Rush Limbaugh on Cheering Disaster

Limbaugh claims that being religious makes him a better man than others because he knows that some things are absolutely wrong. However, it does not seem to have helped him recognize the moral fault of 'bearing false witness'.

On his website, Rush Limbaugh posted a transcript titled, "The Left Celebrates Katrina Destruction, Terror Attack They've Been Waiting For." In this transcript, he stated, "The left is happy. They're energized. They're excited in the midst of a national disaster where many of their own constituents were harmed and maybe killed."

One moral principle that transcends almost all moral systems (and all moral systems of merit) is the principle that it is wrong to "bear false witness against thy neighbor." Whenever a person speaks about his neighbor, he should make sure that his statements are true and accurate.

Speaking dishonestly about a neighbor leads to injustice. Unjust treatment is treatment that cannot be justified. Any treatment grounded on the words of those who bear false witness is, by that fact alone, unjustified in the same way that convicting an accused criminal based on lies is an unjust conviction. Civil society requires that its citizens have a respect for the truth if they are to prevent the misery and injustice of actions grounded on error.

In the Judeo-Christian religion, the prohibition against bearing false witness is a commandment; the 9th Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Though I think that the Bible was written by men without any divine intervention, they were men smart enough to see that civil society required that the people have a respect for the truth.

The Nature of False Witness

Limbaugh's claim that the left is celebrating the destruction in New Orleans is false in two respects.

Broad Statements are Always Unjust

First, "the Left" is not a unified body. "The Left" includes many poor New Orleans citizens who have watched family members die, or are friends and neighbors of those who have done so. The claim that they are celebrating this destruction is a very obvious lie.

"The left" includes people who have watched the suffering on television and sat crying for its victims. "The left" includes people who are reacting out of genuine anger that people could act in ways that bring about this type of misery, and who swear to do everything in their power to make sure it never happens again.

It is simply not possible to use a blanket term such as "the Left" in this way and make a true statement. This is why prejudice and bigotry are immoral. They are attempts to paint whole groups of people with a common brush, and they are never entirely true. They always bear false witness against at least some members of that group.

It is always unjust to blame one person for the actions of another, so statements that attempt to paint all people on "the Left" or any other group in one broad stroke are always unjust.

Compassionate Warnings

Second, consider the case of a mother who has told her son to wear a helmet when he rides his bike, just in case he gets into an accident. However, her son ignores her advice. Let us assume that the son is an adult not living at home.

Limbaugh's form of reasoning would have us think that this mother is eagerly waiting for her son to have an accident, so that she can run up to him, happy and energized, and say, "See, I told you so!"

Limbaugh seems unable to imagine the mother, living in anguish that her son's recklessness will get him hurt, reaching that fateful day when she gets a call from somebody who says, "There's been an accident." He seems unable to imagine the anger and hurt with which the mother greets her son in the hospital and says, "How many times have I told you to wear a helmet?"

When the son looks up at his mother and answers, "This is probably the happiest day of your life, isn’t it? You just could not wait for the day when you could come in here and say, ‘I told you so.’”

The son's words -- or anybody else who claims to be speaking for the son in these terms -- are not the words of a virtuous person. They are cruel and mean-spirited. A morally conscientious person would not say them of an individual without considering alternatives. No person can accurately make this claim of an entire group.

Arguing in Limbaugh's Terms

Some might want to claim that Mr. Limbaugh is not, in fact, bearing false witness because he truly believes what he says.

However, what Limbaugh believes is irrelevant.

I can illustrate the error in this way of thinking with a simple hypothetical story.

Imagine, Rush Limbaugh dies and is standing in line at the entrance to heaven. Ahead of him is a man talking to the gatekeeper. Limbaugh can hear the conversion.

Looking in his book, the gatekeeper says, "You blew up a bus. You killed a lot of people."

"Yes, I did," the man answers proudly.

"You have killed innocent people. You have broken the commandment against murder. You cannot enter."

"I do not believe they were innocent," says the man. "They were supporting an immoral government. I have a right to attack those who support my enemy."

"It does not matter what you think. It matters what you did, and what you did was to kill innocent people. You committed murder, so you cannot enter."

When Mr. Limbaugh steps up to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper says, "You bore false witness against your neighbor."

"No," says Limbaugh. "I believed that my statements were true. I did not think that I was bearing false witness."

"It does not matter what you think. It matters what you did, and what you did was bear false witness against your neighbor. Therefore, you cannot enter."

Truth Matters

When this hypothetical Limbaugh tries to avoid moral responsibility by basing morality only on what he thinks is wrong, he is defending common moral relativism. This is the type of claim made by somebody who believes that there is no right or wrong except that which the person thinks is right or wrong. Since Limbaugh did not think he was bearing false witness, he wants to assert that he did no wrong.

However, he would be mistaken. The prohibition against bearing false witness in fact is that which generates the obligation to check one's sources, look for other interpretations, and show the moral integrity necessary to determine whether what one says is true and accurate before saying it. It is an obligation to have a love for the truth and a hatred for “bearing false witness” that is so strong that one tries to avoid it wherever possible.

We all make mistakes. However, the virtuous person will make fewer mistakes because he knows that he is morally responsible for his mistakes, and goes through the effort to make sure that he does not bear false witness. The vicious person does not care whether he bears false witness or not. He does not care about the truth, and is more than happy to try to sway others with a convenient fiction.

Conclusion

If Mr. Limbaugh truly believes in God, if he believes that this God punishes sinners, if he believes that it is a sin to bear false witness against one's neighbor, then I find it odd that Mr. Limbaugh is so apathetic when it comes to determining whether he is bearing false witness against his neighbors.

It is as strange as a person who believes that there is a God, that this God punishes sinners, that it is a sin to murder, and yet murders without remorse or apprehension.

However he may reconcile these conflicting beliefs in his own mind, from a more objective perspective this much can be said: Neither of these descriptions refer to a person of good moral character. A person of good moral character does not murder, and does not bear false witness against his neighbor.

A person of good moral character would not say that the left cheers the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Christian Culture of Deception and Intellectual Recklessness

Why does it appear to be the case that those who most closely identify themselves with the religious right – the people who say that morality requires God and we cannot trust the atheist to do the right thing – so strongly embraces a culture of dishonesty and intellectual recklessness?

Recent news contained two stories that illustrate the thesis that the religious right give their trust and friendship to those who practice deliberate deception and intellectual recklessness. They seem to have little idea what intellectual honestly looks like, at least when dealing with their own members.

The Obama/Clinton Story

Crooks and Liars carried a posting on the claim that Democratic candidate Barack Obama attended a Muslim Madrassa (a school that specializes in the teaching of Muslim hate and violence to young children) when his family lived in Indonesia. The story originated in Insight Magazine (owned by the same company that owns the Washington Times) and was then picked up and retransmitted by several branches of the News Corp media empire including Fox News and the New York Post. It further alleged that the Hillary Clinton campaign was behind the story, having uncovered a fact that Obama was trying to keep hidden.

They also posted CNN’s investigation of this story, finding it to be entirely unsupported. They visited the school that Barack visited, finding it to be little different from a conventional American school. Class pictures taken from the time Obama attended there showed teachers in casual western-style wear and no signs of any intense focus on the Muslim religion at all – let alone the most violent and hate-filled parts of that religion. Even though most of the students who attended were Muslim, the school gave Christian students an opportunity to spend some time studying their own religion while the Muslim children attended separate classes. Obama, at that time, studied with the Christian students.

The Stem Cell Report

The site, “Lord J-Bar For Democracy, Not Theocracy” carried a posting called “More Lies from the White House” on the Stem Cell debate.

Here, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a report arguing that embryonic stem cell research was unnecessary because everything that scientists expect to gain from embryonic stem cells can be gained using other techniques that do not destroy embryos. However, its claims are built on unrepeated scientific research that scarcely supports the broad claims the Domestic Policy Council claims and whose conclusions are largely rejected by the scientific community.

More to the point, the same White House that so easily and unashamedly accepts the weakest possible scientific claims suggesting that embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary also rejects research on global warming that has massive empirical support and the acceptance of the vast majority of the scientific community. It is difficult to find any pattern to the type of research that the White House uses in evaluating scientific claims other than, “Science that yields conclusions we like is good science and will be considered brilliant even if on the weakest empirical claims and reasoning; science that yields conclusions we do not like is bad science that will be rejected regardless of the degree of corroboration and confirmation available.”

Absent a Love of Truth or Intellectual Responsibility

Even the Christian religion has a commandment against bearing false witness against others. Yet, it seems that those who are the most vocal in asserting their Christian identity, and the most vocal in condemning non-Christians for their lack of a moral base, are also the most willing to bear false witness and engage in intellectual recklessness that threatens to contribute to the maiming and killing of hundreds of millions of people.

Christians defend this prohibition against bearing false witness as a commandment. I defend it on the grounds that we have several strong reasons to promote an aversion to bearing false witness. Promoting such an aversion among the population as a whole would help in the fulfillment of other desires. These many strong reasons to promote an aversion to bearing false witness do not depend in any way on the existence of a God. Those reasons give us reason to praise and to reward those who tell the truth even when it otherwise harms their interests; and to condemn and punish those who use deception and who ‘bear false witness’ against others as a way of promoting their interests.

