Promoting Atheism

From time to time I come across calls for atheists to organize and to participate in a campaign to spread atheism among the believers. In the context of this discussion, I hear a lot of claims about how organizing atheists is like herding cats. (A phrase, by the way, that I have grown very much tired of and which I would not mind seeing die the last of its nine lives.)

There is nothing morally objectionable to evangelizing atheism. If some people think that this is something that they like to do, I can think of no argument against it. However, even though I see no particularly strong argument against it, I do not see any particularly strong argument for it either.

I put atheism in the same category as I put, for example, heleocentrism. It is a belief about the nature of the universe. It is also a belief that has very few (if any) moral implications. So, I do not see that gives a person much to evangelize about.

In place of being a missionary for atheism, I would like to recommend becoming a missionary for ethics.

Let me illustrate this by an example.

In this blog, I have only briefly touched upon the proposition, “God exists.” I really do not care whether a person thinks that this proposition is true or false. Instead, I focus on moral principles, such as the principle that people should be convicted in a court of law before they are killed, that a major principle of justice is to separate the innocent from the guilty and to protect the innocent while punishing the guilty, that people should tell the truth and not engage in intellectual recklessness that could result in harm to others.

Technically, nothing prevents a theist from looking at this set of objectives and saying, “Yes, I agree. Let us do these things.” Then, we can work together to create a world that has these characteristics.

I will write how actions are based on desires, we can evaluate desires according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. I will add that a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, an aversion to harming the innocent, and an aversion to deceit and intellectual recklessness will tend to fulfill other desires. I will argue for using the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote these desires and aversions within society.

I think that I can get a few atheists to agree with these objectives.

My theist ally may argue that God wants us to presume innocence until proven guilty, separate the innocent form the guilty and protect the innocent while punishing the guilty, not to lie, and not to engage in intellectual recklessness where others may be harmed. My theist ally may be able to convince other theists to pursue the same objective.

To the degree that I (and my theist ally) are successful at doing this, to that degree we have made the world better than it would have otherwise been, without debating the existence or non-existence of God.

As a case in point, I recently wrote a posting where I condemned the Republican House Resolution 861 as an example of laying a foundation for a campaign of deceit and “bearing false witness” against others. I can make a respectable argument against that type of activity based on the desire-utilitarian assumptions that I use in this blog. At the time, I think that a decent Christian objection can be raised against this type of activity as well – based on the religious prohibition against bearing false witness. Either way, the practice is condemned, without any need to get into a debate over the existence of God.

I admit, there are some religious beliefs that are difficult to work with. A theist may come forth and say, “My God says that I may . . . that I must . . . set off weapons of mass destruction in American cities until the Americans either convert to our way of life or die.”

This is not somebody that I can work with. Indeed, I will readily say that I cannot work with any theist who comes to me claiming that his God is telling him to do harm to others who are not threatening to do harm. My alliance with any theists ends where they cross the line prohibiting harm to (peaceful) others.

Even here, my objection does not take the form, “You believe in God and that is why I am against you.” It takes the form, “You have an irrational and unjustified belief that you may harm others, and that is why I am against you.”

If somebody wants to join a campaign of sorts, the campaign that I would recommend has nothing to do with belief in God. It is a campaign to expose, condemn, and punish those who would organize campaigns of deceit, and those who engage in fallacious reasoning in support of conclusions that, when acted on, cause harm to others. Take a campaign against lying and manipulating others through half-truths and logical fallacies to its conclusion, and the issue of belief in God will take care of itself.

Furthermore, there is no need to be concerned about the fact that others might discover that you are opposed to deceit and intellectual recklessness. You can make this point clear at home, at work, and to strangers standing in line without much risk of generating hostility.

If, in the midst of your campaign against deceit and intellectual recklessness, others might discover you are an atheist, then this will, in fact, pay dividends in favor of promoting the social status of atheists. However, promoting the social status of atheists will be a side-effect, not an objective, of these actions.

This secondary effect will be more powerful to the degree that those who work on this campaign against deceit and intellectual recklessness let it be known that they are also atheists. However, the objective here is not to promote the social status of atheists. The objective remains to force deceivers and those who are intellectually reckless to pay a social cost for their actions, in the hopes of promoting honesty and intellectual responsibility.

Which reminds me….

I have sometimes encountered a pair of statements made in defense of atheism and against theism that make no sense when they are put side by side.

The one is that the theist is lacking in moral character because the only reason he does good and avoids evil is because he expects a reward for his good behavior and fears punishment if he misbehaves. On this conception, the theist will begin to do all sorts of evil the instant he learns that he has nothing to worry about in terms of reward or punishment.

The other is that atheists should be kind and honest to others, not because we value kindness and honesty, but because we want to purchase the good will of others (for what it is worth). We are to step, hat in hand, up to the theist and say, “Please like me. I have done good.”

Yet, this “doing good for the sake of obtaining a reward from theists” is not motivationally different from the theist’s “doing good for the sake of obtaining a reward from God.” For somebody who holds both of these views, their call to “do good for the sake of being rewarded by theists” is an example of hypocrisy.

It does not do much good to condemn a line of reasoning in one breath that one endorses with the next. It has an air of insincerity about it.

Hudson v. Michigan: Knockand Announce Rule

In a recent Supreme Court decision, Hudson v. Michigan, in which it argued that evidence collected in an illegal search of a person’s house may be admissible. In this case, Booker Hudson wanted evidence collected at his house – a loaded revolver and cocaine – to be tossed out because the police collected the evidence in an illegal search. They had a proper warrant. However, when they got to his house, they announced their presence and entered immediately. They did not knock, nor did they give him time to get to the door. This, according to the Supreme Court, violated his 4th Amendment rights to privacy, but not in a way that made the evidence collected inadmissible.

Before I go further, I will repeat an old caveat that I have not used in a while.

Namely, I am not interested in what the law does or does not say. I am interested in what the law should or should not say, and these are often two different things. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the Jim Crow laws that followed are examples of laws that were not what the laws ought to be.

So, I have no intention to argue whether the opinions were well or poorly argued as a matter of law. My concern is whether the argument gives us good law or bad law.

On this issue, I note that the police had a proper warrant to search the premises. That is to say, they convinced a judge that they had probable cause to believe that the house would contain illegal weapons and drugs. The judge then gave the police permission to go to the residence and see if they were right. Nobody is questioning the legitimacy of the warrant. The only claim is that the police did not knock and give the people inside a chance to answer the door before they went into the house.

Why is the requirement to knock first before entering important?

Much of what I read spoke about the Constitution’s ‘knock and announce requirement.’ I am not aware of such a requirement being explicitly in the Constitution. If it has been read into the Constitution, then it falls in the area of what the Constitution says and not what it should say, unless somebody can provide me with an argument as to why it should be there.

I can think of a practical argument in favor of knocking, but it has nothing to do with protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The practical argument comes from asking the question: What would have happened to Mr. Hudson if he had shot at the police while they entered his house?

Chances are, Hudson might or might not have killed or wounded one or more police officers, and probably ended up being shot or killed himself. In addition, any innocent people (e.g., any children who might be in the house, or any residents who are unaware of any drug activity going on) would have been put at risk of harm from the flying bullets. The police, in failing to announce their presence and giving those inside an opportunity to respond, created an unreasonable risk of loss of life.

An argument may be made that the police, in announcing their presence, increased the risk to their own life. They lose the element of surprise and give the suspect an opportunity to arm themselves. However, the job of law enforcement must necessarily be a job where certain individuals agree to accept personal risks in order to protect and preserve innocent life.

The requirement against entering a house unannounced is the same as the requirement against shooting at a suspect in a crowded subway station, where a stray bullet will likely hit innocent civilians. The police have a requirement to hold their fire until they can make a safe shot. We hired them to protect innocent lives. They need to follow a set of rules consistent with that mission.

Therefore, the Hudson case provides justification for a reprimand of some sort. Somebody should go to those responsible for this incident and say, “Do NOT do anything like that ever again. Your job is to protect the innocent, not to create situations that put them in harm’s way.”

Accordingly, if Hudson had shot at or killed one of the law enforcement officers, and/or they had wounded or killed him, after entering the house unannounced, somebody needs to be held responsible for the negligence that resulted in this harm. If the Supreme Court would have held that the police are not responsible for this harm due to their negligence, then they would have been creating bad law.

