Nothing to Hide

The government is only spying on terrorists. If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason to oppose government spying.

Wrong!

Warrantless government spying is a government license to spy on anybody who opposes Administration policies.

Mike DeWine (R – OH). Lindsey Graham (R – SC), Chuck Hagel (R – NE), and Olympia Snowe (R – ME) have proposed legislation that would legalize the Bush Administration’s program of spying on Americans without a warrant.

Here are four senators who may be considered enemies of the Constitution.

Such a law would be in violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

However, we can no longer count on the Judiciary branch to uphold and defend the Constitution. The Bush Administration has specifically selected and the Congress has appointed judges based on a promise to turn their back on the Bill of Rights.

However, as I said in the past, this blog does not concern itself with what the law does or does not say, but with what the law should and should not say. I have argued in the past that the 4th Amendment to the Constitution was not a mistake and provides important safeguards. A just society would have to incorporate the principles contained within the 4th Amendment into its laws even if such an Amendment did not exist.

We can see this in potential for abuse that the legislation that these anti-4th Amendment senators are trying to pass.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Investigators would only have to prove probable cause to themselves, never to a judge or outside agency. After that month and a half, the warrantless surveillance could continue if the attorney general insisted that it was necessary to protect the United States.

This is effectively the same as saying that probable cause is not required, because anybody can demonstrate probable cause to themselves under any and all circumstances. Hitler certainly did not lack a belief that he had probable cause for everything he did.

One objection to be raised against this legislation concerns the question, “Who counts as a threat to national security?” Members of the Bush Administration have explicitly said that anybody who says anything negative about the Bush Administration is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. In the 2004 campaign they said that if the Democrats got elected, America would be less safe. Certainly, electing or supporting Democrats was considered a threat to national security. So, what prevents the Administration from saying that it has probable cause for spying on anybody who supports the Democrats or on any Republican who does not toe the Administration line?

Judicial review is not meant to prevent the Administration from spying on suspected terrorists. It is meant to prevent the Administration from employing a philosophy against all political opponensts of, “If you are against this us, then you are against America.”

The Bush Administration has demonstrated that it is thoroughly infected with this, “For Bush or against America” way of thinking. Recall that the NSA spying has never had any oversight, and nobody but the Bush Administration itself knows who they are really spying on, or why. This legislation will keep it that way.

It makes one wonder whether the Bush Administration is using the information it gets from spying to manipulate its political allies and opponents? I am not saying that they are, but I am pointing out the fact that authorizes spying without oversight makes it easy for the Administration to do such things. The potential for abuse is criticism enough.

Where the Attorney General gets to privately authorize spying whenever he sees a potential threat to national security, we must realize that the Attorney General is appointed by the President. In this case, Gonzales seems to think that it is his job to justify whatever the President wants to do. He has twisted the definition of torture in such a way that American interrogators can question prisoners sometimes to death without this being called torture.

This is the same attorney general that has already defended the unlimited power of the President to do whatever he pleases in his position as Commander in Chief, powers that include the right to kill people at will without trial, as I wrote about in “The Right to a Fair Trial”

Under this legislation, the only thing any President needs to do is to appoint an attorney general who shares the philosophy, “Anybody who is against the Administration is against the United States,” at which point criticism of the President becomes ‘probable cause’ and the critic becomes a target for government spies.

Nothing to Hide

The claim is that, “If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide and should not care if the Bush Administration is spying on you.”

This only makes sense to somebody who has fallen into the trap of thinking that the Bush Administration is morally perfect in everything that it does, so that “against the Bush Administration” becomes synonymous with “wrong”.

What a person might want to hide from the Bush Administration may be the fact that he does not agree with or support the Administration's position on some issue. He may oppose a plan to allow an Arab country to unload shipping in American ports. He may oppose the Bush Administration’s plan to let India have an unlimited stockpile of nuclear weapons. He may be a part of an international organization working to fight global warming, or some other environmental cause that the President opposes. He could be a newspaper reporter tracking down a story that the Administration is taking American citizens off of the street and locking them up in a secret foreign prison.

These are the types of activities that a right to privacy (a right against warrantless government searches) protects. What it all boils down to is a right to think that the Bush Administration is mistaken on some issue, and to take steps to (peacefully and legally) oppose the President on that issue.

Even if a person believes that the Bush Administration is and must always be considered the model of moral perfection, there is still a right to believe otherwise – a right that an unlimited Administration power to enforce the doctrine, “If you are against this Administration, then you are against America” makes no room for.

Significance

I also fail to understand what these four legislators think this law will accomplish. To any degree that it contains limits on Presidential power, the President will merely issue a signing statement saying that he will interpret this law in a way that is consistent with his own view that the President’s power cannot be limited by Congress.

Recall what Bush did to the proposed limit on torturing prisoners. He issued a signing statement that stated that he could ignore this law if he felt that it was important to national security (meaning "important to protecting and preserving the unlimited arbitrary power of the Bush Administration"). So, at the same time he signed the law, he made it impotent. He will do the same to any limits on his domestic spying program.

Furthermore, this legislation will replace an earlier FISA law that the Administration is already ignoring. What makes anybody think that an administration that ignores a law will not also ignore its replacement?

Yet, this legislation is still important. Hopefully, someday, we will once again become a nation of laws instead of a nation of men. Someday, we will once again require that our Presidents obey the law and shun anybody who believes, “It is not illegal if the President does it.” When that time comes, we will need to have good laws, and this legislation is not good law.

Conclusion

Osama bin Laden cannot take away our freedom. He may be able to destroy a few buildings and kill a few people, but only our own government can destroy our freedom.

The principles behind the 4th Amendment are essential for a free country. They help to protect the right to disagree with those in power. Without the protections embedded in the 4th Amendment, the Administration can target anybody who expresses an opinion that it does not like. There has to be limits on the government. People have to be able to say, “I disagree with the President on this issue, and I am going to work politically to fight this program,” without becoming a government target.

This does not say that the government has no power to spy on terrorists. This only says that if the government is going to do any spying, then it must prove to an independent 3rd party – a judiciary branch – that it has probable cause to believe that the people it is spying on really are terrorists, rather than people with legitimate complaints against the Administration’s policies who are seeking legal ways to change those policies.

The Happy Evangelical

An article called at Slate.com called, “Desperate Feminist Wives: Why wanting equality makes women unhappy,” by Meghan O'Rourke pointed me to some research showing that traditional stay-at-home wives (or those women who accepted the traditional role of the stay-at-home wife) were happier than those who sought more progressive lifestyles.

As I read the study, I immediately imagined throngs of people who would not like this conclusion deciding that the research was obviously flawed and that any decent researcher would see that the data did not support these conclusions. At the same time, those who liked the conclusion would stretch the research beyond all reason and assert that we should re-establish the ideal of the traditional marriage.

This would be the counterpart to an article that I discussed earlier that showed a correlation between religiosity and social ills. Upon publication of that article, evangelicals started a campaign of personal attacks against Dr. Paul, making up claims about what the research said in order to criticize it. At the same time, critics of religiosity started to use this as proof that religiosity caused these social ills.

In fact, what Dr. Paul’s study accomplished was to criticize the claim that evangelicals had been making for decades that. "These ills are caused by the growth of liberalism" and "The reason that our society is in moral decline is because we have kicked God out of the public square."

That article showed that countries that have kicked God even further out of the public square than America has fewer social ills. Evangelicals hypocritically expressed deep contempt for those who expressed a causal relationship where the study only showed a correlation. Yet, at the same time they committed a moral crime worthy of greater condemnation. They asserted the opposite causation without even so much as a correlation to back it up. If they had sought to collect such evidence, they would have found it going the opposite direction. However, they had no interst in collecting data -- their hate was the only data they needed.

In the study mentioned in Slate.com, feminists who have been claiming that women would be better off asserting a more progressive and egalitarian marriage find themselves faced with a correlation that contradicts their assertions. We immediately find feminist progressives engaging in the same type of behavior they would have otherwise condemned. They condemn those who violate the logical principle, “correlation does not imply causation” when they have spent decades asserting causation without even offering evidence of correlation.

The Implications of Happiness

So, what does this study actually show? What conclusions can we draw?

First, if we had a study that showed that firefighters were happier than school teachers, this would not support the conclusion that everybody should be a firefighter. It does not even support the conclusion that school teachers would be happier if they were firefighters.

