Atheist Ethicist

The Fate of Alexander Aan

2012-01-27T08:12:00.002-07:00

What are we going to do for Alexander Aan?

Aan is a 31 year old Indonosian civil servant who wrote on his Facebook page that God does not exist. This resulted in some heated exchanges with some posters. Some of those who were offended by his words formed a mob that intercepted him on his way to work. They beat him. When the police came, they arrested Aan for blasphemy. He now faces five years in prison.

I cannot find any news of what has happened since then.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been looking at Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy. Faircloth works for the Richard Dawkins foundation, and has been selected as the opening act for Richard Dawkin's upcoming book tour. His task is to put the secular and atheist community in America on a new - and hopefully more effective - track.

His strategy contains six components that I have covered this month.

The first item on that list was to focus on stories that have a deep human impact.

Well, here's a story of a man who defended his beliefs and was accosted by a mob and beaten. Furthermore, instead of being helped by the police, he was arrested. He now faces the prospect of five years in prison - where he will be surrounded by people with a demonstrated lack of concern for the welfare of others, some of whom no doubt share the passions of the mob that beat him, as do some of the guards whose duty would be to protect him from other prisoners. Even if he it is decided that he is innocent and allowed to go free, what type of future can he expect to have? What type of security can he expect in that environment?

This should not be a story about political strategy. This is a story about a human being.

One of the questions I am asking is, "How is Alexander Aan. Is he (relatively) safe?"

I, personally, want to know.

I would appreciate it if the Richard Dawkins foundation - or some secular or atheist organization - would make a point of finding out, of providing regular updates, and make the relevant Indonesian government officials aware of the fact that the situation is being monitored.

This ties in with Faircloth's third and forth items on Faircloth's list - a secular coalition of organizations pursuing different ends, and innovation in the pursuit of those ends.

Here us an idea. How about a web site that focuses on collecting and reporting on atheist and secular stories around the world? Its focus will be to learn about people like Alexander Aan and make sure that their cases are not forgotten and that their security is assured.

In monitoring the situation that these people face, this organization also would direct the attention of the secular and atheist community to any situation where it may do measurable good.. An organization with the end of monitoring and reporting on religious violence against atheists would be a valuable part of such a coalition.

The sixth item on Faircloth's list was to reclaim moral language.

Aan's story exemplifies a moral principle - that it is wrong to respond to words (or pictures) alone with violence. The only legitimate response to words are words. They may be harsh words. They may be words of condemnation and outrage. However, the line beyond which this response must not cross is that of violence or threat of violence.

Does your religion call for responding to words alone (or pictures) with violence? Then you have an immoral religion.

This is a vital principle for us to be defending. Without it, society risks disintegrating into violent chaos. Without it, all sorts of political, social, and religious factions take up arms to dictate what others may or may not say. The violence ends only when a society finds itself in unanimous agreement - or at least the appearance of unanimous agreement. But it is an agreement reached solely through force if arms.

And when has any society as large as a nation been in unanimous agreement about anything?

If we want peace, and if we want the type of culture that thrives with the constant comparison of ideas and the influx of new ideas, then we want a society that condemns responding to words with violence.

This leads to another issue - which seems to have been swept under the rug.

Has anything been done to identify, arrest, and convict those who are guilty of assault against Mr. Aan? Or is the message being spread throughout Indonesia that acts of violence against theists are acceptable and shall not be punished?

We should be demanding that action be taken of those guilty of assaulting Aan, at the very least to establish a precedent and to give a warning, for the sake of all atheists, that these forms of violent response to atheist beliefs are to be shunned. The fifth item on Faircloth's list is to promote a diversity.

I fear that we are going to find it easy to forget about Alexander Aan, and to leave him to his fate in an Indonesian prison or a vengeful and violent Indonesian mob, because he is a dark-skinned man in a distant land. This is the type of situation in which we must make sure that our learned prejudices do not cause us to unfairly discriminate, and to base decisions on criteria that are irrelevant to the principles we defend. It is exactly these types of cases that we are inclined to ignore and forget about that we need to put an extra effort into including and remembering.

Will it be the case that we forget about Aan and leave him to his fate, only because our prejudices cause us to lack concern for the fate of such people?

So, in conclusion, I would like to ask again.

What are we going to do for Alexander Aan?

Atheism as Lacking a Moral Foundation

2012-01-26T07:49:00.001-07:00

On the issue of reclaiming moral language - the sixth component of Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists - atheists should learn to react to the claims that they lack a moral foundation the way Jews react to the phrase "Christ killers."

We react as if it is a mere intellectual error - requiring a rebuttal in terms of reason and evidence. However, it is more than that. Like the term "Christ killers" it is politically and socially useful. It serves to marginalize a group of people - to promote religious animosity and to brand followers as "morally superior" to the target group.

When people make certain mistakes, we have reason to ask why they make those mistakes and not some other. Religion is mostly make-believe.

So, why make-believe that some target group lacks a foundation for their moral beliefs and attitudes? Why make-believe that, at any minute, they run the risk of breaking out in an orgy of political and social violence because they have no moral constraints?

They could have easily invented a fiction in which the universe contains certain moral truths built into it by God, but which are available to everybody an discoverable. They could have invented a religion that holds that moral facts are like scientific facts in that even an atheist can determine and assent to the laws of motion and thermodynamics.

Atheists and theists may disagree on the fundamental origin of these laws. However, theists do not assert the because the atheist lacks belief in the author of the law of gravity, he is in danger of floating away (and of causing those he convinces of floating away with him.) It isn't argued that some people choose atheism because they seek to flaunt the second law if thermodynamics or live life as uf it were not the case the E=m*c^2.

So, why choose not to believe that moral facts are facts available to atheists and theists alike, allowing us to have intelligent discussions as to what those facts are?

A theist may object to some of the premises in this argument - that religion is mostly make-believe and that this leads us to the question, "Why make-believe that atheists lack a foundation for their moral beliefs?" However, I am not seeking arguments convincing to theists. I am seeking arguments that are demonstrably sound.

It is a demonstrably sound argument that the belief that atheists lack a foundation for moral beliefs is not merely a mistake. It is a foundation is malicious and discriminatory. It is a mistake that has found favor substantially because it grants those who hold it an unprincipled claim that they may look down their noses on others.

Some may claim that the reason they believe it has nothing to do with a desire to establish and maintain a social order in which those who accept it claim for themselves an exclusive right to stand at the upper tiers. They believe it because they find these ideas in scripture. But how did it get written into scripture to start with? And why is it that this specific interpretation became popular? We have little reason to doubt that it is because this interpretation not only feeds the go of those who adopt it, but gives them an excuse to cast others down onto the lower tiers of he social order.

In America, it casts atheists as untrustworthy, as least likely to share American values, and as being likely to establish a Stalinesque totalitarian regime complete with programs to round up and execute all believers if it should come to pass that atheists get political power.

This type if attitude deserves more that, "Pardon me, but i do not think that reason and evidence properly supports the conclusions you are asserting."

It deserves, "If your fraking religion grants you such a strong moral foundation, why didn't it teach you about the evil of promoting hatred and fear of others for the purpose of harvesting social and political power? Where is that in your moral code and why don't you start practicing it?"

Because this - in fact and in practice - us what the claim that non-believers lack a moral foundation is all about. It is about preaching hate and fear for the purpose of harvesting social and political power.

Reclaiming Moral Language

2012-01-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Today, I come to the sixth of Sean Faircloth's principles for a new secularist and atheist political strategy. In this principle, Faircloth calls for secularists to reclaim the word 'morality'.

Faircloth asserts that the religious right has turned "morality" into a word for sexual trivia. Yet, not to long ago, it applied to such things as concern for the poor and the dispossessed.

It had to do with, as the ancient Greeks said, taming the savageness of man and making gentler the life of this world.

It has to do with making into a world a better place.

As can be expected, I wholeheartedly endorse this principle.

The very heart of this blog is an interest in reclaiming moral language and to presenting the idea that morality is a set of social institutions that aim at making the world a better place.

Morality is not about sexual trivia. It is about killing and maiming, and torture. It is about the plight of those who do not have enough food to eat, clean water to drink, and about those who stand helplessly and watch their young children die from diseases that could have been treated for mere pennies, while others spend billions of dollars on games and entertainment.

It is about rape. It is about slavery. It is about being used solely for the pleasure of others while one’s own interests are regarded as irrelevant.

It is about breathing unpoisoned air and drinking unpoisoned water. It is about not being lied to or defrauded out of one's savings. It is about having control over one's own creative works. It is about being denied opportunities not because if one's character or abilities, but because of the color if one's skin, where one was born, or some other quality that is entirely irrelevant to the work being done.

Whether or not one's sexual partner is the same gender of oneself is as much a matter of sexual trivia as whether or not one’s partner has the same hair color as oneself. What does matter in the moral is that a committed couple be allowed to take advantage of the institutional safeguards that would allow them to build and to live the one and only life they have with the person of their choice - so long as the person of their choice can and does give informed consent to the arrangement.

There is a substantial portion of the Republican party today that is willing to forego all concern over climate change, medical care, famine, and war, and base their whole political decision on their interest in denying a certain percentage of the population the benefits of institution of marriage to the partner of their choice. We can certainly use moral terms where these people are concerned. They are blind and unthinking bigots who have been raised on such nonsense that their political life is now devoted almost exclusively to that which harms others.

Perhaps they are victims of their culture – a claim many have made in forgiving the racism and sexism that many of our nation’s founding fathers embraced without question. However, they are more like the last holdouts of (hopefully) dying primitive bigotry, than they are like the first thinkers in the generation that first comes to question what a previous generation took for granted.

Like Sean Faircloth, I have been criticized for using moral terms on the basis that morality is the realm of the religious. In addition, I have heard it said often enough, that the realm of description falls to science, while the realm of prescription needs to be assigned to the realm of morality.

I reject this entirely.

First, I reject it because religion is almost entirely the realm of myth, superstition, and fictions invented by tribesmen (and, yes, they were almost exclusively men) whose understanding of the moral universe was as primitive as their understanding of the physical universe. Declaring that some centuries-old text is the final word on morality is as absurd as declaring Hippocrates to be the final word in all matters of medicine - not only in terms of its assault on reason but in terms of the disastrous consequences of acting on that belief.

Second, I reject separating morality from science because issues of the quality of life are certainly a part of objective fact. At the age of 13, I accidentally put my hand on a hot metal plate. In an instant I had 2nd degree burn blisters all across the palm of my hand and my fingers. I did not need to believe in a god to know that I did not want that to happen again. Even today, I do not need to believe in a god to have reason to direct social institutions to reducing the chance that others might do such a thing to me on purpose – or to anybody that I care about. Nor do other people need to believe in god to have reasons to cause me to be concerned about their welfare – to object to them being subject to this kind of behavior.

Also, the animal kingdom is filled with examples of creatures that care their offspring, their mate, and others in their community without a belief in a god. There are good biological explanations for these facts that make no reference to a deity.

The idea that we need to invent a god to account for the facts that underlie morality is as primitive as the idea that we need to invent a god to explain the motion of the planets. It is another "god of the gaps" argument, and the gap is closing rapidly.

Having said this, I will add that a substantial number of atheists and secularists make some significant mistakes in drawing relationships between morality and biology. However, these mistakes appear to be disappearing from the academic field (though they are still common among bloggers and others who discuss these issues in more casual settings).

Long time readers of this blog will know some of the objections that I have to the relationships others have drawn between biology and morality.

However, the fact that people make mistakes in drawing relationships between biology and morality does not prove that there is no relationship - any more than mistakes made about the relationship between swamps and malaria (that malaria is caused by "bad air") does not prove that no relationship (independent of divine power) exists.

According to Faircloth:

Now it is time for us . . . Secular Americans - to step up and offer hope and a specific plan to change our society for the better.

Actually, it is long past the time for this maneuver. Claiming that religion is the realm of morality was and continues to be a significant mistake. It has put myth, superstition, and primitive thinking in control of human well-being, and yielded some predictably poor results.

In saying that these results are poor, one is capable of making a claim as objectively true as any claim in science.

Of course I endorse Sean Faircloth's six principle for a new atheist strategy. Around here, the principle is not all that new.

A Diverse Atheist Community

2012-01-24T10:39:00.002-07:00

I have reached item 5 on Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy, which is a call for greater diversity in the secular movement.

It is quite obvious that the current rise of atheist activism has been dominated by white males. Faircloth's response to this is to call for an outreach program as a part of his strategy that aims to create a more diverse atheist community. He spoke about making an intentional effort to include women at a conference in May, 2011. He also reported that the Richard Dawkins foundation will seek to provide forums for Black atheists and Latino atheists among others.

There us something odd in this maneuver. I once saw Richard Dawkins give a speech in which he ridiculed the idea that science was like religion. If science were like religion, he argued, then we could put up a map of the world and note, "This part of the world is dominated by the view that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. While in this other region the dominant view is that they fell victim to a plague."

The point being that, while people draw their religious beliefs from their culture (which gives us regional-cultural differences in religious beliefs), scientists draw their beliefs from the evidence, which prevents it from being "regional".

Would it not be equally strange for impact theorists to have an "outreach program" to draw more women and minorities to the view that the dinosaurs died out as a result of an asteroid impact? This sounds a lot less like science, and a lot more like religion.

And since atheism is a hypothesis about what exists or does not exist, it would seem most appropriate to focus on simply presenting the evidence and letting that be the sole foundation for the beliefs.

However, even though science may be blind to matters of race and gender, scientists are not. Scientists are human. A scientist raised in a culture that dismisses the intellectual accomplishments of women can dismiss a woman's contribution to a scientific field out of hand before even viewing the evidence - or giving the evidence a slanted interpretation that conforms to his prejudice. A scientist raised in a racist culture can easily favor his white colleagues in terms of tenure, professional honors, and in awarding grants and funding.

As a counter to this, it is useful that a lot of scientific peer review is anonymous. This allows even a young child to submit a paper for review and get it accepted without prejudice against her age affecting the review decision. There is no need to include information about the age, race, or gender of the author - that is irrelevant to the quality of the argument. Yet, the scientific community recognizes that humans tend to let themselves be persuaded by these factors. It does not ignore prejudice. Instead, it designs procedures that reduce the effect of prejudice.

The atheist community is made up of humans, and also needs to adopt procedures that address these types of biases. One if the most abhorrent features of the atheist community to date has been a willingness at times to use sexual language - and, in particular, remarks of sexual violence - against female participants. This was exhibited recently in an incident on Reddit Atheism in which a female contributor was treated to sexual remarks, some of them of a violent nature, when she posted about a gift she had gotten from a religious family member. There is no dismissing this as "boys being boys" or even blaming our biological heritage. This behavior can be molded by social forces, and we have many and good reason to muster these social forces against this type of behavior. While desirism does not allow for moral absolutes, I can not think of a real-world situation that would provide an exception - and no reason why these types of comments can or should be tolerated.

However, bigotry neither begins nor ends with blatant acts or even threats of violence. By far its greatest expression is in small day-to-day decisions where it has its influence substantially without being noticed. It is found in the teacher who views a black student's paper as "just not being good enough", or in an employer who thinks that the woman in his office does not quite qualify for a raise. These decisions are not backed by explicit racism, "You do not get the job because you are black". They are backed by implicit racism, "I feel more comfortable with the white applicant than the black applicant because . . . um . . . because the job experience is more relevant. That's it. Yeah. There is just something about this applicant that I was not comfortable with. It has nothing at all to do with race. I despise racism."

I will confess that I am racist, I grew up in an environment that taught me to have a strong averse reaction to blacks. Intellectually, I know that this emotional reaction is not only irrational but one that good people would not have and people generally have reason to condemn. However, emotions do not respond to reason, and the emotions planted in childhood are not so easily changed.

This ties in to my condemnation of "under God" the Pledge and National Motto that identifies community membership with trust in God. These practices aim to generate in children a strong aversion to atheism that will carry them through adulthood and affect their behavior - independent of anything we may do to affect that person's beliefs. Bigotry, planted in a child, is very persistent.

This also ties in to the objections that I have made against basing moral conclusions on "feelings" - a common practice, even among atheists and secularists. "Feelings" do not provide a special mental access to moral truth. They provide a special mental access to one's current learned likes, dislikes, and prejudices.

These types of issues cannot be dealt with by ignoring race and gender. One must confront the psychological fact of casual and comfortable discrimination with a conscious and deliberate effort to correct for its influence. If you are driving a vehicle that pulls to the right, you are best advised not to ignore it, but to make a conscious effort to correct for it, if you want to actually reach your destination.

So, I agree with Faircloth that an outreach program should be a part of the strategy. Furthermore, I would like to see the atheist community make a conscious effort to acquire and apply a sound scientific understanding of these types of biases and their influences on behavior, as well as a sound scientific understanding of the types of social institutions that might eliminate or mitigate its influences.

It would be great if the secular and atheist community could tackle the fact of these biases in an objective, open, and straight-forward way, and provide a model for the rest of the world to avoid prejudices and responsibly handle those that were not successfully avoided.

Innovation, not Infighting

2012-01-23T08:43:00.001-07:00

In my continuing evaluation of Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy, we come to a call for innovation - as a substitute for infighting.

There is some connection between these two issues - which I have already discussed.

There are bound to be disputes over the right way to do things. Rather than have knock-down fights (without evidence) over which is right, let's do this the scientific way. Let each person try things their own way, and collect some data on the various options - then discuss the results.

Infighting among secular and atheist organizations should be modeled after infighting among academics - rather than infighting among religions.

Faircloth did not mention this aspect in his discussion of innovation. He used, as his paradigm example, the out campaign - the red letter A that identifies one as an atheist. He boasted that there is an atheist 'out' page in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, an atheist in Indonesia, last week a civil servant posted his opinion that God does not exist on a Facebook page. An angry mob came to his office, beat him up, and he was arrested - and faces a prison sentence for blasphemy. There is now a Facebook page to Support Alex Aans' human rights.

A high school student, Jessica Ahlquist ets police protection on the basis of threats surrounding a successful court case to get a religious banner removed from a public school.

A speech in London is shut down when somebody with religious passions started filming those in the audience and threatened to hunt them down if anything was said against the prophet Mohammed.

There are risks associated with being known as an atheist. The more who come out, the safer we all become.

I identify myself as an atheist.

However, I do not participate explicitly in the "Out Campaign", nor do I use the red letter A.

Why?

Flags make me nervous.

More to the point, flags should make people nervous.

There are far too many instances in history where people have given up rational thought and replaced it with a call to rally around some flag or other, giving their unquestioned loyalty and obedience to the flag waver above all other concerns. People get into a contest over who can wave the flag with the most vigor, and we start to judge each other by how well one serves the flag as the ultimate virtue.

However, this is a warning to the Out campaign, not an objection to it.

To the degree that people are afraid of the effects if coming out, it is comforting to have a group one can belong to. One of the most serious effects of coming out is the loss of family or friends who cannot accept the idea that one does not believe in God. Seeing the red letter A means that one has found an ally - and a potential new friend. As a result, one should point others to this community. At the same time, the Out campaign could be improved by putting some effort into making it a community that people can belong to.

Another useful purpose for the Out Campaign is to announce to others, "We are here, and we are no longer content to hide in the closet. You had better get used to the fact that there are atheists in your world. We are not ashamed. We will not hide."

This latter point is why I named this blog "Atheist Ethicist". There is no particular link between ethics and atheism. There are no moral conclusions that one can draw from the premise that the proposition that at least one God exists is certainly or almost certainly false. I could have easily written a blog just on ethics, leaving the "atheist" portion out - and probably had a much larger audience as a result.

However, I live in a society of prejudice against atheists - a bigotry that particularly focuses on the claim that atheists lack any moral foundation and, to the degree they are decent people, it is because they "borrow" their morality from religion. Notwithstanding the fact that many of the most popular religions have moral elements that are not worth borrowing.

Another claim is that atheists seek to live a life free of moral constraints, which is why we have rejected God.

Consequently, I hold that it is important to have an atheist explicitly discussing moral constraints without reference to any God or scripture - and I have put the term "Atheist" in this blog title.

So, I agree with all if the things that the Out campaign stands for. However, I am still concerned about the psychology of flag waving. I think somebody needs to stand away from the flag a bit (without standing outside of atheism specifically) to wave a different kind of flag - a warning flag or a penalty flag - if the psychology of flag waving starts to produce some unacceptable results.

That is my strategy - my innovation. It may not be as well thought out as I would have liked. It might have some serious flaws and its foundation might be cracked beyond repair. However, it has not (and should not) generate any form of infighting. Instead, it is best to let the strategy play itself out, and discuss its merits and demerits as one would discuss any experiment.

To the degree that there is infighting among secular and atheist societies, it should be the type of infighting we find among scientists and academics - not the type we find among religious factions.

Reducing Atheist Infighting

2012-01-19T07:55:00.001-07:00

I now return to my discussion of Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy.

Specifically, I return to Faircloth's plea for less infighting.

Earlier, I objected to the way he defended his call for less infighting. Faircloth divided the world up into a group of "us" and "them", and arguing for a higher standard of behavior for members of the "us" group - a standard that included less infighting BECAUSE they were fellow members of the "us" group.

I argued that we apply the same standards of criticism to everybody. These standards included an obligation to present another's view fairly and accurately, and to make criticisms that are true and relevant.

However, on the issue of atheist infighting, there are two common arguments we should drop. The reason we should drop them is because the arguments themselves are fundamentally flawed.

The first argument to drop is any argument of the form, "Shut up. It's people like you who give atheists a bad name."

I cannot stress how contemptible this approach is.

Blaming a fellow atheist for the ill treatment of atheists is like blaming a Jew for the Holocaust, or blaming blacks for American slavery and racism. It's like saying, "If those Jews had treated the Arians with more kindness and generosity, they would not have ended up with the death camps. Or, "Blacks brought slavery upon themselves with the way they treated white people who visited Africa".

This type of statement is not just a historical mistake, it is an expression of the very bigotry that was the true cause if these horrendous acts to begin with.

This objection does not require that every Jew or every Black be perfectly virtuous. We can know that some were not merely from the fact that they were human. However, the misbehavior of some members of a group never justifies treatment of a whole group.

If it is possible to "give atheists a bad name" it is only because one lives in a community permeated throughout with an unreasoned bigotry against atheists. Without this precondition of bigotry and prejudice, it would not be possible to give atheists a bad name.

Somebody with a last name starting with the letter "F" may commit a horrible crime - torturing and murdering children, for example. The story can be in the news for weeks while investigators discover one body after another, and reports on the days of torture each child endured before death. Yet, nobody would even suggest that the perpetrator was guilty of giving people with a last name starting with 'F' a bad name. We do not get this suggestion precisely because we do not live in a society that tends to make bigoted derogatory overgeneralizations about people based on the first letter of their last name.

Where people are inclined to make unjust, derogatory overgeneralizations across a whole group, you know that they are fishing for excuses to justify their bigotry. Neither truth nor reason is going to stand in their way (since derogatory overgeneralizations are themselves unreasonable and leads to false conclusions). That is how bigotry works. It is filled with confirmation bias, cherry picking, and tainted interpretations. If people are already fishing for excuses to support prejudice against atheists, it is neither fair nor just to join them in blaming atheists for that bigotry.

This is really what somebody is doing when she accuses a fellow atheist of "giving atheists a bad name." She is joining the bigots in blaming the atheists for the bigotry against them. It is not the bigots’ fault. It is the atheists’ fault. Logically and morally, it is no different than blaming the Jews for the Holocaust or blaming blacks for slavery.

Before I move on to the next objection, let me derail an expected protest. I am NOT comparing the treatment of atheists to that of the Jews in the Holocaust or Black slaves. I am comparing the logic of blaming atheists for the discrimination against them to the logic of blaming the Jews for the Holocaust or blaming blacks for slavery.

The second dispute that should end because it is fundamentally flawed is the dispute between the "New Atheists" and the Accomodationists - the ones who take a hard line against all religion versus those who seek friendly alliance with liberal religion.

This issue turns out to be related to the issue above in virtue of the fact that the most common criticism an Accomodationist will make of a "New Atheist" is, "Shut up. You are the reason why they hate us."

Yet, both sides are wrong on this issue. There is no justification for this dispute.

The claim that we must all be "New Atheists" or we must all be Accomodationists is as ill conceived as the idea that we must all be doctors or we must all be engineers.

There is room for both.

In fact, there is a need for both.

My perspective on this can be found in my opposition to the national motto, "In God We Trust" and "under God" in the Pledge. I hold that dividing a community between "us" who trust in God and "them" who do not is as objectionable as dividing a restaurant or a bus between "white" and "colored" sections. Particularly given the fact that the discrimination written into the Motto and Pledge serves to keep atheists out of public office. One might as well put a sign on the doors of the legislature that says, "Theists only".

Yet, I am not such a fool to think that a politician who agrees with me has any hope of winning an election. If an otherwise well qualified politician were to say he agreed with me, I would tell him to lie. Because I would not want him to throw the election to somebody who did not agree with me. I would want that politician to be an Accomodationist. That is the only way he can do his job effectively.

We need “New Atheists” with their uncompromising ridicule off all of the stupidity and foolishness we find in religion. And we need the Accomodationists making real change in the real world as it currently exists. The future is in the hands of the first group. The present is in the hands of the second.

Together, I would say that these two complaints make up the majority of the current disputes between secularists.

The first dispute is morally objectionable. Whenever I read an atheist who says that other atheists are responsible for anti-atheist bigotry, I think of two Jews standing naked under a shower head with one turning to the other and saying, "NOW look at what you've gotten us into."

The second dispute is irrational. It is not the case that we must all be alike. We are better off with some diversity, with different people taking on those tasks that suit their personality and temperament. Members of this community should understand the practical value of diversity – given its representation in evolutionary theory. They should not be fighting against it.

I would argue for both of these types of disputes to be put to rest. I would have the Accomodationists get along with their job of accommodating. I would have the new atheists continue their practice of "New Atheisting". And I would have nobody blame atheists for the bigotry that is targeted against them.

The Stop Internet Piracy Act

2012-01-18T08:47:00.002-07:00

I interrupt my analysis of Sean Fairchild's New Atheist Strategy to discuss the campaign today regarding the Stop Internet Piracy Act. This post is still relevant to that series in that it covers the subject if bringing about a political objective.

Many web sites today have gone dark, allegedly to protest an attempt at internet censorship by means of House Resolution 3261 - the Stop Online Piracy Act. Censorship is a bad thing, so it people count it as a good deed to be taking a stand against censorship.

Unfortunately, this interpretation of the bill is not entirely accurate. The bill does not censor anything. It does not identify any set of content and say, "This shall not be shown". There is no censorship in this bill.

There is a component of the bill that blocks communication. However, the communication being blocked is material that has copyright protection. We have always had limits on reproducing copyright material – and we have never called it censorship. To count as censorship, material has to be blocked because of the message it contains.

Ultimately, this bill concerns the question of who will bear the cost of policing copyright laws already in effect.

However, some employee in the marketing department at Google probably figured out that if they used the word "censorship" in their campaign against this legislation, they would get a huge knee-jerk reaction from people who do not do their own research that would be politically useful.

Anyway, let us take an honest look at the details of this legislation.

The entertainment industry (and others) creates electronic content. They invest time, energy, and resources. Their goal (among other things) is to make money. The way they make money is by either charging people directly to experience the content they create, or by charging them indirectly by directing their attention to advertisements - where the advertiser pays a fee.

However, we now live in an age where this type of content, once created, is hard to control. Somebody else comes along and takes the content. Often, the pirate will also charge people a fee to see it - either directly or through advertisement revenue. Thus, taking for themselves the revenue that would otherwise have gone to the people who created the content.

The people who create this content view this as a form of theft.

And . . . they are right.

The pirate does not accept any of the costs of production. The original creator pays the writers, the actors, and the crew to create the content. They pay the rent on the buildings and buy the equipment. They create a content that they think will bring money. Then somebody who bears none of the costs comes along and siphons off a share of the potential revenue into their own pocket.

Even when the pirate gives the material away for free, we still have an act of theft. This would be similar to a person going into a store, carting things off the shelf, and setting it in the street for others to take. It would be accurate to say that the store owner has been robbed, even though the thief did not materially profit.

Let's be honest. Companies such as Google and Facebook make a great deal of money by wrapping their advertisements around this pirated content. If their bank account increases by one billion dollars per year, then - moral considerations aside - it is worthwhile to invest a few tens of millions of dollars in a campaign to protect that revenue stream.

When they go to the marketing department (and they do have a professional marketing department) with the project of defeating this legislation, some genius in the marketing department is likely to come up with the idea, "We can get a lot more mileage with this money if we brand our efforts as anti-censorship. This will generate a politically useful knee-jerk reaction from a lot of people who do not look at the issue in any detail, and very few will look at the issue in detail. It does not matter whether this is true or not. What matters is that people will believe it."

Somebody in the marketing department also probably also figured out that Rupert Murdoch is widely disliked by the target audience. Therefore, if the marketing campaign can attach Rupert Murdoch's name to this legislation, they can increase the opposition to this bill. Again, there is no logical inference to be drawn from the premise "Rupert Murdoch favors this legislation" to "this is bad legislation." However, marketing departments tend not to care about validity or invalidity. They care about cause and effect. In marketing, the value of an inference rests in its consequences, not in its validity.

This is how marketing works - when it is used by people who care only about producing a useful effect, but who does not care whether their claims are true or their arguments are valid.

(Note: This is very closely related to the issue I discussed with respect to Sean Faircloth's atheist strategy, in A Question of Style)

The fact remains, these claims are false or invalid.

This does not imply that I am in favor of this legislation. It has some real, legitimate problems.

On the media side of the equation, one obvious goal they have is to shut down or hobble their competition. One of the ways to hobble competitors is to saddle them with extra costs. In this case, the relevant costs are those associated with enforcing this legislation.

Furthermore, the creators of this pirated content also make money by wrapping advertising around that content, or by selling direct access to that content. They have to compete against people who produce similar content at a lower price – or for free. Anything they can do to harm a competing industry or the producers of free content gives potential customers fewer options. It is every company's dream - for a company that has leadership that lacks a conscience - to increase its profits while dumping the costs onto others.

Another legitimate objection to this legislation is that it has the same moral status as using a hand grenade on a crowded street to stop a purse snatcher from getting away. It creates a lot of collateral damage. In this case, blocking a site that contains pirated content also blocks the legitimate content hosted on that same site. No doubt, some of that legitimate content exists as a type if "human shield" - innocent people put in harm's way to protect illegitimate activities.

Yet, this issue is still not clear cut. A terrorist organization that also runs a hospital and food distribution network will have its funding cut off without regard to our ability to distinguish between its terrorist and other activities. The mere fact that a legitimate activity is harmed by action taken against illegitimate activity is a point to consider, but it does not decide the issue one way or another.

However, that neither of these legitimate concerns count as censorship. The sites are not being blocked in virtue of their content. The legitimate site would end up being blocked in this case regardless of its content - merely because of its proximity to a criminal site. People are using the term 'censorship' here entirely because it generates an emotional response.

These are legitimate concerns. However, the 'censorship' objection is not. This is not so much about censorship as it is about two groups of ultra-rich people trying to use the government to control the flow of money into their bank accounts. But that does not sell very well in the political marketplace, so useful deceptions are employed instead - on both sides of the debate.

Secular Community Infighting

2012-01-17T07:57:00.002-07:00

Item 4a in Sean Faircloth’s frame for a new atheist strategy calls for a reduction in infighting.

Since the start of the year, I have been going through the elements of Sean Faircloth's new secular and atheist political strategy. He states that we have precious little to show for our political efforts to date, and argues that a new strategy may change that. Item 4a on Faircloth's list of suggestions is the suggestion: Before you start a battle with another member of the secular community, you should contact that person first and make sure you understand their position.

In saying this, he puts a lot of emphasis that this standard applies strictly to members of the secular community - because they are fellow members of the secular community.

He states that, before you post or blog or twitter of say anything critical:

If it is about somebody in the secular movement - if it is about somebody on our team - let us do the evidence-based thing and contact that person directly, and then give them a chance to . . . offer evidence . . . so you might actually know before you click - before you say something negative to thousands of people. It's really important for our movement.

I object.

Faircloth is advocating a double standard. He gives us one standard to use when writing about members of the secular community that prohibits posting things before knowing the facts and making sure that your criticism is true and relevant. Apparently, when we criticize members of the non-secular community, malicious exaggerations, gossip, and innuendo are perfectly legitimate.

Granted, Faircloth does not say that our standards when addressing fellow members of the secular community are to be higher than those we apply to the non-secular community. If pressed, he would probably say that we should apply the same standards across the board. However, this does not change the fact that the argument he presented was one that advocated a higher standard of behavior regarding members of the secular community BECAUSE they were members of the secular community.

I do a lot of criticizing in this blog. It’s an ethics blog – condemnation (along with praise) is inherent in the subject matter. However, I hold that the same standard applies to everybody that I criticize.

This standard includes an obligation to present the other person's view fairly.

I cannot count the number of times that I have written a caustic post condemning some person or group. However, I gave the subject matter another thought before posting and I deleted the post. Or, I get halfway through the post presenting my arguments when I discover that my arguments are no good. Either way, I delete the posting. Which meant that I had nothing to post for that day. When you see a gap in my posting - this is often the reason.

(In fact, two be honest, there was originally a second half to this post. However, I could not make the argument work. In trying to make the argument work, I think I proved my original premise for that second criticism to be flawed. So, I deleted the second half of this post, and resolved to give the premise I would have used more thought.)

This is a standard that applies to everybody - not just fellow members of the secular community.

The main reason why I worry about Faircloth's suggestion - or at least his way of presenting it - is because of the risk of setting up tribes. It is a part of our human nature to divide the world between “us” and “them”, and then treat "us" better than "them". I study history, and I have paid particular attention to what has brought about the greatest atrocities in history. They all begin by dividing the world between "us" and "them", and holding that "us" are somehow entitled to a higher standard of treatment then "them".