However, I see nothing about the need for the police to announce their presence before entering a house that is at all relevant to the admissibility of the evidence. I still see no argument that requires that the police identify themselves and give the occupants time to respond that makes this a “4th Amendment” issue. I see nothing in their decision not to knock and give the occupants a chance to respond that would quality the police action as an unreasonable search and seizure – a search and seizure without probable cause.

There is a concern with this decision that the police will use the tactic of entering a home without announcing themselves or giving residents a chance to respond. There is a legitimate concern that this will become a new terror tactic whereby governments seek to rule the people through fear and intimidation.

However, preventing this outcome does not depend on excluding evidence gained when the police do not knock and wait. Preventing this outcome depends on how the courts handle the inevitable increase in the number of cases where police actions turn violent as homeowners seek to turn weapons on unannounced intruders. If the courts side with the police in these cases, then our liberty is truly in danger.

The requirement to knock and wait must be protected, but not as a 4th Amendment issue, but as a public safety issue – as a way of protecting peoples’ right to protect their homes and their families from unannounced intruders.

Maybe I am missing something. If somebody can explain to me how failure to knock means that this was an “unreasonable search and seizure,” I will reconsider my position. However, in my readings on this decision, I have not encountered any such argument.

As far as liberal criticism of this decision goes, it seems to me to be following the formula that, “Since this is the decision of the Bush court in a case where the presence of Sandra Day O’Connor might have resulted in a different outcome, it is wrong.” In other words, they are not basing their opinion on the merits of the case. They are basing the opinion on independent and irrelevant political decisions.

Morality and the Subjectivity of Definitions

I have mentioned this argument in passing before. However, I would like to bring it to the forefront for some proper attention. It is an refutation of the following argument:

The definition of morality is subjective. Whatever definition I accept, you can accept a different definition, and there is no objective argument that will decide the case between us. Therefore, morality is subjective.

It really is a bad argument.

Atheists pride themselves on being rational, and Theists condemn them for their inability to make sense of morality. Atheists who use this argument simply concede the Theists’ point.

I can prove that this form of argument is invalid by use of the logician’s tool, “Disproof by counter-example.” All I need to prove that this argument is invalid is to provide another argument, having exactly the same form, and true premises, but a different conclusion. If I can provide such a counter-example, I can prove that the form of the argument being used is not one where the conclusion follows from the premises.

So, here is my counterexample.

The definition of planet is subjective. In about three months, the International Astronomical Union will propose a definition of the word ‘planet.’ The definition has become an issue recently because we have found another object 2003 UB313 in space that about the same size as Pluto is much like Pluto. However, it has very much in common with a group of objects on the edge of the solar system called Kuiper Belt Objects. So, astronomers need to know whether to call this new object and Pluto planets, or Kuiper Belt Objects.

The question that Astronomers need to ask is: What is the definition of a planet?

What is relevant here is that the definition is subjective. Astronomers are very much aware of the fact that the definition of a planet is subjective. There is no experiment that they can perform, no objective test, that will tell them whether define the word ‘planet’ in a way that includes Pluto, or in a way that excludes Pluto. There is some talk of putting it up to a vote.

Yet, nobody draws the conclusion that, “Therefore, planetology (or astronomy generally) is subjective."

The claim that the subjectivity of language implies the subjectivity of a field of study is false. Just as you cannot infer subjective astronomy from its use of subjective definitions, you cannot infer subjective morality from its use of subjective definitions.

The argument simply does not work. People who pride themselves on reason either should quit using it, and should quit giving it any respect when they are in the company of others who use it. They should pipe up, “No, friend. That is a mistake. You cannot infer that a field of subject is subjective from the fact that it uses subjective definitions. All fields of study use subjective definitions. Yet, some fields of study clearly are not subjective.”

So, what’s going on when people use this argument?

Actually, they are starting with an assumption that the meaning of ‘morality’ is not subjective at all. They are starting with the assumption that “morality” has a fixed and determined meaning that everybody agrees on. However, they do not agree on what that term refers to. It is like having a common definition of ‘planet’ that everybody uses. However, they cannot agree on whether 2003 has the criteria that would qualify it as a planet.

More importantly, to make this analogous to what people say is true of morality, we have to imagine that it is the case that if Person 1 calls Pluto a planet, then Pluto has those qualities that would qualify it as a planet for Person 1. Also, if Person 2 says that Pluto is not a planet, then Pluto would lack those qualities that would qualify it as a planet for Person 2. Yet, Person 1 and Person 2 are using the same definition. Somehow, by Person 1 calling Pluto a planet, it acquires properties (for Person 1) and that when Person 2 says it is not a planet it lacks those same properties (for Person 2).

However, I need a subjectivist to make sense of how this is even possible. How do the properties of an object change according to what it is named? How is it the case that by calling something X, it automatically acquires the properties that would qualify it as an X, whereas denying that it is an X means that it lacks the qualities that would qualify it as an X. Can somebody make sense about how this is possible?

One of the things that subjectivists note is that we have different preferences. When it comes to eating chicken, I like dark meat, and my wife likes white meat. If we describe parts of a chicken according to whether it suits are taste, I would say that dark meat is better than white meat, while she says that white meat is better than dark meat. The taste of chicken would then be subjective, right?

In a sense, we can say that it is subjective. However, this subjectivity has nothing to do with definitions. My wife and I are not having a disagreement over the definition of ‘better’. We are using the same definition: “…appeals more to the tastes of the speaker.” Using this common, mutually agreed upon definition, dark meat is better than white meat to me, and white meat is better than dark meat to her.

Note: I would vigerously dispute any claim that morality is like tastes in food. However, even if it were -- even if we give moral subjectivism its strongest case -- there is still a very strong sense in which it would not make sense to say that morality is subjective.

First, this is NOT a dispute over definitions. Those who try to explain this as a dispute over definitions do not understand what is actually going on.

Second, this is also not ‘subjective’ in another sense.

To illustrate the other sense in which this is not subjective, I would like to invent a word, “tallme”. I will define “tallme” to mean “taller than the speaker.” Now, imagine two people, Aaron (who is 6’ tall) and Bruce (who is 5’ tall). They both know Chuck (who is 5’6” tall). Bruce says that Chuck is tallme. Aaron says that Chuck is not tallme.

The point that I want to make here is that both of them are telling the truth. Bruce’s claim that Chuck is tallme is as objective – as factual – as it would be if he were to claim that Bruce is 5’6” inches. In both cases, Bruce would be giving Chuck’s objective height in terms of a measurement that comes from comparing it to another object – a yardstick in one case, and Bruce’s height in the other.

Statements about something being “good” or “bad” in the sense of “appeals to the tastes of the speaker” are no less objective than statements about “tallme” or “not tallme” in the sense of “compared to the height of the speaker.”

Any claim that “good” or “bad” describes a different type of quality is also false. A claim that “good” or “bad” describes a different type of quality also helps theists to make the claim that atheists cannot make sense of value.

So, I would really like to ask my readers, when they debate the issue of whether morality is subjective or objective, that they at least quit using these faulty arguments, and encourage others to do the same. It does no good to help theists make the claim that atheists cannot speak sensibly about morality.

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.

Rational Choice and Catestrophic Possibilities

Thanks to Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" the global warming debate is back in the news. In reading up on this debate I have encountered another example of intellectual recklessness in the attempt to convince people that they have nothing to worry about regarding CO2 emissions.

An example of the argument that I would like to look at today can be found in the article “Global Warming Fever” by Deborah J. Saunders. She wrote:

Because this is a crusade -- and not about science -- Gore is drawn, not to the most reasoned scenarios, but the most apocalyptic.

To illustrate her point, she quotes the fact that Gore was focusing on the possibility of a 20 foot rise in sea-level as opposed to the more moderate level of one to three feet.

Saunders is making the argument that we only need to consider likely alternatives in planning a strategy. This is completely irrational. There are rational models for decision making, and they argue for ways to give a fair weight to extreme but unlikely possibilities.

To illustrate how basic decision theory would incorporate such an outcome, imagine the following scenario:

You are offered a ticket where there is a 99% chance that it will be worth $100, and a 1% chance of being worth $1,000,000. The question is: if you were to buy the ticket, how much should you pay? How much is the ticket worth?