If there are women who are happy in a traditional stay-at-home marriage, and can find themselves such a marriage with a good husband who can also be happy in that type of relationship, there is no reason to condemn them. Indeed, we should be happy for them. However, this does not imply that everybody would be happy in that type of arrangement, or that we should condemn those who find their happiness living a more progressive lifestyle.

The same study did show that some women living a progressive lifestyle were happy, and their happiness should not be held in contempt because others are happy in a traditional marriage.

The Value of Happiness

Another issue to keep in mind is that happiness is not the only thing of value.

This can be shown using a thought experiment that is widely used in the area of value theory.

Let us assume that I have invented an experience machine. If I plug you into this machine, it will cause you to believe that you are in a situation where you would be very happy. In fact, I have programmed this machine to recognize when it was feeding you experiences that lit up the sections of your brain indicating happiness, and to seek experiences that activated this part of your brain. So, for example, if the machine discovered that your happiest moments were caused by believing that you were a doctor saving peoples’ lives on a daily basis, it would feed you experiences of being a doctor that was saving patients’ lives.

As long as you were in the machine, you would be happy.

Now, would you agree to enter into the experience machine?

Most people would not.

We can say of those who would enter the machine that they value happiness above other things. However, in order to explain those who would not enter the machine, we are forced to conclude that they value something other than happiness. They are willing to give up happiness in order to realize something else that has value to them, such as living in the real world.

Please note, the concept of a “desire” that I have been using as the foundation for these blog posts easily handles these types of thought experiments. This theory states that people seek the fulfillment of their desires. If they desired happiness, then they would choose to enter the experience machine because they would find happiness there.

However, if a person desires to help the needy, then he is only going to value situations that make the statement “I have helped those in need” a true statement. The experience machine cannot accomplish this, so he finds no value in the experience machine. Instead, he has to help real people who are really needy. The person who desires to help those in need would not enter the experience machine. He would consider the experience machine a fate as bad as death, because both will equally prevent him from accomplishing what he desires.

This view creates a problem for the happy evangelical housewife – the woman who enters a traditional marriage because she thinks she is pleasing God. This woman would be in the same position as the person who enters the experience machine where he thinks he is helping the needy. That person would be happy, but it would be a false happiness.

A worse situation is one in which the individual in the experience machine actually does harm to others. Let us take this person who wishes to help children in need, and offer him an experience machine that will feed him the experiences of helping children in need. However, each time the experience machine feeds him such an experience, a real-world child is made to suffer great harm.

A person with a genuine desire to help children would be adverse to allowing anybody to use such a machine. The false happiness of being in the machine saving virtual children would not tempt him in the slightest.

The evangelical lifestyle in some cases is much like this type of experience machine. The evangelical housewife in the traditional role may be happy, but her experience machine is one that causes misery and suffering for others. In the name of promoting God’s will, she not only confines herself to a traditional marriage. She also promotes laws and social institutions that are harmful to women who would not be happy in a traditional marriage, homosexuals, non-believers, women in the first months of pregnancy, patients who may benefit from stem cell research or other medical advances, and those prevented from learning about sex and biological sciences, to name a few.

These are the people who are being sacrificed by the evangelical’s desire to live in an experience machine that generates her false happiness.

Happiness is not the only thing that matters. True happiness – the marriage of truth and happiness – is better than false happiness, and false happiness that does harm to others is the worst form of happiness of all.

Conclusion

This world would enjoy a great benefit if we could reduce the number of people who attempt to fit the intelligence to their cherished beliefs. We need to promote an attitude of contempt for those who think in terms like, "This study says something that I do not like; therefore, it was poorly done and its conclusions are to be rejected."

It is an attitude that can also be found in an administration that says that, “This intelligence does not support the conclusion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, so it must be flawed,” or “This study suggests that we will not be greeted as liberators who can establish a democracy in Iraq for 1.8 billion dollars, so its author must be an atheist liberal who cannot do good research.”

It is time to promote the idea of fitting one’s conclusions to the evidence, rather than the other way around.

If there are women who are happier in traditional marriages, and they can obtain this happiness in an environment that is not harmful to others, then they should be allowed to do so. There is no moral crime in admitting this.

At the same time, we need to pay attention to the fact that true happiness is better than false happiness, and better by far than a false happiness that requires an environment that does harm to others. An examination of the moral facts shows that happiness is not the only thing that matters.

6 Month Anniversary

Old Business: Medical Front

We are looking at the possibility that Lesley may need a pacemaker in order to get her heart rate where it should be. This is another nice piece of medical technology brought to us by those "atheist materialist scientists" who spend their time looking for the real and verifiable causes of things.

The doctors are only hinting at the pacemaker option, but I do not hear any other suggestions right now other than a natural recovery, which is looking unlikely with each passing day.

New Business: 6 Month Anniversary

However, today I would like to celebrate a half year of blogging. I started this adventure on September 10th, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The moral issues surrounding that story told me that I had a lot to write about. My first posts concerned the issue of assigning blame, and the Bush Administration’s condemnation of “The Blame Game”, which we may reasonably assume came from the fact that it was to blame. Further postings discussed issues from price gouging to “A National Day (or more) of Science” that covered the fact that science held far more promise in helping the people of New Orleans than Prayer

At the time, I did not really know if I had the stamina and the interest to keep up a blog. Even if I did, I wondered about the ability to come up with things to write about. I suspect that a vast majority of blogs ultimately end up dying from the neglect of their owners. Yet, so far, things seem to be working out. I have missed only three days out of 183 – and one was due to my wife’s catastrophic illness.

Since I now think that I will be able to keep this up, I am starting to ask what I can do to improve the quality of this blog – to make it more useful to those who stop by.

If you (the reader) have any advice that you would like to offer, I would love to hear it.

I have received a request to add something that will track new comments, even on old blog entries. Also, I have received a request for categories. If anybody has suggestions on how I can set something like this up, I would be more than happy to listen.

Action

I am also spending more of my time wondering what could be done to turn the topics of these blog entries into action. What good does it do to write a half-dozen blog entries about the threat that the Bush Administration poses to the 4th Amendment to the Constitution (and the other members of the Bill of Rights)? He still does what he wants. Congress still rolls over and plays dead.

Once upon a time, we could count on the Judiciary to declare such a law unconstitutional. However, today, we have a judiciary filled with judges who have been hand picked specifically because of their expressed willingness to turn their back on the Bill of Rights.

We have now come closer to having an autocratic government than we have come in 230 years. Is there something that can be done other than write blog entries explaining why it is wrong?

I have long held the view that we do not need to worry much about these things. The system, I felt, was ‘self-correcting’ and excesses like those of the Bush Administration would simply not be tolerated by a freedom-loving people. Yet, they are being tolerated. More than that, a huge section of the population thinks we should have an Executive Branch with unlimited political power.

So, how do we defend our rights when so many people want to give them away?

We need to do more than give wordy arguments that show why these actions are wrong. We also need to actually start putting the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to work promoting those who would defend these rights, while inhibiting the creation of sentiments like those found in the Bush Administration that would destroy these rights.

We need people who are willing to say loudly, “Not only will I not support anybody who does not defend the 4th Amendment; I hold nothing but contempt for those who speak favorably of those who would destroy those freedoms.”

Because of these concerns, I hope to devote a little more of my attention in the future to doing more than present moral arguments. I hope to direct more energy into actually targeting real praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment where they will do the most good.

Parties

One thing that I would like to encourage readers to do is to get involved in whatever political party dominates their part of the country. It does not matter whether that party is Democrat or Republican. Both parties have the ability to be nudged, however far one can nudge it, towards a more moral platform.

I have no particular love or hate for either of them. I view each as being as dangerous as the other – though for separate reasons. I suspect that I would be just as comfortable (or uncomfortable) in either party. On the Republican side, I would have their anti-science views and violation of church and state, while loving the idea of limited government. On the Democratic side I would view their economic policies to be as destructive as the Republican anti-science policies and their “no war” foreign policy as naïve as that of a father who refuses to protect his children from those who would do them harm.

Therefore, I see no reason to encourage anybody to join either party. Instead, I would recommend joining whatever party was in power and try to guide it more towards what is right.

The reason that the candidates of the Religious Right win school board elections is because nobody gets involved on those elections. Because of this, a small block of people to take control of the institution of education and brainwash the next generation into following their lead. The result has been the establishment of the anti-science, anti-reason, anti-intelligence platform of the Creationists as the standard for education across the country. One thing we sorely need are people seeking to be members of their local Board of Education who value science, reason, and intelligence.

