Author Archive for The Barefoot Bum

Money and control systems

Published

on May 20, 2012

"Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader’s instinct that what seems sensible is sensible, and what seems nonsense is nonsense," said John Maynard Keynes in his 1929 pamphlet "Can Lloyd George Do It?". This is the chief task of any honest economist: not to explain a recondite and subtle science to the ill-informed layman, but rather to cut through the mass of lies and bullshit that cowardly, dishonest, and lazy economists have promulgated to confirm to the lay person that many of her instincts are correct. Of course, economics, especially macroeconomics, does have some counter-intuitive elements, but those counter-intuitive elements derive directly and simply from an intuitive basis. Bullshit — myths, lies, equivocations, circumlocutions, and willful ignorance — always grows around the justification of any class rule. Money is, of course, the basic justification for the rule of the capitalist class, and the basis of any class rule can never stand honest, clear-sighted scrutiny; class rule draws bullshit like nectar draws hummingbirds. To start to cut through the bullshit, therefore, we have to understand the nature of money: money is the primary element of a socially constructed economic control system.

What is a "control system"? There are many complex systems that we can usefully divide into a concrete real system and an abstract control system. For example, we can divide up a jetliner into its real system and its control system. The real system consists (primarily) of the engine(s), wings, horizontal and vertical stabilizers, and fuselage: the components that generate and/or directly respond to the four fundamental forces of flight: lift, thrust, gravity, and drag. The control system consists of everything in the cockpit: the yoke, pedals, and throttle; the gauges, dials, and indicators; and, of course, the pilot(s).

The division between real and control systems is not and cannot be absolute: for it to be a control system, the control system must somehow physically modify and respond to the real system. Turning the yoke changes the physical position of the ailerons, which affects the physical lift generated by the wings, causing the aircraft to turn. A change in the attitude of the aircraft causes a physical change to the attitude indicator (artificial horizon). Furthermore, the purely real system can have control effects. On an ordinary aircraft, the horizontal stabilizers on the tail generate a small amount of negative lift (the aerodynamics push down on the tail); when the pitch of the aircraft changes, the force on the tail changes in such a way that the aircraft returns automatically to a stable pitch. The horizontal stabilizers directly control the attitude of the aircraft.

But while the division is not absolute, it is determinable. The key is abstraction. The real system is directly connected to real-word physics. The fuselage must be streamlined to minimize drag. The wings must be shaped just so to generate lift. The engines must combine fuel and oxygen together (and do a lot of other mechanical things) in very specific ways to generate thrust. In contrast, the control system is much less connected to real-world physics. There's no particular extrinsic physical reason we have to use yoke, pedals, and throttle in the specific way that we usually do to control an airplane; we could, if we chose, use knobs, buttons, and switches. All that's necessary is that the control system have the degrees of freedom necessary to represent all desired change and states of the real system. But fundamentally, the more concrete a component is, the more it is part of the real system; the more abstract, the more it is part of the control system. Another key indicator is "removability": we can remove the entire control system of an aircraft and it will still fly; we cannot remove the real system, no matter how the control system is arranged.

Similarly, we can divide economics into a real system and a control system. The real system is people physically working to produce goods (physical things) and services for exchange with other people. The control system is money and the financial system. Work and exchange are concrete: we must do very specific physical things to produce a loaf of bread, a coat, a hat, a computer, or an aircraft. The control system of economics is money. Money is abstract: there's no particular physical reason we have to use small pieces of paper printed in green with pictures of dead presidents on them to control who works where and who consumes what's produced. Indeed, while money exists throughout recorded history, there have been many different control systems, notably communalism, barter, as well as slavery, and serfdom. We could have a real economy without any control system (pure barter), but we have no economy at all if we have only money, without people working and exchanging goods and services.

Indeed, the idea that money itself is part of the real economy, as ineluctable and directly physical as the horizontal stabilizers, is so nonsensical that it takes the most elaborate theological faith to hold that view. That's one reason it's so difficult to argue with hard-money libertarians; like Christians, they are so committed to a nonsensical delusion that they lose the ability to discuss the issue in good faith. Money might or might not be the best control system*, but the intuitive idea that money really is a control system is one that must be grasped and held onto despite the sophistry of the economic theologians.

*It's not the best, but it's better than some others.

Right and wrong

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on May 12, 2012

Being wrong isn't a sin; not trying to get it right is.

--Paul Krugman

Where the Wild Things Are

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on May 8, 2012

And he sailed off through night and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are.

Maurice Sendak died today

Atheist spam

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on May 7, 2012

Someone is spamming my comments with links to the Rationally Speaking Podcast. Please stop. I do not accept spam from anyone. You may comment only if you want to contribute to a discussion.

If the person spamming my comments is not affiliated with the podcast, please let me know in here comments or by email. I'm not sure what I can actually do about it, but I'd like to know.

Why all the bad philosophy?

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 30, 2012

The article in Psychology Today, which I'm informed, perhaps unreliably, hardly stands as a bastion of careful, logical thought. So perhaps that might explain why Dr. Steven Reiss's article, "Why All the Atheists?," displays such a profound misunderstanding of atheism.