The basic formula that decision theorists use says to multiply each “payoff” by its “probability” and add the sums together. In this case, using this basic formula yields the following:

($100 * 0.990) + ($1,000,000 * 0.010) = $10,099

Note: This is a basic formula. There are other issues, such as the 'net present value' of a future result, that complicate this formula. The further in the future an event is, the less we should pay today to avoid it. However, these issues have no effect on the question of how to treat small probabilities of catestrophic events.

The same formula works for costs. If instead of getting a ticket that can pay you the amounts listed above, assume that these are costs that you are facing. There is a 99% chance that your situation will cost $100 and a 1% chance that it will cost $1000000. Basic decision theory says it would be worth $10,099 to get out of that situation. Less than this, and you have a bargain. More than this, and you are paying too much.

If we make decisions the way Saunders would have us make them, you would not pay any money to avoid this catestrophic result. You would look only at the likely consequences and determine that it makes no sense to spend a single dime to avoid them. The high-cost/low-probability “apocalyptic” outcomes would not show up on your radar screen.

If a person’s job is to reduce risk for the company, the best strategy he can follow is to reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic outcome.

In this example, let us assume that we have an option. For $1000, we can cut the chance of a catastrophic outcome in half. What should we do?

The basic formula for rational choice yields the following formula:

($1100 * 0.995) + ($1001000 * 0.005) = $6099.50

Recall, we are spending $1000 to reduce the risk of a catastrophic outcome by half. The formula for rational choice says to buy the package.

If somebody on the Board of Advisors were to argue, “The consensus view is that the upgrade will only cost us $100, and we are going to have to pay that no matter what. It is foolish to spend $1000 for nothing,” then this person needs to go back to business school. Her recommendation is simply foolish.

My day job includes, in part, managing software upgrades for my company. When it comes time to install an upgrade to important corporate software programs, I am responsible for testing the system and making sure that the company gets positive results. The last thing I want in my job is to flip the switch on a new software package and watch the company screech to a sudden stop because nobody can do their job.

Because of what I learned in the study of rational choice, I always ask the question, “What is the worst that could happen?” The one area where I can have the biggest impact on the success of any project is by avoiding the catastrophic outcome. I am interested in avoiding the lesser harms, but they are of secondary concern. If we encounter a minor problem, as long as everything is generally running smoothly, we can deal with it. What we can’t deal with is a catastrophic outcome.

Here’s an example: Where I work, we do regular backups of most of our computer systems. Almost every backup is a waste of resources. I can honestly say that more than 99% of our backups never get used – so we invested that money in backing up those systems for nothing. However, the purpose of a backup is not to prepare for the likely events that happen every day. The purpose of the backup is to reduce the cost of the extremely unlikely catastrophic events that might happen but probably will not. This is the rational option.

Here is another example: Drunk drivers typically make it home in one piece. Those who drink and drive increase the chance that they will cause an accident, but the likely result is still that they will make it home. However, we do not design our laws against drunk driving to deal with the typical result. We write our laws to deal with the atypical but catestrophic results that could be avoided if we prohibit people from drinking and driving. This is the rational option.

Saunders is asking us to approach the global warming issue in a way that is simply stupid . . . irrational. She seeks to inspire us into stupid and irrational action because a stupid and irrational voter is just the type that is likely to keep the Republican Party in power and provide greater profits to its financial backers.

Why?

Let’s assume that you have built a dam. For $1000, you can cut the chance that your dam will break and flood the property of everybody who lives downstream by half (from 1% to 0.5%). Should you spend the money?

That depends. Will you have to compensate those who live downstream if you gamble and lose?

Let’s say that you live in a system where, if the dam breaks, the property owners downstream will get no compensation from you for their losses. They will have to pay for reconstruction and for burying the dead out of their own pockets. If you don't have to pay anything if the dam breaks, then why spend $1000 to reduce the chance that the dam will break? There is nothing in it for you.

However, let's say that you will be held responsible for any damage that results when your dam breaks -- a bill of $1000000. If this is the type of society you live in, now you have an incentive to make sure that your dam does not break. Now, the rules of rational choice say that you are better off spending the money than pocketing it.

The energy companies today live in the first type of world. If their global-warming dam breaks, flooding all coastal cities and causing huge damage to those who live downstream, as it were, they will not be paying a dime in damages. It will be left to those who live downstream -- those who survive -- to pay for any repairs out of their own pocket. So, the energy companies have no reason to do anything but pocket the money that they could have spent reducing the chance that the global-warming dam will break.

Or imagine that you live in a country where the government has passed laws protecting drunk drivers from any costs associated with the accidents that they cause. If a drunk driver should crash into another car and kill or injure its occupants, those occupants would be responsible for the costs. What effect would we expect this to have on the number of drunk drivers on the road?

The relationship that we have with the energy companies in the world today is the same relationship that the victims of the accident described above stand in relation to the drunk driver. They get to take risk our lives, health, and property -- and those of our children and grandchildren -- with the right to walk away from whatever suffering they might cause. So, they have no incentive to avoid that suffering, and they show their lack of concern every day. If they should find themselves in a global-warming collision, they will leave their victims in the tangled wreckage, stagger over to the next car, and continue their trip home.

The global warming companies are trying to convince us that the global warming dam would not brak, and we have nothing to worry about. This is because they will not be held responsible for their mistakes. Find some way to hold them responsible for their mistakes, and they will suddenly discover all sorts of reasons to make sure that the global warming dam does not break.

Such is the system that exists today.

Karl Rove and Due Process

It appears that no charges will be filed against Karl Rove relating to the Valerie Plame investigation.

I suspect that many Democrats will still proclaim Rove guilty, as Democratic National Committee Chairman John Dean did on the Today show. Partisanship on both sides create a mindset where people in the other party are presumed guilty unless proven innocent. Since no person can ever be proved innocent (the best a person can do is defeat all of the evidence that exists that says that he is guilty), Rove will always be presumed guilty in their eyes.

I follow a different set of assumptions. I have no admiration for Rove. However, on this specific issue, I am confronted with a situation where I must compare the opinions of two people. One is that of a person who has spent years going over the evidence and testimony and who knows more about the case than anybody, and the opinions of a person who knows only what he gleaned out of a few articles read in online news accounts.

The first person, in this case, is the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The second person is me. Given these two options, the intellectually responsible person would have to go with Fitzgerald’s judgment in this case, which is the judgment that I will make.

This is the morally and intellectually responsible position to take.

The crime of cherry-picking data that supports a presumption of guilt has been one of the most destructive traits we have seen. Bush got us into this war with Iraq by presuming guilt and reading into the evidence the guilt that he assumed was there. He completely lacked the ability to trust to an independent investigator. We would have been in a lot better shape today if Bush had only trusted the investigators who were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction that they could not find any. However, he had to presume guilt and attack his enemy even in the face of insufficient evidence. Many Democrats will condemn Bush for this, while they do exactly the same thing themselves with respect to Karl Rove.

However, there is another aspect of this case that deserves mention. It does not require an assumption that Rove is guilty. It only requires suspicion.

Rove has been the beneficiary of a system of justice that requires due process. This system has allowed him to live his life in relative peace while an investigation was conducted to see if it was possible to prove wrongdoing.

Karl Rove might have learned a valuable lesson if he had been given the same treatment that he and the rest of the Bush Administration, and in particular Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have argued for over the past five years. A fundamental principle of morality says to treat others as you would have others treat you.

Under this principle, Karl Rove should have been picked up one day on his way to work, stuffed into a van, and then hauled off to the nearest airport. From there, he would have been flown to a "black site" in eastern Europe or an American-run prison in Afghanistan and Iraq, and given the status of an ‘enemy combatant.’ After all, he was suspected of providing Iran with important military information. Valerie Plame was allegedly working to discover Iran’s nuclear secrets when Karl Rove was suspected of blowing her cover.

At this secret prison, Rove would have had no access to lawyers or any of the institutions of justice that people enjoy in a civilized country. Evidence against him would not have been presented to a grand jury. It would have been handed to his captors to provide a starting point to the questioning that would follow.

There would be no "one phone call" to a lawyer or anybody else. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he simply disappeared.

