Life Without a Net

YOU MUST GO HERE TO VIEW MY NEW STUFF

2009-01-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

This is probably the last post I'll leave on this blog. I'm still writing and still posting almost every day. Check out the new blog HERE.

NEW BLOG HERE

Learn Science. Get Laid

2009-01-22T12:34:00.000-08:00

Evolutionary Psychology in Action

In a recent article in Evolutionary Psychology, Brown, Young, Sacco, Bernstein, and Claypool have presented their findings from two studies dealing with social inclusion and mating. I’m going to attempt to give you the layman’s version and contrast it with the scientific explanation to try to show you how we can think scientifically about our own behavior.

Being left out of social groups has always been recognized as detrimental to humans. There’s a very good reason why solitary confinement is recognized world wide as one of the worst kinds of punishments available. Humans are extremely social animals. We all know this intuitively, but let’s look at it rationally for a minute.

Imagine for a minute that you are a human living in the wild before the discovery of agriculture. You are constantly hungry, but there simply isn’t enough food lying around to keep you alive. There are predators all around that would love a human for dinner. You have no claws. Your teeth can’t possibly be used as weapons. There’s really nothing you can hope to do against a lion, or even a few hyenas. What can you possibly do to stay alive?

The only practical answer is that you can stick close to other humans and work together with them to overwhelm large animals for food and deter predators through sheer numbers. That’s it. If you’re going to live more than a few days, you literally need to be accepted by the group. * With this knowledge, we can say that natural selection would favor humans who tended to form strong durable social bonds, and would pretty much eliminate those who didn’t. We can also say that social acceptance would be very high on human’s list of instinctive priorities, right up there with eating and mating.

This is where the new studies come into the picture. All animals have built in “priority meters.” In the simplest animals, it’s little more than the imperative to find food whenever hungry and to mate whenever possible. As animals and societies become more complex, the number of things that need to be prioritized also becomes longer and more complex. Still, if we examine an animal’s behavior scientifically, we ought to be able to come close to describing the algorythm for arranging priorities. For instance, a particular animal’s priority list might go something like this: ”First, avoid predators at all costs. Second, find water. Third, find food. Fourth, when predators are avoided and hunger and thirst sated, explore new territory. Follow these rules unless females are in heat and there is a female present, in which case, attempt to mate as a second priority, even above finding water.”

Evolutionary theory predicts that humans will also have instinctive priority lists. This study was an attempt to identify and quantify two elements within our list — social acceptance and mating. The researchers predicted that social acceptance ought to be a higher priority than mating based on the evolutionary pressures I mentioned earlier. In other words, social acceptance literally equalled survival for early humans, and so we ought to instinctively be more concerned with that than mating, since it’s quite difficult (and a bit creepy) to try to mate while dead.

READ THE REST HERE

Conspicuous Consumption: Why isn't "Good enough" enough?

2009-01-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

It’s very easy for some of us to jump on the anti-consumerism bandwagon. We look at soccer moms driving their 1.7 kids 2.4 miles to school in their Ford Excessives, and we smugly note that there is not so much as even a deep pothole that would require off-road capability. We rail against the excesses of the rich and famous, and decry the salaries of professional athletes. Environmentalists warn that we are literally killing ourselves and our children. Dieticians inform us that we are eating ourselves into early graves and that “all you can eat” buffets are a scourge on the earth.

Yet, we still eat too much, and we still buy a new car every time we can afford it. We still want a bigger house even though the one we have is big enough. Is it a failing of human morality that we are greedy to our own detriment? Are we singular in the animal kingdom in our apparent insatiability? It turns out the answer to both questions is a resounding no. In fact, we are behaving exactly like every other animal. It is not a weakness of will or a “flaw” in our nature. We are behaving exactly as evolutionary theory predicts.

READ THE REST AT MY NEW BLOG

New Blog, New Post

2009-01-20T14:16:00.000-08:00

In an effort to make things as confusing as possible, I'm changing blog servers. I've decided to go with Wordpress for a variety of reasons, but I'll be keeping this blog up long enough to allow readers to get to the new blog. I'm posting an excerpt of today's blog post, and will continue to do so for another couple of weeks. Please bookmark my new blog, and thanks for sticking with me.

Today's excerpt:

There are two primary kinds of evolutionary “arms races” — symmetric and asymmetric. A symmetric arms race is one in which two or more competitors are trying to do essentially the same thing. If we imagine a forest full of various trees, vines, and other plants, we can easily see this kind of arms race in action. All of the trees, regardless of their particular species, are interested in the same thing, namely sunlight. To that end, many of them “discover” the same path to their goal.

Imagine a primordial forest in which (for simplicity’s sake) there is one kind of tree that grows to approximately ten feet in height. So long as all the trees grow to the same height, everything will be stable, but the fact is, natural selection produces variation, so sooner or later, one of the trees is going to grow to eleven feet. Let’s assume that this tree has an umbrella like spread of leaves at the top, so that ten foot trees will receive less sunlight if an eleven foot tree is next to them. In a very few generations, eleven foot trees will dominate the landscape.

Only… natural selection produces variation, so soon, there will be a twelve foot tree. This is the nature of symmetrical arms races, and individual species are one of the best examples. All members of a species are competing for the same thing, and so they tend to push each other towards new innovations. Once we understand this dynamic, it’s easy to see that different species also have the same effect on each other. Elms and oaks and pines all want the same thing, and so they tend to evolve in very similar ways. Though elms, pines and oaks don’t have precisely the same leaf shape or root structure, they are still in the same business — getting to the sunlight and absorbing it through leaves. They’re all part of the same arms race.

READ THE REST HERE

No articles today

2009-01-19T10:10:00.000-08:00

No articles today. Just a few random thoughts about the immediate future. Tomorrow is the first day of America's chance to gain some respect in the international community, and more importantly, for us to gain some much needed self respect. We've really made a mess of things. The economy is in shambles. Iraq is in shambles. It's not a good idea to identify yourself as an American in... well... a lot of places.

This blog is about good critical thinking, not politics. However, I'm going to go out on a couple of limbs and tell you some of my own opinions on political issues. I don't claim that I have all the information on these issues. I'm just doing my best to apply the same standards of critical thinking that I demand for science to issues of politics.

President Obama must work to end the blurring of church and state at all levels. If you think about this, it makes sense not only for atheists who would prefer not to have religion imposed on them, but it makes even more sense for the religious. Do we really want the government deciding what kinds of things qualify a religious group for faith based government funding? Can you see how incredibly bad that would be for the United States Government to decide what constitutes real Christianity?

President Obama must abolish "No Child Left Behind" and work with educators to bring sanity back to public education. There is simply no reason that a country with as many resources as America should be producing some of the dumbest high school graduates in the world. I don't know what the best answer to fixing the system is, but I do know that it's not something for politicians to design. It's something that educators should design and politicians should implement.

America must admit that global warming is a real and current problem. We absolutely must begin to really work towards oil independence, even if complete independence is (forgive me) a pipe dream.

I don't know how this can happen, but as individual Americans, we need to realize that disposable everything, new cars every three years, huge homes, and all the other trappings of "the good life" are destroying not only our environment but our economy as well. It's one thing to have an artificially inflated economy, but it's quite another to systematically create long term poverty with a culture of "everybody deserves everything they want." We don't have to live like monks and force everybody into tiny apartments, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a hundred million people driving huge cars from their sprawling suburbs and huge houses with huge energy requirements for heating and cooling to cities that have little or no mass transit infrastructure. There has to be some sanity to energy usage, and it has to come from all of us. I don't know if it's possible, but it really does need to happen.

The gap between the haves and the have-nots needs to narrow. There needs to be real reform in corporate America so that the people who make the whole thing work are compensated fairly enough to build a real middle class with real accumulated wealth. The American middle class really is in danger of disappearing in the not too distant future, or so it seems to me.

America as a country must learn that the days of unilateral aggression are over. International problems need to be solved internationally. If we want to have any credibility, we must stop pretending that we are the biggest bully on the block. We're not anymore, and it's dangerous for us to keep pretending.

Oh, and finally, it's time for us to apologize to everyone in the Middle East and to our own people. Gitmo must be shut down and we must have transparent and humane treatment of all prisoners of war according to every letter of international law. The term "enemy combatant" needs to be left behind as a reminder of our own haughtiness. Illegal government intrusions into its citizens private matters must end. We must have our civil liberties restored if we are to have any credibility at home or abroad as a country that values freedom and liberty.

Whether you agree with me on any of these issues, I think it's time for America to take what may be its last chance to work together as a country to solve some very real (and very, very big) problems. Neither the democrats nor the republicans are right or wrong about everything. There are good ideas on both sides of the aisle. George W. Bush may have succeeded in creating the most divided America since the Civil War. That remains to be seen, but President Obama is going to have to be a real uniter. He's going to have to find ways to help us remember that we all want the same things -- a safe country, a good job, happy friends and family, and the freedom to live our lives the way we choose.

I am holding on to a tiny shred of optimism. I sure hope President Obama comes out of the gate strong.

Where Do Christians Get Their Morality?

2009-01-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

Where Do Christians Get Their Morality?

Ask a random Christian where his morality comes from, and you are likely to get one answer out of a few that are commonly given. Many fundamentalists believe that God is the source of all morality. Without God, they say, humans would not know right from wrong, and we would be living in total moral chaos. More moderate Christians often offer a more deistic explanation. God created humans with an innate sense of right and wrong, and even without his direct intervention, we know what we ought to do because he has placed his moral laws in our hearts.

Some Christians believe that morality is absolute. There are things that are always wrong, and things that are always right. The ends do not justify the means in any case, and we ought to trust God to work things out when it appears that we are doing something harmful by “doing the right thing.” Even outside of Christianity, there is a prevalent belief that morality exists on some kind of higher philosophical plane, and that it is proof of humanity's separation from the animal world. We are different in kind from the animals because we have morality.

I'd like to examine these claims in light of both philosophy and science to see if any of them hold any water. In the end, I hope to convince you that not only do Christians not have any means to derive a system of morality from their faith, they have every justification in the world to act immorally with impunity based only on their personal goals.

Morality Comes From God

Let us suppose that God is the source of all morality. For now, we will take the most extreme Christian view – that morality is impossible to derive from human wisdom, and that we must rely solely on the word of God to know what is right and what is wrong. If this is true, then it must be true that there is no logical reason to do what is right other than fear of God's punishment or desire for God's reward. If this conclusion seems odd, just consider the alternative. If we can think of any reason to do the morally correct thing, then we are basing morality on something natural. If it is right for me to feed my infant child because otherwise the child will die and that would cause me grief, then there is a natural reason for me to feed my infant child.

It doesn't take much thought to realize that morality doesn't derive solely from God. Virtually every day of our lives, we are faced with moral choices, and we reason out the best course of action. Our thought processes involve causes and effects, not calling to memory a set prescription from the Bible. It should be painfully obvious that if morality does indeed come from God, it is not solely dependent on arbitrary dicta. There are unmistakable real world consequences to our actions, and we can judge their relative value based on individual situations.

For emphasis, let's think of it another way. If God truly was the only source of morality in existence, then we should not be able to distinguish right from wrong except when it was specifically mentioned by God himself. When presented with a unique moral dilemma, we should be at a complete loss for any means of deriving the correct answer. This is obviously not so. As human civilization has advanced and technology has increased, we have created moral dilemmas that couldn't have been conceived when the Bible was written. In many cases, we have established very clear ideas of what is right and what is wrong.

There is only one thing we can do if we are to save the idea that God is the source of morality. We must admit that God has instilled in humans a conscience, and that man is able to reason out morality on his own without reference to an arbitrary set of rules. This is the position that most reasonably intelligent Christians take, for the simple reason that the exercise of a modicum of intelligence pretty much necessitates it.

Unfortunately, this position fails on several levels, although the failures are more subtle, and take a little more critical thinking. Straight out of the gate, we must ask a crucial question. If God has instilled in humans the ability to judge right from wrong, what is the Bible good for? This question isn't as flippant as it may appear. Pastors all over the world thump the Bible on their podiums while decrying Godless heathens who don't act as it dictates. In heated debates over moral hot button issues, the Bible is used as a final arbiter. God says it. I believe it. That settles it. Anytime the Bible disagrees with our innate sense of morality, we ought to believe the Bible over our own conscience.

We are forced now to ask the question. What is the final arbiter of human morality? Is it God's word or our conscience? If it is God's word, then we are headed back towards where we started, only now we are in a worse position. We've admitted that our conscience is a real, God-given tool for determining the morality of a given situation, but now we're also admitting that God's word trumps our conscience. This is another way of saying that when God wants us to do something, it is good, regardless of what our conscience says.

While many Christians would happily agree with this statement, it leaves us with a horrible dilemma. There are, at present, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand denominations of Christianity, worldwide. Each one of them has different views on morality, ranging from the insignificant to issues of global human existence. We have two choices. Either there is one correct version of Christianity or there are multiple correct versions. If there is only one correct version, how are we supposed to identify it? Every denomination claims that it is the correct one (or at the very least, that it is one of the correct ones!) so we can't rely on these claims to make our decisions. Each denomination interprets the Absolutely True Word of God Which Trumps Conscience in a way that makes sense to them.

Let me reiterate that last sentence, because it's really important. Every denomination that believes the Bible trumps our conscience interprets the Bible in a way that makes sense to them. Did you catch the trap in this sentence? They use their conscience to decide which interpretation of the Bible trumps the conscience! Again, we are faced with a nasty choice. Either there is a correct version of the Bible that doesn't rely on conscience or logic to find, or we are right back to conscience and logic being the ultimate guide for morality.

If we assume that there is, in fact, a perfect interpretation of the Bible, we are at something of an impasse. Since logic and conscience can't be our criteria for making the decision, we must rely on something else, but what? Divine revelation? Again, every denomination makes some claim of divine revelation, so which one is correct? How will we decide? What if none of them are correct? What if, after reading the Bible, you come to the conclusion that everybody's got it wrong, and that you have the perfect interpretation. God has spoken directly to you, and you are certain you are correct. This is fine for you, but how am I to judge whether or not I believe you? You are now in exactly the same situation as the other fifteen thousand denominations. You must ask people to use either logic, conscience, or divine revelation to decide to believe you.

The sad truth is that if there is a true interpretation of the Bible that does not rely on human logic or conscience, then it is unknowable beyond individual interpretation, which is the same as saying that it's entirely subjective.

Did you catch that last sentence? If the Christians are right, then morality is completely subjective. What is it that Christians always say about atheists? Aren't they the ones who accuse atheists of having no basis for morality? According to them, the world would be ruled by anarchy and there would be no way to know right from wrong. Civilization would descend into self serving madness. The irony is that their very own doctrine, if true, leads inevitably to the very state they attribute to naturalism!

Now, we must backtrack. We have reached an absurd conclusion when we followed one line of reasoning. The other line must now be scrutinized. Since it is not possible that there is one correct version of Christianity, perhaps there are multiple correct versions. Again, we're faced with choices. Perhaps there are some things that are universally right and wrong, and some that are malleable according to individual situations. The other option is that all things are malleable and based on specific circumstances.

If we accept the former option, we are immediately forced to address the question of which things are universals, and which are subjective. Unfortunately, this is no easier than the dilemma we faced earlier. Either logic and reason can tell us the answer, or it must be found in the Bible, or through divine revelation. If it is found in the Bible, then where is it? Having read the bible myself, I can recall no such clear cut explanations of morality. Instead, I remember reading contradictory edicts from God himself. Don't kill, unless God orders you to, or if it's lawful to kill. Then again, turn the other cheek and repay evil with kindness. Then again, Jesus came to uphold the law. Then again, Jesus came to repeal the law. Then again, it is better to kill yourself than to cause a child to stray. Then again, suicide is an unpardonable sin. Then again, and again, and again, and again.¹

The latter option leaves us in a real pickle. If all things are malleable and based on specific circumstances, then the only conclusion is that there is nothing that is set in stone. There are no absolutes, and God's word is not the final arbiter over conscience. With no instance by instance definitive statement from God himself, there is no way to ascribe any absoluteness to any moral imperative, and we clearly have no such step by step guide.

If there are no absolutes, and God's word is not the final judge of what is moral and immoral, how is a Christian to judge right from wrong? At the risk of becoming pedantic, I'm afraid I must point out that there are two choices. Either the Christian can continue to use the Bible, or church doctrine, or some other source as a basis for morality, or they can admit that morality is ultimately judged by humans on a case to case basis, without any arbitrary intervention by God.

If some theist source is used, then the Christian is right back where we ended up earlier – arbitrary subjective morality. If it is admitted that morality is ultimately judged by humans, we have relegated God to irrelevance. Whether or not God created man with a conscience or the conscience evolved is a pointless distinction. If the conscience, or logic, or any other natural method is used to determine morality, then man can determine morality without God. The foundation of one of religion's most ardent claims collapses. Man does not need God to live morally.

Morality By Plato

Having extracted God from the process of arbitrating morality, we must now address the question of morality as an absolute. Is there some kind of platonic model of morality that is universal to all humans? Are some things absolutely right and some absolutely wrong, or is morality subjective and arbitrary? Perhaps God created man and instilled in him an instinctive knowledge of the perfect good, much like Plato's perfect conceptualizations of imperfect reality. If this is true, perhaps humans are always striving towards perfection but always falling short. Maybe this is the true nature of the biblical “Fall of Man.” In fact, maybe this is the difference between Christians and non-Christians. Maybe God gives Christians an extra “morality boost” and allows them to see a clearer image of the cave wall.

As we did with all the previous claims, lets assume this to be true and see where it leads us. Let us suppose that for every human interaction conceivable, there is a “perfect” morally good action for every individual to take. The first question we must ask is what scale is being used to judge perfection. Is perfection based on the greatest good for the greatest number of people? What about reduction of suffering? Perhaps equality is the ultimate measure. (But, if it is equality, in what sense do we mean equal? Equality of opportunity, or resources, or happiness, or what?) To say that there is a perfect morality is to admit to a scale. Perfect must be judged in relation to something, or the word has no meaning.

Perhaps now is a good time to explore a hypothetical situation to see if we can gain some real world insight into the possibility that there is such a thing as perfect morality. Suppose that there is a man who has a wife and family. He has a good job, with enough time to spend with his children and his wife, enough free time to avoid getting overworked, and enough money to pay all the bills. (Talk about a hypothetical situation!) One day, this man discovers that his boss is involved in a large scale fraud that, if allowed to continue, will cheat hundreds of thousands of people out of large amounts of money. Unfortunately, the fraud is so pervasive throughout the company that if the whistle is blown, the company will surely fail, and all the employees will not only lose their jobs, but many of them will be pulled into years of lawsuits, whether they were knowingly involved or not.

If you are like most people, you have decided that despite the personal loss and the potential problems for other employees, the only moral thing for the man to do is blow the whistle on his company. There are other jobs, and it's selfish of him to hold onto his perfect little life knowing that it will cause great harm to so many people. Furthermore, “shit happens,” as the saying goes, and it's unfortunate that many of the employees will be caught in the mess, but it's just a case of bad luck. It can't be helped.

Does this situation tell us anything about the concept of perfect morality? Let's look at it from the perspective of the greater good. It is true that more people will be helped by blowing the whistle than not. In terms of financial success, the greater good will be served. However, in order to achieve the greater good, there must be lesser bad. Some people, including the whistle blower, will have to suffer financially. Where there is financial gain, there is also financial loss.

Mathematically, there is almost certainly an optimum financial solution to this problem. Perhaps there is a course of action that could minimize financial losses to employees as much as mathematically possible while maximizing the financial gain of those who will benefit from having the fraud exposed. We can say that in terms of financial good, there is a perfect solution to this problem. Maybe it involves a different employee blowing the whistle, or the boss having a fit of conscience and admitting his fraud. What the action is is irrelevant. The broader point is that there is a perfect solution.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. When I began discussing the greater good, I assumed that good to be financial. If we use another measure, we might find completely different results from taking the “perfect” moral action. Supposing that the fraud comes to an end in the best possible way financially, what can we say about the solution based on equality? For instance, if the investors who were going to be defrauded were all upper class and wealthy, the huge financial losses they would take might lower their status to upper middle class, where they would still be quite comfortable. On the other hand, the employees of the company might all be in the lower middle class, and the setbacks from losing their jobs might throw them squarely into poverty, even though the financial losses were minimized as much as possible.

If this were the case, could we then say that a greater good had been achieved? What if there were a total of five hundred children of employees, and as a result of their parents losing their jobs, four hundred of them ended up having to go to lesser schools with poor standards? Knowing that these children will grow up and have children of their own, and knowing that poverty tends to breed more poverty, can we really say that blowing the whistle accomplished a greater good?

We haven't even begun to look at the measures of individual happiness or minimization of suffering. I'm sure there are at least a dozen other measures by which a moral action can be judged, and it's entirely likely that in this very situation, each measure comes out differently on the grand scale of moral correctness.

Even so, our idea of platonic morality is not dead. Perhaps there is a set number of measures by which morality can be judged, and in any given situation, there is an action which is the perfect balance of all of the measures, such that there is no way for a better outcome. To help you think of this concept more clearly, let's say that there are one hundred moral measures, and let us assign a value of zero to one hundred for each of them in any given situation. It's patently obvious that very few, if any, situations will allow an outcome of one hundred one hundreds. Every dilemma will have a number of solutions, each of which is better by some measures and worse by others.

If this is true, then we're left with a puzzle. How do we decide which way to weight the scale? In other words, do we always pick the solution that has the highest aggregate score – the highest total number when we add up the score from all hundred measures? If that's true, what if the solution to a particular problem includes a zero (meaning morally awful) in the category of “Preserving Human Life”? Do we weight “Preserving Human Life” more than “Promoting Individual Happiness”? If so, how do we determine the system by which we will achieve our perfect mathematical formula?

By now, it should be painfully obvious that there is a problem with the notion of Platonic moral perfection. The fact of the matter is that different people have different goals, and different needs, and when morality involves multiple people (as it almost always does) what's good for one person will be less good for another, and with no way to say definitively which person should take precedence, most moral decisions will be ambiguous in some sense.

The Danger of Christian Morality

Before we explore what science says about human morality, I want to take a slight detour and explore some of the consequences of morality as described by Christians. The main point I wish to hammer home is that not only is the Christian model of morality wrong, it is decidedly harmful as well. Imagine a discussion with a believer that goes something like this:

Skeptic: Is it wrong to kill your own child?

Believer: Yes.

Skeptic: Is it always wrong?

Believer: Yes. God has told us that we shall not kill.

Skeptic: And this is absolute and universal. There is never any time when it is ok to kill your child?

Believer: (feeling a little twitchy... he suspects a trap.) Well, I suppose there are some instances. (Perhaps he remembers that God, in the Old Testament, demanded that disobedient children be stoned to death.) But except for really extraordinary circumstances, it's wrong.

Skeptic: What if God told you to do it?

Believer: (Squirming noticeably in his seat.) God wouldn't do that.

Skeptic: How do you know? He ordered people in the Old Testament to do it. He ordered Abraham to do it. Can God do anything he wants to do?

Believer: Erm... well... yes, he can, but he wouldn't.

Skeptic: Well, you believe that he wouldn't, but by your own admission, and by the words of the Holy Scriptures themselves, God has done it, and could very well do it again if it pleases him to do so. Stop squirming around this, and just answer the question. If God told you to kill your child, and you knew with 100% certainty that it was God telling you, would it be a good thing to kill your child?

Believer: Um... well... I don't know if it would be good, exactly, but it would be God's will, so um...

Skeptic: Wait a minute. You're saying that God's will can be evil?

Believer: No, that's not what I said. I just said it wasn't good.

Skeptic: So, it's neutral? There are only three choices, right? Good, bad and neutral. Which is it?

Believer: Well, um... I don't know, exactly...

Skeptic: Ok. Let's get down to brass tacks. If you knew for certain that God wanted you to kill your own child, would you do it?

Believer: (scurries out of the room, making signs of the cross and genuflecting furiously)

From this little discussion, we can see that not only do Christians have nothing solid on which to hang their moral hats, they actually have a very dangerous excuse for doing vicious and horrible things and calling them good, or at worst, neutral. A brief look through history (some of it not particularly far in the past) we see many examples of people doing horrible things in the name of religion and calling them good. I'm not suggesting that every evil act ever committed by a Christian has been because of this kind of justification, but surely there have been many people who have used it.

Lest I be accused of creating a strawman, I want to be clear on one thing. I'm not suggesting that people would not do evil except for Christianity, or that non-Christians haven't done very horrible things. However, I want to make it perfectly clear that the Christian version of morality gives implicit and explicit permission for people to do evil and call it good. While it's true that removing this system of morality from the public consciousness wouldn't eradicate all evil in the world, it would most certainly eradicate some, and that, to me, seems a worthwhile endeavor.² In the words of the Nobel Prize winning physicist (and descendant of a holocaust survivor) Steven Weinberg, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."

As I have hopefully made crystal clear, there simply is no basis for morality from God or scripture. At best we are left with a hopeless subjective conundrum and at worst, we have an excuse to do things that all sane people know to be wrong. Now that we have exposed Christian morality for what it really is, we can begin to delve into the questions from a more reasonable perspective. What does science say about morality? For that matter, what exactly is morality? If morality is not absolute, what is it? If it's not completely subjective, how do we decide what is right and what is wrong?

These questions do not always have easy answers, but they do have answers. Again, we're going to need to learn some real science and be prepared to face whatever answers we find, even if they don't line up with what we were taught as children.

1When faced with this fact, many Christians fall back to the assertion that careful reading of the Bible with an open and honest heart will reveal the “true” intent of the author. Of course, this fails for the same reason that all claims of revelation fail. They are necessarily subjective!

2I should mention the other side of the Christian morality argument. It is often suggested that despite the problems with Christians sometimes doing evil in the name of God, Christianity encourages people to do good that they would not ordinarily do. It's not within the scope of this entry, but evolutionary psychology explains quite parsimoniously that this notion is bunk. People of all religions (and non-religions) have always been inspired to acts of charity. It is just divisive and exclusionary thinking to suggest otherwise.

The Monogamy Puzzle

2009-01-16T17:32:00.000-08:00

The Monogamy Puzzle

There are a lot of opinions roaming about the blogosphere regarding whether or not people are "supposed to be" monogamous. I'm going to try to take an in depth look at this topic from several points of view. Hopefully, by the time you're done with this article, you'll have some idea about what science says, and that will allow you to evaluate your own moral feelings and emotions against something a little more concrete. Before reading on, I do feel like I need to emphasize that descriptions are not instructions. I'm not in any way trying to tell you what you as an individual should do. Instead, I'm trying to give you something scientific on which to base your own decisions -- something more than gut feelings. Humans are widely varied in their desires, so I certainly do not presume to tell you what yours ought to be.

To begin, I'm going to tackle human sexuality from both sides, male and female. This may seem the obvious choice, but just to be sure, let's remember that sex is competition. Males and females have their own interests, evolutionarily speaking, and we have hopefully dispelled the myth that human intelligence puts us above other animals. Like chimps and dolphins and killer whales, we are very intelligent social animals, and examining our behavior is the same as examining that of any other creature. If we see a pattern of behavior, there is a reason for it. Anything that exists is a product of evolution, including our intelligence and our incredibly complex society. If we look well into our past, we will understand the mechanisms behind our behaviors. If we are lucky, we will be able to take the lesson of sugar consumption to heart, and we will be able to make some educated statements about what we should do if we want to achieve a particular result.

