The Duties of a Soldier

I have a question from the mail bag, relevant to current news that Bush plans to send additional troops to Iraq.

To paraphrase the letter: Assuming that an individual joined the military because he believed that his leaders would only have him fight for just causes, what should a soldier do if he believes that he is being ordered to do something that is unjust?

The writer remarked that he should obviously refuse an order to slay a bunch of children. However, he also correctly pointed out that there would be serious problems if soldiers were permitted to refuse any order that caused them any moral qualms at all.

As it turns out, even permission to refuse orders that could maim and kill children would cause problems. Military actions in the modern age inherently create ‘collateral damage’. (Note: This was less of a problem back in the days when you actually had to stab somebody.)

Not Just the Military

I want to note that this is not just a problem for soldiers. Many professions require that people sacrifice a certain degree of moral autonomy.

Police officers, for example, cannot pick and choose which laws to enforce. Judges, as well, must follow guidelines handed down by the legislature – even when they feel that the law or its particular application is unjust.

Many of this nation’s early Presidents took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States – even when that Constitution protected slavery.

The law may even require private citizens to make a choice between obedience and injustice – such as the fugitive slave laws that made it mandatory to report any information one may acquire on the whereabouts of an escaped slave. Another set of famous examples involves Nazi laws that required citizens, even those not in uniform, to participate in the Holocaust by making the failure to report certain pieces of information a crime.

So, we are dealing with a somewhat larger issue than soldiers in the military.

Utilitarian Considerations

As the letter writer pointed out, we have many good reasons (many strong and powerful reasons for action – desires – exist) recommending that we not have institutions where people unquestioningly follow people in authority no matter what those people in authority command.

We are well aware of the possibility that people in authority are not always noble people. They are prone to use their power to promote their own interests at the expense of others. Because of the nature of their position, their abuses tend to result in horrendous evils. That is to say, the private evil of a serial killer is insignificant compared to the harms of an evil political or military leader.

To prevent these evils (and we all have reason to seek to prevent these evils) we need to place checks and balances on unlimited power. One of those checks and balances is to tell our neighbors, “Serve the leader as long as he is fair and just, but do not serve him blindly. If he becomes a despotic tyrant, side with us – your neighbors – over him.)

Efficiency of Command Systems

On the other hand, command systems can be exceptionally efficient. When they are used as a tool to fulfill desires, they can do a great deal of good.

We can see an example of this in the primitive hunt. A hunt will tend to go a lot further if there is not a great deal of debate during the hunt as to who does what and when. The time for debate is either before the hunt (to come up with the best plan) or after the hunt (to use the data from the experience to modify techniques) – not during the hunt. Even if a hunter thinks that the leader is making a mistake, it is better to follow the leader during the hunt and discuss the failure later, then to disrupt the hunt with questions and debate. This is all the more prevalent in military actions, where one must coordinate the activities of even more men in even more complex and chaotic situations.

Of course, whether this coordination ultimately tends towards good or tends towards evil depends on what the coordinators are trying to do. If they are trying to exterminate all of the Jews, this coordination may allow them to do so more efficiently, but it does not make the activity right.

Reasonable Doubt

In many cases in ethics, we employ the joint doctrines of ‘assumption’ and ‘reasonable doubt’ to take care of these types of cases. The accused gains the benefit of an ‘assumption’ that he is innocent unless he can be proved guilty beyond a ‘reasonable doubt’. Speech is presumed to be protected unless compelling it can be shown that there are compelling state interests in prohibiting certain speech, such as the publication of military secrets or prohibitions against using somebody’s likeness to sell a product without that person’s permission.

The same doctrine of “reasonable doubt” seems useful when it comes to obeying orders as well. In these cases, and individual who is working for an institution such as the military or law enforcement should be willing to admit that he or she probably does not see “the whole picture”. In some cases, this simply involves a lack of access to the relevant data. Division headquarters knows things that the company commander does not know. The legislature in a substantially just society spent its time doing research and listening to experts when it came to designing legislation that the cop and the judge had no time to collect or evaluate. This argues for giving the decision makers (commanding officers and legislators) the benefit of the doubt.

This assumption is not unquestioning obedience. Where it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the legislators or superior commanders are basing decisions on something other than the welfare of the public at large, there may be grounds for a complaint. It is not up to the decision makers to justify their actions. There is often not time or opportunity to do so. However, if evidence beyond a reasonable doubt suggests a less-than-honorable motive with innocent victims being made to suffer, the standard of “reasonable doubt” that the order was morally legitimate can be met.

Love of the Institution

Still, there are a great many times where the ‘reasonable doubt’ standard falls short. There are times when a soldier, judge, cop, or private citizen can know that a law is unjust beyond a reasonable doubt and still be compelled to help to enforce it.

The second issue that make this possible is a love for the institution itself, where the institution has proven itself reliable at promoting the public welfare. Judges, following the law as written, help to keep the legal system and its enforcement uniform and predictable. This uniformity tends to promote desires. So, a devotion to the institution can outweigh the aversion to do harm to the institution in those few instances where it promotes injustice instead of justice.

In these cases, there is still and opportunity – and even a duty – to speak up and say that the institution should be changed – but not destroyed. If the institutions are fair and just, giving people a desire to follow the rules and procedures of the institution will gend to fulfill desires – more so than if people had no interest at all in the decisions reached under an institution.

Levels of Punishment

Still, there will be times when this assumption that the institution has produced fair and impartial agents can be challenged, where the individual has reasonable doubt (and not just a hunch or a bad feeling) that he is being told to do something morally legitimate where the institution itself seems not to be interested in justice.

These cases are not always clear cut. There may well be irregularities and complications that make it reasonable to believe that one is being asked to perform a highly immoral act – or that the leaders of the institution lack moral scruples that would otherwise restrict how they would wield the power entrusted to them.

Against this possibility, a fair and just society would not restrict responses to narrowly defined options. Those who would determine punishment or reward should be given some flexibility to match the difficulty in knowing the right answer at times. It would be fundamentally unjust to allow only two options – complete freedom or execution. At times, a punishment of days or weeks will be best. This indicates that the agent was wrong, but not far wrong.

Strict guidelines in sentencing often ignore the fact that the distinction between rightful and wrongful acts, as well as different degrees of wrongfulness.

Conclusion

So, here you are. You are a soldier. You have been ordered to commit an act that you think is immoral.

First, you need to give your superior officers the benefit of the doubt. There is reason to give soldiers an aversion to disobeying a direct order. Such an aversion keeps the system running in a smooth and orderly manner.

Second, even if you know beyond a reasonable doubt that the acts that you have been ordered to perform are unreasonable and unjust, if the institution itself is fair and just and tends to promote good decisions on average, then there is a reason to promote a desire to uphold the institution.

If the institution can be shown to be basically fair and just.

Third, if this reasonable doubt tells one to disobey an order, then the system should recognize the need not to demand unquestioned obedience from those who serve within the institution. This argues against any draconian penalty for disobeying an order. If the defendant can make a good case in favor of his decision (or lack of a decision), then the institution itself should have the freedom to punish the behavior to a degree that is proportional to the offense.

All of this assumes, of course, that the institutions themselves are basically just and tend to promote the desires those who live under them. The situation becomes quite differentd when the institutions themselves tend towards tyranny and injustice.

What obligations did the Nazi soldier have to uphold and defend the Nazi regime?

I will have more to say on this topic in a future date.

Promoting Desire Utilitarianism

If you are a regular reader of this blog, I want to call your attention particularly to this post. I want to address the most common misinterpretation of what I write. This interpretation comes from friends and foe alike.

From foe – particularly from common subjectivists - this misinterpretation often comes in the form of a challenge. “You cannot tell me why I should want to fulfill the desires of others. There is no objective reason compelling me to fulfill the desires of others, so your theory is as subjective as any other moral theory.”

From friends, I usually get this misinterpretation in the form of an email. “How do we establish desire utilitarianism? How do we get others to adopt this moral theory?”

Both sets of comments rest on a mistaken assumption. They assume that the point is to prescribe or recommend desire utilitarianism. This is wrong. Desire utilitarianism is a meta-theory that describes how prescription works. Desire utilitarianism can then be used to show why it then makes sense to prescribe such things as a love of knowledge, an aversion to (and presumption against) doing harm, an aversion to violations of privacy, an aversion to non-consenting interactions, and the like.

Desire Utilitarianism as a Descriptive Theory

Desire utilitarianism is a description of what is true of prescription. As such, desire utilitarianism is to be adopted or rejected on the same types of criteria that any other descriptive theory is to be accepted or rejected. Are the claims that desire utilitarianism make about prescription true or false?

For example:

All prescriptions are recommendations to bring about or avoid a particular state of affairs.

A prescription brings to bear the ‘reasons for action that exist’ that recommend bringing about or avoiding a state of affairs.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

These are not moral claims. They are descriptions about what is true of the world.

I am not saying that desires are the only reasons for action worth paying attention to and that other reasons for action are inferior. I am saying that other reasons for action do not exist. They are not there. Those who claim that they exist are making things up.

So, when somebody challenges me by saying, “You cannot explain to me why we should be paying attention to these reasons for action and not those without using subjective language,” I answer that, “I am distinguishing between reasons for action that exist and those that do not exist – not between reasons for action (that exist) that we should be paying attention to versus reasons for action (that exist) that we should not be paying attention to. Paying attention to reasons for action that do not exist is nonsense. It is like saying, ‘There exists a reason for action that does not exist.’”