So, we have this group of people who claim that their religion makes them more virtuous than others, who claim to have a true devotion to that which is right and a true contempt with that which is wrong, who ally themselves with ‘bearing false witness’ and intellectual recklessness threatening hundreds of millions of lives without the slightest hint of guilt or shame. It is as if they believe that God’s commandments do not apply to those who believe in God. Only the heathen and infidel is prohibited from bearing false witness and threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Believers can do whatever they please.

Two months before the 2004 Presidential election, CBS News ran a story where they claimed to have uncovered memos critical of President Bush’s service as a member of the National Guard. Later, it was discovered that the papers were forgeries, and that CBS News had not authenticated the papers before reporting on their contents. This was a huge embarrassment for CBS, which issued an apology, fired four members of its staff who were responsible for the error getting on the news, and renewed their efforts to make sure that their reports were accurate.

We cannot expect the same thing to happen at Fox News or the New York Post regarding the Obama story, or the White House Office of Domestic Policy in the case of the stem cell papers.

It is not unreasonable to expect that the reason for this difference is because CBS serves a culture that finds “bearing false witness” and irresponsible and reckless reporting to demand some level of moral outrage, who assigns responsibility for wrongful acts and punishes the wrongdoers accordingly.

Fox News, the New York Post, and the White House, on the other hand, belong to a culture of deception and intellectual recklessness that views intellectual responsibility itself as a moral crime and are more likely to punish the honest and careful researcher while rewarding the dishonest propagandist.

The Perpetrators and Their Assistants

So far, I have focused attention on the perpetrators themselves – the intellectually reckless and the bearers of false witness. Yet, blame needs to be cast far wider than this.

We live in a culture soaked in lies and deception for the same reason that the people in Baghdad live in a sea of bombs and other forms of murder. This happens because the people as a whole, and the culture they adopt, have decided to embrace and reward those who practice these arts of deception and intellectual recklessness in this country, of bombing and murder in Iraq, whenever the perpetrators claim to be one of ‘us’ who are inflicting these wrongs on ‘them’.

We are constantly being told that America is a Christian nation. There is one sense in which this is correct. Most people in this country are Christian, and the values that this country follows are those that Christians find easy to accept.

We are a Christian nation, in that the Christian culture is a culture that embraces lies, bearing false witness, and intellectual recklessness as cultural icons, advancing and promoting these art forms at every opportunity, particularly when they are useful in gaining political and economic control over others.

The proof is easy to see. If it were not the fact that this was a Christian nation, and those Christians endorsed deception, bearing false witness, and intellectual recklessness as cultural ideals to be promoted and defended, people in the Bush Administration and on Fox News and other Conservative outlets would be out of a job today, or in the near future. These are the things that people do when they hold to a moral standard, and decide to hold people personally responsible for violating that standard. These are the things that the religious right – at least that arm of it that embraces the White House and Fox News, will not do.

Rush Limbaugh's Bearing False Witness

I am trying to figure out whether Rush Limbaugh and his supporters do not believe in the Christian God, or do not care whether such a God exists. They certainly have no qualms against "bearing false witness." This implies that they do not believe that a God who prohibits bearing false witness exists, or they do not care.

Granted, I do not believe that such a God exists. I have an argument for a social prohibition against bearing false witness that does not depend on the existence of such a God. I'll get to that later. For a few paragraphs at least, I want to look at this from Limbaugh's own assumptions.

From “Crooks and Liars,” in a recent radio show, Limbaugh said:

"I got an email here. "(Uh) Rush, (uh) now that two of our own have been tortured and murdered by the terrorists in Iraq, will the Left say that they deserved it? I'm so sick of our cut-and-run liberals. Keep up your great work." Bob C. from Roanoke, Virginia. "PS, I love the way you do the program on the Little Kim (?)" (laughs) I read...no I added that! He didn't, he didn't put that in there. (laughs) You know, it-it's-I-uh...I gotta tell ya, I-I-I perused the liberal, kook blogs today, and they are happy that these two soldiers got tortured. They're saying, "Good riddance. Hope Rumsfeld and whoever sleep well tonight."

Let us grant Limbaugh the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that he went out onto the internet and found somebody who (1) identified themselves as a 'liberal', and (2) cheered the death of these soldiers.

No, on the other hand, a fundamental principle of justice says that the person who makes these types of accusations deserves no benefit of the doubt. Instead, the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused, who are to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The accuser has the obligation to provide evidence, which Limbaugh did not do.

This is Limbaugh's first moral transgression.

I also want to make it clear that every one of Limbaugh's transgressions reflect on those who support him. Limbaugh himself suggests that this is a valid moral implication. He uses it when he infers that the moral condemnation of those who murdered these soldiers reflects those who cheer the murderers. He’s right in this. Yet, from this, we get to infer that those who would cheer Limbaugh’s own injustice and immorality are also tainted by his moral transgressions.

However, let us assume that Limbaugh went out and discovered some person or persons who cheered the murder of these soldiers.

There is a clear distinction between cheering the murder of these soldiers, and condemning Rumsfeld for being partially to blame for their deaths. Assume that a man knows that a neighbor up the street is a serial killer. With this in mind, he sends his wife over to the neighbor’s house to borrow some flower. He never sees her again. There is a difference between cheering the death of the woman and condemning the man for causing that death.

Limbaugh’s comment suggests that he is misrepresenting the claims of those he read. This would make him a liar, and this would be his second moral transgression.

So, let us go further and say that he found somebody who actually cheered the death of these soldiers – who claims that killing them was a good thing and well deserved. Limbaugh’s discovery would only justify a conclusion that condemned those who actually cheered these deaths. He would have no justification for expanding those who are guilty – those who are worthy of condemnation – beyond those who actually committed this moral transgression.

Yet, Limbaugh does expand the range of those he says are guilty. Limbaugh does, in fact, condemn the innocent.

His logic is exactly the same as that used by a person who goes out to do some research, finds an example of a black man murdering a cop, then going onto his web show and claiming, "I have perused the internet and discovered that black men are, indeed, cop killers." Or, it would be similar to going out onto the internet, discovering that a Protestant planted a terrorist bomb in north Ireland, and said, "I have gone out onto the internet and discovered that Protestants are terrorists."

This is the type of person Limbaugh is. He is exactly like the person who would make these types of inferences against blacks or Protestants. He is, in short, a bigot, practicing the bigot’s art of applying the wrongs (real or imagined) of a few individuals to those of an entire group.

This is Limbaugh's third moral transgression.

Again, the contemptible moral quality of Limbaugh’s actions reflect on those who cheer and support him, in the same way as the morally contemptible actions of those who murdered those soldiers reflect on those who would cheer the murderers.

Limbaugh’s actions clearly fall under the category of “bearing false witness.”

He “bore false witness” when he misinterpreted the original claims as “cheering that the soldiers were killed.” He bore false witness when he applied the transgressions of a few individuals (if true) to a whole group.

With this evidence clearly in hand, we are forced to conclude that either Limbaugh does not believe in a God who condemns "bearing false witness," or he believes that such a God exists but does not care about His prohibitions.

Those of his followers who would cheer and support his actions must also believe either that no God would condemn them for supporting a campaign of lies, or does not care that such a God exists. These are the only attitudes consistent with their behavior.

Of course, I do not believe that there is a God that prohibits bearing false witness. Yet, I argue that people generally have a reason to promote a culture of aversion to deceit. The fulfillment of desires requires true beliefs, so people generally have reason to promote a culture filled with true beliefs. This means promoting a culture in which people love truth and hate deception. The way to do this is to use the tools of praise and reward on those who love the truth, and to condemn and punish deceivers.

In this case, this argues that Limbaugh and those who support him are deserving of condemnation, because they have proved themselves to have no fondness for truth and an immoral affection for deception (a.k.a. "bearing false witness").

By praising and rewarding liars and hate mongers, they are helping to raise a generation that sees liars and hate mongers as role models, who will be tempted to become liars and hate mongers themselves, with all of the evil that will come from this. The way to teach a generation to respect honesty and kindness is to reverse this trend of rewarding deceitful hate mongers, and praising and rewarding those who are honest and kind instead.

The same argument suggests that we would be wise to create a culture in which people are adverse to harming the innocent. That would be a culture made up of people who welcome individual responsibility where the innocent are allowed to live free and only the guilty are punished. Bringing about such a culture means praising and rewarding those who protect the innocent and who condemn the guilty only with proof of guilt, while condemning those who over generalize guilt as a tool for promoting hate.

I recognize that Limbaugh and his followers do not share these assumptions. Instead, they assert that there exists a God who loves honesty and justice who commands their followers to do the same. Yet, at the same time, Limbaugh bears false witness against others. This only makes sense if we conclude that, deep down, Limbaugh believes that no such God exists or he does not care.

As for his followers and supporters, their support only makes sense under the assumption that they do not believe that a God that condemns bearing false witness exists or they do not care.

Nor do they seem to care for the benefits that reason suggests we would harvest by creating a society of individuals who have affection for honesty over deception, kindness over hate, and justice over injustice. We need a society in which people love honesty, kindness, and justice. Cheering and supporting Limbaugh means cheering and supporting deception, hate, and injustice – with all of the social costs that these evils bring with them.

Limbaugh and his supporters may want to claim that they are innocent. However, we can trust that an all-knowing God would have no trouble seeing past their rationalizations.