Reiss starts by previewing his upcoming book, How God Inspires Us: Religion, Personality, and the Contradictions of Human Nature. In this book, Reiss promises that he will "suggest that religion's sacred role in society is to help people experience their life as meaningful." Because Reiss sees religion in this way, however, he goes on to assume that atheism, in setting itself up in opposition to religion, must therefore take the opposite view. "Meaning arises from purpose," Reiss asserts, and a "true" atheist, according to Reiss, is one who rejects any meaning or purpose for life: "Is the meaning of life real or an illusion? Does your life have meaning? If you say 'yes,' you are a believer. If you say 'no,' you are a true atheist."

Curiously, however, Reiss undermines his own point. Instead of showing us how atheists actually do reject real meaning, he makes two dubious criticisms of atheism. First, he claims, without support, that atheists oppose a straw man, and fail to explain mysticism. "Many atheists think the word 'god' refers to a grandfather in the sky looking down on us. They then reject this god. What they do not do is explain mystical experience, which many serious scholars take as the true origin of religion."

He then goes on to complain he does not understand why the atheist agenda promotes some sort of intuitive/analytical dichotomy. "It is claimed that religious people are presumably not analytical. I don't understand the point." He even quotes (without attribution) the claim that "smart people are atheists." Reiss does not believe that claiming a positive correlation between intelligence and atheism is insulting and does not provide insight.

While these might be interesting claims, even if they were precisely true, they utterly fail to support his thesis, that the debate really is between meaningfulness and meaninglessness. But are these points true?

First, it is ever the claim of atheists that large numbers of theists define a god as what is in essence a "grandfather in the sky," indeed what often seems a malevolent and sometimes insane grandfather. We atheists are simply responding to that conception of a god. If Reiss wants to dismiss this claim as a misreading of any kind of religious thought, then let him do more than simply mention that it fails to address how he himself views religious thought.

Second, I vaguely recall reading about some study that measured analytical and intuitive thought compared between religious and nonreligious people. Since I have not examined this study at all, much less in detail, I'm unable to offer an opinion about its conclusions or the quality of its methodology. But so what? If Reiss refers to this study, it is incompetent and dishonest to attribute the opinions of specific individuals to a group; it is proper to name the individuals and criticize them directly. If Reiss is not referring to that study, then his charge without support is reprehensible.

Finally, Reiss charges that atheists fail to explain mysticism. But what, precisely, is to be explained? Yay, William James was "a Harvard professor and a brilliant observer of human behavior." So what? Brilliant people are wrong, albeit brilliantly wrong, perhaps more often than mundane people. To see the world in a new way requires genius; to determine whether that new way is accurate, or to understand what that "new way" actually means requires more mundane critical thought. Simply accepting statements of truth at face value ignores half the intellectual work that always needs to be done.

Furthermore, there's a curious contradiction in Reiss's piece. On the one hand, he makes a sharp distinction between theism, which is about meaning, and science, which is about cause and effect: "The theist holds that life has meaning, and that science, based as it is on cause and effect, cannot explain meaning." Yet he charges that atheists have failed to explain something other than meaning; we have failed to explain "mystical experience." If Reiss does not believe that mystical experience provides scientific support for a theistic meaning, then atheists would not fail to explain mystical experience; we would simply fail to include meaning in our explanation. After all, Reiss does not say that atheists (scientists) have failed to explain mundane experiences, such as seeing things fall, even though we have not included any sort of "meaning" in our explanations. If Reiss does believe that mystical experience provides scientific support for theistic meaning, then he would not draw the sharp dichotomy between theism and science. Reiss seems to be trying to have his cake and eat it too.

Of course, atheists do not deny meaning; we merely deny that meaning is supernatural. Meaning and purpose are definitely present, but they are entirely human. The project of humanity is not to discover some meaning that is "out there", presumably in Reiss's opinion in the mind of a god. Our project, rather, is to create meaning, create purpose. Yes, science cannot discuss meaning, because every particular conception meaning is neither "true" nor "false"; it is neither an accurate nor an inaccurate description of objective reality. But just because it a particular meaning is not a representation of the world as it is does not make it without value.

Indeed, the atheist project is not against meaning, but against the claims that specific, particular meanings are supernaturally privileged. We are against the idea that, "My idea of meaning is better than yours because God says so," and we are against the "because God says so" part. (We do support the idea that some ideas of meaning are better than others, but on the basis of how well they conform to our scientific, sociological, political, and (ironically) psychological understanding of human minds.

If Reiss wants to promulgate a particular theory of religion, then do so: he should expect that criticism be addressed to him discuss his theory of religion. But by making the implicit claim that anyone criticizing religion in any way is necessarily criticizing his particular kind of religion, and by writing unsourced, straw-man slanders against atheists as a class, Reiss displays himself as incompetent and dishonest.

Some people say

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 29, 2012

I really dislike the Fox News "some people say" move. It's almost always illegitimate. In the typical Fox News sense, it's used to introduce a criticism of a point of view without having to specify the details of that criticism. To paraphrase the probably apocryphal Lyndon Johnson story, The point is not that anyone believes one's opponent is a pig fucker; the point is make him deny it. In another sense, it can be used to ascribe to an opponent a position that is at best in the minority, and at worst is a complete straw man. In essence, the "some people say" is a classic framing device.

Like any device, it can be used legitimately. If it really is uncontroversial common knowledge that a position is widely and explicitly held, then "some people say" can be used simply to provide context for an argument. "Some atheists say," one might note, "that no god exists." Or, "Some Christians say that Jesus is the son of God." Another legitimate use is to simply introduce a specific argument. "Some philosophers argue," for example, "that ideas are the highest reality."