So, here is an example of a reason for action that does not exist.

An Example of Claiming Intrinsic Value

Somebody claims that it would be intrinsically bad if spotted owls become extinct. There is a ‘reason for action’ built into the very nature of the fact that spotted owls exist that tells us that we should act in ways to preserve this species.

My answer to that is that it is false. Intrinsic values do not exist. Consequently, anybody who claims, ‘There is a reason for action intrinsic to this particular state of affairs’ is making a false claim. He is making an objectively false claim.

What is really happening is that the speaker has a desire that the spotted owl species not go extinct. This desire that he has gives him a ‘reason for action’ to preserve the spotted owl species. One of the ways that he can preserve the spotted owl species is to cause in us a desire to preserve the spotted owl species and/or an aversion to those things that threaten the existence of the spotted owl species.

He can also try to convince us that, unbeknownst to us, the extinction of the spotted owl species will thwart desires that we already have. For example, he may tell us that the extinction of the spotted owl will result in the increase in the numbers of their prey. Those prey are desire-thwarting pests. Our aversion to the effects of these pests give some people reason to preserve the existence of the spotted owl – not only those who are averse to these effects, but those who care for those who are averse to these effects.

These types of arguments, according to desire utilitarianism, all make sense – because they relate the state of affairs of the spotted owl’s extinction to sets of desires. Of course, claims that relate the state of affairs in which lumberjacks are put out of work to a set of desires are also relevant.

What is not relevant are any claims relating states of affairs to reasons for action that do not exist, such as the intrinsic worth of the preservation of the spotted owl species.

The Value of a Desire

Desire utilitarianism then takes this fact that desires are the only reasons for action that exist and applies it to the question, “What is the value of a desire?”

Two common answers to this question are simply mistaken.

Answer 1: Some desires are simply, intrinsically better than others. The aversion to deception simply intrinsically good, and the desire to rape young children is simply intrinsically bad.

This is false. No such intrinsic value exists. There is no ‘reason for action’ intrinsic to the aversion to deception that is a reason to promote it. There is no ‘reason for action’ intrinsic to the desire to rape young children that is a reason to condemn it.

Answer 2: All desires have equal value. There is no sense in which we can say that one desire is ‘better’ than another. This would require a belief in intrinsic values. Intrinsic values do not exist. Therefore, it follows that all desires are of equal value.

Wrong again. The claim that there are no ‘reasons for action’ intrinsic to a desire does not imply that there are no ‘reasons for action’ for promoting a desire or inhibiting that desire. It simply states that the ‘reasons for action’ that exist are not intrinsic. They are extrinsic.

This would be like saying that, since the state that results from my sticking my hand into a vat of molten iron is not intrinsically worse than the state that results from keeping my hand out of molten iron, that the two states have the same value. It implies that I have no ‘reason for action’ for refraining from sticking my hand in molten iron. In fact, I have a very good ‘reason for action’ for refraining from sticking my hand in molten iron. That ‘reason for action’ is very real. It is as much a part of the real world as I am. It simply is not intrinsic to that particular state of affairs.

So, we need to answer the question, “What is the value of a desire?”

This is the same as the question, “Do reasons for action exist for promoting or inhibiting that desire.”

Yes, they do.

Desires exist. Desires are the only reasons for action that exist, but they do exist. Desires are our reasons for action for promoting certain desires and inhibit others.

An Act of Honesty versus a Desire to be Honest

So, somebody comes to me with the question: “How do I promote desire utilitarianism? How do I get other people to adopt this system?”

That is not a legitimate or even a sensible question. A legitimate and sensible question would be something like, “Should we be promoting an aversion to deception?” The person who asks this question is asking whether reasons for action exist that recommend acting to promote a widespread aversion to deception, and whether they are more and stronger than the reasons against promoting such an aversion. Here, we bring desire utilitarianism to bear on whether to promote such a widespread aversion.

Before I get into that subject, I need to distinguish this question from another question. “How do I convince an agent to tell the truth in this particular circumstance?” This is not a question about promoting a particular desire, but a question of getting somebody to perform a particular act.

At the level of action an agent will only perform that act that, given his beliefs, will fulfill the more and the stronger of his existing desires. At the level of action, all you have the power to do is to convince a person that an act of honesty will best fulfill his existing desires. If it turns out that dishonesty will best fulfill his desires, then unless you lie to him and convince him of things that are not true, then the simple fact of the matter is that he has more and stronger ‘reasons for action’ for lying than telling the truth.

If by ‘morality’ one is looking for a set of true beliefs that one can give a person that will cause him to tell the truth regardless of what he desires – even if he has only one desire and that desire is to lie to others - this type of ‘morality’ does not exist. That type of morality is not even coherent. The only thing that beliefs do is identify the means to the fulfillment of the more and stronger desires of an agent. True beliefs that cause an agent to act independent of his desires do not exist.

On the other hand, even though there is no set of true beliefs that you can give to all people that will cause them to be honest, it is possible to get a person to tell the truth, even when he otherwise would not, by promoting a desire to tell the truth or an aversion to deception. If a person has such a desire, then all you need to do is to tell a person, “That is a lie,” and you have demonstrated that it is something he has reason not to say.

If it is true that desires are the only reasons for action that exist, then it the desires that we have the most reason to promote are those that best fulfill the more and stronger of our desires. It is not the case that all desires are equal. Some desires (the aversion to lying) tend to fulfill other desires, while some desires (the desire to rape young children) tend to thwart other desires. Some desires we have reasons to promote; some we have reasons to inhibit. Some are virtues, and some are signs of great evil.

Morality is concerned with giving people those desires that we can cause them to have (because our minds are malleable) and which we have reason to cause them to have (because those desires fulfill other desires).

If we are asked why we should go through the effort of promoting a universal aversion to deception, we can now easily answer, “Are you nuts? An aversion to deception fulfills other desires. Those are the desires we have. The fulfillment of those desires that an aversion to deception would fulfill is the only ‘reasons for action’ we need to promote an aversion to deception.”

Reason does have a role to play in this. Reason identifies the means to fulfilling our desires. That is to say, reason identifies those desires that tend to fulfill other desires. However, that is the extent of the power of reason. Reason does not actually change those desires.

For example, you can reason with somebody, and even convince him, that his desire to smoke is putting the fulfillment of his other desires at risk. However, even after you have convinced a person that he would have been better off if he had not acquired a desire to smoke, he will still have a desire to smoke. There is no reason you can give him that will cause the desire to smoke ultimately disappear. That takes work.

Similarly, reason tells us that we have reasons for action for promoting an aversion to deception. But realizing this will not suddenly cause an aversion to deception to spring into existence. We still have to teach children the difference between right and wrong .

(See Obligations to Children: Teaching Right and Wrong.)

Beliefs and Moral Judgments

I have been accused (in the spirit of a civilized intellectual disagreement) of not giving proper weight to the importance of beliefs in behavior modification. I wish to answer that challenge by looking into the role of belief in ethics.

The Role of Belief

This blog is written on a foundation that uses the following formula to explain intentional action:

(Belief + desire) -> intention -> intentional action.

This equation shows that beliefs are a necessary part of intentional action. An agent that has desires but no beliefs will have no idea how to act so as to fulfill those desires. He will lay there and die without ever being able to answer the question, “What should I do?”

However, beliefs do not carry any moral weight. This is an ethics blog. As a result, the fact that beliefs carry no moral weight means I am not going to focus on them in defending moral conclusions.

The Cases

To see that moral evaluations track desires, rather than beliefs, consider the following set of cases.

Case 1: The woman desires to feed the infant. She believes that the bottle contains wholesome baby formula, and the bottle does contain good formula. She feeds the baby. The result is a nourished baby.

Case 2: The woman desires to feed the infant. She believes that the bottle contains good formula. However, the bottle contains poison. She gives the bottle to the baby, and the baby dies.

Case 3: The mother wants to feed the child. She believes that the formula has been poisoned. She is mistaken. However, because of her belief she does not feed the baby and it goes hungry.

Case 4: The mother wishes to feed the baby. She believes that the bottle has been poisoned. As it turns out, she was right. She refuses to feed the bottle to the baby. As a result, the baby is hungry, but alive.

Case 5: The mother wants to poison the child. She believes that the bottle contains wholesome baby formula and the bottle does, in fact, contain good formula. On the principle that a person must have a reason to perform an action, she does not feed the baby. The baby is hungry, but alive.

Case 6: The mother wants to poison the child. She believes that the bottle contains good formula, though it does not. Since the mother has no reason to give the formula to the baby, she does not do so. The baby is hungry, but alive.

Case 7: The mother wants to poison the child. She believes that the bottle contains poison, but she is mistaken. She feeds the formula to the baby. The result is a nourished baby.

Case 8: The mother wants to poison the child. The believes that the bottle contains poison, and the bottle does, in fact, contain poison. She feeds the contents of the bottle to the baby, and the baby dies.

Here, too, we can see how each of these cases follows the formula I mentioned above. Each time, the agent acts to fulfill her desires, given her beliefs. Beliefs end up playing a crucial role in what the agent does.

Now, let’s set Case 2 next to Case 8. Both cases involve a mother poisoning her baby. In Case 2, a mother was trying to feed her baby. However, she did not know that the bottle she thought contained food actually contained poison. In Case 8, a mother who wanted to poison her infant did so using a bottle that she knew contained poison.