This is the main reason why I detest the national motto, "In God We Trust". It is nothing but an expression that divides the world into "we" who trust in God and, by implication, "them" who do not. That it is associated with all sorts of prejudice and discrimination against "them" by "us" who control the political and economic power is inherent to this type of division.

This point also explains the virtue of the motto the founding fathers actually selected for this nation, "E Pluribus Unum". It is a motto that rejects "us" versus "them" divisions.

I want to point out that my conclusion here is not that it is permissible to make derogatory, unsupported claims about other members of the secular community. My point is that we should always go to the effort of making sure that our claims are true and relevant. We should never post unsupported derogatory claims about anybody - secular or non-secular. We should not be dividing the world between "us" and "them" with a different moral standard to apply to each. We should have one standard that applies equally to "us" and "them".

Having said this, I should add that there are a couple of areas where criticism of members of the secular community are common and absurdly stupid. I will discuss these common criticisms and their absurdity in my next post.

Addendum

I wanted to add a point to this issue of criticizing other members of the secular community.

Because of the anti-atheist bigotry most of us experience as children, one of the effects we can expect is that it simply feels more comfortable to criticize members of the community than non-members.

Lessons like this that we learn as children are learned at an emotional level. We are made to feel comfortable doing that which is accepted, and to feel anxious and uncomfortable at doing those things the society condemns. Certainly, we are given no reason to feel uncomfortable when criticizing atheists.

These emotional relationships we learn as children do not disappear simply because we come to realize as adults that they are groundless. They are not mere propositions to be accepted or rejected. They have touched our likes and dislikes and, in doing so, they touch our behavior.

I suspect that a lot of the criticism of members of the secular community by other members is grounded specifically on a learned prejudice that says that it is OK to criticize atheists.

Yes, I hold that the Pledge and the Motto go a long ways in planting these emotions in children that carry through into our adult lives.

Yes, I hold that I am not immune from these effects. I notice a certain amount of anxiety when it comes to criticizing theists that I do not feel when criticizing atheists. Intellectually, I can know that a planned criticism of theists is deserved. However, that does not make the learned emotional reaction any less real.

Whenever I write something critical of atheists, I ask myself, "Am I choosing this topic because it is easy? Or because it is necessary?"

I think that members of the secular community should be aware of the fact that they, too, might be affected by a prejudice against atheists that makes it easier to criticize other atheists in spite of their feelings.

A Secular and Atheist Coalition

2012-01-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

The third plank in Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy is the most straightforward and easiest to explain.

I have already discussed the fact that the key to political effectiveness rests in the number of dollars and the number of votes one can bring to the political table.

Well, if Person 1 comes to the table with V(1) votes and D(1) dollars, and Person 2 comes with V(2) votes and D(2) dollars, then a coalition comes to the table with V(1) +V(2) votes and D(1) +D(2) dollars.

Okay, yes, there may be some overlap in membership and patronage, but, to the degree that there is no overlap, the point stands. And where we are talking about local organizations forming an international coalition, we should see less overlap.

There are a few arguments to support the practice of having a coalition of diverse organizations over a single large organization. One of those reasons is something that any student of biology can understand - diversity. A diverse population is more versatile, better able to survive changes in the environment, and better capable of growing stronger over time (evolving) than a population of one genotype. As different subgroups thrive and fail, the population benefits from the survival of the fittest and evolves.

Somebody who sees evolution as "the enemy" likes to characterize survival of the fittest to mean attacking and destroying everybody else. In all honesty, these are hate-mongering bigots seeking personal advantage by bearing false witness against others - contemptible low-life creatures seduced into hatred.

Really, those people seek to elevate themselves by selling hated and fear. Against "Darwinists", this means selling the message that "survival of the fittest" means that those who consider themselves fit must seek to slaughter everybody else. That Would be a good reason to hate and fear "Darwinists" if it had any foundation in the truth. It does not, of course. However, to the stockholders in groups that can rake in profits by selling hate and fear - which is exactly what many creationist groups are - truth in advertising has never been a high priority.

Surprisingly, they are creatures that use and seek to profit from the very same practices - promoting themselves by unjustly inflicting harms on others - that they condemn as the morality of "Darwinism". However, where hated, fear, and intellectual and social irresponsibility lurk, we should not be surprised to find hypocrisy as well.

The rest of us only have to look to nature - colony animals like ants and bees, herd animals, flocks of birds, schools of fish, and even relationships across species such as that between bees and flowers to see examples in which the fittest seek to cooperate with others. In human societies, we see the advantages of specialization, division of labor, and trade. The "fit" human is not living by himself in the wilderness, hunting or growing his own food and taking care of his own needs for shelter and medical care. He is a member of a community where he can focus on developing a useful skill and trading with those who have other skills.

The same applies to a diverse group of secular and atheist organizations.

To begin with, different people have different tastes, interests, and concerns - even if there are areas where they overlap. There is more than one flavor of soda, more than one restaurant, more than one type of game, more than one type f television show - because people have different tastes and interests. "One size fits all" (or "one group for all secularists and atheists") is a strategically poor choice.

A diverse set of groups promises to bring in more members. A secularist - a proponent of the separation of church and state - would not join an atheist club, but could join a group concerned with church encroachment into politics. A theist who accepts the scientific fact of evolution can join a group opposed to creationism in the classroom. A psychologist or social worker who cares nothing about religion can join a group that focuses on eliminating stereotypical and bigoted messages that contribute to bullying in the classroom.

Local and regional concerns are best addressed by local and regional groups - whose ability to add weight to a national campaign having local implications is invaluable.

The secular and atheist community needs a diverse offering of groups for the same reason that a restaurant puts more than one item on the menu - more customers or more members, as the case may be.

Another benefit is that diversity allows for experimentation and innovation. Group 1 tries things one way, while Group 2 tries a different approach. Over time, we collect evidence on the merits or demerits of each option.

And while Group 1 may do well in one environment, a sudden shift in the political or social climate may create a situation in which Group 2 thrives.

Finally, a diverse set of groups minimizes the harm done by serious mistake or malevolence. A political or sexual scandal in one group is something that other groups can hold at a distance and condemn, where it deserves condemnation. Let us not pretend that secularists and atheists are always and always will be the paradigm of virtue.

You can explain these facts to the hate-mongering bigot who holds that all "Darwinists" seek the survival of the fittest by slaughtering all competitors, but he will not listen. A person whose interest is in the selling of hate and fear for a profit is not going to listen to arguments that show that their claims are false. The only way to fight such creatures is to get the message to their potential customers.

In the mean time, the best way to proceed is through a multitude of groups addressing separate concerns in new and different ways, but groups willing and able to form a united force against concerns that emerge on a larger scale.

The Widespread Permission to Do Harm in God's Name

2012-01-12T08:28:00.001-07:00

In many parts of the law, if you believe in God, the state will grant you special permission to do harm to fellow citizens and benefit yourself that others do not have - but only if you justify this harm as God's instructions.

People can use the claim that God wants them to do harm have greater permission to beat their children - or kill them (or bring about their death).

They can block others from getting health care and other health benefits.

They can use the state to tap the bank accounts of other citizens to pay for certain goods and services, and reserve taxpayer dollars for members of their sect - excluding all others.

They insist in being able to dictate who may marry and who may end a marriage, and to dictate who lives and who dies.

They have special permission to poison the air and water.

They can close businesses, and dictate employment in a community - giving sect members economic opportunities denied to others.

In some parts of the world, they claim a special permission to treat women and children no better than property – where house pets have more freedom and can expect better care.

The second principle in Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy – which I have been writing about since the start of the year - is that secular and atheist organizations need to demonstrate the pervasiveness of religious special treatment.

This, when combined with the first principle (that secular organizations should focus on stories with a human impact) points to the massive number of ways in which religious organizations are given special permissions and powers to lower the quality of life for others.

It really is shocking how many ways a person still has permission to act so as to lower the quality of life for others as long as they invoke the name of some deity in defense of that harm.

In some cases, we can well expect that this special permission to do harm if one invokes the name of God or quotes scripture is a strong inducement towards religion. Are you interested in some policy or practice that harms or threatens others? Then I suggest you find some interpretation of scripture or discover some gold tablets (that will soon be lost) that claims divine permission to perform those actions. Then, you can invoke a special permission to “practice your religion” to justify your harms.

However, we already recognize limits to this argument. When I assert that there are limits to the freedom of practicing one’s religion, I am not presenting some radical new philosophy. I am stating something that is already widely accepted and agreed upon with respect to some behaviors.

Let a person go around killing apostates or burning witches claim that the government may not interfere with his religious practices, and we see instantly that there is a line that religious freedom may not cross. Let him claim that God sanctions marriage to a seven year old girl and let's see him (at least in this country) try to make a first amendment argument in defense of that marriage. Let's see him make a first amendment defense for killing those who charge interest, or who work on the Sabbath, or in defense of stoning a rebellious child.

The thing to do is to define the principle – define the line – that religious freedom may not permissibly cross.

It would seem that the most obvious place to draw that line is in where religious practice does harm to others who are not a member of the church or who cannot give informed consent to belonging to the church. A child's ability to join a church should be as limited as a child's ability to enter into a marriage - and for the same reasons – the capacity to give informed consent is required.

There will be no killing of apostates, Sabbath breakers, or bankers. There will be no marrying of young children even if the children are of parents do belong to the church, or the killing of disobedient children deemed rebellious by their parents – or who are thought to have “dishonored” the family.

There will be no childhood genital mutilations for reasons other than health. There is no special permission to bring about the death of or injury to a child through faith healing or by denying the child medical treatment. Religious arguments shall not be invoked to dictate who, outside the church, may marry or may divorce. Nor shall religion be used to dictate end of life choices or other forms of medical treatment for non-members. There will be no special power to take property from others who do not give explicit informed consent, or to force non-members to pay for goods and services and the church buys. This includes police, fire, and military defense – except in ways that are granted to all non-profit organizations, secular and sectarian.

We will no doubt hear the protest, "But what of all the good the church does? You mention the harm, but you ignore the good?"

By all means, continue to do good.

However, go you think that doing good buys you moral credit giving you special permission to do harm? For example, do you think that a person who has saved two lives earns a moral credit, giving him permission to murder one person of his choosing at a later date? After all, he will still have a net moral balance of +1 life saved. That makes him a hero, right?

No?

Well, then, do not use the good that a church may do as justification for its harms. Good deeds do not buy a special permission to inflict harm on others or to treat others unjustly.

While I am on the subject, we can inquire as to the moral character of a person who attempts to strike a moral bargain like the following: "I will cease to do good unless I am, at the same time, granted a special permission to do harm." An example of this would be a person who says, "I will save these two lives only if you grant me permission to murder a person of my choosing at a later date and time."

Personally, I would grant the permission, only to revoke it after the lives are saved - because a permission to treat others unjustly is not mine to give.

This principle applies to religious organizations that attempt to blackmail the state into giving them a special power to harm other citizens or to treat them unjustly. An example of this is a religious organization that will take state money to help orphaned and foster children only if they are, at the same time, given special state permission to act with prejudice against homosexuals.

A person, or a church, is free to discriminate with its own money. For example, an individual may refuse to patronize a store ran by a gay couple. However, nobody has a right to discriminate with government money or when acting as an agent of the state. In those cases, they have an obligation to treat all others with the equal respect that equal citizenship demands.

The point of this exercise, of course, is to point out the fact that we are not talking about some minor part of the culture or law that affects only a few people in extremely rare circumstances. Our culture is steeped in examples where religious people are given special permissions to engage in behavior harmful to others – or even call upon the state to harm others - just because their god is supposedly jumping up and down with glee at the knowledge that such harms are being inflicted by his followers.

It is not the case that just a few people in rare circumstances are harmed. In fact, in some parts of the world, the harms are extremely wide spread and severe - applying to well over half of the population and threatening the whole of their liberty and, in some cases, their very lives. There is a lot of work to be done to improve the quality of life on earth by battling these harms.

Faircloth's New Atheist Strategy: The Pledge and the Motto

2012-01-11T08:40:00.001-07:00

So far this year I have been discussing Sean Faircloth’s new atheist strategy.

A part of that strategy involves focusing on those issues that create stories with a deep human impact, and shifting away from those issues that involve mere symbolism. He distinguishes protesting a home depot manger with a plastic Jesus on the courthouse lawn from protesting laws that block stem cell medical research and the benefits that may come from it. He asserts an important difference between protesting a cross on government property with concern over the dangers that children may face in unsupervised religious day-care facilities.

In making this distinction, he puts the issue of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” as the national motto in the 'symbolism' category.

I disagree.

From the time a child enters grade school, he or she encounters a very strong anti-atheist message. The pledge of allegiance tells her that people who do not support a nation "under God" are to be thought of the same way as those who promote rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. If she looks at her money - when she learns to read the message printed there - she learns that if she lacks trust in God then she does not qualify as "one of us". "We" trust in God.

Furthermore, in a young child's mind these are not mere propositions to be accepted or rejected as true or false. These messages reach into the emotions - into the evolved need that children gave to being accepted and valued - because the child's survival depends on this. It makes trusting in God and supporting a nation under God comfortable and safe, while rejecting God and God's rule is dangerous and frightening.

Young childhood is when social forces have their greatest power to affect our moral character. The shaping of character does not involve getting the child to hold certain beliefs - like teaching them that 2 * 2 = 4. It involves teaching them to have an emotional attachment to being a "good boy" or "good girl". It goes to shaping the child's likes and dislikes - a desire to help others and to share, and an aversion to lying, cheating, and doing harm. The character the child learns will affect her whole life.

The function - and in the eyes of many who support these practices, the purpose - of the Pledge of Allegiance when originally created was to give a child a moral aversion to aversion to rebellion, treason, and injustice. In the 1950s, the government added a moral lesson in the wrongness of atheism.

We have clear evidence that this effect exists. We have poll after poll showing us that Americans view atheists as the group least likely to share their American values. Of course Atheists are not true Americans. They neither trust in God nor do they support a nation under God.

We now have polls that put atheism on the same level as rapists when it comes to public trust. At the same time, we have a Pledge of Allegiance that puts atheists on the same level as rebels, tyrants, and the unjust.

We have a substantial body of empirical evidence on the effects of these types of practices. Take any group of children and divide them randomly into two groups. Identify one group as the "in" group and give them praise, while the "out" group is excluded from praise. The children in the "in" group become dominant, assertive, and self-confident. The "out" group becomes timid and passive.

In this way, the Pledge and the Motto are a clear invitation to school bullying by their peers, and even to abuse from teachers who also come to view the “disruptive” atheist student as a problem student. A teacher can be made to "feel" that the atheist paper deserves a B and then search for features in the paper to justify this feeling, and equally "feel" that the religious student deserves a special letter of recommendation to some opportunity or program.

We see the same effects in the United States as a whole. We see a religious community that trusts in God and supports a nation under God that is dominant, assertive, and self-confident. And we see an atheist and secular community that is timid, passive, and politically ineffective.

It is no wonder that the "in" group is so defensive of these practices. As long as it holds this ground, everything else is mere window dressing.

Other groups have had to deal with the effect that social conditioning has had on their political status. Women's liberation groups responded with assertiveness training to shake off a culture that taught women passive obedience. The homosexual community responded with "gay pride" to give homosexuals an effective political voice. Both groups condemned the forms of social conditioning that made this response necessary. Black and Jewish groups have organizations specifically devoted to hunting down and squashing racist and anti-Semitic messages that may have a detrimental effect on black and Jewish children.

Yet, somehow, we are supposed to believe that a childhood steeped in the message that all good Americans trust in God, and all patriotic Americans support a nation under God, is of no importance.

I have had many people respond to this that the Pledge does not bother them. They simply mumble past the words "under God" or substitute words of their own choosing. Yet, I have to ask, "Why is it so important to you to give the illusion that you are pledging allegiance to a nation under God. Are you not treating your atheism as a blemish - something to be hidden from public view?"

When an atheist can remain seated, without any hint that this lowers the opinion that anybody else may have of him, then I will accept the claim that "under God" is of no real importance.

Tell me that you think that a major candidate can refuse to sat the Pledge and get elected.

Seriously, what effect can it be expected to have on a candidate for public office that one candidate refuses to pledge allegiance to "one nation, under God"? At least one of the Republican debates started with the Pledge of Allegiance. It was obviously a form of religious test for public office. It conveys a clear message, "We will tolerate no atheist in the office of President."

As long as "under God" remains in the Pledge, atheism will remain a near fatal political liability.

If we are going to divide potential issues that the atheist and secular communities are involved in into "symbolic" and "deep human impact," then the social conditioning of children, and the prejudicing of Americans against atheist citizens in general and atheist candidates in specific, need to be put in the category of deep human impact.

Furthermore, they have to be fought as practices that have a deep human impact.

Part of the problem with the way the secular and atheist community has fought this issue is that they have treated it as merely symbolic. This has made the challengers look petty and mean-spirited. Faircloth is correct to hold that one gets more political traction with issues that have a real human impact. Not only do these practices qualify, they need to be fought as practices that qualify. The subject does not need to change, but the form if argument does.

In the case of the Pledge and the Motto, the focus should be on the human impact of government practices that socially condition children and prejudice all Americans against atheist children, atheist citizens, and particularly against atheist candidates.

These are NOT merely symbolic practices having no human impact.

Atheist and Secular Strategy: A Question of Style

2012-01-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post, I began looking at the details of Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy. Specifically, I looked at the recommendation that the new strategy focus on stories with a deep human impact.

Yesterday, I wrote about how adopting this suggestion would change the focus of atheist activism away from such things as mangers at city hall and prayer in city council meetings, and direct them towards behavior that inflicts real harm on real people - from blocking stem cell research to denying homosexual couples the benefits of marriage.

Today, I want to talk about the moral merits - and demerits - of using these stories.

The reason for using these stories - rather than (or in addition to) true premises and sound reasoning - is because they work. They are effective at motivating change.

To illustrate this technique, Faircloth uses two stories, each of which involved a child in the care of a religious day care center, where the child was left in a car unattended and died from the heat. He then went on to note that 13 states have religious exemptions from standards and inspections that secular day care centers have to follow.

His conclusion was that religious day-care centers be subject to the same regulations as secular day-care centers. Religious exemptions should be removed - and this should be done for the sake of the children.

However, the conclusion does not follow from these premises.

I have a question I want answered.

What is the safety record for state-monitored secular day-care centers compared to religiously affiliated day-care centers?

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that 10 children out of 100,000 die in religious day-care centers. However, in state-monitored secular day-care centers, the fatality rate is 15 per 100,000. It is true that we can tell deeply moving stories of human impact about every one of those 10 children who died in a religious day-care center. However, that would not justify moving children from a system where their chance of dying actually goes up by 5 out of 100,000.

I want to know . . . how many lives can we save? How many injuries can we prevent? How much better off are the children who attend a religiously affiliated day-care center compared to those who attend a state-monitored secular day-care center? These are the forms of evidence that determine whether a policy is a good idea or not, not the anecdotal stories of the 10 children who came to harm.

Stories work at motivating people. However, they do not prove anything. This means that they are just as effective at motivating people to do bad things as to do good things. They are a favorite tool of the bigot, the hate-monger, and the fear-monger.

Tell the story of a young and attractive white girl raped by a black man, and you can incite a crowd into a murderous rage against the next black man they see.

Tell the story if the good German family man driven out of business by the Jew who opened a shop up the street, and you can incite all sorts of hatred against the Jews.

A single story about a parolee who commits a crime can end a state rehabilitation program independent of the fact that the program costs less and is more effective at preventing crime on the whole than incarceration.

In general, one of the major sources of irrational behavior - harmful behavior - is this tendency to over-generalize - to assign to a whole group the qualities of an individual member. We can see proof of Faircloth's claim that this method is effective in its use to justify wars and injustices throughout history. It is, in fact, a powerful motivator. But it does not distinguish between motivating for good, or motivating for evil.

Faircloth recognizes our disposition to prefer sound reasoning and to rely on evidence-based conclusions. However, he calls this a "noble flaw". It is certainly noble to seek sound reason before acting. But it is a flaw. The reason it is a flaw is because stories work. Secularists and atheists have very little to show for our political efforts precisely because we do not use the tools that work.

On the contrary, I hold that seeking justification for one's actions is not just noble. It is an obligation. Given the harms that can be inflicted by those who are persuaded by stories, this is a technique that morally responsible people should be arming others against. "Do not take stories as proof" is one of those messages - a distinctly secular message - that prevents harm.

If we are to tell stories to illustrate our point, we can tell stories about the times in history where an irrational response to a story - even when true - resulted in great injustices.

This, now, leads me to a point that suggests a way in which stories can be legitimately used. This point draws on a distinction between an argument and an illustration.

By means of all sorts of scientific research I can argue that ice is less dense than water at the same temperature. At the same time, I can illustrate that fact with an image of an ice cube floating in a cup of water.

There is nothing wrong - or even unscientific - with illustrating a point with a picture. Furthermore, these forms of illustration can be effective at helping people to understand the claims being made in the argument.

The thing to remember is that the illustration is not an argument. The illustration is not to be taken as evidence that the conclusion is true. The evidence comes from the text itself.

As long as it is used as an illustration.

I would recommend the following:

Go ahead and use your illustrative stories. However, when you are done, tell the audience, "This is just a story. It doesn't prove anything. As rational and morally responsible human beings you have a right - in fact, you have a duty - to demand real evidence when people ask you to do something. And I have a duty to provide you with that evidence. Nobody should ever try to convince you to do something based on a story alone. So, let me present my evidence."

This is the point at which one would then add the evidence suggesting how many lives would be saved, how much abuse can be prevented, and how the quality of life can be improved by subjecting religious day-care to the same state monitoring and standards that are used for secular day-care.

If any. We must be aware of the possibility that - in spite of a few moving stories of human impact - religious day-care centers have a better track record than state-monitored secular day-care centers. Let's not get into the trap of allowing our prejudging our conclusions based on our prejudices. Let the evidence decide which conclusion is correct.

This rejection of unsound reasoning - used as often as not for evil as for good - should be a part of the atheist and secular brand. In making it a part of the brand, we should clearly mark strong evidence and sound reasoning from rhetoric and demagoguery. A story may illustrate a point. However, stories are not proof. A story may motivate action, but it SHOULD only be used to motivate action where that action can be shown by true premises and sound reasoning to be worthwhile.

These principles do not identify a "noble flaw". They represent a set of moral obligations that thinking human beings have towards each other to base their actions on true premises and sound reasoning.

Atheist and Secular Strategy: A Question of Content

2012-01-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

I am reviewing in detail Sean Faircloth’s new strategy for atheism - a video representation of which can be found in my first post on the subject.

In that introduction, I looked at the claim that to make meaningful political change, one has to come to the political table with money and votes. Strong evidence and sound reasoning are not the standard of exchange here.

On the issue of money, things go best for an organization that designs a political product that it can sell to "the top 10%". They have almost all of the disposable wealth that can be contributed to such a campaign.

On the issue of votes, I stressed the importance of recruitment, the insignificance of non-voters, and a need to deal with the psychological impact of growing up in a culture that gives very strong anti-atheist messages to children at a young age. I also discussed the merits of forming a community and the need for political organizations to increase its power by making alliances.

With these basic claims in the background, I would now like to start looking at the specifics of Faircloth’s new atheist strategy.

His first recommendation was that atheists "convey the human impact of religious bias in law."

By this, Faircloth meant that we should tell stories - human stories about real people harmed as a result of religious bias.

Faircloth illustrates this point with a couple of stories of children who were in the care or religiously connected day care centers, each of whom was left in a car for hours and each of whom died. With these stories in mind, Faircloth brought forth facts about religious daycare centers having special exemptions and immunities from state standards and inspections. The conclusion is that, for the sake of the children, religious daycare centers should be subject to the same standards as secular daycare centers.

This recommendation actually has two components. Faircloth advocates that the new atheist strategy focuses on stories – as opposed to cold hard facts and statistics – because they touch the emotions and are more efficient at motivating action. That is one component. The other component concerns content. In this new atheist strategy, the issues that atheists are to focus on about which it is possible to tell these types of stories.

In this post, I will discuss the effect on content. Tomorrow, I will discuss the style of presentation.

The way that this strategy will impact the content of atheist activism is illustrated by the fact that it is difficult to come up with a moving stories of human impact that argue against a manger on the courthouse lawn, or a city council beginning each session with a prayer. There is nothing in these issues that compares to a story about a couple of young children roasting to death in a hot car when left alone for hours by workers at a religious day-care center.

In using Faircloth's strategy, that lack a compelling story fade into the background.

Faircloth did not say that the issues of symbolism should be dropped entirely or that it is wrong to pursue them. His claim is that, in addition to doing so, atheist and secular organizations should also focus on those issues where stories of significant human impact can be told. Of people dying of AIDS where religious institutions oppose the use of condoms, and people with spinal cord and other injuries who might benefit from stem cell research.

From an ethical perspective, I agree with this approach.

This is a type of moral triage. Action that aims to prevent the slow death of young children in day care – to provide for their improved safety and security – ought to be considered more important than removing a manger from the courthouse lawn or prayer from a city council meeting. I would recommend a strategy that focuses first on improving the quality of life - a strategy that would exclude people from using religious justifications or claiming religious immunity from condemnation when they lower the quality of life.

I see no reason to be particularly worried about whether somebody believes in a god. Everybody I know is wrong about something. Well . . . actually . . . everybody I know holds at least one thing to be true that I hold to be false. If I held in contempt everybody who disagreed with me, I would have a very lonely life. I would not recommend it.

However, when another person's false belief makes them a danger to others (that they are a danger to themselves is less of a concern) - as false beliefs about blood transfusions, homosexuality, stem cells, reproductive health, and so forth often do - then that is something that matters.

I would also argue that the accused should obtain the benefit of reasonable doubt. Note here that the standard is reasonable doubt. None of us should be so arrogant as to assume that we are always right - even about what is helpful or harmful to others. Consequently, we should begin with a presumption of freedom - a presumption of non-interference. Note that this presumption applies equally to secular and sectarian beliefs. However, this is a presumption – not a law. When we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, we may act to prevent people from doing harm to others.

To the perpetrator of harm, I would say, I do not disapprove because you believe in a god. Many harmless people believe in a god. I disapprove because your behavior makes you a threat to others. And I do not accept your claim that you can go ahead and be a threat to others whenever you sincerely believe that your god gives you permission to do that which is harmful. You can go ahead and harm yourself through your religious beliefs, but when you harm others, they deserve a better justification from you than, 'My god told me to.'

When the employees of a religious daycare center negligently kill a child, the proper response is that belief in a god is irrelevant. People who believe in a god do not have a special permission to engage in acts of negligence than those who do not believe in a god. The standards of evidence should be applied equally to believers and non-believers.

And that should be one that best secures the health and well-being of children.

The specific objective here is to combat negligence by holding negligent people morally responsible for the harms they inflict regardless of their religious affiliation - and not to grant special immunities . . . what amounts to a special permission to be negligent . . . to those who believe in God.

In general objective is to adopt a strategy that focuses on improving the quality of life. It is to prevent harm – to prevent the physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of children, to prevent bullying at school, to providing people with equal opportunities in employment and health care and to promote the quality of their lives, to prevent violence including the extreme violence of religiously motivated terrorist bombings, to allow people to obtain the benefits of our improved medical science.

This is how the strategy of looking for stories with a deep human impact can affect the content of atheist and secular activism. The fact that it is focusing on quality of life is a definite improvement.

However, we need to go back and look at the issue of style. I will do that in my next post.

Political Activism: Votes

2012-01-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I am starting off this year - a political campaign year - looking at the subject of political activism.

I am using Sean Faircloth's presentation of a new atheist strategy as my foil.

I have argued that if you are serious about political success you must aim to come to the political table with cash or votes or both. Your voice is as loud as the amount of money or the number of votes you carry with you.

On the subject of money, it is best to design a political product that you can sell to "the top 10%". they have almost all of the disposable income.

This post concerns the subject of votes.

The richest 10% of population may have over 90% of the available cash, but they still only have 10% of the votes. You collect money by designing a product you can sell to the top 10%. You collect votes by designing a product you can sell to everybody else.

The Irrelevance of Non-Voters

Nonvoters do not count. Many people think that they can make a statement by not voting. Yet, as soon as they declare their not-voting status, they give up their power. It gets distributed among everybody else (whose vote, in a smaller pool of voters, becomes a little more powerful). A portion of it is handed directly to the people that the non-voter most strongly disagrees with. The non-voter is a worthless waste of time and resources and can be - should be - regarded as irrelevant.

Recruitment

When it comes to collecting votes, one of the best models ever invented was the church.

Church leaders such as Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, James Dobson, Rick Warren, and others always have a seat at the political table substantially because they bring to the table a pocket full of votes. The more votes they pocket, the louder their political voice.

One of the major implications of this is the value of recruitment. More people means more votes, which means a stronger voice at the political table.

A very good way to deal with both of the issues of recruitment and voting is a voter registration drive - particularly in communities that are highly secular such as college campuses. (Are you listening Secular Student Alliance? This is an election year.)

I have heard a lot of atheists express disapproval (very strong disapproval in the area of contempt and condemnation) of recruitment. They identify recruitment with prosthelytizing - a religious practice that disgusts them.

Get over it.

A political organization that does not recruit is like a species that has no offspring. It is not viable. Recruitment - selling the political product - is of utmost importance. It is vital to the organization.

Atheist Out Campaigns

I am certain that groups championing religious privilege love the fact that atheists and secularists oppose recruitment - they do not want the competition. In fact, if I were the head of a religious organization, I can think of few viral memes mire useful to plant in the atheist or secular community than an aversion to recruitment. More generally, the one of the best weapons that those who seek religious privilege have wielded has been to make sure that if a person does become an atheist, he is a shy, socially awkward, politically impotent, closeted atheist.

They have a lot of tools in place for bringing this about - and they work. I have argued in the past that two of the most effective tools are "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance which students are pressured to internalize, and the motto "In God We Trust" on the money and on schoolhouse walls. If it is not their aim - it is at least their function - to create an emotional aversion to atheism in young children such that, as adults, they are politically impotent.

At a very young age, these practices and others teach young children that atheism is something to be ashamed of. It is an unsightly blemish to be covered up and kept out of public view. Of course, it also gives a sense of superiority and an inflated sense of self to those who do believe in God. This not only has an impact on what people believe, but on how they behave when they discover that their beliefs fall on one side of the fence or the other.

Embarrassment and shame are difficult emotions to come to terms with. Both of them stand in conflict with the qualities of self-respect and self-worth. This makes it psychologically tempting to disguise these emotions behind something that is easier on the ego. What the agent claims to be disgust over the religious practice of "prosthelytizing" is actually an expression of the agent's shame and embarrassment over being an atheist.

Do you want some evidence of this?

Well, those who object to atheist "prosthelytizing" will quite often and eagerly engage in recruitment for other organizations.

Given that we are surrounded with anti-atheist messages while growing up, it would be shocking if the atheist community did not have to deal with some of the same effects that the homosexual community has had to deal with. Fortunately, the experience of the homosexual community provides a lot of information that atheist groups can draw on.

I would like to suggest a call for papers and a panel discussion at some future atheist or secular gathering where academic experts are invited to bring their best research on the psychology of "being in the closet" and of "coming out" and apply it to the atheist community.

Atheist and Secular Communities

Religious organizations also know that "membership" most powerful when it is more than a name on a mailing list.

To a church, membership means belonging to a community. Call up 100 names on a mailing list to get volunteers for a project, and compare that to spreading the word among 100 members of a community, and see which group will get the most work done.

Churches create communities. When their leaders step up to the political table, the votes that they carry with them are the votes of community members, and those are far more powerful than an list of equal size that are merely names on a mailing list.

If you have access to a mailing list, I invite you to simply take a look at the names that appear and ask this question: Who are these people? Those are human beings. Some are unemployed. Some are caring for parents whose memories are failing. Some have cancer. Some have dreams of becoming an astronaut and living in space. Some are worried that they will get a visit from the police telling them that their child has been arrested or killed.

These are people.

Here, again, the The Secular Student Alliance has an opportunity to provide a community for young people who are away from their family.

How about a "secular community alliance" for those who have left the university?

I wrote a post about over a year and a half ago on Secular Resource Centers who take it upon themselves to provide the community with sound evidence-based resources for dealing with community problems such as health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, parenting, suicide prevention, community development, grief counseling, and the like. It creates a community - and the leaders of that community goes to the political table with a voice that carries weight.

Big Tents vs. Little Tents

The final issue I want to discuss today is the issue of the big tent versus the little tent.

I have spoken of going to the political table with money and votes. The more votes the better.

One of the ways of getting more votes is by creating a product that has a larger customer base.

In this respect, secularism is a better product than atheism. A person can believe in God and still be secular - still buy a secular product. Religious groups that have a history or a fear of religious persecution probably know full well the evils of giving the state a role to play over religious matters.

I have written in the past of the difference between taking up a political role versus an academic role. I consider my role to be on the academic side. This means that report what I hold to be true without regard to how popular it might be. I have no interest in forming alliances or associations with others on these matters. If anybody disagrees they are invited to provide their reasons for disagreement.

However, I am aware of and respect the need for another group of people that have different concerns. A political organization needs to create a political package that others will buy into. The more buyers they get - the larger the coalition that they can put together - the more powerful their position at the table will be.

The debate between those who seek compromise and those who seek to report facts regardless of its appeal is nonsense. It is like a dispute between nurses and engineers. A society needs both. Both have a function to fill. Neither should be so egotistical to think that theirs is the only legitimate profession.

In Summary

In summary - the politically effective secular organization has a strong voice at the political table for two reasons. First, the organization has created a political product that it can sell to the top 10% and has collected contributions from them. Second, the organization has created a product that voters can get behind. On the issue of collecting votes, nonvoters are irrelevant and recruitment is essential. Secular and atheist organizations need to come to terms with the social stigma of atheism to fight the political impotence that comes from shame and embarrassment. They would be well served to form communities rather than to simply collect names on a mailing list. And, finally, they should recognize the need for two types of groups - academic groups that look at the facts without respect for their popularity, and political organizations that have to sell a political package.