Of course, there are ways to become involved in making change that does not involve joining a political party. One could join a special interest group. Though, even within such a group, there is reason to look closely at what the group stands for. There may be a need to nudge that group into accepting a more morally solid position on some issues.

So, I am interested in hearing from readers about any actions that they might be taking. If you think that there is something going on worthy of attention, click on my profile to the right and send me an email. I’ll look it over and see if it is worth recommending.

I do think it is time to do a bit more than simply write essays.

Atheists In Foxholes Syndrome

On the medical front, Lesley had her gall bladder removed today, and we are waiting to see if this will allow her other systems to return to normal. While she sleeps off the effects of surgery, I have time to do some writing.

In a comment made to yesterday’s post, Derek Scruggs asked the following question:

…recently, I've wondered how I would respond if my own death were imminent (i.e., a terminal disease during which I'm lucid). I'm very committed to my beliefs (or actually lack thereof), but I wonder how I'll react emotionally at the moment of truth. (And, for that matter, whether my reaction even matters.) Have you ever thought about this?

Yes, I have.

Now, before I get too far into this, I want to start by addressing a different question relevant to the overall theme of this blog. This blog is concerned with ethics -- with what ought and ought not to be the case. I do not think that a discussion of my own personal psychology would be all that interesting. Yet, I do think that it is interesting to look at how we ought to react to the prospect of our own deaths.

On this matter, some of the elements of the desire utilitarian theory that I use as the foundation for my writings has some relevance.

Namely, our desires are malleable. They are not perfectly malleable. However, within certain ranges, we can choose what we like and dislike in the same sense that we can choose what to have for dinner or which college to go to. To the degree that we have the capacity to make that choice, it makes sense to ask, "What should we like or dislike?"

One example of choosing a desire is the person who chooses to use or not use drugs. One of the effects of using certain drugs is to strengthen the desire for that drug. If one does not want to become addicted to a particular drug, one can choose not to use it and, thus, not to acquire the addictive desire.

This is just an example to explain the concept of choosing a desire.

Another way that we can choose our desires is to rehearse. An individual imagines himself in a situation where a particular desire comes into play and imagines the reaction he thinks that he should have. In some circumstances, the more effort that one puts into this type of exercise, the closer an individual can come to matching his actual response to the ideal response.

I walk over a foot bridge on my way home from work every day. Honestly, every time I have left for work with my wife sick in bed, I have crossed that bridge on the way home thinking to myself, "What if I find my wife dead or terribly sick when I get home?" I thought about and mentally rehearsed my reaction every time that happened. I thought, "What should I do if this ever happens?

When I discovered Lesley in such bad shape, I was pretty badly shaken. However, I was able to remember the mindset that I had chosen in thinking about that situation and get into it. There were a couple of times that I remember where my thinking got fuzzy. However, a minute later, I thought about what I had done and was able to give a calmer, more rational response.

I have also "rehearsed" the scenario in which a doctor tells me that I have a short time to live. At first, this thought would fill me with an overwhelming emotional wave of grief. However, I responded to this by saying that this reaction would be a waste of the time that I would have left. What I would want to do was to make productive use of that time.

This blog (or, actually, my writing in general) is the most important thing that I do. If I get news of my imminent death, and I was lucid, I would ask for whatever tools I could use to write my next blog entry. I have imagined being in a hospital where the doctor objects by saying, "You must rest and preserve your strength." My response will be, "Two weeks of doing what is important to me is worth two months doing nothing but waiting to die."

My first blog entry after I got that news would be something like, "The doctors say that I have a short time to live, so I want to start summing up what I have tried to say in all of my writing. The most important thing that I have tried to communicate is . . ."

I am confident that there will be no last-minute grasp at the straw of religion and an afterlife. I will not fall victim to "no atheist in foxholes syndrome" (if I may coin a phrase) in which the threat of imminent death brings about an instant conversion to the nearest religion. To suddenly pursue those options would be to waste the little bit of time I would have left.

What a tragedy it would be to have such little time left and to waste it. No . . . I have already mentally rehearsed a response that I hope will ensure that those final days will not be wasted.

This type of rehearsal is useful in a wide range of areas. What would you do in case of a fire in your home? How would you handle a situation where somebody was choking on food? What if you were walking down the street and there was this terrible automobile accident right in front of you?

It is one thing to have a vague idea of how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. It is another to have actually taken the time to mentally (or, better, physically) rehearsed the procedure vividly so that, if the need ever arose, you would be more likely to react appropriately.

So, Derek, if I were to offer advice, I would suggest that you do not waste time wondering how you would react in such a situation. I would recommend that you go through the effort of choosing your reaction. Then, imagine that situation as vividly as possible and "role play" in your head the reaction you have selected. Do this until the reaction you have chosen is natural.

I am not saying that all of our desires are subject to this type of control. Everything I have written applies only to those desires that are within our control and only to the degree that they are within our control.

The Unimportance of Belief in God

First, I apologize for missing a day on my blog. With my wife still in intensive care, I have not been able to focus on the issues that I would normally be writing about. She is better, but we are still trying to figure out how to fix a couple of problems, and I spend more time with her than I do writing.

Still, I want to address kck1999's request from my last blog entry for a discussion about the existence of "something beyond ourselves." I recognize the sincere interest in that discussion. However, I am obligated to report that I would be a poor candidate for that discussion.

When it comes to the existence of a God, my overall attitude tends to be "I do not care."

I am not saying that this is not an important question, or that it is wrong for people to care about this question. There are, in fact, a whole bunch of important questions -- too many for any one person to answer. As my wife sleeps, medical experts are seeking answers to a set of important questions. I admit that the answers to those questions are important. They are important to me. However, I also admit that I am not the best person to seek answers to those questions – at least not in a timely manner. On this issue, I have decided to trust to experts.

Value theorists recognize that, with human limits being what they are, a rational person will choose to be ignorant about certain things. The concept of "rational ignorance" may seem strange at first -- why would it be a good thing for a person to choose to be ignorant? Yet, a moment's reflection shows that this is obvious. Since we cannot know everything, we must choose those things that we will spend time learning, thereby choosing everything else as those things about which we will remain ignorant.

Yet, I call myself an "atheist ethicist," asserting that I am not ignorant about the existence of God. I claim that the proposition, "God exists" is false. However, I do not think it takes a lot of effort to reach that conclusion. I also conclude that "Leprechauns exist" is false. I do not need to go into an in-depth review of all of the literature surrounding the nature of leprechauns to reach that decision. I can look at the general tendency that civilizations have to invent fictitious entities (unicorns, giant spiders, Cyclopes, chimera, dragons, elves, hobbits, Zeus, Xochopilli, etc.) and easily fit leprechauns into that general category.

I also do not see any reason not to put Adam, Eve, Satan, God, angels, demons, and the like in this same category -- another one of those creative stories.

Now, I am a philosophy student, and I spent some time examining the basic arguments for or against the existence of God. These include the Ontological Argument, the two Cosmological Arguments (first cause, continuing cause), the Design Argument, Pascal's Wager, the Argument from Evil, and the like. It was enough to settle the issue that no God exists.

This study has told me that there is a set of experts who devote themselves to these questions as there are experts in the field of medical science. These are academic philosophers – those who are experts in analytic philosophy in the field of metaphysics and ontology. I look over their results from time to time, and they remain convinced that there is no evidence for a God. Therefore, I remain convinced that there is no evidence for a God.

It was also enough to settle the issue that I could put the question of God's existence aside and focus on other things -- just as I have put the questions of medicine aside to focus on other things.

It does not matter to me whether you or anybody else believes in a God. What matters to me is whether a person can commit to a life in which he helps those around them when they need help, does no harm at all other times, and seeks truth through scientific inquiry.

Where I have problems with any particular religion, it is when the followers of that religion say, “My God tells me to do harm to these people, so I will dedicate my life to that which does them harm,” or “My God tells me to stand in the way of these people getting help that will save their lives or improve the quality of their lives; therefore, I will act so as to prevent these people from getting help.”

The former is exemplified by those who crash airplanes into sky scrapers, threaten cartoonists with death, or pass laws banning homosexual marriage – all actions intending to do harm to a group of people. The latter is exemplified by those who block stem-cell research, refuse to allow their sick child to be tended to by a physician, or seek to promote ignorance in public schools (e.g., creationism and ‘intelligent design’).