I can imagine Limbaugh and his followers being questioned at the Pearly Gates, being challenged by an angel at the gates to heaven saying, “Here, again, you bore false witness against your neighbor. We told you that was not allowed. Yet, time and time again you broke this commandment. You know what we do to people like you, right?”

Unsound Moral Reasoning: 4 Examples

As should be obvious to anybody who has followed this blog for any extended period of time, I am somebody who believes that there are true and false moral statements. There is a fact of the matter concerning the rightness or wrongness of particular acts, and we can discover these facts like we can discover the chemical composition of a substance or the facts about an ecosystem that existed hundreds of millions of years ago.

A more important (though, certainly, related) question is not whether moral statements can be true or false, but whether moral arguments can be sound rather than unsound, or at least strong rather than weak.

What follows is largely a summary post, meant to put a number of different issues I have written about into a larger context.

Logicians have their own particular vocabulary for talking about arguments. A sound argument is an argument where the conclusion logically follows from the premises (the ‘reasons for believing’ the conclusion), and all of the premises are true. A strong argument is one in which the premises render the conclusion to be almost certainly true, but does not guarantee that truth.

For example, the major problem with religious arguments is not that their conclusions are false. The problem is that their arguments are unsound, because many of the premises are false.

One of the important facts about logic is that, even though an argument is unsound, its conclusion can still be true. For example, I could wake up in the morning, see a bright red sunrise, and conclude that an airplane crashed last night. My argument would not be sound. It would not even be a strong argument. Yet, this does not prove that no airplane crashed last night. It only proves that no rational person, presented solely with evidence that the sunrise is red, would have any reason to conclude that a plane crashed last night.

So, take the moral prohibition against bearing false witness against others – a prohibition that I have defended as being more important than a prohibition on lying. It is a prohibition that, of course, covers lying (lying is one way to bear false witness against others). Yet, a prohibition against bearing false witness also prohibits rumor-mongering and making intellectually reckless accusations and associations – because of the risk of bearing false witness.

Divine Command

If a person bases a conclusion of the form, “It is wrong to bear false witness,” on premises that say there is a God and that this God frowns upon bearing false witness, then that argument is unsound. The premises are false. It is like basing a belief that an airplane crashed during the night on a red sunrise in the morning, when the morning was, in fact, covered with a thick fog.

However, once again, claiming that the argument is unsound is not the same as saying that the conclusion is false. This is where some theists make a significant mistake. They assert that, “Because you criticize my premises, you must be arguing that it is not wrong to bear false witness against others. It certainly is true that it is wrong to bear false witness against others, so my premises that there exists a God and this God disapproves of such things must be true.”

Of course, this defense fails. This would be like having a person argue, on a gray and foggy morning, “There must have been a bright red sunlight this morning because the news reported that a plane crashed last night.” It is a clearly flawed and question-begging form of argument.

Even though false premises do not guarantee a false conclusion, they certainly do not guarantee a true conclusion. Many theists are convinced through religious argument to do things that are actually wrong. They were not believed to be wrong by the tribesmen who created the holy scripture – but those were largely ignorant people with a limited understanding of the real world. Their moral science, as it turns out, was little better than their physical science.

Intrinsic Value

Another form of argument commonly used rests their moral conclusions on fundamental, basic ‘ought’ statements that cannot be further reduced to anything in the real world. Here, I am also going to argue that these propositions do not exist. All premises of the form, “There is a basic, irreducible ‘ought’ that says ‘people ought to do X’ are false.

One of the most common arguments in favor of the existence of these fundamental, irreducible ‘oughts’ is that one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. Here is where I insert my view that there is no distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. There is only a distinction between ‘is’ and ‘is not’ – and if ‘ought’ cannot fit in with what ‘is’, then the only place left for it is in the realm of what ‘is not’.

Surprisingly, it does not matter which category a person chooses. Regardless of whether ‘ought’ is put into the category of ‘is’ or ‘is not’, desires still exist. Relationships between states of affairs and desires are still real, and desires continue to provide agents with reasons for action in the real world. We may have to come up with a different name for these aspects of nature, but we have no basis on which to question their existence or the reasons for action embedded within them.

Common Subjectivism

Another form of argument that is very popular, and also entirely unsound, is the argument from personal preference. It is an argument that states, “I desire that everybody do X; therefore, everybody has an obligation to do X.” In other words, a person makes a statement such as, “People should not bear false witness against others.” Then, when asked to defend it, the speaker merely asserts, “I have come to adopt the attitude towards bearing false witness that it is something that should not be done. If I had been raised differently then I would not now be a person who holds that this is something that ought not to be done. Similarly, somebody who was raised differently might not hold the attitude that this should not be done. Nonetheless, I have come to hold the attitude that it should not be done; therefore, it should not be done.”

This is much like adopting the attitude that God exists; then, when asked to defend this claim, asserting something like, “I have come to adopt the attitude towards God that He exists. If I had been raised differently, then I would not now be a person who holds that God exists. Similarly, somebody who was raised differently might not hold the attitude that God exists. Nonetheless, I have come to hold the attitude that God exists; therefore, God exists.”

This is clearly a very poor defense. Yet, it is extremely common among those who are trying to defend a moral conclusion. It effectively states, “If I have come to a completely unsupported and indefensible attitude that something is the case, then I am completely justified in asserting that something is the case, even though somebody else who acquires the attitude that something is not the case would be justified in asserting that something is not the case. In fact, if I were to acquire the attitude that something is not the case, then I would be totally justified in asserting that.

It is a nonsense position – and one of my main exhibits in defending my claim that religion is not the only source of absurdity in the world, and eliminating religion is no guarantee against eliminating absurdity.

Genetic/Biological Morality

I have discussed this option repeatedly over the past week. I add it here only to fit it into context. This is the view, “It is wrong to bear false witness because I have been programmed by evolution to adopt the attitude that it is wrong to bear false witness.”

So, what of the person who has not evolved a disposition to view bearing false witness as wrong. Or, what of the person who views the establishment of ‘in group’ loyalty and ‘out group’ hostility, manifesting an urge to attack out-groups and destroy them, taking their resources from them? What of the person who evolved a disposition to rape? If we (or to the degree that we) did not evolve altruistic dispositions, then is it the case that to that degree we are not good? Or does that imply that altruism is not good?

If we look at nature, we do not find an environment filled with cooperation and love. We see an environment that is a blend of cooperation and competition – with forms of cruelty by one creature against others that many people simply hope to ignore. Those people who argue that morality comes from evolution would have to have some place in the horrendous brutality and cruelty we also find in nature, and explain how, if morality comes from nature, that nature (and thus morality) does not and cannot command horrendous brutality.

Summary

None of these arguments actually have much merit. Yet, people appeal to them time and time again. They do so in defending conclusions that are as serious as deciding who to kill and who to let live, who to harm to who to help. There is a lot of talk given recently about how religion, with its false premises and invalid arguments, is used to ‘justify’ support for policies that bring death and suffering to millions. Yet, religion is not the only argument that can work this way. Religious people are not the only people who base moral conclusions on some very shaky arguments.

Here are three examples that fit beside religious-based ethics in terms of shakiness. Some of them are very popular, even among those who are the first to ridicule those who base moral conclusions on shaky premises.

Republican Use of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

“The accused are not entitled to a fair trial because they are guilty. I find it shocking and deplorable that there are people in this country who would give the most despicable people in the world access to some of our more cherished institutions, such as a right to be presumed innocent. I think these people are guilty. I am sickened by those who think that I should have to prove their guilt in a trial.”

If you look at the bulk of the objections to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Hamden v. Rumsfeld, this is largely what they say.

According to an article in the Washington Post, the Republicans are considering a plan to use the decision in Haydan vs. Rumsfeld, that declared Bush's military commissions for detainees at Guantanamo Bay illegal, as a political bonus.

Tony Nelson, identified as a GOP political strategist, said, “"It would be good politics to have a debate about this if Democrats are going to argue for additional rights for terrorists." Also, Tom Liddy said, "It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times."

These individuals are effectively saying that they seek to score political points by spreading a lie. They are assuming that these detainees are guilty and that we are not, for example, dealing with people who picked up a gun because they heard that a foreign army had marched into their country. We are assuming that these people are actually guilty, and that they are not, for example, people “fingered” by others who have a reason to try to get rid of them for such petty reasons as to remove them as competitors in business, politics, or love – or out of simple maliciousness.

Somebody who truly cares about justice would say that we should call a particular group “terrorists” only after we have had some sort of fair trial – a trial designed to determine the truth of the matter – and that trial actually gives us good reason to believe that they are terrorists. After we have separated the terrorists from the not-terrorists, then we can have a debate over what we should do with those who have been shown to be terrorists.

Nelson, Liddy, and any Republican strategists or commentators who share their view are telling us that they do not have any interest in truth or justice. In fact, these statements make it quite clear that they have no qualms against promoting deception as a means of acquiring political power.

Their statements are deceptive and unjust in two ways.

Presumed Guilt

First, they are deceptive because they report something that we have no reason to believe is true, that all of these detainees are guilty. They are all “terrorists.” However, in over 4 years, the Bush Administration has only found enough evidence to charge 10 of the detainees with any sort of crime. These people, even if they are guilty, would mostly be peons in the Al Queida system. In the mean time, out of nearly 1000 who have gone through the prison, 149 have been set free, and 89 have been trusted to the courts of other countries.