Funding a Political Cause II: The Ineffectiveness of Campaign Reform

2012-01-05T07:53:00.002-07:00

I am starting this year - a campaign year - by looking at the issue of making effective political change.

What came before:

Post 1: I argued that to make political change it isn’t enough to come to the table with conclusions backed by solid evidence and sound reason. The leaders of the organization need to come to the table with resources – with cash and votes – that it is willing to and able to mobilize in defense of the position it advocates. Without these resources, the strength of the arguments is irrelevant.

Post 2: Regarding the "money" component, a successful secular organization needs to create a political package it can sell to "the top 10%". The top 10% have almost all of the disposable money that can be spent on a campaign. The money the organization brings to the table almost has to come from them.

Today’s post:

Those who have money to bring to the table cannot be stopped from using it to obtain their objectives.

A whole family of political tactics that people often try to promote is to try to block those with money from bringing it to and using it at the political table. They seek all sorts of restrictions on who can spend what in a political campaign to achieve this goal.

I find these maneuvers to be foolish. At best, they create a room full of smoke to hide political connections, where people then pretend that the relationships they can no longer see do not exist.

Allow me pretend for a moment that I am somebody with a lot of money, and I have a few political causes that I am interested in.

In all but a few very rare circumstances, my money will get me into the door for a personal meeting with any candidate for office. I already have something that the rest of you do not have. I have one of the two commodities that one must bring to the table. The candidate knows this. The candidate also knows that nothing can prevent me from putting those resources to use in the campaign.

Assume that I want a candidate in office that will support policies A, B, and C. It does not matter what they are. They could be selfish. They could be noble. Whether they are an interest in fighting AIDS in Africa or removing regulations that prevent my factory from poisoning the air downwind, these are my interests.

I meet with the candidate and I make it clear that these issues are important to me. There's nothing wrong with that, right? I'm a private citizen. I meet with my representative. I tell her what my concerns are. She knows I have money to put into addressing those concerns. She knows that the money can enter the political arena on her side, or on her opponent's side, depending on how she answers my questions.

I am not talking about some vicious, corrupt politician. She has her own agenda - issues C, D, and E. We may even share some common interests. By giving me what I want on those concerns we do not share, she can bring my money into the political arena on her side - helping her to promote her interests. Again, these need not be selfish or vicious interests. They are hers.

Let's assume that the law prevents me contributing more than $2000 to her campaign. Let us further assume that I am also prevented from contributing more than $2000 to any organization (political action committee) that directly supports or campaign or directly challenges her opponents.

I answer that with the shrug.

The candidate I favor might be a vocal proponent of campaign reform. She knows it will have no effect. She knows that she will still accept my request for a meeting because she knows that no campaign reform law will prevent my money from either helping or hurting her campaign. However, being in favor of campaign reform might win the votes of those deluded enough to think it has power, so why not be in favor?

I know that the candidate's personal agenda includes issues C, D, and E. My options include making contributions to the National Association of D, and the American E Society. I don't have to announce into the hidden microphone, "If you support my issues, I will contribute to yours." It is understood.

Is this going to be prohibited? If my candidate has parents with cancer, am I to be banned from giving money to the American Cancer Society? You would have to ban these types of contributions if you want to prevent me from using my money to influence my preferred candidate.

It is also the case that I pay attention to the news. The news tells me that some issue F is becoming a campaign issue. Let us assume it is the construction of a pipeline. My candidate comes out against the pipeline for environmental reasons. Her opponent comes out in favor because "creates jobs".

It's time for me to make a sizable cash contribution to whatever local chapter of whatever organization exists that is opposing the pipeline. They will put that money to work in an "education" campaign that will unavoidably challenge the arguments that my candidate's opponent is using to defend the pipeline: "It will not create that many jobs" and "Pipeline jobs will come at the expense of jobs in the tourist industry, or at the expense of a company that constructs windmills or builds solar cells."

Of course, I am not going to call the candidate and arrange a deal. When I meet her at a fundraising dinner a few weeks from now I might mention my contributions. It will be only natural that she will want to do a favor for me, given that I have done a favor for her. And, again, she knows that my money goes to aid of whatever candidate listens and responds appropriately to my concerns.

As a wealthy person, we may assume that I am a member of several local organizations. Many other members are my friends - we work together. I can solicit an opportunity for my preferred candidate to come to speak before the orgganization. After the speeches, when we meet for drinks afterward, she will have the opportunity to shake hands, pocket checks, and make appointments to address other groups at other times.

I discussed something similar to this regarding the presidential candidacy of Rick Perry. He organized an evangelical gathering in April of last year to ask for God's help for a nation in crisis in front of 20,000 religious conventioneers.

We know that Perry did not do all of the work organizing this meeting himself. We also know that he used it as a campaign tactic - to gather evangelicals and to try to get their support for a Presidential election bid.

While we are assuming that I am a wealthy person interested in influencing a (potential) candidate, we may assume that I have connections. I know people who are good at organizing events and executing them. Everything from catering to booking locations to arranging travel - I have experts in all of these fields. I direct them to help with the arrangements, and I give the assistant an unlimited expense account. There is going to be a ton of things he can do to promote the gathering that will not count as a direct political contribution to the candidate.

This series of posts is about how a secular organization can make a positive political contribution - make the world a better place. A part of doing this requires understanding and respecting how the real world works. In my last post I argued that the effective organization needs to create and package a political product it can sell to the top 10%. A lot of people think that it is a viable strategy not to seek to bring more money to the table, but to prevent (by law) "them" from bringing money to the table. They call it "leveling the playing field".

It's not going to happen - at least not that way. That money is coming to the table by one route or another. The politically effective secular organization must live and work in the real world. It may not like reality, but it would be to its advantage to respect reality.

Funding a Political Cause

2012-01-04T09:13:00.002-07:00

It is an election year, and I am looking at the issue of creating political change.

In my first post I argued that to make political change you need to bring votes or money to the table. At this stage, evidence and sound reasoning are largely irrelevant. They are relevant elsewhere. I will get to that in a future post.

This is not a cynical complaint about a world gone corrupt. This is a fact, as morally neutral as gravity.

If I were a legislator and you came to me asking for support, I am going to want to know what you have and are willing to put into play to defend that position - and what the opposition might be able to put into the field. It is stupid - utterly stupid – to come to me with an issue where you have nothing to put into the battle for its political defense when I know that there is a ton of resources willing to fight against it.

That is like demanding the evolutionary success of a species with a trait that is instantly fatal to those who have it.

So, if you want to make effective political change, you need to come with money or votes (or both). You need to come with the resources and the will to fight for your position, not only in my office, but on the political street.

Now, lets look at the issue of getting money.

Fact: 1% of the population has 42% of the wealth.

Furthermore, the other 99% of the people who have 58% of the wealth need to spend a substantial portion of that on food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and energy consumption.

Consequently, when it comes to wealth that those who have it can afford to contribute to a political campaign, the top 1% of the population has substantially more than half of the available wealth. The top 10% has over 90% of the available wealth.

This is a fact. Like it. Hate it. Shake your fist to the heavens in protest. It will not change this fact. You can ignore it - like you can ignore the car coming down the street as you step off of the curb. However, you ignore reality at your own peril. Reality does not change merely by wishing it were not true.

A political campaign is a product - a commodity. You are putting a product on the market and asking people to buy (into) it.

People will part with money. They will do so when you can give them something that is more valuable to them than the money that you are asking them to part with, and more valuable than anything else that they can do with that money.

We see this at work in a key difference between the Tea Party movement compared to "Occupy Wall Street".

The Tea Party has a product that they can sell to the top 10% - freedom from taxation and regulation. The Tea Party did not start off this way. It started as a protest against government bailouts for billionaires – rich people getting huge amount of government aid while the rest of us suffer. However, like every movement, it had factions. The factions of the Tea Party movement that succeeded were those factions that had a product they could sell to the top 10%, “No government bailouts for billionaires” couldn’t be sold to the top 10%. ”No tax increases or regulation” had a market. That message got funding and media support. That is where the Tea Party is now.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement, on the other hand, does not have a product that the top 10% has an interest in buying - most of it anyway. Instead of being funded, the top 10% is more inclined to buy a different product – for example, one that is being sold by public relations firms whose objective is to discredit the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Now, let’s not get into hate-mongering stereotypes here. Remember, our focus is on the real world.

The top 10% is not some monolithic "them" in a state of perpetual war against "us". They are a diverse group, ranging the spectrum from utterly horrendous moral monsters (e.g., the executives of Phillip Morris and Exxon Mobile) to the admirable (e.g., Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono).

And, of course, many are admirable in some areas and contemptible in others.

Like normal human beings, they will tend to be persuaded by arguments with conclusions that they like. Thus, many will find Ayn Rand's arguments for selfishness attractive and blind themselves to its flaws. However, these are tendencies, not laws of nature.

Here is where evidence and sound reasoning can be used - at least on some of them. These people – the top 10% - can be persuaded by moral argument. They are prone – at least to some extent - to the effects of praise for their virtues and condemnation for their vices. Many want to be known as good people who did good things.

Rich people get cancer, Parkinson's disease, and suffer from mental illnesses. They want clean air and water. They do not want to be the victims of violent crime. They do not want to be killed by somebody flying an airplane into a sky scraper. Some adore their pets and children and hate to see them come to harm. Some are gay. All of these facts define a set of political products that can be sold to the top 10%. Organizations that create and package these products can collect cash that they can bring to the political table.

The Democratic and Republican parties know this rule and design their political products to sell to the top 10%. Some people lament this and demand change. However, the fact is that the political organization that does not do this simply is not viable. We do not have a party that refuses to create a political product it can sell to the top 10% for the same reason that nature does not give us mammals without a circulatory system. Those creatures do not live long.

Create 10 secular organizations. In 20 years, those with the best track record for change will be those with a political product they can and do sell to the top 10%. It will be those that developed such a product, created an organization that it could market as the organization best capable of delivering that product, sold that product, collected the money (in terms of donations and in-kind contributions), and put those resources to work. The other organizations will become small collections of impotent malcontents whining to each other over the Internet about how messed up the world is.

This, then, is the political question. What political products can the secular community offer that they can sell to the top 10%? Answer this question. Create the product. Make sure to create an organization that can deliver that product better than any competing organization. Sell it. That organization will have cash that it can bring to the political table. That organization can make the world a better place.

2012 - A Campaign Year

2012-01-03T07:57:00.003-07:00

It is a new year, with a new project.

Given that this is a Presidential election year, I want to turn my focus to political and social change.

In doing this, I wish to start with this video discussing a new strategy for the secular community.

There is a lot of good in this. I intend to spend a few posts highlighting some of its more important points.

Key Point Number 1: You cannot accomplish anything politically useful unless you bring money or votes to the table.

I see a lot of blog and forum posts where the author says, "Write to your legislators and oppose/support this legislation."

As if that is going to do any good.

It is particularly amusing when the people writing those letters decide to use well-reasoned evidence-based arguments in support of their conclusion - as if legislators judge legislation according to well-reasoned evidence-based arguments.

If you want to convince a legislator to take your side on a piece of legislation, then what you need to argue is that supporting your side translates into more campaign contributions or more votes come election time, while opposition means less money or fewer votes.

This probably sounds cynical - as if I have given up on finding any decency in the human race and now think that the world is governed by callous self-interest.

However, that is not the case. If I were a legislator, I would work according to these same standards. The only place where I would pay attention to well-reasoned evidence-based arguments are those where the law in question is sailing under the radar, as it were. In most cases - in almost all cases that you would be interested in writing to me - those arguments would only serve a tie-breaking role.

Reality demands it.

Let's say you came to me wanting me to support gay marriage. Let's say that I agree with you on all of the points of evidence and reason - that the laws are discriminatory and unjust - perhaps even that these restrictions on gay marriage violate the principles on which the Constitution was founded. However, knowing my district, I know that voting for gay marriage would mean a sizable shift in campaign contributions and votes to my opponent - a bible thumping young-earth prayer-in-school creationist.

My answer to you will be, "No."

What you are asking me to do is, in practical terms, no different than asking me to resign my position and appoint the bible thumping young-earth prayer-in-school creationist in my place. Is that really what you want me to do?

Do you really want me to support your side on this legislation?

Then you need to bring money and votes to the table. Come to me as the representative of an organization. Let me know how many volunteers you have and how much work you are willing to do in support of a candidate that sides with you on this issue. Let me know that you are willing to put those resources to work in my district. Do this - and make be believe it - and you will have my vote.

Do not write some letter to me saying how wonderful the law is. Write to your mother. Put a link to an article on your Facebook page. Twitter or "Stumble Upon" articles defending your position so that your friends and family can see them.

Join an organization that can pool your resources. As a part of the organization, volunteer to hand out fliers, stuff envelopes, and man a booth at the local county fair. Organize some publicity such as a march or a demonstration that will bring the television cameras and newspaper reporters who will take down your message and put it in front of their audience - and make sure you put out the message you want to put out. Create and collect money to put out a radio or television commercial. Create a web site, then write to a few hundred blog posters asking them to share its message with their audience.

Even in doing this, remember that your goal is to build the political and economic support for the issue you are defending. You can't do this by giving your message only to those who already support your issue. You need to reach the fence-sitters - the people who might change their behavior if they hear the arguments.

So, this is the second question you should ask yourself if you want to be bring about social or political change. "Do my actions increase the political or economic power behind my view. When the representatives of my view go to the legislator, will these actions give them more campaign contributions and more votes to bargain with?"

The second question . . . ?

Well, the first question always has to be, "Am I right?" There are a lot of people arrogantly certain that they are using these practices to support ideas that they think are right - but are just plain wrong. Let's always leave room for the question, "Is this the right thing to do?"

And . . . Happy New Year. Let’s see if we can make it a better year than it might have otherwise been.

Moral Diversionary Tactics

2011-12-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Anybody who has been at this for a while know that theists have a sack full of defensive responses whenever you begin to criticize their religion. You point to a group of religious people who use religious premises to promote superstition in science classes, or to justify harms inflicted on the interests of homosexuals, or that treat women as the property of men, and you can predict the responses.

"Yes, but, not all religions are like that. If you are going to criticize religion, you need to be extra clear about that."

"Yes, but, these religiously motivated injustices do not just happen in this religion. They happen in other religions. In fact, some religions are even more unjust."

"Yes, but, people who belong to this religion often do great things. They perform great acts of charity and kindness. You have to acknowledge their positive contributions in your criticism."

"Yes, but the religion's victims could do things to avoid being the victim of this discrimination. If the atheists are less critical, or homosexuals hide in the closet, or the Muslims keep their temples away from downtown New York, then we won't have such a problem."

"Yes, but atheists are not morally perfect either. Look at Stalin and Mao."

"Yes, but the specific critic has made some moral mistakes as well. Sam Harris, for example, defended torture. Why are you focusing on the abuses that come from religious beliefs?"

"Yes, but, religious injustices are not nearly as bad as some other harms - from disease or starvation, for example. We should be focusing on them instead."

"Yes, but, that religious group is also the victim of religious discrimination elsewhere, where they are not in the majority. Why aren't we defending them from those injustices?"

"Yes, but, we are entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. How dare you criticize our religious practices?"

"Yes, but, calling attention to religious discrimination and other forms of religious criticism only makes them defensive, and makes the situation worse. It is best to ignore it."

"Yes, but, why do you atheists have to be so angry and emotional and over-sensitive about it? That doesn’t help your argument or your cause."

"Yes, but, what about the Holocaust/Crusades/30 Years War?"

There is a wide range of areas where people will attempt to avoid a discussion of wrongs and injustices, effectively trying to bury them - ultimately with the objective of throwing off the discussion and liberating the perpetrators from actual condemnation. If they can change the subject, then they can continue with business as usual.

A lot of atheists have experienced a great many of these defensive tactics and are quick to criticize them.

Perhaps they should be just as quick to criticize them when other subjects are brought up as well.

We have a lot of many and strong reasons to condemn these type of tactics whenever or wherever we may find them.

Theism, Atheism, and Blame

2011-12-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

Gad, how does one kill this senseless piece of atheist bigotry? The idea has dug itself into the atheist community as tight as a tick, even though it represents the worst forms of unreasoned bigotry.

It’s the idea that when a religious person does something wrong religion is to blame, but when an atheist does something atheism is blameless.

This is a very attractive conclusion – for the hate-mongering atheist bigot. The lover of reason has no use for it, but the hate-monger has sure found it attractive.

If you take “atheism” and its counter-part “theism” NEITHER of these are a source of violence or evil. You cannot draw any moral implications from the statement, “It is not the case that at least one God exists” just as you cannot draw any moral implication from the statement, “It is the case that at least one God exists.” They are both behaviorally, morally, and practically impotent.

In order to get to any moral conclusion – any type at all – you have to add something to your fundamental premise, regardless of whether it is atheist or theist.

In order to get violence against homosexuals, you have to combine, “At least one God exists” with “That god commands that homosexuals be put to death” and “We all have to duty to do that which God commands.” Then, you can get behavior worthy of condemnation.

However, on this level, the same reasoning applies to atheism. In order to get any form of behavior – any type at all – out of atheism you have to add something to your fundamental premise. We might add, “Man is a rational animal, and it is irrational to provide help to others unless one expects a sufficient profit in return that more than compensates the cost of the help. Therefore, man ought not to help others. Selfishness is a virtue.”

If we are going to say that religion is responsible for the violence against homosexuals in the first instance, then consistency commands that we hold that atheism is responsible for the selfish disregard for others in the second case.

If, on the other hand, we are going to deny that atheism has anything to do with the selfish disregard for others in the second case, then logical consistency requires that we also deny that theism has anything to do with the violence against homosexuals in the first place.

There is no grounding – none at all – for the claim that religion is responsible in the first instance but that atheism is blameless in the second.

But, hate-mongering bigotry is so sweet, so warm and comfortable. It is so much fun. This sweet, warm, comforting fun is why this bigotry continues to be such huge part of atheist culture.

Oh, and we need to add hypocrisy to this list of evil pleasures. Because when theists engage in these types of unprincipled leaps of logic in order to defend hateful and bigoted conclusions against atheists, they are to be condemned.

The bigot’s trick is to compare general atheism (to which no harms can be attributed) with specific theism (which can be charged with doing harm). Yet, they scream in protest when theists go the other way, comparing general theism (your condemnation is senseless because I can identify at least one person who believes in God who is not guilty of your charges) to specific atheism (Stalin).

Here’s the fact. Religion is exactly as harmful or as harmless as atheism – no more and no less. There are certain religious philosophies that can be condemned for the evil that they contain. However, there are certain atheist philosophies that can be condemned for the evil that they contain. Yes, it is true, atheism itself does not entail any of these philosophies. However, theism itself does not entail any specific religion either.

In other words, when it comes to being a cause of harm, “atheism” (broadly defined) is just as innocent as “theism” (broadly defined). And specific atheist philosophies (narrowly defined) in many cases are just as guilty as specific theist philosophies (narrowly defined). And no decent person is going to sanction scoring political points by comparing broadly defined atheism to narrowly defined theism, or comparing broadly defined theism to narrowly defined atheism. The lover of reason finds this move indefensible. Though the lover of hate-mongering bigotry tends to find this move very, very delicious.

Defending Trial by Jury

2011-12-30T07:53:00.002-07:00

Americans are not lovers of freedom and individual rights. It is politically naive to think that they are.

Cenk Uygur has an article calling for a political rebellion against President Obama because he is not the defender of civil liberties that Uygur and others wanted. To call his article politically naïve puts the case mildly.

(See, Huffingtonpost, Vote Against Obama in Iowa)

You have a choice in thus country. You can be an advocate for and defender of civil rights, or you can be President of the United States. You can't be both. The American people will not tolerate it. People like Uygur who insist that we have both are wholly irrational.

Do you want Obama to be a passionate defender of civil rights? You might as well tell him to appoint Dick Chaney as vice President, then shoot himself in the head. The effect will be the same. The effect on our civil rights will be the same.

Reached this conclusion even before the 2008 elections - that no matter who the Democrats nominated for President, he or she had better not defend human rights. If they did, the Republicans will play the fear card, remove that Democrat from office, and use the fear to generate an even more rapid destruction of civil rights.

The political reality of this was shown when the Obama administration made the attempt to bring the Guantanamo prisoners to the United States to face trial in federal courts. It would be hard to find a better defense of the principle of trial by jury.

However, the effect was a political outrage that resulted in the legislature blocking all funding for this move.

And the people cheered. It was one of the most politically damaging moves the President made in his first years of office - to make a spirited defense of the right of trial by jury. What the legislature did was an outrage against the Constitution and the principles on which it was built - and the people cheered and granted their political support to the perpetrators of this outrage.

For an account of the politics of this attempt to give Guantanamo detainees a fair trial in federal courts, you can read David Laufman, Guantanamo Detainees in US Federal Court

Now, Uygur wants the President to do the same again? Given the fact that he got no support and suffered a significant political hit the last time he tried this, what incentive is there for him to try again?

Obama learned from that attempt to defend the principle of trial by jury that it is a political suicide. The people will not tolerate it. It doesn't matter what the Constitution says on the matter - the Constitution only has force where the people are willing to see it enforced. Any principle that the people themselves refuse to defend is as empty as it would have been if repealed directly.

That is political reality. Like it or not, this is the real world. And when it comes to determining what to do we should at least pretend we are agents who have no choice but to act in the real world.

Given these political realities - given the fact that the lovers of liberty utterly failed to support Obama in his attempt to give the Guantanamo detainees a fair trial, the best that rational voters can hope for at this point is somebody who is willing to perform a delaying action. That is to say - he should make no attempt to retake lost ground (that option has already been tried and failed), and be willing to fall back if pressed to hard, in order to hold on to as many civil liberties as possible.

Ideally, this time would be spent rebuilding the stock of resources necessary to take back our civil rights.

Unfortunately, this time is being spent by people like Uygur ignoring history - ignoring the fact that a serious attempt was already made to retake lost ground and failed as a result of public hostility - and attacking the defenders from the rear. Effectively, Uygur's strategy amounts to, "We are going to withhold ammunition from you until you do more to defend our civil liberties."

Yeah, that's going to help.

What we are seeing now is the logical consequence of an utter failure to supoprt Obama when he was willing to stick his neck out in defense of a trial by jury. We watched his head get cut off and we did nothing. Now, Uygur thinks it is a good idea to condemn him for the learning the lessons we have taught. A defense of trial by jury will not be supported.

We are not going to get any defense of civil liberties in government until a love of liberty by the American people itself has been restored. The public reaction should have been an utter condemnation of the House leaders of this move - to the point of threatening their political careers. Uygur wants to send a message to the politicians in Washington - THAT would have sent a message. But, that is not the message that was sent.

Uygur lives in a fantasy world where he thinks he lives in a country that is opposed to indefinite detention and the assassination of American citizens abroad without a trial. If he were to live in a real world, he would realize that the propaganda of the economic elite has eliminated this love of civil rights and, instead, generated a love for the very type of police state that the economic elite finds most useful. We cannot have any effect by pretending that we have this imaginary army of freedom lovers ready to charge into battle. That army does not exist.

So, the first thing we must do is face this reality and start to rebuild that army from scratch.

In the mean time, we need politicians in office who can perform a delaying action that will give us time to rebuild a love of liberty in the American people.

Religious Liberty

2011-12-29T08:41:00.001-07:00

Al Qaeda has filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that current airline regulations regarding what passengers can bring onto an airplane violates its constitutional right to religious liberty.

According to lawyers fir Al Qaeda, the first amendment prohibition on Congress impeding the free exercise of religion implies that it has no authority to prevent Al Qaeda operatives from hijacking American airplanes for destructive purposes. These acts constitute the religious practices of a sect that demands that its members attack and destroy infidels.

Lawyers for Al Qaeda argue, "This is our religion, and Congress is impeding our free exercise of that religion."

Okay, there is no such lawsuit.

However, there are religious organizations in this country that are trying to defend a concept of religious liberty that, if we take them seriously, would make this type of argument appear sound. These organizations say that anything that can be defined as a "religious practice" - even if it is hurtful or harmful to the interests of those who are not members of that religion - must be respected by the government. Since attacking infidels fits this definition, the logical conclusion that this religious practice must be provided with constitutional protections.

The current form of the argument is one in which Catholic bishops in Illinois claim that "religious freedom" means that the government must turn a blind eye to the organization's practice of actions hurtful and harmful to the interests of other citizens when acting as agents of government policy.

The current policy prohibits money spent on organizations that facilitate adoptions and foster care from going to organizations that discriminate against homosexual couples. Because these Catholic organizations are all about hateful bigotry against homosexuals, they have been forced to make a choice. They can continue to act as government agents and give up the practice of conducting their affairs in ways harmful to the interests of homosexual citizens, or give up the practice of acting as government agents (and the government money that comes with it).

This, they say, is a violation of their religious liberty.

( See New York Times Bishops Say Rules on Gay Parents Limit Freedom of Religion)

The fact is that their religious liberty is not being interfered with.

Nobody is going to arrest members of this sect simply because they are members if a hateful and bigoted religious sect. No attempts are being made to outlaw the sect or make membership a crime. The right to freedom of religion protects sect members from this type of action.

Nobody is going to arrest members of this sect for preaching their brand of hateful bigotry to the public. While the potential victims of their primitive superstitious hatreds may have a vested interest in shutting them up, the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech prohibit this. Those prohibitions are not being threatened.

Nobody is going to prohibit members of this sect from engaging in private actions that express their primitive, irrational bigotry. In their private actions, they remain free to refuse to shop at businesses that are owned by gay couples and to refuse to watch shows with gay actors or that have pro-homosexual themes. They may freely use their hateful bigotry as a criteria in determining who gets their vote and who gets the benefits of their acts of private charity.

As citizens, they have a right to vote and to have a say in determining what government policies are. They have an opportunity to support candidates and to lobby the legislative and executive branches to get a permission for their agents to act on their primitive bigoted superstitions while serving as government agents. These rights are not being threatened.

However, there is no right to act in ways hurtful or harmful to the interests of other citizens while acting as government agents. The "right to religious liberty" does not provide this right. Those other citizens have a right to demand that the government treat them with the dignity due to peaceful citizens, even if certain primitive superstitious refuse to do so.

If these types of religious practices are given constitutional protection, then why not the Al Qaeda operative who wants to fly an airplane into a building filled with infidels? Or the anti-abortion opponent who thinks it is permissible to kill a doctor that performs abortions? Is it because these acts, unlike the acts of the anti-gay bigot are harmful to the interests of others?

Interfering with a gay couple's opportunity to adopt a child may not be in the same category as shooting them or blowing them up, but it is in the same category with respect to being hurtful and harmful to their interests. As such, it is not something that deserves special protection as a religious practice - at the expense of those citizens who would be its victims. Particularly when these sect members are being paid to act in the capacity of government agents.

Desirism and Neurobiology

2011-12-28T08:37:00.002-07:00

CNN has an article, Can a Molecule Make Us Moral?" that invites me to consider the relationship between desirism and neurobiology.

Simply put, the article reports that levels of oxytocin affects such things as whether an individual is trustworthy or generous.

Does desirism have a problem with that?

No.

The systems for morality are to be found in the brain. If desirism is correct, neuroscientists will discover that behavior is grounded on beliefs and desires, that desires are propositional attitudes, and that agents will act to fulfill the most and strongest of their current desires given their beliefs. It will discover that some desires are malleable, and that the mechanisms for change include reward and punishment. They will also learn the mechanisms for praise and condemnation and that they have the same effect as reward and punishment. All of these will have to do with electrochemical operations in the brain.

My greatest value from working with Luke Muehlhauser is that, unlike me, he had the time and the skill to look at current neuroscience in detail. We found a lot of correspondence between desirism and what neuroscientists were discovering about the brain.

For example, neurobiologists were able to look at the ways experience change an agent's long-term desires. Experience provides rewards and punishments - which have the affect of strengthening or weakening agents' desires.

We did not find a perfect fit.

I had been saying that rewards and punishments modify desires directly. The research seems to be suggesting that the learning effect springs from a difference between expected outcome and actual outcome. Expected rewards or punishments do not modify behavior. Though some of the later research we looked at suggested that current reward independent of expectation still has some role to play.

In developing desirism, I had claimed that the agent does not have to be the one rewarded or punishment for reward or punishment to have an effect on his moral character. The effect is generated by witnessing the reward or punishment - the praise or condemnation - of another person. This provides a role for public criticism and for public praise such as award ceremonies and other honors.

Neurobiologists tell us that we have mirror neurons. These cause us to experience the rewards and punishments of others as if they are our own - which is one of the mechanisms through which social forces mold our moral character.

Even works of fiction from religious parables to children's stories to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto shape our moral characters by making us a witness to the praise and condemnation - the reward and punishment - of others.

If oxytocin promotes generosity and tolerance, the next question to ask is how social forces such as praise and condemnation affect oxytocin.

I do have one long-standing objection to the way biologists approach the relationship between biology and morality. Biologists identify behavior as moral and look for the biological causes of that behavior. However, they gloss over the question, "What is it that makes this behavior moral?"

Higher oxytocin levels may end up being associated with opposition to capital punishment, for example. Does this answer the question of whether capital punishment is wrong? If so, how? How do you get from premises relating biological facts to attitudes about moral issues such as abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment, whether it is okay for 1% of the people to own 50% of the planet - to conclusions about whether these are, in fact, morally right or wrong?

One of the common links biologists draw is that if we are morally opposed to X, then it is wrong. It then looks for the biological underpinnings to our opposition to X and claims to be studying morality. However, this would imply that if we had a disposition to approve of killing all the Jews, then the Jews deserve to die. If we are disposed to enjoy having sex with our stepchildren, then it is morally permissible to do so. Nothing is right or wrong except insofar as a genetic accident makes it so. Alter our biology so that we can enslave others without moral regret, and slavery becomes morally permissible.

And what is the relationship between morality and social tools such as praise and condemnation about? If morality is grounded on some hard-coded biological fact, why praise or condemn others?

Desirism has an answer to the question of relating biology to morality that answers these questions. For moral virtue, we are looking for malleable desires that people have the most and strongest reasons to promote using social forces such as praise and condemnation. An agent may be biologically constituted such that he can kill the Jews without guilt, but this does not change the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to that kind of killing.

What makes aversion to such killings a virtue?

Well, people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to these types of killings using social tools such as praise and condemnation. And moral claims contain elements of praise and condemnation.

What more do you want?

A Basic Review of Desirism

2011-12-28T06:03:00.004-07:00

I base my posts in this blog on a moral theory called desirism.

Desirism holds that malleable desires are the ultimate object of moral evaluation.

A malleable desire is good to the degree it tends to fulfill other desires and bad to the degree that it thwarts other desires.

The degree that a malleable desire tends to fulfill other desires is the degree to which people generally have a reason to use social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote that desire.

The degree that a malleable desire tends to thwart other desires is the degree to which others have reason to use these same social forces to inhibit that desire.

A right act is the act that a person with good desires would perform. A wrong act is the act that a person with good desires would not perform. A permissible act is one that a person with good desires may or may not perform depending on other considerations.

Perhaps the most useful account of how desirism works can be found in the post The Hateful Craig Problem, which looks at the problem of trying to make sure that Hateful Craig will not do harm even when there is a chance he can get away with it. That post demonstrates how the principles of desirism would be put to use.

A commenter, Drake Shelton, is providing me as an opportunity to use his comments about desire utilitarianism as a foil for explaining some of the details of the theory. I tend to find these useful because it allows me to answer the claims of a real person rather than an imagined critic.

I want to start with this:

This falls prey to the problems with Utilitarianism. On your own admission then, the execution and torture of the inferior race gives pleasure to the superior race therefore it is the right thing to do. This theory also caters to totalitarians systems. In utilitarianism, the individual must sacrifice his own interests for the interests of the whole or the state.

No.

This criticism applies to a related theory that can be properly called "desire fulfillment act utilitarianism". That theory says that the right act is the act that would fulfill the most and strongest desires. That theory requires the conclusion that if the torture of a young child fulfills more and stronger desires than it thwarts (by fulfilling the desires of 1000 sadists while thwarting the desires of 1 child) it would be the right thing to do.

However, desirism evaluates desires - and evaluates actions only in a derivative sense. A desire is good to the degree that it tends to fulfill other desires.

The sadist's desire is a desire that tends to thwart other desires. In fact, it inevitably does so. Therefore, the sadist's desire gets counted as a bad desire. It is a desire that people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit through social forces such as condemnation and punishment. We have many and strong reasons not to want this desire around - and reasons to use our social forces to fight it, and to raise kindness and consideration in its place. Even sadists have many and strong reason to bring these social forces to bear to prevent sadism in others and to promote kindness in its place.

It doesn't matter how many sadists there are, it is still the fact that sadistic desires are desires that tend to thwart other desires. In fact, the more sadists there are, the more desire-twarting we can expect.

I go into this objection in greater detail in The 1000 Sadists Problem

Here's another objection:

Sounds much like psychological hedonism.

Well, it's not much of an objection, but I would like to use it to explain the difference between desirism and psycholoogical hedonism - a theory that was largely discredited 150 years ago but which is still popoular among many atheists.

Psychological hedonism holds that each of us only seeks two things - our own pleasure, and our own freedom from pain. Nothing else matters. Pretty sunsets, the health and well-being of our children, are all valued for no reason other than those are the means by which we can activate the pleasure centers in our own brain - or save ourselves from pain. We give to charity, we risk our lives to save others, we cry at funerals, because these are the tools we have for triggering the pleasure centers of our own brain.

Before I consider objections to this theory I would like to broaden the scope a bit for the sake of efficiency.