I have talked with at least 8 different doctors in the past 2 days. I certainly have no reason to be concerned with whether any one of them believes in God. My only concern is that every one of them is seeking the physical cause of my wife’s medical problems and the best, most reliable course of treatment. The instant one of them comes to me and says, "Your wife's illness is an example of irreducible complexity. It could not have been caused by natural forces, and is proof of the existence of a perfectly benevolent creator," that doctor will not set foot near my wife again. He will be of no use.

If my neighbor believes that there is a benevolent God who created the universe, that such a God commands him to help those neighbors who need help and forbids doing harm to neighbors, and created a universe whose laws could be learned through scientific inquiry, I have no interest in fighting with him over the existence of a God.

I would rather ally with him to make sure that those who are in need of help get it, that no harm comes to others, and that those truths that can be gained through scientific inquiry -- truths like those that will determine how well my wife makes it through this current illness.

Those are the questions that I have sought to concern myself with. And I have put at least as much time and effort into understanding those issues as the doctor has put into learning how to treat my wife's illness.

Anyway, if you are interested in the existence of a God, I could probably find others who share that interest who you can talk with. It's just not my area of expertise.

The Atheist Materialist Scientist

I came home from work Monday evening and discovered my wife sick in bed. She had dried blood on her lips and all over the inside of her mouth. When I talked to her, she would look at me, but she would not give me any sign that she knew what I was saying.

I called 911.

When the paramedics arrived, they said that she was running a temperature of 106.4 degrees, and that they needed to get her to the hospital. I spent a long evening wondering if she would live and, even if she did live, whether the Lesley that I knew would still exist in her body.

She is in the Intensive Care Unit, but she is doing much better. Right now she is sleeping, and I am taking advantage of this opportunity to do some writing.

One issue that came to my mind this evening is that his is precisely the type of situation in which others would begin to pray, and in which atheists are supposed to lose their 'faith' in a godless universe and start pleading for divine help. People who think such things may be expected to ask whether I felt any inclination to pray. Did I have any interest in clutching at divine straws and saying, "God, if you do exist, please do not take my wife?"

The answer is, "No."

Not even a little bit.

Prayer will not help. Whether Lesley gets better or not -- whether we will get to finish out a long life together -- depends on one thing. It depends on trained professionals who know what happens when certain chemicals mix with the chemicals in the human body at certain temperatures. That knowledge is what will determine the difference between life and death, and the quality of life if there is one.

From the moment that I discovered her at home, I have sought to save her life soly by relying on the discoveries of those "atheistic materialist scientists" have been making since they started looking for real-world material explanations for events.

Note: I will use the term "atheist materialist scientist" in this blog entry, even though many scientists are not atheists and many theists make good scientists. This phrase, "atheist materialist scientist" is a derogatory term invented by people who want to denigrate science by associating it with something that a majority of the people already hate -- atheists. This is a tried and true marketing technique used to manipulate perceptions -- to associate what one wants others to hate with something they already hate. In this case, they want to exploit the fact that 'atheist' in the minds of most people is a word much like "nigger" or "kike" -- a term of hate. Still, I will use their term.

As I said, the first thing that I did was call 911. Over the course of the past few centuries, "atheist materialist scientists" were not content to say that nature was 'irreducibly complex.' They sought natural explanations for events in the real world. In doing this, they discovered the powers of electromagnetism. They learned how to set up an electromagnetic field in one area and use it to send a transmission through space that will set off an electromagnetic field in another location, and do so in a way that transmits information. In this way, I was able to quickly give information to rescue teams set up for just such an emergency.

Using this technology, I summoned help. Within five minutes, I had a dozen people in my house trained to deal with just this type of an emergency.

I would also like to note how this situation refutes the claim that 'without God, all things are permissible.' Without God, atheists have far more reason to set up institutions like 911 and rescue squads and moral institutions that say that it is better to help than to ignore those in need. With no God to touch Lesley with a loving hand and save her, her fate was in the hands of my fellow citizens, with whom I must be able to communicate efficiently, and who have to want to help her. Without a God, we need heroes more than ever.

They arrived in vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Over those same centuries in which "atheist materialist scientists" were studying electromagnetism, they also studied how gasses behave under different temperatures and pressures, and of how certain liquids, in the presence of oxygen and heat, create gas through combustion. Using this information, they learned to squirt liquid into a cylinder, add a spark, create a gas under pressure, and use that pressure to turn the wheels of a vehicle. Within minutes after I made my call, they were parked outside my house, and a team of individuals seeking to provide aid to those in need were inside the house looking after my wife.

When we got to the hospital, I was most grateful for hordes of people who had abandoned the idea that disease was the 'irreducibly complex' product of a perfectly benevolent God. It was once the case that the church said that we should not fight disease and illness -- that doing so was 'playing God', and that meant it was wrong. Countless people suffered and died under this philosophy. Fortunately, I lived in an era when people 'play God' on a daily basis, and were willing to take on the task of seeing to it that my wife, who would otherwise have died, would live instead. If that is not 'playing God', then nothing is.

I did not want a bunch of witch doctors with painted bodies chanting and dancing around the bed spreading incense as a way of asking God to save Lesley. Instead, I wanted her surrounded by people who were gifted at understanding the findings of those "atheist materialist scientists" who had been studying how the physical human body works. Those were the people who discovered that high temperature had a material explanation -- typically infection. Other "atheist materialist scientists" trying to discover how these bacteria live and die discovered a number of antibiotics, which they started putting into Lesley right away.

She is still not out of the woods. The fever is broken, and she is coherent again. However, there are some residual complications that we are concerned with.

There is no value in praying or asking a God that does not exist for any favors. What Lesley needs are people who understand the atheistic materialistic explanations for how the human body operates -- people who can then look at what is not working well and figure out how to correct the problems.

One could then respond that this is just another type of "faith" in another type of religion.

That's absurd. This "atheistic materialistic scientist" looks for results that can be replicated, and then selects those methods that produce the same results.

If only religion would seek to subject their faith to scientific tests in order to discover who is right and who is wrong, rather than resorting to bombs, guns, and laws that aim to diseducate children before they are old enough to understand what is being done to them. I have never heard of a religious group dividing malaria patients into two groups, subjecting one to the rituals of Religion A, while subjecting the second to the rituals of Religion B, to see which group God favors over the other. This would be one way to discover if God is a Christian or Muslim.

However, these tests do not provide any meaningful results. All religions are equally impotent. However, if we divide patients between one group that is prayed over, and another that obtains the benefits acquired by those "atheist materialist scientists" -- antibiotics, CAT scans, MRIs, saline solutions, dopamine, and surgery -- we see a significant difference in recovery rates.

To the degree that evangelicals attempt to denigrate "atheist materialist science", to that degree these evangelicals are putting barriers between the people whose lives and well-being are at risk and the answers that might actually help them.

It does not matter to me whether the doctor or the nurse believes in a God. I am not saying that a person must be an atheist to be a good doctor or a nurse. In fact, I will insist that such a statement is false. However, the good doctor or nurse does have to be able to read, understand, and apply the findings of the "atheist materialist scientists" who are working to discover the material causes and effects of changes in and to the human body.

Ultimately, the biggest threat to Lesley's life and well-being is ignorance. She will live or die according to how much those "atheist materialist scientists" have figured out about people in her position. She will live or die depending on how much her doctors and nurses understand of what has been learned. How much they understand will depend on how much society has promoted and encouraged its members to study whe findings of these "atheist materialist scientists."

I am not writing these blog entries to present cute little word games. These are issues of life and death -- real lives, and real death, and the quality of the lives that we can live.

Aftermath: March 15, 2006

My wife is home from the hospital and resting. She is missing a gall bladder, and now has a pacemaker. After the incision to install the pacemaker heals, the doctors say that she will be able to continue her life with no restrictions (other than avoiding strong magnetic fields).

The research that those "atheist materialist scientists" conducted -- looking for natural causes for natural events -- were entirely responsible for the fact that she has come home healthy. Those who want their loved ones to come home healthy as well have every reason to make sure that those "atheist materialist scientists" are able to continue to do their work unimpeded.

Indeed, anybody who cares about curing the sick needs to care that we have more, not fewer, "atheist materialist scientists" out there.

Subverting Democracy

I read a news report today saying that the Bush Administration is going after "leaks" with a vengeance.

After having been stung by reports of extraordinary rendition (kidnapping citizens of allied countries and shipping them to countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Egypt for torture), torture sometimes until death, secret Presidential orders suspending the 4th Amendment to the Constitution – an amendment that specifically states that there will be no spying on Americans without a warrant, and similar embarrassments, the Administration wants to take steps to make sure no more information gets out.