This suggests that the criteria for calling a prisoner a “terrorist” and sending them to Gitmo was fairly low. This, in turn, gives us reason to doubt that all of the remaining detainees are “terrorists”, and that no fair trial could possibly find them innocent. This, in turn, means that Liddy and Nelson are likely “bearing false witness” against these detainees by saying that they are all terrorists.

From this we may infer that the standards of evidence used for sending people to Guantanamo Bay were rather low, and there is no absolutely no reason to believe that all of the remaining detainees are “terrorists.”

In fact, I wonder if the Bush Administration is so eager for secret trials with secret evidence precisely because he does not want to be caught with the embarrassment of having it be known that we Guantanamo Bay houses a handful of low-level al-Queida members among hundreds of people who were guilty of nothing more than taking up arms when a foreign country entered their land or of being the victim of somebody willing to use the Americans to get rid of a rival.

Of course, the Bush Administration will insist that they are guilty. However, this is entirely what the institution of courts is for. They are a place where those who assert guilt go to rational and disinterested third parties and prove that they actually have a good reason to believe that the accused are guilty. This is the place where the people get to discover if the Bush Administration has been rounding up terrorists, or rounding up people it calls terrorists so that it has not wasted American lives and money.

Once we know that they really are terrorists, then we can discuss what to do with “the terrorists.” Then, people like Nelsen and Libby can make comments about what the Democrats want to see us do to the terrorists.

Democratic Action

Not only are Nelson and Libby probably “bearing false witness” against many of the detainees in Guitanamo Bay, they are “bearing false witness” against the Democrats. Democrats are no more “favoring terrorists” than Republicans are “abusing a group of people who have been rounded up so that they can be used as props in a Republican PR campaign.” Democrats are no more arguing for “rights for terrorists” any more than Republicans are arguing against “rights for innocent people used as props in a Republican PR campaign.”

Think about how a morally good person should react if a Democrat were to step before the cameras and say, “"It would be good politics to have a debate about this if Republicans are going to argue for the right to take innocent people, call them terrorists, and torture them because the Republican PR machine could use the footage.” Think about how a good person would react to a Democrat who said, "It will be worse for the Republicans to be seen as calling innocent people terrorists because they could not find the real thing.”

These types of statements would be making unfounded assumptions, and would be just as evil and immoral as the statements that Nelson and Libby made in fact.

Promoting Injustice and Bearing More False Witness

Also, many people like Nelson and Libby who seek to use these lies to secure vote for the Republican Party claim to worship a God that prohibits them from “bearing false witness.” Yet, we have irrefutable evidence that they are bearing false witness. They are almost certainly bearing false witness against a detainee who is not a terrorist by calling all detainees terrorists. They are also bearing false witness against Democrats who are “favoring terrorists” in the same way that Republicans are “using innocent Arabs as props in a PR campaign.”

These people also claim that their piety means that they can be particularly trustworthy in defending justice. Yet, "bearing false witness" is itself a fundamental injustice, as is violating the principle of presuming a person innocent until proven guilty.

This gives us good evidence that the public support for those who are currently in government comes from people who have no particular affection for either truth or justice. People with an affection for truth will not support those who lie like this. People with an affection for justice will not support these fundamental violations of the principles of justice.

Note: I know that I said yesterday that I would discuss elements of Thomas' opinion yesterday. However, I decided that these infractions of the moral values of truth and justice provided a greater concern.

Bearing False Witness

There is one area in ethics where I think that the Judeo-Christian commandments provide better guidance than modern terminology. We recognize a modern moral prohibition against lying. The Biblical commandment, however, says that it is wrong to "bear false witness". Between the two, we would be better focusing on the biblical prohibition than on the the narrower constraint against lying.

What is the difference?

I would define a lie as an utterance that aims to cause somebody else to accept a proposition that the person making the utterance knows to be false. “Paul robbed the liquor store” spoken by a person who knows that Paul did not rob the liquor store is a lie.

"Bearing false witness" is an utterance that aims to cause somebody to accept a proposition that is false.

The difference is that the person who is bearing false witness does not have to be aware of the fact that the proposition is false to be guilty of a moral transgression.

For example, assume that I hear that Paul robbed a liquor store last night. I do not like Paul. Because of that dislike, I enthusiastically accept anything that anybody says about Paul that is bad. I also want others to dislike Paul. Therefore, as soon as I hear the story that he robbed the liquor store I believe it, and I start telling other people what (I believe) Paul had done.

If I were to do this, I would not be lying. My statements do not count as a lie because I actually do believe that Paul robbed a liquor store.

However, let us assume that the story is false. A friend of mine, while watching the news, saw video camera footage of a suspect in a robbery and decided that it looked like Paul. He told me about his suspicions, and I immediately jump to the conclusion that Paul was the person who committed the crime, and I immediately start telling everybody I know.

In doing this, I would be guilty of a moral transgression. I am not lying, but I am also not acting the way that a person of good moral character would act. I am bearing false witness against Paul, since I am testifying to everybody who listens that Paul has done something that Paul did not do, and which I have no good reason to believe that he did.

The Biblical language captures the moral prohibition more accurately than the claim that it is wrong to lie.

An Analogy

I can illustrate the difference by looking at the prohibition against killing an innocent person.

This prohibition does tells us that killing an innocent person is wrong, even if we do not know that he is innocent. To avoid the wrong of killing an innocent person, this prohibition tells us that we have an obligation to make sure that he is not innocent. We are not morally permitted to kill a person just because we think he is guilty – we have an obligation to make sure of this.

Let us say that I do not like Paul. Because I am suspicious of him, I form the idea that he is going to set fire to my sister's house tonight while my sister and her family are asleep. In order to preempt this attack on my sister, I go out and kill Paul. Of course, I claim that I act from the most virtuous of motives – my desire to protect my sister and her family.

However, Paul had no intention to attack my sister. He did not even possess the materials that would allow him to do so. I drew the conclusion that he was a threat to my sister based on a story that I constructed around a bunch of unrelated facts and rumors that I had decided to accept even though they were unfounded and uncorroborated claims. I embraced the theory that Paul was a threat to my sister because I wanted to believe this – because, if it was true, I could kill him, and not be guilty of murder.

In fact, let us say that I hated Paul so much, and I wanted a reason to kill him so badly, that I actively sought evidence that he was a threat to my sister and her family. In my search for evidence I cherry-pick the evidence. I accept as fact whatever I can weave into a convincing story, and reject that which counts against my theory. This is not conscious deception. Since I have drawn the conclusion that Paul deserves to be killed, everything that supports that conclusion has merit, while everything that is inconsistent with that conclusion is clearly unreliable.

If I was to think this way, and I was to kill John, I would be guilty of the moral crime of murder. No doubt, I would spend my time at the trial and in jail insisting that I was motivated by a concern for my sister. This is what I would want to believe of myself, and what I would want others to believe of me. However, the fact that I had accepted the conclusion that John was a threat based on such poor evidence shows that concern for my sister was a cover – a psychological defense – for more sinister motives that I would not want to admit, even (perhaps) to myself.

A jury of impartial observers would see through this. Recognizing that I formed my belief on flimsy evidence, they would conclude that I was guilty of murder. At best, I may be able to argue that I was not guilty by reason of insanity. However, unless the evidence would have convinced a rational and impartial person that John was a threat, I have no basis on which I can claim justifiable homicide.

Similarities

The prohibition against bearing false witness, like the prohibition against killing innocent people, implies an obligation to make sure that our beliefs are true before we act on them.

It is not enough to believe that Paul is going to set fire to my sister's house. I have to have good evidence for that belief.

Similarly, I cannot claim to be innocent of "bearing false witness" when I said that Paul robbed the liquor store based solely on the fact that I believed it at the time. I also have to show that the belief itself was reasonable. I have to be able to show that I was not motivated by my hatred of Paul to accept weak evidence, but that even somebody who did not hate Paul, if given that same evidence, would have formed the conclusion that Paul robbed the liquor store.

Otherwise, I am guilty of the moral crime of bearing false witness against Paul.

Mistakes

People make mistakes. A woman, alone at home with her children, receives a series of threatening phone calls from somebody who is claiming to be on his way over to kill her and the children. She has called the police, but she lives quite some distance from town. Rain and mud make means that she will not see them for quite some time.

In the darkness, she sees somebody coming up her walkway. She shouts at the stranger to go away, but the stranger persists. She does not realize that the storm had forced the stranger's car off the road. The stranger’s child is laying back at the car badly injured. The stranger insists on getting in, so she shoots him, and kills him.

She kills an innocent person.

If she is a person of good moral character, the truth will have a devastating effect on her once she discovers it. However, mistakes happen, and innocent people are killed without the killer being a moral monster.

Mistakes may also lead a person to bear false witness against another without being immoral. However, the person who realizes he has made such a mistake, if he is a person of good moral character, will still feel the moral sting of discovering he has done something he should have done. He will seek to make up for it, even if it was an innocent mistake.

In the absence of these symptoms, we are justified in assuming that the agent really did not have much concern over whether he was doing the right thing. We have reason to suspect that we are dealing with somebody who does not have the regard for truth that he should have. The person who too eagerly embraces falsehood and accepts it as true cannot truly be said to be faithful to the value of truth.

What Is a Bigot?

Recent events (including yesterday's post) have given me reason to investigate the question, "When can you legitimately call somebody a bigot?"

The basic answer is: "When it is true."