For the sake of this demonstration, I want to eliminate certain pieces of clutter. Let us assume that the mother in Case 2 had every reason to believe that the bottle contained healthy food, and no reason to suspect poison. Assume that the poison was put into the formula from her husband or a disgruntled employee at the factory, where the mother had no way of knowing this.

The Irrelevance of Actions and Consequences:

In Case 2 and Case 8, the actions and the consequences of those actions are the same. In both cases, the mother feeds poison to her child. In both cases, the child dies. If we are going to base our judgment on actions or consequences, we would have to judge both mothers to be equally guilty, or equally innocent. It is absurd to hold that both mothers are equally guilty of murder. Thus, it is absurd to assume that moral evaluations track actions or consequences.

Note: If we include desires in our definition of an action, you get different results. But this will be shown to be consistent with the claim that moral evaluations track desires.

The Irrelevance of Beliefs

Does the difference in moral judgment rest on a difference in beliefs?

In this case, the mother in Case 2 had a false belief. She thought that the bottle contained healthy food, when in fact it contained poison. The mother in Case 8, on the other hand, knew that the bottle contained poison, and used it to kill her infant.

It would seem that if we are going to make moral judgments based on beliefs, that the mother in Case 2 who accidentally poisoned her child deserves the greater blame. She had a false belief. It would seem at least initially plausible that moral assessments grounded on belief would first track whether or not a belief was true, and give more moral credit to the person with true belief than the person with false belief. Yet, in this case, the mother with the true belief is a murderer, while the mother with the false belief was the victim of somebody else’s evil deeds.

Remember, we are assuming that the mother in Case 2 had no way of knowing that the bottle was filled with poison. We will deal with instances in which she should have known a little later.

Here, my interest is in showing that morality does not track beliefs. To see this further, let us assume that the mother in Case 2 acquires the same beliefs as the mother in Case 8. If morality tracks beliefs, we would expect to see the mother in Case 2 acquire the negative moral evaluation of the mother in Case 8. However, when we give the mother in Case 2 the belief that the bottle contains poison, we end up with Case 4 – a case in which the mother does not feed the child and the child lives. This case is not one of moral condemnation. Case 4 and Case 8 are not morally identical, even though their beliefs are identical.

Morality does not track beliefs.

The Morality of Intentions

Some people assert that ‘intentions’ are what matter. The mother in Case 2 did not intend to feed poison to the baby. She intended to feed the baby.

The problem with intentions is that they are ambiguous. The mother did not ‘intend’ to feed poison to the baby. Yet, at the moment she picks up the bottle, we can say that she intends to feed the contents of the bottle to the baby. It just so happens that the bottle contains poison.

Yet, even at the moment she picks up the bottle, it would not be accurate to say that she wants to feed the contents of the bottle to the baby. If another person, who knows that the bottle contains poison, were to see her picking up the bottle and say, “You do not want to do that,” he would be correct. She would ask “Why not?” He would answer, “Because that bottle contains poison.” Then she would realize that, in fact, she does not want to feed the contents of that bottle to the baby. She never did want to to that – though she did not realize it at the time. However, it is still true that she intended to feed the contents of the bottle to the baby.

Moral evaluations do not follow intentions.

Moral Evaluations Follow Desires

The only category that remains in this example is that of desires. Morality tracks desires.

Earlier, I mentioned how the mother in Case 2, if she acquired the same beliefs as the mother in Case 8, would not have fed the poison to the child and would be free from any type of moral condemnation. She does not acquire the moral status of the person in Case 8 simply by adopting her beliefs.

We can conduct the same test here, and give the mother in Case 8 the desires of the mother in Case 2. As the mother in Case 8 loses her desire to poison the baby and acquires a desire to feed the baby, she moves into the same situation as was described in Case 4. Case 4 involves a mother with a desire to feed the baby and a belief that the bottle contains poison. She refuses to feed the baby from that bottle, thus leaving the baby hungry and alive. Here, we see that the moral evaluation does track the desire in that, as the desire changes, so does the moral evaluation.

Yes, it is the case that the agent’s action also changes. This is because actions are the product of beliefs and desires. However, let us not forget that we began this investigation with two identical acts, and they showed that two mothers performing identical acts having identical consequences are not evaluated equally.

It is a fallacy to take somebody who has argued, “Not A” and answer, “I assert B.” Then, facing an argument that demonstrates “Not B”, assert “A” as if the first argument does not exist. The combination of the arguments I have given show that morality does not track actions, consequences, beliefs, or intentions. They track desires.

Crime Scene Investigation

Now, assume that you are a crime scene investigator. On this particular day, you have two infant deaths to investigate. In both cases, a mother has fed her infant a bottle that contained poison. The baby has died. Your job is to determine if a (moral) crime has taken place.

The first thing to note is that you have identical acts and identical consequences (for all practical purposes). Yet, you cannot even start to assign culpability in this case. There are an infinite number of possible stories to reveal. In some of them, the mother herself is as much a victim as her child. In others, the mother is the culprit. The important thing to note is that here, where you know the act and its consequences, you do not know enough to make a moral judgment. Moral judgments do not, in fact, attach to acts or consequences. This is not where the investigation ends, it is where the investigation begins.

In looking for culpability, what are you trying to find out?

In one case, you have your lab determine the type of poison involved and where it is available. Here, you discover that the mother had access to the poison. Furthermore, by looking at internet logs, you discover that the mother was researching the poison in the recent past. You also discover a credit card receipt (with her signature) where she bought the poison.

Through much of this, you are trying to discover what the mother believes. Mostly, you want to know if she believed that there was poison in the bottle when she fed the baby. You discover that she has beliefs about what the poison can do and how to get a hold of it. You also discover evidence the mother put the poison in the bottle while she prepared the formula. All of this leads you to the conclusion that she believed there was poison in the bottle when she fed it to the baby.

In all of this, you do not once blame the mother for her beliefs. In fact, you believe many of the same things she believed. You have the same beliefs about what the poison would do to the baby, and that the mother had mixed the poison with the formula before feeding the baby. If belief were reason for condemnation, you would be in nearly as much trouble as the mother.

So why are you interested in these beliefs?

Because you know the formula:

(belief + desire) -> intention -> intentional action.

You also know that people act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs.

Without these assumptions, you would not be able to do your job.

If you take these equations and fill in the variables about what the agent believed, then you can then make inferences about what the agent desired. If you know that the agent believed that there was poison in the bottle at the time she fed the children, and she knew what the poison would do, you can deduce that she lacked any particularly strong aversion to bringing about those consequences. Ultimately, it is this fact that she did not care enough to preserve the baby’s life that determines her moral culpability.

What about excuses? Once you know that the mother has fed a bottle containing poison to her baby, what types of things can she use as an excuse to argue that she should not be blamed?

I have a section devoted to the subject of excuse in my book. One of those possible excuses turns out to be a ‘mistake of fact’. That is to say, “I did not know that the bottle contained poison.”

Assume that, in the second case, you check the formula and discover a manufacturing lot number. Checking the lot number, you find other packages also containing poison. The mother had no opportunity to deliver poison to the factory, so somebody else must have done it. In all likelihood, the mother had no way of knowing about the poison. Given her beliefs, even a mother who cared deeply about the welfare of her child would have fed the formula to her baby. There is no reason to believe that this mother lacks the desires of a good mother, so no reason to condemn her. In fact, we have every reason to see her as a victim.

There are several forms of excuse – from ‘consent’ to ‘accident’ to ‘greater good’. What all of them have in common is the fact that they block any inference from our knowledge that a particular act took place to the conclusion that the agent had bad desires or lacked good desires. All excuses make it plausible that an agent with good desires would have performed the same action.

Epistemic Negligence

There is one set of cases where it may seem that we are holding people responsible for their beliefs. This is when a person believes something absurd and, as a result of this absurd belief, acts in ways that harm others. In extreme cases, this may be considered insanity. In other cases it is a more common form of negligence. An example of the latter is a case where hunter fires at what he thinks is a game animal, only to discover that he has shot his friend. He negligently formed the belief that the creature making the noise in the brush was a game animal.

Epistemic negligence is very much like physical negligence. Compare this to a case in which a rancher overloads his pickup with hay bails. On the drive home, some hay bails fall off, land on another car, causing an automobile accident that kills two family members. The farmer in this case is guilty of negligence.

There is no reason to view epistemic negligence any different from physical negligence. The epistemically negligent is somebody who fails to properly secure a dangerous belief, in the same way as the farmer failed to secure a dangerous load.

Cases of physical negligence are cases of a defect in desire. We can infer from his lack of care to protect the welfare of others that he lacked the concern for the welfare of others that we all have reason to promote in society. We condemn the negligent for this lack of desire.

It is the very same lack of desire that causes the epistemically negligent to secure their beliefs. If they were truly concerned about innocent people being harmed, then they will take care to make sure that beliefs that might cause harm are properly anchored and secure. If they fail to take the necessary precautions to secure these beliefs, we may infer that they do not care about the harm they do to others.

The best part of the newest rise in atheist activism is that atheists are taking epistemically negligent beliefs that are a danger to others and giving them the level of moral condemnation they deserve. These are religious beliefs that support the conclusion that others are to be harmed. Beliefs that others are to be harmed deserve a far more secure foundation than religion can possibly provide. Those who do not go to the pains to make sure that their beliefs that others are to be harmed are well secured may be morally condemned as people who lack sufficient care that they not inflict unnecessary and unjustified harm on others.