First, one has to wonder, with these being the types of things that the Bush Administration has already been caught in, we must now ask what else is out there that it is trying to hide.

Second, there are two issues associated with this.

Hypocrisy

First, with this crack down on leaks, what is the Administration going to do the next time it wants to reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative where it is useful in embarrassing a critic of the Administration?

This Administration that is cracking down on leaks is also an administration that leaks information when it serves a political purpose. Yet, it is doubtful that this crackdown will include those within the administration who has authorized or participated in these leaks.

This suggests that the Bush Administration is not actually interested in a crackdown against leaks. "Leaking information to the press" and “receiving leaked information” are not the crimes that this administration is actually seeking to punish. Rather, the crimes it seeks to punish are "revealing and/or receiving information that embarrasses the Administration". Those who leak information in ways that benefit the Administration will get an instant get-out-of-jail-free card. Only those who give information opposed to the Administration will be tracked down and punished.

This means that reporters, when they receive information, are going to have to make an evaluation. After hearing classified information, they will have to ask themselves, "Does this benefit the Administration?" If it does, then they will be able to receive the information and print it without repercussions.

If, however, they see the information as damaging to the Administration, they should take this as evidence that they are taking their freedom into their own hands if they should let the information out.

From this, we can rest assured that we, the public, are going to hear more pro-Administration information and less anti-Administration information. From this, we are somehow supposed to make an informed decision as to the quality of the work that this Administration does.

Furthermore, the question still remains: Given what we have learned about this Administration as a result of these leaks -- the torture of prisoners sometimes to death, spying on Americans, extraordinary renditions, and the like -- this still raises questions about what this Administration is doing that we have not yet heard about. These draconian measures are being used to keep people silent about something. What is it?

Democracy

Second, there is a fundamental conflict between a secret government and a democratic nation. In a democracy, the people decide what type of government they want. It is axiomatic that the people cannot make an informed decision unless they have information. Controlling information is a way of controlling the voter. It is a tool in an attempt to undermine democracy by depriving the people of the most important thing they need to make democracy work.

Clearly, the government must keep some information secret. In World War II, it would have been stupid for the government to announce that it was considering a plan to land forces on Normandy Beach on June 6th, 1942. Nor does it make sense to say that the government should have announced to the world that it had broken the Nazi Enigma code and was listening in on German communications.

Anybody who attempts to portray the objections to Bush's secrecy in these terms is missing the point. There were no questions about the moral legitimacy of landing allied troops at Normandy or of listening in on German military communications. These were, of course, perfectly legitimate activities.

However, the Bush Administration is not complaining about the exposure of clearly legitimate military plans. Instead, the Bush Administration is embarrassed precisely by the fact that it has been caught red-handed in actions that many Americans consider to be immoral – and which some would not want to support with their vote.

The problem with the American public learning about the NSA wiretapping is not that some secret (but clearly legitimate) operation has been revealed. The problem is that the people learned that the Bush Administration was doing something that they could not support.

The problem with extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, and torture until death is not that somebody revealed a daring military plan. It is that somebody exposed activities that many Americans who would otherwise support Bush would not be able to support.

The Bush Administration is not seeking to deceive the enemy in the war on terror as much as he is attempting to deceive the American voter. In this, the Bush Administration is subverting democracy. It is trying to people to vote for something by hiding the fact that it contains elements that those same people would vote against. In short, it seeks to gain votes under false pretext, creating a government that does not, in fact, represent the will of the people.

Summary

These points simply highlight another instance of Bush hypocrisy. The Administration claims that it is pro-Democracy. Yet, in its actions, it subverts democracy.

Democracy requires informed and knowledgeable voters. The Bush Administration need not tell the voters everything that it is doing. However, it has an obligation to tell the voters the moral principles that it will use in making those decisions.

This Administration lies. The leaks that have come to light are leaks that show that this Administration is evil by its own standards of right and wrong -- or at least the standards they profess up until the leak is known.

This still leaves us with one unanswered question. Since we know that this Administration has no moral compass, and that its primary interest in blocking leaks is to prevent the people from learning about the immoral activities it is engaged in, what other immoral activities are they trying to hide?

Thomas Monaghan's Model Catholic Community

Thomas S. Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza has started construction on what he hopes will become a model Catholic community – a community free of pornography, prostitution, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.

Since making his original statement, Monaghan’s plan came under fire from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups threatening lawsuits. Namely, they were protesting that the city’s government would violate the separation of church and state. Monaghan then backed off of his original statement saying that the Catholic rules will only apply to the university that will be a central part of the town, not the town itself.

Yet, it is reasonable to conclude that he would like the community to set these standards.

It has been a while since I discussed an issue like this, so I will add my standard caveat. It is not my job to report on what the law does or does not say – whether such a community would be unconstitutional. My job is to investigate what the law should be – the moral foundation that serves to distinguish just from unjust law.

There is reason to believe that a society would benefit from being particularly tolerant of citizens' attempts to build model communities. If a group of people build a community that thrives, then this tells others that they should head in the same direction. If the model community fails, others can see within this a lesson on what not to try. In both cases, society as a whole is better off with this information than without it.

Even core Constitutional values such as the separation of church and state should be open to question. Perhaps it is a mistake to separate church from state? If it is, then it would benefit us to find out. One way to find out would be to allow individuals such as Monaghan to attempt to create model communities that do not allow for this exception, and see how they fare. If they fare poorly, then the rest of the world can use that information to conclude, “Let’s not go that direction.”

Precedent

We already allow communities that blur the distinction between church and state to some extent.

For example, convents and monasteries are live-in communities governed by a strict religious code. Clearly, the principle that church and state should be separate does not apply to the governance of convents and monasteries.

If these are permissible, then it seems that it should be permissible for like-minded people to set up a larger version of a convent or monastery – one that is established for families rather than unmarried women and men. On this model, we also have the examples set by Amish and Hutterite communities that are scattered around this nation. These communities are also allowed to mix church and state -- they are governed by their own religious order.

Monaghan’s community is a larger example of the same type of situation.

Limits

There are, of course, limits to how far an experimental model community should be allowed to take its license to experiment. We limit the freedom of speech by saying that this does not allow a person to yell 'fire' in a crowded movie theater. Similarly, an individual cannot use freedom of speech to protect himself from civil suits of libel and slander. We also limit freedom of religion by prohibiting those religions that would chain a human being to an altar and cut out his beating heart or even allow a child to die from a medically treatable disease.

For the same types of reasons, the freedom to form an experimental community should not be allowed to cross certain moral lines. For example, it may not practice ritual human sacrifice. Nor should we allow an experimental slave community, or a community that arms and trains its members to commit terrorist acts or to practice and plan the violent overthrow of this or any other government.

The only one of these restrictions that Monaghan’s Catholic community might violate is the prohibition on human sacrifice. He may not be advocating an actual ceremony where a live human is killed and offered up as a sacrifice to God. However, as I argued in Faith and Human Sacrifice, there is more than one way to sacrifice another human to one’s God.

Two additional requirements for a permissible community of this type would be:

(1) A voluntary and fully informed decision to be a member of the community

(2) An easy exit for those who may want to leave. By “easy,” I mean that the community should not be allowed to hold people into the community under duress – for example, by holding on to the children. The legal presumption should be in favor of the individual seeking to leave, not the community seeking to retain members.

However, I see no reason to believe at this point that Monaghan’s village cannot stay within these limits.

Reason

I have sometimes wondered what would happen if a group of atheists were to try to create a model community – a community called “Reason.”

I actually lived in community that what something like this when I was a graduate student in the Philosophy Department of the University of Maryland. There were very few theists in that department – as teachers or as students (though the professors who were theists were still well respected). It was nice being able to enter into conversation with others knowing that certain questions were “behind you” and both parties were working on the assumption that no Gods exist.

“Reason” would be attending a school that did not constantly seek to denigrate them and their beliefs with pledges of allegiance to God and plaques on the walls saying that “WE” trust in God and those who did not shall not be thought of as one of the “WE” group.

It would be a place where the science teachers knew the difference between science and pseudo-science, where “intelligent design” gets discussed in a Philosophy class and nobody pretends that it is actually science.

The community would regard the psychic hotline the way a Catholic community would regard phone or internet sex, and spiritualists would have the same status as adult book stores in the Christian community.

Only, as I think about it, it seems somewhat bigoted and narrow-minded. It would seem that a better community would be one in which different people with different world views learned to live together and interact as friends and neighbors -- one that did not, in fact, teach its citizens to hate and to shut out those who held different views.