But even when the use is technically legitimate, however, there are better ways to use it legitimately, ways that do not facilitate dishonest framing or blatant straw men. So when I see "Some atheists say," I usually whip out my bullshit meter, and I'm rarely disappointed.

If philosophy has any value at all, it is the investigation, use, and promotion of good argumentation. One reason I dislike philosophy is that good argumentation seems to be not the rule but the exception. In "Common Atheist Mistakes," Luke Muehlhauser constructs a criticism of atheism that consists of nothing but logical fallacies, all introduced with the "some people say" fallacy noted above.

First, Muehlhauser asserts that "Religion is not the root of all evil, but some atheists like to think it is." The assertion that some atheists actually do think religion is the root of all evil of course requires support. But Muehlhauser's support is deceptive. First, he cites Richard Dawkins' documentary, The Root of all Evil?. However, Muehlhauser buries in a footnote the concession that Dawkins himself denies the absolutist sense that Muehlhauser criticizes:

To be fair: in an interview with Reginald Finley, Dawkins said that he wanted to call it The God Delusion, and that "no one thing is the root of 'all' anything; religion is not the root of all evil." Still, many atheists think all or most evil comes from a single source: religion. To me that is absurd.

Muehlhauser is intentionally using the denial of a position to support his assertion that the position is common. We can count this only as intentional dishonesty.

One instance of obviously intentional dishonesty is enough to discredit not only the writer but also the publisher as unreliable, but I enjoy piling up the score against liars. So I'll continue to highlight the complete vacuity of Muehlhauser's argument.

Muehlhauser then tries to support his assertion that atheists believe that religion is the root of all evil by appealing to the subtitle of Christopher Hitchens' book, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. We should hold self-styled philosophers, even amateur philosophers, to a pretty high standard of logical validity. And of course, the idea that "religion poisons everything" is logically different from the idea that "religion is the root of all evil.*" A logical fallacy is a logical fallacy, and as Muehlhauser is nitpicking atheist claims, it's hardly unfair to nitpick his.

*If you need help with the logic, as in comments; I'll be happy to explain in detail. But my readers are usually more competent in simple logic than Mr. Muehlhauser.

Additionally, Muehlhauser commits the fallacy of uncharitable interpretation. A more charitable way to read Hitchens' title would be to read it as, "Religion poisons everything [it touches]," which would render invalid Muehlhauser's trivial criticism that religion has not poisoned math, Renaissance art, sailing, or hats. And even his argument against the uncharitable interpretation is just an argument from incredulity: Muehlhauser simply finds it "hard to believe that religion poisons everything."

What is especially irritating is that a lot of atheists really do make a strong claim, a claim that deserves serious critical examination: religion is absolutely useless. Religion per se gives us nothing good; anything good that happens to be somehow attached to religion would always be at least just as good, and usually better, without the religious part. In his haste to commit the fallacy of uncharitable interpretation, Muehlhauser misses a chance to make an actual substantive contribution to the discussion.

Wow... a lot of fallacies in just one paragraph. But the fallacies continue.

Muehlhauser's next claim is that atheists use myths as facts. He cites specific atheists claims: atheists comprise less that 1% of the prison population, in contrast with 10% of the general population; that "Muslims destroyed the library of Alexandria"; and that "the idea of Jesus as God did not arise until 300 years after Jesus’ death. at the Council of Nicea."

Muehlhauser might well be factually correct on the second two points; if so, certainly no one should use these arguments.

First, I at least skim a fairly large sample of atheist writing, and I rarely see any of these elements in atheist writing. I could be wrong, but Muehlhauser makes no effort at all to establish that these errors occur with enough frequency to constitute a common atheist mistake. Again, it seems dishonest to call a criticism of a few historically naive commenters as a common mistake.

More importantly, we have to be very careful to distinguish between people taking one or another position on a controversial topic with intentionally ignoring evidence from bias. Intellectual inquiry is a social process, and we have to look at any difficult issue from many sides to come to agreement about the truth. Muehlhauser fails to make this distinction. According to Muehlhauser:

Every people group retells history in a way that favors itself. Liberals and conservatives, socialists and anarchists, Christians and Buddhists, hockey fans and NASCAR nuts – we all have some myths that make us look good. Atheists are no exception.

Clearly, Muehlhauser is going beyond the give-and-take of controversial intellectual inquiry. But is this position justified?

Muehlhauser charges that atheists' assertion that atheists comprise 1% of prison population is "either made up or based on a questionable 1925 study." But a quick Google search reveals, for example, Percentage of atheists, which cites a 1997 study by Denise Golumbaski of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. What's worse, Muehlhauser asserts that atheists are more or less obviously wrong, the "truth", according to Muehlhauser, is found in this study, Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference. The problem is that Muehlhauser's "truth" is a non-peer-reviewed study published by an obviously biased source, Adherents.com, hardly proof positive. The issues regarding Muslims burning the Library of Alexandria and the divinity of Jesus are similar: these are controversial claims, with intellectuals exploring all sides of the issue. I'm not saying that Muehlhauser is necessarily wrong, but saying that one side of an unresolved controversy is evidence of bias is again prejudicial and dishonest.