His questioners would have every right to assume that he is a part of a cell working for the benefit of Iran by discovering and exposing agents keeping track of Iran's ability to produce atomic weapons.

The questioning would involving sleep depravation, waterboarding, and all of the other procedures that might result in his pleading for an opportunity to reveal the secrets of his activity to weaken the United States by exposing its secrets. Knowing that his interrogators expect him to tell them about his plan to aid Iran, he would tell them what they wanted to hear. If they believe him, then maybe they will leave him alone. They will believe him only if he can tell them a story that they are predisposed to accept as true.

Rove would then have every reason to expect that this is what his life will be like for the indefinite future. He has nothing to look forward to but day after day of this. If he should protest this treatment by means of a hunger strike, he will be force-fed. If he should decide that he has nothing left in life to look forward to, he might try to take his own life. Whether he does or does not, nobody else will know about it. That will not matter anyway.

Perhaps his interrogators will decide that they have no further need of him and let him free. One morning, he wakes up on a street in Albania. He is released. He goes home. He thinks he might want to file a lawsuit against his captors for what they did to him for six months. However, the judge rules that his private interests must give way to matters of national security. He has no 'rights' in this case. He is not entitled to compensation for what he has been put through.

According to Karl Rove himself and other members of the Bush Administration, this is how we should treat potential threats to national security. Bush, as the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, exercising his responsibility to keep America safe, certainly has the authority to declare Karl Rove an ‘enemy combatant’ and subject him to this fate.

But he will not.

This is one of the evils of arbitrary power, like that which the Bush Administration is claiming for the President. The best way to escape the pains of arbitrary power is to become friends of those who wield it and to help turn against those who would protest. That is how dictators are born.

Instead, Karl Rove gets to remain free. His prosecutors are bound by legal requirements of getting warrants before they could access his secret files. Or did Patrick Fitzgerald have the right to use the NSA phone database to find out everybody Karl Rove had called or who had called him during the days in question – information that the government can apparently collect on everybody without a warrant? He would, after all, be using the information in an attempt to protect national security by finding those who would expose government secrets.

It is possible to identify people who do not have a basic understanding of morality by the fact that they insist that others have an obligation to live under a set of rules that they declare themselves to be immune from. In this case, they demand the rights of due process, while denying those same rights to others.

We can apply this example to a number of people who have joined the ranks of those who have shown no regard for due process as a moral principle and a human right . . . former majority leader of the House of Representative Tom DeLay, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Conservative hate-monger Ann Coulter, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Fox news commentator Bill O’Reilly.

All of these peoples’ lives would have been quite different if they had lived under a system of “presume guilt unless proven innocent and cease all of this nonsense talk of civil rights” that they advocate for others.

True Beliefs Part IV: Faithfully Causing Harm

I did not mean for this to be a series. It’s just that, at the end of each day, I had one more item that I wanted to cover. This should be the end of it.

In Part I of this series, I explained the value of true beliefs. I used the model of a swimming pool filled with acid, that a potential swimmer thinks is filled with water, to explain why true beliefs have value. I explained the value of using our moral tools of praise and reward to promote a love of honesty, curiosity, and intellectual responsibility. This same argument explains why we should be using the tools of condemnation and punishment against those who would prevent us from acquiring true beliefs -- the deceiver, the intellectually lazy, and the intellectually reckless.

Part II of this series looked at some of the obstacles to our forming true beliefs. I imagined the diver in the above example being confronted by a preacher telling the diver, "Because my book says that the pool is filled with water, you should show that you deserve to go to heaven after death by faithfully accepting what is in the book and ignoring the scientist." Other obstacles include the politician passing legislation demanding that people act as if the pool contains water, and the CEO of Hydrochloric Acid, Inc who realizes that what people do not know about his product (or what they believe that is not true) can help his bottom line.

Part III of this series took arguments out of John Stuart Mills' "On Liberty" to argue that belief in objective facts still suggests the need to let people live their own lives as they see fit. It argues for a love of liberty to sit beside a love of truth, curiosity, and intellectual responsibility. It argues that, except in the case of those who are extremely incompetent such as children, we should use reason to dissuade people from harmful actions, not force.

Faithfully Causing Harm

In this part, I want to talk about the case of faith-based beliefs used to try to justify behavior that does harm to others.

Somebody comes after you with a knife, a gun, a belt or vehicle packed with explosives, a hijacked airplane, or a law (backed by police with guns, bombs, and the like), intent to do you harm. When asked why he seeks to inflict harm on you, he says, "God told me to." He backs up his claim by quoting passages from his book, and he can offer no other reason for his actions.

If you should even offer a peep of protest, he will condemn you for disrespecting his religious practices. The very essence of religious tolerance, he will claim, rests in not protesting, condemning, or criticizing those practices. Therefore, it means not protesting, condemning, or criticizing his attack on you. Raise your arm to block the knife as he tries to stab you says that you do not respect him or his beliefs. That is wrong, he will say. You are “attacking my religion."

He may assert that you have a right to freedom of religion, but not to freedom from (his) religion. The claim that there is no freedom from religion is a claim that one has no freedom from the knife, gun, bomb, hijacked airplane, or faith-based statute that has you hauled off to killed, wounded, or imprisoned in the name of God.

Statutes as Weapons

The criminal law is an institution of violence, backed up by guns and other instruments of violence to be used on those who disobey.

Faith-based law is faith-based violence, backed up by guns and other instruments of violence to be used on those who disobey.

It is no defense in favor of slavery, inquisitions, jihads, witch burnings, religious wars, or other acts of religious violence in the past to say that they were written into the laws and made legal. This also applies to prohibitions, such as prohibiting a woman from getting an education or prohibiting a homosexual couple from getting married. These prohibitions deep wounds into the quality of people’s lives -- as deep as any physical wound.

It is no defense in favor of any of these things that the majority of the people would have voted for them. It is no defense of slavery that a majority of whites would approve a ballot initiative to enslave blacks. It is no defense of faith-based harms generally that a majority of the people have no moral qualms against inflicting those harms.

When discussing the law, the relevant moral question becomes whether the law ought or ought not to exist. If it is wrong to inflict faith-based harm on another person, than laws that inflict faith-based harms on other people ought not to exist. The same prohibition that exists between wielding a faith-based knife applies to wielding a faith-based statute. Both equally seek to cause harm. Both do so in the name of God.

If anything, the faith-based knife wielder is less of a moral threat than the faith-based statute wielder. The knife wielder can attack many people. Faith-based statues, on the other hand, are faith-based weapons of mass destruction.

Reason vs. Faith

As the faith-based attacker comes at you with his weapons, saying that he would please his God by causing you to suffer, you cannot reason with him. Reason is the enemy of faith. Reason is the voice of the devil trying to seduce him into giving up his faith -- giving up his relationship with God.

If you are trying to reason with him, you are putting your reason up against his faith. You are hoping that reason will win, and he will put his faith (and his faith-wielded knife) aside. This cannot be understood as anything other than an attempt to use reason to turn your attacker against God. This proves your guilt. This proves that you deserve to die, in the name of God.

Limitless Faith

There is no limit to what a person can believe on the basis of faith. From the idea that the sun is a burning chariot, to the existence of a titan named Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, from flying horses to three-headed dogs guarding the entrance to hell to walking on water, from snake-haired Medusa whose gaze turns people to stone to divine retribution capable of turning a woman into a pillar of salt or a staff into a snake, from leprechauns to ghosts to flying saucers hiding in the tail of a comet, faith knows no limits.

I am more than comfortable making the assertion that, somewhere out there is a religious passage that says that you, the reader, should be put to death for something that you have said, done, or thought. Furthermore, there is a person who believes that the passage represents the literal and unquestionable truth from God.

From this it follows that if we allow faith-based belief to justify actions that are harmful to others, there is not a person alive who should not die. Every one of us violates somebody’s religion somewhere.

Have you worked on the day of the Sabbath? Have you collected interest from a loan or a savings account? Then, according to the Old Testament, you should die.

No Faith-Based Beliefs Justify Harm

The only way to avoid a catastrophic conclusion is to say that faith-based belief does not justify harm to others.

We have no reason to protest faith-based beliefs that inspire people to help others. We might question whether the person who contributes to charity only because he thinks of it as a down-payment for a ticket to heaven. However, we have no reason to protest – unless he thinks he can also purchase his ticket to heaven by doing harm in some cases.