When is it true?

It is true when an individual takes a characteristic and applies it adversely to a group when it is unreasonable to believe that all members of the group have that characteristic.

A paradigm example of bigotry is found in applying the property of ‘criminal’ to those who are black. Another example involves applying the property ‘stupid’ to those who are blonde. We also see bigotry in those who apply the property ‘without morals’ to ‘atheists.’

Yesterday, I called Rush Limbaugh a bigot for claiming that all liberals cheered the murder of two American soldiers in Iraq. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any liberals cheering this brutal crime. Furthermore, what Limbaugh seems to have wanted to call ‘cheering’ was, in fact, an assertion that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld deserves some moral criticism for this outrage – criticism for putting the victims in harm’s way.

Conservatives are not the only ones prone to bigotry. In fact, the tendency is far too common everywhere. Any time somebody condemns “Republicans” or “conservatives” or “Christians” or “People who voted for Bush” by asserting that they all have a characteristic that they do not share in fact, that person shows himself to be a bigot.

[Note: Taner Edis had a statement on his post at The Secular Outpost that I was going to use as an example of liberal bigotry. However, he has since corrected it – which deserves a note of praise.]

A bigoted generalization does not necessarily have to say something bad about individuals in a group. It simply needs to be applied to them adversely. Saying that a person “has rhythm” is not, in itself, an insult or an accusation. It is, however, a sign of bigotry when it is said of a person merely because he is black.

Why Bigotry is Evil

Bearing False Witness

The first problem with bigotry is that the bigot's claims are false in many instances. That is to say, bigots “bear false witness” against their victims.

Here, I want to point out that there is a distinction between ‘lying’ and ‘bearing false witness,’ and that the second is still a serious moral crime.

To see the distinction, we can look at the difference between ‘murder’ and ‘killing an innocent person.’ Murder is understood as intentionally or knowingly killing an innocent person. However, it is also wrong to kill an innocent person through negligent or reckless actions. Negligent homicide is still considered wrong, and the accused cannot defend himself by claiming that he did not intend to kill his victim.

‘Bearing false witness’ consists not only of intentionally reporting as true something that one knows to be false (a.k.a., ‘lying’). It also includes recklessly or negligently promoting a false belief. In fact, the moral crime of negligence often takes the form of negligent belief. It can be found in the doctor who arrogantly presumed that his diagnosis must be accurate, the ship pilot who presumed that the channel was deep enough for his oil tanker, a rapist’s negligent belief that ‘there is no, no on your lips but yes, yes in your eyes, and a President’s negligent belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Negligent belief is a moral crime because negligent beliefs cause harm. Where a negligent belief can cause harm, individuals have an obligation to check and double-check their facts.

Bigots hold and promote beliefs that cause harm without checking their facts. Bigots are guilty of the moral crime of ‘bearing false witness.’ Rush Limbaugh was guilty of ‘bearing false witness’ when he reported that liberals are cheering the murder of those soldiers in Iraq.

Accusing the Innocent

The second moral crime inherent in bigotry is that of accusing people of crimes for which they are innocent. Each of us has a right to be assumed innocent unless proven guilty.

If it is permissible to assume guilt, then none of us is safe. I can assume that everyone who reads this post is child rapists, and not a one of you can prove that you are not. The only defense that any of us ever have against the accusation that we have committed a crime is that the accuser cannot provide any evidence that we are guilty. We can never prove our innocence.

So, reasonable people adopt and defend the moral principle that a person is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Along with this, reasonable people recognize that bigotry is a form of injustice. There is no clearer measure of injustice than to condemn and/or punish a person for a crime that he did not commit. By definition, the bigot condemns (at the very least) people for wrongs that they did not commit. Rush Limbaugh was accusing his victims (liberals) of crimes (cheering the murder of soldiers in Iraq) they did not commit.

Anybody who loves justice must certainly hate the bigot; and anybody who cheers bigots clearly must have little or no interest in justice.

Summary

Truth and justice. The essence of bigotry is that it is found in those who are the enemy of truth and justice; who are quite comfortable living a life of somebody who 'bears false witness' and promotes injustice.

Caution

To avoid the moral crime of bigotry, a person has to follow these two rules:

(1) Make your accusations of specific individuals (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter), and not against groups. Any statement that says that "Christians" or "Liberals" or "Republicans" or "Democrats" and the like all share some despicable characteristic are examples of bigotry in action. They are signs of a person who cares more about hate than he does about truth and justice.

(2) Where you can provide proof that a person has committed a moral act worthy of condemnation, you can draw two legitimate conclusions.

(a) Anybody who performs a similar act is similarly guilty.

(b) Those who support or cheer the person who performed the act wear the moral taint of those they cheer or support.

Before I close, I want to draw particular attention to item (2b). We should recognize that bigots and hate-mongers like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would have been nothing if not for those who supported and promoted their actions. It is reasonable to believe that society, by rewarding them for their moral lapses, encouraged them to become more and more morally depraved over time.

In other words, Limbaugh and Colter are symptoms of a corrupt society that feeds and nurtures hate and bigotry. Certainly, Limbaugh and Colter are to be condemned for their moral failings; they cannot get off simply by saying, “It’s not my fault; they did this to me!” However, it is a mistake to only condemn Limbaugh and Colter, when their fans at least as guilty as they are.

So, when making an accusation that an individual is a bigot, I would like to make sure that you include a harsh statement for those who make bigotry profitable. As I wrote yesterday, just as those who would cheer the murder of American soldiers in Iraq wear some of the moral taint for that murder, those who make bigotry and hate-mongering profitable in this country wear the moral taint of a bigoted hate-monger themselves. They certainly are doing nothing to make our society better than it would otherwise have been.

10 Commandments Display in Oklahoma

There is a particular irony in proposals such as that recently passed in Oklahoma to display a 10 Commandments monument on capital grounds.

(See: The Oklahoman: Oklahoma state Capitol to display Ten Commandments)

Even though the monument declares that one should not bear false witness, and its proponents claim that it is important to teach this moral value to children, the plan itself is built on a foundation of lies, half-truth, and distortions.

I have heard the defense that the prohibition against bearing false witness merely says that perjury is wrong. However, are the proponents of this law actually going to retreat to the defense that lies and deception are acceptable when they are not made under oath? Or are they willing to admit to the moral truth that lies and deceptive manipulation of the truth is wrong at other times as well?

If they admit that bearing false witness generally is wrong, then they are going to have to come up with some way to square their behavior with this prohibition.

They tell us that the purpose of the monument is to "simply acknowledge" that "many of current laws can be traced to the 10 Commandments."

Yet, there is a very long list of things that many of current laws can be traced to – from the Code of Hammurabi to the principles of the pagan goddess Justitia to European monarchies. There has to be a reason why they selected this item among all of them, and that cannot be because it "simply" acknowledges our heritage, because that is not what makes the 10 Commandments different from the others.

The truth that the supporters of this legislation wish never to speak out loud is they want to put a billboard advertising their religion on the Capitol grounds. They want to have the government declare that, "Those who belong to this religion, more than any other, are Oklahoma’s truest and most noble citizens."

Anybody with a breath of honesty in their lungs knows this to be true. They know that the claim that this is "simply" to "acknowledge that heritage" is false. They know that these people bear this false testimony in order to get away with something that is both illegal and unethical.

It is no more legitimate for the legislature to put up a billboard for any particular religion on the public square than it would be for the government to put up a billboard for Wal-Mart or Exxon-Mobile. If they do choose to lease or to give away billboard space on government property, then the government’s duty to be impartial (because people have a right to EQUAL treatment under the law) gives them no right to accept one billboard and to refuse all others.

If the government does put up a billboard for Wal-Mart on the grounds of the Capitol, it has a duty to be prepared to offer as much and as good of an advertising space to competitors such as K-Mart and Target as well. If it wants to put up a billboard for the Judeo-Christian religions, it had better be prepared to put up billboards for the Muslims, Hindu, Wiccans, and Atheists as well.

When it comes to teaching the difference between right and wrong to our children, we have far more potent teaching tools available than the writings on walls. Our best tool is the force of our example.

Just as the rest of us know that the 10 Commandments is not being posted "simply" to "acknowledge that heritage", and that there are ulterior motives involved, children know this as well. Because they know it, they learn a valuable lesson in hypocrisy. They know that, in fact, the people who put the words there only want others to refrain from bearing false witness. Bearing false witness is an activity that the supporters of this legislation wish to reserve for themselves.

It is a lesson that we can fully expect these children to learn – that true virtue can be found in the manipulation and distortion of the truth whenever to get what one wants.

Or we can teach them that we respect truth and honesty, by admitting that this legislation in fact is not meant "simply" to "acknowledge that heritage" but is meant to put a religious billboard on government property and to imply that the official government position is that those who accept the religion advertised by the state are better than all other citizens.

This is what the advocates of this legislation want. And they are willing to distort and manipulate the truth on order to get it. And they are more than willing to have the next generation learn from their example.

Misquoting Sam Harris: Culture of Irresponsibility

It appears that the propagandists for anti-atheist bigotry have found a weapon to use in a quote from Sam Harris’ book “The End of Faith.” There, Harris wrote:

[S]ome propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing in them.

This is being used around the internet in a campaign of fear, representing Harris (and those who approve of his work) of arguing for a state much like the Inquisition, where people are arrested and executed merely for having the wrong beliefs.