This article is getting long, so I'll cover Muehlhauser's remaining errors briefly. First, he accuses atheists of "bad scholarship" in calling the Hebrew word elohim a plural. This is such a narrow, technical issue of Biblical scholarship that calling it a "common" atheist error is simply ridiculous. Muehlhauser weighs in calling assertions that the Jesus stories are unfairly compared to other myths "simply false. [emphasis original]" But parallels are definitely a live controversy in academic scholarship, as historian Dr. Richard Carrier has been recently discussing on his blog. And finally, Muehlhauser condemns atheists' "dogmatic materialism" without offering any evidence whatsoever that this is a common theme.

Just because one disagrees does not mean that they are stupid, lazy, or dishonest. But using egregiously bad argumentation, unsourced assertions, faulty logic, and unjust pejoration does make Muehlhauser stupid, lazy and dishonest.

The Barefoot Bum 2012-04-27 14:26:00

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 27, 2012

You stupid douchenozzle. You truly don't fucking get it, do you? You poor motherfucker. You're gonna miss everything cool and die angry.

— Patton Oswalt

The Stupid! It Burns! (burden of proof edition)

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 23, 2012

Unveiling Atheism

Mohamed Ghilan tells us that John Stewart Mill argued that "In circumstances in which the great majority hold a belief of any kind, what the dissenting voice must do is bring forth their case and prove it." Ghilan concludes, therefore, "The proposition that the believer must provide evidence for God, and until then we should remain either atheists or agnostic is problematic when we have had, since the beginning of history records, humans having engaged in some form of religious rituals and having acknowledged the existence of God."

Sigh. I so hate to belabor the obvious.

The atheist program is precisely to bring forth our case and prove it. One element of our case is that the existence of God, when considered as a neutral proposition, outside its social context, is a positive assertion that demands the burden of proof.

Furthermore, atheists really don't much care about the purely private beliefs of others; what we do care about is the positive religious assault on science, law, and secularism. The religious themselves are dissenting to the beliefs of a great majority, and we demand their burden of proof. God wants us to subjugate women, oppress and marginalize gays, keep the races separate? All these positions, at least in the United States, dissent from beliefs that are if not in the great majority at least widely held.

When it comes to the issue of evidence, it seems to be a word that is used in an unrestricted fashion by atheists to support their final conclusions. If anything, this reflects either a simpleton mind, or an ulterior motive driving atheists. The broad term “evidence” is defined as a body of information that points towards the validity of a claim. However, because there are several types of evidence, we cannot simply make the broad request of anyone to provide “evidence”. Depending on the matter at hand, we must define the type of evidence we need in order to be convinced. At the very least, we should qualify whether we want direct evidence, or can be persuaded by indirect evidence if it is strong enough.

The sentences are grammatically correct, but there's no actual meaning there.

Can any evidence, irrespective of type, be sufficient to prove that God exists? It would seem that from the atheist perspective the answer to this question is a simple “No”. Regardless of what type of evidence they are provided with, atheists will always have some response to it, which can be frustrating to the believer as they list all the reasons why a belief in God is actually the more rational position to hold. The problem is not with the evidence from an empirical sense. The problem is with the rationalization process that comes after being presented with the evidence, which leads us into a discussion about the nature of knowledge, which we can address elsewhere. [emphasis added]

Ah. "Elsewhere." Short for, I think, nowhere.

Evidence must be examined. That's why we have two advocates at a trial. If you think your evidence is being unfairly dismissed, you should provide evidence for such a claim.

The interesting question for the science-worshipping atheist to answer is whether it is about the belief in God, or the consequences of believing in God that are a problem. In other words, is it a matter of acknowledging God’s existence, or a matter of acknowledging what it means to their life after acknowledging God’s existence?

It's the former.

Moreover, what these science-worshipping atheists failed to recognize is that in their rejection of God, they have taken their own egos to be gods and became autodeists. Now they are organizing to form their own brand of religion full of moral theory and even practices, which they began to call people to so they can be “saved”. How ironic?

Yeah.

Sacking the City of God

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 15, 2012

It's interesting to contrast PZ Myers upcoming speech, "Sacking the City of God," with timberwraith's recent diatribes against atheism: Agnostic and A Movement of Disappointment.

It's hard to see Myers speech as anything but precisely that which timberwraith finds objectionable about atheism. From the title to the conclusion:

I have a different metaphor for us, my brothers and sisters in atheism. We are not sheep; there are no shepherds here. I look out from this stage and I see 4000 pairs of hunter’s eyes, 4000 hunter’s minds, 4000 pairs of hunter’s hands. I see the primeval primate hunting band grown large and strong. I see us so confident in our strength that we laugh at our enemies. I see a people thinking and planning, fierce and focused, learning and building new tools to conquer new worlds.

You are not sheep. You, my brothers and sisters in atheism, are a fierce, coordinated hunting pack — men and women working together, and those other bastards have cause to fear us. So let’s do it: make them tremble as we demolish the city of god.

Myers exudes confidence, even perhaps arrogance. We are right, we atheists, and we know we're right, and being right gives us power. It's the power to demolish the "City of God," the edifice of superstition, the idea that we can privilege this or that moral or even scientific belief, good or bad, by an appeal to private knowledge of the mind of God.

Instead, we know we can learn about the universe, of which the human mind and the human "spirit" are fully a part, and we can use that knowledge to make a better life, not just for those who hold the same arbitrary superstitions out of tribal identity, but for everyone, for only reason and knowledge are truly universal. And since we can do so, we must do so: to remain silent is to sit idly by while a fellow human being drowns; to protect religion from criticism and, yes, mockery, is block others from rescuing the drowning man.