Psychological hedonism is an internal state theory. It holds that the only thing in the world that matters to an individual is having its brain in a particular brain state. Other internal state theories hold that happiness is the only thing that matters - or desire satisfaction.

Note: Desire satisfaction is not the same as desire fulfillment. Desire satisfaction is a feeling - much like pleasure or contentment - that one gets when one (thinks that) the world is going the way one wants it to go. Desire fulfillment, on the other hand, takes into consideration that a desire is a propositional attitude - it takes as its object a proposition P. (Thus, desires can be expressed in the form "agent desires that P") A "desire that P" is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which P is true. A desire that I am saving children from disease is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which the proposition "I am saving children from disease" is true.

I discuss internal state theories in detail in the post Internal State Theories.

Briefly, one of the major objections is that no internal state theory can handle the issue of the experience machine.

An experience machine is a machine that feeds electrical impulses into your brain that puts your brain in the state that the internal state theorist claims to be only thing that matters. Your brain is put in a jar, electrodes are hooked up into it, the electrodes produce the brain state of value and keeps it in that state.

Faced with this possibility, many people - most people - will claim that this is not what they want.

Desire fulfillment avoids the problem with the experience machine by holding that what matters to a person who desires that P is that P is made true. The desire to help protect children from disease can't be fulfilled by an experience machine. It can only be fulfilled by creating a state of affairs in which one is actually protecting children from disease.

Desirism is an external state theory. It holds that what a person with a desire that P seeks is (often) an external state - a state of affairs in which P is true - that will make the experience machine entirely unattractive.

There are other considerations to raise as well. For example, it is easier to tell a story of evolution whereby biological entities acquired at least some dispositions to change the world than it is to square evolution with the theory that they only acquire an interest in creating a particular brain state. Evolutionary success - procreation, for example - is an external state. External state changes are necessary for evolution.

Another post in which I draw distinctions between desirism and psychological hedonism (and other internal state theories) can be found in the post Egoism.

Oh, and I was accused in a comment against using a term in its own definition. That, in fact, is not the case. I illustrated a use of the term. Dictionaries, when defining a term, will often give an example of how the term would be used when it meets that definition. It helps to clarify the definition. The way that one might define the word "cow" by pointing to a cow.

The Year Ahead - Atheist Activism

2011-12-27T11:55:00.001-07:00

This is a time traditionally assigned to assessing one's place in the world and plotting a course for the year ahead. What should be the goal of atheist activism in the year ahead?

There seem to be a lot of people who think that every atheist should line themselves behind a single cause - marching lock-step behind a single message, without deviation or dissent.

I object to this way of thinking. It requires individuals to give up the practice of reaching their own conclusions based on an application of reason to the evidence available. Instead, it requires that each person obligate himself or herself to be a puppet obeying and serving the puppet master. Whether or not this form of power does good or evil depends a lot on the moral character of the puppet master.

The Republican party operates this way - and as a result it exercises political power out of proportion to its numbers. However, it has also seems to attract immoral people seeking to use this mass of unthinking puppets for their own personal use. Either that, or it elevates as leaders those members who are experts at the type of unthinking, irrational idiocy that this system requires.

I would not want the atheist movement to acquire this type of lock-step mentality.

Besides, I think it is useful to have different groups pursuing different objectives.

For example, I strongly disapprove of a pledge of allegiance that groups atheists with traitors, tyrants, and the unjust. I strongly disapprove of a national motto that segregates the community into groups of “we” versus “they” on the criteria of trust in God. However, I fully realize that no politician could get away with defending this position, even if he agreed with it. It is useful to have a community advocating the removal of these offensives. While, at the same time, others seek public office that will not advocate policies that will guarantee the position they seek goes to their political opponent.

It is good to have a PZ Myers harshly condemning all of creationism (on the grounds that it deserves criticism), while at the same time having others with their mind in the political realm taking a softer approach and seeking compromises that can actually have an effect on policy. It is not the case that one is a villain and the other is a hero. It is the case of two people pursuing means appropriate to their ends. The loss of either will be a great loss indeed.

In general, this means that we will have to accept as a working assumption that there will be a diverse set of groups that call themselves atheists, they will be run by people who have different ideas on how best to proceed, and some of them will be embarrassingly wrong.

There's another fact that atheist activism will have to accommodate in 2012 (or any other year) is that we do not get to pick and choose which of our leaders will become popular. This is true in the same way that we cannot pick and choose which YouTube videos will go viral. The culture itself will determine this - and will do so according to its values.

This means that, in 2012, the leading news stories will continue to be those that are embarrassing to atheists. This is simply because the critics of atheism have good numbers and an eagerness to embarrass atheists. Those people simply have no incentive to take an example of an atheist doing great deeds and sending it off to their friends - given that the bulk of those friends will likely to be hostile to anything that depicts atheists in a favorable light. Only things that cast atheists in an unfavorable light have much of a chance of making news.

This is how bigotry works. There is widespread bigotry against atheists in this country. That bigotry will grasp onto anything that serves its interest. Those are the things that it will introduce into and spread throughout the community - while ignoring and burying anything that does not serve this interests.

When we criticize those who "embarrass" atheists - but who do not actually do anything wrong - we are actually giving voice to and embracing the very same bigotry and prejudice that we complain against.

In the absence of bigotry, an atheist can do something foolish or embarrassing without this reflecting poorly on all atheists. It is only in an envirnment filled with anti-atheist bigots, eager to make invalid inferences from the specific to the general, one atheist's foolishness does harm to the image of all atheists. When we join in the criticism of the atheist activist by saying, "Don't embarrass us," we are simply giving bigotry and prejudice a seat at the head of the table.

Consider the fact that a religious person can do something foolish and embarrassing - it happens all the time - yet the community does not take this as proof that all of religion is defective.

Granted, some atheists make this leap. However, this only shows that some atheists are anti-religious bigots. I am not shy at calling them that. In fact, I am deeply embarrassed by the atheist community that, while they profess to be the champions of reason, their writings are filled with the bigot’s fallacy – repeated arguments that begin with premises identifying the immoral or irrational acts of a single person or small group that leap inexplicably to conclusions about "religion" in general.

I wish these would disappear from the atheist community – not because I think they represent poor tactics, but because they fly in the face of a commitment to reason that permits supporting only the conclusions that one’s premises will allow. The principles of reason do not permit the bigot's leap from the specific to the general.

They are just as immoral as anti-atheist bigots who make the similar move, begining with premises about the immoral or foolish actions of some atheist (usually Stalin), and drawing conclusions about all atheists. This is as clear of an example of the bigot's fallacy as one can imagine.

In light of this fact, I would suggest a different response in the face of atheists doing something foolish or embarrassing - or that you just don't like. You should use this as an opportunity to turn on those who commit the bigot’s fallacy and condemn them for their immoral conduct.

"Look, here's proof of how pervasive anti-atheist bigotry is in this country. Atheists are human, and in any group of humans you will always find some of them doing something foolish or embarrassing. Non-bigots recognize that all groups have a immoral and foolish members and refuse to condemn the whole group and dismiss them as not being characteristic of the group. Bigots, on the other hand, love to exploit this fact to belittle and denigrate whole groups of people in those communities that their bigoted mind wants to target. Where we see people using the foolish acts of some atheists to denigrate all, we see this bigotry at work."

This does not deny the legitimacy of criticizing certain things that atheist activists do. Some of them are simply wrong.

In the recent past, there was the sign that said of religion, "You know it is a scam". Setting aside the question of whether this is good or bad tactics, it is false. A scam requires an intent to deceive. Much of religion simply does not have the required intent (though some of it - a lot of it - certainly does) to be a scam.

I have noticed that, in light of the criticism this campaign generated, the message has changed to, "You know it is a myth," which is perfectly acceptable.

Nor do these arguments prohibit reasoned criticism of the methods used by others when those methods seem ineffective. There has to be a debate on the effectiveness of different means – both in terms of their effectiveness in realizing ends and the legitimacy of those ends.

However, it should be a debate grounded on evidence and reason – and much of it is not.

When I read about one group of atheists criticizing another group of atheists for actions considered tactically or strategically unwise (as opposed to being factually wrong), I immediately come up with two questions. These are questions that the critic almost never answers.

Question 1: What is your measure of whether something works?

A system works when it generates a state of affairs that fulfills the desires that the system was generated to fulfill. A change in desires implies a change in the lists of states of affairs that will fulfill those desires. This means that what works relative to one set of desires might not work relative to a different set. What works for you given your interests may not work for me given mine.

In determining whether something works one needs to first determine which ends it is meant to serve (and the merit of those ends). Then one must determine the effectiveness of the means available in achieving those ends - straight forward statements of cause and effect.

Question 2: How do you know?

In these debates about which strategies to use, I have noticed a shortage (in some places, a complete absence) of evidence in favor of one's position. People who participate in these debates seldom offer anything more than a gut feeling backed by anecdotal evidence - personal stories - unsurprisingly selecting only those stories that confirm the gut feelings of the person who picked and interpreted them.

We are supposed to be a community of rational, scientifically minded individuals. How about introducing some rational scientific evidence to claims about which tactics "work" and which do not?

In short, my recommendation to atheist activists is not to worry so much about what other atheist activists are doing. Instead, turn your attention on the anti-atheist bigots who so eagerly embrace the bigot’s fallacy of derogatory overgeneralizations.

Every group in existence has members who will be doing things that other group members find foolish or wrong. Usually, we do not feel our own reputation to be at risk by their behavior. Many people my age can do something foolish or wrong without me having the slightest sense that my own reputation has been harmed. The difference between groups where one persons foolishness harms the reputation of others and groups where it does not is the difference between groups where bigotry is at work in the community and where it is not.

We will never be able to end foolish behavior on the part of some members of the group. But we can tackle the bigotry that gives this foolishness unwarranted implications on the reputation of others.

Stripping Judiciary Powers

2011-12-23T06:01:00.001-07:00

An article in Bloomberg discusses the attitude of several Republican presidential candidates towards the judicial branch of government.

Among these, Newt Gingrich "says as president he would ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings he dislikes" and Ron Paul "would bar federal judges from hearing many cases involving abortion, same-sex marriage and religion."

(See Bloomberg: Gingrich Leads Revolt Against Judges by Vowing to Ignore Court)

I want to start by looking at what is in fact a major motivator behind many of these claims. There are a great many Christian theocrats - particularly church leaders - who would like to set up an American theocracy. This is a state where religious leaders get to dictate the direction that the country goes. However, the Constitution prohibits this. A lot of judges are doing their job - that is to say, they are upholding the constitution. That blocks these Christian theocrats from setting up a Christian theocracy. So, these Christian theocrats want to get rid of the judges or, at least, strip them from their power to decide issues relevant to the establishment of a Christian theocracy.

Of course they claim that they are seeking to protect the Constitution. It is politically necessary for them to do so. If they were to say, "We want to repeal the religious freedom elements of the First Amendment" - If they stated their true intentions - the American people would soundly reject their program. Consequently, they argue that the establishment of a Christian theocracy is somehow identical to protecting freedom of religion.

It is actually a simple argument to make - and it can be seductive to those who want to believe it. "If we are not permitted to establish a Christian theocracy, then we are not free. The government grants us liberty in practicing our religion. We practice our religion by establishing a Christian theocracy. Therefore, the government grants us the right to establish a Christian theocracy. Any attempt to block this Christian theocracy is a violation of our God-given rights as defined in the Constitution."

However, this argument is as invalid as that of a skinhead caught spray-painting a swastika and "Kill the Jews" on the door of a synagogue saying, "Hey, it's a free country. Don't I have a right to freedom of speech? I'm just expressing my opinion here. If you stop me from doing this then you are violating my right to freedom of speech."

More intelligent, thinking individuals would not be seduced by this type of argument. They recognize that the right to freedom to practice their religion, like the freedom of speech, has its limits. They roughly follow the model that, "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."

The right to freedom of speech does not grant one the right to express an opinion in spray paint on somebody else's property. The right to freedom of religion does not grant one the right to set up a religious theocracy.

One of the ways that our government is set up to avoid tyranny is by this method that establishes three branches of government, with a system of checks and balances between them. Let any one of them try for tyrannical power, and the others are set up to stand in their way.

Executive tyranny is blocked by the fact that the executive branch must depend on the legislature to pass laws and approve a budget. It is also blocked by a judicial system with the power to declare their tyranny unconstitutional.

A tyrannical legislature depends on an executive branch with the power to veto legislation - which the legislature can override only if it provides a super-majority. Legislative tyranny is also checked and balanced by a judicial that can declare its laws unconstitutional.

A tyrannical judiciary is checked by the fact that judges only have the power to judge cases that are brought before them and are appointed by the executive and legislative branches. Furthermore, the legislative and executive branches can work together to change the Constitution.

There are some who argue that these proposals from Gingrich and other Republican presidential candidates are a part of the system of checks and balances. As such, they do not work against that system.

However, a system of checks and balances requires that no entity be given a trump card that renders another branch totally impotent. An impotent branch of government can offer no checks and can create no balance.

If the executive branch can ignore any judicial decision it does not like invalid, then executive power is unchecked. It is worthless to even take a case to court. No matter what the judge decides, the executive will continue to do what it pleases. Consequently, judicial checks on executive power are eliminated.

Similarly, a law that says that judges may not render an opinion on certain issues is a law that gives unchecked and unbalanced power to the legislative and executive branches on those issues. Where there is no power to review or question, there is no check or balance.

Of course, this is exactly what the Christian theocrats hunger for - the ability to cast aside the first amendment protections against a theocratic government controlled by religious leaders for their own benefit.

It seems only natural for religious leaders to seek more power for themselves. They claim to speak for a God, but they are only human. Let's not forget that the God that they want us to obey is a God that they invented. They invented this God by projecting their own image onto a divine form. The message that they claim comes from God with a command to obey actually comes from them.

They are certainly going to be tempted to invent a God that says that they have the God-given right to rule humanity (in God's service, of course.)

It is an old-fashioned way of thinking. However, this does not mean that it has lost any of its seductive power.

The Cosmic Policeman's Influence on Moral Behavior

2011-12-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

I would like to comment to the following proposition:

Religion might bring comfort to some or allow them to behave morally because they think a cosmic policeman is looking over their shoulder...

This statement was made in a comment to a post a couple of days ago. I am taking this quote entirely out of context. As such, I am not responding to the comment specifically. Instead, I want to use it to point to an often-heard statement about the relationship between morality and religion.

The claim is that we need religion – or, at the very least, religion is a great benefit to us - because the threat of an omniscient all-powerful inflictor of harm on those who would act immorally motivates us to do good and avoid evil. Without this motivation, people will do less good and more evil.

Some will question whether an action is genuinely good if it is motivated by a desire to avoid personal suffering. However, that is not relevant to my current subject.

My interest is in an unspoken assumption often built into this claim - an assumption that has to be questioned. It is the assumption that the cosmic policeman is actually motivating people to behave morally.

In fact, it is often false.

God does not exist.

Most of my readers, I suspect, already believe this. However, sometimes an obvious premise needs to be stated.

God does not exist.

The cosmic policeman is not handing out some type of perfect moral virtue. He is handing out the moral beliefs of the people who invented him - rather ordinary human beings with ordinary human virtues and vices. Only a human with perfect moral knowledge can invent a perfectly moral god. Less perfect human beings invent less perfect gods. This is why when we take a serious look at the gods people invent we find beings that fall far short of claim of having perfect moral virtue.

If I were a less than respectable human being trying to control others, then I would need to worry about people disobeying my commands whenever they think they can get away with it. One way to remedy this problem is to say that I have an all-knowing, all-powerful invisible friend who they cannot hide from. He will know of their treason and he will ensure that they are punished severely. Those who believe me will then be motivated by this cosmic policeman to obey my commands.

However, this does not imply that those who believe me will be motivated to do that which is moral. This is something entirely different.

Of course, in my attempt to manipulate people, I would certainly insist that what I command is moral - that they have a duty to obey and that their life only has meaning if it is a life lived in service to my interests. These would be powerful motivators.

However, my claim that - let's say, attacking the next village and taking its people as slaves - is moral does not make the claim true. When I add that I have an invisible cosmic policeman who will punish anybody who fails to take part of this invasion or who undermines it, these beliefs will not generate moral behavior. They will motivate people into doing that which is immoral.

Finally, it takes just a very small shift to go from, "Do as I say, or my all-knowing, all-powerful friend will make you suffer," to "Do as my all-knowing, all-powerful friend says or he will make you suffer; now, let me tell you what he says." For all practical purposes, these are the same. Only, in the last case, I can add the claim that my all-powerful friend is a perfectly moral being so that, now, obeying him (actually, obeying me) becomes synonymous with doing what is right.

This gives us a situation where people believe that they have a cosmic policeman looking over their shoulder and believes that its commands are the model of morality, but the cosmic policeman is still nothing but an agent in service to the interests of the people who invented it. You cannot get from this to the conclusion that the behavior it motivates is actually moral.

Consequently, I am not at all comforted by the claim some people make that they believe this cosmic policeman is looking over their shoulder motivating them to be moral. People under the watchful eye of this cosmic policeman can be described as serving the interests of the god's inventors far more often than they can be described as doing what is moral. Let me provide an example of how easy it is to believe that there is a cosmic policeman who nonetheless helps a person behave in ways that are immoral. Our hypothetical case involves the pedophile priest who tells himself, "God must have made me this way for a reason. God works in mysterious ways that I, a mere mortal, cannot hope to understand. Obviously, He wants me in these sexual relationships with children. And though I run the risk of social condemnation, I know in my heart that I am doing what the cosmic policeman wants me to do."

We have a cosmic policeman looking over one's shoulder. However, the cosmic policeman this person invents is precisely one that gives him permission to do that which he wants to do anyway. It provides no motivation to do good or avoid evil.

The world is filled with people today who believe that they have a cosmic policeman looking over their shoulder who are motivated to do great amounts of evil - because this is the type of policeman they invented. In America, many these people are motivated to consider nothing in the world more important than acts harmful to the interests of homosexual couples in forming a marriage. They promote ignorance and stupidity in science and history classes, thwart the faculties of reason, ignore scientific evidence of potential future harms, and block all attempts to avoid those harms. They do all of this under the watchful eye of their cosmic policeman. They simply invented a policeman that considers these acts to be virtuous.

They struggle to create a nation that is "under" God. However, since there is no God to be under, for all practical purpose they are seeking a nation that is "under" those people who invent God - and they inevitably invent gods that serve their own interests. They pretend that they are asking us to pledge allegiance to God, when in practice they only seek to have us pledge our allegiance to them.

It is ironic that the type of person who would invent a truly good god is precisely the type of person who does not need one looking over his shoulder. While, at the same time, the people who would benefit by a god looking over their shoulder motivating them to do good are the people who will not invent such a god. They will, instead, invent a god that gives them permission to do the evils they are already inclined to do.

There is no comfort at all to be found in the fact that some people think that there is a divine policeman looking over their shoulder. That divine policeman is simply going to tell them what they want to hear anyway.

The Zombie Army

2011-12-21T08:30:00.002-07:00

If I were to categorize the most odious elements of the Republican party, I have to put at the top of the list their blatant disregard for facts and reason.

Evolution, climate change, the alleged historical accuracy of scripture - the Republican culture is one that completely abdicates rational thought and evidence. Their modes of thinking even extend to questions such as whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or whether Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11.

They live in fantasy world where they start with what they WANT to be true, and judge evidence and arguments on whether they support the desired conclusion.

They do not think.

Just to be clear, I am not applying this criticism to all Republicans, conservatives, or theists - but to a substantial subset that has abdicated the responsible use of their brain and a respect for truth and reason.

I do not doubt that there is a huge religious influence in creating this phenomenon. These are the dispositions that come from most types of religious training. "Have faith. Ignore evidence. Shut your mind off to reasoned arguments. Simply believe. It does not matter what you believe as long as you believe. Truth is irrelevant. Evidence can't be trusted."

Former president George "The Decider" Bush confessed that his decisions did not come from his brain. They came from his gut. We see how well that turned out. His decisions - his beliefs - proved to have no foundation in reality. But they did get 150,000 people killed.

They are not living in the real world.

Here is a case in point - historian David Barton's fictitious history of the United States.

Chris Rodda refutes Barton's claim that Jefferson signed his documents, "The year of the lord Christ." Barton attributed to Jefferson religious wording that actually was not Jefferson's at all. It was dictated by international treaty as the wording required for documents seeking safe travel at sea. Barton is even mistaken about Jefferson being the only President to use that language - since the treaty came into effect long before Jefferson took office and remained in effect long after he left.

Listen to the attached video.

No, Mr. Beck, Jefferson Did Not Date His Documents "In the Year of Our Lord Christ" from Chris Rodda on Vimeo.

Or read the transcript..

Either Barton is a fraud in the sense that he is presenting claims he knows to be false, or he is a fraud in the sense that he presents himself as a historian who has done his research when, in fact, he has not.

However, to his followers, fraud isn't a concern. It counts as bearing false witness, but it is not judged as worthy of any type of moral condemnation.

But, then again, consistency is reserved for beings who have the capacity to think and reason. Those with the brains of zombies have no trouble holding contradictions even this close together.

The function of this fraud is to provide social, economic, and political power to religious leaders.

Plese note that I said "function" and not "purpose". "Purpose" requires a particular level of thought and planning - it requires intent. Thought, planning, and intent are not commonly attributable to people whose mental faculties resemble that of your average zombie.

Its function is to create a herd of unthinking, easily manipulated intellectual zombies under the direction of a leader that then can direct this zombie army to serve the leader's purposes.

The larger the zombie army one controls, the more social influence one has. So, there is a strong driving force to recruit new zombies.

Of course, the effect of zombification is most effective when it is used on children. The largest and most successful zombie armies are those that can infect children at a young age. When a young child is turned into such a zombie, the effects are often deep and permanent.

Barton and Beck have little reason to be concerned that their fraud becomes known. Remember, the zombie army shuns evidence and reason. Evidence and reason require the exercise of mental faculties that have completely atrophied among those who make up the zombie army. The zombie army will continue to buy tickets to their shows. Corporations will continue to pay huge sums to show their products to the zombie army, particularly when it comes with at least an implicit endorsement by the zombie master.

In fact, much of the zombie army has lost the capacity even to recognize fraud - let alone generate a morally appropriate response to it.

Besides, the professor in this video - to be honest - does not have the stage presence of a Barton or a Beck. One of the facts about being a zombie master is that the zombie army is attracted to leaders based - not on their command of the facts, but by their stage presence. Can the zombie master put on a good show? If he can, the zombie army will follow.

Evidence like that presented in this video against Barton's history, evidence for evolution and human influence on the climate, evidence for the age of the earth, evidence of the errors in scripture - none of this has any power against the members of the zombie army.

You simply cannot ignore that much evidence and be anything other than an intellectual zombie.

Well, there might be a few for whom the process of zombification was not totally effective, but they do tend to be rare.

Responsibility, Religion, and Science

2011-12-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some thoughts on the war on Christmas and the conflict between science and religion.

The first question is: Can you get along with somebody with whom you disagree?

I sure hope so, because 100 percent of the population fits that description. If you cannot get along with those with whom you disagree, this will be a very lonely life.

But, a lot depends on the specifics of those disagreements. If a person comes at me with a sword and the firm belief that his God gives him an obligation to take my head, then he has a belief that will make our getting along problematic.

Can an atheist get along with somebody who believes in a god?

I think it is likely that all of us can and do.

Can we get along with somebody who uses religion as reason to take up a sword and do real harm?

That is problematic.

The person who picks up religion and denies others the happiness of marriage or harmless relationships suitable to their biological makeup? No. Here, religion is a source if harm. Its practitioners are due the same contempt as the man with the sword above. Just like the man with the sword, they need to be told, "No. You have crossed a boundary and deserve our contempt for doing so."

I will stress, in a nation that allows for free elections, the only legitimate response to a political campaign is a counter-campaign. Violence is not permissible. But it us a campaign where the harsh rhetoric of condemnation and contempt is warranted.

If a person comes with the religious belief that releasing a cloud of chlorine gas into a crowded city would be cleansing and no harm will come of it, that would put a strain on our relationship.

Where religion plants absurd beliefs that are a threat, not only to those who believe it, but makes them a threat to others, there is reason to object. The quality of evidence for evolution is far stronger than anything one would require in a court of law for convicting somebody of a crime. Evidence in science is never perfect, but it is the best actionable evidence available.

Furthermore, evolution is essential to fully understanding medicine, the environment, and the future of life on Earth. These are not idle beliefs that sit in the background and do nothing. Denial of evolution is like the denial of the effects if a cloud of chlorine gas released into a crowded city. It will cost lives.

And where attitudes towards this dangerous illness are under the influence if social forces, we have many and strong reason to direct those forces against coddling these dangerous delusions. It's practitioners - it's coddlers - put the lives and health of innocent people at risk.

This applies not only to evolution, but to every area where people adopt beliefs that influence their behavior towards others in ways that affect the lives, health, and property of others. The responsible person says, "There are important potential consequences here, I have an obligation to do my best to understand those consequences." the person who fails to do this is irresponsible, and deserved our contempt.

This is one area in which science wins over religion. In fact, this is an area where religion at its very best contributes nothing. It is as worthless as astrology and palm reading.

I will repeat that for any who might have trouble understanding. Religion, independent of science, gives us zero capacity to predict future events. This includes its inability to predict a "second coming" or what happens after death. But it also applies to predicting the occurrence and severity of natural disasters and providing ways of avoiding those disasters. Sacrificing virgins to a volcano god - or the contemporary American version of sacrificing homosexual relationships to the god of Abraham in any of its forms - will not prevent the formation of hurricanes or determine the location and severity of the next earthquake.

There are many people with religious beliefs that it is easy to get along with. They hold that they think there might be some higher purpose or divine spirit in existence. However, they acknowledge that they find it difficult to know anything about this deity and they do not use it as a basis for actions and policies that affect other people.

They may use it in their own lives, but never to direct the lives of others. And, where their actions may do harm, they allow science to be the ultimate authority in judging the consequences of their actions and policies.

Stepping outside of these bounds warrants our contempt, because those who do so risk the well-being of other people for no good reason.

Morally responsible people do not do such things.

Morality in Nature

2011-12-14T10:07:00.002-07:00

I have a sense that some people have taken my earlier posts to imply that we cannot find morality among animals. This has the added implication that we cannot look at the animal kingdom to find examples of morality that does not involve moral behavior - genuine moral behavior - that does not depend on a belief in God.

That implication is mistaken.

We can find examples of genuine moral behavior in animals, and we can use it as an example of moral behavior that does not require a belief in God.

We do not find it in an example of a rat freeing a confined rat.

We will find examples of genuine morality among animals in a group setting. What we are looking for is a system where members of the group use praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to alter the dispositions of other members of the group.

Examples of condemnation would include such things as bearing one's teeth, yelling (or making aggressive sounds), taking a threatening posture, or even a facial expression or ignoring the perpetrator in a particular context.

Punishment goes further. It actually inflicts harm on the perpetrator. It involves driving the perpetrator away or taking a non-lethal swat at the offender. It can involve driving the perpetrator away from available food. It may involve killing or banishing the perpetrator. In these cases, the moral lesson is not taught to the perpetrator as much as it is taught to all of the other members of the community. They see what comes from that type of behavior and form a corresponding aversion to it.

Rewards can take the form of grooming, sharing food, and allowing sex to those who exhibit behavior that the animal in question has an interest in promoting.

In a milder form, a facial expression or a friendly gesture can take the form of praise. It communicates to the other member of the group and to all witnesses that the behavior is welcomed and appreciated, forming in others a desire for that type of behavior.

Let us take a community of rats and observe them. Let us discover if there are behaviors in that community that are greeted with condemnation or punishment, or behaviors that are greeted with praise and reward. Let us observe what effects these social conditioning behavior have on the frequency of the types of behavior being praised or condemned.

Now, we have observations of animals in a state of nature - lacking a belief in God - setting up a true moral system.

Furthermore, I hold that these types of communities are very common in nature, particularly among primates.

More importantly, they provide a model for creating human communities in which moral behavior can be promoted and immoral behavior inhibited without a belief in God. Specifically, one uses social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to create in community members desires that produce behavior helpful to others, and aversions that reduce behaviors harmful to others.

We do not get our rights from God. We get our rights from the purely natural fact that there are some desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote or to inhibit. Our right to freedom of speech simply expresses the natural world fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to use social forces to promote an aversion to responding to words with violence.

In short, my objection to pointing to altruistic mice as an example of morality independent of God is that it simply doesn't make any sense. It requires a sense of 'morality' that is so alien and foreign to common usage that the person who uses it tends to sound rather foolish.

There are behaviors in nature that actually do fit the bill here. Those are the ones that people should be using. They actually make sense and they do not cause the atheist to appear foolish.

On Mice and Morals - A Second Look

2011-12-13T09:50:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, I made some comments about Luke Meuhlhauser's objective moral pluralism - the view that several moral theories may be correct because people adopt different meanings for their moral terms. It is "objective" given the fact that adopting a given language does not change what is true in the world. The diversity in our uses of moral terms suggests that it might not be productive to debate which moral theory is correct. In fact, it might be better to simply drop moral terms and focus on the facts of the matter - to "replace the form with the substance".

With this in the background, I would like to look again at the issue of "altruistic mice" as an answer to the theists' concern with the relationship between atheism and immorality. I am referring to claims that evidence if altruistic mice can answer the theist's assertions about the possibility of morality without God.

Bringing Luke's ideas into play suggests a different order to those responses.

(1) The theist's concern with immorality without God cannot be answered by examining the altruism of a rat.

You can't use this research to prove that humans will never be cruel to each other because we have some innate altruism that will simply cause kind behavior. A long and bloody history of cruelty proves that to be false. What the theist is interested in is preventing that type of cruelty that is far too common. Evidence of altruistic rats simply misses the point.

Here's the question. Without belief in God and fear of punishment in an afterlife, how do we get people to choose not to do the kinds of cruel actions they often do? How does your altruistic rat prove that I need not worry about my children bring raped, my bank account being drained, or being thrown into slavery or into a death camp? Are you trying to tell me that the rat's altruism proves that these types of things will not happen? If you are, you are more the fool than I have ever imagined.

(2) What makes altruism moral?

We have evidence of mice behaving altruistically, but gave altruism the quality of being moral? Can you give me a genetic test for the morality of altruism?

One option, clearly, is that when God created altruism then God gave altruism the quality of being moral. If God did not put morality into altruism, how did it get there?

(3) Can it be wrong to have a particular genetic makeup? Are certain genes obligatory?

If we are going to talk about a genetic basis for morality, this has one of two mutually exclusive implications. Either we have to say that people are morally obligated to have certain genes and prohibited from having other genes. Or we are adopting a theory of morality that simply has no place for moral obligation and prohibition.

Given that, so far, we have no ability to choose our genes, it seems we are stuck with the latter option. In other words, yes, rats may be genetically disposed to behave morally, but that is a sense of morality that makes no use of the concepts of obligation and prohibition.

On the other hand, the morality that theists talk about is a morality that is filled to the brim with talk of prohibition and obligation. It's not the same thing.

Once again, the claim that there is a morality found in the behavior of the rat does not answer any of the theists' concerns about atheism and immorality, because the rat's morality is not a morality of obligation and prohibition, and the theist's concern is with a morality filled with obligations and prohibitions.

(4) Rat morality would be a moral system where we determine the moral guilt or innocence of the accused by conducting genetic tests on the accusers.

Is homosexuality immoral? Does committing a homosexual act make it the case that one deserves to be put to death? Is it morally obligatory to stone a young girl to death for the crime of being raped?

If we take the claim that we get our moral code from our genes seriously, it implies that we can determine the answer to these questions by conducting genetic tests on the accusers. If the accuser is genetically disposed to feel moral outrage at those who have gay sex to the point that he wants them killed, then homosexual couples deserve to die. It is not just that he will seek to put homosexual couples to death. They deserve to die - because we get our moral code from our genes. This means that if our genes tell us that homosexual couples deserve to die, then they deserve to die.

This also raises a host of other moral questions. Which chromosome do we look at to determine the amount a person is obligated to give to charity? What genetic test should we conduct to determine if animals or zygotes or Jews are "people"? Where is the genetic marker for the wrongness of slavery and how did it spread through a the whole of society in just a couple of generations?

What happens if a person with a genetic disposition to view homosexuals as deserving to die meets one disposed to want the death of those who condemn homosexuality? Is there a way out of this situation other than a fight to the death? And what if one of them also has a gene that says that it is wrong to settle moral disputes through combat?

(5) Genetic morality faces the Euthyphro Dilemma

Against divine command theory, atheists argue (following Socrates), “Is X good because it is loved by God, or is X loved by God because it is good? If the first, then anything loved by God would be good. If God was turned on by having children raped and murdered, it would be good. If, on the other hand, it were the latter, then goodness remains a quality independent of what God likes. We still would not have an answer to the question of what makes something good.

Is X good because it is loved by our genes, or is X loved by genes because it is good? If the first, then anything loved by our genes would be good. If our genes were turned on by having children raped and murdered, it would be good. If, on the other hand, it were the latter, then goodness remains a quality independent of what loved by our genes. On this option, we still would not have an answer to the question of what makes something good.

Conclusion

The difference between this report and the previous report is that we are not going to argue here which moral theory is correct. We are simply going to look at the objective statements that are a part of each theory and see if there are any conflicts.

When we do this we see that those who apply moral concepts to the behavior of the altruistic rat are talking about something entirely different from those who worry about a link between atheism and cruelty. This essay identifies a number of ways in which the two subjects simply talk past each other. The speakers are using the same words, but talking about two different things.

Anybody who claims that these are the same concepts – that altruistic rat morality addresses the concerns about a possible link between atheism and cruelty. It is not a matter of which theory is correct. Both sets of claims could be right. Any impression that there is a conflict is merely an illusion, caused by using the same words but giving them different meanings.