In Context

As posted on A Load of Bright in “Misquoting Harris”, this quote is taken out of context. Harris is talking about somebody whose beliefs cause him to threaten others. His account would apply, for example, to a case where a neighbor of mine took seriously the commandment that those who work on the Sabbath shall be put to death. Noting that I publish blog entries every day of the week and deciding that this constitutes work, he decides that I must be put to death. While I am sitting on my patio working on my next post, he comes over with a machete in order to execute God’s will.

Clearly, I would have the right to defend myself and to use deadly force to do so. Of course, additional principles such as a clear and present danger also apply – nothing in Harris’ actual quote even hints at overruling these caveats. Yet, those who wish to believe otherwise are free to add their own (false) assumptions in order to season the words to taste.

A consistent use of the principles employed by some hard-core fundamentalists may dispute this conclusion that I would have a right to defend myself. They may protest that any act of self-defense on my part constitutes ‘militant atheism’ – an attempt on my part to force my religious views (that there is no wrong in working on the Sabbath) on my neighbor by preventing him from freely exercising his religious requirement to kill me. These are people who refuse to recognize that a “freedom of religion” is not an absolute moral permission to do whatever one wants, to whomever one wants, as long as one can find a piece of scripture to support it.

Yet, let’s leave these anomalies aside, and work within the common-sense view that the right to freedom of religion is still constrained by moral limits that are higher than scripture – limits that would allow me to defend myself from my religious neighbor’s attack regardless of his ability to find biblical passages to support his view.

In this context, his ‘belief’ – and the fact that it has driven him to be a danger to others – justifies a lethal act of self-defense.

Intellectual Immorality

Harris’ quote, taken out of this context, is an extremely useful tool for those whose business is the manufacture and untaxed sale of hatred (since contributions to religious institutions are not taxed) against atheists. As such, it is reasonable to expect that some would find this business hard to resist. Moral prohibitions against bearing false witness against others, lying, sophistry (engineering false beliefs) and intellectual recklessness are of no concern to such people – only the profitability (in terms of cash and power) of their product.

This is the point that I want to make in this posting. It is not that there are people who have taken Harris’ statement out of context in order to manufacture hate. It is not the fact that what they have done is morally contemptible. A morally responsible person would have checked the quote to determine if it was accurate, and refused to use it if it was not.

No, the real issue is that these people are part of a vast and powerful culture that have absolutely no respect for the intellectual virtues. Intellectual recklessness, bearing false witness, sophistry (manufacturing false beliefs), and deliberate deception – they shrug off these moral crimes with a lack of guilt that would make them the envy of any sociopath.

As I work on this blog, I have often thought of what might happen if my writings somehow became noticed by the members of this culture. I suspect that they would immediately cast me as somebody who says that people may do whatever they desire because fulfilling desire is the root of all value.

Yes, I say that all value consists of relationships between states of affairs and desires. However, these people would likely choose to ignore (because they care nothing about truth) that this implies that the value of certain desires rests in their tendency to fulfill other desires. Thus, it is not the case that all desires are equal – some are clearly better than others. Some desires (those that tend to fulfill the desires of others), we have reason to promote and encourage. Other desires (desires that do harm to or otherwise thwart the desires of others) we have reason to inhibit.

However, once this propaganda machine gets up to speed, there is little that I, with my little corner blog and the need to spend a good portion of my day working for a living, could do anything to stop it. Those who read the words of people who would bear false witness against me equally will accept the accusations as true. This is because they share in this culture of intellectual irresponsibility – it is a part of their culture. Reading the words of others through a lens of moral responsibility is simply out of the question.

There are, then, three responses to an incident such as this wrong committed against Harris. The first response is to simply point out that the author made a mistake. The second response is to condemn the author, because a morally responsible agent would not have made a mistake. The third response is to condemn the culture to which that agent belongs – a culture that cares nothing about intellectual integrity, and a great deal about doing harm to others through careless and deliberate falsehoods.

Culture of Intellectual Recklessness

Who are the members of this culture of intellectual recklessness? To find out, all we need to do is to trace the thread of this misquote through the internet. Everywhere it stops and obtains an implicit endorsement is another person who is part of this intellectually reckless culture.

It is not surprising to find a link between intellectual recklessness and religious fundamentalism either. Fundamentalism teaches intellectual recklessness. It is, in fact, a primary requirement for membership. This is not to say that all intellectually reckless people are fundamentalists. Nor is it to say that all religious people are intellectually reckless (because not all religious people are fundamentalists). It is only to say that religious fundamentalism is intellectually reckless.

Do we wish to see how far this intellectually reckless attitude – this fundamental disregard for truth – goes? Our current day and age gives us a handy tool to do so. All we need to do is search the Intranet, and we can track intellectual recklessness through the strands of the world wide web.

Note that I am not talking about tracking religious fundamentalism through the web and using that as a marker for intellectual recklessness and a fundamental disregard for the truth. I am talking about tracking something where the intellectual recklessness can be more easily noted. In this case, it is in the many examples of bearing false witness – either recklessly or through deliberate and malicious deception – against Sam Harris.

That these people show the same moral failing if intellectual irresponsibility on matters of religious belief as they show here is simply another piece of evidence in what criminal lawyers would call “establishing a pattern of behavior” which, with enough examples, is sufficient to prove moral culpability.

Promoting Intellectual Responsibility

One lesson that I wish to draw from this is that it is possible to criticize and to condemn religious fundamentalists without once bringing God or religion into the picture at all. People suffering from the vice of intellectual irresponsibility are bound to use it even in areas outside of religion – areas that have real effects on real people (e.g., global warming, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) costing real lives and real suffering. When these types of opportunities come up, blaming the cult of intellectual irresponsibility for the harms done – for the lives lost, the injuries, the suffering – will have a real-world significance that will pay dividends against other instances of intellectual recklessness.

The point is to say more than, “You are mistaken,” but to go further and say, “Your mistake is either reckless or deliberately malicious and, in either case, is morally reprehensible,” to the final charge (where bad reasoning can be shown to have been picked up and spread around by others), “You are a part of a morally irresponsible culture that appears to embrace intellectual recklessness, bearing false witness, engineering false beliefs, and even deliberate deception, with all of the evils that such people bring to the world.”

Note that my accusation in this case applies to those whose moral irresponsibility applies to misquoting Sam Harris - an easily demonstrable example of, at best, moral recklessness and, at worse, deliberate and malicious deception. Yet, its targets are also those who are morally irresponsibile in other ways.

To the degree that intellectual irresponsibility in all of its harmful forms can be reduced, to that degree we will all live longer, healthier, and happier lives, and to that degree even harmless unreasonable beliefs will fade away.

Ben Stein's "Expelled" Revisited

One of the problems with the "new atheism" is that it is confronted with people who seem to be significantly lacking in certain moral virtues; in particular, the moral virtues of honesty and intellectual integrity.

One manifestation of this is the degree to which they critics of the “new atheism” lie, distort, and otherwise misrepresent the claims of those they criticize ('bearing false witness' against others to their readers and listeners) in order to present a view that they can easily refute. In doing so, they ignore the claims that those they criticize actually make.

An instance of this springs from my post concerning Ben Stein's movie, due out next month, "Expelled: No Intelligence in the Classroom." The movie aims to argue that the ‘Darwinists’ that dominate America’s institutions of higher learning are engaged in an unjust campaign to silence critics this persecution is not being carried out because intelligent design is not science (the reason that, for example, astrologers are not welcome in the community of astronomers), but because 'Darwinists' have a religious intolerance of all things religious.

Seth Elliott, writing for the organization “In His Name,” wrote recently that he wants to use my earlier criticism of Ben Stein’s movie as a starting point for addressing certain concerns that atheists might have with Christians.

Well, from the Atheist Ethicist’s internet blogging, we can begin to understand the fear that for an increasingly large number of people comes from Christians. I intend to use one of this blogger’s main points to begin a series of articles to re-articulate the Christian faith and to reduce the irrational fears that misinformation has produced about those of us who seek to follow Christ and His teachings.

What is "one of this blogger's main points?" According to Elliott it is:

He honestly fears that the refutation of evolution might mean an onslaught of religious fervor that would seek to replace things like MRI’s with crystal balls and neuroscience with phrenology. He, and others, imagine a world where everyone abandons boats and starts drowning while trying to walk on water. They see censorship, hysteria, and catastrophe when religious fools start throwing themselves off of cliffs to see if angels will catch them. I am heartbroken about where this dude went to church and the kind of Christians he knows.

The question to ask is: Are these empirically true facts about me? Or is this an example of 'bearing false witness' - an example of the morally questionable practice of telling others things about a person that are not true.

Of course, it is the latter.

Attacking Christians

The most personally disturbing fiction that Elliott witnesses to is his assertion that my writing is directed against Christians. I have devoted a great deal of my blog to promoting and practicing the principle that blame must be narrowly assigned to those who are actually guilty. I am as critical of atheists who violate this principle as I am of theists, as illustrated by my recent series of postings criticizing the act of putting an, “Imagine: No Religion” sign in a park in Connecticut as a part of a holiday display.

The fact is, it would be wrong for me to blame Christians for this attack on science. Many Christians (and, officially, the Catholic Church) accept evolution, and some make significant contributions to the biological sciences. Though we might argue that evolution is inconsistent with a literal interpretation of the Bible, some do not interpret the Bible literally.