Contrast this with the core of timberwraith's diatribe:

I am one small person, facing the inscrutable vastness of a universe that is beyond my full comprehension. What I see is nothing more than a window’s breadth of existence. I can not say with certainty that no aspect of this realm is aware in a way that is beyond human understanding. Nor can I claim with certainty that such an awareness exists.

Timberwraith frames her position around certainty, but that's just a cop-out. One does not need certainty to know, and atheists do not claim certainty. We do claim knowledge, so it must be the knowledge she claims we have only pretension to. She accuses us not of unjustified certitude but actual ignorance and blindness. Timberwraith does not seem to like knowledge: "And so, I prefer the unknown. I walk through a land without boundaries. I cast my destiny into the void of formlessness…"

In a sense, she's absolutely correct: what she doesn't like about atheism is not just a few "bad apples" but what atheism (and New Atheism even more so) is all about.

Like the religious, atheism has a moral vision, a vision of things ought to be, not just for ourselves as individuals, but for society as a whole. Like the religious, we claim to know our moral vision is correct. Like the religious, we are willing and able to use social tools to bring about that moral vision. If you want to tell me that there are some deep similarities between the religious and atheists, especially the New Atheists, I will happily admit the similarity.

But similarity is not identity. We are the same in many ways, but there is a crucial difference: when we claim to know, we claim to know not by private faith or authority but by public reason. When we, as humanists, say our moral vision is that everyone ought to be as happy as we can manage to be, we say that because we know by reason that people want to be happy. When we say that men and women, Black people and white people, gay people and straight people, ought to be treated the same, it's because we know by reason that there are no morally relevant differences between these categories. Those who say there are differences rely on either outright lies or unreasonable, irrational bullshit.

Timberwraith has a moral vision too, I think. It's hard to say what it is, but she must have one because she does not say merely that atheism is not her cup of tea; we are wrong and bad. You have to have a moral vision to make that kind of distinction. And she's willing and able to use social tools — mockery, insult, appeals to emotion, a condemnation of ideas that are at the core of many people's identity — to promote her moral vision. Good for her: she is a human being, and having and promoting a moral vision is what people do.

I can't know, but I can speculate, and I suspect timberwraith's moral vision is a deep abhorrence of conflict. What seems to incense the soi-disant "moderate" critics of New Atheism is just that: we have abandoned our bland "why can't we all just get along" secularism and embraced the conflict as a conflict, and we intend to win. We have abandoned the mode of "let us reason together" because we know that religious belief is unreasonable; we would rather embrace conflict than unreason.

If that's not your moral vision, you must, like timberwraith, set yourself at odds with atheism and the New Atheists. If it is, though, if you want a reasonable society, you should join us.

An agnostic critique of atheism

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 13, 2012

Ok. You don't like us. Noted.

The Stupid! It Burns! (the show about nothing edition)

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 10, 2012

Atheism: Much Ado About Nothing :

The atheist convention is quite odd in many respects. They will insist that atheism is not a belief to be proved, but a non-belief. They will argue that they simply do not believe in God – so there is nothing to prove, nothing to argue for. Yet they will have a full three days celebrating this. They will be carrying on about nothing.

All this raises the obvious question: why bother? Why spend so much time, money and effort on, well, nothing? We recall that the hit TV show Seinfeld was “a show about nothing”. But these international atheist shindigs seem to be simply much bigger versions of shows about nothing.

The Stupid! It Burns! (no good atheists edition)

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on April 10, 2012

No Good Atheists:

There are actually no good atheists. ...

If you could look into the secret places of many of [atheists'] lives, I’m sure you would see a pattern of behavior that is far from moral. ...

Atheism is actually a form of idolatry. The idol in this case is man himself. ...

I would argue that there is no such thing as an atheist. Atheists demonstrate the highest form of deception and hypocrisy, denying outwardly what they cannot avoid inwardly. Years ago when I was an atheist, I thought about God all the time. I couldn’t get away from the overwhelming evidence, both inwardly and outwardly, that my Creator existed. It’s the same with all atheists. ...

Think about it—what could be more immoral than denying the existence of the being who created you, gives you health and food and opportunity, and even the very breath you use to deny his existence? ...

The next time an atheist says, “You don’t have to believe in God to be moral,” look at it as an open door to share the gospel. Tell him he can’t be moral at all and deny the existence of his Creator. Walk him through the arguments I’ve given in this article and the Bible passages I listed. And then tell him about the work of Jesus Christ on the cross on his behalf.

The Stupid! It Burns! (just like stupidity edition)

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on March 24, 2012

Annual Atheist Convention Resembles Religion:

How the Annual Atheist Convention Proves that Atheism is a Religion or at the VERY LEAST Resembles a Religion

Oh, just go read it yourself.

Do atheists own reason?

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on March 22, 2012

It's not burningly stupid, so it doesn't get the tag, but it's still pretty bad.

Tom Gilson asserts that Atheists don't own reason. Gilson not only believes that reason does not point directly to atheism, but that atheists are incompetent at reasoning effectively. "The new atheists have no business proclaiming themselves the defenders of reason, simply because they don’t practice it competently." As an English composition tutor, I must give high marks to this strong thesis statement (and a pretty good introduction). However, which might come as a shock, Gilson fails spectacularly in supporting his thesis.