So, on to the question of monogamy. Before answering decisively, I must make a distinction about the word itself. There are two very different ways of asking the question – that of a social scientist and that of a sociobiologist. An anthropologist who speaks of monogamy is talking about marriage, or whatever cultural equivalent there might be. A species is monogamous if males and females have one official partner. This does not take adultery into account, nor does it account for serial monogamy, which is the practice of having one partner for a relatively short period, and then moving on to another partner. On the other hand, a sociobiologist who speaks of monogamy is speaking of the actual practice of mating. A species is only monogamous if it really has only one sexual partner. Any mating is considered part of the equation, and social institutions are not considered.

For the time being, I will be using the sociobiological application of the word. When I speak of polygamy, I am speaking of the practice of having multiple sexual partners, regardless of institutionalized or cultural norms. Similarly, monogamy will only apply when a species really does mate with only one partner. Just as in our mental exercise with sugar cravings, we must first understand how we behave, and then we must understand why. Only then can we begin to look at ourselves as individuals and begin to think about goals and how we should act if we wish to achieve them.

Finally, then, the answer to the question. Are humans monogamous? The short answer is no. We are mildly polygamous. The long answer requires addressing the question from various points of view. Culturally, we have always focused on a single marriage between a man and a woman, but there are two unavoidable facts that we must not overlook, even if they are incriminating or cause us personal discomfort. First, though marriage has virtually always been between one man and one woman, mating has not. Since the agricultural revolution, powerful men have virtually always kept harems. In fact, this practice has only fallen out of favor since industrialization. Contrary to the notion of the faithful middle class man, polygamy was not restricted to the very powerful. It was only institutionalized for them. Men have been cheating as long as they have been marrying, and not just a little bit. Cheating is almost as common as marriage, historically.

If we compare anatomy and biology, we find this conclusion to be valid. There is a clear and virtually indisputable link between the size of the testicles and the fidelity of the species. Ours are not large enough for a thoroughly promiscuous lifestyle, like the chimpanzee's, nor are they as small as the most monogamous apes. Human males are not large enough, compared to females, to command harems in the same way as a gorilla. We are not antisocial enough to be as monogamous as gibbons. In all biological areas, we fall above the threshold of monogamy, and below that of outright polygamy.

If this conclusion leaves you feeling uncomfortable, try to keep that feeling at bay for a while. I promise this will make a lot more sense once we've examined the evolutionary developments that led us to this perilous double standard of demanding monogamy and practicing polygamy. If it helps you to understand the point, think about yourself for a minute, and your partner, if you are attached. If you are over the age of thirty, you've probably had between three and ten sexual partners, and most of them have been monogamous partners, though there's somewhere around a thirty or forty percent chance that you've cheated at least once in your life. Now, your partner has probably had around the same experience, and if you think about it, most of your friends have, too. Humans do not have sex monogamously today, and as we will see, they never have.

Game Theory and Mating Standards

Why would a species evolve into a particular mating pattern? Why aren't all species either polygamous or monogamous? In order to understand the answer to this question, we can think of evolution as a game of strategy, with each side using whatever advantage it has, and trying to minimize its weaknesses. This is where game theory comes in.

Imagine a species that is polygamous. This means that the most powerful males have many females in a harem. If you are a male, you have two choices. You can either be one of the most powerful males in the group, or risk celibacy. No matter how dominance is chosen, the losing males find themselves without mates. This is not just conjecture. It has been thoroughly documented in nature. The more polygamous a species, the more the average male suffers. Only the most powerful get to pass on their genes. The rest literally die for eternity.

While this brutal male selection is going on, the females pretty much have everything they could ask, right? All of them get to mate, and they all get one of the crème de la crème as a husband. Well, in a sense, this is true, but there are disadvantages. For one thing, as the degree of polygamy increases, the amount of attention the male can devote to each female decreases. Though the offspring will be the children of royalty, they will have been raised essentially by a single parent. Furthermore, as the old adage goes, if everyone is special, nobody is. In other words, being the child of the king isn't particularly advantageous if everybody is a child of the king! In the next generation, each male will be on equal footing when competing for females. Since all the genetic material comes from the king, it's basically a matter of luck and the female's genes.

Eventually, this kind of system will reach a point of diminishing returns, where the females do not receive a significant benefit from mating with the most desirable male. When this happens, the most clever of the celibate males might figure out that he has an advantage. (Again, I am speaking very liberally about conscious decisions. This is for ease of understanding, and does not imply that evolution is intentionally doing anything.) If he devotes himself entirely to one female, and dotes constantly over the children, the female is actually gaining something by marrying down on the social ladder. As more and more females realize this advantage, monogamy creeps up on polygamy. It may eventually surpass it as the primary mating arrangement.

This works in reverse, of course. In a completely monogamous population, females are stuck with who they get. If only twenty out of one hundred males are attractive and strong, that means that eighty females are forced to mate with a dud. If strength correlates to resources, as it often does, clever females will eventually figure out that a half of a rich male is better than all of a poor male. Even with half of the parental attention, the benefit in resources is more than enough to make up the difference. If there is a mechanism by which males can accumulate vast resources, such as a large territory, or a particularly rich food source, polygamy will overtake monogamy.

As we might expect, complete monogamy is pretty rare in nature. Most animals fall somewhere in between strict monogamy and rampant polygamy, which is consistent with the theory that ecology and internal competition create a fluid and self-correcting system. Either system creates an inherent advantage for one gender or another, based on resources, population density, and many other factors.

So What About Humans?

Homo erectus was the most carnivorous monkey or ape ever. He represented a sharp divergence from the now extinct Australopithecus robustus, who lived almost exclusively on leaves, seeds, and fruits. Though it may pain some vegans to hear this, our entire society is very likely the result of our ancestors' love of raw meat. You see, in order to hunt meat, humans had to roam far from home. Unlike plants, prey animals do their best to get away – and stay away – from their predators. Not only that, but our pre-human ancestors were not nearly as fast as most of their prey. We gained much by standing on two legs, but we also lost much. For Homo erectus, the hunt required allies. Groups of men had to form social bonds, and then set out on the hunt, perhaps for days or even weeks at a time, until they were able to secure a large enough prize to bring home. Not only did man need social bonds, but he needed spears, for he lacked the claws and teeth of the other top predators. Both of these things require a big brain. As it turns out, this is the major difference between our extinct ancestors and ourselves. We were the only ones who figured out how to make tools, form groups, and kill big animals.

For over a million years, humans didn't evolve much. Our environment was stable, and we had achieved a stalemate with natural selection. We lived in small groups, formed pair bonds, experienced jealousy, lust, and emotional hurt. We were busy just trying to stay alive, and we hadn't discovered how to farm, so there was no way to build up enough resources to become highly polygamous. By all estimates, only the most elite males could be openly polygamous, and then, only with a small number of females. As for cheating, the jury is still out to some degree, but there is very strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that it was at least relatively common for all of our history.

Within the animal kingdom, there is a remarkably consistent tendency. The smarter the animal, the more flexible are its mating habits. We can see this very clearly in chimps and coyotes, two species that are very similar to humans in many societal ways. The degree of polygamy in both of these species changes slightly based on the availability of resources. With humans, we would expect that this tendency would apply, and as we progress in history, we will see that not only is this true, it is spectacularly true.

In a hunter-gatherer society, there is very little skill involved in staying alive. Either the food is there to pick, or it isn't. Either the herd is nearby, or it isn't. For this reason, there was no way for males to build up reserves, or to guarantee food in the future. The conclusion is clear. With no particularly powerful males, polygamy would never become the dominant mating model. However, things changed with the agricultural revolution. Once we figured out how to grow our own crops, our big brains kicked in at an astonishing rate.

As soon as one male accumulated more food than he and his mate and children could eat, he discovered the power of money. Obviously, he had no concept of the abstract currency we use today, but it was clear that he could use his excess food to buy the loyalty of his fellows. As labor goes, farming two fields is not significantly more difficult than farming one, especially with a little help. Soon, what was a slight excess of food became a large excess, which allowed the purchase of more loyalty. Man had discovered how to become rich. With this discovery, he changed the dynamic of mating by allowing females the option of choosing a portion of a very rich man over all of a very poor man. Polygamy was here, and it was not going anywhere for a long time.

In all of human history, pastoral societies have been polygamous, almost without exception. At the dawn of human 'civilization,' when we learned to build cities, kings and emperors and local rulers generally had thousands of women in harems. Kings had ultimate authority, and ultimate access to mates. In some South American nations, it was rare to find a child who was not royalty. Until as late as the 20^th century, many parts of the world were still operating within this model. Though it's not always pleasant for us to think about, the reality is that for virtually all of our history as agriculturalists, women have been monopolized by powerful men, leaving large swaths of the male population celibate.

Perhaps now is a good time to take a step back and try to look objectively at what we've learned. Please bear in mind that I am not suggesting how people ought to act, or how many wives a man should have. Also, please remember that, just like our taste for sugar, our drive to compete and our tendency to stratify our society is completely natural. Men are evolutionarily programmed to behave the way they do. It is incorrect to say that man became polygamous because of deficiency of morality, or because of a fault in his character. Simply put, the strategy that man discovered has been extraordinarily efficient. A population of a few million has become a population of six billion. This is no small feat, and as far as evolution is concerned, for a species as big as humans, it's nothing short of a roaring success. We're going to leave this topic for a while, but I promise you that later on, we will return to polygamy and discuss exactly what's wrong with it. In the meantime, we need to look at males and females separately.

Why Men are Lying Cheaters

In any species, sex is a competition. The females, with so much at stake, must choose their mates with great care, selecting the best male for genes, post-natal protection and childrearing duties. The males, on the other hand, have very little at stake genetically, and virtually nothing in time expended. (Women, feel free to make your 'minute-man' jokes at this point.) They literally have no compelling reason, in and of themselves, not to try to impregnate as many females as possible. With this notion as a starting point, let's examine human males, and see if we can discover just what it means to be a man.

The first thing we must know about males is that they tend to produce more children than females. This seems counterintuitive at first, but it's true. Men who marry twice are more likely to have children by both wives, and women are less likely to have children with their second husband. Add to this the fact that one particularly promiscuous male could have perhaps four or five wives in the course of a lifetime, all the while availing himself of the services of prostitutes and mistresses, and you will see the truth in it. Men produce more children than women.

If there's something twitching the back of your head about this, it's probably the question of how to work out the math if men produce more children than women. Obviously, there's a real number of children in the world, and it takes one man and one woman to make a child, so that can't be the way it is, can it? Yet, the numbers are astonishingly clear. Across all cultures, men who are fathers have more children than women who are mothers. It is undeniable. The only question is how we can interpret this information. What is the answer to this apparent paradox?

The answer is obvious, if painful. The only way for this to be possible is if virtually all females produce children, and many men do not. This is, as it turns out, completely true historically. There has always been a significant number of celibate men, usually the least powerful, or the poorest, or the ugliest. Furthermore, the ratio of men to women has always been essentially one to one. If for no other reason than this, we can say with certainty that humans are polygamous. (As we will see later, cuckoldry also plays a part in this odd equation, but not enough to explain the discrepancy completely.)

The next thing to know about men is that they must seduce women. Despite libraries full of feminist literature extolling the virtues of confident women asking men out, it remains the very rare exception to the rule. For all of human history, men have seduced women. This, too, lines up very neatly with other creatures who share similar mating patterns. In nature, the gender which spends the least amount of time in reproduction does the seducing. In the few species where males tend the young, or even more rare, carry them in their bodies, females do the courting, and males do the selecting.

Men are not entirely ignorant in their pursuit of sex. Overwhelmingly, we see a historical trend that is at least somewhat promising. Most men, having achieved a monogamous marriage, try very hard not to lose it. This doesn't mean that they don't cheat. It does mean that they usually go to great lengths to hide their indiscretions if they don't have the power to enforce polygamy. Most men, it seems, have a vested interest in maintaining something close to a monogamous relationship.

One of the most obvious traits males exhibit is their tendency to compete. Sport is ubiquitous, and until quite recently in our history, was virtually monopolized by men. Testosterone is clearly linked to aggression. Men compete for jobs, for money, for land, for possessions, for women, and pretty much anything else of value. This drive to compete is a direct result of female selection. That is to say, because females choose the best males (whatever the criteria might be), the males must compete so that the female can choose properly. It's a cruel twist of fate that the 'right to choose' inherent in females is what led to the complete domination of females by men after the agricultural revolution. Once men learned how to become rich, they learned how to become kings. It was only a short jump in logic to realize that kings (the winners) could have as many mates as they wanted. In all six of the early civilizations – Babylon, Egypt, India, China, Aztec, and Inca, one man ruled with complete authority, and had rights to virtually any females he wanted. There are records of some rulers complaining of their regimens, as many kings were literally obliged to perform sexually at least two times a day every day with different concubines. In all of these civilizations, there were elaborate records noting exactly when each concubine would be the most fertile. Clearly, to males, sex is something to be fought for and won.

What is more notable than the behavior of kings is the observation that kings were not special in kind – only degree. Across all of these cultures, men with power had harems of proportionate size. As wealth diminished, so too did the quality and exclusivity of the harem, but the desires and goals of men are clear. Even among the lowest level of landowners, there was rampant polygamy. The Roman Empire is a perfect example of this. Though marriage was between one man and one woman, we can learn a lot from the slave trade. Most of the actual labor was done by male slaves, for obvious reasons, yet young female slaves brought the highest price on the open market. Not only that, relatively small houses were often filled with an inordinately high number of female domestic servants, who were, by and large, all young. More convincingly, Roman nobles freed many of their slaves at remarkably young ages, leaving them large inheritances. The common thread? All of them appear to have been children of slaves. Why else would they be freed, except that they were illegitimate offspring?

Though we think of Christian Europe as a monogamous place, it's just not true. Polygamous mating was kept more secret, but it was no less prevalent. The countryside was male dominated, leaving many men celibate, primarily because castles and monasteries employed huge numbers of serving maids. In some cases, contemporary historians explicitly mention “gynoeciums,” where the secret harems of castle owners lived. Add to this the fact that among men with one wife and no servants, there is no indication whatsoever that cheating was any less common when there was an opportunity for it.

The last thing that we must realize about men is that they are violent, and that their violence has a lot to do with sex. It has been convincingly demonstrated that war among humans did not originate over resources, but mates. All studies of preliterate societies reveal very high levels of violence between men, with the inevitable result being the capture and sexual conquest of the females. In earlier historical periods, rape was one of the most attractive incentives used to recruit soldiers. Even today, rape is not uncommon in war, and shore leave is at best a thinly veiled excuse for soldiers to buy the services of prostitutes.

To quote Matt Ridley, to whom this essay is unquestionably indebted, “The nature of the human male, then, is to take opportunities, if they are granted him, for polygamous mating and to use wealth, power, and violence as means to sexual ends in the competition with other men – though usually not at the expense of sacrificing a secure monogamous relationship.” (The Red Queen, 206) As we will see in a moment, human sexual competition is not one sided. Females have their own games to play, and their own motivations. Clearly, the domination of rampant polygamy is at an end, for when we look around the world today, we see that even the most powerful men must now at least make a good show of discretion with their mistresses. Although cheating is still very common, and multiple marriages are the norm, there has obviously been some dynamic that has caused a shift in the balance of power. Men don't get everything they want, no matter how powerful. We must explore the nature of females to discover what has caused this.

Why Don't Women Bear Their Husband's Children?

We've pretty firmly established that men are scum, right? All they want to do is have sex with as many women as they can, and the only thing stopping them is their own level of power, right? Well, not exactly. This picture is entirely one-sided, and doesn't account for the fact that through most of human history, women have been able to enforce near-monogamy on men. How did they do that, exactly? Moreover, is it fair to say that women have been nothing but the pawns of men for all of history? Are they little more than incubators for male genes to be passed through?

It's easy to understand why women often describe history as an entirely male dominated story. It's also easy to understand that women are often frustrated by the apparent paradox. If women have so much power as the selectors, why do they always end up on the short end of the bargain? When the men leave, women are the ones left holding the baby and all the responsibility, and the men get to go out and make more babies, with little or no consequence to themselves. For all the power women are supposed to have, they still can't seem to get paid as much as men, and they've had to fight tooth and nail for everything they've ever gotten. You never hear about men being left at the altar, do you? Women just want a man who will be faithful, and then they'll be happy, right? If only men would be faithful, everything would be perfect.

As it turns out, there really is a paradox that explains how women impose monogamy on men, and it fits perfectly with the ever-growing body of evidence that suggests that nearly everything we think of as being “above nature” about humans is actually evidence that we are unavoidably tied to our animal roots. Here, then, is the answer to why men marry, and why they prefer long term relationships with one woman. Women cheat. Often.

One of the most dramatic advantages, genetically, of being female is that there is never any doubt of parentage. In other words, a mother knows with 100% certainty that her child is her own. (This, of course, doesn't take into account modern medical procedures, but you get the point.) Since evolution is not concerned with ethics, only successful reproduction, it stands to reason that females would have learned to take advantage of this fact. They clearly have. Though the numbers vary slightly depending on the particular culture, one thing has been proven rather conclusively. In cultures that are primarily or strictly monogamous, cuckoldry is common. In the landmark study, conducted in Liverpool in the 1980s, it was discovered that less than 80% of children were actually related to the man who believed himself to be the father.

If it is true that human nature is the cause of this phenomenon, we ought to see biological evidence. It so happens that the evidence is striking. Recent investigations of the female orgasm have given us a rather shocking dose of reality. It has long been known that there are some female orgasms that cause more sperm to be retained after sex. These are called high-retention orgasms. Obviously, high retention orgasms have a higher probability of inducing pregnancy. What was shocking to researchers was when they examined orgasms alongside fidelity. In faithful wives, approximately 55 percent of their orgasms were high-retention. However, among unfaithful wives, only 40 percent of their orgasms with their husbands were. Even more shocking, though, was the fact that over 70 percent of the orgasms with their adulterous lovers were high-retention. There is more. Without consciously being aware of their most fertile period, women tend to have sex with their lovers on their most fertile days.

The combination of these numbers is shocking. Though women tended to have sex with their husbands twice as much as their lovers, they were slightly more likely to conceive with their lover than with their husband. It appears that women have a biological drive to keep their husband while bearing the child of another man. Again, if this is true, we should be able to make predictions based on other animals who behave similarly. Again, we can.

In a previous essay, I noted that human females are rare in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. Rather than having a small window of sexual availability and interest, they are sexually active essentially all the time, but only fertile a small percentage of that time. Another aspect of this system is that fertility is concealed. Except in very recent years, there has never been an accurate measure of peak fertility. One immediately apparent advantage to the female is that this system allows her to choose her mates much more selectively. If, like other animals, human females displayed fertility with a clear physical sign, and were only receptive to sex during this period, men would only be interested during these few days, and culture would be much, much different. As it is, women have as many days as they want to choose between as many potential suitors as they desire.

There is an odd side effect of concealed ovulation. Since ovulation is concealed, adultery becomes easier, for on any given day, the woman can leave in secret to have sex with her lover, and her husband, ignorant of her fertility, is none the wiser. As we have seen, whether they know it or not, women are instinctively aware of this fact, and use it to their advantage when they do have affairs.

Why would female cheating have such a profound effect on men? After all, men are supposed to be interested in having sex with as many women as possible. Why would female cheating be such a threat? Like other polygamous animals, humans produce 'smart sperm.' Some sperm avoids trying to get to the egg, instead forming a kind of blockage that prevents other sperm from getting in. Other sperm are literally attack sperm, actively trying to destroy sperm from competing males. All of this is a testament to the fact that even on a cellular level, men really don't want other men having sex with their women. The math is clear. If many men have sex with a woman, the chance of any one man being the father is dependent on how many men there were. On the other hand, if a man can keep his woman faithful only to him, there is a 100 percent chance that he is the father. It almost goes without saying that virtually all the laws in history regarding adultery have been geared towards punishing women for having more than one man. Our biology predicts this.

There is a clear pattern in nature. In species that have rampant adultery, particularly birds, interest in frequent sex is almost always observed. Birds turn out to be the closest analog to humans, sexually. Like many species of birds, humans live in colonies. Swallows, in fact, are very close to humans in their sexual practice. Consider this. In swallows, 'married' females often have affairs with dominant older males, but they do it in secret. When a male has been cosmetically altered by researchers to be more attractive, his chances of having an adulterous affair doubles. The more attractive the male is, the more chance he has of being a deadbeat dad. Husbands are very jealous of their wives and often follow them around anytime they leave the nest. Anytime the female leaves for an extended period, the male becomes adamant about having numerous sexual encounters with her. One of the most disturbing things that we've seen in swallows has only been discovered recently. Until genetic tests verified that cheating is rampant, scientists thought swallows were pretty much completely monogamous. The reason they thought this? Swallows are very good at keeping their adultery secret!

Is any of that making you twitch a little? There's more. The research on swallows, unhindered by the objections of the church or feminists, has proven rather conclusively what the female's reproductive strategy is. Marry the male who will remain faithful, and reproduce with the one who will produce the best children. Does this sound like a cynical view of human marriage? If the facts line up, why would we use the word 'cynical'? It turns out that when we examine human society, across cultures, women have a propensity for carrying on secret affairs with one man who is usually an 'upgrade' from her husband. Depressing? Perhaps, but it is true.

Males have adapted to combat this tendency. Men whose wives have been gone all day produce much more sperm than those who have been with their wives all day. Consider the adage, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' As it turns out, it also makes the testicles more fecund. The same thing happens in rats, incidentally. Once again, human behavior lines up with animal behavior. What we think of as intellectual, or cultural constructs, are actually deep rooted instinctual behaviors. We cannot control them on a biological level. They simply exist. It would be foolish of us to deny this fact.

Jealousy is one of those mythologized concepts that we seem to have a very hard time understanding. Despite voluminous research indicating that lack of jealousy is a near-perfect indicator of impending divorce, we insist that jealousy is something to be suppressed or avoided. It is seen as an aberrant behavior. In reality, it is one of the mechanisms that keep both men and women relatively monogamous. Without jealousy, we can imagine that both men and women, with their innate tendency to cheat, would eventually throw off the yoke of monogamy and live in openly polygamous communes. They do not, and every attempt at creating such a commune has utterly failed.

Once we take the labels “good” and “bad” off of human behavior, we can begin to see a cause and effect chain. Once we recognize why we are the way we are, we can begin to evaluate our own feelings based on our own goals. If we try to do it the other way around, we are dooming ourselves to failure. Human nature is neither good nor bad. It just is. Individual goals, on the other hand, can be good or bad, based on what outcome is desired. For a man who has had a vasectomy, the reproductive goal is clearly gone, but the motivations and desires still exist. Only by a clear understanding of why he feels the way he does can a man begin to decide with rationality what his behavior ought to be.

To Summarize:

In short, here's how it works. Men would like to have as many women as possible, but in egalitarian systems, this is rarely possible. Women would like one man because of his contribution to childrearing. Women are also restricted by outside realities. They seldom get to marry the best man available, not to mention the fact that the most reproductively viable man is seldom the best potential husband. To this end, women often engage in extramarital affairs with one man, usually an older, richer man, and more often than not, married. Men, aware of this propensity in women, become jealous of their women and guard them relentlessly. They also attempt to reduce the chance of being cuckolded by having sex with their wives as often as possible after being separated. Married men are also, ironically, pursued as potential lovers by women with lesser husbands.

The bare truth is perhaps not as rosy as we'd like, but it's also extremely parsimonious in explaining why we act the way we do. Men and women both cheat, and always have. Marriage in humans is a tenuous balance between drives. Women instinctively want to keep their men for financial and childrearing advantages, but they have a natural drive to trade up in secret if they get the chance. Men, likewise, have a natural drive to be the one selected for an upgrade, which conveniently allows them to engage in their biological drive to be polygamous. It is not a pretty system, but if you think about the reality of the marriages you've seen, or your own experience, it is a very elegant explanation for what seems to be contradictory desires in our own nature.

What Does It All Mean?

Finally, we must put all of this in perspective. This is perhaps the most crucial element of this essay. All of these facts about human nature are trends and averages. They do not speak to any one person's desires or tendencies. You may want to object that you have had a vastly different experience, but this cannot be an objection, since none of these trends can be used to accurately predict an individual's behavior. As I have said many times before, humans are incredibly diverse, and deviance is something that is part of our nature.

However, it is also impossible to deny these trends as inherent, innate, instinctual realities. Though our own lives may have been shaped by our experiences, and we may not fall under these broad generalizations, they are nonetheless valid. Regardless of what you have become as an adult, you were shaped by your inherent sexual nature.

Now, we must recall the lesson of sugar cravings from a previous essay. We learned why we crave sugar, and we learned that immoderate consumption of raw sugar can lead to dire consequences – not least of which the lessening of our own sexual attractiveness, which does matter. We learned that it is quite possible to begin to put together a system of ethics about sugar consumption, based on the scientific evidence of what consequences follow from different consumption patterns. If we wish to be sexually attractive, healthy, and long-lived, we can certainly eat sugar, but we must be careful of processed sugar, and we must engage in enough exercise to burn off any excess calories we might consume.

Can we apply the same mentality to sexuality? I hope you're beginning to see that we can. We're not quite ready to make any broad statements, because there are aspects of sexuality that we have not covered, such as sexually transmitted diseases, emotional consequences of various sexual activities, and the physical consequences of various types, or levels of sexual activity. Nevertheless, we ought to be able to form some rather firm objective statements about ourselves and our culture. For instance, marriage is something that reflects human nature, but it does not reflect all of it. Both men and women desire and engage in extramarital affairs. Many couples successfully practice 'open marriages.' Pockets of polygamy persist. Very rich men move to South America and buy the services of young housemaids. The tendency to get tired of a mate after childbearing is natural. The male desire for young women is natural.

In short, what we have learned so far is that much of what we consider immoral or unnatural in humans is not only natural, but essential in building the mating system that we have now. There is no particular indication that humans are supposed to mate for life, especially since life has been extended to over seventy years. Like sugar consumption, we can look at marriage and mating as the results of natural instincts, which will, with any luck, allow us to judge cause and effect more objectively, without the baggage from religion and myth which tell us that our sexuality is evil or depraved or out of control.

Three short examples of equivocation

2009-01-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

Several conversations recently have given me pause to think about equivocations. That is, arguments in which a word has multiple interchangable definitions. Theist arguments are full of equivocations, but I'd like to highlight a few that I've been dealing with lately, and one from the news:

Death: Back before we knew about neurons and electricity, we were still keenly aware of death. When a person no longer has the thump-thump in their chest, and they're no longer breathing, they're dead. Once they're dead, they don't come back unless there's a miracle. (More on miracles in a second.)

As we became more and more aware of the science behind life, and consequently the science of death, we learned that we weren't necessarily a hundred percent correct about that whole "heart stopped, therefore dead" thing. In fact, once we discovered electricity, we learned that people can sometimes be revived once their heart has stopped. We also learned that sometimes, artificially breathing for someone who can't breathe on their own can get them breathing again.