So, the claim that I have written against Christians commits the moral crime of bearing false witness against me. It is a malignant distortion of my views that will give Elliott’s readers false impressions of what I actually believe and say;

My point here is not just that Elliott's claims are false, but that they represent a moral failing on his part. He wrote a series of statements about me without showing even the slightest interest in determining whether they were accurate. He bore witness against me without concern over whether the witness he bore was accurate or false.

Evolution and Past Medical Breakthroughs

Elliott bears witness that "[Alonzo] honestly fears that the refutation of evolution might mean an onslaught of religious fervor that would seek to replace things like MRI’s with crystal balls and neuroscience with phrenology."

I find the insertion of the word 'honestly' in this statement to be particularly ironic.

Actually, this is not 'honestly' the case at all. I have no doubt that Christians will continue to make use of current medical breakthroughs. I am well aware of the fact that, while Creationists are busy undercutting the foundation on which medical breakthroughs are built, they have no objection to taking advantage of those breakthroughs anyway. The clear benefit of those breakthroughs will virtually guarantee that they will continue to be used.

My concern is not with abandoning current medical breakthroughs, but with delaying future medical breakthroughs. Those breakthroughs come from people who take phenomena not yet explained, offer theories about possible explanations, and then test those theories through experimentation. The person who shuts down his mind and says, "There can be no understanding of how this happens; God did it and it defies human understanding." discovers nothing, and helps nobody.

These are the people who I was referring to in my original post when I wrote that a consequence of 'Expelled' in promoting public hostility to the scientific quest of finding real-world answers to these questions will be the suffering and early death of countless people who otherwise could have been saved or benefited from advances in science.

The Consequences of Refuting Evolution

I would be ecstatic to learn that evolution had been refuted and replaced with a better scientific theory. A better theory, in science, means a better way to explain and predict real-world events. In the area of biology, a breakthrough theory that replaces evolution should generate countless medical breakthroughs and a significant improvement in environmental policy (derived from our better understanding of the environment). In fact, these outcomes are how the new theory would prove it deserves to hold the seat that evolution currently holds.

Intelligent design is not science precisely because it does not offer the breakthroughs in medicine and environmental policy that an improved scientific theory would give us. There are zero medical research proposals waiting for intelligent design theory to be verified or falsified, and there are zero medical research proposals that employ intelligent design rather than evolution as a basis for that research. If intelligent design theorists actually started producing breakthrough medical research and breakthrough understanding of the environment, then those benefits alone would guarantee that they get a hearing.

It is precisely because there is no scientific evidence supporting intelligent design that, instead of offering research results that defend their claim, they are forced to use propaganda such as the movie Expelled, legislation, and public pressure to get their views presented as science.

The Policy Implications of Belief Without Evidence

According to Elliott, I and others “imagine a world where everyone abandons boats and starts drowning while trying to walk on water.”

Actually, I do not recall ever imagining such a world. Taken as a literal statement of what I imagine, the statement is false.

However, it is possible to take this statement metaphorically, in which case it might hold some truth.

We do, in fact, have events like this in the real world. We have people who insist that we can alter the course of hurricanes and prevent tsunamis, for example, by passing laws against homosexual acts and abortion. They are people who think that the absence of school prayer has a material effect on whether federal agents will notice whether a group of terrorists are going to try to hijack airplanes and fly them into sky scrapers. We have people who, in countless individual cases every day, choose an irrational solution based on star charts or what they think is a sign from God. These are, in fact, 21st century equivalents of ‘abandoning boats and trying to walk on water,’ with the same types of tragic consequences.

There is reason to believe that we have nearly 4000 Americans killed and over 20,000 injured in Iraq by a President who ignored evidence and went with ‘signs from God’ in deciding to attack Iraq – another example of the metaphor of abandoning boats and walking on water, where this is taken as a metaphor for abandoning evidence and acting on faith.

More importantly, we have legions of individuals devoting vast quantities of time and effort to actions and policies that deprive others of life, health, and well-being based on beliefs without evidence. Metaphorically, these are not just people who abandon boats and try to walk on water, but who force others out to stand on the water. When their victims sink, they blame the victim for not having enough faith while they shove the next group out onto the water.

Regardless of the accuracy of Elliott’s statement as metaphor, I do see how it would be on topic to relate these effects to Ben Stein’s movie Expelled. In my original article, I have written about how the belief that we can use laws against homosexuality and abortion to influence the frequency of earthquakes and direction of hurricanes has not been scientifically verified. However, that is not the same issue.

Conclusion

Theists who engage in these types of acts are rewarded by the fact that benefit from the fact that more people will read their claims about what these writers said than read what the writers actually wrote. Their willingness to devote so much energy to repeating these false claims, combined with their readers’ and listeners’ tendency to accept claims made on authority without questioning the reliability of the source, promotes a false impression of our views. We must, then, live with the fact that others have made and promoted false claims against us – exactly the type of injustice that makes this type of behavior immoral.

In my original post, I took effort to confine my criticism to “those who were responsible for” the movie. I made sure to declare that I might be mistaken about what the movie claimed (because I had not seen it) and that I was responding to reports about the movie that may be mistaken. I made an effort to make sure that I did not bear false witness against anybody, and that my writing conformed to the moral responsibilities incumbent on all writers.

House Resolution 861: Iraq and Terrorism

Today, the House of Representatives debated House Resolution 861.

Sometimes, I wish that I was a member of Congress, and had the freedom to stand before the Democrats and Republicans where I can give them an honest assessment of their conduct.

From the Congressional Record: June 15, 2006

ALONZO FYFE (I - CO).

There are days when I am pleased to be an Independent. I can say the things that I actually hold to be true.

Today, I rise to urge you to pull this resolution.

Do you still beat your wife?

Yes or no.

We will not allow you to give any other answer. We will not allow you to clarify the question. You must answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this question.

This is a classic example of the informal fallacy of ‘complex question’ -- a form of rhetoric where you demand that somebody answer question phrased in such a way that any answer can be distorted or twisted.

Do you still beat your wife?

If the person answers 'yes,' you say that he is beating his wife. What a despicable person he is that he would do this to another person.

If the person answers 'no,' you say that this means that there was a time in which he did beat his wife. How could he stop doing something that he never did? What a despicable person he is that he did this to another person.

What does he answer if he has never beaten his spouse? He is told that he must answer the question, but he is given no opportunity to give an honest answer.

To my Republican colleagues, it is clear that this is what you intend to accomplish with this resolution.

"Do you support war on Iraq and the rest of the war on terrorism?"

How is somebody supposed to answer this question if he believes that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terrorism? How is he supposed to answer if he believes that the Bush Administration used 9-11 and a pack of lies to manipulate Americans into supporting a blatant act of aggression?

If he answers, "Yes," you will say that he supports the Bush Administration’s war invasion – that he supports Bush Administration's policy of deceiving the American people into supporting a war they never would have supported if they had been told the truth. You will use that to turn them into co-conspirators.

If he answers, "No," you will have your spin doctors portray this as a vote against fighting the terrorists. You are prepared to make it sound as if they are willing to let Osama Bin Laden go and forgive the terrorists for what they did to this country.

You built this resolution to be the foundation for a campaign of lies and deceit.

Many of you claim that you worship a God that forbids you from bearing false witness against another. If this is true, then how you expect to escape judgment for setting up a campaign of lies and deceit? Maybe you think that your God does not care if you lie – His commandments only apply to others.

You decided not to allow any amendments.

Why is that?

People who plan to use a complex question in a campaign of deception cannot allow the people they ask to modify the question. You cannot allow them to say something like, “I have never beat my wife.” You cannot allow any answer but “yes” or “no” to the question you asked.

This is not an accident. This is an intentional and deliberate plan to begin constructing a campaign of lies with this resolution. Such a campaign of deception and “bearing false witness” that you plan to build on this foundation will not stand if you allowed amendments.

You know that these charges are true. Think back to the back-room meetings you had with fellow Republicans when you worked out this strategy. I will bet good money that the conversation was rich with examples of people saying things like, "This is a perfect strategy, because no matter what the Democrat does we can twist his words, distort their meaning, and bear false witness against them in order to gain an advantage."

You are liars, plain and simple. Why somebody thought to put people of such low moral character in charge of this country is beyond my comprehension.

As for my Democratic associates -- at least those who belong to the so-called "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party," those who have the endorsement and support of liberal bloggers, your position on this issue baffles me even more.

You make me think of stories that I hear from time to time of people who turn their backs on innocent people in danger. I see you sitting down in the comfort of your own home, eating a good meal and entertaining yourself with the most recent episode of "Survivor," when you hear a woman's screams coming in through your open window. You are curious enough that you go to the window, where you watch an attacker drag his victim into an alley. Fearing that the noise may make it difficult to pay attention to your show, you close the window and go back to your meal.

The next day, the police show up. They have discovered a body of a young woman in the alley. They ask if you know anything about it. You answer them that you did, but that you did not want to get involved. So, you did nothing.

This is what you . . . what some of you . . . want to do with Iraq. You want to close the window and go back to watching television. As the bodies pile up in the street you will comfort yourself by saying, "It's not my problem."