Bigotry

Finally, we have the fact that people have a tendency to believe what they want to believe. From this simple fact we can sometimes make inferences about what another person desires simply by looking at his beliefs.

It is important to note that this type of inference only works where an individual makes some sort of mistake. Either she bases her conclusion on evidence that is not well supported, or she makes some flawed inference. When people make a mistake like this, we have reason to ask, “Of all of the mistakes that you could have possibly made, why did you make that mistake and not some other?” The reason will often be because that mistake fulfills some desire of hers.

For example, let us take the bigot who believes that hurricanes hitting New Orleans has something to do with the town’s greater-than-normal acceptance of homosexuality. This is clearly an absurd belief. We know enough about hurricanes to know that our computer simulations that predict their paths do not need to include a variable for “coastal region’s acceptance of homosexuality.”

When people make a mistake like this, we then have reason to ask, “Why did you make that mistake? Why did you accept that absurdity?” The answer, in this case, is that they are motivated by hatred, and are looking for something – anything – that might give their hatred legitimacy. There is no good reason to hate homosexuals. Therefore, these agents level completely unfounded and unjust charges against the victims of their hate. In this case, it is the charge that homosexuals attract hurricanes.

In this case, from a mistaken belief, we can infer something about the agent’s desires. From what we then know about the agent’s desires, we can make a moral evaluation. In this case, we know that the agent is a hate-mongering bigot unfit for civilized society.

Conclusion

So, what can we say about the role of belief in ethics?

Beliefs clearly play a role in influencing intentional action. However, beliefs are morally inert. In fact, actions, consequences, and intentions also fail to properly explain and predict moral judgments. The only claim that actually appears to work is the claim that moral evaluations track desires. The moral value of a person’s actions comes from the desires she has, or the desires she does not have that a person with good desires would have.

Criminal investigations can be best understood as a scientific quest to discover the desires of the agent that motivated a particular act. The act and its consequences alone are not enough to fix culpability. Beliefs are useful, but they are not the reason for blame. What matters is what the accused wanted to do with those beliefs. It is her desires that determine culpability, not her beliefs.

There is moral culpability for negligent beliefs – beliefs that are a danger to others that an agent fails to tie down securely. This need for well secured beliefs is why we have reason to require federal agents to go before a judge before they spy on or arrest people and why we have a right to a trial by jury. However, this is not because of the moral quality of the belief. Epistemic negligence is a moral crime because it demonstrates that the agent really does not care about the harm that her unsecured beliefs may due to others. It is this lack of compassion that deserves our moral condemnation, not the false beliefs.

Also, whenever a person clearly adopts a belief that is clearly absurd and grounded on no solid evidence, we can use this to infer what the agent wants. People have a tendency to believe what they want to believe, so any beliefs that are not well secured will tell us what the agent wants to believe. The bigot who makes up reasons to hate Jews, gays, or atheists can be shown to people who embrace hatred. If they were truly opposed to hatred, they would see the flaws in these types of arguments.

This, then, is a quite insufficiently brief outline of the role of belief in morality.

The Source of Hatred

The vast majority of people who claim to oppose homosexuality (or civil unions, for that matter) for religious reasons are lying.

They may be lying to themselves as much as they are lying to others. We have a great deal of evidence to show that people are capable of embracing the greatest absurdities when it is psychologically comforting to do so. A person who is unwilling to face the true nature of their disapproval of homosexuals, and unwilling to accept what it says about them as a person, can easily grab onto a lie that gives them an illusion of legitimacy.

However, whether this is self-deception or an attempt to deceive others, few people, if any, actually oppose homosexuality for religious reasons.

This can be proved.

There is a fire, and the fire department needs to determine what caused it. The investigator sets out to do his work. He gathers evidence and conducts experiments. Then, several weeks later, he calls a press conference to discuss his findings. He reports that the reason for the fire was the presence of oxygen in the air, because his research has shown that if there was no oxygen there would have been no fire.

Immediately, the mayor of that community would have reason to start looking for a new fire marshal.

“Excuse me, Mr. Investigator. There is oxygen present in every house on the planet. Yet, very few of them burned down. When we asked you to find the cause of this fire, we were asking you to explain why this particular house burned down. The cause that we are interested in is what makes this house different from all of the houses that did not burn down.”

Anybody who gives us a reason, where we can answer that there is another case where that reason applies but the outcome one is trying to explain did not come about, has given us a poor reason indeed. We are justified, in these instances, to answer, “That is not the real reason. We need you to give us a reason that actually explains what we asked you to explain.”

When some people are asked why they oppose homosexuality, they answer that the Bible says that it is an abomination before God. We know that it is an abomination before God because it says so in the Bible.

Excuse me, Mr. Religious Ethicist. There are a whole lot of things that are an abomination before God, as mentioned in the Bible. These include the eating of shell fish to working on the Sabbath to collecting interest from fellow citizens to suffering a witch to live to NOT killing somebody who recommends belief in another God. However, you do not condemn these other things. So, this cannot be the reason for your condemnation of homosexuality. Why can't you treat homosexuals the same way you treat those who work on the Sabbath?

This is not a novel response to those who condemn homosexuality for religious reasons. I have not written anything that those who have been involved in this debate has not seen a number of times before. Yet, most people leave the argument here. In fact, this response opens up a number of interesting moral questions.

If Biblical abomination is not the true source of this condemnation, then what is?

"You are not getting this from the Bible. We know this. We can prove this. So, if not from the Bible, then from where?"

The fact is, those who condemn homosexuality suffer from a learned bigotry. They do not learn to hate those who eat shell fish, work on the Sabbath, or charge interese on loans. In fact, they learn to be quite tolerant of such people. As such, shellfish eaters, Sabbath workers, and interest chargers live relatively safe and comfortable lives.

The government even steps in to try to improve the lives of these people. It establishes standards that aim to keep shellfish safe to eat. People who work on the Sabbath have the same legal rights and protections as those who work on weeksays. Nobody dares argue that Sabbath workers are seeking 'special protection' by applying labor laws to Saturday or Sunday labor (which ever actually is the Sabbath).

Worse, the government participates in charging interest - through the Federal Reserve, and charging interest on late payment of taxes. This should be viewed as the biblical equivalent as the government participating in homosexual acts. This latter act itself would be the moral equivalent of the Federal Government itself setting up organizations to facilitate homosexual acts – perhaps by running a house of homosexual prostitution. Such is the government’s attitude towards the charging of interest.

On the other side of the equation, we can imagine a government that says that fair labor laws and overtime requirements simply do not apply to those who labor on the Sabbath. Clearly, the moral fiber of our country cannot withstand the assault that would befall it if we were to give weekend labor official recognition and the sanction of government protection. This is if we do not ban it outright.

Just as clearly, at the very least we must abolish the application of pure food and drug laws to the shellfish industry. If the government were to take steps to protect citizens from the ill effects of eating unhealthy shellfish, this will do nothing more than to promote this perversion, inviting an overall lack of respect for God’s law that will do nothing less than bring down civilization as we know it.

If biblical prohibition were the real source of condemnation, we would find ourselves in a society where shellfish eaters and bankers would be prohibited from participating in youth organizations like the Boy Scouts. Those who insist on such a ban would argue that those who so flagrantly violate God’s law cannot possibly be moral, and clearly cannot be considered good role models for our children.

What type of message does it give our children to be a member of a troop whose troop leader is known to be a practicing shellfish eater or banker – when the Bible so clearly identifies these acts as a violation of His law? These children will no doubt come to think that all of God’s law are open to question. This type of moral relativism is the last thing that we need to be teaching impressionable young minds.

We do not hear these arguments. Therefore, we need something that explains why the homosexual is subject to these types of claims, but the shellfish eater (or harvester) and the banker are not. There must be some other reason for this distinction.

So, he who says that the condemnation of homosexuality is driven by its being called an abomination in religious text is like the fire marshal telling us that the fire was caused by the presence of oxygen in the air. The fire marshal cannot explain the difference between the house that burned down and the house that did not burn down. Both, as it turned out, contained plenty of oxygen. The religious ethicist cannot explain the difference between the homosexual and the shellfish eater or the banker – all three of which are equally engaging in practices that are abominations according to scripture.

We are still in need of somebody who can tell us the real cause.

The real cause is actually quite obvious. The difference between the homosexual and the shellfish eater is simply a learned hatred. Parents and priests teach their children or their flock to hate homosexuals in ways that they do not teach their children to hate shellfish eaters and bankers. In fact, parents and priests quite openly teach their children and their flock to ignore God’s prohibitions on these activities, and to treat these practitioners with the same respect given to any other neighbor.

From this, we must ask whether there is any good reason to teach a hatred of homosexuals, but not of shellfish eaters or bankers. When we look at this question, we discover that the reasons we are typically given to hate homosexuals are make-believe. It is a hatred cloaked in a sheet of lies and nonsense.

We are told that the reason that the 9/11 hijackers were successful is because our nation has weakened its intolerance of homosexuals. As such – because we so flagrantly allow citizens to ignore God’s law – God has removed his protective hand. Yet, it would seem that, if such a story made sense, God would be even more furious over our acceptance of shellfish eaters and bankers. They, clearly, have gained far more acceptance in our society than homosexuals.