In what I consider one of the worst linguistic gaffes of history, doctors and scientists invented two categories of death: Clinical death and brain death. Clinical death is usually caused by cardiac arrest, and is basically what we've always thought of as being dead -- heart stopped, no breathing. (Apologies to the medical community. I'm keeping this simple.) Clinical death isn't always permanent. Brain death, on the other hand, is when there is no more brain activity. Once the brain dies, there is no coming back.

So, the word "death" really means two things now. First, it means "really close to being gone forever." Second, it means "gone forever."

Here's a really important point: There is not one case in the history of mankind of someone coming back from brain death. It's permanent. Anyone who has ever "come back from the dead" has actually been revived from near death.

I wish scientists and doctors had just invented a new word. Death would still mean "gone forever" and we would have another word for "mostly dead" (to quote Miracle Max). If that had happened, we wouldn't have all these silly theists prattling on about how their Uncle Bob was "dead on the table" and Jesus brought him back to life just like he did Lazarus.

Nobody comes back from the dead, folks.

Man Needs God

We hear all the time that man "needs" god, but again, there are two words at work here. There's a strong and a weak sense of "need." The strong one is that without a certain thing, a man will die. Man needs air. Man needs food. You put a thousand men into the vacuum of space for ten minutes each and you'll have a thousand dead men no matter how many times you run the experiment. Man needs air pressure. This is the strong sense of need.

Sometimes, after arguing with theists all day, I feel like I need a drink. This is not the same sense of the word. In reality, if I don't get a drink, I'll wake up fine tomorrow morning, and in fact, I'll probably feel a little better than if I did drink. Humans feel like they need someone to love them right now. They need a sense of fulfillment in their jobs. The list can go on ad nauseum.

Hopefully you see the difference. One of these words means "a strong desire" and the other means "a necessity for life itself." Theists use these words interchangably. In church, they're happy to assert that morality, or happiness, or life itself is fully dependent on God. We need God for all of it. The arguments tend to get really silly once an atheist points out that he's happy and moral, but that's not what I want to go into right now. The point I'm making is that if we had two separate words for "need," these arguments would be dealt with a lot faster.

If theists want to say that a lot of men "really strongly desire" God to be the source of morality, I will concede the point happily and we can both go on our merry way. If they suggest that without God, it is impossible for me to be happy... well... they'll just look stupid because... um... I'm happy. Q.E.D.

Finally, a little bit from the news:

This is being called a miracle. A plane crashed into the icy waters of the Hudson River, and nobody was killed. People are thanking God for ruining their trip without killing them.

So, you should be getting the hang of this by now. There are two meanings of the word "miracle." First, a miracle is something that is highly improbable but clearly possible. The Miracle Mets were not defying the physical laws of the universe when they beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. They were defying odds. Similarly, when a plane crashes and nobody dies, it's not a physical impossibility that somehow managed to happen anyway. It's a remarkable coincidence. It's odds-defying, not physics-defying.

Still, theists are fond of using the word miracle to mean both "things that defy the laws of the universe" and "things that are highly improbable." We can end this discussion of miracles really simply. There has never in the history of the world been a documented phenomenon that could only have happened if the laws of the universe were broken. What we might call "minor miracles" -- things that defy odds -- happen all the time. That's because when we put billions of people into situations where odds-defying things can happen, it becomes pretty much inevitable that things with less than billion to one odds will occasionally happen.

So, to summarize my thoughts for today:

1) Nobody has ever come back from the dead. Period.

2) Man clearly doesn't "need" God.

3) God didn't ruin your holiday just to prove he loves you.

On Science and Knowledge, Part II

2009-01-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Problem of Induction

Most objections to science come from people who have heard of the Problem of Induction, but don't understand it. Put simply, it is the observation that nothing empirical (that is, existing in the material universe) can be known with certainty. People who subscribe to a philosophical concept called solipsism insist that the only thing that can ever be known is self. That is, I can never know for certain that anything besides myself exists. In fact, I can never know exactly what I am, only that I am. This is sometimes referred to as the “Brain in a Vat” theory. That is, we might simply be brains in vats, and that everything we perceive of as reality is an intricate illusion.

This supposed problem is not nearly as difficult to resolve as you might immediately suppose. For one thing, there's an obvious issue with the “Brain in a Vat.” Even if it is true (and we can't conclusively prove that it's not) we cannot help the fact that we can't test the idea in any way. If we are trapped in an illusion, then we are trapped, and the illusion, for every conceivable purpose which we might have, is real.

Furthermore, if there is some evidence that we are brains in a vat, the theory becomes testable. If we discovered a “tear in the Matrix,” for lack of a better term, we could scientifically study it, and if there was enough evidence to sway our opinion to the conclusion, it would no longer be in the realm of philosophy. It would be scientific fact.

We must, it appears, conclude that all the available evidence suggests that reality is what it appears to be, that other people exist, that our senses are basically reliable, and that through rigorous testing, we can verify the reliability of our observations.

Nevertheless, some will argue that even granting the reality of this existence, the fact that science cannot prove anything with certainty negates the value of science. This is clearly absurd, and we can prove it with the somewhat tedious examples I gave in the previous section. When provided with overwhelming evidence – the actual photo in question, in this instance – we can say with virtual certainty that a thing is a fact. We can clearly demonstrate that some sets of evidence are stronger than others, and that for all practical purposes, science does have measurable value.

Finally, (and forgive me for getting a little bit technical) scientific certainty isn't based on guesswork. It's based on deduction. Math is deductively true. That is, it is 100% certain. Probability equations are math, and therefore, based on deduction. When we can say with mathematical certainty that a thing is 50% certain, for example, it is certainly 50% certain. What we cannot say is that the two things we're assigning probability to are 100% certain. However, as we've seen, we can be so overwhelmingly sure that there's no point in questioning them.

Consider this very simple example. Suppose that I am in a soundproof room (and suppose that I have used science to prove with overwhelming certainty that it really is soundproof) and there are only four things in the room – three boxes and me. The boxes are all across the room from me, and there is a noise coming from that general direction. With no other information at all, I can say that I am scientifically certain that the noise comes from one of the three boxes.* However, at this point, any box I pick is only 33% likely to be the correct box. Now, suppose I ask an assistant to remove one of the boxes that is not making the noise. Now, I have a 50% likelihood of guessing correctly. If the assistant removes another box, and the noise persists, I can be 100% certain that the box is making the noise, even without doing any more experiments.

Here's where we need to be sure to separate empiricism from probability. I cannot be 100% certain that I am standing in a room, or that if I am standing in the room, I am not the subject of some elaborate hoax, or that I am not suffering from a hallucination. As I've shown, I can find ways to be so certain that it would be absurd to suggest otherwise, but to be pedantic, I am only nearly certain. However, if reality is what it appears to be, it is 100% certain that there is a 33% chance of each box being the source of the noise. In other words, once we have decided to trust our senses, we can invoke mathematical certainty and be completely certain of the numbers.

In many cases, this is what science attempts to do. When there are multiple possible explanations, scientists try to eliminate as many as possible. If they can do this successfully, and only one explanation remains, they can feel certain that it is the correct one. At every step of the scientific process, everything is questioned, tested, and retested. Nothing is ever assumed until it is demonstrated to be so certain that it is worth assuming. Even then, scientists are perfectly happy to concede that new information could exist which would change their conclusion.

However, it's important to note that there is also a way to calculate the probability of this happening. Suppose that science has observed a phenomenon thoroughly, and has determined that it has happened one hundred thousand times, and in all cases, it happened in exactly the same way. Furthermore, the explanation of the phenomenon made it logically necessary that a certain other phenomenon happen in a very particular way, and that has been observed a hundred thousand times, without incident. Now, suppose that there is a chain of events, where there are a hundred thousand things that would logically have to happen a certain way, and all hundred thousand have been observed a hundred thousand times, without a single instance of deviation.

How likely is it that the logic is wrong? How possible is it that our predictions are wrong, and that there is some other explanation for our observation of all of these events? Obviously, it's staggeringly improbable. It's so improbable that without any other reason to believe otherwise, we can say that this is a fact of nature. Again, this is what science attempts to do – demonstrate things so many times that certainty becomes nearly complete – so nearly complete that it becomes unnecessary to provide a disclaimer because of the “Problem of Induction.”

Religious Claims

Theists everywhere claim that they receive their “truths” about the universe from a source other than science. They must, for science contradicts the claims of the religious. Any wonder that theists claim that science is incapable of addressing the questions of religion? Unfortunately, this is simply not true, and a careful examination of religious claims will prove it.

When a Christian claims to know something about the nature of God, where is he getting his information? There are several possibilities. One of the most common sources is the Bible. Also, many claim to have “heard the voice of God” in one way or another. Perhaps they got a strong intuitive feeling about something. Perhaps they heard a voice in their head. Perhaps there was an event in their life that led them to believe that God was manipulating events in order to “send them a message,” or reward or punish them. Perhaps they heard the testimony of hundreds, or even thousands of people claiming to have evidence of God's nature. Perhaps they were swayed by the fact that millions of people share a belief in the Christian God.

Here, we must ask a pointed question. What do all of these circumstances have in common? Quite simply, they are all empirical evidence for God's existence! Evidence, as we have seen already, is nothing more and nothing less than bits of data for our brain to interpret. All of these bits of data that Christians mention when asked about their belief in God are just that – bits of data. Like any other pieces of data, they have a certain degree of reliability.

Without laboriously dissecting each category of evidence, let's just admit the obvious. Only a few minutes ago, you certainly agreed with me that taking my word about something was basically useless as reliable evidence. Without reliable physical proof of my photo, you would be unwilling to bet ten thousand dollars that you could guess its subject. If you think about it for a moment (without thinking too much about God) you will quickly realize that testimony is only good when there is a reason to believe it.

As for internal “feelings,” we can make the same observation. Everyone has had feelings that turned out to be wrong. Without other reliable evidence, feelings are not good enough. Likewise, we have all seen things that were highly coincidental, but turned out to be just that – coincidence. Finally, it should be patently obvious that a book is nothing more than a written version of someone's testimony, which we already established as unreliable.

Having laid bare the truth about religious claims of knowledge, we see that they are false on two counts. First, they are not relying on non-empirical claims. Quite the contrary. Every bit of “proof” is based on something that they observed in the material world with one of their senses. Second, none of their evidence passes muster as reliable. Instead, each one is inherently untrustworthy, and easily proven to be so. Does this prove that Christians are wrong about the existence of their God? No, it does not. However, it does expose a very nasty truth about it: There is absolutely no good evidence for it.

If you remember the first example of science that I gave you, you will realize that the claims of God's existence are as outlandish as the claim of alien spacecraft or space stations from Andromeda. None of the three have any basis for certainty, and as we have seen, the question is most certainly not outside of the realm of science. In fact, it is absolutely impossible NOT to use science to answer questions. The only question is whether or not we will use science that is reliable.

This last point is important enough that we shall linger on it for another moment. As I said, science is nothing more and nothing less than the description of how we learn about the universe. There is no way for us to avoid processing evidence and reaching conclusions. The only question is whether our methods will be testable, repeatable, and verifiable. Like any other method, science can be done well, or done poorly. Scientists have spent hundreds of years using deductive logic, empirical evidence, and inductive reasoning to refine and perfect the methodology of science, to the point that well trained scientists can achieve astoundingly accurate information about the world. Scientists are always willing to admit that they are not 100% certain of their conclusions, but if they are good scientists, they will also be quick to point out that there is a degree of certainty to their conclusions that is extremely reliable – so reliable that you can bet everything you own on it and be assured of winning.

Back To Religion

Having established that it is literally impossible not to do science, we must return to the question of religion and how it perverts and degrades science. Remember, every conclusion about the world is scientific. The only distinction is whether the conclusion was reached by using good science or bad science. In the case of religion, it is unquestionably the result of bad science. (Think about it. If it was good science, scientists would call it scientific, right?)

By separating itself from good science, religion is admitting conclusively that its conclusions are at best unreliable and at worst completely wrong. This is not a trivial matter. As we are all too aware, religious conclusions are used in everyday life in all walks of life. In politics, they can be bitterly divisive. In classrooms, they blur the lines of separation between church and state. In the homes, they are used to teach moral and sexual norms. What possible reason can we come up with for allowing conclusions that are admittedly suspect at best from being the default conclusions, simply because they are religious.

The answer that is most often given, at least in my experience, is that religion is not addressed by science. Unfortunately, as I have just demonstrated, it most certainly is. There is no basis for the claim that knowledge can be gained any way except through empirical observation and inductive conclusions. In fact, when the religious are pressed, we notice that they never describe in any meaningful way what method they use for gaining knowledge of God. They can't, for if they did, they would be admitting to scientific scrutiny.

The Cult of Credulity

Now, I wish to leave Christianity for a moment and focus on other areas of American life. Several years before I began writing this blog, America invaded Iraq, based on the testimony of a president and his cabinet whose political motives could hardly be described as morally pure. Though the signs of deceit were everywhere, Americans followed blindly into a war that has cost tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of lives. The best evidence for this decision was a dubious link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and equally dubious evidence of “weapons of mass destruction.”

It's easy to look at this in hindsight and say that we were deceived, and that it is the fault of the president and his political cronies. It may comfort us to say that it is not our responsibility, but the cold facts are a little less rosy. As a nation, we are credulous. We believe that sending money to faith healers will cure cancer. We believe that three sentence blurbs in newspapers have personal relevance to us based upon where the stars were positioned in the sky when we were born. We believe that humans are not just animals, but creatures placed on earth by God, and given authority over the whole earth. We believe that Global Warming isn't a problem. We believe that love is unconditional and that marriage is supposed to last forever. We believe that psychics can tell us where lost babies can be found. We believe that we can talk to our dead relatives through mediums, if only we use the correct crystals while summoning spiritual energy. We believe that God loves us more than the Muslims.

In short, Americans are an incredibly gullible people. To be fair, the same can be said for most of the people on earth, but Americans are, in many ways, uniquely gullible. We are the only nation in the civilized world that actually considers teaching children that the earth is six thousand years old. This is a symptom of a larger problem, and that problem, I believe, is the notion that “Faith is a Virtue.”

Faith, or rather, the belief in things that defy evidence, is the source of thousands of bizarre beliefs. Regardless of the scientific explanation for it, the reality is that people really, really want to believe in a lot of nonsense. The question we must ask ourselves is whether or not that desire is enough justification for allowing a culture to continue down the path of unscientific conclusions. We can clearly see that things which are “natural” are not necessarily good. We cannot assume that our natural inclination to credulity is good, either. In fact, it should be patently obvious that it's harmful.

Since there is no way to gain knowledge except through science, we can ask the question very simply. Which is more likely to give us correct answers: Good science, or Bad science? The answer is so patently obvious that we wonder why everyone doesn't know it. My explanation is that our culture teaches two blatantly false ideas. First, we teach that science is just “one way” to get correct answers. Second, we teach that science is dangerous because it threatens the “human spirit” or that it encourages immoral conclusions about government or personal ethics. I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated the ridiculous nature of the first claim. The second will require a lot more information to dispel, but that is what I intend to do. Having established that science is the only way to learn true information about the universe, we must try to learn what science says about human morality, and if we can, determine whether or not science really does lead us down a path to moral depravity and the devaluation of human life.

The Alternative

We must return to something I mentioned in the first paragraphs of this chapter. Namely, I want to address the claim that I'm attempting to take all the imagination and fun out of life by making it all about cold hard science. I hope it's already becoming clear that this is absurd. Imagination and fun are part of the human experience. There are perfectly good scientific explanations for why we have imaginations, and why fun is important to us, and these often end up telling us things about how we came to be human in the first place. Will the knowledge of what makes “fun” fun make it any less fun? Of course not, any more than having a degree in linguistics makes a great novel any less entertaining. Knowledge adds to the human experience, and those who say that it makes life cold are either ignorant of the true nature of science, or afraid science will render their own view of life irrational.

By examining all aspects of what it means to be human, I hope to give you the freedom and the knowledge to make your own life better, and perhaps happier. By dispelling myths that have been hanging over us for centuries, I hope to give you more options for how to have a fulfilling and meaningful life. In fact, I can assure you that the only option I intend to take away is the option to accept bad science as good science and feel good about it.

* To be truly scientific, I would need to eliminate the possibility that multiple boxes were emitting noise or that through some effect or combination of effects, more than one box was working in concert to produce a single noise. In science, before we can say we are certain, we must eliminate all potential rival theories. For this example, however, I assumed a rather simple scheme for illustration purposes.

On Science and Knowledge, Part I

2009-01-14T12:29:00.000-08:00

I have often mentioned the subtle danger inherent in toleration of moderate religion. In short, the most insidious aspect of moderate religion is that it not only permits, but encourages, belief in things which are not supported by evidence. At first, this may not seem like such a bad thing. Many cultural traditions involve harmless (and even fun) promotion of things that are not “scientific.” There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who look back at their childhood years with fondness, remembering the excitement they felt at the thought of a midnight visit from Santa Claus. Millions of people worldwide check their daily horoscope, and they live perfectly functional lives. Despite cases like this, I believe it's crucially necessary to draw a cultural divide between that which is credible, and that which is mythical.

Before making my case, it is important for me to mention that I am not advocating a world without imagination, nor am I suggesting that we all live in a cold, calculating world of probability and detached analysis. In fact, what I'm proposing is the exact opposite in many ways. Even so, my critics will surely play the standard card, accusing me of attempting to rob their lives of any meaning or joy. Of course, the final judgment is to be made by you, the reader, but it is important to me that you understand my intentions at the beginning so that perhaps, if you are prone to making such accusations, you will suspend sentence until you have absorbed my entire argument.

What is Science?

The first step in dismantling the power of religion is to establish the power of science. There are many misconceptions, particularly in America, about not only what science is, but what it can do, and why it is certainly reliable. There is a perceived battle between science and religion, and much to the chagrin of the religious, the whole thing is a sham. The war has long since been won, and much like the stereotypical southern Good Ol' Boy with a confederate flag on the back window of his pick-up truck, many a religious man persists in believing that there is still something to fight over.

Science, very simply, is a process. It is a method, like math or logic. More precisely, it is the method for learning about our universe. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the sole milieu of trained academics and stodgy old men with glasses. Science is practiced by everyone on the planet on a daily basis. In fact – and this is a crucial point – it is impossible to avoid using science.

A simple way to learn the scientific method is to perform a series of thought experiments. Let's start at the very beginning. Imagine that you are walking along a road, and you spot an object on the sidewalk. It is metallic, roughly circular, and covered with a sticky black substance. Now suppose you decide that you want to know what it is. The first thing you are likely to do is pick it up. Imagine that when you do, you discover that it is very hot – so hot, in fact, that you are unable to hold it for very long. Out of sheer reflex, you drop it again.

At this point, we have quite a bit of data to work with. First, we have a physical description of the thing, and we have verified, as well as possible, that our eyes reported approximately accurate information to our brain. From picking the object up, we've learned that the object feels like it looks. It does indeed feel metallic. It has a heft that we would expect from metal. In short, we now have corroborating evidence – feel and touch – to help us decide what it might be.

If you will forgive the pedantic nature of this next observation, I promise it will be worthwhile. Picking the object up is a very important step in our little science experiment. We have all learned that our eyes are often not reliable sources of information. Not only are they often fooled, but many substances look very much like other substances, even though they are quite different. We might very well have discovered that the object, which gave every appearance of being metallic, was actually styrofoam covered with metallic paint. The simple act of verifying our initial observation with a second kind of observation is crucial to science.

Now, after you have dropped the very hot object, you make a third observation. When you put your fingers near your face, you notice a distinct smell that you recognize as that of burning motor oil. This new data puts an idea into your head. Perhaps this object is part of a car, and has recently been expelled from a running engine, landing on the sidewalk only a few moments earlier. In support of this idea, we have the following set of data:

Metallic object
Much hotter than expected from the current weather
Appears to be mechanically crafted
Appears to be covered with oil
Found very near a road

By itself, any one of these pieces of data might not be enough to reasonably conclude that the object is a car part, or that it was recently in a running car. However, when you put all of the information together, it seems a reasonable conclusion. Now, suppose that as you look up, you see a disabled car about fifty feet ahead, and a man working under the hood. At this point, you will probably feel confident enough to take the object to the man, certain that you have found something he needs. If, having done so, you watch him place the object back into his engine, in a space that appears specifically designed for it, you can leave satisfied of the facts.

Removing the details, what can we say has happened here in terms of general principles? First, you encountered something unknown. Second, you made multiple observations. Third, you tested the observations against one another for consistency. Fourth, you made a guess, based on your observations, about a likely explanation for the unknown object. Finally, you devised a test to determine if your guess was correct.

This, in a nutshell, is the scientific method. There's nothing magical about it, and certainly nothing requiring years of education. In fact, without consciously thinking about it, you performed the steps in exactly the correct order! The reason for this is that the correct order is the order that works and you intuitively knew it.

For comparison, let's try thinking of ways in which you could have deviated from the scientific method and reasonably hoped to get the correct answer. Is there any way that you could have looked at the object without recording the observation as data in your brain? Unlikely, to be sure. Could you pick it up without noticing the texture, temperature, or weight? Again, no. In short, there's no way to avoid recording empirical data about the world. Simply by interacting with the world, we are collecting evidence.

Likewise, if a pattern emerges from your observations, it is entirely unreasonable to suggest that our brain will not try to subconsciously make sense of it. That's what brains do. The process of forming guesses about patterns is ingrained in our consciousness, and cannot be avoided. It is the way we think. Literally.

Very simply, the scientific method is just the expression of what we as humans unavoidably do. We make observations and predictions based on patterns of information. Now, let us do another thought experiment about the same situation. Suppose that after having gathered all your data about the mystery object, you decided that the object was likely a piece of debris from an alien spacecraft. Would that guess be a good one? There are obviously several problems with it. First, nobody on earth has ever produced an alien spacecraft for observation, so it's hard to test the idea. Second, unless alien spacecraft are invisible, there would be considerable evidence against the notion. Local radar, observations of other people, and satellite imagery could all demonstrate rather conclusively that no alien spacecraft were in the vicinity in the recent past. In short, there is a mountain of evidence against the guess.

Furthermore, there are clearly better guesses. Anyone noticing the broken down car could hazard a guess that makes more sense to the circumstances. In fact, a simple test will tell us whether this guess is accurate or not. If the man didn't actually need the part, and it didn't fit anywhere in his car, we would have to perhaps refine our guess. Perhaps it was from another car, which didn't suffer badly enough to stop running when the part was ejected. Perhaps it's from a riding lawnmower. (If there was a John Deere store in the vicinity, this guess would gain more credibility.)

Suppose now that after guessing that the part was from the broken down car, you tested your hypothesis by asking the man working on it, and it turned out that the part was not from that car. Has science failed us? Of course not! We have simply ruled out one possibility. The part might still be from a car. We could easily take it to an auto parts store and compare it with their inventory. If we found an identical part, we could be sure of it's identity. If, having tried several auto mechanics and auto stores, we were unable to find anyone with knowledge of cars who recognized the object, we would be forced to conclude that, barring any new information, the object was not from a car.

At this point, we could try various machine shops and manufacturing plants, repeating the same set of tests, until eventually, we correctly identified the object. This, again, is precisely what the scientific method prescribes. When we rule out one possibility, we keep looking for as long as it takes to find enough evidence to say what something is, or how it works. Here, we may ask a very pointed question. Supposing that we exhaust all of the known avenues for identifying the object, and we have still not determined its true nature. What is the correct answer to the question: “What is it?”

The answer, of course, is “I don't know.” This seems patently obvious, but it's astonishing how many times people forget this simple bit of logic. Suppose that, having exhausted our resources, we still had no evidence for what the object was. Would it be correct to say that since there was no evidence for its nature, that it must surely be part of an interstellar space station from the Andromeda Galaxy? Of course it wouldn't! In fact, it would be preposterously wrong to suggest such a thing, since the very result of our search demonstrated that there was no evidence for what the thing was!

It should be obvious at this point that whenever we don't have evidence for something, there's no way to form a reliable guess about its nature. However, just to drive the point home conclusively, let's do one more thought experiment. I have, on my desk at this moment, a picture of something. What is it?

Clearly, you have no idea. Perhaps, through random chance, you will guess the subject of the picture correctly, but it's highly unlikely. The only thing you know is that the subject can be rendered in picture form. You don't even know for certain that it exists on earth. Perhaps it is a photo of a far away galaxy, or of the upper atmosphere on Mars. (You don't even know if it's a photograph. Perhaps it's a drawing of something imaginary!) The point is that with no evidence, there is absolutely no way to make any kind of guess about what a thing is.

Suppose I ask you to now make a bet with me. If you guess correctly, you get ten thousand dollars, but if you guess wrong, you owe me ten thousand dollars, immediately. Unless you are a complete fool, you wouldn't dream of taking the bet, and for good reason. You have virtually no chance of winning. Now, suppose I gave you more information. Suppose I told you that it is a photograph of a baseball helmet. Would you be comfortable making the bet now? Probably not. If I added more information, and told you that it was a helmet from a Major League team, you would still only have a slim chance of guessing it – Far less than fifty-fifty, at any rate. However, if I told you that it was either a Chicago Cubs helmet or an Atlanta Braves helmet, you might feel sufficiently brave to take the bet.

Now, imagine that I told you that it's a photo of a Chicago Cubs helmet, and then asked you to make the bet with me. You'd be a fool not to take it, right? Or, would you? If you examined the evidence carefully, you'd realize that all you had to go on was my word. In fact, I would have a very strong motivation to tell you something inaccurate, so the weight of my testimony is almost nil. However, if I invited you over to my house and showed you the photo, allowing you to examine it to your heart's content, you would then have enough evidence to confidently take my bet.

This, again, is a step by step explanation for how (and why) science works. Some evidence is more reliable than others, and certainty can be measured in degrees. Imagine that I invite three people to make the same bet with me, and give each one a different set of evidence. To the first person, I say only that I have a picture of something. To the second, I say that I have a photo of a Major League baseball helmet. To the third, I provide the photograph itself. Each one of these three people, if forced to make a bet, has a certain likelihood of getting it right. The first person's chance is virtually zero. In fact, we could probably let him take thousands of guesses with confidence that he would not get it right. The second person, on the other hand, would certainly guess it within thirty tries, since that is the number of teams in Major League Baseball. The third person, unless he was monumentally stupid, would guess right on the first try. Though we cannot be 100% certain of his guess, it's fair to say that for all practical purposes, he will win ten thousand dollars in the next few seconds.

All of this, I hope, seems really straightforward and simple. Perhaps it is even insultingly so. However, it is apparently something that needs to be drilled into a lot of heads. The number of times I have had to defend the scientific method against other “sources of truth” is staggering. In fact, I have no doubt that there are many people who, upon reading this, will still cling to the idea that science isn't the only way to get knowledge.

Stay Tuned for Part II, in which I will spend more time on the notion of "alternatives" to science, the nature of religious claims, and the "Cult of Credulity."

