purpose, once, in particular settings. Nowadays, there are places where such teachings may still be required, but on the so-called western world they are mostly useless.... nice for passing the time, but overall they have no applicability as life is regulated by the civil law system, instead of the religious law system.

So, the natural prior appears by default. The supernatural prior appears through untrustworthy means.
If I desire to be intellectually honest, I should then attribute more weight to the natural prior. Actually, the weight of the supernatural prior should be very close to zero and the natural prior close to one.

If there is anyone out there capable of convincing me (or anyone around here) that the supernatural prior should be given more credence than the natural prior, then these are the obstacles that person must overcome: faulty transmission of information regarding the deity, faulty origin of such information. No excuses... no apologetics... no god-of-the-gaps... just reliable origin of any information regarding the god of choice and trustworthy method of transmission of this information.

I wish you the best of luck with that endeavor!

[Welsh cake]

I don't really hold to the sacred/secular divide - under your argument every Christian should be a full time evangelist/apologist if they're serious about their faith.

Oooooh, so you're one of those casual Christians.

Oh well, I must have been reading the wrong Bible where you actually have to be sincere about your position and give reason for the faith you have. Silly me.

1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear

Casual Christianity works for me.

Worship god, but only when its coooooool. Yeaaaaaaah.

[Alex25]

I have a question: I have a friend who is a theist, and he had an argument to which I couldn't really reply reasonably. He said:
In nature, when a fruit is ready to be eaten, it changes its color from green to yellow, red, orange, blue, purpule etc.
However, before all fruits can be eaten they are all green, and that's a sign of a design in nature, that tells both animals and humans not to eat.

To be honest, his logic seems quite good, and I don't know what to say.. any ideas?

[Esquilax]

I have a question: I have a friend who is a theist, and he had an argument to which I couldn't really reply reasonably. He said:
In nature, when a fruit is ready to be eaten, it changes its color from green to yellow, red, orange, blue, purpule etc.
However, before all fruits can be eaten they are all green, and that's a sign of a design in nature, that tells both animals and humans not to eat.

To be honest, his logic seems quite good, and I don't know what to say.. any ideas?

I'd show him green apples, watermelon, rock melon, etc etc. There's plenty of fruit that's ready to eat when it's green, hence his claim of uniformity is nonsense.

[pocaracas]

I have a question: I have a friend who is a theist, and he had an argument to which I couldn't really reply reasonably. He said:
In nature, when a fruit is ready to be eaten, it changes its color from green to yellow, red, orange, blue, purpule etc.
However, before all fruits can be eaten they are all green, and that's a sign of a design in nature, that tells both animals and humans not to eat.

To be honest, his logic seems quite good, and I don't know what to say.. any ideas?

Call it symbiotic evolution.
Like insects and flowers.

Fruit develops in a particular way, animals learn that green fruit (looking like leaves) doesn't taste good and leave it alone.

Other fruits, like melons and figs just smell sweet with no need to change colors.

I'm not sure green apples haven't had a helping hand from humans, like bananas. Like I'm not sure about pears.

[Alex25]

I remember that when I was vegan, I was told to cook green soybeans before eating. I once tried to eat them raw and got a diarrhea.

Also, I was surprised to know that our daily foods can kill us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEcOCzpjwo

So, sad enough, but the colors of fruits and vegetables can attract us and eventually kill.. what a dangerous nature

[The Grand Nudger]

I have a question: I have a friend who is a theist, and he had an argument to which I couldn't really reply reasonably. He said:
In nature, when a fruit is ready to be eaten, it changes its color from green to yellow, red, orange, blue, purpule etc.
However, before all fruits can be eaten they are all green, and that's a sign of a design in nature, that tells both animals and humans not to eat.

To be honest, his logic seems quite good, and I don't know what to say.. any ideas?

Tell your friend that the changing color of fruit is due to the release of ethylene which interacts with the chlorophyll or xanthophyll present in the cells of the fruits surface tissue. Anytime the fruit is exposed to this simple chemical process it will appear to "ripen" even if it's still "stone-green"(as in the case of tomatos). There are other chemicals, as well diseases, naturally occurring, which cause this transformation. It could be, for example, that the one ripe fruit in a bunch of green fruits -in the wild- is, in fact, toxic or poisonous(and will sicken/kill your friends silly ass when he thinks that's god signalling him that the fruit is ready to eat). The color of fruit is informative, but not conclusive, and to be blunt, fruit (and plants in general) are -always "ready to be eaten"......it all depends on who the diner is. Your friends "logic" only shows that he thinks the world revolves around him and what he likes to eat.

animals learn that green fruit (looking like leaves) doesn't taste good and leave it alone.

I wish someone would tell that to my aphids, nasty little bastards, lol. You know how much money those fuckers cost me this year......I'm about ready to go on a pogrom up in this piece. Don't even get me started on the hornworms and stinkbugs. I've been engaged in a brutal forever war with these helpful little werewolves so long that I resort straight to biological weapons without a moments hesitation anymore. Used to pick em off, mechanical intervention, screw that - my fingers are likely to fall off before I ever made a blip