If faith-based beliefs have no effect on the lives of others, such as beliefs about what to eat and when to pray, these also give us no reason to interfere. As I wrote yesterday, there are powerful arguments against interfering with the liberty of others when they do no harm.

However, when a person attacks others and uses faith-based beliefs to justify it, we have a problem. If a group of people hijack an airplane and fly it into a building, faith-based beliefs can never be good enough to justify such an action. Faith-based belief fares no better when a group of people take over a government and use it to do just as much or more harm to others.

Conclusion

I started this series of postings investigating the idea of being concerned about what another person believes.

I argued that we all need true beliefs in order to make intelligent and informed decisions. Because of this, we have reason to use praise and reward to promote a love of honesty, curiosity, and intellectual responsibility. We have reason to use condemnation and punishment against deceivers and those who are intellectually reckless -- particularly when they harm others. I have shown how this love of truth and aversion to deception and intellectual recklessness gives people reason to condemn practices that promote fiction over fact.

I also argued in defense of liberty. Human fallibility and the fact that each person acts to fulfill his own desires given his beliefs, imply that each individual should be in charge of running his own life as much as possible. They imply that there should be a presumption (like the presumption of innocence until proven guilty) in favor of each person being the ruler of his own life.

This presumption of liberty applies to any who would use faith-based beliefs to justify helping others, or for doing actions that do not affect others. However, this presumption is defeated when a person seeks to harm others and he has nothing but faith-based beliefs to justify it.

Saying that I should not be concerned about others' faith-based reason for doing harm says that I should stand and do nothing while others inflict harm on me, my nieces and nephews, my friends, my co-workers, or my neighbors.

Why interfere with those who do harm in God's name? It is because I care about my nieces and nephews, my friends, my co-workers, or my neighbors. I have no interest in watching them become victims of those who inflict harm on others in the name of God.

True Beliefs III: The Liberty of Beliefs

I have spent two days discussing the importance of true beliefs – and the importance of a culture that praise and reward those who show a love of honesty, curiosity, and intellectual responsibility while condemning and punishing the deceptive, lazy, and intellectually reckless.

In the first post, I used the example of a man who jumps into a pool, believing that it is filled with water, when it is in fact filled with acid, to provide an example that illustrates the importance of true belief and the problems of false belief.

In the second post, I presented some of the obstacles to true beliefs and the costs associated with allowing those obstacles to flourish.

There is an important supplement to these ideas – the importance of allowing each person to have the freedom to act on his or her own beliefs, and not to have the beliefs of another forced upon him. There are four assumptions that I will bring into play on this.

Assumption 1: Let us assume that there is a truth to be known. In our example, the pool either contains acid or water, and the effects of the acid are what we typically know them to be. The facts of the matter include facts about how much discomfort and other effects that the acid will have on the person who jumps into the pool.

Assumption 2: I would like to add the assumption that there is widespread disagreement over many matters of fact.

Assumption 3: This assumption comes from the theory of action that sits at the foundation of these posts. Each person acts so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of his desires given his beliefs. All of us do this – and it is not a mark of selfishness. It is simply recognition of the fact that my desires are the only desires connected to my muscles in the right way. Furthermore, if somebody else could control my actions, so that her desires were the proximate cause of the motions in my body, then these actions would be her actions, and not mine. I would not in any way be morally or even causally responsible for those actions. So, if I have causal power over your actions I will, necessarily, use them to fulfill my own desires, and not yours. I cannot do anything else.

Assumption 4: I have only had one desire. My sole desire is that the more and stronger of your desires are fulfilled. In this way, I am perfectly altruistic, with no ‘selfish’ or self-centered desires at all.

I would be willing to argue that the first three items on this list are true, and have given brief arguments above. Assumption 4 is clearly false, but it makes the strongest case against freedom. If a love of freedom can survive the best case against it, it can survive real-world arguments against it.

Even under this entirely unreasonable Assumption 4, I would have to choose to let you live your life as you saw fit rather than impose actions upon you , unless you were obviously in a state of extreme incompetence (such as being a young child). In order for me to act to fulfill your desires, I would need more than a desire to fulfill your desires, and no competing desire to weigh against it. I would also need to know what your desires are. I would need to know what they are in detail – their precise objects, and their relative strengths.

This would take a great deal of work. One could argue that it is impossible.

The next best option is to leave your decision making up to somebody else who has the same interest in the fulfillment of your desires as I do, plus vastly superior knowledge as to what those desires are.

That would be you.

The assumption that I have only one desire – a desire to see your desires fulfilled – is an idealized state that does not exist. I have other desires. Those desires will distract me from fulfilling your desires. Depending on the strength of those other desires and their objects, these distractions may be small and insignificant, or they may motivate me to neglect your desires entirely. If I had a desire to thwart your desires, this would be particularly problematic.

So, we have an argument here for the love of freedom – the love of a state where each person (except the clearly incompetent – as with a child) has the liberty to fulfill his or her own desires as he or she sees fit. Among the desires that we should use our tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to support is a desire to allow each person to have the freedom to pursue happiness in his or her own way. This means praising and rewarding those who work for a state in which people are left alone, and condemnation for those who seek to impose their will on others.

By the way, these are not my arguments. These arguments belong to John Stuart Mill in his 19th century book On Liberty. I have simply translated them so that they fit into the desire utilitarian theory that I use as the basis for these blogs.

Objective Truth and Impositions on Others

One of the arguments that I often come across in my reading, used against the claim that there are objective moral truths, says that that there are practical reasons not to promote the idea of an objective moral truth even if it is true. If people are cause to believe in an objective moral truths, they will undoubtedly take their sentiments as unmistakable guide to that truth. This will cause them to think that they are justified in imposing those sentiments on others. We wish to avoid this result, so we should not cause others to believe in objective moral truth.

This is an absurd argument for two reasons.

First, it requires more than belief in an objective truth to justify imposing one’s views on others. It also requires an arrogant presumption that one knows without error what those truths are. There are theists who claim that their moral conscience is the word of God written onto their soul. These people arrogantly presume that they are without error on all matters of morality. However, the fault does not lie with the belief that there are objective moral truths. It lies with the belief that the individual has a direct conduit to God and, as a result, cannot be mistaken as to what those truths are.

Second, common subjectivism is even worse when it comes to giving people a reason to believe that their moral sentiments are without error and may be imposed on others. Subjectivism says that one’s moral sentiments are without error because there is nothing for them to be in error about – there is no “fact of the matter” that one can be mistaken about. Furthermore, the prescription against forcing one’s will on others, on this system, is itself a moral sentiment that the agent may or may not have. It, too, can be discarded without moral error. Consequently, common subjectivism gives agents an even shorter route to intolerance than objective morality, and does not require the arrogant presumption of infallibility.

In contrast, the person who believes in moral truths, who also has an honest appreciation of his own fallibility, can recognize the dangers of imposing his or her beliefs on others. The honest believer in objective moral truth has reason to say, “I can be wrong. If I am wrong, and I force this conclusion on others, then the badness that results will be my fault – my moral responsibility. If I am going to force this conclusion on others, then I had better make sure that I am not wrong.”

Modesty is a virtue in the desire-utilitarian framework. Modesty is honest. Arrogance, on the other hand, is a dishonest conceit.

Conclusion

So, even though the scientist tells us that the pool is filled with acid rather than water, and we do not wish to see our friends, family, neighbors, and descendents dive in because of the harm that will be done, we should still have a love of freedom that leaves others to make up their own mind. We will try to persuade them and reason with them. However, before we will take steps to use force against them – to override their will with our own, we are morally obligated to make sure that we are not in error. There must always be a moral presumption in favor of the agent acting on his own believes that can only be outweighed by extraordinarily solid proof that he will regret the action if he is not stopped.

Force is not only prone to the corruption of the agent’s own desires and the possibility of error, it also leaves the victim unarmed to handle other, similar circumstances. Reason with a person and explain why he should not jump in the pool, and he can apply that understanding to all relevantly similar cases. He will do this voluntarily. Prohibit him by force and he will continue to lack the understanding that he could otherwise apply to relevantly similar cases, and he will probably fight to violate the restrictions themselves wherever possible.