As his first supporting element, Gilson appeals to a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig, but this approach simply cannot work. At the most basic level, the most a debate can show is the logical failings of a single individual. The strongest conclusion we could draw from this debate is that Sam Harris himself was incompetent at the practice of reason; Rather than an indictment of atheists' reason, this paragraph can aspire at best to rise to the level of ad hominem fallacy.

Gilson does not manage to give evidence supporting even Harris's incompetence. Gilson accuses Harris of the fallacy of appeal to emotion, but completely fails to provide any evidence for this accusation. Furthermore, the appeal to emotion is not itself a fallacy; it is an indispensable rhetorical strategy. Gilson says that in the debate, Harris "depict[s] Christianity in the most negative light possible, and suggest[s] that we should conclude therefore conclude [sic] that Christianity is wrong." But "wrong" is a label we give to things that are indeed negative. Gilson does not even assert that Harris argued fallaciously, nor does he even assert that Harris's negative portrayal of Christianity is mistaken. Gilson fails to assert, much less support, the incompetence of even a single individual.

Gilson's support of Craig is halfhearted. Gilson acknowledges that "opinions differ" the outcome of the debate. The best he can say of Craig's performance in the debate is that Craig used logic, and offered "at least one" (unnamed) argument that, if true, would be true. If Craig really has an argument worth investigating, then a debate is not the best support; Craig's published work could be cited directly. I'm hardly an expert in Craig's work, but what I have seen of it has left me quite underwhelmed. Reason is more than just logic, but even that Craig can use logic (or that Gilson thinks he did) fails to support the thesis that atheists are unable to use reason.

From the Harris/Craig debate, Gilson turns his attention to Richard Dawkins' best-selling book, The God Delusion. Gilson chooses to focus on (presumably) chapter 9, "Religion and childhood." But again, Gilson simply offers opinion, rather than any evidence. First, it is not clear why Gilson believes Dawkins "devotes an entire chapter to unscientific anecdotes supporting his belief that a religious upbringing is abusive to children." Judging from the chapter headers, only the first section, "Physical and Mental Abuse" (comprising eleven pages), would seem relevant. Furthermore, anecdotes are not necessarily unreasonable; they can be used unreasonably, but they can also serve (reasonably) as examples to inform the reader the sort of thing the writer is referring to. Because Gilson does not give us any details, we cannot determine what he specifically criticizes; we cannot form our own opinion as to what Dawkins is even saying, much less whether he is supporting it reasonably. Gilson goes on to claim that "science shows exactly the opposite: spiritually engaged teens are healthier than others on multiple dimensions." Not only does Gilson fail to specifically cite this material to evaluate its scientific quality, we have no way of knowing what "spiritually engaged" means, and whether this undefined quality has anything to do with Dawkins' assertions. Gilson closes with alleging that "rational and logical errors are pervasive throughout 'The God Delusion,' [sic]" citing as evidence only philosopher Michael Ruse's personal opinion. Again, Gilson at best only raises questions (and weakly); he fails to support in any way his thesis that atheists are actually incompetent at reasoning.

Finally, Gilson criticizes the recent billboard co-sponsored by the American Atheists. The billboard really is terrible; the imagery is certainly racist, and it is entirely inappropriate to co-opt the struggle against slavery for atheists' purposes. But Gilson is not concerned about the racism and misappropriation. Instead, Gilson believes that the underlying position of the billboard, that the Bible supports slavery, is so obviously false as to be fallacious. First, Gilson asserts that this is a fallacious appeal to emotion, but the whole argument against slavery lies in an appeal to emotion: slavery is bad precisely because we are emotionally repelled by the practice. And Gilson openly admits that the Bible does indeed support slavery, albeit for pragmatic reasons:

Immediate abolition was realistically impossible in New Testament times: The Romans would have treated it as insurrection, and the inevitable bloodshed to follow it would have produced greater evil than would have been alleviated by abolition. The injunction to “obey” was thus temporary and contextual.

A retreat into moral relativism is perhaps inevitable, because whether from conviction or cowardice, the Bible does in fact support slavery. That Christianity eventually contributed to the near-eradication of slavery, a brief millennium after the fall of the Roman Empire, does not change what the Bible actually says. It is impossible to locate any actual offenses against reason in this example.

Gilson ultimately fails to give any support to his thesis than pure personal opinion. He accuses atheists of using "incomplete evidence," but he gives no evidence at all to support his position. He accuses atheists of using "demonstrably invalid reasoning," but it is his own reasoning that is demonstrably invalid. Indeed, chief among his complaints is that atheists use fallacious arguments from emotion, but it is his own argument that employs the true fallacy: he does not like what we have to say, therefore it is unreasonable. Nothing demonstrates the fundamental failure of Christian attempts at intellectual support more directly and aptly than Gilson's post.

The Stupid! It Burns! (rational edition)

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on March 20, 2012

Are Atheists Redefining "Reason"?

According to Nix, the organizers of the upcoming "Reason Rally" in Washington DC

have chosen to appeal to improper authorities, resist peer review, and encourage an atmosphere of personal attacks- all pointing toward a deliberate rejection of reason and possibly even an intentional redefinition of the word "reason". ...