The fact is, altruistic rats have nothing at all to tell us about how to address the issue of preventing the cruelties that history itself tells us that humans are very much able to inflict. Altruistic rats do not prove that theist concerns over human cruelty are baseless. They have not been baseless in the human past, and there is no reason to believe that they are baseless concerns about the human future.

Atheists look like fools when they point to altruistic rats as proof of something that the theist is actually concerned about.

Luke Meuhlhauser's Moral Pluralism

2011-12-12T09:56:00.001-07:00

There is an issue in the discussion of morality having to do with the meaning of moral terms. It came up in a recent comment where the author questioned whether the actions of an altruistic mouse or a cub-killing lion can be called "moral" or "immoral".

This attaches to the question of what moral terms mean.

Luke Meuhlhauser, with whom I have worked a few times, suggests a view called "moral pluralism". He holds that moral terms do not have one meaning - that they have different meanings for different people. With each different set of meanings there is a theory that corresponds to that set. Therefore, there isn't one moral theory that is correct. There are countless moral theories.

This sounds like moral relativism, but it is not. Objectively, these theories do not contradict each other - because the world itself does not contain contradictions. However, people speaking in one language may utter statements that appear as if they contradict the claims made in another theory.

For or example, one person may hold that what is right is that which is commanded by God, and what is right is that which is permitted by God is one moral theory. She uses "right" to literally mean "that which is commanded by God" and "wrong" as "that which God prohibits."

Another may use "right" to mean "that which maximizes utility", and "wrong" to mean "that which does not maximize utility is another theory".

These are two distinct moral theories. Both of them are legitimate. Both describe a way in which a person may choose to use moral terms. Both theories are correct.

However, these theories cannot contradict each other is because, no matter how we choose to use the terms, this will not change what is real. A person can have a theory that says that what is right is that which is commanded by God, but thinking it does not make it the case that there is a God that holds anything to be right.

Another person can have a theory that a right act is the act that maximizes utility. However, we can then ask, "What is literally true of the act that maximizes utility"? Does it follow that people generally have reason to praise such an act? Does it follow that the agent himself has a reason to perform that act? Does it follow that the act has a property of intrinsic goodness? Declaring an act "right" does not change its properties. Nor does it, by itself, give agents a reason to behave differently.

When somebody adopts a moral theory, they do not necessarily adopt a set of beliefs about the world. Adopting a moral theory is to adopt a language - to decide to use moral terms in a particular way. When two people adopt two different moral languages, they will sometimes have trouble communicating. Because those languages are very similar to each other, they may be confused about the nature of their disagreements - mistaking differences in languages as differences in beliefs.

On this account, desirism is one theory among many. I can defend the claim that desirism explains more of the use of moral language than any other theory. It makes sense out of the types of evidence that people usually bring in to defend moral claims. It is a theory in which some moral claims are true. However, it is still just one theory out of a very large set of possible theories. Meaning, it is one language out of a near infinite set of possible languages.

This view suggests that it might be better to abandon moral terms entirely. We should just be rid of them and, instead, simply stick to the propositions themselves and whether they are true or false.

Rather than saying that an act that maximizes utility is right, we can simply stick to the fact that it maximizes utility. Rather than saying that which God forbids is wrong we can simply stick to the claim that God forbids it - which is always false, because there is no God.

Applying this to the comment I referenced earlier, I argued that moral concepts do not apply to the case of a rat freeing a confined rat. Moral terms apply to behavior that we have the capacity to control through social institutions such as praise and condemnation. It makes no sense to say that a person is evil because he happens to have bad genes. It makes as little sense as calling a tornado evil for destroying a school.

However, if we apply Muehlhauser's approach we could have a different answer. Me and the commenter are speaking two different moral languages. On my language, praise and condemnation only apply to behavior that can be (and is being) molded through praise and condemnation.

In a different languages, those terms "moral" could mean, "Behavior we would praise if it were done by a creature with malleable desires." "Immoral" would mean "behavior we would condemn if it were done by a creature with malleable desires". On this account, it does make sense to say that the rat that releases another rat from confinement performed a moral action and the lion that kills the antelope performed an immoral action. However, this still does not imply that either action is praiseworthy or blameworthy - because they were not, in fact, the consequence of malleable desires we have reason to inhibit or promote.

Language is subjective. We cannot give an objective argument to the effect that one definition is correct and another is incorrect. We may, at our discretion, freely agree to alter the definition of our words. However, the ability to freely change the definition of words does not imply a freedom to alter reality. We can agree to use the term "carbon" to refer to atoms that have 8 protons rather than atoms that have 6. However, our decision will not alter the properties of atoms that have 8 protons or of atoms that have 6.

Muehlhauser presents a tempting view - and I have adopted it to some extent. In many cases, rather than fight about the meaning of moral terms, I simply provide the description and its implications and set the moral language aside. For example, instead of saying that something is wrong, I argue that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn it, and then give those reasons. Functionally, this says everything that I mean to say when I say that something is wrong. So, then, why add all of the confusion and complexity of actually using the term "wrong"?

This implies a reduced interest in arguing that desirism is the best moral theory and, instead, simply using the propositions that make up desirism (without the morally laden terms) to make the same claims in a less confusing language. Why put a lot of effort into arguing that desirism is the best moral theory when, instead, you can argue that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn violations of freedom of speech, or having sex with children - or to praise acts of charity or of pursuing education over mindless entertainment.

However, when it comes to entering into public debate on any subject, I do not think it is possible to leave moral terms behind. This, too, is likely to misinterpreted. Leaving moral terms behind may mean, to some, that everything is permissible (with each theory having its own account of what "permissible" means). This is not a legitimate implication. What is legitimate depends on how the term is used and if it makes a claim that is objectively true of that which is being called legitimate. Furthermore, I hold that people do substantially use moral terms in a way consistent with desirism. Therefore, desirism does allow one to communicate with people on matters of social importance in terms that they understand. Calling something wrong, for example, does, in fact, communicate that it is something that people generally have reason to condemn.

However, it is still a mistake to get caught up in a dispute of definitions that are not, at the same time, disputes over substance.

Altruistic Mice and God-Independent Morality

2011-12-09T08:15:00.002-07:00

A person does not have to believe in God to have absurd and irrational beliefs that bypass reason.

One of the beliefs relevant here is the belief that evidence of altruism in animals helps to prove that morality does not come from God. In fact, it is quite easy to demonstrate that proof of altruism in animals has nothing to do with morality.

This discussion is being prompted by an article in Wired magazine on a scientific study in which Rats Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy.

This is a study of two rats in a cage. One is free to move around the cage, while the other is in a very confined space. In this research, the free rat (relatively speaking) routinely releases the confined rat - allegedly for no reason other than an act of kindness.

The article itself doesn't mention morality. The error I am pointing to does not appear in the article. It appears in blog posts and comments about the article in which authors point to the article as proof that Christians are wrong about the possibility of morality without God.

Those blog posts and comments are written by people demonstrating such an eagerness to embrace a "Christians are wrong" conclusion that they utterly blind themselves to reason in order to reach that conclusion. In this, their behavior is much like those who abandon reason to reach the conclusion that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old or that the story of Noah and the flood is literally true.

I am going to ask those people to pause for a moment and think. Here are some questions to answer.

Question 1: What makes altruism moral?

Maybe altruism is evil?

You cannot make the leap from, "X shows altruism" to "X shows morality" until you can make the leap from altruism to morality. So, how do you cover that ground? How do you leap the chasm from "mice behave altruistically" to "mice do that which they morally ought to do"?

Does the free rat have a moral obligation to free the confined rat? Does the confined rat have a right to be free? Do these applications of moral concepts even make sense?

Question 2: What is the moral quality of predatory and parasitic behavior?

Evolution may have created altruistic rats - at least in these circumstances. However, evolution also created predators and parasites.

Evolution created a situation where, when a pair of male lions takes over a pride, they will kill the offspring of the previous lions. Is this moral or immoral? Or do moral concepts not apply?

What about the lion killing the antelope for food - a rather bloody and pain-inducing activity on the part of the lion. Is it lion acting immorally, or virtuously? Or, again, is it simply the case that we cannot apply moral terms to this behavior? If it is the latter, then why are we attaching moral terms to the altruism demonstrated above?

A wasp lays its eggs inside the living and paralyzed body of a spider. Moral or immoral? Or neither?

A bird lays its eggs in the nest of another bird that will then raise this chick as its own. Is this a morally impermissible act of exploitation? Does it make sense to apply moral terms?

What about taking the eggs of a bird and eating them. Is that immoral?

Demonstrating that certain behavior can be found in nature is not enough to show that we have discovered some natural morality. What we need is a way of demonstrating that the classification itself as moral, immoral, or neither can be found in nature. None of that is demonstrated by these experiments.

Question 3: So, are you telling me that, because we have this innate altruism, that evil is not possible?

Are you saying that I don't have to worry about people raping me or those that I care about, taking my property, practicing slavery, showing passive indifference to those in desperate need, lying, cheating, breaking promises, taking advantage of the elderly, engaging in assaults or bullying, about brutal dictatorships and blood-thirsty warlords and the like because innate altruism simply will not allow this type of behavior?

Of course it would be foolish to make that claim, given that we are surrounded by these evils.

However, when Christians express a concern that atheism undermines morality, these are the evils they are concerned with. They are afraid that, without religion, that the evils that humans are very much capable of performing will become a lot more common. Pointing to a pair of altruistic facts does nothing to counter this concern. The Christian only needs to point to the history book. While we can show that religion has been the source and justification of many of these evils and has often done nothing to prevent them, altruistic rats does not prove that they will become less common without religion.

Christians concerned with atheism undermining morality look at this research into altruistic mice and the so-called moral proofs that atheists draw from it and say, "Are you frikken serious? I know atheists are stupid, but you really do not need to these extremes to prove it."

Question 4: Are you saying that the mouse who frees the confined companion deserves praise and the one who doesn't deserves condemnation?

Morality is about praise and condemnation. It is about deserving rewards or punishment. That rape is wrong justifies inflicting harm on rapists, not only as a way of deterring rape but because the rapist deserves to be punished.

You can hardly draw a valid inference from, "I have a genetic disposition to want to kill people like you; therefore, you DESERVE to die." Or "I am genetically disposed to free you from that confined place. Therefore, I deserve praise for releasing you."

These experiments involving altruistic rats tell us nothing about who DESERVES to be punished or rewarded. In fact, the very idea of praising people or condemning them on the basis of their DNA is nonsensical.

Question 5: How are you going to use this type of research to answer moral questions?

What particular DNA sequence are we looking for as proof that homosexual behavior is permissible and child rape is not? What strand of DNA do we read to discover whether, and to what degree, the rich are to be taxed or whether we should execute murderers? Moral philosophers trying to answer questions about our obligations to the environment should look at which chromosome?

The purpose of these questions are to point out the fact that these particular biological premises are not even relevant to trying to answer moral questions.

As it turns out, moral questions concern a different subject matter entirely. Specifically, they do not concern innate biological dispositions. They concern the dispositions that we ought or ought not to learn.

Conclusion

I want to repeat that last point because it actually applies to this whole post. Moral questions are questions about the dispositions we ought or ought not to learn, and about teaching those dispositions to each generation through the use of social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. It is not about the things we do as a matter of biological necessity.

In addition, this line of questions demonstrates that atheists are just as adept at theists at abandoning reason and rushing to give a firm bear hug to conclusions that they like. This disposition is not a religious problem. It is a human problem. In this case, it results in atheists making claims and drawing inferences that are as absurd as anything you can get from religion.

Evidence of genetic or evolved altruism may be interesting. It may be good science and worthy of our attention and study. However, it does not prove that learned morality is effective or even possible without religious belief. It does not answer the question that theists are concerned with - and that we all have reason to concern with.

The moral questions are: What is the difference between good and evil? How do we know? And how do we cause people to perform those goods and refrain from committing those evils they are obviously capable of committing.

Scripture as a Source of Moral Knowledge

2011-12-08T08:30:00.002-07:00

I have sometimes used an analogy that compared a person who viewed scripture as the final word in morality to a doctor who viewed Hippocrates as the final word in medicine.

That hypothetical doctor would be considered entirely and obviously incompetent in the practice medicine in the 21st century. In fact, he would be banned from medical practice - deemed a threat to the wellbeing of would-be patients. He may claim that the writings of Hippocrates were divinely inspired and objectively true - founded on God's wisdom rather than the efforts of fallible humans. However, that would not excuse him from acting on those beliefs in ways harmful to the interests of others.

We have learned a lot in the past two thousand years. A competent physician would be expected to put that knowledge to use for the benefit of her patients - knowledge that cannot be found in and, in some cases, contradicts the writings of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.

Similarly, a person who holds scripture to be the final word in morality is just as incompetent to practice ethics - and for the same reasons. She, too, has to ignore everything we have learned in the past 2000 years. Her morality would be as primitive in the 21st century as the medicine of Hippocrates. She can rightly be said to be a threat to the well-being of other members of the community.

On giving this analogy some thought, I noted that we can extend it. I can imagine two different sects of Hippocratians. Both hold that the writings of Hippocrates are true and complete. However, only one group holds that the divinely inspired writings if Hippocrates are to be interpreted literally. For this group, any modern claims not found in Hippocrates represents blasphemy that must be rejected.

The other potential group of Hippocratians, in contrast, would hold that Hippocrates is not to be taken literally. They accept the claims of modern medicine, then return to the works of Hippocrates and say, "Here is where Hippocrates talks about radiation treatment for cancer. Here, we have a discussion of how mosquitos carry malaria. Here he discusses types of genetic disorders And over here we have a whole chapter on penicillin and other antibiotics - as well as information on bacteria and other microbes."

These Hippocratians might be able to practice modern medicine successfully - without being a threat to others. However, when we hear them talk about how all modern medicine can be found in Hippocrates this does give us reason to worry, just a bit. When they claim that they can find writings on antibiotics in the works of Hippocrates, what other odd ideas do they have, and how might this impact the way they treat patients? Is this going to distort their interpretation of new medical advances as they are revealed?

The moral equivalent of this species of Hippocratian are those who claim, for example, that all of our moral breakthroughs of the past 400 years of moral philosophy came from Christianity. They make claims such as saying that America was founded as a Christian nation based on Christian principles, and Christianity ended slavery.

Crediting Christianity with the end of slavery would be comparable with actually crediting Hippocrates with discovering a vaccine against Polio - by some modern physician who claims he can see all if the truths if modern medicine in the writings of Hippocrates.

In fact, if these moral truths were in scripture, why did it take 1600 years to discover them? It really would have been nice to find the words of the Declaration of Independence in scripture, and for Moses to have brought down from the mountain, not the Ten Commandments (many of which are not found in law and some of which are explicitly rejected), but the Ten Amendments. The right to freedom if speech and religion are as foreign to scripture as penicillin and radiation treatment would have been to Hippocrates.

One of the ways we can demonstrate the absurdity of the claims made by these hypothetical Hippocratians is by noting that Hippocrates is never the source of any modern medical breakthrough. These Hippocratians always discover these medical truths written in the works of Hippocraties after the fact - after they have been discovered by other methods. Furthermore, even errors, if widely believed, end up being discovered in the writings of Hippocrates.

Similarly, scripture is never a source of moral innovation.

For example, America was actually founded on the principles if the enlightenment. They cam from philosophers such as John Locke who tossed aside scripture and said that we can derive moral facts from an examination of humans in a state of nature. It was this method that revealed that humans, in nature, are equal. None have a natural right to rule or a natural duty to obey. They create governments to secure their life, liberty, and property. If any government becomes a threat to the life, liberty, and property of the people, then the people have the right to alter and abolish it - just like they have a right to alter or abolish any other tool that they create for human purposes, but which becomes a threat to their well-being.

As with an imaginary Hippocretian discovering passages about penicillin after the fact, people claim to find the moral truths on which America was founded in scripture after the fact. This only demonstrates that scripture is an object of creative interpretation. It does not show that scripture is an actual source of moral knowledge.

People who claim that they can get their moral knowledge from scripture deserve to be thought of the same way we would regard a physician who gets all of his knowledge from Hippocrates. If they truly believe that the writings of Hippocrates/scripture represent the literal and complete set if medical/moral facts as written, they are incompetent in the practice of medicine/ethics. If they make Hippocrates/scripture the object of creative interpretation, they may competently practice medicine/ethics, but this does not change the fact that Hippocrates/scripture long ago stopped being an actual source of medical knowledge.

World War II and an Irrationality of Conspiracy

2011-12-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today, December 7, 2011, is the 70th anniversary if the day that will live in infamy - the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into World War II.

It is also the focus of one of our more popular conspiracy theories. According to this theory, President Roosevelt knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor and kept the secret, helping Japan to destroy the American navy in a desire to get America into the war against Germany - Japan's ally.

It represents another example of people, impassioned by a love for a particular conclusion, blind themselves to truth and reason.

It is not just that there are problems with this thesis. All people make mistakes, and simple failures should be pointed out politely. The intellectually responsible person will revise their opinion based on new information.

The problem, in this case, is that some of these beliefs can be easily discredited with a moment’s thought, yet those people who embrace its conclusion continue to cling to these discredited arguments. Failure to recognize errors that a moment’s thought would expose demonstrates that those who hold to this error do not care to put in a moment's thought.

For example, a part of this conspiracy hypothesis is that by getting Japan to attack the United States, then Germany would have to attack the United States, and then America would be at war with Germany. This was Roosevelt’s goal and his reason for goading Japan into making the attack.

Here's a problem.

It is not true that Germany had to declare war upon the United States. In fact, it would have been (and was) foolish for them to do so. Germany DID declare war on the United States, but that was based on a false assumption that a wiser Germany would not have made.

But didn't Japan and Germany have a treaty that required Germany to declare war on Japan's enemies?

No.

Japan and Germany had a treaty requiring each country to aid the other if the other was attacked by a currently (at the time of the treaty) no belligerent nation. But it gave no obligation to attack if the axis country attacked first.

The issue here is not just that those who advance this theory made a mistake about the requirements for Germany to declare war on the US. It is that anybody with a basic knowledge of that history already has all of the information necessary to realize these facts, and often present that evidence in the very same context in which they promote this conspiracy.

In 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Was Japan was forced to also declare war on the Soviet Union at that time?

In fact, Japan did not declare war on the Soviet Union. Japan and the Soviet Union remained at peace until 1945, when the Soviet Union attacked Japan – a fact known and sometimes stated in the same context in which an agent declares that Roosevelt provoked Japan to attack the US as a way of entering the war against Germany.

Germany had the option to doing to Japan what Japan had done to Germany. Germany attacked the Soviet Union and got no help from Japan. When Japan attacked America it might not have gotten any help from Germany.

So, if Roosevelt wanted to go to war with Germany by getting Japan to attack the United States, this was a very risky strategy to pursue - with a very large and potentially self-defeating cost. One of the effects might have been that Germany did not declare war on the US, and the American people saying, "We are already at war with Japan, we do not need another war with Germany."

Many of the people who make this assertion - that the US goaded Japan into attacking the US so it could enter the war against Germany - know this history. However, these facts do not support the agent's politically desirable conclusion, so the truth is ignored. All of the pieces are there for a person concerned with the truth to see, but are easily overlooked by anybody less concerned with the truth than with promoting their political tribe.

This is yet another clear example of people impassioned by a conclusion to a degree that abandons reason and truth. As soon as I hear that argument, I know that providing evidence and reason is a waste of time. I am talking to a political dogmatist - someone whose passion for a politically weighted conclusion outweighs their interest in the truth. Whereas attempts to use reason and evidence on those individuals presupposes an interest in the truth they may not have.

Shiller and the Awfulness of the 1%

2011-12-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

In an opinion piece on the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, Bradley Shiller asks, "What is so awful about the top 1%?"

He paints OWS as class warfare - "us" (the 99%) versus "them" (the 1%). And then he paints the top 1% - or, admittedly, the top 0.0000013% in heroic terms that do not deserve to be subject to the abuse that OWS is heaping upon them.

Those 1 percenters are not an avaricious "them" but in reality the most entrepreneurial of "us." If we had more of them and fewer grandstanding politicians, we would all be better off.

(See: Los Angeles Times, What Is So Awful About the 1%.)

Well, actually, by definition we can't have more of "them". The top 1% will always and only be 1% of the population. You cannot add even one more of "them" unless you kick some other member out or add 99 more of "us".

However, the main point I want to make is that there is absolutely no sense to be made of this argument.

Shiller takes a hand-picked subset of a group - selected precisely because they have a quality he wants to highlight - and from that draws a general conclusion about the whole group. He includes in this list Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, and others who are considered cultural heroes who made their billions producing products such as eBay, Google, Apple, Pixar, Facebook, and other products that have enriched our lives. He paints them as nearly divine heroes, not people to be vilified the way OWS vilifies them. And then argues that the whole 1% is made up of divine heroes who should, it seems, be worshipped rather than vilified.

In other words, he takes a small subset of the group hand-picked for having a quality he wants to highlight, and infers that this quality belongs to the whole group.

It would be just as valid for me to select ten convicted felons, now known to be innocent – hand selected precisely because they have this quality that we now know them to be innocent - and use that to argue that everybody in prison was wrongfully accused of their crime.

Nobody would fall for this argument when applied to convicted felons. In fact, anybody who tried this form of argument would be laughed out of the room. "Here is some nut who obviously left his brain in 'idle'."

But we are not to notice that Shiller's argument is no less stupid.

For what it is worth, Shiller is described in the article as, "[P]rofessor of economics at the University of Nevada-Reno and the author of 'The Economy Today.'"

When somebody uses a wholly invalid argument such as this, one of the questions that I ask is, "What is it that caused him to present such a flawed argument?" I consider it remarkable that Shiller with his background and others are so utterly blind to the obvious failings of this argument.

Two main reasons come to mind.

One possibility is that some public relations company, relying on surveys and focus groups, was able to determine that this form of argument is effective in obtaining a political end. In this case, the political end is securing the wealth of the top 1%. This research is useful and can be sold to those who have the wealth that these findings can help protect. They then sold a service (to those who have the money to pay for this service) of muddying the social debate on this issue by filling it with this muck. At that point, they identified people willing and able to get these talking points out to the public, and we end up with an article like the one above.

Another possibility is that the author has adopted a dogma - a virtually religious devotion to the divine worship of the top 1%, where his piety has blinded him to reason, at least on matters in which his religion is concerned. Any argument that serves the religion is granted credibility and preached as if true - no matter how absurd. Even if the author himself has doubts about the argument – it still serves a divine purpose. A poor argument that serves a divine purpose should still be expressed.

In practice, it is likely a combination of both. Public relations groups discover which messages will work and get those arguments to the true believers, who will then repeat them with all sincerity, never once stopping to question the soundness of those preachings. Or, if they do question its soundness, they dismiss the issue on the grounds that they are serving the cause.

For my part, the issue of the top 1% has nothing to do with the moral quality of those who have the money. If we were shipwrecked, and somebody managed to save several cases of bottled water, the claim that he should share it has nothing to do with the moral quality of the person who got the water – though I would make a moral judgment of him if he refuses to share.

As I see it, we have run up $15 trillion in debt over the past 30 years. It has to be paid back. There is a block of people saying that none of the burden of paying back this money should fall on the shoulders of the top 1%. Those obstructionists have blocked legislation and brought government to a standstill in defense of this claim that the 1% that controls 42% of the wealth (and a substantially larger percentage of the disposable wealth) shall suffer 0% of the burden.

It is also relevant to point out that, in those 30 years of running up the deficit, that same top 1% has pocketed nearly all of the benefit. Their average income has increase by $700,000 per year. The bottom 90% is, on average, getting by on $900 less per year.

Yet, our political system is still being plagued by those who say that people making $700,000 more per year should bear none of the burden of $15 trillion in debt – that we should be looking primarily at adding to the burdens of those making $900 less.

That idea deserves protesting.

Shiller actually argues as if we have no hope of finding people in the other 99% who are as heroic as the semi-divine beings he finds in the top 0.0000013%. The teachers, doctors, parents and relatives, the people who established and maintained the schools and streets, performed the research, and kept society running are not as worthy as those who pocketed the great quantities of cash. Without this assumption, it is impossible to explain how one can get from the premise that the presence of these divine entities in the top 1% implies they should have none of the burden of paying back the debt, and that it belongs squarely on the shoulders as everybody else. The other 99% does not contain the type of divine entities that would grant this immunity.

It's an absurd argument - but true believers are quite capable of finding absurd arguments to be incredibly convincing.

Discovering Life on Distant Planets

2011-12-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

This post concerns an item of personal interest.

It is really looking like, by the end of this decade - indeed, within the next couple of years - we will be able to point to a spot in the sky and say, "Over there, there is an earth-like planet with life on it."

It will likely only have single-celled life, but it will be life, and we will know that it exists.

Today, at a science conference held by the team that operates the Kepler space telescope, researchers announced that the Kepler telescope has now discovered 2,326 planet candidates.

(See NASA: NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star)

The way science works, a scientist can't just shout out that he knows something. She has to say why she thinks she knows something, and then wait for somebody else to confirm the findings.

With the Kepler telescope, a "planet candidate" is evidence that a sun has dimmed three times at regular intervals - hypothetically because an orbiting planet has orbited between that sun and the earth (blocking a part of its light). There has to be at least three dimmings because that is the minimum required to determine that the equally strong dimmings are evenly spaced.

But even then, some other telescope has to take a look at the star and determine if it, too, sees evidence of a planet.

So, the Kepler observatory has, in effect, turned over 2,326 suspected planets to other researchers to confirm (or not).

At this conference, it was also announced that researchers have confirmed that one of Kepler's planet candidates is an actual planet - a little larger than earth (about twice its size) - orbiting in the "goldilocks’ zone". That's the distance at which a planet is not too hot or not too cold but just warm enough to create a warm, wet, life-making planet.

The next part of the discovery comes from the fact, if the planet has an atmosphere, then some of the sunlight will travel through that atmosphere on its way to earth. As light goes through the atmosphere, its gasses will absorb certain frequencies of light depending on the gasses present. We will be able to tell, for example, whether the planet has an atmosphere rich in nitrogen and oxygen, or some other chemical compounds.

This will not determine with absolute certainty whether the planet has life, but there are some atmospheric mixtures where the presence of life will be the best explanation of how that planet maintains the atmosphere that it has.

On earth, for example, our atmosphere filled with oxygen was created by several billion years of plant life freeing oxygen from carbon dioxide and trapping the carbon in oil, coal, natural gas, and sedimentary rocks.

By the way, these tricks that will allow us to find another planet around a distant star and determine if it has life - beings living on other planets can apply to Earth. If that alien life lives in a narrow part of the sky that will see the earth pass in front of our sun, and if they are close enough given the size and complexity of their scientific instruments, they will see our sun dim once every 365.2 days. They will get a reading of our atmosphere showing a lot of nitrogen and oxygen and a little bit of everything else.

They wouldn't get much of an indication of human intelligence - at least not yet. If they were 1000 light years away, then they are seeing today what our atmosphere looked like 1000 years ago.

However, in about 900 years, they will start to notice changes in the data that comes from Earth. Carbon dioxide levels will increase. There will be a sudden increase in night-time luminescence - meaning that the dark side of the earth is not as dark as it once was. This will be due to the array of city lights shining on the dark side of the Earth.

There is no telling what they will think of these changes, however. Perhaps it will be attributed to volcanic activity, or a large forest fire. I am certain that these will not be the first abrupt changes they have seen on Earth.

However, with continued observation, focusing instruments on the Earth that we already know how to build but which we have not yet built – they can get some very precise images of Earth. They would even be able to see cloud patterns, the shapes of the continents, and the pattern of lights that identify our cities at night. They would know that we are here.

Or, they would know that we were here 1000 years ago. They will have to wait to discover what happens next.

The Possibility and Moral Relevance of Absolute Certainty in Science

2011-12-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece discussing global warming states that "absolute certainty is not scientific".

(See, Wall Street Journal Absolute Certainty Is Not Scientific.)

And the first question that came to my mind was . . . .

"Are you absolutely certain of that?"

The article tried to use this as a criticism of global warming claims - criticizing scientists who say that they are absolutely certain that human CO2 emissions are caused by humans and they are contributing to rising global temperatures.

What this question points out is that, while some elements of a scientific claim are uncertain, some can be quite certain.

I am absolutely certain that the earth is round - or an "oblong spheroid", as they say.

I am absolutely certain that water is made up of 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen.

There is this small thread of doubt that I have that maybe, some day, scientists will come up with a whole new way of looking at matter - one that makes no use of the concepts of "atoms" or even "planets:", and these claims will have to be discarded. It's possible. But the possibility is so slight that it has no practical weight. Anybody who bases a public decision (e.g., decides how to vote on legislation) on the basis that the world just might be flat or water is not composed of hydrogen and oxygen can be viewed as being irresponsible.

The article applies its principle that absolute certainty is not scientific against a claim by Paul Krugman:

For me, the extreme limit of this attitude was expressed by economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, who wrote in his New York Times column in June, "Betraying the Planet" that "as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason—treason against the planet."

Even if some of the science on global warming contains uncertainties, it is still the case that some of the arguments used against those claims are utterly contemptible.

I have spoken against some of these arguments before.

They include the recent "quote mining" of some emails to generate impressions about the claims of scientists working on climate change that are simply and blatantly false. One can call this "a form of treason" without exaggeration. Yet, it does not require saying that the science of climate change is absolutely certain. It requires saying that this quote-mining is deceptive and the desires that would motivate this type of behavior warrant utter contempt.

(See my earlier post, The New Climate Change Email Fraud)

Another is the claim that the current science cannot be trusted because news magazines (not peer-reviewed scientific journals) 40 years ago contained articles warning about an upcoming ice age. The claim is that the scientists were wrong then, so their claims now can be dismissed as probably wrong as well.

There are three errors in this form of reasoning.

(1) Scientists were not wrong then - the articles were written by journalists, not scientists. It is simply false to claim that these articles represented the claims of scientists.

(2) The scientific peer-review literature contained no predictions of an upcoming ice age.

(3) Even if scientists were wrong at time 1, this does not imply that their claims at time 2 are wrong. Scientists once thought that malaria was caused by "bad air". One can hardly argue that, since scientists were wrong 200 years ago that all of the current research and knowledge related to malaria can be thrown out.

Here, once again, we can inquire as to the moral character of those who would use these obviously flawed arguments again and again against in order to manipulate the public towards certain political and economic ends - namely, to profit a small segment of the population at a risk to everybody else.

Another point that I have made before is that the moral condemnation does not depend on certainty - it depends on creating risk. I cannot say for certain that the drunk driver will kill somebody as he tries to get home at 2:00 in the morning. He might make it safely. But, he is creating a risk for others that he has no moral right to create. Others have no moral obligation to accept that risk.

I do not need to make absolutely certain claims about global warming to condemn those who refuse to take action against it. It is sufficient to argue that those who contribute to global warming are creating a risk. Their behavior, in fact, is worthy of orders of magnitude more condemnation than we would give to the drunk driver - because the drunk driver is risking only a fraction of the harm as the global warming denier.

This "uncertainty" argument is another morally reprehensible argument. It fails on two counts. The first is that there are, in fact, a great many scientific claims that are, in fact, "absolutely certain" for all practical purposes.

The second is that the lack of absolute certainty is not an excuse for inaction - it is not an excuse for putting things off. Risk and uncertainty still have a great deal of moral weight.

It is utterly, morally irresponsible to pretend otherwise.

International Day of Protest Against Child Religious Grooming

2011-12-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

On Facebook, I received an invitation to "a day of protest against child religious grooming" - January 15th.

(See Facebook Day of protest against child religious grooming)

I am not yet certain what is it is about. However, it seems to relate to religious indoctrination. I wonder if the term "grooming" was selected to draw an association to what child molesters do - groom a child for a sexual relationship. That would be a sinister description. Is it accurate?

Desirism - the moral theory that sits at the foundation of this blog - is not inherently opposed to indoctrination. There are those who speak as if indoctrination itself is an inherent evil to be always prohibited. However, that attitude against indoctrination is not just impractical, it demands that which is not even possible.

Let's start with an obvious case - learning a language. We can image a parent saying, "I am not going to indoctrinate my child into a particular language. I am going to raise my child language-free, and allow my child to choose a language for herself when she reaches an age where she can do so. I also demand that others respect these wishes, which means that I condemn anybody who ever attempts to indoctrinate my child into their native language. Everybody in the community is obligated to provide my child with a language-neutral environment in which to grow up."

This is obviously absurd. While it is possible to raise a child in a language-free environment, this will not do the child any favors. Nor will the child ever be equipped to simply choose a language at some future time and be a competent native speaker of that language. This suggestion simply is not engaged with the real world.

In that real world, children are indoctrinated into language, into a wide range of beliefs, and into a number of social attitudes. From the moment we learn words such as 'mommy' and 'daddy' we are being indoctrinated into a set of cultural norms - norms that will color our thinking through our entire lives. This is the way the world works. As we discuss social policies, let us at least discuss policies that have some relationship to reality.

Furthermore, we need these norms.

Here is another clear example. We can imagine a parent saying, "I am not going to indoctrinate my child into driving on the right side of the street or the left side. I will let my child grow up to make up her own mind. The same goes for the convention whereby a green street light means permission to go, and red means stop. I demand that my child be at liberty to adopt the standard that green means to stop and red means to go."

Again, clearly, is an absurd proposal. The well functioning society requires that children be indoctrinated into certain modes of behavior. It is also inevitable that people are going to disagree over exactly which modes of behavior it is essential to indoctrinate children into. These are facts of the world in which we live. Let us not pretend that the world is different.

The modes of behavior we have reason to indoctrinate children into include moral norms. Let us imagine a third example - a parent saying, "I am not going to indoctrinate my child into any particular attitude regarding race or gender. I want to raise my child with a neutral attitude towards the KKK and to allow him to choose for himself at the appropriate age whether KKK memberships and beliefs are right for him. I also want him to be free to adopt his own attitudes towards rape, or to killing people who he thinks get in his way. Furthermore, I insist that nobody else in this world try to indoctrinate my child into adopting their attitudes towards this type of behavior."