The Anthropic Principle -- Not So Scary After All

2009-01-13T12:17:00.001-08:00

Christians will often say, "The universe cannot possibly have been created in exactly this way without intelligent design." The most common way to refute this is to trot out the anthropic principle, which essentially points out that our existence only proves that our existence is possible. For whatever reason, this refutation, though perfectly sound logically, seems to come up short on emotional impact.

I want to look at this in a little bit more detail to give the reader a little bit more ammunition should the first round of refutation fail to convince interlocutors. To begin with, let's look at the theist's claim a little more closely:

Without God, this particular incarnation of the universe is impossible.

This can be rewritten slightly to express the same idea with words that will be easier for us to work with:

Besides God, there are no other possible explanations for this particular incarnation of the universe.

Theists are not going to like it when you reword it this way -- at least not if they're smart. In fact, maybe even you, gentle atheist reader, are bristling a little bit. A brief perusal of the science aisle at Borders will tell you that there are most certainly other possible explanations for the universe besides God. Is it really that simple to completely discard the argument?

In a word, yes. It really is that astoundingly wrong. However, let's keep looking at it to make sure we're not missing something really important. First, let's make an important observation about the word possible. I've been talking a lot about epistemological rights recently, and I want to begin with saying that I have absolutely no justification for making pronouncements about any of the current cosmological models. That is the stuff of very highly advanced theoretical physics, and I always had problems figuring out those stupid problems with ramps and boxes and pulleys. Physics is not my thing. However, my inability to discuss physics has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to address this particular argument.

Notice that the theist argument relies completely on possibility, not accuracy. The assertion is that there is no other possibility at all that could explain the universe existing as it does. This is so astoundingly easy to refute that one has to wonder why anyone would bother, but for the sake of being thorough, I will do so:

Assertion: It is possible that there is a multiverse, and that black holes are singularities, each spawning their own unique universe, each with random or at least highly variable universal constants. If this is the case, we should expect that universes such as ours where black holes naturally form would be more common than universes in which black holes do not naturally form. It is possible that time, whatever it might be, is infinite. If that is the case, then we should be surprised if a universe such as ours did not come to exist, as it is within the set of possible universal constants.

(This is a very bad rendition of a real theory, by the way.)

I have no idea whether or not this is the way reality is. I have no idea whether this is probable or staggeringly improbable. This is not the point. The point is, unless there's somebody out there with some startling empirical observations of the nature of reality, this theory is at least possible, even if the possibility is only one in trillions of trillions.

That's how incredibly weak the theist argument is! It is disproven by just imagining anything at all that might have "created" the universe. Of course, savvy theists will balk at this line of thinking. They can't really argue the logic, but they can certainly argue the spirit of the argument. "Possible" doesn't really mean possible in the absolute sense, they will say. What they mean is that nothing else makes any good sense. Sure, you can imagine that multidimensional ferrets shit singularities, and it's pretty much impossible to disprove, but how much stock should we put into that hypothesis. No, the theist will aver, God is the only one with any reasonable possibility of being true.

At this point, a clever debater will insist that theists give up the charade of asserting that God is the only possible cause for the universe, and refuse to discuss the matter further until a new proposition has been put forward.

Having to give up the notion of God being the only possibility, a theist has now conceded that virtually anything could be the cause of the universe. This is actually the death blow for the argument, though most theists don't realize why. To illustrate the point, let's assume the theists are correct in fact. That is, the universe was intelligently designed. We'll concede for the sake of argument that there is an intelligent being who created the universe. Imagine now a conversation between a theist and an atheist where the tables are turned. Science has proven that the universe is most likely to have been intelligently designed, and it is now the atheist who is irrationally holding to the notion that everything began mindlessly, despite evidence to the contrary.

Would a theist, given the preponderance of evidence in his favor, continue to argue that God is the only possible explanation for the universe? Of course not! He wouldn't have to, and any first year college student could point out the error in that position, so why would he? He would happily admit that the atheist was clinging to a possibility, but that there was no rational reason to hold onto that possibility given the preponderance of evidence for intelligent design.

When we look at it from the other side of the fence, we realize that this is just so much emotional pandering. There is literally no logical content worth considering, and when the tables are turned, we see just how ludicrous it is. Once again, theism wants to play tennis with the net down and force atheism to play with the net up.

Non-Mythicism

2009-01-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

My ongoing discussion with John Loftus has led me to realize something about a lot of people who like to throw their weight around in the discussion of a historical Jesus. Actually, what really tipped me off to it was that John kept saying that I agree with mythicists. Just to be thorough, he might have said that because I sided with a mythicist on a point of order -- that John hadn't addressed a particular argument. If that's why he thinks I'm a mythicist, then he's just mistaken. I was playing the part of a referee (albeit an uninvited one) who says, "Hey guys... no hitting below the belt." John wasn't playing by the rules of debate. He was restating his position without addressing the critique that had been offered. I was not siding with the mythicist. I was siding on neutrality and fairness. In the paraphrased words of Dan Dennett, the net needs to be up for both sides.

Having gotten that out in the open, perhaps John thinks I'm a mythicist because of THIS BLOG POST. It's an understandable mistake, I suppose, if one doesn't know what mythicism is. If you read through that post, however, you will notice that I don't use the word mythicist. I speak of Jesus as an ahistorical figure. That's not mythicism.

Mythicism is a positive claim that the first literature about Jesus indicates that Jesus' was first conceptualized by believers as a spiritual being, and the stories of his actions as symbolic, not earthly. I'm going on the record right now as saying that I have absolutely no idea whether this is true or not. None. I have no position. I have neither the time, nor the background, nor the desire to form an opinion on Jesus Mythicism. It's for scholars to fight about.

I am not a mythicist. I don't think the mythicist position is winning. I don't care.

I invented a term for myself, and I think I'll make it public now. I am a Jesus-Irrelevantist. Here are my two (and only two) positions:

1) I don't believe the archaeological and literary evidence is sufficient to present a positive case for a particular historical inspiration for either the Gospel or the Epistles or both. Further, I don't think the evidence is sufficient to present a positive case for a necessary historical inspiration.

2) I believe that because of the fifty(ish) year literary and archaeological silence after the alleged events, and the complete contemporary silence, it is likely that any person (or people) who contributed to the inspiration for either the Gospel or Epistles was historically insignificant.

That's it. I am not saying, nor will I say that there was no historical Jesus. I also won't say that there was. In good science and good history, we don't make pronouncements with insufficient information, and I don't believe the information exists at this time. Because of the burden of proof, I must maintain the position that until there is evidence for a historical Jesus, I must not say that there was. Simply by default, I must maintain the negative position.

Can you see that this is not mythicism? Not even remotely.

I also want you to see that my position is compatible with mythicism -OR- historicity. I think all atheists are comfortable saying that IF there was a man who inspired the myth, he did not walk on water nor did he turn water into wine, unless he was a wine maker by trade. He was an ordinary man who did something. I have no clue what that might have been. Even so, there is still merit to my argument that Jesus, if he did exist, was historically irrelevant. The history of Christianity is very different from the historicity of Jesus. We know Christianity exists, and we know pretty much where and when it started. These are two different discussions. My position is that the narrative of history works whether Jesus is historical or ahistorical. That is, he is historically irrelevant.

To be sure, if the mythicists are completely correct, we wouldn't expect to find a single human who we could call "the Historical Jesus" but does that mean there were not contemporary events, perhaps acts by one or more people, that had direct impact on the writer of a particular work? Of course not. There had to be a reason for the Gospel to be written, and we would be shocked if it didn't have some contemporary relevance to the reader. The question, it seems, is whether contemporary events inspired a writer to retool a savior from literary history for current use, or whether a person's life inspired a writer to mold literary history around him.

Suppose the historians are correct, and the first literature was meant to portray a real person. We're in exactly the same boat! Who knows what inspired the first person who wrote about the "real person" Jesus in the Gospel. Even if the Gospel was written by a madman who really believed he had seen all these things, where'd he get the ideas? From people. For that matter, suppose we could prove through textual criticism that the Gospel is intended to portray a real earthly person. That's fine, but we're still left with the historical question of whether the author was telling the truth or lying or decieved or stretching the truth to the point of absurdity. So, even proving the mythicists wrong leaves a big gaping hole in our understanding of history.

Whether there was a writer with a penchant for the classics, a preacher, a doomsday prophet, a homeless crazy guy, or Paul's great nephew, we may never know. It's basically irrelevant except as a piece of history. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for historians, and I'd love to know the right answer, but whatever they find simply isn't going to change much. Christians will still be blinded by faith. The pope will still make pronouncements about birth control.

What I care about the most is scientific and historical honesty and accuracy. I don't like it when people go off half cocked talking about subjects they're not qualified to address as if they're authorities. The debate between Jesus Historians and Jesus Mythicists isn't even understood by most people. They think it's about whether there was a Doomsday prophet or not. Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn't, but that's not the debate. The debate is about what the writers of the first texts were doing. Were they writing about a heavenly or earthly savior? There were doomsday prophets in Palestine in the first century, CE. Let's just get that out there right now. Maybe one of them even resembled the literary Jesus very closely. That's not the point. The point is one of textual criticism. What was the author's intent and what was his subject matter specifically?

I don't have a horse in this race, and I don't think many people even grasp the idea that they don't have one either. It's people who don't even understand the debate who are screwing things up by thinking this is about something it's not. The mythicist debate is about very specific and very scholarly understanding of languages that virtually nobody has any training in, and scholars are trying to piece together this understanding from the scantest evidence. It's really hard and specialized work, and the fact is, if you don't know VERY specifically what I'm talking about -- as in, you have had years and years of specialized training in ancient languages and literature -- you are not qualified to do anything but watch.

This, friends, is why I insist on people being epistemologically justified to make claims. If everybody who doesn't even know what mythicism is would just listen instead of getting their panties in a bunch and shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, there could be some actual scholarly dialog about how these texts should be interpreted. I'd be interested in the results, but I'm not going to be in the discussion because I'm not qualified.

I sure wish more people would follow my lead.

All's Well That Ends Angrily, Mr. Loftus

2009-01-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

I have tried and failed to communicate to John Loftus what I think are very important criticisms of his rather cavalier attitude towards serious history. For my own peace of mind and for the edification of any readers, I'm going to reprint our entire discussion, unedited. John has elected to selectively cut and paste my correspondence to him without posting it fully for context. I find that to be rather dishonest, and I am disappointed, but I suppose there could be other reasons for his editing. I am at a loss to think of what they might be.

In any case, I have heard it said that insult is the last refuge of the defeated, and I think Mr. Loftus' last sentence says all that I need to hear. I will leave this exchange feeling justified in my criticism and yet... sad.

In chronological order, I give you the whole exchange:

*******

HAMBY'S POST:

John, I have some things I'd like you to think about. I don't know if you've noticed my comments about your discussion with a "blog site owner" but I come down on the side of that certain blog site owner, though not without some caveats. You really should read my comment on the blog in question, but I'll explain it here, too.

I've read your arguments rather thoroughly since my initial response to you (linked below) and I think you're making two very serious errors.

First, you've admitted that you are not well versed in mythicist arguments, and you display this lack of knowledge when you get into spats with mythicists. I'm not going to validate your exchange with a blog site owner by calling it an argument because that implies the logical exchange of ideas. No ideas were exchanged because you didn't address or refute any of his arguments. You just restated your opinions.

Please bear in mind that I'm saying this to you in a spirit of constructive criticism so that we can all get along and get on with the business of finding true answers to legitimate questions. I hate it when people have ego spats, and from where I sit, you threw the first stone in the fight you're talking about.

I don't know who's right in the question of Jesus mythicism, but I have a question for you and others who come down hard on either side. How much does it really matter?

Think about that before you jump to a conclusion. We're all atheists and skeptics here, right? Would the existence of a historical Jesus change our minds about God? Would the nonexistence of a historical Jesus change our minds?

Your second mistake, in my opinion, is a matter of broad perspective. The fact is, this is an issue dripping with angst and ego, and I can't for my life figure out why a bunch of atheists would get into such a huge snit about it. If there is or is not enough evidence for a historical Jesus, so be it, but everyone reading this knows that a Christian can be logically and philosophically whipped into a Self-Pwnd Frappe with or without even cracking a bible, much less mentioning Jesus.

John, if you want to get into academic history and make a case for a historical Jesus, please do. However, I have to ask you in all seriousness if you are prepared to stake your professional reputation on what amounts to your feelings about the interpretation of academic arguments. Do you really have the epistemic right to make the proclamation? Please remember when you were a Christian how hard it was to see logic when someone talked to you about the very emotionally charged issue of God. You weren't that way just because you were a Christian. That's human nature, and you're still subject to it.

John, you and the blog site owner had a temper tantrum playground fight. Both of you are at fault for letting your emotions get in the way of reason. However, he has reason on his side. You haven't dealt with (or apparently read) what he's said. I'm not saying his position is right. I'm saying you haven't done anything to prove it wrong. Please remember John that the most well meaning of people have spread opinion to the point that it became perceived as fact. Please, unless you're prepared to make an academic issue of it, don't muddy the waters of Jesus' historicity with less than scholarly analysis. Your voice is too loud. Do the right thing and just shrug your shoulders when someone asks what you think about it.

I offer you the following link (http://allthingsstupidandreligious.blogspot.com/2008/11/thoughts-on-jesus-historicity.html )to my own thoughts on Jesus as a historical figure, and I invite you to consider them, particularly since they come from someone much like yourself -- a former Christian apologist who has devoted much of his life to study -- and more importantly, someone who knows when he has the epistemic rights to make a claim, and when "I don't know" is the only acceptable answer.

You'll notice that I've also addressed as many of your arguments as seemed relevant in a detailed post here: http://allthingsstupidandreligious.blogspot.com/2008/12/response-to-john-loftus-historical.html

3:29 PM, January 06, 2009

JOHN'S POST:

Ham, there you go misrepresenting me. I only said there was more to learn and I could say that about any issue I write about.

I don't know who's right in the question of Jesus mythicism, but I have a question for you and others who come down hard on either side. How much does it really matter?

It doesn't matter a bit to me at all. Since that's the case I can be more objective about the evidence. And since I can be more objective about the evidence Christians will listen to me. They are my target audience. I do not think people understand this.

And you know what? I have even been accused of having "blind faith" and accused of choosing to think Jesus existed against the evidence because I want to impress Christians who are my target audience! Wow! The extent that people who disagree with me will go to discredit an informed opinion is strangely similar on both sides of the fence. And this is something I'll not have a part in. My beliefs are sincerely held ones.

To be honest I'm pissed off.

5:09 PM, January 06, 2009

*******

HAMBY'S POST: (Not posted by John)

Ham, there you go misrepresenting me. I only said there was more to learn and I could say that about any issue I write about.

If I have misrepresented your intent, I apologize. Have I misrepresented your knowledge? I'm sure that you've read quite a few books by various historians, as have I, but does that qualify you to use your considerable influence to proclaim that your interpretation of the various arguments is the better one? I've read everything that Richard Dawkins has ever written, but I hardly think I'm qualified to speak as an expert on more than the very basics of evolution. I'm sure you did study antiquities and literature in your theology degrees, but are you really qualified as a Jesus scholar? (I mean have you the methodological knowledge AND are you thoroughly versed in the most current data?)

Mythicist arguments rely on very detailed comparisons of ancient documents for evidence of various tropes, and on very specific linguistic analysis of textual minutia. These are the supports on which mythicist arguments rest, and from your discussions, I don't believe you are qualified to address them. If this is the case, then you aren't prepared to make a substantive claim about Jesus' historicity because you don't know both sides.

Even if you did some of this kind of work in the seminary, have you really examined both sides of this argument and produced a scholarly opinion? Are you prepared to defend your views against mythicist scholars, and if so, would you offer arguments or disagreement? I know you know the difference.

It doesn't matter a bit to me at all. Since that's the case I can be more objective about the evidence. And since I can be more objective about the evidence Christians will listen to me. They are my target audience. I do not think people understand this.

Feh. I know you're pissed, but this just isn't constructive. I admit I'm biased. I wish you would admit it, too. Everybody's biased, John. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It just means we lean one way or another. I think the evidence leans away from historicity, but I don't go around proclaiming it as truth just because I like my own reasoning. Yeah, I know, you always say you might be wrong, but you accuse people on the other side of being crackpots and having axes to grind. (I have quotes if you'd like, and I'll print them in the full paragraph so you won't accuse me of quote mining.) I wish you'd get off of that soapbox. Passion is not the same as blind devotion. Carrier, Thompson, et al, are genuine people -- just like you. They also study this for a living. I wish you wouldn't dismiss them, particularly since you don't study this for a living. And frankly, if I may say so, the vitriol you've spouted since being rather strongly contested belies your assertion that you don't care.

And you know what? I have even been accused of having "blind faith" and accused of choosing to think Jesus existed against the evidence because I want to impress Christians who are my target audience! Wow! The extent that people who disagree with me will go to discredit an informed opinion is strangely similar on both sides of the fence. And this is something I'll not have a part in. My beliefs are sincerely held ones.

John, if you'll take ten seconds to follow the links I gave you, you'll see that I've defended you on these counts. I believe you to be sincere and well meaning, and I have never accused you of having blind faith.

I accuse you of having less than enough knowledge to have epistemic rights to your claim. There's a very, very big difference. You're clearly well read, and I believe you've done a great thing for atheism. I love your site, and I think you have an incredibly compelling story to tell theists.

I just don't think you're qualified to weigh in on Jesus' historicity. Please, if I'm wrong prove me wrong, and I will recant, but I have yet to see you even address a mythicist position with anything other than a statement of disagreement. That's not scholarly rebuttal. That's seeing who gets the last word.

Please, consider leaving this debate to the scholars, and focus on what you're qualified to do, which is expose Christianity for the lie that it is. You're very good at that, and I hate to see you getting caught up in this fight when it's not even important to what you are doing for the atheist community.

When you're feeling less pissed, I wish you would ask yourself if maybe you're a bit more emotionally invested than you think.

(Originally posted Jan 6, approximately 5:30 PM)

*******

And finally... I get quote mined and called an idiot by John:

Hambydammit, I didn't publish what you wrote because I had to cool off before responding and because I'm pretty much done with this topic for now. I do not like how you've treated me but I'll comment on a few of the things you wrote.

Ham said...I'm sure that you've read quite a few books by various historians, as have I, but does that qualify you to use your considerable influence to proclaim that your interpretation of the various arguments is the better one?

Is that what this is about? That since I have "considerable influence" I should not make a case unless I'm qualified to speak? Thanks for saying I have such influence. I don't claim to. But even Einstein wrote a book of opinions and ideas. Would you say he shouldn't have done so?

Ham said...I'm sure you did study antiquities and literature in your theology degrees, but are you really qualified as a Jesus scholar?

See above. Don't get so bent out of shape here. My views are well argued. They are the ones the overwhelming peer-reviewed scholars accept. I fear my friend Carrier could become marginalized as a scholar if he doesn't make a strong case. What's wrong with my concern for him? His scholarship is too good for that and for our cause. If he becomes marginalized people will write him off and his credibility will be in need or repair. I do care about that. YOU should care about it too. But apparently you want an actual scholar to quote from who defends what you believe regardless of what happens to him. In the minds of many other scholars he may be treated like a Holocaust denier, rightly or wrongly, and that's bad for atheism I think, since the historicity of Jesus is a non-issue to me.

Ham said...I don't believe you are qualified to address them (mythicists). If this is the case, then you aren't prepared to make a substantive claim about Jesus' historicity because you don't know both sides.

I deny this, although I have more to learn about the issue. You continue to claim I'm ignorant. That's what Christians claim too, you know. Why do they do so? Because they read a few paragraphs and disagree, that's why. Now I do back up what I say in my book, but until they read it they will think I'm ignorant, and they do. Now you come along and claim the same thing, but because I have not written a book on the topic to show you I'm not ignorant you can claim that I am. I cannot say all I know unless I wrote a book on a topic. And it's not true that someone who disagrees with someone else is ignorant anyway. Are the overwhelming number of scholars ignorant too? Is Richard Bauckham, N.T. Wright, Dom Crossan, Dale Allison, Bart Ehrman? Get a grip, okay?

Ham said...Are you prepared to defend your views against mythicist scholars, and if so, would you offer arguments or disagreement?

I think I have done so. Do not think I'm ignorant on this topic and do not be so ignorant as to say I cannot write what I think about any topic I want to do so. I have and I will.

Ham said...I accuse you of having less than enough knowledge to have epistemic rights to your claim. There's a very, very big difference. You're clearly well read, and I believe you've done a great thing for atheism. I love your site, and I think you have an incredibly compelling story to tell theists.

Thank you for the compliment, but I see no basis for you to tell me to basically shut up...none at all and I brittle and such a thing.

Ham said...I just don't think you're qualified to weigh in on Jesus' historicity. Please, if I'm wrong prove me wrong, and I will recant, but I have yet to see you even address a mythicist position with anything other than a statement of disagreement. That's not scholarly rebuttal. That's seeing who gets the last word.

Again, you sound just like the Christians who visit here. Yeah, that's right, I'm ignorant, I don't know what I'm talking about, I should just shut up until I write a book on a topic. Right.

Go away, idiot.

**********

As I said, I think the exchange speaks for itself. One of us got his panties in a bunch and the other didn't. I'm happy to say that I intended my criticisms to be pointed, but I don't feel that anything I said warranted either censorship or outright abuse. I am sad to see the exchange end this way, and I wish the best for John in his pursuits.

While I'm At It

2009-01-06T16:11:00.001-08:00

You know what? I just figured out what's really bothering me about John Loftus. This has been bugging me for weeks, actually, and I just figured it out. I'm not particularly distressed that he leans towards Jesus' historicity. What distresses me is that he routinely refers to this as an informed opinion.

I don't doubt that he has the theological qualifications to have an informed opinion, but an informed opinion is most certainly NOT the same as a defendable position. In proposing that a certain position is the correct one, two things are required. First, we must justify our own proposition. Second, if our proposition does not inherently do so, we must address competing propositions and either prove them false or render them sufficiently implausible as to make our own the only likely candidate.

Richard Carrier, Thomas L Thompson, and others have written compelling arguments for an ahistorical Jesus, and they've addressed in some detail what they feel to be the problems with the Jesus historicity argument. In other words, they've done exactly what I'm talking about. James Loftus has been quite unwilling (unable? I don't know) to refute these arguments in anything I've read online. Am I missing a scholarly rebuttal in his books? I don't know personally, but nobody I know who's read his books has mentioned any.

This, then, is the crux of my problem with John Loftus with regard to the claim that Jesus probably lived. He's only playing one side of the coin. It's easy to be persuasive when you don't even acknowledge the other side of the coin. I wish he would leave that part of the former preacher behind.

I want to make one other thing very clear. I've been ripping Loftus pretty hard over this Jesus thing, and I think it's justifiable criticism. However, I don't want you to get the impression I don't like the guy or think that he's doing good work. In fact, I encourage everybody to check out his website Debunking Christianity. I have almost all good things to say about the site and the work that Loftus is doing for Atheism. However, I refuse to allow a lapse in critical thinking to go unquestioned, particularly when it is being made by one of our leading spokesmen. I hope that should I ever make a similar mistake, I will be immediately corrected.

Evidence of Lack and Lack of Evidence

2009-01-06T12:37:00.001-08:00

I think we've all heard this platitude before: Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. It's a common argument(sic!) trotted out by apologists when atheists say "There's not enough evidence to believe in God."

I want to mention the argument in a slightly different context. I've been sucked in yet again to the John Loftus claim that Jesus most likely existed. I try not to get into this because I really don't have a firm position, but I hate it when people who shouldn't have firm positions do anyway. I'm going to briefly outline -- in obscenely broad strokes -- the things that pretty much all credible scholars agree on:

1) There is absolutely no contemporary evidence for Jesus. That is, there is not one shred of literature written by or about Jesus while he was alive. There are no artifacts pointing to his existence. There are no records, Jewish, Roman, or otherwise, with any reference to anyone who could be reasonably called Jesus. There is nothing.

2) There is scant evidence within perhaps 50 years of Jesus alleged death. The only legitimate evidence is literary. Again, there are no artifacts with his picture, or alleged possesions of his, or anything. Nothing. The only literary evidence is in the form of two sets of documents -- the Gospel(s) and the Pauline Epistles. The Gospel reads like fiction even though it's set in the recent past. The Epistles are written by a man who claims that his knowledge of Jesus came in a vision.

3) After the first century C.E. there's a ton of literature mentioning Jesus. However, it should be pointed out that a skeptic must realize that this is evidence that lots of people believed in Jesus -- not that Jesus existed.

That's it. That's the evidence for Jesus. Jesus historians spin various scenarios in which the various pieces of literary evidence seem to point to credibility as historical documents. The mythicists spin it the other way and say the evidence points to ahistoricity.

Ok, with all that in mind, let's examine the phrase: Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. What exactly does that mean?

Epistemologically, it is patently false. The way we know something is by evidence. If there is no evidence for a thing, we can say nothing about it whatsoever. We can't postulate its existence, nor can we assert its nonexistence. If I ask you to speculate on the existence of schpimble, you have no epistemic rights to do so since you have no evidence indicating what it might be.

When historians use the phrase, however, it takes on a slightly more nuanced meaning. (Beware: I normally hate the word "nuanced" in discussions of this sort. It usually is just a subtle jab, as if to say "You aren't smart enough to understand.") When a historian looks at a particular figure for which there is a question of historicity, he cannot, strictly from a paucity of evidence, rule out his historical existence. To put it precisely, there is evidence for Jesus, or we'd have never heard of him. The question is threefold: Is there evidence for a historical or mythical Jesus, how should the evidence be weighed, and how reliable it is?

Unfortunately, this particular truth is often misappropriated for arguments which are not sufficiently supported. This is particularly true, in my opinion, of Jesus historians. It seems that every treatise on the historical Jesus that I read makes this mistake. They say essentially that all this later reference to Jesus makes a case -- a conclusion with which I take issue -- and then they say that a mythicist cannot use the lack of evidence as a positive argument.

Let me make this clear. Epistemically, the lack of evidence doesn't prove a mythicist's case, but it absolutely can be used within certain boundaries as evidence against historicity. The question a historian ought to be asking is this: "With a character like Jesus, would we find it startling if there was no contemporary record of his existence?"

For some characters, even if they were historical, we'd be surprised to find anything written by or about them during their lives. For instance, in the family tree of John Doe, we might find a posthumous reference to Baby Jack Doe, John Doe's great-great-great-great uncle who died in infancy at sea, born to an illiterate sailor moving his itinerate family to a new home. We should be rather shocked to find anything of the baby's, because nobody would bother to keep a swaddling cloth or a locke of hair. Babies died all the time. The circumstances of his life and death were insignificant historically, but we find that someone a couple of generations later decided it was important to record the oral memory. Thus, we can have a perfectly legitimate case for a historical figure for whom there is no record for fifty years.

What of Jesus? I don't know the answer to this, but in the case of John Loftus account, Jesus was a charismatic and apparently well known apocolyptic preacher, at least somewhat reminiscent of the Gospel Jesus. I say this because John appears convinced that even with the overwhelming majority of the stories containing magic, mysticism, gods, and demons, there is a factual basis for this man. If that is so, is it reasonable to conclude that he was famous, or at least that he influenced a lot of people? Was he a magician? A political up and comer? A malcontent?