Misscelanious Issues in Space Development

Sadly, my vacation is now over. Tomorrow, I will tether my mind to the real world and start catching up on all of the things that I have missed over the past week.

However, that can wait until tomorrow. I have one more day to dream about a better future before I go back to examining how people are screwing up the present. So, in this posting, I would like to address four areas of controversy in space development.

(1) Man vs. Machine

A lot of electrons tend to get spilled in a debate over whether it is worthwhile to send humans into space. When it comes to doing scientific research, we can get good quality data from robots. Sending humans will increase the quality of the data somewhat. However, it is unfair to compare the quality of data from one human visitor versus one robotic visitor. The fair comparison would be the data between one human visitors and 100 robotic visitors that we can send for the same amount of money. Plus, we have to add concern for the loss of human life when we send people.

Proponents of manned missions tend to make a significant strategic error when they enter into this type of debate. They accept the assumption that research is the only legitimate reason to explore space. From this, they try to argue that actual astronauts can do a significantly better job collecting useful data. Scientists can see this for what it is. It is a rationalization – an example of believing what one wants to believe. There is no way that 1 astronaut can provide more data than 100 robots.

To see what is wrong with this argument, I would like to see a show of hands from the studio audience. How many of you spend one hundred percent of your time exclusively concerned with scientific research – to the degree that even eating and sex are mere tools for promoting scientific understanding?

That’s what I thought. None of you.

Okay, I am taking a guess, but I think it is a reasonable guess. I just spent a week in Las Vegas, and I would bet that with all of the people there, only a very small percentage of their time and money was spent in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

We humans have a right to be interested in things other than science. We have a right to be interested in such things as “being there.” In Las Vegas, there were tours for sale – helicopter tours of Las Vegas itself, as well as tours of the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. None of these people were going anywhere that no man has gone before. If they were merely interested in acquiring facts about the place of interest, they could have rented a video. However, their interest was in “being there.” For that, they were willing to pay a hundred times as much as it would have cost to send a machine to take pictures and transmit data.

To answer the advocate of robotic exploration, one does not need to argue that humans are better scientists than robots. It is sufficient to answer, “Fine. To the degree that we are interested in pure scientific data, we send robots. To the degree that we have other interests – such as an interest in “being there” – we send humans. Your robots cannot give us that.”

(2) Moon vs. Mars

The Mars Society argues that we should send missions to Mars and bypass the moon. The moon is a useless rock that lacks vital resources. Mars has everything humans need to survive. Moon enthusiasts assert that Mars is too far away and too expensive and a destination fit only for a hand full of government-paid astronauts.

I consider this to be a waste of time.

As to where the government should send people using taxpayer money, I see no reason to care. These adventures may make for great television (for as long as they last), but they will not have a significant effect on the course of space development. To have a great effect, they would have to consume huge quantities of tax revenue. There will always be better things to spend tax money on.

To see the course of space development, one needs to look at the options and ask where it makes sense for private business to spend its money. The true space enthusiast does not look for places to spend taxpayer money at a net loss, but looks for areas where investors will have reason to put their money to realize possible gain.

I have my ideas. However, it is important to note that these ideas are predictions, and not policy. Over time, it will be possible to see whether I am right or I am wrong.

My prediction is that most space development will not take place on either the moon or on Mars. I see two large space communities developing; one in low-earth orbit, and another in geosynchronous orbit. These communities will be built from material hauled in from smaller asteroids – not from the moon, which is too far down another huge gravity well.

There are asteroids that periodically come very close to earth on trajectories that require very little energy to transfer materials from them to Earth orbit. Low energy translates into “inexpensive.”

Why Earth orbit?

• From earth orbit it is a lot less expensive to interact with the surface of the earth.

• Tourists can visit earth orbit for the weekend.

• Scientists can send up experiments to conduct the zero-or micro-gravity part of the experiment then return the results to Earth where the scientists can use much better equipped earthbound laboratories.• Workers can build and repair earth-orbiting satellites, including weather and communication satellites, platforms for manufacturing materials useful on Earth, power satellites for transmitting power to Earth, and refueling and assembly stations for material going elsewhere in the solar system.

• Residents can communicate efficiently with Earth, participating in real-time conversations for the sake of business or pleasure.

• People in need of emergency medical care can more easily reach Earth and the earth-based medical facilities.

• People on Earth who can benefit from the strain of lower gravity can be more easily and economically transported to facilities in orbit.

• Individuals and businesses can select their gravity from zero gravity to normal earth gravity and beyond and can be set up to easily shift from one gravity level to another.

• Transportation costs from one station to another are minimal; a burst of a rocket engine and off it goes.All of these represent values that people have, and all of these values are better realized in space than on either the moon or Mars.

I want to repeat that this is not a prediction. I am not advocating any policy to promote the earth over the moon or Mars. In terms of policy, I would recommend only that the government get involved to the point that it needs to capture the value of certain public goods, such as preventing environmental degradation and saving the human race from extinction. From this, decide where those who are spending the money decide where they want to spend it.

(3) Mining Minerals

Imagine that Company M is a mining company. It is looking to open up a new mine for some particularly valuable material such as platinum. It has two options.

a) It can go into the sea and start strip-mining the ocean floor, cutting out huge sections the way it has engaged in the open-pit mining of resources found on land.

b) It can find an asteroid, already a pile of gravel flying in loose formation, and harvest the materials there.

The accountant will say that Option 1 is the least expensive – and, consequently, the most profitable. However, this is partially due to the fact that the mining company will be able to force others to pay some of its cost. Future generations will suffer the costs of environmental degradation, not the company that caused it, unless those costs are somehow written into the company’s license.

The asteroid, on the other hand, is a dead hunk of rock. There is no living ecosystem to destroy. Furthermore, the material will be hauled across the vacuum of space, still doing no harm to a living ecosystem. It can be shipped to a manufacturing plant located in space, fueled by the heat of the sun. It will draw no power from the earth’s energy grid, and its pollutants will not become a part of earth’s atmosphere or water supplies. Much of the work converting this ore to its final, most useful form can be carried out in space. Once the process is done, the material is loaded into a capsule and dropped out of the sky to a space port. This is the only act having any environmental impact.

If we were to figure in all of the costs of harvesting material from the ocean floor and force the mining company to pay those costs as well, it is not so clear that ocean mining has the lower cost. At the very least, we have an argument for demanding that the government either include these costs in mining operations, and/or conduct more and better research on how to take advantage of the mining opportunities that exist in the dead of space.

(4) Land Claims Recognition

Former ABC and CBS broadcast journalist Alan Wasser has been advocating a plan to have the United States government recognize and defend a land claim made by a private company that sets up a space settlement.

Specifically, though the Outer Space Treaty prohibits any government from claiming national sovereignty over the Moon, it does not prohibit a private company from claiming ownership. Wasser’s plan is for a private entity to set up a lunar station, then claim 600,000 square miles of land (4% of the total lunar surface). This would provide the incentive for a company to carry out such an operation.

Whereas I modeled my proposal yesterday on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Wasser is modeling his after the railroad grants later in the 1800s. As payment for building railroads across the Pacific, the Federal Government gave railroads every other section of land along their route. The value of this land helped the railroad companies to secure financing. One difference is that, in this case the US government will not give the land (it cannot claim it to give it). Instead, it announces that it will use whatever means are at its disposal to defend a company's claim to that land.

I have argued that space development contains elements of a “public good” that warrant government expenditures or subsidies. In spite of this, I see several problems with the land-claim option.

A) The land grant is offered for the completion of a particular task. In the 1860s, the task was the construction of a transcontinental railroad. In order for the land grant to be worthwhile, the task in question actually has to be a task made useful for space development. If the government does not pick the right task, then a huge amount of wealth is given over to nothing.

B) The land grant establishes monopoly power. We may assume that any company that goes to the moon and claims 600,000 square miles of land is going to claim that land around the lunar poles. These are the only places with near permanent sunshine and darkness that are useful locations for power and have the potential for water ice, which would be a valuable resource. A land grant may give the entirety of these resources to one or two companies.

C) Much of the world would recognize this maneuver as an attempt by the United States to claim territory in violation of current treaties. It would be presented to the world as a “claim of national sovereignty by proxy”. In this case, the private American company would provide the proxy.