If the victims of force are suspicious of the motives of those who are using force against them, they have every reason to be.

I am going to add one more entry to this series tomorrow. That entry will have to do with beliefs that one may cause harm to another, with a focus on beliefs that are grounded on faith.

True Belief II: True Believer

Yesterday, in a posting dedicated to the value of true beliefs, and the social value of holding the dishonest and the intellectually irresponsible in contempt, I used an example involving a diver and a swimming pool.

Believing that the swimming pool was full of water, the diver jumps in. However, he discovers that his belief was mistaken, and the pool was filled with hydrochloric acid. It is a stark example the consequences of acting on false belief. It explains why we must work to create a society that values not only honesty but intellectual responsibility and curiosity as important virtues.

What we do not know can kill us. Ignorance is, in fact, the leading cause of death, illness, and all other forms of suffering.

Now, I want to carry the analogy further. I would like to add the scientist who has conducted experiments and formed the theory that the swimming pool contains acid rather than water. He has done so by means of applying the scientific method. Through his studies of the properties of water and acid, he has discovered some differences in how the two chemicals behave. In testing the contents of the pool, he discovered that his sample behaves like hydrochloric acid, rather than water. He has announced his results, whereupon a second scientist performed the same test and confirmed those results.

I would also like to introduce the preacher, who reads from his book that there is water in the pool, who condemns the scientist for making claims that contradict his religion. He asserts that faith is better than science at discovering truth and, if it is written in his book that pool contains water, it must be so, regardless of what the scientist says.

The preacher goes on to accuse those who side with the scientists as intolerant, and who claim that those who prefer science over religion are inherently evil and are not to be trusted. He holds up as his model of moral perfection the likes of Ann Coulter, who proclaim the country should rid itself of these godless scientists with their experiments and their theories who continually get in the way of faith.

The preacher, with his bible, tells the diver that not only may he enter the pool, but his book says that he must enter the pool as a way of proving his devotion to God and securing for himself a place in heaven.

But wait! There’s more! He also tells the diver that, before diving into the pool, he is to help the preacher compel others to dive into the pool as well. He is to join an “Army of God” that will round up others with the intention of doing God’s work and getting as many people into the pool as possible. If he will join this army, donating his time and a portion of his income to the cause, then he will be a truly virtuous person and truly deserving of a place in heaven.

He also claims that anybody who criticizes his view – anybody who says that the pool does not contain water and that those who say so are mistaken – are guilty of religious discrimination. Religious liberty, they say, means that nobody is permitted to criticize the preacher or question his claims.

Then we introduce the politician who has a need to mobilize his political base for the next election, introducing legislation and constitutional amendments for the sake of making his campaign attractive to the preacher and his army of God, so that he may collect campaign contributions and votes from them.

We must also introduce the businessman who profits from having others enter the pool. He hires the PR firm who creates a campaign to discredit the scientists who claim that the pool contains acid. The PR firm collects millions from the businessman and uses it to launch an advertisement campaign to bombard the diver with messages from all direction that he is to listen to the preacher, not the scientist.

The PR firm creates advertisements that say, “Scientists once thought that diseases were caused by ‘bad air,’ and now they say that diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses. They once said that the space between the stars was filled by aether because light is a wave and could not travel through a vacuum. Now they assert this absurd ad hoc idea that light is both a wave and a particle that can travel through a vacuum without difficulty. They admit that the universe has “dark matter” and “dark energy” that they do not understand. So, we clearly should not believe what they say about the pool containing hydrochloric acid.”

In another campaign, the PR company makes a colorful add full of sweet music and pleasant images while an announcer with a soothing voice tells the audience that hydrochloric acid is what the stomach uses to digest food. “Some call it pollution. We call it life.”

They find so-called scientists who are willing to say that the original scientists’ experiments were flawed, and other scientists who are willing to say that bathing in acid is good for you, and they pay millions of dollars to promote whatever books and articles these so-called scientists are willing to publish.

Whereas the only outlet the scientists have are the peer-reviewed scientific journals, where scientists talk in a language that only other scientists can understand, while the rest of us are watching “Survivor” or, at best, “Fox News”, brought to you by the businessman looking for a way to put his PR spin in front of as many people as possible.

Let me make it clear that the political right are not the only villains in this story. We also need to introduce the members of the political left who do not want the diver to enter the pool of acid, because they have a pool that they want the diver to enter instead. Their pool does contain water, but the water is at a near boiling temperature. They also have people who profit from having divers enter their water, their “paid experts”, and preachers who say, “Those other preachers do not interpret the book correctly. The book says that you must enter into this pool, not that one.”

Do you really believe that there is nobody out there paying to promote certain ideas on the political left, not because they are true, but because they are profitable? Furthermore, there is more than one kind of profit. There is cash in the bank. There is also power – the ability to get into a position to make decisions for others, to profit one’s friends, and to burden one’s enemies. Intellectual recklessness and the urge to enter into an “army of whatever” by accepting all of what that subculture says just so that one can belong to something are not traits found only among political conservatives. They are human traits.

Then there are those who say, “Wait! Let’s find out what is really in these pools. Let us use science with its reliance on observable and replicatable results, and use logic with its truth-preserving principles, to determine what is in each of the pools and what the effects of diving in will be. Let us create a culture made up of people who are intellectually curious and intellectually responsible, with a love of truth and contempt for deception and intellectual recklessness, so that we can make intelligent and informed decisions.”

So, why do I care?

Here’s one reason:

The pool is filled with hydrochloric acid.

Some people might argue that religious belief is not as bad as all of this.

Two things can be said about that.

The first is that they are right, as far as some religions go. There are some preachers who listen to the scientists. They say things like, “God commands us to do that which is good. If the scientists are right, it is not good to tell others to go into that water. Yes, parts of the book say that pool has water and not acid. However, given what the scientists have discovered, we must accept those passages metaphorically, and not allow the reality of the acid to do harm.”

The second is that we may imagine different concentrations of acid to correspond to the different levels of harm. For each of the harms done in the name of religion, from blocking stem cell research to cure disease, to prohibitions on birth control, to forcing people with terminal illness to endure an end of days that would make a dive in a pool of acid seem pleasant, to preventing homosexuals from having the institutional support to form stable relationships, to insisting on programs that scientists tell us are less effective at preventing sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy, to sewing a general disregard and disrespect for the tools of true belief, there is a level of acid that will provide the corresponding level of misery.

The people at risk of entering this pool are our friends, our families, our neighbors, and our children -- who will soon discover that the public school requires students to go through rituals whereby only those who agree that the pool contains only water will be fully accepted, and those who do not share this belief will be excluded. Does a person have to believe in God to have good reason to refuse to jump into a pool of acid?

Nothing could be more absurd.

I do not have to believe in God to have reason to protest when others, convinced by their faith that the pool contains water, come at me with warrants and laws and demand that I dive in this pool of acid or suffer the consequences.

If there is no God, then this life is the only life we have. If this life is the only life we have then it is particularly hard to watch one’s friends, family, neighbors, children, and grandchildren dive into this pool of acid. There is also no reason to sit quietly while others, convinced by religious faith that the pool contains only water, passes legislation that forces even us into the water.

What we lose, we never will get back.

The Love of True Belief

A few days ago, Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism addressed the issue "Why Do We Care?" He was concerned with the question of why some atheists, such as himself, seem concerned with the fact that others are devoting time and energy serving entities that do not exist.

I thought it was an interesting question.

I no special qualms with the answer and Ebonmuse gave. However, I wanted to give an answer in my own words – in terms of the view of morality that serves as the foundation for this blog.

A reader who sticks around for a while will discover that I almost never concern myself with questions about the existence of God. This is just one of an infinitely large set of questions that I do not concern myself with.

I also do not concern myself with the question of whether there is an invisible gremlin sitting in the next seat on this laptop, reading my screen, making plans to arrange for a rather brutal ‘accidental’ death of a young child 100 years from now each time I use the word ‘atheism.’

I could accept this proposition on faith. Yet, I could just as easily accept, on faith, the proposition that such a demon exists who will save a child from a brutal death each time I use the word ‘atheism.’