The point is that the more contemporary importance we ascribe to a historical Jesus, the more difficult it becomes to reconcile fifty years of silence with regard to his existence. Jesus historians occupy the unfortunate position in which they shoot themselves in the foot every time they elevate Jesus in importance! Are they vehemently arguing for a Jesus who was historically irrelevant? If so, they may have a very strong case. But... why? If we're looking for an itinerant preacher, there are thousands of those we can find. What makes this one so important? So what if he was the inspiration for a gospel. Was the gospel about him? Clearly not because we've just admitted that he wasn't important!

On the other hand, if we are going to claim that Jesus was a very important figure, important enough that a religion sprung up around him, the burden of proof shifts to us to provide a plausible explanation for fifty years of silence in the face of his very significant existence!

Again, let me emphasize that I'm not claiming that Jesus did or did not exist. Hell, I have no idea who most Jesus historians are claiming to have existed. If you read ten different authors, you get ten different figures. (This, by the way, demands an explanation as well, don't you think?) The point I'm making is that historians don't get to play both sides of the field -- or as Dan Dennett says, they don't get to put the net up on our serves and return with the net down. The lack of evidence is not proof of ahistoricity, but it is surely not a help for the case of historicity! I feel like many historians throw this in the face of mythicists as if such a banal platitude does anything but muddy the waters.

Finally, I'd like to return to something I've recently chided John about on his blog. I think he is very well meaning in his discussions about his beliefs. I think he feels he has a very strong case. What I am not sure of is whether or not he has the epistemic right to make the claim. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I am led to believe that John Loftus is not a historical scholar, nor an archaeologist, nor a linguist, nor a textual critic. He has degrees in divinity unless I am mistaken. He is certainly a well read man, and I do not mean to malign his status as a thinker. I do think it worthy of mention that even the most well read Jack of All Trades must be careful to claim only what he can legitimately claim. I write in broad generalizations about well established theories of evolutionary and human science. I do this because I know better than to make specific scientific claims I am not prepared to back up. We've all heard of Jesus, and most of us know a bit about first century Palestine, but the fact is, unless we have spent our lives in textual criticism or some related field, we don't have the professional chops to make pronouncements about this matter.

In the same way that someone who has read every book Richard Dawkins has written is not prepared to teach a college class on evolution, I'm afraid neither John Loftus or I am qualified to make an authoritative statement on Jesus' historicity. It is a hotly debated topic among people who have devoted their whole lives to its intensive study. I declare myself agnostic with regard to Jesus existence, though I am quite capable of realizing the terrible burden of proof for those who claim he did. As a skeptic, I must weigh the lack of evidence carefully, making sure not to build a case for mythicism entirely on its shoulders, but recognizing its ability to seriously undercut any argument for historicity.

So, until more evidence comes in, I must remain, as with all things.... skeptical.

On "Natural."

2009-01-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

One of the concepts that is very difficult for many people to grasp is the meaning of "natural." It's another one of those words we use in at least a half a dozen ways, and we tend to interchange them or worse -- use the word without any precise meaning.

To a materialist, the word "unnatural" is almost nonsensical. That is, the natural universe is defined as everything that exists. Saying that something is unnatural is equivalent to saying that it doesn't exist, much the same as supernatural, preternatural, or any other variation of the word.

Most people, however, aren't using the word in this strict sense. When someone says that something is unnatural, they mean something more akin to "extremely out of the ordinary." When we talk about behavior, morality, or other social phenomena, we normally use unnatural to mean "highly deviant." (Nevermind that deviant is equally difficult to define, especially for psychologists.) When we talk about the earth, unnatural usually means man-made.

If you've read my blog on free will, you know that from a strictly materialist point of view, we can't really make a distinction between natural and unnatural in many of these cases. Humans are as much a product of evolution as anything else, and there is really no objective difference between the tools we make and the tools used by birds or chimps. Our tools are certainly far more sophisticated, and require more "design," but our ability to make the tools is granted by our genes, just as a chimp's ability to use a stick or rock is granted by its genes.

The universe as we know it is ordered and lawful. That is, everything does what it does because there is no alternative. Even though carbon can form a vast number of different bonds with a large number of other elements, there is no such thing (nor will there ever be) as a car that randomly spits diamonds out its exhaust pipes instead of carbon dioxide. Similarly, humans cannot help but be what we are. We are conscious. We have morals. We have desires. In all cases, we have no choice but to be human, for we are also made of elements which have no choice but to do what they do.

I've addressed how this effects free will as a concept, so I will not belabor the point. What I'd like to focus on here is that the debate between design and accident is a non-debate from the materialist point of view. A spaceship is something built by man, to be sure. We designed it and built it with the purpose of flying it into space. However, and this is the crucial point, purpose itself is something that has happened entirely naturally, and cannot be avoided any more than carbon dioxide can avoid being expelled from a combustion engine.

Consciousness evolved without consciousness, and it is just like long legs or molars in the eyes of evolution. Certainly it is an emergent property -- that is, it is greater than the sum of its parts -- but there's nothing magical about that. Emergence is not limited to consciousness, but we as humans have the tendency to view consciousness as being special because it dominates our lives. We cannot imagine being unconscious yet alive. For that matter, we cannot imagine life in any other way than how we experience it. The fact is, though, that millions of other organisms do experience life in very different ways, and they are just as oblivious to our experience.

We think of human accomplishment as having meaning, and it does -- within the context of human awareness. Someone asked me one time, "When humanity is gone, what will be the greatest thing we accomplished?" I replied that I couldn't possibly answer that question because value only exists within the context of human existence. Once we are gone, everything we have done will be completely meaningless. Without a frame of reference, there is no way to answer the question.

I know this is a bit rambling, so I'll recap the major points I'm trying to make. Natural and unnatural are tricky words, and strictly speaking, "unnatural" doesn't exist. Everything that humans do is natural. We place value on actions and things, but only because we cannot help but do so. Consciousness is just as much a part of the ordered and lawful universe as anything else. We cannot help but be conscious, and we cannot help but be human. Anything and everything we do in life is done precisely and only because we are as completely immersed in the natural universe as anything else.

Ok. If this is making you uncomfortable, go back and re-read my blog on free will.

A little bit more about sex and advertising

2008-12-31T11:55:00.000-08:00

After mulling over the thoughts in my previous blog for a few days, there are a couple more things I'd like to say on the subject. First, on the subject of non-persons and dehumanizing:

I don't like the word "dehumanize." It gets tossed around very easily, and I think that is undeserved. Humans are very complex creatures, capable of very generous and kind acts as well as very cruel and despicable acts. Mass murderers are being just as "human" as human rights activists. They're just being particularly cruel humans.

Here's an important distinction to make. In some situations, individuals can have their "humanity" taken away. Examples of this would be sensory deprivation or extreme isolation. Humans are social creatures who rely on our senses and human contact for our sanity. When a human is deprived of these things, they are (in my use of the word) being dehumanized. What's important to bear in mind is that the people doing these things are being very human.

Point two: treating people as less than intimate friends is not dehumanizing them. Humans are designed to have a hierarchy of intimacy, from that of a complete stranger from another culture to that of an intimate long time lover and friend. We recognize that other people are humans, but we don't accord them the same level of intimacy we would someone more familiar.

Point three: Sex is not magic. Particularly in America, we tend to think of sex as something either above or below other kinds of human interaction. For many fundamentalist Christians, it's something that humans basically have to do, but it's not something we talk about, and certainly not something we try to enjoy too much or give into more than occasionally. For many others, it's something sublime and wonderful that's above the mundane, and is proprely reserved for only the most special people to experience, and only the most intimate to discuss.

I maintain that it is neither of these things. While sex can certainly feel magical, the reality is that most people will have far more "normal sex" in their lives than they will the intensely romantic, erotic, and adrenaline fed sex they did when they found their first "true love" and had that perfect night.

In reality, many people never have that night. Sex is not magic. It's two people and nerve endings and heart rates. There is no inherently correct way to view intercourse, either. It is not true that sex within marriage is always better than casual sex, nor is it true that all married couples become bored with each other and have only infrequent mundane sex. It's not true that monogamy is the best way for people to have sex, nor is it true that open relationships will save all marriages. The fact is, sex is a highly subjective experience, and our perceptions of it are directly caused by our environment acting upon our genes.

This, I think is the crux of why I get aggravated by people who assert that sexual advertising, or porn, or see-thru tops, or swingers, or confirmed bachelors, or any other "unusual" variation on human sexuality, is degrading, humiliating, or dehumanizing. What we need to remember is that the only thing we can rightly say about a particular aspect of sex is that it feels degrading to us personally. The truth is, we cannot say that it is universally degrading, nor can we say that because most people find it degrading that anyone who doesn't find it so has something wrong with them.

Finally, I want to make clear that I recognize the difference between morality and taste. I, for one, get kind of tired of seeing Girls Gone Wild commercials during every commercial break after midnight. I find the videos to be overload, to be honest. I like young attractive females with breasts as much as the next guy, but after the first hundred and fifty, they start losing their appeal to me. It's not my thing. However, I will defend to the end the right of women to show their breasts to anyone who wants to see, and I will defend the right of men to masturbate to videos of them doing so.

To those who will say, "Yeah, but you have to draw the line somewhere," I submit that the line draws itself in two ways. First, there's the law. Girls under the age of 18 are not permitted to be in sexually explicit media. I support the law even though I quibble with the implementation of it from time to time. (I'm thinking of a case where several teenagers were charged as sex offenders when one of their friends, also a teenager, sent a topless photo of herself to several cellphones. That's ludicrous. These were clearly not sexual predators. But I digress.)

More importantly, the line draws itself by virtue of the fact that there are different tastes. If I choose to, I can get in my car and drive to a neighborhood where everyone is rich and white. I can drive to another area of town and have my choice of eighty or so bars. I can go to the mall and see nothing but photos of beautiful people wearing expensive clothes and jewelry. I can go to the seedy part of town and have my choice of adult toy stores.

The world has never disintigrated into a giant orgy despite the fact that everyone thinks about, and most people like, sex. There is a natural limit to what people want to see, and this is reflected in our society. It isn't that the laws prevent us from turning the world into a giant billboard for "Pussies R Us." It's that even the most sex crazed people have other things to do and other interests.

Sure, there will always be debates over particularly risque ads, and someone will always push the envelope when it comes to advertising their product. The important thing to remember is that human nature is not infinite. We won't turn the whole world into a brothel. We've got other shit to do. Most of the fuss and worry is unfounded because sex isn't magic, it's not dehumanizing, and it's not all there is to being human.

Sex and Advertising

2008-12-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

I've been reminded again recently that sexual advertising offends a lot of people. To be honest, I've always been a little bit puzzled by this. I'm still working on a genuine book chapter dealing with Evolutionary Psychology's possible explanations for this, but for the moment, I'm just going to bounce a few thoughts off of the blogosphere.

I hear two objections more than any other:

1) Sexual advertising objectifies people (especially women) and "dehumanizes" them.

2) Sexual advertising imposes a false sense of beauty on us, and pressures less than perfect women (and men!) to obsess too much about their looks.

First, what does it mean to "objectify" somebody? Webster says it means either "to treat as an object" or "cause to have objective reality." Alternatively, it can mean "to give expression to (as an abstract notion, feeling, or ideal) in a form that can be experienced by others < class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">objectify differing facets of the child's emotional experience -- John Updike>" Clearly, we must be talking about the first definition, so let's work with that. What does it mean to treat someone as an object?

What is an object? Webster has a lot to say about that question. It can be something material, perceivable by the senses. Clearly, all people are objects in this sense, so that's probably not what we're talking about. It can be something mental or physical toward which thought, feeling, or action is directed, as in "the object of my affection." At first glance, maybe this isn't what people are objecting to, either. Most people like being the object of affection and admiration.

Even so, are the models on billboards objects in this sense? I think they certainly are. When I see a male underwear model with six-pack abs, I sometimes think to myself that I am far short of that goal. Sometimes it causes me a sense of envy. Gosh, I think. If I had abs like that, women would line up to have sex with me. In reality, it's not clear whether my sex life would be more fulfilling if I had six-pack abs, but I certainly do entertain the thought from time to time. So in a sense, I'm making that person's body the object of my envy.

Is that bad? Is that what women are objecting to? Perhaps it is, in the sense of the second complaint I listed. I'll return to this idea later. In the meantime, we need to hash out what it means to objectify someone in a bad way. In browsing through several dictionary sites on the web, I've had a hard time finding a definition that fits this use, so let's just play around with making our own. The sense I get when someone says an ad objectifies women (or men, or whatever group is being portrayed) is that some generalization or stereotype is being emphasized to the exclusion of other traits. That is, a Victoria's Secret model is nothing more than sexuality. In the pages of the catalog, there are no minds. There is no camaraderie. There is no love, no self-respect, and there certainly aren't any shared goals in the context of a loving monogamous marriage.

I think this gets closer to the meaning of "objectification" in advertising. For the time being, it's what I'm going to use. Now, let's ask the obvious question. Is this kind of objectification bad?

If you've lived in the real world at all, you've probably known a man who objectified women. That is, he treated them as nothing more than sex toys, and didn't invest any kind of energy into forming deep emotional bonds. (In fairness, we've probably all known women like that, too, but we'll go with men for the time being.) These kind of men don't often make good husbands, so we can say that if all men treated women that way, it would be very bad for monogamous marriage.

The thing is, all men don't treat women that way. Most men are looking for a monogamous lover who also happens to be a great friend. Sure, they'll take casual sex along the way while they're searching, but the ultimate goal of most men is long term meaningful relationships. Considering the huge number of sexual ads, it's safe to say ads don't turn all men into objectifiers. But do they turn some men? Perhaps, but even if they do, we have to ask the question, do these men objectify because the ads are bad, or do they objectify because they were socialized poorly and don't have healthy views of women? It's a chicken and egg problem that probably doesn't have a clear cut answer.

Instead of trying to find a clear answer, let's approach it from the other angle. Do most men look at sexual advertising and still manage to have healthy relationships? Yes. They do. Perhaps we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by blaming the existence of sexually selfish men on billboard ads. In fact, psychologists have made a very compelling argument that images are not the main cause of emotional dysfunction in men or women. One of the best indicators of relationship health in any person is the relationship health of their parents (or whoever raised them). Religion also plays a much larger role in shaping sexual identity. In America, people who think sex before marriage is inherently harmful are almost all religious, and those who aren't have almost all come from religious backgrounds and given up the organization.

In fact, there's a lot of new and compelling evidence that sexually vivid advertising, erotica, and even downright smutty porn are a significant part of a lot of healthy relationships. It appears that emotionally healthy people are not only not "dehumanized" by sexual advertising, they incorporate it into their own healthy lives!

Since I just used the word, "dehumanized," let's define it. Webster says "to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit."

Hmmmm.... did you notice something there? That's what most people mean by "objectify." Ok, I admit I kind of snookered the reader a little bit here. "Objectification" is not really the right word for protesting sexual advertising. The real argument is that it deprives people of human qualities or personality -- that it reduces them in some way. (I'm leaving out the spirit part because spirits don't exist. Sue me.)

So, let's ask another pointed question. Is depriving people of human qualities or personality always a bad thing? Ask yourself that question next time you get annoyed with a waiter for getting too much into your business during lunch. When you're asking yourself why he won't just refill your tea without talking, remember to consider whether we ought to treat every human as equally "human."

The fact is, we dehumanize people everyday. It's part of the lexicon of modern psychology. Servers, taxi drivers, gas station attendants, people standing next to us on the train, and any number of other people are less than "whole people" to us. Road rage is another great example. We simply don't think of other people as entirely human when we're insulated by our automobiles.

If we're honest, we have to admit that humans absolutely do dehumanize other people. In fact, it's necessary. If we had to take the time to develop deep relationships with everyone we encountered in our lives, we'd never get anything else done. Relationships take a long time.

So, we've taken a long route to get here, but we have to admit that dehumanizing in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. We can't say sexual advertising is bad because it dehumanizes the models. Just to hammer the point home, realize that if you passed a supermodel on the street, you wouldn't think of her as any more human than if she was on a billboard. She's just another face in the crowd, just like 99% of the people you'll ever meet.

I'll be mercifully brief on the second objection. Does sexual advertising impose a false sense of beauty on us? In a word, yes and no. Mostly no.

Scientists have known for quite a while that humans' perception of beauty is not arbitrary. That is, we don't just like what society tells us to like. Across all cultures, scientists can pick out the people that will be judged most attractive by a random sampling of judges. They can do it by measuring symmetry and comparing facial features to a "cultural average." People whose noses are average sized and very symmetrical will be judged as more attractive than people whose noses are very small or very large, but very symmetrical.

Culture certainly does shape our perceptions of beauty, but only within the bounds that already exist. To put it bluntly, there has never been a time when grossly obese people with large warts on their noses have been considered highly attractive. Yes, Titian painted "healthy" women by today's standards -- and that's about where the outer boundary lies. With the very occasional exception, virtually every society values physically fit bodies and symmetrical features, though they have quite a bit of leeway. In America, we've gone from Twiggy to Marilyn Monroe to Kate Moss to Britney Spears in just a few decades.

Does sexual advertising cause people to obsess about their looks? Sure, some people. Again, though, we have to ask a pointed question. Do the people who obsess about their looks do so because of advertising or does the advertising bring out an existing insecurity? In the same way that males become sexual "users" because of their family and peers, females become obsessively looks conscious because of their family and peers. To hammer this point home, we should realize that we have female jewelry going back to the beginnings of human tool use. Before TV, there were looks-obsessed women and women who just went with the flow.

Is it possible that the information age has exacerbated the situation for certain women? Sure. Does that mean the advertising is bad, or does it mean that some women have been raised with an overly looks-conscious mental outlook? I can't answer this definitively, but a quick scan through history tells me that men have always gone after the prettiest women, and women have always wanted to be the prettiest.

Finally, I'd like to return to the spirit of the original question. Is sexual advertising in and of itself a bad thing? I think no. Humans are products of natural selection, which is inevitably going to produce lots of 5s, a couple of 10s, and a couple of 1s. Almost everybody is average looking. Just as in any other species, the standouts are going to... well... stand out. We can't blame them for being better looking than us. It's genetics. Nothing else. If we're honest, we have to admit that they're more sexually attractive to more people than we are, but does that mean we're dehumanized? No. It means we're realistic.

Humans are walking sexual advertisements. If you're in a relationship, the odds are really, really high that you are (or at least were) attracted to your mate sexually. If you hadn't been, you wouldn't be in a relationship. You'd be friends and nothing more. We dress up so that we're sexually appealing. It's just what it is.

This brings me to my last (and hopefully most convincing) point. As you've hopefully read and understood in my articles on human sexuality (links to follow) it is patently wrong to say that human nature is above sexuality. Sexuality is literally what makes us who we are. Were it not for sex, we wouldn't make art and music and poetry. Sexuality isn't the basest part of our nature. It is intrinsic to everything we are.

Freud was right even though he was horribly wrong. Everything really does come back to sex, but he just had no idea how or why. (If you're reading this and thinking, "No, it isnt!" I'll ask you to please read my other articles thoroughly and come back to this one.) In other words, we are all walking sexual advertisements. Even when we don't try to be sexual, people look at us sexually. We're human. That's what humans do.

So next time you look at a billboard with a scantily clad woman selling something that seems completely unrelated to sex, remember... sex is what makes the world go round, and we're all sexual advertisements. The one on the billboard just got paid for it. No biggie. Really.

What Science Says About Human Sexuality

What's So Great About Sex?

On Myth, Sexuality, and Culture

Female Sexuality and Origins

Christians and Projection

2008-12-23T12:21:00.001-08:00

Projection is the psychological defense mechanism of assigning one's own bad qualities to someone else, usually the opposition. For instance, a hypothetical football player (cough... cough... T.O.) who is well known for selfishly wanting all of the spotlight for himself might suggest that his team is somehow conspiring to keep him from his just rewards by selfishly not throwing the ball to him enough. By assigning the quality of selfishness to the quarterback, he absolves himself of his own selfishness.

Christians are particularly good at this. I read an interesting post this afternoon, in which a Christian said that he thinks consumerism at Christmas is due to a secular materialist worldview. I admit, I almost choked on my iced tea when I read that. A short trip through Googleland produced 387,000 hits for "Christian Merchandise." Curiously, "Secular Merchandise" spawned only 171 hits.

Ok, I know, that's not fair. Nobody labels their stuff "secular merchandise" but the point is still quite valid. Christianity is big business, and anybody who doubts it needs to have their head examined. The point I want to make, however, is not that Christians are particularly evil in their consumerism. As I mentioned in my blog about scary atheist morality, Christians operate on the same principles as everyone else. They just think they're different.

We're all materialists. We have to be. We live in a material universe, and our only way of staying alive is to consume. We must have clothes, shelter, and food. We accumulate resources because we recognize our own fragile mortality. We want to have enough tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is that the only thing separating one person from another is the degree of materialism. Some people want "stuff" more than others. This goes for Christians, atheists, Muslims, and Buddhists. Some versions of Christianity preach a much more materialist worldview than others. TV evangelists promise that if we just send in enough money, God will give us so much money that we'll never want for anything again. Other churches preach the value of an almost ascetic life, eschewing the trappings of the material world. It's the same with non-Christians. Some people think the one who dies with the most toys wins. Others think we have an obligation to preserve the earth for future generations.

The point is that the distinction between "secular materialism" and "Christian ethics" is a non-distinction. It simply doesn't exist. We're all people, and we all have our own values. Once again, Christianity proves divisive for no good reason. It's not us and them. It's just us.

Selling Christmas and Christianity

2008-12-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Christmas time is here, and I thought it would be a good time to think about what Christians say that Jesus did for us. First, let's talk about it the way they say it in church:

From Bible-Knowledge.com (The best hit I got on a google search for "God's Plan of Salvation."):

The Bible specifically says, without any other possible interpretation, that there is only one God, one faith, one baptism and one way to God the Father - and that is only through His Son Jesus Christ and His sacrificial death on the cross. Jesus says that He, and only He, is the way, the truth and the life leading to God the Father and that no one comes to the Father except through Him!

Many people, including some Christians, believe that God the Father honors all other religions as long as people try to live a good and godly life and try to stay out of trouble.

As you will see in the Scripture verses I will list below, this is not the way God the Father has everything set up. God will not honor any other religion, and He makes it very clear that it is only through His Son and His sacrificial death on the cross that will give people eternal salvation and thus eternal life with Him in heaven.

So Christmas is a time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, God who became man. We celebrate the fact that he came to earth to die at the hands of men so that all who would come after him would be free from the law and free from sin. It all sounds pretty amazing when we hear it in chucrch. I've been there. I lived it for over twenty years of my life.

I'm trying to make this blog about what it is to be human, and not another rant about how much religion sucks. To that end, I want to help explain a little bit of what's going on with the whole salvation-Christmas thing. Take a couple of minutes and watch this video. Seriously... it's very important for you to do this so that what I say afterwards will make sense.

Ok. What I want to discuss is how there can be two completely different tellings of the same story, and though they both have the exact same content, they are perceived quite differently. When you go to church to see a Christmas production, what do you see?

1. Pretty Lights.

2. Angels

3. Mangers

4. Adorable children with big doe eyes.

5. Cute little baby Jesus

6. The pure virgin Mary.

7. The loving supportive Joseph

What do you hear? Beautiful music. Some of the best music ever written was written for Christmas.

What is the message from the pulpit? Love. Lots of love. So much love that God paid the ultimate sacrifice for us to save us from ourselves. So much love, he was willing to be born in a common stable! The Lord Of The Entire Universe lowered himself soooooooo much that he was willing to be born IN A STABLE!!!

For you.

Just you.

He loves you that much. Personally.

Ok. Enough of that. You get the picture. Now, think about the last time you decided to make a major purchase. Suppose you were going to buy a car. If you are like most people, you were greeted personally by a salesman who immediately wanted to learn your name and a little bit about you. You were led to a glittery salesfloor where everyone was dressed sharply and all the cars shone of fresh polish and smelled of leather. Someone immediately scurried off at butler's speed to fetch you any drink you wanted. You were shown fancy brochures with snappy photos of "your new car" doing feats of incredible maneuverability, protecting children from harm, and safely delivering the whole happy family to visit the smiling grandparents.

We are all familiar with the manipulation that goes on with salesmen. We expect it because we know it's their job to sell us their wares. However, we don't trust them. We only go there because we want a new car, right?

Well, that's not entirely true, is it? How many commercials have you seen for new cars in the last week? I have TiVo, and I fast forward through commercials, yet I'm sure I've seen at least a few dozen ads in one form or another, whether at a bar, or in print, or on billboards. Car ads are everywhere! They are all designed to show me exactly how wonderful my life is going to be when I get a new car.

Folks, this is brainwashing. Pure. Simple. Brainwashing. It's exactly the same phenomenon used by preachers, salesmen, and interrogators at Gitmo. Whatever it is you're trying to sell, the important thing is to make the buyer do the selling! Make the buyer believe he was the one with the idea. He thought of it. That way, the ulterior motive of the salesman doesn't matter. The salesman is irrelevant.

That's why we buy cars, and that's why we buy religion. So what if Ted Haggart fucks male prostitutes in his spare time. We have an empty place in our life, and we want Jesus. We feel it deep down inside. Ted Haggart doesn't matter. Neither does Jimmy Swaggart, Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson or anybody else.

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this. Religion is dressed up for a pageant. We have huge churches with amazing architecture. We have choirs singing beautiful (by some tastes) music. Everyone wears their "Sunday best." The hymnals have fake gold gilding.

I want you to do one last thought experiment. Think of one of those late night infomercials where people are trying to sell you real estate or male enhancement pills. Forget the words for a moment and think of just the images you see. Men in nice suits. Charismatic, strong gestures. Pictures of huge mansions, nice cars, attractive women... everything we want that we don't have in life. And we can have it, too... for just $19.99.

Is it clear?

Just in case, try this on for size. The world is an evil, nasty place. You don't have everything you want. You're afraid of dying. Your family feels like it's a complete mess. What if I told you that there's a super-awesome King of The Whole Universe whose biggest desire is to make you completely happy for the rest of eternity? You get everything you want. Just look at all these people in nice clothes who will be your friend for the rest of this earthly life. When you get to heaven, there will be millions more! Just look at this huge building. We built it for you.

All you have to do is believe that the Super-Awesome King of the Whole Universe came to earth to die to save you from your sin.

Sounds really great, doesn't it? Yeah... so does the new Super-Awesome-Turn-By-Turn-Super-Duper-Satellite navigation system in the Brand New Ford Excessive NINETY TWO THOUSAND!!

Yet somehow, without all the ads, the glitz, the glamour, how many of us would spend a year's salary on a new SUV when the car we have is fine, if a bit outdated? Car companies, male enhancement companies, and religion need to advertise. Not just a little. They need to constantly show us how awesome they are, or we wouldn't buy them.

Now, go back to the simple stick figure movie and watch it again. See if it rings more true now than it did before.

Morality and Fear

2008-12-04T07:59:00.001-08:00

I'm afraid I've gotten off topic more than I'd like in the last few weeks. This blog is primarily for discussing human nature, science, and what it means to be atheist. Today, I'd like to briefly discuss one of the most volatile issues between theists and atheists, namely godless morality.