D) Imagine the situation whereby Exxon Mobile was made the owner of the entire state of Alaska. The 600,000 square mile land grant is approximately equal to Alaska’s land area, and under Wasser’s terms it would become the private property of one company. Such a plan would take the concept of a “company town” to a whole new level, effectively creating a “company state”.

E) It contains an element of “rich gets richer.” Those who have the money to finance such a project (the rich) get rewarded with huge tracks of land (get richer). I have no problem with the rich getting richer. The problem comes from them doing so with government help using rigged contests that others lack the capacity to compete in.

F) Finally, other countries will certainly challenge the claim. China, for example, would have no incentive to refrain from landing its craft and setting up its base within the 600,000 square miles claimed by this American company. In order to truly establish these rights, the United States government would have to be prepared to back up the claim with the force of its military. Otherwise, the claim is meaningless.

The advantage of something like the University of Earth is that it is consistent with a set of principles that has already passed approval by the United Nations – a way to use space resources that benefit the poorer people of Earth. In this case, it would benefit children born to areas where their prospects for a bright future would otherwise be bleak.

I recognize Wasser’s concern. He wishes to find a way to finance space development other than through taxpayer revenue. The land grant would accomplish this goal. Yet, an economically more sensible option would be for the government to require mining companies to pay all of the costs associated with harvesting resources by cutting into a living ecosystem, while there would be no such costs for the company harvesting resources from the dead of space.

Wasser also provided another reason for this land grant legislation. If passed, it may inspire international negotiations on an alternative treaty. It would force other countries to the bargaining table. I do not have much to say about the plan as a political tactic. I do not do political tactics. I am only interested in the idea on its own merits.

I suspect that Wasser and his allies would object to the option I presented yesterday on the grounds that no body actually owns the lunar surface to have a right to give it away. Actually, if the governments of the world agree to a treaty using the territory to fund a University of Earth, then this is all that is required to establish a valid claim. Objections that this would still not be a legitimate claim can only be built on the assumption that there are a set of intrinsic natural moral laws governing the creation of such a claim. Intrinsic moral laws of this type do not exist.

Consistent with this, and with the idea that it is better to get a plan adopted than to stubbornly stick to one's own ideas, if Wasser musters support for his proposal, we are better off accepting it than fighting it.

Summary

This represents a few random thoughts on the development of space, from somebody who has given the issue a fair amount of thought. With this, I end my vacation, and I return to the real world.

Property In Space

Today's vacation activities included a viewing of the 3D Imax movie, "Magnificent Desolation." The movie contains 3D reenactments of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 15 moon landings in a great deal of detail. Pardon the pun, but it puts the moon landings in a whole new perspective.

It was a wonderful experience. I'm going to go see it again.

Combine this with my choice of reading material for this vacation, RETURN TO THE MOON edited by Rick N. Tumlinson with Erin R. Mendicott, and you can get an idea of where my mind likes to go when I am on vacation.

In spite of the sentiment that I feel towards the Apollo program and the sentimental attraction I feel for a return to the moon, I am not in favor of President Bush's program to establish a south pole lunar base. Part of the reason is that I expect this program to turn out like the Space Shuttle and International Space Station -- I expect it to be long on promise and short on delivery. There will be cost overruns and delays that will weigh heavily against the federal deficit and the funding crisis for Social Security, Medicare and the Iraq War.

Instead, I would like to direct the reader's attention to the activities of companies such as Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceDev, and Space Adventures, Inc. This time, while NASA stumbles, these companies may well race past, and beat NASA to the moon. NASA's lunar base will be cut because, if they went ahead with the mission, wealthy tourists will already be there to watch the landing first hand.

History

However, one thing that we must have for the development of space to extend beyond the possibility of tours for extremely wealthy tourists is a way for individuals and companies to own real estate on the moon.

Whereas the development of space is essential to the long-term survival of the human race, and the establishment of private property is essential to the development of space, the establishment of these property rights is a moral imperative. Of course, I am not talking about a moral imperative in the Kantian sense, but in the desire utilitarian sense. All things considered, more human desires hinge upon the survival of the human race than upon its demise.

While the United States was winning the technological race against the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon, the Soviet Union was winning the political race to institute communism in outer space. The "Outer Space Treaty" pretty much says that, when it comes to developing space, the resources to do so will come from each nation according to its ability, and be handed out to each nation according to its need. The "Moon Treaty" took this a step further, claiming explicitly that no heavenly body including the moon "shall become the property of any State, international intergovernmental, or non-government organization, national organization, or non-governmental entity or of any natural person."

In other words, the possibility of somebody owning an acre or two of lunar real-estate was prohibited.

Fortunately, none of the countries that could use space at the time, including the Soviet Union, agreed to those terms.

That was a good thing.

Without private property in space, there will be no private investment in space. Space will not be used for the benefit of anybody, even the poor, until and unless it is possible for companies and individuals to acquire secure deeds to territory on the moon and the resources beneath it.

No mining company is going to extract the metals that exist on the moon until they can sell those materials for a profit. No tourist organization is going to establish a vacation resort on the moon until it can pocket the money it gets from its customers.

Some of the sentiment associated with these treaties still remains. In 1996, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution stating that outer space may be used only "for the benefit and interests of all states, in particular the needs of developing countries." However, these expressions of sentiment leave open the question of how space will be used in the interest of developing countries. In particular, it leaves open the possibility of establishing property rights in a way that benefit these countries.

Free Market Purists

In discussing space development, I have encountered a number of free-market purists. These are people who agree with me that some sort of private property system is necessary for the development of space. Without it, space will remain unused, and the people of Earth will suffer for it. We may even cease to exist.

These purists have a simple two-step plan that they insist must be used to develop space resources. They will accept no compromise. Those steps are:

(1) Step 1: Convert the vast majority of the population of Earth to libertarianism.

(2) Step 2: Use this power to apply libertarian principles to space development.

Most that I have met are against any sort of compromise -- space must be settled on their terms or not at all. The practical implication of this is that space will not be settled. It will never get past Step 1.

It shows a great deal of arrogance to say, "Things must be done my way or not at all." The person who makes such a claim can only be taken as believing in his own infallibility -- that there is no possible way that those with different ideas might have a point. The moral failing of arrogance tends to be quite destructive -- in this case destroying the opportunities available by the development that could take place under some compromise position.

Land Grant Colleges

I think that the principle of using space to assist those on earth who are most in need of assistance is a perfectly admirable principle. This, in turn, suggests a possible solution to the question of how best to establish private property in space that Thomas Jefferson proposed over 200 years ago.

Jefferson had a similar problem to solve. The American government claimed ownership of land west of the Appalachian Mountains. (For the sake of this essay, let us set aside the issue as to whether these claims are legitimate. The moon does not have a native population of inhabitents who would, if they did exist, have a legitimate prior claim to the land.) Jefferson wanted to put this land into the hands of individual Americans. To accomplish this, he suggested dividing the land into townships. Each township was six miles wide and six miles long and divided up into thirty-six sections. Each section was a square mile. Jefferson had section 16 in each township reserved to finance public education. Much of Jefferson’s system was formalized in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Let us apply this principle to the moon. It can begin by chartering a University of Earth. When I think of such a university, what I have in mind is a boarding school where children from countries consumed by poverty a "University of Earth" I have in mind a school for children from countries consumed by poverty and war can go to stay. Students would be provided with good food, medical care, shelter, and peace while they studied the subjects taught at the school. Of course, we would not be able to save all of the children in this way, but we would be able to give some a better life than they would have otherwise had.

To fund this school, we divide the moon up into townships. Each township would be 10 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide. They would be further divided into 100 sections, each 1 square kilometer. Each section, in turn, would be divided up into 100 lots -- each 100 meters by 100 meters (approximately 2.5 acres). The major difference between this system and Jefferson’s system is that all of the land is given over to the University of Earth with the requirement that it start selling this land to fund its operations.

I imagine the University of Earth beginning its operation by establishing a Region of 100 townships in a 100km by 100km square. This will hold one million lots. If each lot were to sell for $100, then the University of Earth would be able to begin operations with $100 million.

There are companies selling real-estate on the moon today. Taking advantage of ambiguities in the law, they "claimed" the moon for their company and began selling sections. While I do not think that there is any chance that these organizations can claim a legal title to the moon, and that these deeds are novelty items of no real worth, they prove that there is a market for lunar territory. An organization with an internationally recognized right to sell the land, using it to fund a "University of Earth" to rescue children from the worst conditions on the planet, should be able to make some money.