When we are asked to explain why Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans – this too was ‘explained’ in germs of God’s anger over the town’s greater tolerance of homosexuals. Yet, here too, perhaps God was not targeting homosexuals (and those who are tolerant of homosexuals) at all. Perhaps God was angry at New Orleans because it was the center of a huge shrimp industry.

These arguments against shrimpers and bankers make absolutely no sense. Anybody who tried to use them would be immediately exposed as hate-mongers devoting themselves to adding misery to the lives of others for no good reason. Moral progress will be made when homosexuals, in fact, are given the same type of treatment as shrimpers and bankers – fully accepted in society in spite of the fact that the Bible condemns their lifestyle – because there is no good reason to hate them.

So, the next time somebody says that they base their condemnation of homosexuals on religious text, call them a liar. Let them know that you cannot tell at the start if they are only lying to others, or if they are lying to themselves as well. However, they are deceiving somebody. What they are saying is false, and can be proved false.

Unless the speaker actually gives homosexuals the same social status as shrimpers and bankers, they are doing as poor a job of reporting the actual source of their hatred as the fire marshal who reports that oxygen is the true source of the fire.

Fear of Dying

It is ironic that those would rescue an animal from otherwise certain death face their greatest risk from the animal itself. Trapped, and too stupid to know the difference between predator and benefactor, they assume that their rescuer is a predator and seek to defend themselves accordingly. More than one person has died trying to save a creature that could not appreciate the effort.

One of the reasons that people turn to religion is the fear and pain of death. Unable to handle the prospect of their own death, they get grasp onto the idea that there is a life after death and cling to that idea as tightly as they can. No rationalist can pry his or her fingers away from it. Those who try are at risk of being attacked.

In saying this, I am not making any grand claim that all of religion is a psychological crutch for those who are emotionally weak. People have a number of different reasons for adopting religious beliefs. This is only one of them. Fear of death does provide a motive (even though not the only motive) to adopt religious beliefs.

The irony that I spoke of above is that those who are motivated to embrace religion by a fear of death have ultimately ended up shortening their own lives (on average) in the process. The religions they embrace have them dying sooner than they otherwise would.

Killing Oneself

First on this list, of course, are the religious commandments that cause death directly. The Kamakazi pilot who dies for his emperor, the suicide bomber, the crusader, the jihadist, all of whom head off to do battle and to die in the name of their God. This label also applies to the Jehovah’s Witness and Christian Scientist who refuses medical treatment that would otherwise keep them alive.

These people think that they are cheating death. They think that the manner in which they leave life on this earth determines whether they will die in fact, or simply transition to a new phase of life. As a matter of fact, all who choose these options do, in fact, die. No 9/11 hijacker or suicide bomber has ever found himself in heaven. No Jahovah’s Witness ever made a transition to an after life. They have, in fact, brought about what they most wanted to avoid.

The situation is as tragic as that of a mother who, thinking that her child is ill and in need of medicine, feeds her child a substance that ultimately kills the child. The mother, acting on her false beliefs, brings about the situation she wanted most to avoid.

I wrote recently about the debate on embryonic stem cell research. This, is another type of case in which a person’s religious beliefs hasten his or her own death. However, in these types of cases the tragedy is compounded. This is not a case where, like the Jehovah’s Witness or Christian Scientist, the individual refuses to accept certain medical treatments for religious reasons. These are cases in which an individual, for religious reasons, seek to prohibit others who do not share their religion from getting medical care that could save their lives.

The same arguments that are being used to block stem-cell research could, from a slightly different perspective, be used to make blood transfusions illegal – because the practitioners of a particular religion believe that God would not be pleased. Indeed, some religious practitioners, given the power of the state, can use the same principles being used to ban embryonic stem cell research to prohibit all forms of medical treatment.

Inoculation against disease, for example, was once thought of as “playing God” in that it took away God’s choice to wipe out whole populations using plague. Humans were thumbing their nose at God if they acted to inoculate humans from God’s wrath.

These are just two ways in which the fear of death causes people to embrace religion, which then causes the person to act in ways that hastens that which the agent fears most - their own death.

Being Killed by Others

These examples suggest another type of case in which those who turn to religion out of a fear of death do more harm than good. Not only do some of them end up killing themselves (though they foolishly believe they will not actually die), but they put themselves at risk of being killed by others.

Tragically, one common set of cases that fit this category involve the killing of children by parents and others following religious commandments. This applies to the child who dies because he is denied access to life-saving medical care. It also applies to cases in which children are forced to endure ‘treatment’ that is potentially life-threatening in its own right. An example of this is the case of an 8-year-old boy who died in 2003 due to suffocation in an attempt to ‘expel demons’.

This is a case of somebody killing somebody that they love out of misguided religious beliefs. The death, in this case, was not intentional. Yet, most cases of killing others for religious reasons are intentional. These are the suicide bombers, crusaders, jihadists, inquisitors, and even those who advocate capital punishment for certain criminal offenses because the Bible tells them that they are to kill such people (e.g., murderers, adulterers, homosexuals, witches, apostates, or anybody who denies the One True God – whoever that happens to be).

Science: The Rescuer

The rational person who fears death has no reason to turn to religion to find rescue from this fate. Indeed, religion will often hasten his death, and even more often suppress and destroy those things that have the best chance of saving his life. The rational person, instead, turns to scientists and doctors – people who study real-world physical and biological systems, rather than scripture. Through their study of biological systems, aging, consciousness, and the brain, they are continually finding ways of preserving a particular stream of consciousness, allowing it to continue under situations where it would have otherwise come to an end.

I know, for example, that scientists have kept my wife’s stream of consciousness going far longer than nature or God (if there were such a creature) would have allowed. As a child, she was treated for cancer that would have otherwise killed her. In March of last year, doctors inserted a pacemaker since her heart was not functioning well enough to keep her alive without such aid. If her parents had trusted to prayer alone when she was a child, or if we had trusted to prayer alone last year, she would almost certainly be dead today.

There are, of course, indirect ways in which science allows us to extend our particular strands of conscious over time – the hurricane and tsunami warning systems, the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors for our home, the circuit breaker, materials science and its relevance in sound construction and safe wiring, cars engineered to protect passengers from the force of impact, sanitation, and the like.

However, in doing this, scientists have routinely uncovered a set of explanations for the causes of these phenomena that leave no room for a heaven and an afterlife. The scientist says, “The theories that are the most proficient at generating hypothesis that then allow us to preserve and protect human lives are theories that contradict the basic claims of every major religion. They are theories that make it less and less likely that we have reason to hope for a life after death. Human consciousness is being tied more and more tightly to the brain to the point that we can tell with greater precision what parts of the brain to change in order to change the person’s psychology. If minds and brains are so closely linked, it us absurd to believe that the person himself can survive the destruction of the brain.”

Those who fear death hate science for saying this. They do not want to hear it. They view science as the enemy – snarling and kicking and doing anything in its power to strike back at this ‘attacker’ – paying no attention to the fact that the theories that yield these conclusions also yield the treatment options that can be empirically shown to save lives.

Religion actually does nothing to extend the length of a strand of consciousness over time. It only creates the false belief that a strand of consciousness will continue, then that strand of consciousness ends in fact. Even if we hold to an obligation to respect another person’s religious beliefs, my respect for somebody else’s belief in a life after death will not change the fact that he will not have a life after death.

Science, in fact, is the only institution that has had an actual affect when it comes to prolonging human lives, allowing strands of consciousness to continue when nature, or nature and religion, would have brought those strands to an end.

As a matter of fact, those who are alive today will almost certainly die. One of the reasons we will die is because earlier generations embraced religion over science. If earlier generations would have embraced science more and religion less, we would have a stronger foundation of medical science today to draw upon, and people who are dying today would have otherwise lived.

Scientific advances can give some of us a few years that we would not otherwise have, or improve the quality of life in any given year. However, embracing science today will not protect us from death indefinitely. It is too late for us – thanks to the generations that came before and their embrace of superstition over reason.

However, we could save the lives of our children, or their children, or their children. We could, at least, do a better job of protecting them from those forces that would otherwise end their streams of consciousness, if we care enough to do so. What it requires is getting a grip of our own fear of death and spending the time we have helping others.

What type of parent allows his or her own fear drives them to sacrifice the lives of their children?

The Surge

We live in a country where even the village idiot is permitted to run for President.

However, when the founding fathers set up this system, they assumed that at least a majority of voters would be smart enough not to vote for the village idiot.

Well, actually, that’s not true. The founding fathers set up the Electoral College, and meant for it to be something more than a rubber stamp of the public will. Recognizing that the selection of a President is an important task that takes more time and intelligent research than the average person has available, they decided instead on a system where the people would choose elector. Those electors would go through the effort of assessing candidates. The next few generations of Americans tossed out that system in favor of direct elections. That system is one that can only work if we assume that the average voter has enough intelligence not to hire the village idiot to run the country.

Yet, here we are.

Anybody who paid attention to how Bush thinks could have predicted long ago that Bush was going to promote a renewed push in Iraq, with more troops and more money. I described that method yesterday. Bush ‘thinks’ by a three-step process that says:

Step 1: Embrace a conclusion

Step 2: Collect evidence on an issue.

Step 3: Filter the evidence, keeping only that which conforms to the embraced conclusion, toss out that which contradicts as the embraced conclusion and condemn any who would dare present conflicting evidence as anti-American, anti-Freedom, and anti-God, and reinterpret everything else so that it supports the embraced conclusion one has embraced.