A fellow blogger recently voiced his discontent with Christopher Hitchens' standard response to the accusation that godless morality is a scary thing. Hitchens reply is usually that he is appalled to think that anyone would be good just because they're afraid of a big supernatural hammer. True morality, he asserts, comes from within oneself, not from without.

I have also felt a vague discomfort with this response for years. The thing is, it's only partly true, and it's skirting around a bigger issue. Theists are right to be afraid of godless morality. Yep. I said it. Godless morality is a scary thing, and theists are right to fear it. Atheists also ought to fear it. It's scary.

Unfortunately, it's the hand we've been dealt, and making up stories to make it seem less scary doesn't accomplish anything -- nothing good, anyway. Atheists debating morality with theists make a fundamental mistake out of the starting block. They allow themselves to be caught using theist models and trying to make atheist morality fit. When a theist speaks of the difference between theist and atheist morality, he is literally not saying anything, for there is no difference. There is no god, so morality cannot derive from it. All theists are functioning within the same moral paradigm as atheists. They're just lying to themselves and others about it.

This is why I don't like invoking the Crusades. All of the atrocities attributed to God are directly attributable to humans and human nature. We do have an evil side. It's really nasty.

The reality of human morality is that it is subjective. It is not, however, arbitrary. As I've previously mentioned, killing is not always wrong to humans. Most people get turned on by Dirty Harry or James Bond or some other hero from that genre of movie. There's a reason we spend millions of dollars to watch the good guy shoot all the bad guys. We like killing bad guys.

Young men join the army in droves, and not because of the health insurance. They want the chance to kill, or the chance to help someone else kill. It's exciting and sexy. They'll get laid more because they are in an organization formed with the express purpose of killing other humans.

We are animals, and animals kill. It's a fact of life. We also steal, rape, embezzle and defraud. It is part of the human experience. Everyone reading this blog has done something that they knew was wrong, and they knew it was wrong while they did it. Nevertheless, they did it, and they would do it again if put in the same situation.

So yeah, theists are right to be afraid. Humans are scary creatures. The thing is, we're also good creatures, and we are instilled with empathy for others. More importantly, we have amazing intellects which are capable of recognizing our own dark drives for what they are -- evolutionary adaptations. We are not bound by our natures in the same way as dolphins who gang rape females. We have the choice of looking at our own bad behavior and deciding not to do it anymore. More importantly, we have the capability of building societies which encourage good behavior while making bad behavior less appealing.

There are human societies in which murder has been all but eliminated. In a recent television program about a certain city in Japan, the commentator mentioned the collective shame felt by one city -- a city of millions of residents -- in which eight murders were committed in one year. (I believe it was eight. It was less than ten, at any rate.) It didn't take god to do this. It took human ingenuity and good planning.

The fact is, with knowledge, humans are capable of great engineering feats, and we should not exclude human society from the discussion. Humans work just like anything else -- we follow natural laws. We have set natures which give us the capacity for good and evil, and we do good or evil based upon our environment, not our inherent goodness or badness. This simple fact can change the world if we only embrace it instead of fearing it. Change the environment, change the behavior.

This is the true explanation of morality. It's a little scarier than believing everything will be ok because God said it would, but let's be honest. God's had his chance. He failed. It's time to see what humans can do on their own.

Response to John Loftus Historical Jesus Blog

2008-12-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

John W. Loftus has been receiving rave reviews for his acceptance of a historical Jesus, and this is a bit of a puzzle to me. You can find his blog post on the matter HERE.

I'm going to quote John directly so that the reader will not have to continually refer back to his blog, but I encourage you to read his whole post before continuing on with my response.

I know fellow bloggers here at DC may disagree with me, perhaps even Biblical scholar Hector Avalos. But let me very briefly outline the case for the historical person of the man Jesus. Even though I think the Christian faith is delusional, I think a man named Jesus existed who inspired people in the first century who is best seen as an apocalyptic doomsday prophet.

There certainly are a lot of modern scholars, including Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Thomas L. Thompson, all with very good credentials, who put forth very good arguments against a historical Jesus. I have nothing to add to their arguments. History is not my primary interest. Good critical thinking is what I try to encourage in all disciplines, and this is where I think John is falling short. I do not intend to argue for the a-historicity of Jesus. Instead, I feel there is far too little justification to make the positive claim that Jesus either certainly did exist or very probably did exist.

Before continuing, I should point out that the Burden of Proof is always on the positive claimant. This is not just in history, but in everything involving the acquisition of knowledge. It is so fundamental, in fact, that if we attempt to overturn the Burden of Proof, the necessary and inevitable result is incomprehensible nonsense and paradox.

Where a lot of people seem to get confused is in the identification of positive claims. Many atheists claim to be "weak atheists." That is, they see no evidence for a god, so they don't believe. This is not, in an epistemological sense, a positive claim. It is the absence of a positive claim.

Think for a second about a globelrafk. Do you believe in it? Unless I have inadvertently made up an existing word, you do not, for you have no idea what a globelrafk might be. Technically speaking, you are an aglobelrafkist, since you do not make the positive claim that globelrafks exist. Through complete ignorance, you simply do not make a claim either way.

For all the potential gods we've never heard of, we are similarly atheists. For the Christian god, or Allah, it becomes more problematic to say that we're simply not making a positive claim. We've been presented with the evidence and rejected it. Most atheists are not blank slates that simply have no thought of god(s). They consistently reject specific god claims. What we must bear in mind, however, is that in terms of the burden of proof, we are simply rejecting insufficient evidence. We are responding to a positive claim by saying, "I'm sorry. You have not met the burden of proof."

This can get very tedious, since the claim "You have not met the burden of proof" is a positive claim, and is subject to the same kind of scrutiny. Even so, it's important to note that this chain of proof eventually stops somewhere, and that is the initial claim. That is, we can argue all day about the burden of proof being met or not met, but all of those arguments hinge on the initial claim -- in the case of atheists, the claim that a god exists. The reason I mentioned globelrafks is to illustrate the point that without an initial positive claim, the default position is disbelief.

With all that in mind, we must realize that the claim that Jesus existed is the positive claim. We do not begin by claiming all that does not exist. Though it certainly feels like a lot of historical figures are taken for granted as existing, from an epistemological position, the evidence is simply so overwhelming that it never occured to anyone to bother making the positive claim.

Obviously, with Jesus, this is not so because many people do question the positive claim of his existence. The fact that there is not a consensus means that the positive claim of his existence is perceived by a great many people as not having met the burden of proof.

I think pure historical studies cannot prove whether Jesus actually existed or not. That something happened in the historical past doesn’t mean we can show that it did. That something did not happen in historical past does not mean we can show that it didn’t. You’ll have to read my chapter on “The Poor Evidence of Historical Evidence” to know why I think this, where I argue that if God revealed himself in the historical past he chose a poor medium and a poor era to do so. Historical studies are fraught with difficulties. Even Christian scholar Richard Bauckham acknowledges in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, that “Historical work, by its very nature, is always putting two and two together and making five—or twelve or seventeen.” (p. 93)

Strictly speaking, no historical study can "prove" that anybody did or did not exist. It's always an inductive conclusion based on the weight of the evidence. History is more nebulous than physics because there are no immutable natural laws of historicity.

The very fact that several scholars have reasonably concluded Jesus probably never existed is proof that historical studies is a slender reed to hang one’s faith on. Historians disagree over a great deal, even over mundane things. Christian, your faith is based upon so many conclusions about history, including whether Jesus even existed at all, that with each question the probability of your faith diminishes. Why don't you admit this fact and then turn around and say something like this: "I am willing to stake my whole life on the basis of a probability from historical investigations. It's probable that my conclusions on a whole host of historical issues are true by, say ____% (insert the probability)." [51% 55% 60% ???].

I know John is being loose with his terminology, but I don't like the use of the word "faith" in this context. Hanging a belief on probability is not faith in the theological sense because probability is math, and math is based on deduction. While I agree that Christianity has very low probabilities on which to rest belief, I hardly see this as a valid analog to the argument over a historical Jesus. How do you even begin to discuss the difference between a supernatural claim and a matter of science? Yes, I am invoking science in the question of Jesus' historicity. The most compelling of all historical evidence is scientific, not literary. That is, if you have twenty stories of an African man who did such and such at a certain time, and you uncover the actual remains of the man, and DNA testing reveals him to be Asian, the only reasonable conclusion is that the stories were in error or were fabricated. Evidence of historicity is weighted, and archaeology trumps literature.

I’ve read the relevant passages in Tacitus (64 AD), Pliny (112 AD), Suetonious (49 AD), Rabbi Eliezer (post 70 AD), the Benediction Twelve (post 70 AD), Josephus (post 70 AD). I’ve read the Christian inscription in Pompeii, too (79 AD). I understand the debates about them. But consider the majority scholarly consensus about the two-source theory of synoptic gospel tradition (Q and Mark) that predate the Gospels, and that we have early creeds inside Paul's writings (I Cor. 8:6; 12:3; 15:3-4; Galatians 4:4-5; I Tim. 3:16) that predate his letters. Consider also the close connection between the New Testament era with the early church fathers like John the elder, Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and others. We have to date these texts, no doubt, and many of them are indeed late, and some were forgeries. But they still offer some kind of early testimony to the historicity of a man called Jesus. Even a tradition is based on something. I just don’t see why we must discount the various independent writers of the New Testament itself on the historicity of Jesus. Why, for instance, should we not believe anything at all in the New Testament unless there is independent confirmation from outside sources?

We certainly don't have to discount anyone out of hand, but what we must do is consider the weight of their testimony against their potential for having reliable information and their motivation for accurately relaying the information they had. In the case of Jesus, many historians seem to get hung up on the fact that there are a lot of relatively early sources mentioning Jesus. What they seem to miss is that there are only two significant sources within the first several decades of Jesus alleged existence -- Paul and the author of the Gospel, whether Mark or some lost "Q" document.

The gospel hardly counts as a historical document by any stretch of the imagination. It is riddled with magic, deities, demons, and clearly fictional events. Many of the themes are clearly metaphorical, or would be if not for the presumption of Jesus historicity. Twelve apostles? Twelve tribes of Isreal? Coincidence? I think not. The notion of a dying and resurrected savior was clearly not new, and recently Hellenized Jews (at least those capable of writing the first gospel) would surely have been aware of previous models from both Jewish and Classical mythology. It is an ad hoc rationalization to suppose that the gospel was meant as anything other than a fictional story.

Paul was a cunning man who clearly enjoyed being the center of attention. We have it from his own pen that he spent most of his time after his conversion preaching. Let's not kid ourselves about this. Paul's testimony fails on two levels. First, he never claims to have met Jesus. He had a vision. Exactly how trustworthy are the thousands of preachers who claim to have had personal contact with Jesus in the 21st century? I'm sorry, but just because Paul was removed from Jesus alleged existence by a couple of decades (give or take a few years, depending on your beliefs) his proclamations are no less suspect.

The fact is, our only sources that fall anywhere within the reasonable bounds of "contemporary" to Jesus are highly unreliable and certainly fail the test of motives for honesty.

Strike one against the burden of proof.

Furthermore, what Jesus may have did and said seems to correspond to the Jewishness of that era as best as we can tell. E.P. Sanders in his book, The Historical Figure of Jesus, even thinks there was nothing strange about his message that would've gotten him killed by the Jewish authorites (he argues instead that the Romans were the sole actors). He argued that "the level of disagreement and arguments falls well inside the parameter of debate that were accepted in Jesus' time." (p. 216). He adds, "If Jesus disagreed with other interpreters over details, the disputes were no more substantial than were disputes between the Jewish parties and even within each party." (p. 225).

So? I hardly think it surprising that a fictional writer would attempt to create a believable character. This is not evidence for historicity. It is not evidence for anything, since there is an equally plausible explanation for both fiction and non-fiction. If anything, there's less reason to believe it's factual since most of the gospel resembles fiction much more than fact.

I could be wrong. But here is why I think I’m right. Passionate cult-like religious groups are always started by a cult figure, not an author, and not a committee. It’s always a single charismatic leader that gathers passionate religious people together. So who is the most likely candidate for starting the Jesus cult? Jesus himself is, although Paul certainly was the man most responsible for spreading what he believed about his story. And even though Paul never met Jesus and only had a vision of him on the Damascus Road (Acts 26:19), his testimony is that there were already Christians whom he was persecuting in Palestine in the first century.

But you are wrong. Passionate cult-like groups are not always started by a cult figure. L Ron Hubbard? Author.

Furthermore, why is Jesus the most likely candidate for starting the Jesus cult when we have the words of Paul himself stating that he was responsible for spreading the word to so many places? Not only that, we have a good psychological profile of Paul from his own words. He was a driven and charismatic man who thrived on being the center of attention. This sounds an awful lot like the kind of man who could run with a fledgling religion and make it his own. To the claim of persecuted Christians in first century Palestine, this is all well and good, but if Paul is being honest, (that's a big "if") this is evidence that there were people in first century Palestine who were following a new religion -- not evidence that the figure in the gospel was the originator of the religion.

I think if we look at the New Testament texts it's clear Jesus was an apocalyptic doomsday prophet who's message, like that of John the Baptist before him, is for people to "repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Is it really clear? How is it so obvious that this was a real man and not a fiction set in contemporary times? It only seems obvious if we presuppose the conclusion. Otherwise, we're just guessing. Let's not forget that a clever author could easily make use of the messianic expectations of his audience. Also remember that even in 20th century America, thousands were fooled by a radio broadcast into believing that aliens were invading earth. It's not so implausible to think that in a time far, far before radio, an author could fool a few hundred people with a cleverly written story. Also remember that War of the Worlds was not originally intended as a giant hoax. It was just a made up story. After it was written, it developed a life of its own, so to speak. We must remember that the author's intent is not necessarily relevant when we consider the historical ramifications of his work.

That Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet has been the dominant Christian view since the time of Albert Schweitzer and given a robust defense recently by Christian scholar Dale Allison in his book, Jesus of Nazareth. For an excellent overall treatment of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet see Bart D. Ehrman’s book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.

It's also been the dominant Christian view since the time of Albert Schweitzer that God exists and watches us when we masturbate. Is that also true? I'm aware that all of these scholars have big books on the historicity of Jesus, but have there not been consensus opinions before that have been fundamentally flawed? I'm speaking of methodology and critical thinking here, not consensus. I have not yet read a reasonable treatise that compels me to disregard the paucity of contemporary evidence coupled with the unreliability of the closest "witnesses."

So even though historical studies are fraught with some serious problems, I think the evidence is that an apocalyptic prophet named Jesus developed a cult-like following in Palestine in the first century. I cannot be sure about this though, from a mere historical investigation of the evidence. I could be wrong. But that's what I think.

Fire away now, on both sides. I stand in the middle.

I hate to say it, John, but your arguments (in this blog, at least) don't hold water. I'm happy to admit that I have not read much else of yours, so perhaps you are simply not making this particular argument well, but none of what you have said here passes muster as proof of anything other than a lack of proof.

I'd like to point you to my official statement on Jesus' Historicity in this very blog. In THIS POST, I explain why I believe that though it's certainly possible that there was some figure in history that served as inspiration for the Jesus myth, there's no compelling evidence to suggest that this figure in any way resembles the figure in the Gospel or Paul's epistles.

I disagree that there must certainly have been a single apocalyptic preacher who got himself killed. There were tons of mystery cults floating around in first century Palestine, and there's no particular reason to believe that Christianity either did or did not revolve around a significant historical Jesus.

It may not feel particularly satisfying, but the correct position with regard to the existence of a man whose life closely resembled the gospel in any meaningful way is a shrug of the shoulders. There simply isn't enough evidence.

The Ball Is In Our Court

2008-11-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

I can't stress enough that if progressives, secularists, and freethinkers want political respect and clout, the ball is in our courts.

President Elect Obama is not going to take it upon himself to restore the church-state separation intended by the founding fathers. He is a religious man himself, and will not turn his back on the Christians without being able to justify it in a way that makes everyone happy.

The ball is in our court.

Atheists, progressives, freethinkers, and secularists represent somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent of the population in America. For comparison, that's about the same as the number of Fundamentalist Evangelicals. Yet, who has all the political power?

The Secular Coalition for America has approximately fifty thousand members, of which only a small percentage contribute anything at all. There are churches in the DC area that could drum up a million dollars for a cause, and not bat an eye. Lori Lippman Brown, the nation's only atheist lobbyist, works on a shoestring budget because you and I, gentle progressives, have not stood up for ourselves and demanded attention from the White House.

The mechanism is in place. It lacks support.

http://www.secular.org/

Learn from the past. Eight years of religiostupidification, fights over stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage, and evolution is long enough. Let's let the religious have their religion, but for the government, no thank you.

What Can We Do?

2008-11-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

It occured to me this morning that maybe my last blog, while an effective call to action, was less than effective at telling people what they can do.

First, you should know that we do have a lobbyist in Washington. Lori Lippman Brown is the director of the Secular Coalition for America, which is the national lobby representing the interests of atheists, humanists, agnostics, freethinkers and other nontheistic Americans. Their website has updates on the political efforts on behalf of freethinkers as well as the all too common attempts by various government entities to blur or tear down the wall of separation.

Get involved, people. Now. Today. Be loud.

The Hardest Job In The World

2008-11-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

I generally try to avoid politics, but this is too big. For the sixteen to eighteen percent of Americans who don't subscribe to the belief that God has chosen America to do whatever it is we're supposed to do, this is a momentous time in history.

At no other time in the foreseeable future will those of us who call ourselves freethinking progressives have more power than we do now. President Elect Obama needs to know that we expect more than we have gotten from the Democrats in recent memory. We expect decisive leadership away from the failed policies of the Reagan to Bush era.

Personally, I will not consider this presidency a success unless at least the following things happen:

1) The Patriot Act must be repealed. Period. It's an abomination and an affront to everything America is supposed to stand for.

2) Gitmo must be shut down. Period. It's an abomination and an affront to everything America is supposed to stand for.

3) Nothing less than the Geneva Conventions must apply to all enemy combatant prisoners held by the U.S. for any reason.

4) No Child Left Behind must be scrapped.

5) There must be an end to the senseless waste of resources, life, and American credibility in Iraq.

6) Global Warming must be rationally addressed.

This is no time for inaction. We don't have the luxury of gloating. So far, we have done nothing. Already, there are hateful messages pouring out over the internet urging Christians to fight against the new godless government.

God removes His hand from the United States, it is now time to act! With the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the next President of the United States, yesterday marked a watershed day spiritually for this nation. For decades now, this country has been operating in rebellion to God and His Truth. We legally slaughter 4,000 babies every day. We have made a mockery of God's Holy Institution of Marriage. God's plan for the family has been decimated. We have totally given ourselves over to the lusts of the flesh and the pleasures of this temporal world. We have bowed down to and worshipped every false god and idol created in rebellion to the God of the Bible.

Out of our rebellion to God, the people have now elected a man to lead this nation who is a staunch supporter of legalized infanticide. Speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007, Senator Obama said, "The first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." President Obama will repay the support of those in the baby killing industry by insuring abortion on demand at any stage of the pregnancy, and through executive orders, he will wipe out any progress individual states have made in trying to ban abortions in their state. As President, he will elect judges to the US Supreme Court who will insure Roe vs. Wade is never overturned, as well as activist judges to the Federal Courts who will rule on the side of death in any abortion cases.

President Obama is also a great friend to the homosexual community and will be a champion of their radical agenda. President Obama will make it easy for gay couples to adopt children. I remember years ago warning people in my Daily Devotional that the homosexual community was targeting your children. People said I was over reacting. Today, an entire generation of children has grown up being brainwashed that being gay is normal and acceptable. They are being indoctrinated as young as kindergarten that there is nothing wrong with this choice of deviant sex. Again, through executive orders he will wipe out any gains made by various states to insure gay marriage will quickly spread across the nation, and the judges he appoints will help the radical gay agenda to move forward

This is what we're fighting against. Rush and Laura and FOX News and a hundred other conservative pundits are going to attack President Elect Obama from day one. We're already seeing it happen.

Bill Clinton was a Republican's Democrat. Even so, he was crucified by the neocon right. Forgive my southern roots showing, but how much more will Obama be attacked when a good ol' fashioned lynching would thrill the hearts of so many good Christians south of the Mason Dixon?

The new administration is going to face terrible opposition, but we must not pity them for this. It has been nothing less than the systematic failure of the Democratic Party for the last eight years that has put us where we are today. We can blame it on the neocons all we want, but the reality is that the Democrats haven't had a goal. They have simply wimpered quiet opposition to the very well formed Republican plan.

Obama is an organizer and a negotiator. We need to make sure, as progressives, that he understands just how many of us are out here, and just how insistent we are that we have a voice in what will hopefully be the beginning of the end for Neo-Conservative rule in America.

Logic-Resistant Belief and Three Steps to Freedom

2008-11-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

I am an atheist. I used to be a Christian, and then I read the Bible, thought about it, and left Christianity. Soon after that, I examined the concept of “the supernatural” and became an atheist. Hearing my story would probably be interesting to some people, but apart from some minor variances, it’s no different from the stories of thousands of other “de-converts.” Most atheists are well versed in the logic necessary to rid the mind of religious delusions. What I want to discuss in this essay is the number of theists who fully comprehend the same logic, and yet remain theists. Clearly, this phenomenon should be of great concern to the freethinker who would like to see friends, family, and society in general rid themselves of the poison that religious thought injects into culture.

To begin with, let us briefly examine the reasons that people follow religion. Some people are afraid of death, and gain comfort from the belief that they will not really die. Others want some truth to help explain the pain and suffering they or their loved ones experience. Many people attend church for social reasons – Christianity is, after all, the biggest social group in the country. Many people accept Jesus into their hearts because they’re afraid of hell. Obviously, there are also many people who firmly believe that they have spoken to God, witnessed a miracle that only God could have performed, or felt a “presence” they believe to be the Holy Spirit within them. All of these reasons, and many more, would be listed if you took a poll of believers.

I submit that close examination will reveal that virtually all of these reasons can be reduced to fear. Some are easy. Fear of death, hell, pain and suffering, and the unknown are easy to understand, but what about the other reasons? Do people who have spoken to God also believe because of fear? I believe so. The real question is, why would a person either try to hear God’s voice, or upon hearing a perceived spiritual voice, be inclined to believe it? The answer is still fear – most likely one of the ones I’ve already listed. Why would a person be inclined to believe that there is a supernatural force that performs miracles? Again, fear -- the fear of being in the position of needing a miracle would certainly make one more likely to believe in miracles.

I’ve left out one big fear, and it’s the primary focus of this essay. I noted earlier that many people attend church for social reasons. This fact is, I believe, the key to understanding why theists who understand the logical reasons for disbelief continue to profess belief. For a moment, think about as many of your friends as you can. If you are a Republican, are most of your friends also Republican? If you are a Christian, do you spend most of your free time with other Christians? Here’s a nasty one. If you are white, are most of your friends white? Unless you are one of a few very rare personality types, or are forced into living in a culture that is not your own, you must admit that the majority of the people you surround yourself with are very similar to you.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It is built into the survival instinct, and is an intrinsic part of human nature. Also part of this survival instinct is the fear of being ostracized by the group. In the earlier days of the human species, exclusion from the group meant death in most circumstances. Even in more recent recorded history, there are many examples of places and times when banishment from a group would cause real mortal danger. In America, this is no longer true, but the instinct remains. Most people, given the choice between conforming to the group and leaving the group, will choose conforming. This isn’t speculation. It’s scientific fact.

Here, then, is the answer to the question I posed at the beginning. Why do theists who understand the logic of atheism remain theists? I suggest that it is fear of being ostracized. If you are a Christian, think of everyone you know who is also a Christian. How would it feel to be hated and distrusted by all of them? Am I being overly dramatic? Sadly, no. A recent survey showed that a very large portion of U.S. citizens would rather see a homosexual president than an atheist one. Furthermore, they rated atheists as the least trustworthy group of people – lower than lawyers and politicians who profess faith in Jesus Christ. If you are an atheist, you know these facts from personal experience. It is fair to say that a rational person, given the choice between believing in a deity or joining the most distrusted and disliked minority in the country, will choose to believe in a deity and be part of the largest and most well-regarded social group in the country.

Am I suggesting that there are “believers” who don’t really believe and use Christianity for social status only? Absolutely. But I’m also suggesting that there are many people who clearly understand the reasons for not believing, and perhaps even grasp the inherent danger posed by modern Christianity, and subconsciously create layers of apologist theory to shield themselves from having to face the seemingly awful truth that would force them to abandon the comfort of the group. Any atheist who has debated a Christian has seen the layers of circular logic necessary to answer even the simplest question of faith. For example, examine the question of an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful deity. Did this deity know before he created the universe that he would create literally billions of people who would not profess Jesus as their savior and would therefore be tormented for eternity for not believing a book riddled with inconsistencies and improbabilities? The correct answer is “yes,” but try to get a Christian to say it.Once we establish this, can we describe this being as “good?” Obviously, the answer is “no.” This being would be so atrociously evil that we would have to put Hitler on the list of “pretty ok people.” At least Hitler’s torments only lasted minutes for the lucky ones who got the gas chambers, and years for those forced to endure medical experiments and grotesque abuse in the concentration camps. Again, many Christians have a ready-made answer – “We cannot understand the ways of God. Good doesn’t have the same meaning for him because he is love.” This is obviously circular logic, and is nonsense even if we accept it. If God is truly beyond human comprehension, how do you know that he is good, or bad, or anything, for that matter? The answer to this – “Because he told me.” If you respond by asking if that doesn’t mean that God has given us the means to understand him, you’ll just get more circular logic.

Eventually, most Christians, when backed into a corner, will resort to saying something like, “Well, you just have to have faith, and I can’t make you believe, but I do.” In other words, “You’re right. I don’t have any reason to believe this, but I do, despite the logic that has defeated my arguments.” Faith, by definition, then, is believing something despite all evidence to the contrary. Many Christians will balk at that definition, but it’s true. Not only is there no evidence that the Christian god exists, there’s no evidence that any god exists. None! Even so, they will believe this book of myths that tells them that God made the earth, populated it with people who were predestined to sin, sent himself down to the earth to be sacrificed to himself so that people who believed that he had done this bizarre thing would be saved from a place of eternal torment designed by God for the people who were predestined not to believe such rubbish.

If this seems ludicrous and possibly even insane, it’s not exactly. Believing that all Christians are insane would be, well, insane, but we must be careful of how we're using the word. Many people with mental disorders are not called insane. Think of how many people you know who take a mild antidepressant. Many people with mild bipolar disorder function very well in society, and we don't call them insane. This is where the issue of social pressure becomes paramount. It is much easier to postulate that many people will accept the circular logic if they can convince themselves that A) Christianity makes them feel good, so it’s ok if it doesn’t make sense, or B) Everybody believes it, and it doesn’t do any harm, or C) It’s too scary to think about leaving Christianity, or D) It isn’t worth bucking the system because it wouldn’t change anything for them to leave.