There is enough real-estate on the moon for nearly 4,000 such offerings. However, let us not pretend that these numbers would survive a decision to put the whole moon up for sale at once.

It would be in the school's interest to hold onto much of the land to sell at later dates, as property values go up. It would also be in the school's interest to lease some territory rather than sell it, so that it can collect some rents over time without giving up the land, though ultimately the charter would require that most of the land be sold. Also, it would be useful for the University of Earth to hold on to some territory for its own use – for establishing research stations and, some day, a lunar campus. Of course, the school charter would not allow it to sell the Apollo landing sites. It would, instead, have the authority to establish tourist centers at such a place, where visitors can look out the glass window at the undisturbed site and go through a nearby Museum of Space Travel owned and operated by the University of Earth.

Consistent with all of this, the first offering could be 99 townships surrounding the Apollo 11 landing site, which the University of Earth would hold onto as its own for constructing a lunar campus and museum at some date.

One hundred million dollars from the first offering (and this is merely an estimate) would be enough for the University of Earth to begin operations. It would begin construction of its facilities while it selected the first set of students to attend. Meanwhile, it would prepare the second offering.

Governance

On the issue of governing the Region, one possibility would be to establish a "Property Owners' Association" where those who purchased lots would automatically become members. The POA would collect dues and, with the money, engage in regional projects. Perhaps one of the first projects would be to send a lunar orbiter to make some slow flights over the region to take detailed pictures of peoples’ plots. Of course, renters in residence (when there are some) will also be allowed to be members of this organization. We would not want to establish a system where only owners had a right to vote.

These Regions may eventually become counties in one or more lunar states. One principle that we should accept at the start is that those who choose to live in space have a right to govern themselves at some point. Just as America adopted a way for territories to become equal states within the union, the settlement of space should include criteria for space settlements to become nations enjoying a status equal to that of any government on Earth.

Conclusions

I am not under any delusions that the leaders of the world will start debating the merits of this suggestion in the near future. I am not under any delusions that they will even become aware of it.

But, I am on vacation and entitled to certain flights of fancy. I would suggest that this essay is best used as a case study that illustrates many of the principles that I have written about elsewhere, and applying them to a specific concern.

Those principles include:

(1) A respect for the fact that policies that inhibit private property rights also inhibit growth and that secure private property is essential in any area where we wish to attract private investment and growth.

(2) A concern for the future of humanity -- specifically, a concern that humanity has a future. This means turning attention towards issues that are related to the future of humanity. (3) A concern for children who, like all of us, have only one life to live and can be given a better life, and an interest in making a better life for children born to regions where they have little hope.

(4) The value of knowledge and understanding as the best tools we have available for solving all of our other problems and a willingness to direct institutions to provide more people with a better education than they would have otherwise had.

(5) A devotion to political principles that insist on extending representation to all residents regardless of whether they own property as well as allowing those who face unique situations and environments to govern their own future rather than owe their allegiance to a distant government with different concerns.

(6) A willingness to compromise – to listen to the concerns of others and to make allowances for them, rather than to assert, “I am the master of all wisdom and only those concerns that I share serve as the legitimate foundation for any policy I would support.”

These principles are applicable to a number of areas. Applying them to the issue of space development, we can derive something like the proposal I have suggested above.

The Fate of Humanity

My status while being on vacation, where I have little opportunity to keep up on the daily news and little time to research specific stories, leaves me with an opportunity to contemplate "big picture" issues. One of the issues that concerns me is the fate of humanity.

I have heard some respond to this concern by saying, "What does it matter; we will all die anyway in the cosmic crunch or whatever fate the universe has in store for us."

On this issue, we do not know that this is true just yet. Even if it is, just as I would prefer to die later rather than earlier, there is reason to prefer that the human race die later rather than earlier. The prospect that life is temporary is a poor argument for suicide.

One of the propositions that I hold to be consistent with atheism is that we exist in a universe that is substantially indifferent as to whether we, as a species, continue to exist. For as long as we do exist, the universe does not care whether we live well or suffer. There is ample proof of this in the fact that the universe contains disease, natural disasters, and a human psychology that lends itself to more violence and destruction than is good for us.

Because the universe is indifferent to our survival or our well-being, it is left to us to protect our survival and well-being. Our weapon against disease rests in our ability to understand them and the ways in which we can avoid their ill effects -- through immunization or treatment. We must study naturlal disasters so that we can build warning systems that give us an opportunity to protect ourselves and responding to the worst effects. We must study human nature so thta we can learn how to best organize our societies so as to minimize the harms that humans inflict on each other.

This view -- the view that we must study nature scientifically and use what we learn to help the human race survive and survive well -- sits in contrast to two religious views that tell their followers not to be concerned about the long-term status of the human race.

End-World Scenarios

One set of religious beliefs that tell their followers not to worry about the long-term status of the human race are those that believe that we do not have a long-term future. These are people who believe that a religious "end times" is near and that that the human race has no long-term future to worry about.

Clearly, if the world is going to end in the next few years, we will not need to worry about the national debt. If you are sitting in a fancy restaurant and you know that the whole building will come crashing down before you get your check, why not enjoy the most expensive options on the menu? You will never actually have to pay for it, right?

Another issue that the end-world believer does not have to worry about is the fate of the planet's health -- also known as "the environment". It is like, if you know that you only have a month to live, then it would seem a waste of time to exercise and watch what one eats. Instead, it is time to eat what one enjoys and ignore the consequences. They are consequences that the end-world scenario tells us we will never face.

The set of risks and concerns that we can ignore include not only man-made threats such as national debt and environmental damage. It includes natural threats. There are natural threats on a cosmic scale that seriously threaten the quality if not the actual possibility of human survival. Some we know about, such as the potential impact of a long-period comet. There may be others that we are not yet aware of, such as a plague or a dramatic natural change in our sun or earth climate. If the end of the world is near, we do not need to devote time and energy to these concerns.,/p>

I am aware of the fact that different end-world beliefs have different expectations for the future of humanity. I have heard it said that even those who believe that the end-times are near are supposed to consider the possibility that they are wrong and prepare for the future. Yet, even if this is offered as a prudent plan, end-time beliefs will interfere with the costs one is willing to bear to ensure the future of the human race.

A patient with a cancer from which the chances of survival are very low may be told to live his life as if he will live a typically long life. However, the existence of the cancer and low chance of survival will almost certainly argue against him suffering any huge burdens to obtain a future that he thinks is neearly impossible.

All of this suggests that end-world ideas might prevent people from putting in the effort that might otherwise keep the human race alive in an apathetic universe.

Benevolent Guardian

Another religious belief that threatens the future well-being, if not the existence, of the human race has gotten very little coverage. This is the view that we do not need to worry about our future because God would not allow such bad things to happen to us. Since God made us in His image, it would be insane to worry babout some natural or man-made event destroying us before God's plan is fully revealed, or so the argument goes.

The benevolent guardian believer is like the child who believes that his parents will keep him safe. Such a child can do whatever he pleases, confident that an all-knowing and all-benevolent guardian will not allow him to come to harm. Such a guardian has either removed the threats, or stands ready to intervene before we, in our ignorance, do too much damage.

The result is substantially the same as it is for the end-world believer. There are many things that these people will see little reason to invest much concern with. These are objects for God to be concerned with; not us.

Earth Sciences and Space Science Research

In his 2006 budget, the Bush Administration put on hold programs having to do with earth-science and space-science research. Much of this money is being spent on Bush's project to create a lunar base.

We can see how both an end-world or a benevolent guardian dictator would view earth and space sciences as unimportant. To cush a person, money spent on these types of projects is wasted. Either the end-times will strike before we suffer serious harm, or God will protect us from these threats, eliminating our need to learn about them.

Both of these views are in contrast to the aethist. The atheist knows that there are traps out there that will threaten to destroy humanity or significantly impare the quality of life unless we find them first. Such a person will see little interest in postponing scientific research when its timely delivery of that information is useful to protecting the quality of our lives and even the possibility of our survival.,/p>

The universe is indifferent to our survival. Looking at a photo of a nearby galaxy, I say to myself with confidence that somewhere in that mass of stars a civilization came into existence. Then disaster struck, leaving nothing but a shell of abandoned buildings for future archaeologists to explore.

Two religious options -- end-world beliefs and benevolent guardian beliefs -- put our survival more at. They tell people not to put the effort into saving the human race that they otherwise would. The increase the possibility that some day we will have opened our eyes to discover, when it comes to detecting and avoiding some natural or man-made threat, we have done too little and too late.