[T]he organizers of the Reason Rally are using people not trained scientifically to provide conclusions about scientific data. They are also using people not trained in philosophy or metaphysics to support metaphysical claims (that God does not exist). ... Instead, the organizers give us a few scientists (covering biochemistry, astrophysics, and psychology- okay coverage), yet a large number of singers, comedians, a TV show host, activists, and...politicians? ...

[The organizers] deride the Christian apologetics community for saying that they will be present to engage in reasonable dialog, and they have invited the known-to-be-highly-unreasonable group Westboro Baptist church in lieu of true peers. ...

No matter how "nice" the exchanges may appear to be, each side will be either explicitly or implicitly calling the other "evil", "dumb", "stupid", and "naive" and concluding that the other's worldview is wrong because of that. These are nothing short of the ad-hominem fallacy. ...

It baffles my mind to think that certain adherents to a worldview that claims to promote "reason" are actively doing things at their "biggest gathering of atheists in history" that are diametrically opposed to their own claims.

The moral philosophy of hierarchy

Published

The Barefoot Bum

on March 19, 2012

Eric Hoffer philosophizes on The True Believer. Bob Altemeyer studes The Authoritarians. Corey Robin investigates The Reactionary Mind. Each author uses a different method to investigate a different facet of the opponents of progressive and revolutionary egalitarianism. All progressives seem to have a difficult time understanding our opposition. Who wouldn't want a better, happier society? Who wouldn't conceive a better, happier society as one that was better for everyone? The opposition seems so intellectually perverse that many cannot resist the temptation to explain the opposition as pure sadism (as Orwell does in 1984) or descend into the most labyrinthine conspiracy theories (e.g. the 9/11 "Truthers"). But the reactionaries and authoritarians, who disproportionately claim the everyday true believers, can be simply explained as the logical, almost-inevitable conclusion of the most prevalent human theory of justice: the theory of just deserts.

The moral theory of just deserts firmly locates the institutions of society as the mechanism by which individuals get the status they deserve according to their moral qualities, good or bad. The shift in this philosophy between the feudal era and the capitalist era is a shift from seeing moral qualities as primarily hereditary to seeing moral qualities as a result of individual "merit". The idea, however, that there is a distribution of moral quality in the population remains firm, and the proper function of society is still to discern this moral quality and appropriately reward it. A society might perform this function poorly, and will probably always make some mistakes, but a society that does not have as its primary function the discernment of virtue and vice and the distribution of status on that basis is just not a society.

I mean something specific by "status": a person has a higher status to the extent that he or she determines what is fundamentally good for those with lower status. This notion of status is different from esteem or respect (though one might well esteem hold those with higher status). This notion status is different from a relationship founded on expertise: for example, my physician's notion of what's "good" for me is purely instrumental; he* assumes we already agree on what is fundamentally good, i.e. good health, and he merely advises me on how to implement that agreed-upon good. The role of status in a "hierarchy" is more fundamental: it not how to implement an agreed-upon good; it is those above determining and imposing fundamental goods on those below.

*My actual physician happens to be male.

According to a deserts theory of justice, a fundamental good must be imposed. Absent imposition, individuals always act according to what they believe to be good. An immoral person must be, by definition, either a person who is mistaken about what is good, or a person who cannot act according to their correct notions of what is good. Immoral people cannot act on the true good on their own; they must be subordinated to their moral superiors. Because the moral inferiors cannot not do it on their own, it is the necessary function of moral superiors to mete out what their moral inferiors deserve.

Fundamental goods must also be objectively determinable. A subjectivist conception of morality grounds moral decisions in the subjectively conceived benefit of the actor, and all sane, non-neurotic* people always act in what they believe to be their individual benefit. To impose a good as a good (and not just admit to naked exploitation) requires that we can objectively determine what is good and thus hold that dissenters are mistaken about a matter of truth. Even the most committed "Machiavellian"** must believe, I think, that the qualities of will, ruthlessness, and lust for power are objectively good; by possessing these qualities, he not only can gain power, but it is objectively true that he deserves to gain and exercise power. Without the concept of an objective good, superiors in a hierarchy cannot effectively rationalize the exercise of their power.

*Neurotic people, I am convinced, are those who have an irreconcilable conflict in what they consider beneficial. Neurosis is, however, better placed outside the sphere of politics.

**In the popular sense of "Machiavellian". There is some controversy over whether The Prince expresses Machiavelli's actual views or if he was writing ironically.

***It's possible that the moral justification of hierarchical social relations is entirely insincere, that those above (or perhaps just those at the very top) do not see themselves as acting in any sense of the good beyond superficial desire. I don't such absolute insincerity is viable, but that's a topic for another essay.

The relationship between an objectivist moral theory of deserts and hierarchical social relationships works both ways. Not only must a hierarchical society be founded on an objectivist deserts theory, but also an objectivist deserts theory demands a hierarchical society. Physical law by definition cannot mete out any justice; what physical law actually requires (e.g. that at all times we must accelerate towards the center of the Earth at ~10 m/s²) or prohibits is ipso facto placed outside moral consideration. We can divide into virtue and vice only that which physical law permits but does not enforce. If you believe that there are objective truths about fundamental goods, and that those who conform to those goods ought to be rewarded and those who contravene those goods ought to be punished — i.e. that justice demands that people get what they deserve in actuality, not just in theory — then there can be no other option than to try to privilege those who are morally superior, and thus themselves deserve reward, to mete out these deserts on those who are morally inferior.