All of these reasons are hedges for the real reason – they are afraid to be ostracized. This fear is so pervasive that their subconscious will not even allow them to consider the possibility that not only are they wrong personally, but that our entire culture is wrong for basing so much of its morality on an ancient fairy tale. The question for atheists who would like to see change is this: “How do we, as atheists, help to create an environment conducive to de-conversion?” I don’t have all the answers to this, and I hope that this essay will spark discussion. I do have some suggestions, though.

First and foremost, it is important for the potential de-convert to see that there is a large group of freethinkers who will happily welcome her to “the group.” She needs to see that not only will her social life not end by leaving religion, but that she will have a strong support group that will be loving and fun and permanent. The best first step in this direction is for atheists to “come out of the closet.” We as a group should be proud of ourselves, and should display our disbelief to anyone who cares to look.

Second, it is important for the potential de-convert to be drawn away from religious influences as much as possible. Think of it this way. It’s a lot easier for a man to think about religion in a critical way if everyone around him has already done it, and seems no worse for wear. The more a theist can retreat to the religion that enslaves him, the more he will want to remain a slave.

Third, and possibly most controversial, I believe theists need to be exposed to embarrassment for their beliefs. Factually, their beliefs are ridiculous, and this needs to be pointed out clearly and often. Logically, their beliefs are nearly insane. This needs to be drilled home at every opportunity. This is difficult, because it’s hard to separate the person from the belief. Remember, we’re talking about people who can understand the logic, but are resisting because of social pressure, so we’re not talking about idiots. I think it’s crucial to remember that the beliefs are stupid. The people are just victims of a mass movement to believe in stupidity. Educate them in the same way you would someone who had never been taught history. (Because many of them are people who heave never been taught history!) Remember the mantra: Build up the person, tear down the belief. {edit: I've already received criticism on this one on my livejournal, but I stand by it. First, let me emphasize that these steps are in chronological order. If you start making fun of their beliefs before they're attached to your group, yes, they will run away as fast as they can. Second, if you think I said we should make fun of Christians, go back and read it again, and again if necessary until you see that I didn't say that. Nowhere in the paragraph did I say we should belittle the people. We should belittle the beliefs and do our best to point out that it's a shame that a person with enough intelligence to be an atheist would believe such silly things! Tear down the belief, build up the person!! I don't know how I can say it any more clearly.}

I think one of the biggest mistakes made by atheists when debating Christians is that they overlook the simple fact that all the logic in the world will not overcome the fear that pulls Christians back into the fold. It takes a two-pronged approach to successfully pull a sheep out of the flock. They need to be exposed to the illogic of their belief, but more importantly, they need to be shown that there is another side of the fence, and that it’s greener – not just from an intellectual standpoint, but from the all-important social standpoint. They need to know that they will not be alone if they choose to leave. They need to know that even if they lose many, or even all of their friends and family, they are not alone, and they will be accepted and loved. In fact, they will be loved based on the intrinsic value of their life, not on their acceptance of someone else’s system of beliefs and morality. There is freedom in atheism, and theists need to be shown how amazing it is to be free.

Thoughts on Jesus' Historicity

2008-11-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

I've recently stepped a little out of my comfort zone and entered into a couple of discussions about whether or not there was a historical Jesus. You can find those discussions here:

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2008/10/historicity-of-jesus.html

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/10/messiah-vs-myth-did-jesus-exist.html

I'd like you to look at both of these after you've read a few of my thoughts here. First, I'd like to state my position very clearly. I don't know if there was a historical Jesus. There simply isn't much evidence that there was, but that doesn't mean there wasn't.

My main problem with Jesus historians like James McGrath is one of methodology. If you read through my comments on his blog, you'll see that for each point he tries to make about one of his proofs of Jesus, I can make one using the same information yet pointing to ahistoricity.

To put it plainly, here are my primary objections to the arguments for Jesus:

1. They invent their own criteria.

That is, you see things like the "Argument from crucifixion" or "Argument from somebody who claimed to be related 20 years later." When historians examine other historical figures, they have a fairly straightforward way of determining whether it's a myth or a real person. Jesus historians bypass this route and make up their own rules. That bothers me a lot. Sounds like special pleading.

2. Each argument can be flipped around.

Jesus historians will say that the sheer number of references twenty to fifty years after Jesus supposedly lived point to him being historical. I can flip that around and say that the complete absence of any contemporary evidence during his life, and for twenty years after, point to the story being a myth.

The same is true for pretty much every argument I've encountered. Jesus historians seem content to examine only one side of an argument, and when I've pressed them, as I did Dr. McGrath, they accuse me of not understanding history. Particularly when dealing with people who are supposed to be educators, it seems odd that they don't wish to educate me if that is indeed the case.

I also notice that when I've asked similar questions of Jesus A-historians, they've been eloquent and informative in explaining why they feel their position is epistemologically more plausible. So, that leads me to the next point:

3. Jesus A-historians seem to be much calmer about their position, and actually answer my questions.

Typically, people who seem calm and have good answers, even when pressed by the opposition, tend to have better positions. And like I said, I am not in either camp. I don't have enough background to make an informed authoritative statement. All I can say is that the A-historians seem to have their shit together and their arguments seem more coherent. (And I can make authoritative statements about the coherency of arguments.)

Finally, I'd like to make a really important point by way of analogy. Wonder Woman is based on a real person. Elizabeth Marston was the wife of Wonder Woman's creator, William Marston. He admired her sense of loyalty and honor, and was amazed by her ability to tell when other people were lying. He created Wonder Woman with a magic lasso and an island of magical Amazon Goddesses.

Here, we must ask a very important question: Is it fair to say that Wonder Woman was a historical figure? She's clearly not, even though she is based on someone who actually lived.

Ok, so to everybody who comes down hard on either the side of the Jesus debate, ask yourself what you're really asserting? Is it possible that there was a homeless guy who preached rebellion and got himself killed by Romans two thousand years ago? Sure! There was lots of that kind of thing going on in those days.

Would that two thousand year old homeless guy resemble the Jesus in the Gospels or Epistles? Of course not. Jesus, regardless of the origins of the myth, is just as historical as Wonder Woman.

Free Will, Determinism, and Choice

2008-11-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Matter moves from instability to stability. This is a basic physical truth. Sodium is highly unstable, and when it encounters moisture, it changes states rapidly to form more stable compounds. Rocks last a long time because their atoms have reached a level of high stability. Eggs fry because the added heat causes their atoms to be in an unstable state, and they naturally move to a more stable state. Because of the incredible complexity of matter, there are lots of ways that it can be arranged, and because of the incredibly complex systems of movement in the universe and the incredible amount of energy it contains, it's going to take a really damn long time before the eventual state of "complete stability" is reached. (Assuming, of course, that the universe isn't going to contract again.)

What has this got to do with free will? Everything. The first replicator on earth, whatever it was, came to exist because it was following this principle. The configuration of the first replicator was stable enough that atoms "wanted" to move into it, the same way that salt wants to form cubic crystals. At each step of evolution, the next level of complexity was reached by the same process. You can think of it as two laws working together. The physical law of "survival of the stable" interacted with the mathematical law of "survival of the fittest" which actually ought to be renamed "survival of the best equipped to survive." It is so simple as to be perfectly obvious when we say it that way.

Anyway, at some point, replicators developed rudimentary walls to insulate themselves from the environment. Eventually, cells developed. Eventually after that, some cells developed the ability to work together with other cells, and the inevitable math of Game Theory was set in motion. What is crucially important to bear in mind is that all of this happened completely without consciousness. It was the inevitable result of the interaction of survival of the stable with survival of the best able to survive.

Jump ahead in evolutionary history, and you get to a huge moment, where eukaryotes and prokaryotes split from each other. After that, plants and animals split. Here's where things started to get really interesting. Plants, for whatever reason, never got around to moving very fast, or being able to perform what we can call "free movement." They pretty much just grow. Animals, on the other hand, discovered the benefit of much faster movement. The earliest animals (which would have been a lot more like a paramecium than a rat), "learned" how to eat other animals and plants. Remember, all of this happened without consciousness because matter always moves from instability to stability. It's really, really important that you keep this in mind.

Soon, through natural selection, some individuals developed very rudimentary senses. Perhaps it was the ability to detect a chemical in the water which indicated that potential prey was nearby. Perhaps it was the ability to react to the intensity of light. It doesn't matter. What matters is that this was a HUGE advantage. Through nothing but blind matter interacting with other blind matter, the senses came to exist. Soon, complexity added to complexity and early versions of what would become nerves developed. Once animals had muscles and nerves, they were able to perform astounding feats of independent movement. Their eyes developed into the complex organs they are today. Their hearts, lungs, and livers all developed in complexity, and one other extremely important organ developed as well -- their brain.

At first, brains were very rudimentary, but the engineering advantage of having a central "control station" are undeniable. Through millions of years, brains grew in size and complexity. At each step, the animals became better and better adapted to their environment, still following the principles of survival of the stable and survival of the best able to survive. The way brains work is really astonishing. Specialized cells called neurons link with other neurons into long chains, through which unbroken chains of reactions can take place. You can think of it like a row of dominoes. An outside stimuli (your finger) knocks over the first domino, and without any further influence, the entire row topples, one at a time. This happens because of the laws of physics. So it is in brains. When light enters an eye, the cells in the eye have no option but to do what they naturally do. Light triggers a change in one cell, which triggers a change in another cell, and so on. The matter which makes up an eye must move from instability to instability, and the only way to do this is to react in the way it has been arranged to react.

The earliest brains didn't produce anything approaching what we call consciousness. They were just control centers made of matter that couldn't help how it had been arranged. However, through the inevitable laws of matter, increasingly complex brains were bound to develop. If it is beneficial to be able to see prey and chase it, it is more beneficial to be able to see prey, chase it, and make rudimentary predictions about its future actions. Such a leap in brain development may seem huge, and perhaps in terms of time, it was. It isn't that hard to conceive, though.

Memory is something that happens in very simple animals. Even simple worms can be “trained” to react to certain stimuli. All we need to do to imagine the birth of memory is to imagine an arrangement of matter in an early animal in which repeated occurrences of the same stimulus would create a permanent change in the animal itself, thus altering the way it behaved. No consciousness is necessary, and the exact mechanism is extraneous to this discussion. All we need to be concerned with is the fact that it's not hard to imagine rudimentary memory coming into existence.

Once memory existed, it is not hard to imagine it becoming more and more complex as brains became larger and more complex. The first predictive behavior, then, is easy to imagine. After chasing several prey animals in exactly the same pattern, a permanent change happened in the hunter such that the next time it chased a similar prey, it “anticipated” the movement, quite automatically.

With memory and prediction came great evolutionary advantage, so it's not hard to imagine these kinds of creatures proliferating. We can imagine two kinds of creatures, however. The first kind of creature could see its prey, chase it, and predict its movements, and would pursue relentlessly, even to the point of exhaustion or death. The second kind of creature, with the same abilities, also had the tendency to stop chasing its pray when its own energy began running low, but before exhaustion set in. This simple modification to behavior patterns needs no grand explanation. Again, all it takes is imagining a small mutation which produced the behavior once. It requires no consciousness, but it is the beginning of something amazing. From this simple change in behavior, the ability to weigh options developed.

Suppose that a creature encountered two potential meals at the same time. It could only chase one of them. Any creature which had a rudimentary ability to judge the chances of success for each of two chases would have a stunning advantage over those which just randomly chased one or the other. This is a big leap in brain development, but again, it does not bring us to the point of consciousness in the modern philosophical sense. These animals were still what Richard Dawkins has called “survival machines.” They were doing what they did because the matter in their bodies (now arranged in staggeringly complex ways) did what it had to do.

Hopefully, you can see where I'm going with this. Each step of brain development happened through the same process of survival of the stable combining with survival of the best able to survive. The discussion of what exactly constitutes consciousness may seem like a huge concern, but it is not. In the same way that there is no such thing as the single ancestor of humans that was the “first human,” there is also no exact divide between consciousness and unconsciousness, at least from a biological point of view. This may seem controversial, but please make sure you understand precisely what I'm saying, and more importantly, what I'm not saying.

Goldfish have memories, and can recognize individuals of their own species, as well as other species. Their brains transmit impulses through nerves in such a way that they can perform feats of apparent purpose like traversing a maze to get to food. I doubt many people would suggest that they are fully sentient beings. One of the main reasons for this is that even though they show apparent purpose, they do so predictably and mechanically. If they're hungry, and food is placed at the end of the maze, they will move towards it and eat. Higher animals, however, show a lot more autonomy – that is, ability to take one option over another based on analysis of sensory data. An ape, by all appearances, spends time “deciding” whether or not to attack another ape, and we can only assume that his brain is processing data from the ape's memory, and is weighing the potential for victory against the potential for defeat, and perhaps even the possibility of personal injury in either case.

While this may be an incredible dilemma for philosophers, it's not that big of a deal to biologists. Goldfish have less complex brains than cats, which have less complex brains than monkeys, which have less complex brains than dolphins, which have less complex brains than humans. The measure of an animal's ability to perform predictive analysis is a measure of their brain's size and complexity. Period. There's no such thing as a really smart earthworm because earthworms don't have complex big brains.

Before we can finally address free will, we must perform a couple of mental exercises. First, think about an ant. Do you have any problem thinking of an ant as a creature that simply reacts to its environment based on its genetic programming? I would hope not. Ants simply don't do things like quit their job or decide to move to another anthill. Ants do what ants do, and nothing else. They do it predictably, and when we do experiments on their genes, we can reprogram them to do other things just as predictably.

Ants have brains that were “designed” just like every other part of their body, as a natural result of the survival of the stable combined with survival of the best able to survive. They are alive, but not sentient, according to every philosopher I can think of. Yet, even these simple creatures show remarkable behaviors that seem “intelligent.” Some varieties of ants engage in “tandem running,” a process by which one ant leads another ant to a food source. It requires many adjustments, and happens methodically, as if each ant “intends” to find food. Still, we can imagine that the ant genes have programmed their carriers to perform this way, and they do so because they have no choice in the matter. They are ants, and their genes, like everything else in their bodies, must obey the law of survival of the stable.

Bees, as most people are now aware, have a system of communication that is virtually unrivaled in the animal world. They do an incredibly complex dance to indicate to their hivemates the distance to food, quantity of food, and exact direction. Still, it is clearly a genetic behavior, for all bees do it the same way, and they do it predictably, without the ability to “decide” to do otherwise. They have genes that dictate their behavior by causing proteins to be built in a particular way, and those proteins, acting entirely according to the law of survival of the stable, react with other proteins in exactly the “correct” way, on up the line of complexity, until the amalgam of all those chemicals, a bee, behaves precisely as it must behave.

At some point, though, we're going to have to address the philosophical leap that comes with the existence of what we call “sentience.” For our purposes, it won't matter precisely what sentience is, but it is important to note something of critical importance. Whatever sentience is, it is that way because there are genes within the sentient animal which, according to the law survival of the stable, caused chemicals to interact in completely predictable ways to “build” a being capable of sentient thought.

The last paragraph is staggeringly important. We must realize that whatever a brain allows us to do, it does so because it was built to do so by genes. Every stimulus that a creature encounters causes a series of unavoidable events to occur. When an eye opens, chemicals react with other chemicals to create nerve impulses that must go to the brain, where the brain must render them as images, and the creature must perceive the external world in whatever fashion it has been built. Once that image has been perceived, the same kinds of neural impulses unavoidably travel through the brain in complex patterns, triggering still more reactions, and still more, until the entire organism can be said to have reacted (in whatever way) to the stimulus.

Finally, now, we can address free will. The first thing we must do to address it properly is to define it. This might prove to be much harder than we first imagine. We can say that free will is the ability to make choices, but this is unsatisfactory. When a spider walking across the forest floor encounters a log, it can either turn left, turn right, turn back, or climb up. Alternatively, it could just stay right where it is. It has quite a few “choices” and will make one of them. It cannot avoid making one of them unless it suddenly dies. Because time moves forward, and there are many potential actions for any creature at any given time, we can say that all creatures make choices.

Clearly, we need to work on our definition of choice if free will is to have any meaning. Perhaps it means taking one option over another based on rational choice, rational meaning “conforming to the laws of logic.” This is also unsatisfactory because many animals who are not aware of the laws of logic do precisely that. Apes, when sizing up a potential opponent, very often make the “correct” decision based on the size and strength of the potential opponent and the “chooser's” memory of previous battles. Yet, most people are unhappy with the conclusion that apes have free will.

Perhaps for free will to exist, the creature must be able to think in the abstract. That is, it must be able to run “simulations” in its brain, and must be able to think of concepts, not just objects or actions. This easily eliminates most creatures from the discussion of free will, although not necessarily all. Dolphins, apes, and even parrots have shown the ability to understand the concept of rational numbers. Dolphins and apes have both demonstrated rudimentary ability to predict the outcome of an action based on abstract thinking, and both have demonstrated the ability to imitate with modification.

In any case, I said that the philosophy behind sentience was irrelevant, and it is. By illustrating the problems with these definitions, I hope to show you that the definitions aren't really flawed. The concept itself is flawed. If you've followed my somewhat tedious tour through evolutionary history, you've realized that at every step of brain development, new abilities were added naturally through immutable physical forces. This is in direct opposition to thespirit of any argument for free will, regardless of the exact definition.

When I speak of the spirit of the free will argument, I mean this: humans possess consciousness and sentience, which allow us to control ourselves in any way we desire, and to enforce our “will” upon the universe. What I want you to see is that this kind of thinking is backwards, for it assumes something existing independently of the law of survival of the stable. For us to be conscious, impulses must move through neurons in our brain. These impulses exist before consciousness. They must. The inescapable conclusion is that our brains cause us to be conscious.

Let's think now about what happens when we humans make a choice. Suppose I am at a restaurant, and am offered the choice of chicken or fish. The waiter asks me which one I want. My ears receive the vibrations caused by the waiter's mouth and vocal cords. Without any external “will” causing it to happen, the vibrations are translated into nerve impulses which travel, completely on their own – because they are obeying the law of survival of the stable – to the part of my brain which, through no conscious will of its own, processes sound. I cannot help but comprehend the waiter, for my brain is doing what it must do. It is sending neural impulses to and from various parts of my brain, all of them unavoidably doing what they must do because they are matter and they are seeking stability.

Once my brain has translated the vibrations into a concept, I cannot help the reality that follows. My brain is now in a state. Either I desire chicken, or I desire fish, or I desire neither. I cannot change this state, for I am matter, and my brain has done what it had to do, and my preference is now a reality in time. I cannot help but move forward in time, and I must act in one the thousands of ways potentially available to me. If you think about it, there are probably hundreds of thousands of things I could do in the next second after entering the state of being aware of my preference.

I will do something in response to the question. Most likely, I will speak, expressing my desire for one or the other. The important question is this: Did I decide to speak, or did I speak because my brain caused me to do so? Here is where the survival of the stable plays its trump card. We really have two choices here. Either my brain caused me to have a preference, and then caused me to speak, or something else caused me to have a preference and then speak.

To suggest that something else caused me to have a preference is to defy time, for we have already recognized the simple truth that uncontrollable interactions of matter happen in the brain and then a state is reached. To put it another way, a “choice” in the religious or philosophical sense of the word would really involve moving backwards in time! First, a state would have to exist, and then act upon the brain in some way so as to put the brain in the chosen state. However, as we've seen, perceptions cause neural impulses which cause brain activity which causes a state.

Perhaps an even bigger problem with the idea of an independent choice is that it violates the law of survival of the stable. If matter is unstable, it must move to stability if that move is available. If several possible stable states are available in the environment, we can predict which one a particular piece of matter will “choose” based on its atomic structure. (For illustration, notice that even though there's plenty of carbon available from the operation of an internal combustion engine, there has never been an exhaust pipe that randomly spewed diamonds instead of carbon dioxide.)

Some might object that I am being overly reductionist. To this accusation, I would make two responses. First, the accusation of reductionism is not an argument. It's an objection. There's no reason that a reductionist viewpoint is inherently wrong. Second, I would say that reductionism need not eliminate broader interpretations of the same phenomena. For example, I can say that a computer program is nothing but ones and zeros, and that is true. This does not mean that I cannot use a computer program to write a book.

The broad point that I'm attempting to make is not that humans do not make choices, or that we are not highly autonomous creatures. I am trying to establish the unavoidable reality that humans do not control brains. Brains control humans. Before I can decide on a course of action, my brain must perceive the situation, and having perceived it, go through the unconscious and uncontrollable series of chemical events that will put me in a state of awareness of the options. Any decision I make is the result of brain activity, not the cause of it.

It might be helpful at this point to think of the brain as a computer. Just as a computer has a series of ones and zeros that “make it work,” so do our brains, only the brain is built on four letters instead of two numbers. The code for our brain is DNA. Also analogous to a computer, our code is set up in such a way that it causes a series of events in the material universe.

Think of a chess playing computer. The binary code for such a program doesn't include instructions for every possible chess scenario. This would take an astronomically large code, and it would be so slow that a single game of chess would take as long as the time our solar system has been in existence, even if we imagine a stupendously fast processor. Instead, the program includes general instructions – rules for piece movement and strategic advice, for instance. It might say something like, “In general, pawns are expendable before queens, but if the payoff is high enough, sacrificing the queen is advisable.”

Of course, all of this is rendered in ones and zeros, and it's not important to explain the exact mechanism by which they translate into a computer program. We all know that this is the way it works, even if we don't know exactly how. Our brains are very much the same way. We are built with simple sets of instructions: Avoid that which causes pain. Seek that which causes pleasure; Attempt to mate. Seek companionship; When your stomach rumbles, eat food; When your mouth is dry, drink water. Of course, in a human, there are far more complex sets of instructions, and many of the instructions clash from time to time. For instance, if one has to reach into a thornbush to get fruit, the instruction to avoid physical discomfort is in conflict with the instruction to obtain food.

If you've ever seen a computer play chess, you know that it can predict its opponent's moves. In fact, if you could bring someone back to life from a time before computers existed, and show them a screen with a game in progress, they would likely swear on their life that humans were controlling the moves. Chess programs give every outward appearance of being sentient because their programming is sufficiently complex to create those appearances. Here, we can ask a very pointed question: Is there a difference between a game of chess played by two humans and one played by two computers? The answer is that there is not. The mechanics of the game are exactly the same, as is the strategy and the outcome. In fact, we could easily build robots to move physical pieces on an actual chess board, and for the purposes of winning a chess game, there would be absolutely no difference whatsoever. A game of chess is being played. There is either a winner and a loser, or the game is a draw.

Humans are chess playing computers. Our circuitry is much more complex, and we are able to do far more than play chess, but that is the reality of it. Our genes carry instructions for building a human being with a brain that causes consciousness to exist. Our brains operate from a set of instructions given to us by the same genes. A brief examination of all the humans we've ever seen will bear out the reality of this. All¹ humans do many things in exactly the same way. All humans feel roughly the same set of emotions, and they feel them as a result of roughly the same kinds of events. All humans come with a complete set of plans for understanding and utilizing language.

To put it succinctly, we are sentient, conscious, highly adaptive animals because our genes made us that way. We cannot be anything else. To extend the computer analogy even further, at any given moment, our brains contain an unalterable set of data. When we make a choice, just as when a computer makes a choice, our brain is processing all the relevant data it can access through an algorithm that has been set by the program (genes and binary, respectively). Once the computation is finished, the brain and CPU put their machine into a state that once again, has been set by the program.

Where humans have a distinct advantage over computers is our immense capacity for learning and adapting to our environment. What we must realize, however, is that our adaptability is not limitless. We are still bound by the limits of our programming, and some things cannot be undone. Two sobering examples are sexual abuse and drug use. To put it bluntly, show me a woman who was sexually abused as a child, and I'll show you a woman who isn't over it. Just like the simple animals whose bodies physically change because of external stimuli, so to do our complex human bodies. Particularly during the formative years, when new neural connections are still being formed, our environment has a huge impact on us. Some environmental factors, like drugs, exert their effects regardless of the age of the person. Methamphetamine is a perfect example. Regardless of when a person takes it, there will be permanent, irreversible changes to the brain, which will result in permanent changes in the way the person perceives and thinks.

With everything we have learned about human behavior, we must realize that we are at a milestone of human history. The knowledge of evolution has taken us leaps and bounds ahead of where we were two hundred years ago, but we have been violently opposed to accepting the natural and obvious conclusion evolution gives us about human nature. We are not conscious beings who happen to have a body to go with our mind. We are incredibly complex programs that have the ability to perform remarkable feats of mental computation. We are animals that have evolved so much brain power that we can think of ourselves as having “free will.”

In closing this essay, I feel that it is necessary to refute some of the most common objections to this line of reasoning. The one that comes to mind immediately is this: If we really have no free will, than what justification do we have for laws, or punishment, or rewards, or anything like that? The answer ought to be obvious, but I will explain it for the sake of being thorough. Our programs include self interest and the ability to conceive of strategies that will harm others for our own benefit. Like all animals, we tend to do those things that we can get away with when they benefit us. We are also programmed to be intensely social animals. We are smart enough to realize that without disincentives, some people will take advantage of other people. Laws and jails and social stigma are all disincentives, and they often have exactly the desired effect. People avoid doing things that would benefit them and harm others when they know that they are very likely to be punished. The question of free will is irrelevant.

Knowledge of punishment changes behavior, whether that behavior is motivated by free will or programming. Think again of the computer analogy. It would be easy to invent a computer game in which both players have chances to cheat. It would also be easy to invent periodic “referee checks” in which a third player would check the field for evidence of cheating and penalize the cheater accordingly. Even a modestly good programmer could design code to instruct the computer players in the best way to avoid being punished. As the frequency of referee checks increased, cheating would decrease accordingly. Consciousness is not necessary for this simple set of principles to work.

Another common objection I hear is that scientists cannot prove that humans are not different than the animals. Perhaps we do actually have something that has risen above the level of animal consciousness. Maybe we really are different in kind. Of course, this argument commits the same fallacy as the argument that atheists can't disprove the existence of God. In all cases, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and anyone who claims that human consciousness is different in kind from any other animal has a brobdingnagian task set for himself. Certainly we can do mental tasks that other animals can't, and our powers of abstraction and conceptualization are unrivaled, but this is no justification for the statement that we are not completely under the control of our genes, just like every other animal. We must remember that any mental ability we have is the direct result of our genes building us this way. If we have the choice to act in illogical ways, or contrary to the dictates of our nature, it is because it is in our nature to be able to do so!

When the previous objections fail, people often say that lack of free will makes life meaningless, since we're just mindless robots running around doing exactly what our programming tells us to do. This is a good example of finding the nearest pool and taking a belly flop into the deep end. Our programming gives us consciousness, and our consciousness gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. We get up in the morning because we're programmed to have sleep cycles, but we also get up in the morning because we want to make money at our jobs. We want to make money because we want to have a house and attract a mate and be able to buy status symbols and gadgets to make our lives easier. Purpose comes from living, regardless of what causes us to live.

Finally, I want to address a question rather than an objection. Many people may ask why I am so intent on going through all the trouble of explaining this if in the end, the question of free will is ultimately meaningless. If it doesn't matter that we are programs, and that our programs give us the sense that we are free willed, why bother refuting the concept of free will?