I have just as little evidence for each of these claims, so I have no reason to accept one over the other. I cannot accept all of them, so I accept none. I focus instead on the things that can actually affect the world around me. "If X is true, then Y will result; if X is not true, Y will not result. We can prove or disprove the truth of X by looking at whether Y results." If there is no “Y” or “not-Y” in the real world that counts as evidence of “X” or “not-X”, then “X or not-X” is a waste of time.

So, does this mean that, unlike Ebonmuse, I do not care about other peoples’ false beliefs?

Okay, I have to change the question somewhat. Another question I do not focus on answering in this blog is whether I, personally, care or do not care about a particular state of affairs. As an ethics blog, the relevant question is whether you, the reader, should or should not care about a particular state of affairs. Morality, as I have been describing it in this blog, would focus on the question, “Should people, generally, be promoting a universal desire for true beliefs and aversion to false beliefs?"

Another way of asking the same question: "Does a good person prefer truth over fiction (except where fiction is provided for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to be a basis for decision making)?"

Answer: Yes.

Why?

In the terms that I have used as the foundation for this blog, humans seek to perform those actions that will fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires. Humans actually act in ways that would fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires if their beliefs were true.

If a person’s beliefs are true, his actions fulfill the more and stronger of his desires. If his beliefs are false or incomplete, he may fail to do so.

Imagine that it is a hot summer day, and you want to cool off in the swimming pool. You believe that the swimming pool has been filled with water. In fact, it has been filled with hydrochloric acid. You jump in. You choose an action that would have fulfilled your more and stronger desires if your beliefs were true. However, your beliefs were not true. Therefore, your attempt to fulfill your more and stronger desires failed. Instead, a great many desires, some of them very strong (e.g., desire to avoid pain) were thwarted.

True beliefs are important.

People, generally, have reason to acquire true beliefs so that they can better fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires.

One way to surround ourselves with true beliefs is to create a society in which the people who surround us are people who love truth and hate deception. Also, it would help to surround ourselves with people who are intellectually curious so that the will go out and seek new discoveries – create new true beliefs -- that we can then put to use. Accordingly, we have reason to discourage people from becoming either dishonest and deceptive, or intellectually reckless and irresponsible to the point that they freely make claims without regard as to whether they are true or false.

To the degree that we do this, to that degree we will find ourselves in an environment with more true beliefs, and less chance that a false belief will lead to incidents such as jumping into the pool.

We have tools that we can use to help to create a society filled with people who love truth and honesty, are intellectually curious, and accept moral responsibility for their claims about what is true or false. These are the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. To form a culture that values true belief, we should praise and reward those who value honesty and truth, who are intellectually curious and seek new answers, and take care to draw only sound conclusions. We should present them with these rewards and honors in public and hold them up as an example for others.

At the same time, we should condemn those who show by their actions that they care nothing for truth. We should express our contempt not only for the dishonest, but for the intellectually reckless who assert things without taking proper care to determine if they are true or false. We should hold these people up as an example for others as well so that they can see what comes to those who are dishonest and intellectually reckless.

We can tell the difference. Let nobody convince you that we cannot.

We have the tools of logic. These are the tools that describe how to link premises and conclusions in a way that are truth-preserving. We can tell when a speaker or writer respects those rules, and when they violate those rules, either through a malicious intent to deceive or a careless disregard for truth.

We also have the tools of science. These tools tell us to take propositions and to look at their implications -- to design experiments -- and to use the results of those experiments to determine which propositions are true and which are false. History makes it obvious to any who would look that medicine has cured more people than prayer. Chemistry has saved more lives than communion. Biology and genetics has fed more people than sacrifices at an altar.

Those who belittle and denigrate these methods are preventing us from acquiring the true beliefs we need. They stand in the way of the medical advances, engineering accomplishments such as telecommunications and climate prediction, and advances in agriculture -- because they promote fiction over fact.

That is reason enough to care.

If you actually care to save lives and reduce suffering, go with what works.

Seeing the difference between these two different types of people is as easy as recognizing the difference between the likes of Carl Sagan versus Ann Coulter.

As an example, Hume's Ghost has been following the practice some public relations firms have of finding ways to pass on corporate and partisan advertisements as neutral third-party news stories and even getting them to show up on the evening news as news.

These organizations have been producing video news releases (VNRs) and submitting them to news organizations, who then insert them into their evening news casts as if they were neutral third-party reports filed by their own staff. Against this, some have been calling for the Federal Communications Commission to force news organizations to disclose when they are using these paid advertisements.

As Hume’s Ghost has reported, elements of the PR industry is fighting this requirement calling it censorship.

Those who are protesting this requirement are effectively protesting the idea that we should form true beliefs about the authorship of these so-called news broadcasts.

Why would they do that?

It seems reasonable to conclude that they think we will act different if we had true beliefs. As I mentioned above, a person will act as if their beliefs are true, and may fail to fulfill his desires if his beliefs are false. Any organization or group that adopts a policy of preventing us from acquiring true beliefs is an organization that would rather have us risk thwarting our desires to allowing us to make informed decisions grounded on true beliefs.

They seem to think that they profit from our ignorance and are anxious to preserve their profit. Their clients want us to jump into the metaphorical pool (because they profit from it) and those who make these VNRs fear that we might use a little more caution if we knew who was telling us that the water is fine.

They may be right.

However, the question we need to be asking is whether, and to what degree, we can succeed in fulfilling our desires in a culture that values deception and the encouragement of false belief over honesty and truth.

We care, some of us anyway, because we have, and we recognize the value of the love of true belief.

A Different Kind of War

Sometimes, to understand the reasonableness of an argument, we only need to use it in a slightly different context.

President Smith Reacts to Death of Norez

In an address to the nation earlier this afternoon, President Smith congratulated those responsible for killing notorious drug lord Evan Norez in a theater in downtown Jersey City today.

According to reports, the units involved in the operation received information three days ago that allowed them to follow Norez into the Pine Street Theater. Once they received information that Norez was inside, they called in an air strike that destroyed the theater. Norez' body was identified from among the nineteen bodies removed from the building. Two key lieutenants in Norez' organization were also reported to have been in the theater.

Norez' drug cartel has been responsible for a major part of the drug crime in the region known as the Northeast Triangle -- the region from Boston to Philadelphia to Baltimore. Sources inside the White House expressed hope that this would restore support for President Smith's war on drugs, which had lost popularity in the polls in recent months.

World leaders congratulated President Smith on the death of Norez, stating that the drug lord was a major source of misery and suffering.

In his speech, President Smith went on to defend his administration's decision to use the tools develop in the war on terror to fight the war on drugs. "For eight years we fought a war on terror, and we fought it successfully," said President Smith. "Here we see the benefits of applying those same tools to the drug cartels."

President Smith also defended his decision to use the military to fight this war. "As Commander in Chief of the armed forces, I get to decide when there is a sufficient risk to the safety and well-being of the American people, and I have the authority to use the military to defend America from those threats. I have decided that these drug cartels are a threat. They are a threat. They ruin the lives of millions of Americans every year. I have the Constitutional authority to call in the military to deal with any threat to the safety of the American people, including this one. We are in a war on drugs, and we will win that war."

Attacking his critics, President Smith reiterated his belief that those who oppose him on this are fighting for the cartels. "Those who oppose my plan for bringing these cartels to justice are fighting with and for the cartels. They weaken the government and make its enemies stronger. We are involved in a war here, and I intend to win."

Attorney General John Miller, testifying before the Senate Justice Comittee today before the President's announcements, also defended the constitutionality of President Smith's actions. "The Constitution clearly gives the President the authority and the responsibility as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to keep America safe."

Miller also defended the Administration's use of the American Defense Database in this war on the cartels, saying that it has provided the government with vital information that has helped it significantly in this war.

The New York Times reporter Jane Walton revealed in a series of articles last year the extent of the Defense Database. Originally thought to be a database that held only telephone calls, Walton revealed that the database also contained tax information gathered from the Internal Revenue Service, credit reports, credit card statements, bank account statements, mail and email records, and internet browsing records.

"If the government has the right to obtain phone records, then it clearly has the right to collect all records on American citizens," Miller told the Committee. "I will not comment explicitly on what this administration is and is not doing to fight the war on drugs. I can only say that the President is merely doing what he thinks needs to be done to protect the American people from this threat. The people can sleep comfortably that the President will do everything in his power to keep them safe."