Shortly after the Bush Administration saw the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, it called a group of ‘experts’ over to the White House to discuss alternative plans.

Simply by knowing how Bush thinks, one can see what he was up to with this meeting. Four years ago, Bush embraced a conclusion. He turned to the intelligence evidence, threw out what he did not like, and reinterpreted the rest to match his conclusion. With all that he has seen since then, nothing has yet shaken his faith that his original conclusion was correct. If a group delivers a report that he does not like, then this is proof that the group was made up of incompetents – twisted by ideology or a weak will from seeing the grand vision that sits right before Bush’s eyes.

In order to move on to Step 3, Bush needed somebody to tell him that his embraced conclusion was correct. As soon as somebody else told Bush, “The Iraq Study Group was wrong,” then Bush can say, “Yes, I think so, too,” and continue on with his embraced conclusion.

It would be interesting to see what he would do in the absence of yes-men willing to call his ideas brilliant - whatever those ideas may be. However, since any idea, however stupid, will have at least one advocate other than Bush itself, Bush will always find what he needs to find in order to continue to hold on to his embraced conclusion. Once Bush collected his data, he decided that he then had enough information that his generals were too stupid to know what to do and overrule their suggestions. He could assert that the blue-ribbon committee were wasting their time and taxpayer dollars coming up with a set of recommendations.. Instead, Bush could assert that he alone had the intellectual giftedness necessary to come up with a plan that all of his experts. All of this came in spite of the fact that his experts worked full time on the question, while Bush filled a substantial portion of his time and keen intellect on other matters.

Now, I have criticized some Democrats of this same way of thinking. They have embraced the conclusion that Bush was wrong. As a Republican, by default, he could not possibly be right. They collect their evidence, keep what confirms their hypothesis and throw out what they do not like, and reinterpret the rest so as to support their embraced hypothesis.

I have presented as evidence the claims that many of the more liberal Democrats have made regarding the conduct of the war. With nothing to go on but their own ideas, and the automatic assumption that Bush must necessarily be wrong, they judge themselves fully competent to make their own war plans (or withdraw plans) on little or no data.

In this context, I have held that the only morally and intellectually responsible position to take is to say, “I do not know; I must leave these choices up to the experts.”

In the last couple of months, we have had reports of what the experts would have said. An individual who holds that intellectual responsibility involves listening to experts, there is reason to condemn Bush. The Iraq Study Group has given its recommendations. In addition, the Washington Post reports that the Joint Chiefs are unanimously opposed to Bush’s plan.

Bush is, in fact, the village idiot. He is so lacking in basic intellectual skills that he thinks he is a genius.

He does not earn this title because he does not accept my wisdom on what to do in Iraq. I have admitted my own ignorance, and yielded to the better judgment of those who have spent more time studying the issue than I have. Bush earns the title by not listening to them.

Ancient Greece brings us the story of Socrates, who the Oracle of Delphi declared to be the wisest person around. Socrates answered that if he was wise, then wisdom must consist in knowing one’s own limitations – with respecting the fact that one actually knows very little.

It is true, in fact. The wise person consults a doctor to diagnose his disease, an engineer to design his house and a carpenter to build it, a lawyer to handle his affairs in court, and a financial advisor (either personally or in the form of experts running a preferred mutual fund) to make many of his decisions for him. He recognizes his own limits and trusts to experts.

Only the fool thinks that he can do everything himself.

Of course, there is a chance, however small, that even a fool might get lucky. After all, somebody has to win the lottery. However, even professional gamblers know how to read the odds so as to give oneself the best chances possible.

Plays and movies tend to show us examples in which a person makes a 1 in 1,000,000 gamble and wins. However, this is only because the 999,999 examples in which the gambler loses, the story tends not to be one that one wants to watch – or to live through.

Bush has decided to gamble by putting yet another stack of young American lives and a few more tens to hundreds of billions of dollars into the pot. Yet he lacks even the rudimentary intellectual competence to play the game well – meaning that there is a good chance (given the testimony of the experts) that Bush will lose this hand as he lost the earlier hands, and another stack of lives and collection of taxpayer dollars will be wasted.

Yet, ultimately, it is difficult to blame Bush for these failures. Bush is an intellectual lightweight. Much of the reason he does poorly is because he lacks the basic competence to do well. If an incompetent employee does something destructive to a business, then the blame not only falls on the incompetent employee, but on the people who decided to hire him.

America is filled with people who decided to put the village idiot in charge. At which point, the village idiot made the types of decisions that village idiots are prone to make. The public tendency is to blame Bush himself. The just and fair response would be to blame those who put him in that position. Those are the people who have the blood of 3,000 dead Americans, over 20,000 wounded Americans, nearly 40,000 dead Iraqis this year alone, and untold number of wounded, and incalculable damage in loss of education and damage to economic infrastructure. Such people deserve fair condemnation for what they have done.

The founding fathers decided that even the village idiot can run for President.

However, that doesn’t mean that they wanted us to actually vote for him.

Bush Spying: Mail and Bank Records

I want to start this post with two primary claims.

(1) It is surprising, really, how easy it is for politicians to put into place all of the mechanisms for a police state sufficient to make any would-be dictator drool without a word of protest from a population raised to value freedom and oppose tyranny.

(2) It is not so surprising that those people who claimed that atheists must be kept out of political power and lack the moral foundation that would prevent a good Christian from setting up such mechanisms are those who are primarily responsible for setting up these mechanisms.

We have grown so accustomed to news that the Executive Branch of the Government claims a right to look into every aspect of our lives to judge our loyalty to the State that news articles are substantially ignored.

A year ago, we were protesting the government listening in on our telephone calls, snooping through our emails, and creating watch lists of organizations who spoke against the President’s war in Iraq. These generated some moderate level of outrage. I wrote at the time that these are only the violations we know about. I asked about what the Bush Administration was doing that we had not yet learned.

In the last few weeks, we learned that Bush claims the right to open your mail without a warrant. He wrote this into a signing statement – the type of unconstitutional power that the President claimed to rewrite legislation he does not like, and to give himself whatever powers it pleases him to have.

More recently, the New York Times reported that Bush has authorized the Pentagon and CIA to spy on Americans by collecting our bank records – again, without a court order or Congressional oversite.

Of course, government officials are claiming that they are only looking at the mail and examining the bank records of ‘suspected terrorists’.

Yet, these are people who also claim that, “If you are not with us, then you are with the terrorists.” In other words, if you are not a supporter of the Bush Administration, then you qualify as a ‘suspected terrorist’ in the eyes of this administration. This means that the Executive Office can claim an unrestricted right to example your phone records, bank records, email, and physical mail.

Once again we encounter the argument that any opposition will hinder the President’s personal task to keep us safe from terrorist attacks. Liars and propagandists will claim that those who oppose these policies want to give terrorists a free pass. Again, it becomes necessary to assert that the liars are lying; that protesters are not seeking to prevent the government from spying on terrorists – but to make sure that the government is spying on terrorists.

There are two counter-concerns.

(1) Who is going to protect us from the President?

The greatest source of harm to the people of any country has never been “terrorists” but its own government.

Our society today is filled with people who would love the opportunity to take over the government and to control the vast military and economic power that this country holds, and to throw it around for his own pleasure, ruthlessly eliminating anybody who gets in his way.

The best protection that we have instrument we have against such an individual is that, even if he can con us into electing him President, he does not have the power to establish a tyranny. He does not have the tools he would need to pull off such a coup, because the Constitution does not allow him to have those powers. It has taken those powers and split them up, creating a system of checks and balances, so that the would-be tyrant in any body must deal with those in the other two estates.

As long as this system is intact, and as long as the American people are willing to defend it, any would-be tyrant is simply out of luck when it comes to becoming a dictator. The people are going to insist that his plans meet the approval of the other estates, and that is simply not a situation that a would-be tyrant is going to find appealing. He wants a country where the occupant of one of the branches of the government can do whatever it wants, without asking permission of the other branches. Or, he could accept a requirement to appeal to another branch, as long as he has the authority to tell the members of that other branch what its response will be.

For 225 years, would-be tyrants saw nothing that would appeal to them in the Executive branch of the United States. The power to spy on others is extremely useful. It can provide the raw material for blackmail or for seeing to it that others are removed from power by ‘leaking’ damaging information. However, our government said that would-be tyrants had to prove to a judge that they had probable cause before they spied on others. Without this, the judicial branch had good reason to assume that the Executive Branch was after something other than national security, and prohibit the Executive Branch from getting a hold of that information.

No would-be tyrant could stand such a system. If only somebody would change the system, allowing the President to act without appealing to the other two branches, then it would be a position that would tempt some would-be tyrant. For this, we need a President who asserts that he has the right to spy on who he wishes with no warrant, with no Congressional approval, with nothing but his desire to find out information about a person to guide his actions. Once this happens, then a would-be tyrant has a reason to want to become President. Until then, it is not worth the bother.

To defend ourselves from these people, we must condemn and prohibit any President from changing our form of government into one where the Executive has dictatorial powers. Even if this President promises to be a benevolent dictator and to use his limitless authority only for good, this President will not be President forever.

(2) How is the President using this evidence?

Six years of watching this President has given us a good look at how he thinks. Typically, he follows a three-step process.