The objectivist theory of deserts is pervasive in human thought, going back to the first recorded philosophy. Some, with some justification, go so far as to say that any theory that is not objective, and does not include deserts, is simply not a moral theory.

A objective deserts theory of justice starts with our treatment of criminals. A criminal, especially a violent criminal, is a bad person and justice demands he or she be punished. To treat a criminal as someone in need of extra help or assistance is the acme of injustice. It doesn't matter whether or not punishment actually deters crime (it's pretty clear that it does not); if we do not punish criminals, our society simply fails in its first, fundamental job.

But there must be gradations of punishment. Those who rape and murder children are, of course, the most morally inferior people we can imagine. We, their obvious moral superiors, must impose on these morally inferior a lifetime of torture in prison. (Death is, of course, far too good for them.) Not only is their happiness irrelevant, but society demands that we impose as much suffering as we can stomach meting out; that we do not simply break them on the wheel is not a measure of our compassion but a concession to our squeamishness. But of course not all criminals deserve such thorough suffering. Someone who kills his or her lover in a fit of jealous rage is still our moral inferior, but we do not believe he or she deserves the most thorough suffering. The burglar, pickpocket, embezzler, or shoplifter again are our still our inferiors, but they certainly deserve less suffering than a murderer, and perhaps can be fully redeemed into the ranks of the morally superior.

But if there are gradations of punishment, then why must our moral evaluations stop at the courthouse and the prison? If we're going to separate morally inferior criminals from morally superior citizens, why not grade the citizens themselves according to their virtue? Surely the lazy and improvident do not deserve the same material prosperity as the industrious and thrifty. Surely those who welsh on their debts do not deserve the same trust as those who pay them. Surely those of crudity and triviality do not deserve the same artistic recognition and control as those of refinement and sublimity. And surely the foolish do not deserve the same privilege over laws and institutions as the wise.

The political philosophy of egalitarianism must entail the moral equivalence of all human beings. People are obviously physically different (I know of no egalitarian social philosophy that advocates a reductive Harrison Bergeron caricature of physical equality), so any notion of egalitarianism must entail moral equality. Moral equality entails that there is no moral difference to which to attach deserts. Under any true moral egalitarianism, the notion that people ought to get what they deserve becomes entirely incoherent. Even if a society has a de facto hierarchy, with those "above" effectively wielding coercive power over those "below", the lack of a de jure moral justification for the hierarchy still subverts the moral sensibilities of deserts.

The advocates of progressive social and political philosophies must, I think, confront this moral dilemma head-on. The left's greatest intellectual and philosophical weakness is its equivocation between moral egalitarianism and moral hierarchy. A progressive political philosophy can pick hierarchy, which makes its critique of the existing system essentially claim that the correspondence no longer obtains between moral virtue and socio-economic status. The argument cannot be that those above are immoral simply by virtue of being above; to deny the notions of social superiority and inferiority is to deny morality itself. The argument must be not that society is stratified into the 1% and the 99%, but that the 1% contains too many of the wrong sort of people.

If you are going to embrace hierarchy, then the political strategy is obvious: get together with the 1% like you (whom you must believe, of course, are the acme of virtue), and convince the other 98% to legitimatize your own moral superiority, by persuasion and force of arms. The bourgeoisie succeeded in doing so, convincing (and forcing) the people to believe that the nobility and monarchy were corrupt and immoral, and that they themselves were in fact the acme of social virtue. The professional-managerial middle class did so in the West after the Great Depression, convincing the people that the capitalists were corrupt and immoral, and that the professionals, managers, academics, and bureaucrats were the acme of virtue. The Communist Parties did so, convincing the people of Russia and China that the Tzar and Emperor (and the disorganized and weak bourgeoisie who immediately followed them) were corrupt and immoral, and that those who had a correct scientific grasp of Marxism were the acme of virtue. Perhaps by doing so we are making progress; perhaps there really are correct ways of organizing a hierarchy, where those who really are morally superior legitimately command those who really are morally inferior. Or perhaps, as the song goes, it's just "out with the old boss, in with the new boss."

If, on the other hand, you're going to embrace egalitarianism, then you have to deal with the problem of criminality, or, more precisely, with the popular belief that real criminals deserve punishment. To discard the notion that there are moral gradations in the non-criminal population is to fundamentally undermine the moral gradation between the criminal and the non-criminal. This is not to say, of course, that egalitarianism entails that we permit others to go around killing people willy-nilly. If you're going to deny that laziness deserves some sort of social or economic punishment, that there are no "lazy" people, just those who prefer leisure to material goods (and why shouldn't they?), then there are no criminal who deserve punishment, just those who prefer violence to peaceful coexistence. There are good reasons why we cannot tolerate certain kinds of violence, but to remove the notion of moral condemnation is to remove the notion of deserving punishment. But the egalitarian must put the response to criminality on a completely different philosophical foundation than the notion of deserts, and must sell that new foundation.

Half measures will not work. You cannot be half hierarchical (towards criminals) and half egalitarian (towards everyone else). As the old joke goes, "We've already established what you are, we're just haggling over the price." Once you permit the concept of any personal moral gradation, the argument becomes over how to sort people in those gradations. Those below must therefore deserve less than those above, and it must be the task of those above to impose those deserts on those below. Once you deny the concept of personal moral gradation, you cannot call any person morally inferior. There's no in between.