Morally, the the 10-year-old in Iraq is no different than the 10-yar-old in Iowa. You have to ask yourself what you would do if you faced a situation where bloody factions in Iowa were going around killing each other. Would you endorse the policy of letting them fight it out among themselves, no matter how many 10-year-olds end up as scattered body parts on the streets of Des Moines? Or would you insist on sending in the federal troops to find the murderous bastards responsible for this situation and putting an end to it?

If you say, "Let the people fight it out among themselves?" then you are no better than that man in the apartment watching the attack in the alley below saying, "Let THEM fight it out among themselves."

Innocent people are being killed and maimed, and you say "Do nothing."

To my Republican colleagues, I say that you cannot morally vote for this resolution. If you vote for this resolution, you vote for a culture of lies, deceit, and distortion. You should be voting for a culture in which, "Thou shalt not bear false witness upon thy neighbor" is a guiding principle and a doctrine which all good citizens must accept and try to live by. Instead, you would be voting for a culture in which the guiding principle is, "Thou shalt manipulate the system so as to bear false witness upon others whenever it is politically and socially expedient to do so." Those who vote for this proposal do not have the moral character needed for somebody to serve in this body.

Democrats, you cannot vote morally against this resolution. Voting against this resolution involves voting for closing the window and going back to your entertainment when you know that there is a bloody attack going on in the alley below your window, and innocent people are being slaughtered.

The only morally conscionable position to take on this resolution is to abstain, and wait to consider a proposal that is not meant to build a foundation of lies and deception that allows one to seriously state an honest opinion on what should be done with respect to the war in Iraq. The question of what should be done should be answered with one question in mind. "How do you best prevent children from ending up as scattered body parts on a city street?"

So, let’s put this thing away. Let’s move on to discuss important and relevant issues. And, when we do, at least try to pretend that you have something resembling a sense of morality and integrity.

The Republican National Committee vs. Representative Murtha

FactCheck.org has a recent entry called “RNC Ad Mischaracterizes Murtha” on an internet advertisement from the Republican National Committee that quite blatantly tells a lie about Representative John Murtha.

The advertisement is a lie. It is not one of those adds that take a truth and gives it a political spin that conceals the truth. This is a flat-out, no qualms, “We care absolutely nothing about the truth” type lie that tells us a great deal about the moral character of all of those who were involved in it.

The advertisement shows Representative John Murtha (D-Penn) saying, “We're more dangerous to world peace than North Korea or Iran.”

The quote is taken from a speech in which Murtha actually said,

Fifty-six per cent of the people in Spain think it's more dangerous, the United States is more dangerous in Iraq than Iran is. Every one of our allies think that the United States being in Iraq is more dangerous to world stability and world peace, every one of our allies, Great Britain, every single country, they think it's, we're more dangerous to world peace than North Korea or Iran. That says something.

The Republican National Committee could have used the fact that Murtha himself had lied. Murtha himself was not interested in giving his audience the facts about Bush’s policies. Murtha, instead, showed that he was just as willing to manipulate his audience with fiction as the Republican National Committee was.

Indeed, we can say one thing about the RNC that we cannot say about the liberal defenders of Murtha. The RNC did not engage in the hypocrisy of condemning those who distort somebody else’s record while they were, in fact, engaging in the act of distorting somebody else’s record. Liberal defenders of Murtha, on the other hand, are hypocrites for their condemnation of the RNC’s deception while they ignore Murtha’s deception.

Both Murtha and the Republican National Committee showed themselves to be liars.

This, as I said, tells us a lot about their moral character.

In this blog I have been defending the idea that morality is concerned with molding desires. Desires work to influence our actions even when there is nobody to watch over our shoulders. My dislike of pain helps to ensure that I will not put my hand on a hot stove even if I am alone in a room and I know that I can get away with it without anybody discovering what I did. My child’s dislike for liver will bring it about that the child is extremely unlikely to sneak off with a piece in a way that the same child might be tempted to some cookies hidden on the top shelf of the cupboard.

So, to keep others in our community from taking our property even when they are able to do so, we give them an aversion to taking property – an aversion, like the aversion to the effects of putting one’s hand on a hot stove – that will motivate them to leave our property alone even when they can get away with taking it. We give them a desire to help those in need so that, when they encounter somebody in need, they will give assistance because they want to and will not walk away even when they know they can get away with it.

If we want a person to speak the truth even when he can benefit from a lie, we do this by giving them a love of truth. We do this by molding his character in such a way that lying, even when it can produce a benefit, is personally unpleasant, much like putting one’s hand on a hot stove. A person who has this characteristic – a person with this moral virtue – is somebody we can trust. This is somebody of which we can say, “He is not telling us this merely because he can benefit from our knowing it. He truly believes this – because, if he did not believe it, he would be averse to saying it.”

When we see somebody display such a blatant disregard for truth as is found in this advertisement, we can know right away that we dealing with somebody who has no love of truth. He is somebody who views truth as a tool. He will use it when it benefits him to do so, and discard it for fiction when that will benefit him. Once we know that we are dealing with somebody who has this characteristic we know that only a fool will trust him. From this moment on, everything that individual says would become suspect to the rational person. The moral person, at the same time, will know him from that point on as a liar.

Assume, at work, an employee is discovered taking money from a co-worker’s purse. Once we catch him in this act we know that he does not have the aversion to taking the property of others that he should have. We know from this discovery that if his actions are governed at all that they are governed only by the fear of punishment. From this, we know that any time the fear of punishment is removed – any time he has a chance of getting away with taking the property of others, he is at risk of doing so. We know never again to trust him with our property. In fact, to restore a sense of security at the work place, we would insist that this perpetrator be removed (be fired), so that we can once again trust that the property we bring to work is secure.

So, what does it say that we find Murtha and the Republican National Committee engaged in these most obvious lies.

One thing we know is that, in their dishonesty, they do not even fear the possibility of discovery. This is not like an employee sneaking money out of co-worker’s desk. This is like an employee walking to a co-worker’s desk in full view of everybody, taking her purse, taking what he wants from it, going back to his desk, and boasting, “What are you going to do about it?”

This is the behavior of a pack of schoolyard bullies who know that the teachers will turn their backs. These are people who know that they have nothing to fear from others who might otherwise stand up and say, “This is wrong!” With no restraint coming from a moral conscience, and no restraint coming from social consequences, they flaunt their power precisely by giving people a live demonstration that, “I can do whatever I want, even that which is blatantly wrong, and nobody will touch me.”

They strongly believe that nobody will touch them.

Yesterday, I wrote a post on the need to avoid “fiction-based policies.” Murtha fed us a fiction about the effects of Bush’s decision. On the basis of this fiction, Murtha is recommending a change in policy. However, he is advocating a change grounded on fiction if it is foreign policy.

We are so heavily surrounded by deceivers these days that the job of calling them to task seems overwhelming. Yet, the situation may be like living in Baghdad, where the citizens are so heavily surrounded by murderers that there seems little to be done in holding them accountable. Yet, this is also the only way to put an end (or, at least, to reduce the commonality) of these moral crimes.

The example that I gave above of the employee sneaking money out of a co-worker’s purse does not fully apply here. A better analogy would be of an employee who goes up to a co-worker who is sitting at her desk and takes money from her purse in full view of other co-workers and the manager. This, let us assume, happened on Monday. Now, it is Friday, and still nothing has been done. So, the thief now swaggers up and down the office halls making every employee aware of the fact, “I can do whatever I want to you, and nobody is going to do anything about it.”

So, he does whatever he wants.

In this case, the Republican National Committee swaggers across the airwaves telling their political foes, “I can tell whatever lies I wish about you – destroy your character and turn others against you – because there is nobody out there willing to stand up against me.”

The office bully in my analogy requires only the passive cooperation of the manager and other employees. He requires that, through fear and intimidation, that others do nothing. The liar, in this case, actually requires the active cooperation of others to succeed. For example, the RNC requires a group of followers who are willing to accept and live by the rule, “Our rule is to repeat whatever the RNC says, with no regard for the truth, with no aversion to the fact that what the RNC wants us to repeat involves bearing false witness against others. If the RNC says that Representative Murtha believes that we are more dangerous than North Korea or Iran, then you must all agree to act as if it is true even though it is clearly false.”

Without the active participation of those who spread and promote lies of this type, the lies themselves will have no effect.

In case of the RNC, a large part of those who assist in these campaigns of deception (and, in fact, a large percentage of those who engineer, approve and fund these campaigns of deception are those who claim to believe that there is a God that prohibits them from bearing false witness against their neighbor. The condemn a number of biblical transgressions (including many that I would hold were falsely believed to be wrong 2,000 years ago but were not wrong in fact).

Yet, they do not condemn the bearers of false witness (a moral transgression believed to be wrong 2,000 years ago and wrong in fact). In fact, they choose to have themselves represented by these bearers of false witness and, indeed, to engage in the practice of bearing false witness with these representatives. This, to me, strikes the same moral cord as having these people not only choosing to have themselves represented by a group of homosexuals but agreeing to engage in homosexual acts with those representatives.

I find it so odd that these people find such energy and devotion to enforcing what those 2,000 years ago falsely believed to be wrong, but so clearly allow themselves to participate in moral crimes that even primative people 2,000 years ago were able to understand to be wrong in fact.

They cannot, in fact, completely escape the charge of hypocrisy.

The rest of us, in the mean time, would be well served to adopt a standard under which, when asked to choose between a loyalty to truth and a loyalty to party, will have the moral fortitude to choose the former.