Step 1: Embrace a hypothesis. This could be any hypothesis, such as the claim that what makes money for oil companies could not possibly cause harm to others, that removing Saddam Hussein would be fast, easy, and cheap and set the stage for the democratization of the Middle East, that God created the heavens and the earth 6,000 years ago, that there was no such thing as Evolution, that Saddam Hussein aided the 9/11 terrorists and was building weapons of mass destruction to use on the United States.

Step 2: Examine the evidence.

Step 3: Selectively keep and throw out sections of the evidence, rewrite others, and reinterpret the rest to support the embraced conclusion.

Let us apply this to the President’s power to spy.

First, he forms they hypothesis that an individual is a friend of terrorists. This could come from a number of sources – conscious and unconscious. One of those sources may simply be a hatred for somebody and a desire to remove them from a position of power (and replace him with somebody more friendly).

Second, he collects the evidence, using these powers to listen in to phone calls, collect phone records, collect bank records, read the mail, and intercept the emails of the person.

Now, here, we must remember that the President can do this for anybody he ‘suspects’ of being friendly to terrorists, without justifying to anybody else why he ‘suspects’ this person. So, if he suspects a political rival, he now has access to the private communications of a political rival based on the convenience of ‘suspecting’ that the individual was associated with terrorists.

Third, he sifts through the evidence, keeping that which appears to support his hypothesis, throwing out that which does not, and reinterpreting the rest so that he now has ‘proof’ that the accused is guilty.

This is precisely what happened with respect to the invasion of Iraq.

The Bush Administration formed the hypothesis that Saddam Hussein aided the 9/11 hijackers and were building weapons of mass destruction with which to attack the United States. It collected the evidence. It then kept what supported its hypothesis, threw out anything that contradicted their hypothesis, and reinterpreted the rest. It then took this as “proof” that Saddam Hussein was guilty, and launched a war.

Elsewhere, it is a very good bet that some of the people that the Bush Administration has locked up in its secret prisons were “guilty” of terrorism in the same way that Saddam Hussein was “guilty” of supporting the 9/11 terrorists and building weapons of mass destruction.

Scientists and scholars know that this type of mistake – cherry picking data and reinterpreting events to support a favored hypothesis – are very human tendencies and very unreliable. To combat these, scientists have adopted a number of procedures to remove the possibility of human error. It uses “double-blind” experiments and insists on using people to collect the data who do not know what conclusions the person wanting the data is seeking to support, and gives the data to educated third partied with no particular stake in the outcome for an impartial review.

Modern courts were also invented by people who understood these weaknesses and sought institutions that promoted justice over prejudice – that promoted a rule of law over the rule of men (or of a man).

Intelligent and wise people know human frailties and human failures and design their institutions to protect us from these sources of error. Fools ignore these human limitations and design institutions to suit their whim. The fool leads us into error, the way George Bush lead us into this war in Iraq.

I hold that it is significant that President Bush and almost all of his inner circle were trained for this type of backward thinking. Their religion tells them that wisdom is gained through a three step process.

Step 1: Embrace the Bible as literally true.

Step 2: Look at the evidence for and against scripture.

Step 3: Accept the evidence supporting scripture as sound, reject all that contradicts the Bible, and reinterpret the rest so that it fits into one’s religious view, and assert that this is proof that the Bible is correct.

It is a recipe for error, and is as poor a system for determining who is and who is not a “suspected terrorist” as it is in determining the wisdom of invading Iraq.

Conclusion

There is more at issue here than the question of whether the government will open some envelopes. What is at issue is devotion to institutions that protect civilization itself from human failings. Destroy those institutions that protect us from human failings, and we risk suffering far more than any terrorist could cause us to suffer.

One of the institutions that protect us from human failures – a human lust for absolute power and to “play” with it to the detriment of everybody else – is the institution of separation of powers. It is an institution that demands that the Executive must present its findings to some other branch to make sure that when it claims to be protecting the nation from terrorist attacks that it is not, instead, protecting the power elite from political opponents.

Courts protect us in another way – by eliminating bias in the interpretation of evidence so as to make sure that it actually supports the conclusion that the agent claims that it supports. People have an annoying habit of seeing what they want to see in the evidence, and only those who do not care which story is true – who cares only about the truth – can be trusted to interpret the evidence soundly and avoid costly errors.

Only a fool would throw these institutions away and trust, instead, to the whim of a person who has such a proven inability to use evidence to come to reasoned conclusion as Bush has demonstrated.

Overriding a Veto on Stem Cell Research

Thinking that you will go to hell if you use embryonic stem cells to cure paralysis is as foolish as thinking that you will go to heaven if you fly a hijacked airplane into a sky scraper. Of these two irrational sets of beliefs, the second is the least dangers, because it threatens to kill far fewer people.

House Resolution 3 passed the House recently. Earlier, President Bush used his only veto to date to veto similar legislation that passed the Senate.

Chances are, he will use his veto again. This means that this bill will fail unless enough votes are brought in its favor to override a veto. In the House of Representatives, it takes 290 votes to override a Presidential veto. The bill passed with 253 votes. This means that between today, and the day the House votes to override the veto, either 37 Representatives have to be brought to their senses, or the bill will die – and, in a very real sense, there is a potential for millions of people who to die or suffer permanent sickness or injury who might have otherwise lived or been cured or healed.

I am aware of the protests that embryonic stem cell research does not hold the promise that its supporters claim it to have. Yet, these people speak from scientific credentials that tell us that the Earth is 6,000 years old, evolution never happened CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, and that an invasion of Iraq would be fast, easy, and cheep. In other words, these are people who are experts at seeing what they want to see when they look at the data – rather than what is already there.

There is actually more on the table here than just the issue of saving lives, curing the sick, and healing the injured (including, by the way, over 10,000 Americans who have acquired debilitating injuries in the name of helping Bush save face – and an unknown number of Americans who will suffer such injuries in the future).

This is a very potent example of harm done in God’s name.

It rests in the fact that there is no real difference between the Representative who will vote ‘no’ on this legislation for religious reasons (and the President who will say ‘veto), and the suicide bomber with his finger on the button. Except, the Representative does not do us the favor of destroying himself in the process.

I am sorry that this sounds harsh. But the equation holds, in spite of its harshness.

One may protest, “The Representative is doing this for good reason. He thinks that he is saving innocent lives. He thinks that he is serving a kind and benevolent God who is the source of all morality, who is infinitely just and would bestow infinite kindness on us if we would only accept His ways above all others.”

Yeah, that’s what they all say.

Suicide bombers are not motivated by pure hate either. By their act of self-sacrifice in the name of God, many think that they earn the right to name those who will join them in Heaven. They do this – not because they love to maim and kill others, but because they want to buy eternal happiness for their friends and family members. They act from the most noble of motives. However, religiously-grounded beliefs turn these noble motives into an act of barbaric destruction.

Sound familiar?

There is a difference, and this difference does lend a shade of grayness that distinguishes the two acts. The Representative does not hate his victims. He considers his victims to be unfortunate collateral damage in his pursuit of God’s will. He would rather that his act kill and maim nobody – while the suicide bomber kills as many people as possible.

Yet, it is ironic that, even though both would wish things were different, the Representative will end up killing and maiming far more people in the name of God than the suicide bomber. (At least, until the would-be suicide bomber gets to put his finger on a voting button or the pen that signs the law, veto, executive order, or signing statement in a country that lacks institutional safeguards.)

This one difference does not erase the similarities – the real-world death, injury, and disease that would not have otherwise existed if not for the irrational beliefs of those who could have prevented it.

A reader might protest, “But these Representatives are our friends and neighbors, our family members – or are loved and admired by those we care about. How can you possibly compare them to terrorists?”

In fact, I expect that some people would get absolutely furious at any who would draw such a connection.

Yet, even here, it is not difficult to imagine that the suicide-bomber or terrorist lives with the same type of support structure. The Shiite or Sunni mother in Iraq also has problems handling the idea that her son, brother, father, best-friend’s son, and the like deserves any type of harsh condemnation for his deeds and actions. She is going to be angry at any who casts them in an unfriendly light. Yet, the fact that such a claim elicits such a harsh emotional response does not make it false. The issue is whether or not the claim is true, not whether people like it.

Our message to the friend of the would-be suicide-bomber/terrorist, and the person who has the ear of a Representative who might refuse to override a Presidential veto when the time comes, is the same.

If you are somebody who cannot stand the thought of one of these people being evil, then I ask you a favor.

Go to these people and tell them, when they have their finger on the button and are ready to perform an act that will result in people being killed and maimed who would not have otherwise been killed and maimed – to pause for one second and consider their actions. The free ticket to heaven for those that a terrorist bomber selects, and the ensouled blastocyst that the Representative seeks to defend equally fictitious entities. In both cases, you are bringing about real-world suffering for the sake of an imaginary good.

The Representative might answer, “You can’t know that these entities are not persons deserving of life, and I am sworn to protect the innocent. I must protest these entities.”

I answer that I can know this – because that which has no desires has no interests, and that which has no interests cannot be harmed in any morally relevant sense. However, even if somebody wants to play the ‘benefit of the doubt’ argument, we must ask where the greatest cause for doubt exists. Does it exist with the blastocyst, or does it rest with the real, living person in a real hospital facing a real death and real injury. You have a button. If you press it, a person you can see before you will die and there is a vague and ill-defined chance that somebody in a distant room might die. Do not press it, and there is a vague, ill-defined chance that somebody in some distant room will live and the person before you will certainly die. On which side does “the benefit of the doubt” lay?