The very purpose of parenting is to indoctrinate a child into certain attitudes regarding how to treat others. The parent who fails to indoctrinate their child into certain values is worthy of our condemnation.

So, indoctrination itself is not evil. Whether indoctrination is good or evil depends entirely on its content.

I would hold that the practice of childhood indoctrination should aim for true beliefs and good desires. Furthermore, this indoctrination should include a healthy respect for the true proposition, "Maybe we are wrong. Feel free to double-check our work."

Now, we get to the subject of religious indoctrination.

The principles I expressed above would make me an opponent of the religious indoctrination of children. Religious indoctrination violates the true belief criterion for what the indoctrination of children should aim for. A properly raised and educated child will be brought to adulthood with the recognition that the God and Jesus are just as imaginary as Zeus and Hercules - even of the latter element of each pair was based on a real person. These are primitive myths fit for primitive cultures.

Children raised in ignorance of these facts are done a disservice. Notice that I do not call this abuse - as some do. This is because abuse requires either intentionally or knowingly doing harm or, at best, not caring. While many of these acts do not qualify as the abuse of a child, they still qualify as doing a disservice to the child.

Once again, these types of statements also require a health respect for the proposition, "Maybe I am wrong". The possibility of error rules out the use of violence to bring about these ends in all but the most extreme cases where the harms are significant and the chance of error particularly small. In most cases, people are limited to using the tools of reason, praise, condemnation, and private rewards and punishments. "Private rewards and punishments" refers to those rewards and punishments that can be built into legitimate private actions such as deciding where to shop, who to vote for, who to friend or who to unfriend, what to watch or read, what charities to contribute to, and the like.

So, religious indoctrination is a social ill which should be stopped, but the legitimate tools for doing so are limited to reason, praise, condemnation, and private rewards and punishments.

New Climate Change Email Fraud

2011-11-30T09:12:00.002-07:00

It is . . . interesting . . . to discover that the world is filled with so many people eager to provide a smoke screen - often without pay - for those who are willing to profit from the destruction of lives and property on a massive scale.

This actually amazes me each time I see it - that such a large community of blatantly vile creatures should exist.

This disgust is directed at climate change deniers who are now using a new set of leaked emails to create another smoke cloud behind which millionaires can continue to profit from activities threatening the large scale destruction of lives and property of those who have very little to begin with.

Here is one of the quotes from those emails.

[T]he trick may be to decide on the main message and to use that to guid[e] what gets included and what gets left out.

Clearly, this is definitely proof of a sinister plot. First one decides on the conclusion one wants to peddle. Then, one cherry-picks the relevant data with an eye to including that which supports the conclusion and leaving out that which does not.

Right?

Actually, this quote comes from an email from Jonathan Overpeck to Ricardo Villalba on how to create a half-page summary of an article. Obviously, you can't create a summary by including everything in the article. You have to decide on the main message of the article (ignoring tangents and lesser concerns) and use that to determine what information to include in the summary.

Furthermore, the very next line in that email reads:

For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change. Moreover, we have to have solid data - not inconclusive information.

Here is another of the quotes:

We really don't want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written . . . We'll have to cut out some of his stuff.

What is this bullshit that Michael (Schulz) had written that needs to be cut out? The context of the email tells us that Michael had was glossing over of the uncertainties and complexities in the climate science and thus presenting conclusions as being more solid than the evidence (others argued) was warranted. He was hiding the fact that some of the science was messy.

If the creatures who lifted this quote had included the next sentence in that email.

What we want is good honest stuff, warts and all, dubious dating, interpretation marginally better, etc.

There is no way that those who lifted the quoted material could have missed the sentences that followed. But those sentences gave the quotes a context that made the emails less useful, so the creatures who did this work left those sentences behind.

They then offered this material to an army of lackeys who they knew would care nothing about the truth of the matter and who would simply parrot the information provided, adding their own condemnation to the sinister scientists and government agents who were obviously conspiring to perpetrate a hoax for the purpose of gaining money. They pretend that they view this type of behavior as worthy of condemnation, yet they are engaged in the very type of behavior they are pretending to condemn.

The final result - the end that provides the initial motivation behind these activities - will be that harvesting of profits that will generate death and destruction people might have otherwise avoided can continue.

Make no mistake, these people would prefer to see you or your children or grandchildren dead over giving up a dime of profit or of putting an iota of effort into discovering what is true or false about the issue of climate change. You cannot explain the type of behavior we are observing here any other way.

When I see behavior such as this, I understand the interest in an afterlife in which these types of creatures get the treatment they deserve from a divine source of cosmic justice. There is some pleasure in the thought of them being made to suffer in proportion to the harms that their immoral behavior created for others. It would also be nice if this cosmic justice would give the victims of this behavior an after-life that had a quality that was denied to them on earth but creatures such as this.

However, cosmic justice does not exist.

And I wonder, at times, if a belief in cosmic justice in an imagined afterlife makes some of us morally lazy in this life. If one thinks that a divine justice will take care of these matters in the long run, does that make it easy to shrug off those injustices in the real world? Does it make it easier for villains to profit in this world? I hasten to add that the right to freedom of speech forbids one from responding to words with violence. But we can still make it clear to the world what types of creatures we are dealing with here - and we can still put effort into limiting the success of those who would kill, maim, and destroy for profit in this world.

You can find out more information on these emails at ThinkProgress The Climate Scientists Who Wrote the Hacked Emails Explain the Cherry-Picked Phrases

Apologies and Forgiveness

2011-11-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

We have had two news events recently concerning the issues of apology and forgiveness.

The first is an incident I mentioned yesterday. It concerns a shop owner who put up a sign that said, "Skepticon is NOT welcomed in my Christian Business." he took it down 10 minutes later and issued an apology.

It is an apology that PZ Myers has decided not to accept.

GelatoGuy lives in one of the most religious countries on earth, in a particularly intensely religious part of that country, and in a moment of smug self-righteousness, felt he could openly discriminate against people who do not respect his beliefs. And now he thinks he can walk away, forgiven, and return to his blithe happy Christian pocket universe, just by saying a few words. And we, of course, will turn around and think he’s a nice , sincere, classy guy. Meanwhile, we will still be regarded as the least trustworthy minority in the country; we still have to deal with the fact that we are excluded from the political discourse; we still have to walk into courtrooms with the ten commandments on display; we have to watch these nice, sincere, classy people elect gay hating bigots, anti-science know-nothings, and flaming misogynists to high office…

See Pharyngula, Fair Weather Atheists and Sunshine Skeptics"

In the second incident, Kansas high school senior Emma Sullivan was called into the principle's office and told to submit an apology to Kansas governor Sam Brownback fit tweeting, "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person, #heblowsalot." apparently, the Governor's communication director felt that the comment wasn't respectful and called the principal, who told Ema that he needed to do damage control.

Sullivan refused to write the apology. In the end, Governor Brownback apologized, saying that his staff over-reacted.

(See New York Daily News, Governor Brownback apologizes to Emma Sulliven over Twitter Tiff)

So, when do we apologize. When do we forgive?

Here are some of the elements relevant in assessing an apology and deciding when to forgive.

An Absence of Duress

To start with, a sincere apology is freely given. An apology given under duress does not count. So, to call a student in and say, "Apologize to the governor or suffer the consequences" does not elicit a sincere apology. Neither is it the case that an apology delivered out of fear of losing business count as sincere.

However, having said that, there still may be good reason to force somebody - particularly a child - to apologize. It communicates to that person and to others who are a witness to the events that the behavior in question is the type for which an agent should apologize. A forced apology is a statement of condemnation against those who act in ways for which the apology is being extracted, and a statement of praise of those who would offer a sincere apology in such a case. As such, it builds aversions to the type of act for which the apology is being extracted. When a child is forced to apologize for taking something that did not belong to him it communicates to that child and others a condemnation of taking things that belong to others, and builds a social aversion to those types of actions.

In the case of Emma Sullivan, a forced apology communicates that making disrespectful statements about the governor deserves condemnation, even if the apology is insincere. The problem here is that making disrespectful statements about the governor is not, in fact, a type of act that deserves condemnation. In fact, the right to express harsh opinions about political leaders is an important right worthy of protection. It is the person who demands an apology for criticizing a political leader that deserves our condemnation, not the critic. Thus, Sam Brownback was right to apologize for the inappropriate behavior of his communications officer.

Note: There is a difference between showing a lack of respect for a person in public office and a lack of respect for the office that person holds. In a society governed by the rule of law, the office may be worthy of respect where the person holding that office is not.

Personal Responsibility

So, one of the main elements of an apology is an admission of a personal failing. When an agent apologized, he says, in effect, "I acted in a way that a good person would not have acted. I was wrong. I feel bad about what I did because I have a sincere interest in being a better person than that. I will work to make myself a better person and will not engage in similar behavior in the future." a sincere apology is given when one actually believes this message.

Here, PZ Myers' response to GelatoGuy in the first example is way off base. Myers response would make sense if it were the case that GelatoGuy personally brought about all of the injustices that atheists suffer in the world, and had the capacity to remove them. In this case, GelatoGuy's refusal to remove those prejudices and their consequences would be a reason to reject his apology. However, that is simply not the case - and Myers' reasoning in this case is flagrantly unjust.

In the case of Brownbeck, the apology may seem illegitimate because the wrong was committed by his communications director, and not by Sam Brownbeck himself. Thus, the principle of personal responsibility is violated. However, Brownbeck has a personal responsibility to establish procedures that respect the freedom of speech - the right of citizens to speak critically of their political leaders. The actions of Brownbeck's communications director reflect Brownbeck's own failure to establish procedures that respect this right, with is Brownbeck's personal failing.

However, this brings up a question that, as far as I can tell, nobody has investigated yet. Was this a unique incident in the life of Brownbeck's communications director. Or was his communications director in the habit of searching the internet for statements critical of the governor, and then strong-arming those critics into making a retraction. If it turns out that the latter is the case, then Brownbeck's apology is not acceptable, nor is it sufficient. There is a much greater wrong being committed.

A Promise Not to Repeat the Behavior in the Future

One of the elements of a sincere apology is the admission that the behavior was wrong, which implies that it ought not to be repeated in the future.

We see this in the apology from GelatoGuy. He removed the sign - believing that he acted inappropriately, and gives every indication that he would not perform that act in the future. He yielded, in a moment of anger, to a baser nature that ought to be kept under control.

We haven't seen this same type of statement from Brownbeck. I have not seen any communication that suggested that any steps are being taken - or any commitment is being made - to ensure similar events do not happen in the future. Certainly, Brownbeck does not want another incident that hits the press like this one did. Care may be taken in this direction. But there is a difference between considering an action wrong and something to be avoided, and simply seeking not to get caught so one does not suffer the ill consequences of condemnation.

What we should demand from Governor Brownbeck is some statement governing the principles by which the communications director will respond to criticisms of the governor. Exactly what are the principles and procedures in play, and in what ways will they be changed to help protect the right of citizens to criticize their elected officials?

Making Amends

"I'm sorry. How can I make it up to you?"

A sincere apology comes with an admission that one has wronged other people. Which in turn should motivate a desire to make up for the wrong that was done. Sometimes it is as simple as, "Let me buy you a drink." At other times, it requires something more. It all depends on the magnitude of the wrong that was done.

The people who are owed the apology always have the right to revoke compensation. They can say, "That's okay, just forget it." However, this decision is up to the recipient, not the person who performed the wrongful action. The recipient can be magnanimous and let the issue slide. Or, the recipient can accept the drink or other form of compensation.

It is actually possible for an offer of compensation to be insulting, and to indicate that the apology itself is insincere. "Let me make it up to you. Here's a quarter. Call somebody who cares," follows the form of offering compensation for a wrong done. However, it clearly communicates that the agent does not think that a harm was done or that there is any call to offer legitimate compensation.

In the case of GelatoGuy has not expressed an interest in providing compensation, it is possible to see in his actions that he has done so. He has gone public with his apology. This in turn spreads the message through the community that actions like those he performed earlier ought not to be done and are worthy of condemnation. By doing this, GelatoGuy is taking a reasonable step in combating the ills that Myers wants to place squarely on his shoulders. It is - or should be - worthwhile to atheists to get that message out into the world. In providing atheists with this benefit, GelatoGuy has offered compensation.

Conclusion

In the case of GelatoGuy, I believe all of the elements of a sincere apology have been met. From this, the only legitimate option is to accept that apology. Refusing to do so is unjust. Refusing to do so because one holds GelatoGuy personally responsible for a culture over which he has no control compounds the injustice.

Given these facts, PZ Myers’ refusal to accept the policy is unprincipled and unjust.

In the case of Emma Sullivan, no apology was given, and no apology was needed. The criteria that would make an apology required were not met. She did nothing wrong.

In the case of Sam Brownbeck, we still have some open questions. We still do not know Brownbeck has his communications director routinely strong-arming critics of the governor, or if this was a single instance. Nor have we seen any indication that steps are being taken to avoid similar wrongful actions in the future.

Last Week's Anti-Atheist Bigotry

2011-11-28T08:23:00.001-07:00

This past week, we were treated to three examples of anti-atheist bigotry.

In the first, a store owner operating near the site of the Skepticon convention walked in during an anti-religious presentation. Feeling that he and his religion were being insulted and denigrated, he posted a sign in his store that said, "Skepticism is NOT welcomed in my Christian Business."

Though he removed the sign a short time later, somebody had taken a picture of it and posted it online. The picture generated a lot of angry email messages and postings on the company facebook page - which the owner ultimately disabled.

(See: NPR Mo. Shop Owner Apologizes To Religious Skeptics)

In the second, Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said in a nationally televised Republican debate on foreign policy that he views being a member of a church as a qualification for remaining in the country if one arrived illegally.

So far, only a hand full of a people seem to sense that there is any type of issue of discrimination or bigotry here. Unlike the case of the shop owner, almost no objections have been raised, even though Newt Gingrich is now leading the Republican nomination for President. In fact, regardless of whether Romney or Gingrich wins, the Republican candidate will be one who has explicitly stated that nobody is fit to lead this country who does not believe in God.

In the third case, Lind Media Company in Mansfield Ohio has cancelled plans to show three bill boards being paid for by the Mid Ohio Atheists. This news came right before the holiday season - with no time to begin negotiations with some other company, and after months of negotiations in which no objection had been raised against the signs.

The reason they gave is, in part, because:

[T]he inflammatory nature of the proposed displays would no doubt be considered offensive to much of the community and would be harmful to Lind’s community reputation and goodwill.

(See: Mid Ohio Atheists Billboard backlash (before it ever started))

The link above includes contact information for Lind Media Company and Lind Outdoor Advertising Company. I have not heard any news about whether Lind has received any harsh reaction to their expression of bigotry.

I do know that I had a hard time finding any mention of the incident in the press.

This is surprising. Usually, if you can't get your message up on a billboard, you can almost certainly get it in the press.

The message is simple enough. If one wants some talking points, I would put these on the list:

Lind Media Company is saying that anti-atheist bigotry is so pervasive in this community that they fear that going against it would be a real threat to their business. There decision is no different in principle than a decision from an advertising company afraid to put up a billboard for the NAACP because they fear the backlash from the white supremacists in the community. The sad fact is that when a business such as Lind Media Company takes that kind of position, they hand the community over to the bigots.

Only a bigot would be offended by this type of message. A civil human being can accept the fact that they live in a community with people who think they are mistaken about matters of religion without breaking out into hysterics over it.

Lind Media Company is saying what atheists have known for years. People have reason to fear the economic consequences of associating with atheism. We know that there are atheists in this community who are like Lind Media in that they, too, fear the economic consequences of admitting their beliefs or lack of belief in a God. They fear they will lose their jobs or their customers. This is the very type of bigotry we are trying to take a stand against. Lind Media has decided to surrender to this bigotry, but in doing so they admit that is there.

It is hard to find a more blatant example of hypocrisy. Everywhere you turn in this community you see the message, "There is a God". Yet, those who say this do not consider it offensive and obviously feel no obligation to keep their beliefs to themselves. But the message that there is no good - that is "offensive". That message must be silenced. I would suggest that we apply the same rules to both sets of messages. Either allow both, or ban both. Of the two options, I would say that the best option is to allow each person to freely express their opinion.

Mid Ohio Atheists should not just include contact information for Lind Media Company. They should also include information for all media outlets they can identify that feeds the local community. If the people in this community are being prevented from seeing this message on the side of the road because people fear the acts and attitudes of bigots, then they should be seeing this message on the 6:00 news.

More of Newt Gingrinch's Anti-Atheist Prejudice

2011-11-24T11:53:00.004-07:00

Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich would use belief in God as a criteria for determining who stays in America and who do deport.

He would not seek to deport an atheist citizens or those who are here legally - though I suspect he would like to. However, when determining whether to deport a person in this country illegally, atheists get the boot. On the other hand, a member in good standing of a church, would get to stay.

If you're here -- if you've come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home. period. If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.

And, later, to show that this was no oversight, he said:

I do suggest if you go back to your district, and you find people who have been here 25 years and have two generations of family and have been paying taxes and are in a local church, as somebody who believes strongly in family, you'll have a hard time explaining why that particular subset is being broken up and forced to leave, given the fact that they've been law-abiding citizens for 25 years.

This is simply a reiteration of the standard prejudice that those who go to church and believe in God are morally superior to those who do not. It is a prejudice so common it scarcely gets the attention of those who are assaulted by it - like the black person who hears the word 'nigger' so often he thinks it is his name.

If you are a church-goer (does the same apply to mosque-goers?) you are safe. You are trusted. You not somebody to be rejected as a neighbor. However, if you deny that there is a God, you are a threat. You are dangerous. It is best to be rid of you, to remove you from the community.

It repeats a stereotype and, because it is not publicly challenged, it reinforces a stereotype. The absence of a challenge sends a message through the community that Gingrich's attitude towards atheists is the true. It must be true - nobody said it was false. It is not challenged. It is not questioned. It is not condemned or criticized. So, this is one thing that we can accept without question.

It is great to speak about accepting claims on the basis of evidence, but none of us have time for that. We use shortcuts - we HAVE to use shortcuts, given our limited resources. One of those shortcuts is to simply internalize claims that are uttered without question or criticism. We simply absorb them.

We acquire our cultural dispositions through countless instances just like this. We acquire our values by listening to what people say and watching what they do and measuring the reactions. We acquire dispositions to do that which is praised, and aversions to that which is condemned.

Gingrich's praised those who hold down good tax-paying jobs, obey the law, have strong family ties and have strong family values (that is, those for whom the well-being and association with family members is important, AND who go to church. By implication, free-loading, loaner, atheist criminals types can, in good conscience, be sent away. People like that are not good for this country. America are better off - safer, stronger, happier, wealthier - without such creatures.

I have no doubt that Gingrich views atheists with utter contempt. We are a vermin infesting his idea of an ideal America.

This is not the first time he showed his contempt for atheists. I wrote about an earlier instance in the post, Newt Gingrich on Atheists in America. . There, the comment was:

I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

There is no doubt, in his stand on immigration and elsewhere, that Gingrich would be more than happy to tape a sign on the door to America itself, "Atheism is NOT welcome in my Christian nation." Nor would he take it down a few moments later with regrets after some deep reflection. Nor would he ever issue an apology. Indeed, these are his sentiments, and he will likely stick to these opinions until the day he dies.

And, yet, I do count it as . . . well . . . incoherent and irrational, to be honest . . . that atheist bloggers and others would put such tremendous effort into attacking a store owner who did such a thing in the heat of passion - and say nothing about a Presidential candidate who did far worse. This provides a set of observations about the real world that seeks a rational explanation.

The first hypothesis that comes to my mind is that it is simply a lot easier - a lot more fun - to snarl and bark at somebody who is weak and vulnerable. A pack of wolves does not hunt for the biggest and strongest member of the herd to attack. It goes for the weak and defenseless - particularly when they can get their prey away from the herd.

But Newt Gingrich is a national figure running for the office of President of the United States - somebody who has wealth and power and who knows others with wealth and power. It may be best to leave this bigot alone and attack the little guy off in the corner of nowhere.

Note: That was sarcasm, by the way.

"Opposition Research" to Discredit Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-23T08:45:00.001-07:00

$850,000 will allow you to purchase the services of a firm that will put it's skills to work discrediting the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, & Cranford will conduct a nationwide survey as well as local surveys in eight key states to provide a context for the campaign. Effectively, they will look for information that would help them to determine which messages will be most effective at discrediting the movement.

They will do opposition research. That is to say, they will conduct research on the leaders and financiers of OWS. Actually, what this means is that they will dig up dirt on its leaders and financers. They will monitor social media - for example, the Occupy Wall Street Facebook site - to acquire strategic intelligence on what OWS is planning and will likely do next in order to plan, in advance, an effective response to those actions.

They will perform coalition planning - a search for political allies that can add their strength to the opposition.

And they will prepare and place the political messages that will fulfill the final objective of discrediting OWS and, in doing so, help to secure the political and economic fortunes of those who purchase these services.

All for the bargain price of $850,000.

(See, Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street. The article contains a link to a PDF of the memo itself.)

Ultimately, Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, & Cranford almost certainly hopes to get more than $850,000. Hopefully, from their point of view, this arrangement could open the door to future contracts worth a lot more money. This may even be a loss leader - an initial contact that will actually cost the company money, but which might establish a relationship that will be profitable in the long run.

Now, what kind of people get this kind of help? What segment of the population has $850,000 to put into such an effort - and has the kind of money that would make it worthwhile to establish a long-term, more profitable relationship? I don't have that kind of money - nor do I have control over that kind of money by leading a business or well funded (read: "serves the interests of those who have money") organization.

We hear it said that we need to give the rich more money so that they can create more jobs.

What we do not hear about is the fact that these are among the types of jobs they are creating.

The short version of the story is that those who have money create those jobs that serve the interests of people who have money.

This proposal is just an example of the types of jobs the rich create. They hire political manipulators to do research and plan strategies that aim to maintain or increase their economic and political power. They hire people to report things like, "Our surveys and focus groups tell us that if we can get people to fear for their jobs, we can get them to vote for candidates who will put more money and more political power into your pockets, the pockets of our customers. The way we can get them to fear for their jobs is to get these stories we created reported in the media, and here is our contact list of media people who can be convinced to make these claims."

Where does this message that tax cuts create jobs come from, anyway? We had massive tax under the Bush Administration. Where are the jobs? The Republican presidential candidates tell us that President Obama's economic strategy failed. However, a substantial part of Obama's strategy involved maintaining or adding to the Bush tax cuts, which his administration extended to January 2013. Where are the jobs?

However, the surveys and focus groups continue to show, "We can enhance our economic and political status if we continue to spread this message."

In fact, they are right. This research strictly follows the principles of the Scientific Method. It's practitioners observe, hypothesize, and conduct experiments to continually refine their skills on how to manipulate the public. They then sell these skills to the highest bidders - the people with the most money to spend.

The scientific method is a powerful tool. We see this in the success it has brought to those who use it in the industry of political manipulation. The result of their success over the past 30 years is that the wealthiest people - the people who can pay companies to use this method to their benefit - now have twice the wealth they used to have. The rest of us, who do not have the money to spare for these types of activities, are treading water. And the poorer are becoming both more numerous and worse off.

The rich pay this kind of money for these kinds of services because it is an investment. $850,000 spent requires an expectation of more than $850,000 return on the investment for manipulating the political process. The rich get richer.

The better an organization is at successful manipulation, the more money they get. They get that money from the people who have money to give. The people who have money to give, in turn, are for that manipulation that best serves their interests.

When 1% of the population controls half the money and the other 99% control the other half, then half of the economic activity serves the interests of 1% of the population, and the other half of the economy serves the interests of the other 99%. Since the other 99% have to spend significantly more on food, medical care, and shelter, their ability to contribute to these types of political manipulations is much smaller. They may have half the overall wealth, but they have significantly less than half of the disposable wealth. And it isn't governed by common mind that can direct its use without dispute.

Let's be clear - this memo is not a fluke event. It is not even news. This is business as usual. We are talking about huge amounts of money going into "opposition research" and similar projects paid for by those who have the money to invest in these projects. Countless organizations just like this are sending out countless proposals to the top 1% every day saying, "This is how we can serve you." Of course, they are going to send their our proposals to those with money to spend. Of course they are going to offer goods and services that the people with money to spent want.

If, instead, we get the money to people who are hungry and sick, one of the effects we can expect is to see fewer $850,000 proposals to deliver "opposition research" to the top 1%, and more $850,000 proposals on how to deliver food to the hungry and medicine to the sick. The jobs that are created are the jobs that serve the interests of those for the sake of whom the money is being spent.

Dishonesty in Romney Campaign Advertisement

2011-11-22T09:07:00.001-07:00

It appears that honesty is not a virtue for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

He is airing his first anti-Obama advertisement in New Hampshire. In it we hear a voice clip of Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we are going to lose."

However, as MSNBC reports, this was selectively cut.

But that's only part of what Obama said. His entire line is: "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose.'"

(See: MSNBC, Democrats Say New Romney Ad Distorts Obama's Words)

And, in fact, here is a reference to a McCain aid saying just that.

[T]he McCain campaign has issued a new strategy: just don’t talk about the economy and instead attack Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) character — as a top McCain aide explained to the New York Daily News: “It’s a dangerous road, but we have no choice,” a top McCain strategist told the Daily News. “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.”

(See Think Progress, Top McCain Aide: ‘If We Keep Talking About The Economic Crisis, We’re Going To Lose’)

The defense from Romney's camp is, "Isn't it ironic that Obama spent the 2008 campaign running against somebody afraid to talk about the economy, and now Obama is afraid to talk about the economy."

First, we should ask whether the claim that Obama is afraid to talk about the economy is true. As far as I can tell, he has talked about little else, trying to get some legislation that he claims will create jobs and improve the economy through a Congress that refuses to do anything at all.

It is something like being a carpenter, trying to build a house. A bunch if workers show up. They refuse to do any work – They refuse to let anybody on the premises who is willing to do work. Then they blame the foreman because no work was done on building the house, and claim that the these actions qualify them to be the new foreman.

Second, and more important for this essay, it is particularly ironic that, in an advertisement in which Romney talks about the moral obligation of the government not to spend more than it takes in, he forgets the moral obligation not to misrepresent the truth.

While we are on the subject of ironies here. I guarantee that Romney's first budget, if he were elected, will not be balanced. This implies either that even Romney holds that this moral requirement to balance the budget allows for exceptions. Either that, or it implies that Romney does not care that much about moral requirements.

I will add yet another irony. I have just spent a couple of days listening to a lecture on lying in which the primary focus was on former President Bill Clinton's claim, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinski."

Some people presented a strong sense of outrage that the President had lied. "He is the President. We must hold him to a higher standard."

My question is: Does that standard apply to all Presidents, or only to Democrats?

The type of double standard this suggests is called 'hypocrisy'. So, now, we have dishonesty and hypocrisy wrapped up in the same moral package.

To the Romney campaign directly, somebody should ask, "If the Obama campaign were to quote you out of context in a similar way, would you defend him from Republicans who condemned that act, or would you join in the condemnation? And, I have a follow-up question after you answer that one, sir. My follow-up question: What is your view of the moral prescription to do unto others what you would have them do to you?"

Deficit Failures and Primary Concerns

2011-11-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

I want to demand that the government deficit super-committee members show us the actual proposals they made during the past three months of failed negotiations.

I see a lot of finger pointing, with different factions making claims about what the other side proposed or rejected. However, we are not permitted to see what these politicians were actually willing to do to us.

In the absence of information, this means that the vast majority of us will make our judgments based on our partisan prejudices.

A Democrat will say that the blame belongs to Republicans for refusing to tax and to seeking to preserve the estates of the very wealthy (who control over half if the political power precisely because they control over half if the money used to buy it).

The Republicans will say that the blame belongs to Democrats' insistence on taking other people's money and treating it as their own.

One absurd claim being made on the Republican side is to blame President Obama for his "lack of leadership".

It's a political year. We can expect this type of political rhetoric simply because we can expect politicians to behave in a contemptible manner.

On this suggestion my reaction was, "You immature little children. You are supposed to be mature adults. Don't go bawling because Papa Obama wasn't there to hold your hand during these negotiations. This was your job. There is no fault in expecting you do it."

Of course, we can't know what any of these people (and I use the term loosely) were trying to do to us unless we can see the proposals. The arrangements for the super-committee made it easy for the members to shove all sorts if unpleasantness down our collective throats - a straight up-or-down vote with majority rules and no amendments permitted. It would be interesting to see just what each side was hoping to get away with.

But we are not going to see them.

We will not see them precisely because the politicians are manipulating us into a position were we will use those political prejudices to their advantage. Each of us will tell ourselves, "It's not the fault of the people I voted for. It's somebody else's fault". Republican politicians know that Republican voters in regions dominated by Republicans will blame the Democrats and re-elect the Republican candidate. Democratic politicians know that Democratic voters will blame the Republicans and re-elect the Democratic candidate. The incombents will face no fall-out for their failure. So, why succeed when failure is just as rewarding?

The incumbents get re-elected, regardless of the failure. Which is all that really mattered anyway.

This tells us that the system truly is broken. As much as we may want to say that the Founding Fathers were geniuses who set up this wonderful system of checks and balances that allows the government to work without anybody getting too much power, it doesn't work.

It works when it is occupied by people willing to accept checks and balances and are willing to work with others to come to a common agreement. But, when a system of checks and balances is filled with "My way or the high way" politicians, the effect is deadlock.

Who do I blame?

I blame anybody who is unwilling to compromise. I blame any Republican who announces that he or she will not raise taxes. I blame any Democrat who say that social security and Medicaid are not to be touched no matter what. I credit any Republican who announces, "I will accept the following tax increases as a part of the overall package." Or any Democrat who says, "If we are honest, we must admit that the following changes in entitlement programs are vital to the financial security of the country."

Everybody else is a waste of biological mass and needs to be thrown out.

The primaries come sooner than the general election. There is still an opportunity to get better candidates within each party on the ballot in November – where voting the bums out does not require voting another party in.

Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

The "Occupy" movement is the offspring of the "Tea Party" movement and is now a better representative if its principles than the Tea Party itself.

I do not have enough room in this blog to give this hypothesis justice, but I will throw out some reasons to consider it true.

The question asked in the "Tea Party" originally movement was, "Why is the government spending all of this money to reward those people whose poor decisions caused this mess, and putting the burden on those of us who have lived responsible lives?"

Consider the rant by Rick Santelli that is considered a key point in the Tea Party movement.

You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology– How about this, President and new administration? Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water? . . . How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand.

He is not complaining about the level of government spending. He is talking about taking the money from the responsible people and giving it to the irresponsible people.

And it is not just the irresponsible middle class - but the irresponsible rich. The broader issue in the rant concerns "moral hazard". Economists use this term to talk about government action to bail-out rich people who make unwise decisions and end up in financial hot water. It is mostly used when talking about the government putting huge amounts of money on the table to rescue rich people who made mistakes while leading organizations that are "too big to fail".

So, this was the start of the Tea Party movement.

But what happened?

Well, it started off as a disjointed group if angry voters with no clear message or objective. However, it became news. Some Tea Party members got access to microphones - meaning, that they and their message made it into the press and in front of the public. Others were ignored - and their message faded into the background. Some members of the movement got funding and got volunteers to help them organize. Others got nothing.

Which portion of the Tea Party got these benefits?

Well, those people with the message that the microphone holders wanted people to see got the microphone. Those with the message that the people with money wanted to fund got the funding. Those that certain political organizations thought would be best for helping their candidates or special interest groups got the organizational help.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is just the invisible hand of people pursuing their own individual best interests to the degree that they are able - and the people with the money and control of the media being more able than others.

Through the action of purely natural forces, the Tea Party movement became a "Protect The Pocketbooks Of The Rich" movement.

This became obvious during the budget debates in July 2011. The one thing that the Tea Party legislators absolutely refused to compromise on was not holding people responsible for their choices and actions - that never even entered the discussion. Instead, the only thing they cared about was protecting the pocketbooks of the top 1%.

The multi-millionaires who drove their companies into the ground should be greeters at Wall-Mart by now. Instead, they sit in huge homes with huge bank accounts filled with the money that responsible people earned and paid. The Tea Party candidates did not even discuss the issue of how to get back some of the wealth that they pocketed - that makes up a substantial portion of our current debt. Instead, ironically, the Tea Party is interested in only one thing - making sure that they get to keep the money they have already taken.

Ultimately, the idea is that if the government adopts the principle of rewarding the irresponsible and punishing the responsible, we will end up with nothing but irresponsible people. I do ask myself at times if I am stupid for living a responsible life when, if I were to be as reckless as others, i could enjoy the pleasures of that recklessness and then have the government rescue me in the end.

In more general terms, they are not working on solving the moral hazard problem. They are working on compounding it by making sure that the recipients of these government rescues keep their wealth. We do not even hear the original reason for the Tea Party any more - the government rewarding (bailing out) irresponsible and incompetent people at the expense of the rest of us. Instead, the only message coming from the Tea Party concerns protecting the pocketbooks of the top 1%.

The effect of this (even though it is not the intent) is that the top 1% have raided the treasury and walked away with trillions of dollars of benefits. Now that we are looking at that deficit and talking about paying the debt, the top 1% - speaking through the Tea Party and using them as its defensive shield - is saying, "Don't talk to me. Give the bill to the middle class."

Well, a lot of the people in the top 1% are doing this. It would be wrong and totally unfair to claim that this statement is true of all in the top 1%.

This now brings us to the movement to Occupy Wall Street.

Why Wall Street?

Because these are the "moral hazard" people - the people who were allowed to keep their million-dollar homes and million -dollar jobs as a direct benefit of running up the government deficit. And who now refuse to pay any taxes that would go to relieving or paying off that debt.