Lawyers speaking for New York Times reporter Jane Walton released a statement today saying that Walton continues to stand behind her story. Walton has now served over 120 days in jail for her refusal to reveal the names of the people who leaked the details of the Defense Database.

Miller has said that he is still trying to decide whether to charge Ms. Miller with treason.

In further testimony before the Senate Committee, Miller said that he also considers the agents to be traitors and that he is committed to finding their identity. "The Justice Department will get the information from Ms. Walton, one way or another," he said.

When Senator Bailly asked whether this might include torture, Miller answered, "The Administration does not torture prisoners. I assure you, Ms. Walten will not be permanently damaged."

President Smith also spoke about the ongoing investigation of the incident in Modesto, California last November where some have accused the military of slaughtering eleven civilians in a raid to capture or kill suspected cartel members.

A military tribunal released its findings late last week clearing the soldiers of any wrongdoing. The official report said that when soldiers approached the house they were met with small arms fire. They returned fire then called in an air strike on the house. A private home video of the scene of the scene after the battle showed the bodies of several women and children, which some say show signs that the occupants were executed.

In the last twelve months, 1,237 civilians have been reported killed in U.S. Army raids against suspected cartel hideouts. One of the dealiest incidents involved an attack on a reported Cartel safehouse in Arkansas where a wedding was being held. 62 people were killed and 117 injured in that attack. The military called the incident a simple failure of intelligence. President Smith said in his speech that he sincerely regrets the loss of innocent life, but he asked the American people to stay the course until the drug cartels are defeated and the country can declare victory in its war on drugs.

Military investigators are also looking into the death of a pregnant woman and her mother on the New Jersey Turnpike late last week. According to reports, the victims were in a car that sped past an Army checkpoint on Thursday, prompting military personnel to open fire on the vehicle. Relatives for the victims, 47 year old Natalie Farmer and her daughter 20 year old Ashley Mason, said that Farmer was driving Mason, who was in labor, to the hospital when the incident occurred. President Smith responded to the incident by saying that the soldiers have a right to protect themselves, and that citizens should not take any action that soldiers might perceive as a threat.

In related news, the military swept into the town of Needles, California last night looking for cartel members. In a door to door sweep of the town, soldiers killed 27 suspect cartel members and apprehended 147 others. Those apprehended were immediately flown out to secret Detention Centers. Though the U.S. Military refuses to release any numbers, independent organizations such as Amnesty International report that the United States is now holding 153,000 citizens in Detention Centers. Most of them have been transported to centers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This includes 22 Representatives, 3 Senators, and 38 Judges, all of whom are being detained under charges of obstructing the war on drugs and giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.

The ACLU has filed an official protest with the Smith Administration over these detentions, calling them unlawful and unconstitutional. In a strongly worded letter to the President, they said that the Administration has a duty to respect the constitutional rights of all prisoners.

President Smith, addressing these issues in his statement, repeated the Administration's view that suspected cartel members are not prisoners in the classic sense, but enemy combatants. "You do not hold trials for enemy combatants captured in a state of war," said President Smith. Since the start President Smith's escalation on the war on drugs he has stood behind Attorney General Miller's claim that those captured in this war are neither criminals nor prisoners of war but 'enemy combatants' who are not entitled to the constitutional or legal protections of either group.

ACLU spokesman James Clark said, "President Smith has put these people in a legal twilight zone where he claims that there are no rules or limits to what he can have done to them. Flying them out of the country itself is a gross violation of the principles upon which this country was founded."

Vice President Lewis, responding to Clark's statement, said, "We are in a war against those who care nothing about life. You can't have any civil rights if you're dead."

Clark, responding to the Vice President, Clark said, “It looks like you can’t have any civil rights if you’re alive either.”

Addendum

I have read some comments today from people who suggested that killing Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was a bad move because it will create sympathy and support for fundamentalist Muslims.

As a word of warning, this is fine.

As an argument for the conclusion that it was wrong to kill a person such as Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is alleged to have been, it can be rejected. The type of person who would support the murder and destruction of Al-Zarqawi are people whose opinions do not deserve moral consideration.

Evolution and Ethics

I have some questions for those who are disposed to link morality and evolution -- those who think that "morality" is an evolved sense of right and wrong that we have acquired through the process of natural selection.

Question 1: Why is moral change is faster than physical evolution?

Some of us are disposed to see slavery as evil, and our disposition to do so seems to be unrelated to genetics. If any of us look back on our family trees, we do not have to go through too many branchings to discover ancestors whose moral opinions were quite different from our own.

In fact, I would like to see a show of hands. How many of you have moral views that differ from those of both of your parents?

This suggests that there might be a problem with this whole evolution/morality link.

Also, if you take identical twins, you separate them, and raise them in entirely different cultures, you cannot prevent them from looking quite a bit alike. However, are they going to grow up to have identical moral sentiments as well? If not, then this would suggest a serious problem with the idea of linking morality and evolution as well.

Question 2: What is a "criminal"?

Of course, there is one sense in which a "criminal" is simply somebody who has violated the law. However, societies do not pick their laws randomly out of a hat. I do not know of a society where laws are determined entirely by somebody throwing a set of prohibitions into one hat, punishments into another, drawing one item from each hat, and making a system of laws out of it. Laws, rather, must have justification. One of the justifications that are required for making a certain activity criminal is that those people "deserved to be punished". This quality of "deservedness to be punished" is a moral quality -- we do not find it by looking at existing laws (otherwise, laws would never be changed).

So, from whence does this "deservedness to be punished" come from? How do we account for it?

Those who link evolution and ethics explain that it is an evolved disposition to punish.

An evolved disposition to punish?

What is the difference, then, between an 'evolved disposition to punish' and 'an evolved disposition to do harm?' The semantic difference is that 'to punish' suggests that the harm is somehow justified. Yet, 'to harm' simply talks about the effect of one's actions on another. So, how does evolution give us concepts of 'deservedness' or 'merit' that actually make sense?

Where does the 'deservedness' of punishment or the 'merit' of reward come from?

Question 3: Is capital punishment genocide?

Let us assume that there is a link between evolution and morality such that, for evolutionary reasons, some of us are not disposed to simply slaughter our neighbors. WE are disposed to view this type of activity as 'wrong.'

Some people do not feel that way. They can slaughter others without any remorse.

It's not that they are sociopaths. They have a sense of 'right' and 'wrong'. It's just that their sense is different from others. So, for example, their sense of 'right' and 'wrong' does not prevent them from slaughtering all of the Jews, for example, or from lynching an uppity nigger from time to time.

If we assume that there is a link between evolution and morality, then these divergent moral opinions must be different evolutionary paths. They are, somehow, branches on the evolutionary tree.

If this is the case, then attacking bigots, murderers, thieves, Nazis, rapists, and the like and the attempt to create a society in which these beings do not exist must be interpreted as a type of genetic warfare. It is a war against, and an attempt to exterminate, a genotype, or genocide.

Unless, of course, morality has nothing to do with evolution, in which case what we are doing is trying to eliminate certain learned dispositions that have nothing to do with genetics or evolution.

Alternative

The view that I defend in this blog is precisely the view that morality concerns the molding of learned dispositions -- the shaping of desires that can be shaped through social conditioning such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Because we are dealing with learned dispositions, moral attitudes can change much more quickly than evolution would allow.

Because we are dealing with the practical use of use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment, then "deserved to be punished" simply means "having a disposition that it it is generally prudent for society to discourage.'

(Note: There is a clear distinction between having a disposition that those in power have reason to discourage, and a disposition that people generally have reason to discourage, so, there is such a thing, on this model, as an 'unjust law.' It is also possible for people to have mistaken beliefs about what dispositions they have reason to discourage. For both of these reasons, we can have 'unjust laws' and 'bad laws.')

Because morality is concerned with learned dispositions (dispositions that can be molded through social conditioning) there is no 'genocide' involved in punishing wrongdoers.

In fact, if we discover that a disposition to harm others is fueled by a genetic trait, this model suggests that we should remove those cases from the criminal law (they do not deserve to be punishment), and move it into the field of medicine where the applicable concepts are not 'guilt' and 'punishment' but 'sickness' and 'cure'.

Which, I suggest, makes a lot a sense.

But not to the person who begins with the assumption that there is some sort of link between evolution and morality.