I claim to know that there is nobody in that other room. Yet, even if I am wrong, the benefit of any doubt weighs in favor of the real person that one can see and touch.

They may answer, “You are asking me to abandon my faith. I cannot do that. I have faith that it is better that I blow up these infidels and buy my friends and family a ticket into heaven. I have faith that these blastocysts are ensouled and protecting them is more important than fighting death, disease, and injury among the real-world people who surround me.”

Yet the proper response to their insistence can never be, “Oh, if you feel that strongly about it, then go ahead. Of course, I cannot allow real-world death, disease, and injury come between you and your faith.”

Having said this, there is another important principle that I need to repeat in the context of this discussion. It is the principle that the only legitimate response to words are counter-words; the only legitimate to a political campaign in an open society is a counter-campaign; that violence becomes legitimate only against those who are actually using or planning violence. This principle is necessary to keep the peace. If we allow violence in response to words or political campaigns, then we will be surrounded by violence, because too many arrogant people insist that their view cannot be mistaken and they are the ones who may use violence in defense of their words or their party.

The proper response to use against those who claim that their faith justifies death, disease, and injury is to explain, in posts like this, that they are horribly misguided. The proper response to a political campaign to elect politicians who will use faith as a reason to allow death, disease, and injury is to campaign against them. The proper response to the would-be suicide bomber is to identify him and confine him before he gets a chance to act.

We have as much reason to fear and to campaign against the politician who would vote “no” when the time comes to override Bush’s inevitable stem-cell veto as we do to apprehend and confine the would-be suicide bomber – and every reason to pursue those options with equal enthusiasm.

Atheism, Education, and Virtue

There is a question floating around asking how critical atheists should be of their theistic neighbors. Some advocate a direct frontal assault of all religiosity – turning belief in the absurdities of religion into such an acute embarrassment that none would dare go there (or, at least, admit that they do so in public).

The reasons for doing this are because those who believe in such things should be embarrassed - the idea of people standing in front of an audience and announcing that the world is less than 6,000 years old is laughable. If one were to imagine the Earth under the watchful eye of some extra-terrestrial scientists, the fact that we choose leaders who think that perfect truth can be found in the assertions of a bunch of illiterate goat herders can be seen as good reason for embarrassment.

The other reason – the reason that I hold is the more important of the two – is that these superstitions motivate people to act in ways that are harmful to others. If there were fewer religionists, then there would be fewer people seeking weapons of mass destruction to detonate in an ‘enemy’ city for us to worry about. Our children, and their children, can count themselves safer to the degree that we can make a future world in where there are fewer theocrats trying to kill dissenters.

In earlier posts, I have written that those who focus on your standard weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons – are blinding themselves (willfully or otherwise) to the fundamentalists’ most destructive weapon – legislation.

We are up in arms over 20 terrorists flying airplanes into some sky scrapers, killing less than 3,000 people. At the same time, religious fundamentalists in this country have orchestrated the curtailment of stem-cell research that will allow the destruction of as many families per day as Islamic terrorists have killed in this country throughout its history.

In Massachusetts, religious fundamentalists are seeking a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This constitutional amendment is a weapon of mass destruction that has the whole gay population of the state (between 300,000 and 600,000 people) in its blast radius. And some of them will die – most of them children. Fundamentalists engineer such self-loathing among young homosexuals that a disproportionate number will see no option but suicide. “But what does it matter. They are an affront to God.”

We get daily news reports of tens to hundreds of Iraqi citizens being blown up each day in sectarian violence in Iraq (and other parts of the world). Yet, the damage that these bombs do pales when compared to the damage of over a hundred million women being denied an education – either by law or by custom – because so much ignorance is far more destructive than any bomb.

Given the harmfulness of theism, and the more direct embarrassment of being surrounded by people who express such utterly insane beliefs about the world, it follows that a direct assault on theism is fully justified, is it not?

Well, not exactly.

Atheism is nothing more than the belief that no God exists. (I have expressed my contempt for the idea that ‘atheism’ is ‘the lack of belief’ – a definition that makes the atheist the intellectual equivalent of a rock – in earlier posts.) This proposition alone – “No God exists” – does not entail any other belief, so it does not entail any type of scientific or intellectual enlightenment. It is true that almost all members of the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in God. However, it is also the case that a very small portion of those who do not believe in God will come anywhere near to qualifying as members of the National Academy. There are a lot of stupid ideas out there consistent with “No God Exists” that are not at all disarmed by converting people to atheism.

As for the issue of harm, “No God exists,” entails as much about the nature of value as “The Earth is not the center of the solar system.” That is to say, it entails nothing. Theists like to make a lot of noise about the fact that Nazism and Communism were not religious doctrines, and that Communism embraced atheism.

Yet, the fact is so conveniently ignored that these movements had ‘prophets’ who demanded total obedience and ‘scripture’ in the form of Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, and Mao Tse Tung’s Little Red Book - giving them all of the hallmarks of theism without the God. Furthermore, the idea of killing Jews was hardly an new and un-Christian idea in Europe. However, more importantly, every one of these groups had been brought up to believe that the Sun was the center of the solar system – yet we can hardly make the argument that heliocentrism itself should be condemned because those who lead the most bloodthirsty regimes in human history were heliocentrists.

Note: This idea that Hitler and Stalin brought about more destruction than religion is, itself, an instance of distorting the truth through the creative use of statistics. In terms of the percentage of the population destroyed, the religious wars of Europe wiped out a substantially higher percentage of the population than Hitler and Stalin, and failed in the systematic extermination of religious heretics only because they lacked the technology to do so, not because they lacked the will.

So, nothing about atheism per se that entails any type of intellectual or moral superiority. Consequently, there is nothing about promoting atheism that entails promoting intellectual or moral virtue – except in the comparatively insignificant sense of knowing one specific proposition to be true; the propositions that no God exists.

On the other hand, if we take our cart and our horse, and we switch places, we might discover a combination that makes infinitely more sense.

We have noted that the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to doubt the existence of God. The trick, then, in promoting atheism is to promote education, and to take a firm stand against disinformation. The trick is to demand better schools, better teachers, better access to universities and other forms of education, more public lectures, more research money, more research facilities (from space telescopes to supercolliders), more intelligent use of information in all aspects of American life.

It also means a condemnation of far more than a belief in God. It means a condemnation of anything that wastes time in the pursuit of fiction over fact – from astrology to astral projection to conspiracy theories. One of my favorite examples in public conversation now is to use Bush as an example of intellectual backwardness – basing his interpretation of military intelligence on his decision to invade Iraq, rather than basing the decision to invade Iraq on the best military intelligence. (He’s still doing it, you know. Given the way Bush’s faith-based brain works, he will give up Jesus before he will give up the idea that invading Iraq was a good idea.)

Most importantly, it means identifying smart candidates for public office and promoting those candidates. (Smart candidates are not necessarily Democratic candidates, by the way. I think that there are important minority factions in the Republican Party that are very respectful of science and intellectual integrity.)

We see the same relationship in ethics. Not all atheists are virtuous, but an argument can be made that a truly virtuous person must be an atheist. In this blog, I have defended the idea that moral conclusions must be grounded on reasons for action that exist. In fact, I have attempted, in a way, to make this a cliché of these posts – to distinguish conclusions based on reasons for action that exist from conclusions based on reasons for action that do not exist.

One of the things that theism gives us – over and over again – is a huge stack of reasons for action that do not exist. Thus, theism gives us the pursuit of ‘goods’ that are not, in fact, good. It employs reasons for action for promoting certain states of affairs and avoiding others that are simply not real. So the ‘goods’ that they promote, are not good. In fact, many of the ‘goods’ that they promote are evils in fact (evils, when we consider only the reasons for action that exist) and many of the evils that they tell us to avoid are good in fact (good, considering the reasons for action that exist.

Even though atheism does not imply virtue, and many atheists can be evil – virtue does require a certain type of atheism, because only atheism can focus attention on reasons for action that exist while abandoning reasons for action that do not exist.

This means that, instead of promoting atheism as a way of promoting virtue, promoting virtue as a way of promoting atheism. This means pointing out that President Bush’s veto of stem cell research is a religiously motivated weapon of mass destruction that will spread far more death and misery than any terrorist bomb This weapon will bring about far more sickness and death than a half-dozen Jihadist nuclear bombs. In this case, is not protecting us from fundamentalists with weapons of mass destruction. He has become one.

It means spreading the idea that the Massachusetts anti-gay-marriage amendment is a religiously motivated weapon of mass destruction as destructive as releasing a neurotoxin into parts of The Big Dig.

Because these types of attacks on peoples’ wellbeing – just like the terrorist attacks we have learned to fear – are examples of religious fundamentalists destroying the lives of others by basing their decisions on reasons for action that do not exist.

In both cases, these types of campaigns have additional virtues. The campaign of promoting reason and education (instead of promoting atheism) can direct its guns against other types of irrational belief systems that make no reference to God. The campaign of promoting virtue based on reasons for action that exist can be used to target reasons for action that do not exist that do not have their roots in religion.

This is not an argument that one should downplay atheism – that one should sweep it under the rug and hope nobody notices while one engages in a campaign to promote education and virtue. Look at the title to this blog. I certainly am not downplaying atheism. However, it does mean that the existence of God is not the most important question – not when people are dying today and will die tomorrow based on ignorance and beliefs in reasons for action that do not exist.