"Hey, top 1%. You took spent the money - putting your bailout on the national credit card. You pay the bill." Here, again, let us not lose track of the fact that a substantial portion of the problem rests with $15 trillion already spent. This is not about future spending. This is about past spending. $15 trillion has been put on the national credit card. The wealthiest Americans have pocketed virtually all of the benefits from that spending. So, the wealthiest Americans ought to contribute to paying off the debt. Even balancing the budget does not answer the question that needs to be answered: Who is going to pay back the $15 trillion already spent?

During the past 30 years of deficit spending, the wealthy significantly increased their personal income and wealth. The middle class has treaded water for 30 years, harvesting no overall benefit, while the poor has become worse off. If that $15 trillion - and the benefits that came from it - all settled in the pockets of the wealthiest Americans, but the middle class are forced to pay the bill, then we truly have a situation in which the main role of government for 30 years has been to transfer money from the middle class to the rich.

This suggests a potential rallying cry for the Occupy movement. "You - the financial companies of America - you hoarded the wealth that came from the deficit. You pay the bill."

Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

2011-11-17T08:15:00.003-07:00

Would we be better off without religion?

This is the debate question.

Answer: Not necessarily.

This is not the answer many atheists give - but I think it is easy to demonstrate that it is true.

In arguing that the world would be better off without religion, atheists tend to us a particular argument that is easily shown to be invalid. Theists then respond with evidence that it is invalid. However, it seems that a lot of atheists - blinded by the fact that this flawed argument supports a desired conclusion - refuse to see reason.

That traditional argument is to categorize the evils done in the name of religion. Crusades, Jihads, terrorist attacks, faith healing, praying for solutions rather than finding scientifically sound real- world solutions, the condemnation of homosexuals and other minorities, the religious defense of slavery - all of these go on the catalogue of religious evils. The claim is that we would nit have these things without a belief in God.

The idea seems to be that, without religion to corrupt us, our natural virtue would have prevented these evils.

But this is the question I want to ask: Where did religion come from?

None of the evils that were listed above - or those not listed - actually came from God. The thoughts that motivated them did not magically appear in scripture. They all came from human beings, working without a drop of divine influence, who created scripture - and from other human beings who decided to accept those stories. Humans created God in their own image.

If, as Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion,

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Then so were the people who created that God, and those who decided that this God - and not some other - is to be worshipped.

This us the human character that would have risen to the top in the absence if religion, and it is identical to the character of the people who created that religion. It is in humans that these flaws exist - not in God.

What sense is there to the idea that, without religion, they would have behaved differently? It is much more plausible to hold that, without religion, they would have performed the same evils. The only difference is that they would have used different justifications.

We already know that this is possible. Social Darwinism, atheistic communism, subjectivism, Ayn Rand Objectivism - these all demonstrate that, in the absence of religion, humans are just as capable of inventing non-religious justifications for the same evils and carrying them to ends that are just as - or even more - bloody and harmful.

There will, some day, be an atheist terrorist. Some young male, feeding off if the works if Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris, will decide that religion is the root of all evil. He will load up some weapons and decide to take out a congregation - knowing that this is his last act on earth, but thinking it is worthwhile way to send his anti-religious message. While none of these authors intended or would condone these such an action, this will not necessarily stop a determined individual from drawing his own conclusions. Yet, these authors and the "militant atheists" will still be blamed for inspiring hate.

There is nothing in the human nature such that, in the absence of religion, they will not do evil.

My answer is that the world could be better off without religion - but it could be worse off.

Why is that?

It is because religious beliefs are false - and false beliefs get in the way of fulfilling desires.

A woman is thirsty, sees a glass of what she believes to be water, and takes a drink -poisoning herself. Her false beliefs caused her to act in ways that ultimately thwarted her desires. True beliefs would have allowed her to have picked the option that actually fulfilled her desires.

A woman stands before two buttons. She believes that the red button will release a stranger from his cell. The blue button will start a compressor that will suck the air out if the room. She us told that she will never know the actual results of her actions, but to have faith. She presses the red button, and lives the rest if her life comforted by her faith that she let a stranger out if his prison. Meanwhile, the researchers bury the bodies of a room full if children who suffocated to death as a result of her actions.

True beliefs are useful. False beliefs lead to regrettable actions. And the comfort felt by those who have faith is no compensation for the harms done.

We could be better off without religion because we are better off without false beliefs.

But we are not necessarily better off if we replace those false beliefs with another set of false beliefs that are equally or more dangerous. We are not better off if we replace those false beliefs with social Darwinism, communism, subjectivism, or Ayn Rand objectivism, to name only four possibilities.

To be better off, we need to replace false beliefs with true beliefs.

The works if the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates represents the best medical knowledge of his age. Yet, today, we would take the person who held that Hippocrates was the last word in medicine, and that anything that contradicts Hippocrates is heresy to be unfit to practice medicine.

Religious scripture represents the best in moral knowledge at the time in which it was written. However, anybody who holds that scripture is the last word in morality, and that anything that contradicts scripture is heresy, is unfit to practice ethics.

We can imagine how horrible the state if medicine would be if it were dominated by people who held that everything that was true about medicine was written by Hippocrates. We can see without imagining how horrible the state of ethics us at, where it us dominated by people who hold that scripture is the last word in morality.

Yet, we are better off simply because modern medical practitioners have more true beliefs than ancient medical practitioners. If we had instead replaced Hippocrates with some tribal medicine that, in fact, even more wrong - we would be better off with Hippocrates.

So, would the world be better off without religion?

Possibly - to whatever degree we replace the false beliefs of religion with true beliefs, and not some other set of false beliefs that happen not to include a god.

(Note: I had a different answer to that question when I started this blog, but I found that the weight of the arguments did not support that conclusion. So, somewhere between writing the first sentence of this blog and the last, I changed my mind, and went back to rewrite the beginning. That is how reasoning is supposed to work. Right?)

Ending the No-Tax Pledge

2011-11-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

If I could make a suggestion for the next election, it would be that a concerted effort be made to oust from office any politician who has signed a pledge not to raise taxes.

You can find a list of those who have made such a pledge at Americans for Tax Reform

This is a list maintained by those who support the pledge. However, it is a list that can also be used by those who support a fair distribution of the burdens involved in ending our nation's financial predicament.

These were the people substantially responsible for the stonewalling when negotiating a debt increase in July – which, in turn, resulted in economic instability that harmed the recovery and the lowering of the American government’s credit rating.

In practice, this pledge is a wall behind which the super-wealthy are protecting their estates and making sure that the burdens that face our nation are born almost entirely by the middle and lower classes. If we want a fairer distribution of the burdens of government, then the need to tear down this wall.

For all practical purposes, a "no tax" pledge is promise to the top 1 percent that says, "Don't worry. You're safe. We're not going to do anything to you."

It is also a pledge to refuse to compromise on this point. It says, in effect, "No matter what happens - no matter what threats this country may face - your estates are safe in my hands. They will not be touched."

This combination of "No burden on the rich" and "no compromise" makes for a very strong defense for the estates of the rich - as long as it holds this lock on a significant part of the government. They make sure that the rest if us will either suffer the burdens of our current national predicament - of suffer far worse.

Of course, we must also add that many of these promise makers are also members of the top 1 percent. It is their own estates and the estates of fellow members of their social circle that they are protecting.

These are not the type of people who we need in Congress.

I want to stress that the target of this proposal is not the top 1 percent. Like any population, they represent a range of people, some more virtuous than others. My target us the signers of the no-tax pledge - an act that demonstrates either extreme arrogance, extreme ignorance, extreme unfairness, or some combination of the three.

I propose telling them, "If you signed a no-tax pledge, you have pledged to be a part of the problem - not a part of the solution. So, you're gone."

Some might object that this is an anti-Republican recommendation.

That is not the case. A candidate can still be a Republican and, at the same time, agree to a more fair distribution of the burdens of ending our current financial problems and agree that a legislator's job is to govern, not to bring government to its knees.

In fact, I would much rather see those who made this pledge ousted in a Republican primary rather than in the general election. I have a great respect for intellectually acute and concerned conservatives - the type that the Republican party nominated and I voted for in a couple of decades ago.

Ronald Reagan passed 11 tax increases in his 8 years in office. Today's Republican party would reject his candidacy with insults.

A Republican who reject this pledge has the option to say, like Reagan did, "Okay, if you are willing to go so far as to allow $3 in budget cuts for every $1 in revenue increases, then I will go so far as to allow $1 in revenue increases to get $3 in budget cuts." Somebody who takes a no-tax pledge is not permitted to accept this option. He has promised to go so far as to destroy the country if he does not get 100% of what he is asking for.

From the ethical perspective, the type of no-compromise attitude fostered by such a pledge represents extreme arrogance. I may well believe that we are better off with 100% budget cuts and 0% tax increases. And, actually, I can be sympathetic to that view. However, at the same time, I recognize that I fall somewhat short of perfect intelligence and wisdom. There are other people on the planet, just as intelligent as I am, and just as concerned about the welfare of others, who disagree with me. The wise person admits, "I do not know everything. Therefore, even though I disagree with you, I am willing to give you a voice in the decisions. After all, aren't we supposed to be working together?"

On the other hand, somebody who makes a pledge like the no-tax pledge is claiming (honestly or dishonestly) to have perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom. He is saying, "Whatever happens, whatever information I may be provided in the future, whatever arguments might be offered against my position and in favor of some alternative, whatever harms my actions or inactions may cause, I will close my eyes and ears to those considerations and vote consistently against a tax increase. "

Anybody who would do that should not sit in public office.

The first step - to be conducted within the next 12 months if it is to be conducted at all - is to tear down that wall defending the top 1% from sharing the burdens of our current national problems. We have a list of names. All that is required is the time and effort to do the work.

Cain, Bachmann, and Obama and Arguments Against Torture

2011-11-15T08:37:00.001-07:00

Two Republican candidates for President - Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann - said in a recent debate that they do not consider waterboarding to be torture and would return to the practice of waterboarding prisoners if they were President.

Two Republican candidates said that they opposed waterboarding - Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman.

A number of people raised objections to waterboarding and torture following the debate, almost all of which can be put into two categories:

Category 1 - It makes America look bad.

Category 2 - It doesn't work.

These are stupid reasons to oppose torture.

If this is the best we can come up with, then waterboarding or torture really isn't bad. Either it merely appears bad to others - for no reason, it just does - and America doesn't want to look bad. Or, it's a waste of time. Waterboarding or torturing prisoners is a bit like watching football - it doesn't accomplish much, but some people may find it entertaining.

The first half of Jon Huntsman's response in the debate was an example of a Category 1 response. "We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project, which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets, when we torture."

The second half of that answer puts the principle of refusing to torture prisoners alongside the values of liberty, democracy, human rights, and open markets. This is a better response, but is lacking in justification.

However, on the issue of "diminishing our standing," that is consistent with saying, "If people just gave torture the respect it deserves, we wouldn't have this problem. The problem isn't that torture is bad. The problem is that other people don't like it when we torture - and we shouldn't be doing things other people don't like."

As if America's number one foreign policy objective is to do what other people like and not do what they dislike.

Ron Paul gave us a Category 2 response. In addition to saying that it was illegal, he said, "[I]t's also very impractical. There's no evidence that you really get reliable evidence."

On the legal issue, we still need to ask whether it should be illegal. Unless it should be illegal, we can address the fact that it is illegal by changing the laws.

On the issue of impracticality, this puts torture in the same category as trying to use a psychic to read the prisoner's mind. It's a bit silly, really. There's nothing really wrong with it. If it only worked it would be great! But, alas, it doesn't." *sigh of disappointment*

In all of the comments I have read about the debate on this issue, I have actually not found a single instance of somebody explaining why it is wrong - why it should be prohibited.

Even President Obama's response - saying that it is simply wrong - does not offer an explanation.

"Anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do -- period."

Well, here is my sound-bite answer to the issue of torture.

"As president, I will put others on notice that any abuse of Americans taken captive will not be tolerated. However, the only way I can maintain the moral authority to do that is if I also take that same position on the abuse of prisoners BY Americans. Any President who says we may torture also tells the rest of the world that they may torture Americans."

At this point, I would like to hear my opponent answer the question, "Do you think that the waterboarding of Americans taken captive is torture?"

Let's put the defenders of torture on the defensive. "What is your position on the waterboarding or torture of Americans – soldiers and civilians - taken captive?"

Now, we can get to the question, "What is your definition of torture?"

Answer: Consider an American taken captive. Torture is any treatment of that prisoner that we have reason to take harsh action against - that we tell the world, "Think long and hard before you do this because we will do what we can to make you answer for this."

The implication being - any treatment that we would seek to protect Americans from suffering if they are taken captive is treatment that we should not impose on those that we take captive.

What reason do we have for this universal aversion to torture?

It begins with the reasons we have not to be tortured - or to have people we care about being tortured. A way to protect people from torture is to use social forces such as praise and condemnation to promote an aversion to torture. Thus implies the moral condemnation of those who would support torture, and the praise of those who oppose it.

In fact, Bachmann and Cain, merely in virtue of expressing their opinion at this debate, have done harm. They have told the world, "Go ahead and waterboard Americans. Go ahead and waterboard anybody you take prisoner. I really have no objection to that. Which means, you should not have any qualms against it either." The commentator broadcasting the same praise on a cable news program or in an internet blog is also giving others moral permission to abuse Americans.

One tool for protecting Americans and others (because, face it, in morality - it is not just the torture of Americans that has moral weight) is through a chorus of condemnation. That chorus can bring about a widespread aversion to torture. That aversion, in turn, protects Americans and others from these forms of abuse.

However, that chorus of condemnation also implies a decision not to practice that which is condemned. Practicing torture implies accepting torture. It means telling the world that these forms of torture and abuse are legitimate. It explicitly contradicts the message in this chorus of condemnation – which means that it is something that, itself, needs to be condemned.

Distilling Morality

2011-11-14T08:29:00.001-07:00

I have been asked to respond to the following comment:

Wait so your assertion about not doing evil basically distills down to "Because I want to be a good person and not do harm." How is this anymore valid than "Because I want to be bad and do evil."? If you can answer this without using a social construct and only natural law i would love to here your Answer. (Don't bother quoting Locke he does not answer this question, or Mill, or Bentham)

Well, the first part is wrong.

A person acts to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, given their belief. There is certainly room for a desires to be a good person and an aversion to causing harm - accompanied by beliefs that a good person has certain qualities and that certain states constitute harm. However, these will always be a small part of any person's motivational structure.

The first part is actually an empty statement. It says that a good person acts because "he wants to be a good person." Which means he acts because he wants to be somebody who wants to be a good person. Which means that he acts because he wants to be somebody who acts because he wants to be a good person. And so on, ad infinitum. It doesn't say anything about what a good person is.

Another problem with this statement can be illustrated by the fact that a good person seldom acts from a desire to be a good person. A classic example is that of visiting a sick friend in the hospital. A person motivated to come to the hospital because, "I want to be a good person and this is what good people do," has already failed the good person test.

The good person goes to the hospital because, "I care about you. I want to make sure you are doing well, and see if I can help - not because I want to be a good person, but because I am your friend. I don't care about being a good person. I care about you."

The parent who shows up at a child's school play out of a sense of duty just isn't as good a father as the one who is there because he is genuinely interested in his child's activities and enjoys the opportunity to watch his child participate on those activities.

Perhaps I am not interpreting the comment correctly. I could interpret it as saying, "I want to be a good person - which is to be understood as somebody who does not do harm." Taken this way, the comment can be more economically written as, "Wait. so, your assertion about not doing evil basically distills down to, 'I want not to do harm.'"

I agree that a person with an aversion to doing harm will avoid some evils - though he will have no reason to avoid or prevent harms caused by others. However, this will still only be one desire among many. It will live in the brain in the company of hunger, thirst, preferences for and aversions to particular food and drink, an aversion to pain, desires for certain sex acts, special affections for family and friends, and a whole host of interests from space studies to stamp collecting.

You will never, ever act solely on a desire not to do harm. And, given the mass of desires most of us have, the aversion to doing harm will seldom play the deciding role.

To avoid doing evil, you need more than a desire to be a good person. You need good desires. Good people and evil people both act to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, given their beliefs. Beliefs aim at reporting what is true in the world. If our two agents both had true beliefs, they would agree on all matters of fact. That would not explain their different actions. Those differences are explained by differences in desires. If you want to get the evil agent to avoid doing evil, you change his desires.

What makes a desire good? Well, it's a desire that people have reason to promote using social forces such as praise and condemnation. And the desires that people generally have reason to promote using praise and condemnation are those that would fulfill other desires. Whereas, desires that thwart other desires are desires that people have reason to inhibit through social forces.

Which is why morality is all about praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Take the desire for sex, for example. If you put this desire up against the aversion to doing harm, then the desire for sex will likely win out at least some portion of the time. However, if the desire for sex is actually "a desire to make love to a willing adult partner whose welfare is important to me", then a general aversion to doing harm is not even necessary.

So, people generally have reason to use social forces such as praise and condemnation to mold the desire for sex into "a desire to make love to a willing adult partner whose welfare is important to me" - by praising (so as to strengthen the relevant desires for) this form of sex, and condemning (so as to promote aversions to) those forms that do not fit this mold.

So, it is not the case that desirism, which I employ in these posts, says that "not doing evil basically distills down to "Because I want to be a good person and not do harm." Not doing evil distills down to having those desires people generally have reason to promote, and not having those desires people generally have reason to inhibit. This probably includes a desire to be a good person - with non-empty account of what a "good person" is, and an aversion to causing harm. But these will always be two desires in a long list of desires that agents have - natural and learned. Since agents always act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of all of their desires given their beliefs, you cannot distill morality down to just one or two.

Bullying and Freedom of Speech

2011-11-04T12:17:00.004-06:00

There seems to be a lot of noise in Atheist blogs about a religious exception being written into a Michigan bullying law.

The exception reads:

“This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.”

This is being protested as a religious exception to bullying.

Well, I have a question.

Is the statement, "Creationism is stupid," an act of bullying?

What about "Evolution is a fact?" Is this not an act of bullying people who reject evolution into accepting a view that contradicts their religion?

Well, no . . . but it is easy for some people to interpret it that way.

I do not see this clause as providing an exception to bullying. It does not say that teasing or tormenting an individual is justified when it is done on religious grounds. However, it does say that one has the right to express a sincerely held opinion on matters of religion or morals without being accused of a crime.

In this blog, I defend the thesis that praise and condemnation are central to morality. A moral statement is (1) an expression of an action and reasons for action that exist, (2) an act of praise or condemnation.

Where does moral praise and condemnation - for such things as lying, stealing, or even, for that matter, bullying differ from bullying itself?

In many cases, the difference is found nowhere but in an agent’s belief that the condemnation is justified or not justified. Unjustified condemnation is “bullying”, whereas justified condemnation is . . . well, condemnation.

However, with a law that fails to recognize a distinction, any expression of a minority opinion on matters of morality would be at risk of being called “bullying”. Abolitionists opposed to slavery would be “bullying” slave owners. Gay-rights activists opposed to literalist objections to homosexuality will be seen as “bullying” religious conservatives.

Without this exception, I do not see how any moral statement - particularly a statement of moral condemnation - can be distinguished from bullying. Moral condemnation itself would be declared immoral.

In fact, in the protests to this exception claus, it seems that a substantial number of people already support the view that a "a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction" is equivalent to bullying and is to be prohibited, rather than protected.

Which would imply that this entire blog is an example of bullying - because it is nothing but statements of sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions.

In effect, without this exception, this anti-bullying law would read a lot like the so-called “respect for religion” resolutions often submitted to the United Nations. Those resolutions prohibit people from saying anything negative about another person's religion. Saying that another's sincerely held religious beliefs are false - or insanely stupid - would be declared a hate crime that governments have an obligation to stop.

However, in that case, atheists correctly recognize that the declaration would constitute a violation of free speech. They fight to protect their right to say that certain religious beliefs are not only false, but insanely stupid, and in some cases malicious and evil.

Would this anti-bullying law - without this exception - not make it a crime to say that certain religious beliefs are not only false, but insanely stupid, and in some cases malicious and evil? Is that protected speech, or is that bullying?

If this law makes it possible to declare that such statements are acts of bullying, we have more reason to reject the law than to favor it – or to explicitly write in an exception in favor of freely expressing religious and moral beliefs.

Bullying is bad. I was a teenage atheist, and I was a recipient to some very brutal treatment as a result of my beliefs. In one case, I was in a situation where I was quite convinced I was being killed by classmates who sought to "baptize" me by holding me under water longer than I was able to breathe. As an act of desperation when I could not hold my breath any more, I screamed. Screaming while somebody is holding you underwater does not make any noise. But, they let me up.

This is the worst of what happened, but it is not the whole story.

So, I know the hazards of bullying.

At the same time, I recognize the importance of freedom of speech. I recognize that it is important to condemn people who do wrong, and that moral condemnation is not the same as bullying.

The law needs to recognize that as well.

Furthermore, please consider, which type of claim do you think is more likely to be branded as "bullying" and prohibited without such an exception? The claims of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens against those who believe in God? Or the claims of those who hold that atheists are un-American and you cannot have morals without belief in God?

Ultimately, if no exception is allowed for statements about sincerely held religious beliefs, it is probably the "militant atheist" who will be silenced as bullies before anybody else.

Sometimes, it is useful to defend freedom of speech, because, without it, one's own freedom to speak that would be the first to disappear.

Homosexuality and the Choice Argument

2011-11-04T08:12:00.001-06:00

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the relevance of choice in morality. I argued that morality requires determinism because it is ultimately about using social forces such as praise and condemnation to promote some desires and inhibit others.

I applied this to smoking and obesity to outline criteria where, in a determined world, people can be held morally responsible for these actions and obligated to pay their own costs.

These points are also relevant to the issue of homosexuality. In this issue, we frequently encounter the claim that homosexuality ought not to be condemned because it is not a choice, "Do not blame me, I did not choose to be gay."

Recently, when people are confronted with the opinion that homosexuality is a choice, will make the retort, "When did you choose to become straight?"

Clever, right?

Actually, no.

It is a clearly flawed response that suggests that the speaker is clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to defend a strongly desired conclusion, without regard to the reasonableness of the response.

Critics can instantly see the flaws – particularly given the fact that people are far better at seeing the mistakes that others make than they are at seeing their own mistakes. This argument gets cheered, but the cheers generally come from people displaying the same desperation to ignore the flaws in an argument that supports a desired conclusion.

To prove how poor this response is, simply note that a pedophile can give the same response. "Do not blame me. I did not choose to become a pedophile. When did you choose not to become attracted to children?"

How many nanoseconds did it take you to see the flaw in thus argument.

"Perhaps you did not choose to be a pedophile, but you do choose whether or not to act on those desires. And the choice of whether to not to act on those desires is very much under the influence of social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. So, it is very much a legitimate object of moral concern. Perhaps it makes no sense for me to condemn you for having the desire, but I can certainly have a lot of very strong reasons to condemn you for acting on them. And that is the choice I am talking about when I condemn you and people like you."

At this point, the gay rights activist will shout, "How dare you compare homosexuality to child abuse!!"

Thus proving just how effective emotional rationalization can be at missing the point. This response does not compare homosexuality to child abuse. It compares an argument offered in defense of homosexuality to a potential argument in defense of having sex with children. In doing so, it shows that the argument is unsound. However, proving that an argument is unsound does not prove that the conclusion is false.

There is no moral case to be made against homosexual acts among consenting adults. The gender of one's sexual partner relative to oneself is entirely morally irrelevant – whereas, for many reasons, the age and mental capacity of one's sex partner is highly relevant.

The amount of choice one has in acquiring the desire is equally irrelevant. It is the choice one exercises in acting on the desire that we are looking at in making moral evaluations.

The fact is, the decision of whether, when, how, and with whom one will have sex can be influenced by social forces. There may be limits, but there is also some flexibility. We see this in the different sexual norms of sexual cultures – differences more easily explained by the applications of social forces than by the presence of genes.

Homosexual acts are not like child abuse. We have many and strong reasons to use social forces to promote an aversion to having sex with children. We have no reason to promote an aversion to having sex with somebody of the same gender.

Many of us have such an aversion. But many of us also have an aversion to eating raw fish. Having such an aversion does not justify the condemnation of those who are different from us. It does not justify condemning those who do not have the same aversion.

Homosexual acts are not immoral. Or, I should say, the factors that determine their morality - coercion, honesty, the safety of one's partner - are the same for heterosexual and homosexual acts. Gender partner relative to oneself is not on the list of factors.

However, grasping at straws in defense of a desired conclusion is immoral. We have way too much of that going on the world, and we are made worse off as a result. This is something that we have reason to condemn. And this applies to the way that the defenders of gay rights use the "choice" argument. In the moral sense, homosexual acts are a choice.

Besides, why choose an option that makes you look desperate and rationally blinded by a need to defend a desired conclusion when you don’t have to.

The Motto, The Pledge, and "No Religious Test"

2011-11-03T08:23:00.002-06:00

In the past, I have argued against "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and a national motto of "In God We Trust" as a moral issue.

The former equates atheism with rebellion, tyranny, and injustice and, as such, represents a bigoted attitude towards those who do believe that no God exists. The latter embraces a principle that governments may declare that its preferred citizens trust in God.

However, if I were to raise a legal objection against these practices, I would not ground it primarily on the First Amendment separation of church and state. I would instead ground it on Article 6, Section 3:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Because the intent and the effect of having a national motto that says "In God We Trust" and having "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is to create a de-facto religious test for public office.

In the case of the pledge, it is particularly relevant that the Constitution mentions that no religious test should be made a part of an oath or affirmation – or, we may assume – a pledge of allegiance.

Quite a few supporters of secular government demonstrated just how politically naive they are when they declared the recent passage of a resolution affirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto to be a waste of time. It was not a waste of time. It served a political purpose of reserving seats in the House of Representatives exclusively for those who trust in God. Or at least exclusively for those who refuse to admit that they do not trust in God.

"Vote against this resolution - reject the claim that America's preferred citizens trust in God - and we will use this against you in the next election. Seats in this body are reserved exclusively for those who affirm that America's preferred citizens trust in God."

How many affirmed atheists are running for public office in 2012?

One reason is obvious. They know it to be a waste of time. They know that government has effectively established a de-facto religious test for public office and they do not qualify.

"Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is an even more effective religious test.

Let's have a candidate run for public office while refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Gerrymandering and partisan politics have created a few districts in which it may be possible. However, as a matter of fact the government has set up a system for effectively barring people who do not support a nation "under God" from holding public office.

A filter that is "only" 99.8% effective is still a filter.

It is also important to note that most people will take the fact that a candidate refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance as evidence, not that he is an atheist, but that he professes no allegiance to America. The Pledge instantiates the attitude that atheists are, by that very fact, anti-American.

No power can prevent the people themselves from applying a religious test when they vote. This is true in the same sense that no government can prevent a person from voting for or against a candidate on the basis of race or gender.

However, this does not give the government authority to embrace or endorse those bigotries – as it does when it embraces a motto of “In God We Trust” or a pledge containing the words “under God”.

If I were standing in front of a judge arguing against "under God" or "In God We Trust," I would certainly mention the First Amendment arguments – briefly and in passing. However, I would spend the bulk of my allotted time on the "No Religious Test" argument. And my client would not be some parents of a school-age kid going to school where the Pledge is recited. My client would be an otherwise well-qualified candidate for public office.

One advantage of this tactic is that I can answer the judicial challenge, "Isn't this an issue best left to the legislature?" The answer to this being, "Not if the legislature is using this to stack the legislative deck in favor of those holding certain religious beliefs." This requires a judicial remedy - and the Constitution demands one as well.

We seem to have a lot of atheists out there eager to file lawsuits on things as trivial as a cross on government property. I would suggest filing this lawsuit instead. File a lawsuit to end state-sanctioned bigotry against atheists by using the national motto and Pledge of Allegiance to establish an effective religious test for public office.

Then, just maybe, we can actually stand a ghost of a chance of getting more than a token atheist elected to public office.

Smoking, Obesity, Responsibility, and Choice

2011-11-02T08:33:00.000-06:00

My recent statements that smoking, overeating, and under-exercise are (sometimes) a matter of choice, and that people should bear the costs if their own choices, naturally leads to a discussion of free will and morality.

It is widely held that if you can show that something (e.g., smoking, obesity) sits outside of the realm of free will them moral concepts do not apply. My assertion that they are responsible for the medical costs they create, then, would be rejected.

Some who agree with this view on the relationship of morality to free will hold that there is no such thing as free will - so moral concepts never apply. We are all innocent, no matter what we do. Of course, we are also determined to blame others, even if it is unfounded.

I agree with the claim that free will does not exist. This means that if you demonstrate to me that some aspect of behavior was determined and that free will played no role, I will shrug my shoulders and say, "So?"

I reject the idea that morality requires free will. This means that if you then go on to infer that moral concepts do not apply, I will stop and raise objections.

Desirism - the moral theory on which I rely on in writing these posts - is not only compatible with determinism. It requires determinism. Free will, if it did exist, would throw the theory that I use into complete turmoil.

But it doesn’t exist, so I am safe on that front.

Desirism holds that people act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their current desires, given their beliefs. You can alter a person’s intentional actions either by altering his beliefs or altering his desires.

The tools we have for altering desires are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

This is where morality comes in. Morality concerns the use of these tools - praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment - to promote desires that people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote, and inhibit desires people have the most and a strongest reason to inhibit.

Well, that’s the aim. People often do not know what desires they actually have the most and strongest reason to promote or inhibit. False beliefs get in the way. But it only makes sense to promote desires people have the most and strongest reason to promote, and inhibit desires that people have the most and strongest reason to inhibit.

So the question, with respect to health, is not whether individuals have the ability to draw upon some supernatural force called "free will" to avoid eating or smoking or to exercise, but whether the agents' desires can be molded by environmental factors such as the praise and condemnation of others.

Do incentives work as a way to get people to exercise? To quit smoking? To avoid over-eating?

I can praise and condemn people until I am blue in the face, but it will not affect their eye color. If I threaten to punish people who have blue eyes, and reward those who have brown eyes, nobody's eye color will change as a result. So, eye color actually is something that stands outside of the realm of morality.

On the other hand, by praising those who are honest and condemning those who lie, we do have the ability to create an affection for honesty and an aversion to deception. Similarly, where deception is rewarded and honest people are punished, we can expect people to practice dishonesty to a greater degree and shun honesty.

The ability to influence the prevalence of honesty and dishonesty using these tools means we have a question to answer regarding how we are going to use these tools. We can get more honesty by praising honesty. So, if we have many and strong reasons to be surrounded by honest people, we have many and strong reasons to praise honesty.

Are eating habits responsive to social forces? Can social norms influence what we eat, when we eat, and how much we eat? Do they influence whether we spend an afternoon on the basket ball court or in front of the television?

My claim that people should pay for the medical costs associated with smoking, overeating, and under-exercise only requires that it be the case that people who engage in this behavior respond to incentives. Demonstrating that the behavior is determined is irrelevant. Demonstrating that the behavior is influenced by things other than praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment will have limited relevance. Ultimately, what will be required in rejecting these claims is demonstrating that praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment will have no effect at all on bringing about the intended behavior.

The thesis that some desires can be molded through the use of these forced is not only compatible with determinism. It requires determinism. Without it, we can't make reasonable claims about whether or how to use these social tools.

Without determinism, there can be no morality.

The Greek Referendum

2011-11-01T13:45:00.002-06:00

The Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou surprised the world today by announcing that he will put the bailout plan for his country up to a public vote.

I find two conflicting principles at play here.

One the one side, people do not get a vote as to whether or not they will pay back money they have borrowed.

I can imagine somebody to whom I have lent money telling me, "I have taken a vote and I have decided against paying back the money I owe you."

Or, I can imagine my bank saying, "Our Board of Directors have taken a vote and decided against returning any of the money you have in your savings account."

Or my employer saying, “Our board of directors has voted to keep the money we would have otherwise paid you for the last month.”

When the Greek government borrowed this money, they gave others a claim on future Greek income. Perhaps they should not have done this. In fact, they should not have done this.

In doing so, they have given themselves an obligation to pay back that borrowed money according to the terms specified. If they cannot do so - or they cannot pay all of it - then they need to come to some sort of agreement with the people to whom they owe these obligations. They cannot simply say, "We have voted not to pay our debts."

On the other side - speaking in favor of such a referendum - it is good for people to take ownership of their obligations.

There should be no problem with giving the people of Greece a vote in whether or not to pay back their debts, and getting a resounding "Yes" in response.

It would be nice to get the Greek people on record as admitting, to themselves and the world, "Okay, we have these obligations. We have decided to honor and respect them."

The problem here is that - what if the Greek people are not willing to live up to their obligations?

The reason that this proposed referendum is causing so much turmoil is because the people of the world think the Greeks are dishonorable and immoral people who will simply refuse to pay what they owe.

This means that the people to whom Greece owes money will suffer. They, in turn, will be put in a position where they cannot pay off their debts unless they adopt austerity measures themselves - and perhaps not even then.

Imagine getting a telephone call from your boss at the end of the month saying, "We have decided not to pay anybody this week. I know you did the work and we owe you the money, but we have decided to keep it instead."

Putting aside the fact that they have no right to make such a claim, there is also the problem that you have rent or mortgage coming due, car payments to make, a power bill to pay, and other uses for that money. If you had known you would not get paid, you would have likely spent the last month finding some other source of income. However, now that you have done a month’s worth of work and it is time to get paid, you no longer have that option.

A referendum is a good idea when given to honorable people who respect their obligations. It is a less than good idea when offered to dishonorable people more than willing to inflict harms on others if they can obtain a financial benefit in the process.

In this sense, it is like giving the a community a vote on whether to institute slavery. Moral people would simply vote a unanimous "no" and be done with it. However, there is some reason to worry that even the idea of a vote gives the institution of slavery an illusion of legitimacy. It is something that moral people not only would refuse to adopt, but something people generally have no right to adopt.

And what should you do if you live in a community where there is a real sense that the people will end up voting FOR slavery? In this case, is it a good idea to suggest that the people have a right to vote on such an issue?

This is the type of situation that Greece faces with respect to this public referendum. There is a clear answer to what they should do. The question is, are they of a good enough moral character to do it. And, if not, should they be given the option of voting on something they have no right to do?

Lifestyle Choices and Health Care Costs

2011-11-01T08:40:00.002-06:00

In recent posts, I raised an objection to "free health care" on the grounds that it is a subsidy for unhealthy lifestyle choices.

It also objected that it is misnamed, because the health care is not free. What we are really talking about is a legal right (where no moral right exists) for people to make unhealthy lifestyle choices and to force others to pay any resulting medical costs under penalty of death. "I choose to smoke. You must pay for my lung cancer treatment under penalty of death if you should refuse. "

One move that an increasing number of companies are taking against this is to require that unfit employees pay more for health insurance. Specifically, obese people and smokers have larger payroll deductions than other employees. "If you choose these options, you pay the costs – not your co-workers."

Overall, the use of penalties is expected to climb in 2012 to almost 40 percent of large and mid-sized companies, up from 19 percent this year and only 8 percent in 2009, according to an October survey by consulting firm Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. The penalties include higher premiums and deductibles for individuals who failed to participate in health management activities as well as those who engaged in risky health behaviors such as smoking.

(See Reuters, Firms to charge smokers, obese more for healthcare)

This, to me, seems a reasonable way to go. It provides people with a financial incentive to make healthier choices. It also provides parents who care about their children an additional incentive to give their children healthier habits. And it provides a more immediate and comprehensible disincentive to participate in those options than vague warnings about the possibility of having medical problems in the indefinite future.

The fact is that these choices that some employees make are one of the reasons employees are paying so much for health insurance, and why some companies do not offer health insurance at all. They simply cannot afford to make this option available and stay in business.

Somebody has to pay these costs. If the smokers and the obese are not paying them, then somebody else is.

There are people objecting to this practice as being unfair to poor people who do not have the same access to fresh foods or a gym that rich people do.

There are also fears the trend will hurt the lower-paid hardest as health costs can eat up a bigger slice of their disposable income and because they may not have much access to gyms and fresh food in their neighborhoods.

I was surprised that some people would consider this a serious objection. It eats up a bigger slice of the disposable income of those who choose to smoke, overeat, and under-exercise. This is the true in the same way that higher ticket prices eat up a bigger slice of the disposable income of those who go to movies. But the option is still there not to go to movies, smoke, overeat, or under-exercise.

I see no reason to give a person who makes the choice to smoke or overeat or under-exercise the option of forcing others to pay for the consequences of their actions than to give investors who lose their money the option of forcing taxpayers to bail them out of their financial problems. Freedom means that you have the liberty to make your own choices, and to live with the consequences, good or bad.

A better response, I would argue, is not to fight for subsidies for unhealthy lifestyle choices, but to use these costs as an additional incentive to get people to make healthier choices. The purpose of these options is not to fleece the poor and to get more money from them. Instead, the hope is that they would choose options where they can avoid paying these additional costs.

Actually, my first thought when I read the objection that the poor have less access to good food and gym membership was, "Then shouldn't we be working on giving them better access?" Which option is better: to pay huge amounts of money to cover avoidable health care costs, or to use that money instead to provide people with healthier options? If we are going to subsidize lifestyle choices, let's subsidize health and fitness rather than that which is unhealthy and unfit.

That, however, was before I asked my second question, "How much does it cost to not smoke, to not overeat, and to not under-exercise anyway?"

Of course, all of this is incompatible with the idea that people are entitled to "free" (force others to pay under penalty of death) health care. It is more compatible with the idea that those who create an avoidable cost should pay the avoidable cost – or, if they don’t want to pay the costs themselves, to avoid those costs instead.

Free Markets and Free Medical Care

2011-10-31T09:34:00.000-06:00

In my last post, I argued that health care (with some exceptions) is a private good. The benefits of these sources are obtained primarily by those who consume them, with little public benefit leaking out. As such, there is no "free rider" argument to be made for government funded health care. This makes health care different from education, which does have a large public good component.

Against this, there were some objections to the idea of leaving medical care to the free market.

In answering these objections, I wish to begin by pointing out that the current system in the United States is not a free market system. Consequently, you cannot raise objections to a free market health care system by criticizing the current system in the United States.

The medical industry is probably second only to the banking industry in its success in using government to transfer money from the poor and middle class to the rich. Lobbyists and campaign contributions from companies and special interest groups in the medical industry are responsible for countless regulations, programs, and mandates. Each one of these rules takes a little money out of each of our pockets and concentrates that wealth in the pockets of the business owners and special interest groups who sought those regulations.

The huge medical costs we experience in the United States are because thousands of these little wealth transfers add up. They add up to the point that the government is now transferring thousands of dollars from each middle-class pocket (who can afford to pay) to the rich, and the poor are priced out of the market entirely.

Nobody should be surprised to discover that one of the primary uses people have for our system of government is as a tool for transferring wealth and power from those who cannot afford political manipulations to those who can. We should not expect anything else.

But this is not a free market system. A free market system condemns using the government to force wealth transfers. The only type of wealth transfers that the free market allows are those that people agree to voluntarily.

Another set of objection to free market health care that fails assumes that a free-market economy is an unregulated economy. What is called a "free market" is not “unregulated”. It is actually a massive body of regulations.

All you need to do to see this is to consider the question, "What counts as informed consent?"

Even if we look only at free-market principles, it is easy to get bogged down in a swamp of ill-defined rules and exceptions that define “informed consent”. Can an 18 year old give informed consent? What about somebody who is 17.99 years old? How much information is necessary for informed consent? What types of force count as duress? If you are starving and want a cracker, if I ask for your home as payment, is that coerced? The complexities to free-market informed consent can compete with any government regulation for complexity.

So, then, here are two ways NOT to criticize a free market in medicine. One is by criticizing the current system in the United States – which involves thousands of forced transfers from the middle class to the rich. The other is by criticizing the concept of an unregulated market – since free markets are actually governed by a very complex set of rules.

However, if you want to make a valid criticism of free-market health care that actually sticks, try this one:

The free market is a system of "one dollar, one vote". Rich people have the power to bid resources away from poor people - even where the poor people have a more highly valued use for those resources.

I have described this in the past using a story about a poor mother who wants a bottle of water for her sick child and a rich woman who wants it to give her poodle a shampoo. The rich person can simply bid the price outside of the poor person's grasp. But the ability to pay $20 for a bottle of water without batting an eyelid does not prove that her use for that water has more value. It simply means she has more money to put into the bidding process.

We see this where rich people buy meat - thus increasing the demand for grain, bidding the price out of reach and off of the table of those who cannot otherwise afford it. Currently, we see the same thing is happening with rich people using food grains to produce ethanol - again bidding food grains off of the table of poor people around the world in the form of higher food prices. The same thing happens with gasoline - rich people bid the price up to force poor people to conserve.

Rich people, some of whom have a demand for medicine at any price (or almost any price) can get medical resources allocated to them simply by bidding it away from those who could not afford to otherwise pay for it. The fact that a poor person cannot outbid the rich person does not mean that the poor person has a lower-valued use for those resources. It simply means he doesn’t have the money.

We are told that, in the free market, those who value a particular good or service more use price to bid it away from those who value it less. Thus, resources always go to their most valued use. However, this is true only if we add the assumption that all people have the same access to money. The instant we change that assumption and allow different consumers to have different income levels, then some consumers have the power to bid resources away from those who value it more but can't pay as much.

This creates a real problem for free market medical care in societies with widely different income levels. What we will find is a situation in which poor people simply cannot afford medical care even for basic needs because rich people have bid the resources out of their ability to pay. As the wealth gap widens, the situation gets worse. And the wealth gap is widening, so the situation is getting very much worse.

Free Education and Health Care

2011-10-28T09:11:00.001-06:00

Brian Sapient at Atheism wants to know if atheists agree with the claim that education and health care should be free.

Of course, nothing is ever free. Somebody has to pay for it. So the real question is whether education and health care are things for which people have a right to force other Peopke to pay for, threatening violence up to death.

As it turns out, these are two different types of goods and, as such, they require two different answers.

Education is a public good. It provides benefits to people - not just the person being educated. We are all better off in a community of well-educated, reasonable people. Whereas those who are stupid and irrational create all sorts if problems, not only for themselves, but for others.

We find this in climate change denial, where people who cannot reason their way out of a wet paper sack provide a significant barrier to policy options that could prevent a great deal of global harm and suffering. I am not saying that I know what the best options are. I am saying that it would be nice to have this discussion with people who can at least put aside the poor arguments that currently dominate global warming denial.

A public good is something that other people have a reason to pay for (there is some sum of money less valuable to a person than the benefits they obtain). However, they can not be blocked from these benefits when others pay for them. Free riders who seek to obtain the good without paying cause the good to be under funded.

National defense, a police and court system to fight crime, pollution control, and flood control, all produce public goods. Education is a public good.

Health care, on the other hand, is a mostly private good. It's benefits are almost exclusively to be had by the person whose health is being cared for.

There are exceptions. Immunization against communicable diseases provide a public good by creating firewalls against the spread of those diseases, for example. This provides an argument for government subsidies for immunizations.

It is also true that we would all be better off surrounded by people who are generally healthy and fit. However, a government health and fitness program is a different sort of thing compared to free health care.

In fact, in one important way, free health care might work against overall public health and fitness. Free health care means, "We are going to cover the costs of personal decisions detrimental to health and fitness."

Smoking. Obesity. Lack of exercise. Drug and alcohol abuse. Unprotected sex. Use of alternative medicines (e.g., prayer). These all decrease health and fitness, and increase health care costs.

For all practical purposes, free health care is actually a subsidy for these types of activities. A subsidy invites people to take up an activity by saying that the government will pick up part of the tab. When the government tells people that it will pay for health care, it is saying that it will pick up a part of the tab - cover some of the expenses - associated with smoking, obesity, sexual promiscuity, and the like. It is a subsidy for unfit and unhealthy living.

It is also important to recognize that many of the activities useful for maintaining health and fitness are free. It costs no money to get exercise, not smoke, not over eat, not abuse alcohol and drugs, and not have unprotected sex. People can also save a lot of money by avoiding quack medicines and other nonsense - another potential benefit of a quality education.

Where people are choosing to risk their health, I do not see any particularly strong reason to want to compel others to bail them out when they suffer the results of their own choices.

Having said this, there is a certain amount of medical care that qualifies as a welfare good. It goes in the same category as having food to eat, water to drink, air to breathe, and a basic freedom of movement. You are not going to survive without it. Even a fit and healthy person will have health care costs necessary to maintain a minimum quality of life. Others lose health and fitness through no fault of their own. To state the obvious, we all lose health and fitness eventually, no matter what we do.

If a civilization has a lot of resources being spent fulfilling few and weak desires, there are many and strong reasons to direct some of those resources to fulfilling more and stronger desires. Methods would naturally include praise and condomnation - to promote an aversion to wasting resources on trivial things and a desire to help those in need. Other tools available to obtain these ends include rewards (for those who make these kinds of contributions) and punishment (for those who do not).

However, this is a far more limited option than would fit in the category of "free health care".

So, to answer the question.

The state should heavily subsidize education - real education; the acquisition of reasoning skills and true beliefs. The subsidy should respect the degree to which education is a public good.

If a society has people spending resources on fulfilling few, weak, and trivial desires, then it should redirect some of those resources to fulfilling more and stronger desires of basic health care. It should also work to promote health and fitness. However, subsidizing poor lifestyle choices is not a useful way to spend government funds.

The Flat Tax and the Loophole Manufacturing Industry

2011-10-25T08:25:00.000-06:00

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry is releasing his economic plan today, which includes the option of a 20% voluntary flat tax.

Perry is another Texas idiot who is simply not qualified to be President. He is one of the worst of the contenders.

However, this does not mean that a flat tax would be a bad idea.

Personally, I would like this option. At tax time, I choose the simplest option available. My goal is to minimize the time I spend filling out taxes. A 20% flat tax would make it easy. I may pay more, but the higher amount will be more than made up for in time saved and reduced stress.

This points to way in which our current hyper-complex tax code is actually built by the rich for the rich.

These deductions that they write into the code are substantially available only to somebody with the resources to hunt them down and take advantage of them, and for whom it would be profitable to do so. Those of us who do not have a tax consultant staff are likely missing opportunities every year to take deductions we qualify for. We are also losing out on opportunities to do things in such a way that we can qualify for those deductions. The vast majority of us simply do not know all of the tax implications of the options we have each year.

A second way in which the hyper-complex tax code serves the rich can be found by asking, "How did those deductions get written into the tax code anyway?"

They were put there by people who had the resources to lobby politicians for the deductions - special interest groups. These are the activities that go on behind the scenes and beneath the radar of regular voters like you and me. We don't notice them - but the special interest group with the campaign contributions and other resources the candidate might draw on sure know about them.

From the point of view of the special interest group, loophole purchasing is just another business investment. For example, they invest, say, $5 million in lobbyists, public relations, and campaign contributions to manufacture a new tax loophole that, according to the accountants, has a $50 million payoff. That is an excellent investment opportunity – a company or organization would be foolish to pass it up.

However, you and I do not have the resources to invest in loophole manufacturing. So, the loopholes tend, by and large, to serve the interests of those who can afford to have them built.

A third expense comes from the opportunities lost when companies invest in the manufacture of legal loopholes rather than productive goods and services. The $5 million that my hypothetical special interest group invested in loophole manufacturing above could have invested that money someplace else – product development, updating infrastructure, employee education.

We waste untold billions of potential research and development dollars every year in the loophole manufacturing industry. If we closed that industry down, we would free all of that economic potential to pursue other, more productive options.

Furthermore, the loophole manufacturing industry corrupts our political system. A lot of loophole manufacturing involves simply buying and selling political favors. The loophole manufacturer (politician, regulator) sells his product to the highest bidder, who pays for it by providing the manufacturer with something of value in return. Our political system would be a lot cleaner if the loophole manufacturing industry did not exist.

A fourth cost is found in all of the costs associated with filling our taxes and trying to figure out in advance what it is that we owe - and what options exist for minimizing those costs. These resources, like the resources spent in loophole manufacturing itself, could have gone into something a lot more productive or enjoyable - something that actually had value to the agent rather than handing around (or trying to prevent the handing around) the wealth already created.

One problem is that, a simple flat tax would benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class and working poor. However, this problem is easily fixed. Let households deduct the first $40,000 or so. This would take us toward the principle that the first dollars for public welfare be the dollars that fulfill the fewest and weakest desires. Include interest income and capital gains as income.

That would be it.

(1) How much money did you make last year?

(2) Subtract $40,000 from line (1).

(3) Multiply (2) by 0.2.

(4) How much was withheld from your paycheck last year?

(5) Subtract (4) from (3)

(6) If (5) is a positive number, send in that amount. If (5) is a negative number, you qualify for a refund of that amount.

Sign and date here:

Period

End of story.

The Possibility of Evil

2011-10-24T10:06:00.001-06:00

In my last post, I mentioned a hypothetical corporate leader who "really does not care about the fact that the methods for creating his product kill, maim, or sicken others or destroys their property."

My purpose was to illustrate that the current system is one in which the person who is willing to do harm has a number of economic advantages over any who would be reluctant to do harm. He gets to pocket profits that others would avoid and use governments in ways that others would shun. In doing this, he gets extra income that he can then use to drive more virtuous (and less vicious) competitors out of business.

This brought up some comments about the possibility of evil.

A member of the studio audience asked, "Do you really believe this person exists in the real world?"

My answer: We are clearly surrounded by people who have a lower regard for the interests and well-being of others than people generally have a reason to promote. Some not only disregard the well-being of others, they actively seek to cause harm. For some, causing harm is an acceptable means (collateral damage). For others, it is an end in itself.

Villainy, in this sense, is a matter of degree. There are probably a few with absolutely no regard for the well-being of others. At the same time, everybody has this fault to some degree. Each of us has encountered a situation where we did not do as much for others as a person with good desires would have done.

According to desirism, a villain is a person who lacks malleable desires that people generally have reason to promote, or has malleable desires that people generally have reason to inhibit. Praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are the social tools for promoting moral virtue and inhibiting vice.

The drunk driver provides one of the best examples of moral failing for my purposes. The drunk driver does not seek to do harm. Instead, he adopts a belief - contrary to all evidence - that he does not pose a threat to others. The main difference between the drunk driver and the corporate executive is that the drunk driver is a threat to only a small number of people – one vehicle full, in most cases. The corporate executive has the power to do far more harm.

This is not to say that all corporate executives are evil. They clearly are not.

Yet, even here we must use some care in using the claim "good" or "evil". Desirism suggests that it is possible for a person to be both - to be good in one area of life, and a villain elsewhere. This happens as a result of a specific mix of the malleable desires an agent acquires.

A brutal Nazi SS officer can be a gentile and loving father. A drunk driver can be somebody who volunteers a great deal of time to help the poor. A slave owner in a slave society can be, in every other respect, indistinguishable from any gentleman in the world today in terms of concern for his family, willingness to sacrifice for his country, and the efforts he makes on behalf of the suffering of others – those who do not belong in the slave class.

A corporate executive can be brutal in the board room while still be the nicest person one would meet if you happen to bump into him on a fishing trip with his kid.

The drunk driver also illustrates the fact that few people actually see themselves as evil. Take almost any person who has committed a moral crime, and he will give you a story that paints him as the virtuous person trying to do good - or, at least, as somebody doing that which was fully within his rights - being victimized by oppressive 'others' filled with malicious plans or a callous indifference.

I have no doubt that Hitler thought himself a great man. Slave owners had any number of rationalizations in defense of slavery. It was a great institution – a win-win situation – in which the plantation owner benefits from the labor of the slave, and the slave benefits by a warm roof, food, and somebody to watch out over their welfare.

A rapist will commonly tell you either that the woman wanted to be raped or that she deserved it as punishment for some prior crime. Child molesters will explain why sex with children is not harmful and that all harm comes, not from them, but from an oppressive society.

However, the fact that one is a successful rationalizer does not mean that one is not guilty of a moral crime. Rationalization itself is a vice, worthy of condemnation. It is not to be made into an escape from moral judgment.

The main impact that Ayn Rand has had is to give business leaders a rationalization for disregarding the life, health, and well-being of others. They are told to see themselves as the sole source of all things of value and deserving a rich reward for their contributions. Those who do not become wealthy are too lazy to make money themselves and, instead, wants to live like a parasite on the profits of those who actually contribute.

Though, to be honest, some members of the 99% fit this description.

Do these people exist?

Well, yes, they do.

My standard example of this type of people are corporate leaders who contributed to senseless propaganda against climate science. I mentioned some of them in an earlier post, many of the objections we hear against climate change. Regardless of whether the climate change science is accurate, the arguments being used against it are absolutely pathetic. We have reason to inquire as to the moral character of those who would grab onto those rather foolish arguments.

A person genuinely concerned about the well-being of others would condemn the use of these flawed arguments as cluttering the debate. I cannot think of any conclusion to draw of those who grasp these flawed arguments other than that they lack concern over the potential harm that climate change might cause. They do not have enough concern to keep the debate focused on objections that actually make sense.

Do people who grasp foolish arguments against climate science exist?

Well, yes they do – and many are on the seats of major corporations.

Quite a substantial number of candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States also fit this description – and they are well funded.

Moral Failure and Taxing the Rich

2011-10-21T08:35:00.001-06:00

On the subject of a sales tax, a member of the studio audience brought up the fact that the US government tried a small luxury tax in the early 1990s.

Three years later, it was judged to be a failure and repealed.

I should note that it was considered a failure by a Republican congress. However, the reasons offered for considering it a failure deserve some consideration. At the start, I need to remind the reader that this is a blog on ethics. I focus on how things ought to be. I have argued that the dollars that pay for government-provided public goods and basic welfare ought to be the dollars that fulfill the least and weakest desires. Given the law of diminishing returns, these are the last dollars of the richest people.

But, in the real world, we routinely run into people who are immoral.

We can conclude that torturing innocent people is evil. But, what does this proof do for the person who has been kidnapped by some sadist who has strapped him to a table and is starting to pull out his instruments of torture?

A sales tax that excludes basic welfare goods (food, medicine, basic shelter, basic clothing) has a lot to recommend it morally. However, some people are immoral, and their immoral behavior may create problems.

Well, immoral behavior, by its very nature, does create problems. There is no reason to call behavior that creates no problems immoral.

The luxury tax of the early 1990s is said to have failed because the very rich - the people whose dollars were fulfilling the fewest and weakest desires, were too selfish to allow that money go to providing government public goods and basic welfare (turning them into dollars that fulfill more and stronger dollars).

They quit purchasing goods in the land that has the sales tax and made their purchases in lands that did not have that tax. This left the middle class (those whose dollars fulfill more and stronger desires) to pay for the public goods and basic welfare that the wealthy refuse to provide.

Furthermore, when the wealthy took their money to other countries to make purchases, this cost jobs in local businesses that cater to the rich.

I want the reader to note that this problem is not unique to the sales tax. It is true of all forms of taxation. The very wealthy have a way to avoid those taxes - because they have a freedom the rest of us do not have to move their economic activity to other regions.

If there is a property tax, they buy property elsewhere. If it is an income tax, they arrange to get their income elsewhere. If it is a capital gains tax, they will buy and sell their assets in foreign markets.

Note that this is not a tax loophole. Closing tax loopholes alone will not bring this business back into the country. In fact, closing tax loopholes will do harm. These business leaders are simply going to move their activity from the country that closes the loopholes to a country that maintains them. In short, it will drive business away.

Actually, this is a lot easier to see with respect to regulation - though all of the basic underlying principles are the same.

Take a corporate leader who really does not care about the fact that the methods for creating his product kill, maim, or sicken others or destroys their property. He wants the liberty to conduct these activities anyway and he does not want to pay any compensation for harms done. Instead, he wants to pocket all of the profits including the money that would have gone to compensation.

Assuming that he is wealthy enough, he simply farms out his operation to whatever government will refuse to regulate those activities. If the harms are global rather than local, this becomes much easier to pull off.

We can take greenhouse gas emissions for an example. These are activities that kill, maim, and sicken others and harm their property. If one country decides to restrict or tax these emissions, the international business leader instead moves his business to a country that offers no restrictions. The country that gets the jobs will still suffer the harms of global warming - but they at least have jobs available while they are being harmed. Countries that refuse this deal also still get the harms, but do not get the benefits of jobs.

In many industries, the wealthy have the opportunity to bid out their activities in this way. They will build their business in those areas where the people ask for the least contribution of their dollars to public goods and basic welfare, and give them the greatest freedom to harm others without demanding that compensation be given. The country that puts in the winning bid gets the company with its jobs. All other countries get the global harm done and nothing else.

In fact, a business can add another element to this bidding process. "How willing are you to tax your middle class to provide me with an economic incentive - a payoff - to build my factory in your country? To get my business, you have to show a willingness to cut your college education funds and social security to make sure that my business is bailed out if I should make a lot of foolish business decisions."

This bidding puts more wealth into the pockets of the wealthy - often transferring it directly from the pockets of the poor and middle class. And the more wealth these people accumulate, the more freedom they have to engage in this type of bargaining. And the more freedom they have to engage in this type of bargaining, the wealthier they become.

To make matters worse, we can well expect that the people who have the profits from harming others without compensation, obtaining government "economic incentives", and refusing to contribute to public goods and basic welfare, will economically dominate competitors that accept these costs. Good companies finish last.

So . . . regulation, sales tax, income tax, property tax, capital gains tax, business incentives, environmental regulations, worker safety . . . all of these are subject to this phenomenon. It is not a problem unique to the sales/luxury tax, and it is not a reason to preferring some other option over and above the sales or luxury tax.

So, there you are, strapped to the table by the sadistic killer who is starting to gather his instruments of torture. The person strapped to the next table has given you an argument that demonstrates that sadistic desires are immoral - they are desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit through condemnation and punishment. You know this to be true.

But it is not going to help.

It is just a fact of the world around us that, where morality fails, people suffer the consequences. We have all been victims, of one degree to another, of moral failure. The more moral failure we allow, the more suffering results. The moral failure of allowing evil people to make economic bargains across nations of the type mentioned above threatens a great deal of widespread suffering. It is a situation that people generally have many and strong reasons to prevent.

Romney's Philosophy of Regulation

2011-10-20T08:21:00.001-06:00

One of Republican candidate Mitt Romney's first acts as President, according to his plan for jobs and economic growth, will be to sign over to corporate America significant rights to your life, your health, and your property.

His Day-One plan includes an executive order that

Directs all agencies to immediately initiate the elimination of Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation, and then caps annual increases in regulatory costs at zero dollars

The first part of this is meaningless political gibberish - as if there is somebody out there who is a passionate defender of unduly burdening the economy. For the sake of the really stupid, I will explicitly state that the dispute is not over whether we should or should not unduly burden the economy, but what counts as an undue burden.

For this, we turn to the "zero dollars" clause.

I am a business owner. I am engaged in an activity that, it is discovered, kills, maims, or sickens others or damages their property, I get to continue that activity unless and until somebody is willing to pay me enough so that not doing harm costs me zero dollars.

Your right to life, health, and property are irrelevant. Your costs are irrelevant. The only thing that matters – the only standard on which regulations will be judged – is whether or not the regulation costs me, the Corporate American, zero dollars. If that rule is violated, the regulation will not take place.

This is functionally the same as saying, "I, a member of Corporate America, own certain rights to your life, health, and property. If you wish to prevent me from doing certain harms to your life, health, and property, you must pay me not to do so. Otherwise, I shall be considered at liberty to inflict those harms by any activity that I judge to be profitable. If you wish to buy me off so that I will not inflict those harms, you owe me at least as much as I would have made in profits by the activity that would have caused those harms – and not even one dollar less."

These are not the values I was raised to believe in. Those values state that all people have equal rights to life, liberty, and property, and it is the purpose of government to secure these rights. It is not the purpose of government to transfer those rights to Corporate America.

Though I do not believe in a creator (or, at least one that has beliefs and desires) or in intrinsic values, I hold that an honest examination of the moral facts reveals that people have many and strong reasons to promote a moral harming the life, health, and property of others. In other words, in declaring that such actions are immoral and those who would do so are . . . shall we say . . . lacking in certain virtues.

Okay . . . they’re selfish and evil.

In effect, Romney’s executive order is a massive government wealth transfer scheme from poor and middle class Americans to Corporate America.

I, the Corporate American, will either get the profits from the activity that harms others, or I will get at least an equal profit from being paid nit to cause harm. You, the muddle or lower class American, will either suffer the harms that I find profitable to inflict on others, or you will suffer the costs of paying me not to do harm."

In other words, I am richer and you are poorer.

Of course, it is not the case that all regulations prevent harming the life, health, and property of others. However, do not complain to me about the failure to make that distinction.

It is Romney in his Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth that fails to make any distinctions on this matter. If he had made distinctions and recognized other values, the rights people have not to suffer harm to their life, health, and property - then this objection would not have been made.

Instead, what we get from Romney, is a statement his regulatory philosophy holds that the purpose of government is not to secure the equal rights that all people have to their life, health, and property. Instead, governments exist for the purpose of securing the number of dollars in the pockets of Corporate America by ensuring that regulations remove not one dollar from those pockets.

Considerations Regarding School Vouchers

2011-10-19T08:03:00.000-06:00

While I am on the subject of things that conservatives get right and liberals get wrong, I want to bring up the subject of school vouchers.

This is a system where the government takes tax money and pays a parent or guardian to get their child educated. The state does not manage the school or pick the teachers or pick the coursework – but it does require that the student meet certain standards. It is, after all, paying for a service – the quality education of a child. It does have a need to adopt some measure of making sure that it gets what it pays for.

One of the common objections to this system that I hear is that it is a tax subsidy for religion. There are a lot of parents who would use these vouchers to send their children to some form of religious school, where they will get religious indoctrination at state expense. This violates the separation of church and state – which does not permit the government funded religious indoctrination.

I think that this is a flawed argument. The government is not paying for religious indoctrination. It is paying to educate a child to acquire a certain set of knowledge and skills. It just so happens that, at the same time as the child is being given these skills, in some setting, it is also getting religious indoctrination. However, this is not something that the state is paying for.

It is also the case that, while a child is being educated, it is breathing – consuming oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. The fact that this happens while a child is getting an education paid for by the government does not imply that the government is paying the child to consume oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.

To determine what the government is paying for, we do not need to look at what happens while the child is learning. We need to look at what the state considers to be a successful completion of the contract on the part of those who get the money. That contract cannot include any type of religious indoctrination, but this does not permit religious indoctrination going on at the same time as the terms of the contract are being met.

On this matter, we still have many and good reason to set high standards. We benefit from a well educated population, and we have reason to condemn the uneducation and miseducation (myth-education) of children.

However, the fact of the matter is that the political compromise necessary for public schools is to teach ignorance on all controversial matters. By 'controversial', I am no talking about scientific disagreements about (for example) whether t-Rex was a carnivore or scavenger. I mean any fiction that a segment of the population absolutely refuses to let go of.

The option that I would propose is not to oppose school vouchers, but to use them.

Lets create our own schools.

I would love to see an Academy of Reason for K-12 education.

This would not be an atheist school – I would oppose that. An atheist school would mean picking winners and losers on matters of fact. Though I think I know what the facts are concerning the existence of a god, I reject the arrogance of presuming infallibility.

However, it would be a school where a philosophy course covering the arguments for and against the existence of a god ( along with free will, epistemology, logic, and value theory) may well be a required course.

It would be a school that discusses creationism in its biology class – specifically for the purpose of educating children to understand exactly why creationism is not science. One could devote whole lectures in biology class to, "Here is what the creationists say. These things are false, and those things over there are not science"

It would be a school that could offer honest and informative classes on the history of religion - and even of history, for that matter. The question of what counts as evidence and whether there is evidence that Jesus actually existed could be discussed.

It would be a school where those students who are interested could take in a class that looked into the biology and psychology of homosexuality, and where students would get accurate information about sex, pregnancy, and venereal diseases and how to prevent them.

There are other potential concerns about school vouchers. For example, some worry that taking the best students out of the public schools and putting them into private schools will lower the quality of public education. Also, public schools are concerned about having less money to spend on education. Consolidating schools to cut costs will mean longer commutes for school-age children and their parents. This is not the end of the discussion.

However, there would be a lot that could be gained from having schools where teachers are free to teach and students are free to learn. And a school voucher system would help parents of modest means to get the it children into those schools.

Considerations on a National Sales Tax

2011-10-18T08:53:00.002-06:00

I could support a national sales tax.

A national sales tax is a part of Republican Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan – a 9 percent national sales tax, 9 percent corporate income tax, and 9 percent individual flat tax.

This is not to say that I support Cain's 999 plan. I do not. It seems well designed to tax the middle class for the purpose of supporting the wealthy.

Furthermore, I am not a supporter of a "flat tax". As I have argued in the past, I think that the first dollars for government public goods should come from the dollars that fulfill the least and weakest desires. Because of the diminishing marginal return of dollars, these are the last dollars of the very rich.

However, there is some merit to the idea of replacing taxes on labor, savings, and investment with a tax on consumption - merit grounded on real-world reasons for action and not imaginary "intrinsic values".

A tax makes the activity being taxed more expensive. You take an option that fulfills just a few more and a little stronger desires than an alternative and tax it, and you create a situation in which the alternative wins out. This suggests that taxes should be placed on activities that one wants to discourage, and not be placed on taxes one wants to encourage.

Working, saving, and investing are not good candidates for "activities we have reason to discourage".

In fact, we have more and stronger reasons to encourage these activities than discourage them.

Is "consumption" something we want to discourage?

A sales tax is really a tax on consumption - on spending.

Whether this is something to be discouraged, I would argue, depends entirely on what is being consumed.

One of the objections to national sales tax is that it is a regressive tax. It puts a greater burden on the poor and middle class - who have to spend a higher percentage of their money to survive - than on the wealthy who have spare cash to save and invest.

However, as I said above, I am no fan of the flat tax. I think we can engineer a sales tax in such a way that it avoids these objections.

First, we do not have a sales tax on what is needed to survive. Food...good food...need not be taxed at all. The portion of the poor person's income that goes to food need not be taxed. Medical care, prescription drugs, and primary shelter (rent and mortgage on a first home) can also be included in the list of things not taxed.

The more things excluded from the sales tax, the higher the rate needs to be on the things included in order to make up the lost revenue. However, that is not an objection to the system. This is, instead, an application of the principle that the first dollars to go to pay for government services should be the dollars that fulfill the least and fewest desires.

On the issue of rent and mortgage, we can rationally conclude that a $10,000 monthly rent or mortgage payment represents the purchase of a form of shelter not needed to maintain basic human welfare. So, perhaps, allowing the first $1000 in rent or mortgage per month to be free of a sales tax would be sufficient.

I am throwing these numbers out for illustrative purposes only. A proper understanding of the subject matter may argue for a different number, but the principle remains the same.

Another economic good that we can argue should be tax free is education. Indeed, education - because of its free-rider problem (an educated population is a benefit to everybody, even those who do not contribute to the cost of education) - is something that the government should subsidize, not something it should tax.

On the other side, we can have a higher sales tax rate on things that are clearly luxury items - pure consumption. Jewelry, designer clothes, everything above $2,500 in monthly rent or mortgage, luxury cars, expensive hotel suites, cruises and first-class plane tickets are examples that can fit into this category.

The fact that a sales tax is supported by Republicans - and can be designed as a system that taxes the middle class to benefit the rich - does not prove that it is a bad idea. It has its merits - and can be designed in such a way that it is just as progressive as an income tax, with the tax focused on collecting those dollars that fulfill the fewest and weakest desires.