To answer this, I must first say that the distinction is not meaningless. From religion to politics to economics, people make broad sweeping decisions based on the notion that people really can decide anything they want. Personally, I think the flaws in this thinking are most obvious in politics. Lawmakers often assume (falsely) that humans will change their behavior if only the right law is enacted. Even though history demonstrates repeatedly that this is a false assumption, we continue to see bad policies enacted. The reality is that people do not and will not behave outside of their programming. Laws demanding that people not act like humans are doomed to cause suffering.

At the time of this writing, there is a very good example of this kind of thinking in my own city. Over the past several years, the city council has passed several draconian policies regarding the consumption of alcohol by minors and the selling of alcohol to minors. The feeling is that it's an awful thing for college students to drink, and that by punishing drinking severely, they can stop the behavior. Unfortunately, the laws are ill-conceived and doomed to failure. Rather than curb the amount of drinking done by college students, they have forced students to drink in private. Unlike in bars, where bartenders can refuse service to anyone who appears too drunk, there is no supervision at all in private homes, and young drinkers are actually drinking more than they did before. Drinks at a bar are more expensive than bottles of liquor from the store, so for the same amount of money, students are drinking more, without any outside influences to try to slow them down if they're drinking too much.

College students will drink because drinking is fun for humans, and is generally harmless if they don't drive afterward. Trying to stop them is generally futile, unless extremely drastic measures are taken. Rather than enforce a police state on campus and in the bars, a better solution would be to enact policies that encourage college students to drink responsibly. Perhaps an even better solution would be to look at the rest of the world and see that eighteen year olds are allowed to drink in many places, and civilization has not collapsed because of it.

In religion we see another clear example of this faulty concept in action. Abstinence only education, as I've mentioned before, is a monument to the stupidity of trying to get humans to act far outside of their nature. We are designed to have sex, and we're designed to want it most fervently in the years before most people are getting married these days. Still, Christians insist that premarital sex is wrong and that nobody should ever do it. They insist that if only we teach children how to behave, they will behave that way.

The evidence could not be more clear. Abstinence only education doesn't stop people from having sex. It only stops them from using condoms. Humans are literally alive to have sex, from a gene's point of view. That is why humans are obsessed with sex. It's not because we're evil, or that society is corrupt, or that we've gone “away from our nature.” Of course, this is not to say that humans ought to go out and have orgies with complete strangers every night. That's not in our nature either. The fact is, regardless of the laws or teaching policies, people do what people are going to do. I've addressed this at length in the chapters on human sexuality, so I will not belabor the point here.

This brings up a counter-objection. If we can't stop humans from being humans, how can we ever expect to make society better? After all, some things that are perfectly natural for humans are also very, very wrong. Humans are capable of committing rape and murder, and these behaviors are just as natural as giving money to the poor and sending baby pictures to the proud grandparents. To answer this question, I will again point out that recognizing that we are programs does not lead to the conclusion that we can only act in one way, or that we don't have purpose. We do have purpose, and one of the most noble of those purposes is the betterment of society for the good of all citizens. If we decide (because of our programming) that we ought to build a society where everyone has healthcare, then we can do that. The fact that our genes programmed us with the ability to reach such a decision doesn't make the decision any less valid.

Furthermore, the prohibitions on sex and drinking are not based on empirical reality. They are based on a very old religion. Humans have been drinking and having sex before marriage since the invention of alcohol and marriage. Society has not collapsed, and there's never been any evidence that either activity damages either individuals or society as a whole in any significant way. In fact, both sex and alcohol have been important parts of rituals that have cemented various societies for thousands of years. Murder and rape are empirically bad. Murder ends a life and rape causes extreme mental trauma and possibly passes on STDs or causes serious physical injury. As I've explained in another essay, morality is subjective, but it is not arbitrary. With more scientific understanding of what human nature is, we can use our critical thinking to decide what is right and what is wrong based on the results of the actions, and try to mold society in such a way as to reduce the bad and increase the good as much as possible.

Humans have the capacity for good and for evil. They decide which to do because of genetic programming. The environment is the main factor that determines how the programming will manifest itself, just as a chess machine's next move is dictated by the current state of the board. Now that we are aware of these facts, we have, for the first time in human history, the chance to use science to help us predict the best ways to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Rather than taking something away from humanity, the knowledge that we are gene survival machines has given us the chance to mold society in exciting new ways. Instead of trying to metaphorically fit a cube into a round hole, we can now think of how to change the shape of the hole so that the cube will fit. We can flip our thinking around and work towards building an environment that triggers our programming in ways that will improve things for everyone. Science can teach us how to improve society. We only have to embrace the previously discomforting thought that we aren't as free willed as we would like to believe.

1For the remainder of this paragraph, the word all means “virtually all, excluding those humans with genetic disorders that exclude them from this group.”

On Morality, "Should," and Murder

2008-10-30T07:58:00.001-07:00

The “Should Trap” and How we Ought to Behave

I've frequently mentioned the trap hidden in the word, “should.” It's time now for us to look at exactly what the word means, what it doesn't mean, and how a good understanding of these things will allow us to understand how humans form concepts of morality. We'll soon see that everything from what we should eat for dinner to who we should vote for in the upcoming election to whether or not we should have children or adopt – all of these questions become much easier to answer when we realize exactly what we're asking.

Like so many words in the English language, “should” has multiple meanings. “Should I decide to get married, I will do so in a courtroom, not a church,” is one possible usage. This is a relatively uncommon usage. It essentially means, “If I decide to get married.” Another usage involves probability. “The Patriots should win the Superbowl next year.” We're saying that we believe the Patriots are more than 50/50 favorites to win the Superbowl. We can also use it as a way to blunt or soften an otherwise harsh statement, as in “I should think that it's a bad idea to drive in your condition.”

All of these usages are irrelevant to the topic at hand. We are going to be using the word as expressing a sense of obligation or necessity: “You should go to the bathroom before we leave the house.” If you think about this statement for a moment, you realize an essential part of any sentence using the word with this meaning. There is an unspoken, yet implicitly understood, phrase at the end of it: “You should go to the bathroom before we leave the house IF you don't want us to have to stop at a gas station on the way.” Of course, there may be other equally valid phrases – “IF we're going to make it on time,” for instance. Stopping at a gas station takes longer than walking to the bathroom now, and we're in a rush.

Any statement about what we should do is really an IF-THEN statement, or a contingency. In other words, a certain outcome is contingent upon us doing a certain thing. “You should temper the milk before adding it to your hot pan, IF you don't want the sauce to curdle.” There are different ways of expressing contingency. The word must is stronger than should. “You must keep your speed under sixty-five miles per hour if you are to obey the law.” There is no wiggle room in this statement. If we exceed sixty-five, we will be breaking the law, regardless of whether or not we are caught. On the other hand, we should drive under seventy if we don't want to run an excessive risk of being pulled over in a sixty-five zone. We know that the chances of being pulled over are very slim if we maintain a speed of five miles per hour over, but it's not certain.

This all seems very simple, but we are talking about relatively uncontroversial topics. Let's talk now about something from the opposite end of the spectrum. Should abortion be legal? If you are like the majority of people, you have a strong opinion on this question, but let's make sure that our opinion is based on an accurate and well constructed contingency. We need to be able to construct a sentence in the following form: “Abortion should be legal if X is to occur.” The letter “X” represents some outcome on which the legality of abortion is contingent. Perhaps we can make a statement with more certainty by saying that abortion must be legal. Let's look at some possible sentences.

Many abortion rights activists say that abortion should be legal because women have the right to make their own choices about their bodies. To rephrase it as a contingency, we will say that IF women are to have reproductive control over their own bodies, THEN abortion should be legal. Others use a different approach. IF we are to reduce the number of deformed, chemically addicted, unwanted, or severely retarded babies, THEN abortion should be legal. There are many more arguments, and I'm sure that astute readers have already begun to dissect and critique the ones I've made based on their own opinions. I do not intend to answer this question, so forgive me for not listing every possible contingency statement.

What about abortion opponents? Probably the most common statement has to do with the sanctity of human life. IF we are to respect the rights of the unborn, THEN abortion should be illegal. IF a fetus is a human, THEN it should have all the rights of a human. Again, depending on your own view, you've probably raised your eyebrow at something inherent in these statements. When we talk about critical thinking, debate, and evidence, we'll dig deeper into this kind of complicated question, but for now, I want you to see that regardless of the peripheral issues, each side of the abortion debate is creating their own contingency statement, and it's based on what they believe to be a good outcome. For abortion rights advocates, they envision a society where individual adults have as much freedom of choice as possible. For opponents, society would give equal legal rights to the unborn and the born, restricting freedom of choice to gain legal recognition of the sanctity of human life.

A Taste for Something Sweet

Now that we've looked at two very opposite questions, let's try to establish how we can start from scratch, with nothing but our knowledge of human nature, and develop a working model of what we should or should not do. We'll use something that's pretty much universal, and also very well understood – the sweet tooth.

Why is a taste for sweet food pretty much universal to humans? Across all cultures, humans crave sugar in some way or another. Not only that, but our taste develops well before we can learn it culturally. It is clearly a biological constant among humans, but why is this? To answer this question, we must remember that human nature is nothing more than a reflection of the evolutionary forces that created us. If we crave sweets, then there's a good evolutionary reason for it. Also, we must remember that the agricultural revolution happened so recently in our evolutionary past that we are, for all intents and purposes, post-industrial humans with pre-agricultural brains. We have the same instincts and emotions as we did forty or fifty thousand years ago when we were hunting and gathering in small tribal groups of twenty to perhaps two hundred.

As we look across the animal kingdom, we realize that natural selection has 'learned' to encourage beneficial behavior. In even the most unintelligent species, we recognize something in common with humans. That is, the experience of both pain and pleasure. Things that are painful are generally avoided, and things that are pleasurable are generally sought out. Pain and pleasure are nature's way of getting us to do what is best for us while avoiding that which is harmful. It's obviously not a perfect system, but we must remember that natural selection is not concerned with the individual. It is diversity which makes a species adaptable and likely to survive, but diversity is a double edged sword. By creating lots of highly varied individuals, natural selection has made things very bad for some and very good for others. Nature is an amazingly complex system, and the 'rules' of pain and pleasure are general guidelines that tend to benefit the entire species – not each individual. We must always remember this humbling truth. Natural selection could care less about you or me. We are both little more than genetic dice rolls in a much larger game.

Now, with a little educated guesswork, we can come up with the correct answer to the sugar question, an answer which science has verified. In nature, things that taste sweet are ripe. More than that, very few naturally poisonous substances are sweet. So, as man was evolving, the members of the species that ate more ripe fruit and avoided poisons became the best nourished, and consequently, the most reproductively successful. Within perhaps ten or twenty thousand generations, those humans who tended to eat poisonous food died out, leaving virtually all of humanity in possession of a sweet tooth. The species had evolved an adaptive trait that made it more successful.

Pre-agricultural man had two principle pursuits in life. He wanted to avoid starvation, and he wanted to reproduce. The former was usually critical to the latter, so food gathering was probably the most common activity for our ancestors. Most fruits that our ancestors would have eaten were under 10% sugar. Not only that, fruits are almost all more than 80% water, and contain fiber and important nutrients. If you think for a moment about the natural growing season of most fruits, you will realize that the average human would have had very few opportunities to get fruit, and consequently, sugar. It would have been terribly important to get the accompanying nutrients whenever possible. Sugar was an indicator of foods that were high in nutrients. Not surprisingly, our sweet tooth is one of our strongest taste cravings.

As a result of this adaptation, we in the post-industrial world crave sweets, and enjoy them when we get them. There's a big difference, though. Post-industrial man has something that pre-agricultural man did not – processed sugar. We have learned to farm beets and sugar cane, and aided by advanced tools, to extract the pure sugar. We can use it to flavor everything from barbecue sauce to tiramisu to cough syrup to coffee. We can get sugar year round.

There's another adaptation we must consider. Our ancestors had to catch pretty much any protein they were going to consume. Protein came primarily from animals, and most of the animals we lived with were faster than us. To put it simply, it cost us a lot of calories to catch and kill our dinner. In addition, we were very seldom certain that we would find a meal tomorrow, or the day after. Food for us, like every other creature, was a hit and miss proposition. To that end, we developed a propensity for gorging. If there was a dead antelope by the fire, we consumed not just enough to sate our hunger, but as much as we possibly could, for that stored fat energy might well be the difference between a successful hunt in a week. It could literally be the difference between life and death.

By now, you've probably anticipated where I'm going with this. Very few humans expend energy in catching their food anymore. Not only that, but we get to eat our fill every day, and we add pure sugar to a large percentage of our food items. Our natural desire to gorge ourselves only compounds the problem.

According to the 2008 stat sheet from the American Heart Association, more than 9 million children under 19 years old are overweight. Nearly 14 percent of preschool children are overweight. Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of remaining overweight as adults. Obesity increases as we reach adulthood. Among women between 30 and 40 years old, 34 percent are overweight. The link between obesity and myriad health problems is so well documented as to be incontrovertible.

The problem isn't just sugar. We also crave fat, for obvious reasons. Fat is one of the best ways to store energy in the body. Stored energy was crucial to our ancestors, but it is literally death to us today. Salt was an extremely precious commodity well into the modern human era. Today, it is available for a nickel a box at the supermarket, and is added to virtually everything we cook. Our ancient instincts have turned on us, and we are eating ourselves to death. Potato chips, candy, Big Macs, cheesecake, and All-You-Can-Eat Buffets are slowly and consistently killing us.

How does this relate back to our discussion of the word should? Very clearly, as it turns out. Remember, in order to make a statement about what we should do, we must provide an outcome. The chain is quite clear. Salt, sugar, and fat are clearly important to the human diet, but with science, we have identified clear dangers to our health that result from consuming too much of any of them. We can say with scientific certainty that IF we wish to increase our chance of being healthy and living for a long time, we SHOULD take special care to monitor our intake of calories, sugar, salt, and fat.

How much should we monitor our diets? Again, the answer depends on our goals. If we wish to give ourselves the maximum chance of a very long life, we will have a lot of work ahead of us, because very few foods today are designed with that goal in mind. We must balance our desire for a long and healthy life with the time constraints of our work and leisure time, as well as our income (eating a maximally healthy diet is much more expensive!) and ultimately, the amount of pleasure we are willing to sacrifice today for the goal of living a long life.

Here, we get a sneak peek at the conclusion of this line of inquiry. If we see that, say, 90% of the food industry produces food that is less than optimally healthy, should we all become full time activists, trying to change the way food is produced worldwide? Optimal food production is clearly a reasonable goal, if we believe healthy eating is the most important thing to aim towards. If we think about this for a second, though, we will realize that it's absurd to suggest that everyone in the world do such a thing. Clearly, the conception of absolute normatives (“should” statements) is on shaky ground. If everyone works toward food production, where will everyone live? Who will run the police departments? Who will study energy sources for the future? There are many, many competing goals in the world, all of them with their own merits.

But Isn't There More To It?

Sugar craving is something virtually all humans do. It's part of our nature. As such, it's a great example for illustrating several common misunderstandings of what morality is. The first, and the most obvious, is the appeal to nature. As we have clearly demonstrated, all of our natural inclinations are not inherently good for us. Remember, our sweet tooth is something that benefited our species at a time when we desperately needed it. Today, indiscriminate indulgence of that which feels natural is the equivalent of signing our own death warrant, at least when it comes to food.

We can also see the beginnings of another fallacy, the false dichotomy. Many moralists will argue that a certain moral issue is black or white, wrong or right. By looking at the natural, healthy consumption of fat, sugar, and salt, and comparing it with unmoderated consumption of all three, we can see that there are an almost unlimited number of positions along the middle ground. If it can be scientifically demonstrated (and it can) that a diet of say, five percent excess fat, sugar, and salt will have a minimal effect on our health, particularly if we counteract the effect to some degree with exercise, how can we say that based solely on health and longevity, it's wrong to consume such a diet?

Here, we see another error lurking just around the corner. Is our diet truly based solely on our own health? If we eat our fill, will someone else starve? Is it cruel to eat foix gras? If raising enough of a certain crop to sate our national appetite causes us to harm the environment, is that morally wrong? Is it actually justifiable to say that everyone in the world should always eat as healthy as possible? If someone is dying of cancer, for instance, should they still adhere to eating practices that will never be a benefit to them? These are all questions that need answers, and in each case, we can use science and a proper understanding of the word “should” to find answers.

In less enlightened times, philosophers decided that animals were simply automatons, put on earth to perfectly mimic life, which only human beings had, because only humans had souls. As a result of this scientific inaccuracy, it was considered acceptable to nail a living dog to a plank by its feet and cut it open while it was still alive to see how it worked. Today, through the critical lens of science, we know that dogs do indeed feel pain. We have come to the conclusion that such research is morally wrong. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I will hazard a guess that virtually every sane person on the planet would agree that nailing dogs to planks and cutting them open while alive is wrong.

Why is this, though? If we can find an evolutionary explanation for our sweet tooth, and find a middle ground, can we also examine the mutilation of living animals? Why do humans cringe at the sight of other humans in pain? Why would we do the same for dogs, when they are not members of our own species? Why can some people wring the neck of a chicken, cook it, and eat it for dinner, while other people become sick to their stomach at the sight of a steak?

Our ability to recognize pain in others, and our aversion to seeing it, is rooted in our social nature. Remember that our ancestors lived in small tribal groups, and were probably all closely related. They also depended upon each other for their survival. If the group weakened, the chance of each individual to survive lessened. Those of our ancestors who developed a negative response to pain in their kin were more likely to try to help prevent or alleviate this pain. When everyone in the tribe had this tendency, a sort of mutual protection pact resulted, even though it would be millenia before such a thing would ever be written down.

Why, then, do we fight wars? Why do soldiers experience excitement, jubilation, and even sexual pleasure when they take the life of an enemy soldier, or worse, an enemy civilian? Again, the answer lies in our genes. To the eyes of natural selection, the tribe is almost like an organism itself. Each member, like an individual cell in a large organism, contributes to the survival of the whole. As we've seen previously, natural selection is driven by several competitive forces – interspecies, intraspecies, parasitic, and environmental. The superorganism, that is, the tribe, is at a state of relative equilibrium, competing within itself for mating, power, and social status, but the ultimate goal is the survival of the tribe. With limited resources in any patch of land, the encroachment of another tribe meant the threat of death by starvation. Those of our ancestors who were instinctively driven to drive off or kill members of other tribes were able to protect their own resources, ensuring survival of the tribe.

Remember that pleasure is nature's way of encouraging a behavior, and pain is its way of discouraging it. Also remember that our brains are the same today as they were in the days when a small grove of fruit trees might be the difference between survival and starvation. Cooperative pacts and international treaties were simply not possible because there were neither the resources, the language, or the advanced abstract thought necessary to conceptualize such things. Like all the other animals who lived in small social groups, the choice was clear. Either drive the competitors away, kill them, or die.

Ancient humans, then, developed what seems to us to be a contradictory nature. They were appalled at pain experienced by their 'fellow man,' and delighted with pain inflicted on 'the enemy.' Once we understand that these feelings are normal, natural, and instinctive, we can begin to look at the question of murder in the same way that we approached the question of sugar intake. We can recognize that in a post-industrial world, our instinctive desires are not necessarily to our advantage. We can look at the real, scientific picture of what the world is, and make decisions about what our laws should be, and what our own actions should be, based on our goals. In other words, we can say, IF we want a society that accomplishes X, then we SHOULD or MUST have Y laws about killing other human beings.

But what about animals? Why do we feel empathy and sorrow for animals when they are clearly not part of our tribe? The answers to this would take a great deal of space to adequately explain, but if you think about a few of our instinctive traits, you can probably understand at least some of the reasons. Humans have instinctive nurturing tendencies. All humans, and especially women, and even more so, mothers, naturally feel nurturing instincts towards our babies. This isn't a uniquely human trait, of course. All animals that nurture their young feel some degree of the same thing. In nature, something that works for one species often works for another species. Human babies have fat cheeks, big eyes, and big heads. These traits are common in many baby animals, not just humans. In fact, many adult animals appear to humans to have baby like qualities.

Additionally, humans do not experience feelings of animosity towards things that are not a threat. Notice that the things we find most cute in the animal kingdom are those that very seldom kill humans – baby seals, for instance. Where we see things that resemble humans, and we perceive no threat, our other instinct, nurture, can kick in. This tendency varies widely among individuals, which explains why humans have invented both cock fighting and PETA.

Next, consider that animals benefit from not being killed by humans. We cannot overstate the complexity of natural selection. Notice that humans have driven whales to the brink of extinction, and we don't find them particularly adorable. Dogs and cats, on the other hand, are nearly ubiquitous in our society, and we think they're very cute. Animals that are unlikely to inspire animosity or a killing instinct in other potential predators have a much greater survival capacity than those that do. Humans are part of the ecosystem, and as such, we've been at least a partial cause of selective pressure on other species for our entire history!

Finally, think about fishermen. Recreational fishermen put sharp hooks through the mouths of fish, and then let them freeze to death in a cooler, all with a calm, removed demeanor, and almost nobody on the planet protests. The observation that humans feel empathy towards animals is highly subject to bias. We feel empathy for some animals, and indiscriminately kill others. Our moral outrage varies tremendously with regard to other life forms. We have no problem killing rats by the million, but killing a hamster from the pet store is considered immoral. Once again, the quest for an absolute answer to the question of morality looks to be on thin ice.

Ok, So What's The Right Answer?

We've talked about sugar, and it's fairly clear that there's no single right answer. We've talked about animals and witnessed our own bias when it comes to moral outrage. Nevertheless, murder is in a special category, right? It's human life we're talking about, after all. So, what is the correct moral law with regard to murder? Are we ready to say with certainty that we shouldn't kill at all, or that we should only kill for certain offenses, or that war is never the answer? Can we finally answer the question of what morality is, with only science as our guide?

If you are asking this question, then you are forgetting a couple of fundamental truths about natural selection. First, you're forgetting that diversity is the biggest strength of natural selection. Second, natural selection is not concerned with the individual. It is concerned with the species. If we're still expecting a single answer to a question of morality, we must be getting that expectation from somewhere, but it's not science. All of the evidence points to a dynamic and changing relationship between members of a species, between different species, and species and their environment. If anything is constant in nature, it is that nothing is constant. Many, if not most, highly socialized creatures are known to commit murder in some form or another, whether it's infanticide, inter-tribal warfare, or intraspecies competition over territory or mates.

If you find yourself insisting that there has to be an answer to the ultimate question of morality, where are you getting this idea? What scientific theory led you to believe such a thing exists? If you can't think of one, perhaps the idea came from elsewhere. Maybe it's the idea that humans are better than, or higher, than the animals. We've already seen that this is not so. We are very smart products of evolution, but we are products of evolution, and nothing more. Maybe it's the idea that we can rise above our nature and use our brains to end suffering for everybody. While this sounds noble, we must ask what the justification is for wanting this. Once we offer our justification, we must realize that someone else can offer an equally reasonable goal for humanity which does not include the eradication of all suffering or rising above killing. For instance, one might point out that without suffering and death, humans will literally multiply exponentially, and will probably destroy our habitat, and we may all die. Though we can't be one hundred percent certain of this, there are extraordinarily strong indications that this is true.

In good science, the researcher usually expects a certain answer from his experiments. This is because he's formed a hypothesis based on what he's observed. The experiment is a way of either verifying or falsifying his educated guess. The good scientist will recognize that both results are possible, and will be prepared to accept either. Though he may be disappointed with the findings, his ultimate goal is discovering the truth of reality, not ensuring the correctness of his own guess.

Likewise, when we approach the question of morality, we must be prepared for what science tells us. When we look at the life on earth, we see everywhere the undeniable proof that competition is what drives natural selection. We see that life and death are part of reality, and that there is no such thing as an eternal environment. Things change for individuals within a species, for the species itself, and for the competitors outside of the species. As much as we might want to believe in a reality where any taking of human life is morally wrong, we must, if we are to search for truth, realize that this does not, and cannot exist.

The first reason such a reality cannot exist is the very obvious fact that competition often involves directly conflicting goals, both of which have their own legitimate justification based on facts. If I am to protect my children, I must kill the man who intends to kill them. If I am to preserve the sanctity of every human life, I must hold my trigger finger, even though the man who is trying to kill my children can only be stopped if I shoot and kill him. But, if I do not kill him, my children will die, and my inaction will have caused death.

If someone objects that the man should not be trying to kill my children, he is falling prey to a fallacy. Science has shown us with empirical certainty that deviance is unavoidable within society. All conventions will be broken by at least some of the members of a society. If you think about it, this is obvious, for if there was no deviation, there would be no rule. Somewhere in the world, someone will try to kill another man's children, and the man will have to make a choice as to who will die.

Death is inevitable. Competition is instinctive and unavoidable. Goals are necessarily different for individuals, and groups of people, whether families or tribes or countries or global alliances, will always seek to ensure their own survival. We can imagine a world where we completely overcome our own instincts, but such is the stuff of science fiction and religion, not reality. Our instincts are what make us human, and our instincts drive us inevitably to conflict, which often results in death.

So Does This Mean I Can Just Kill You?

No. If you believe this, then you have ignored the most crucial message that science has to teach us about morality. This doesn't take any philosophy to answer. It only takes historical observation. In all of recorded history across all cultures, there has never, ever been a time when humans arbitrarily killed other humans. Never. In all of the collected archaeological data in the world, there is no compelling case for humans ever arbitrarily killing other humans. As long as humans have had societies, they have had agreements, whether unspoken, verbal, or written into law, about when killing is acceptable, and when it is not. These agreements are part of the balance of natural selection. If intraspecies competition leads to extinction, the species will die. On any legitimate computer simulation, a population which arbitrarily kills its own kind will become extinct. Science gives us the answer, as clear as day. If humans had ever developed the tendency to kill arbitrarily, we would not be here to ask the question of why we do not.

More compelling still, in all of nature, there is no evidence of any intelligent creature that arbitrarily kills its own kind. Across all intelligent species, where there is intraspecies killing, there is always a reason for the killing. Period. Nature is yelling at us. It is screaming to us. It is telling us in the most certain terms that we could ever see that there is something inherent in us which prevents us from crossing certain boundaries. In nature, we see the same thing, over and over. In bee hives, females who try to lay their own eggs are killed or banished by other workers loyal to the queen bee. This behavior is entirely instinctive, and is not driven by the intelligent desire to follow laws, or some higher mandate. It is simply the way that bees have survived, and it is the way we have survived since before we were intelligent enough to ask why we don't kill our own.

Among many ants, there are often coups, where a young female gathers enough followers to overthrow the queen and take her place. Again, this is entirely instinctive behavior, programmed through long eons of reproductive successes and failures. Yet, humans do the same things, over and over, through history, all the while thinking ourselves to be above the animals.

The answer to the question of morality is that there is no single, immutable answer, but there are the realities of nature. Like all social animals, we have individuals who try to further their own goals at the expense of other members of the group. Sometimes they succeed, and other times they fail. Depending on our own perspective, sometimes we approve of deviants, and sometimes we disapprove. We love Dirty Harry for killing the bad guys, and we despise Ted Bundy. This is instinctive, and is based on that apparent contradiction we saw earlier. Our ancestors survived by killing outsiders and protecting insiders. Ted Bundy killed insiders. Dirty Harry killed the enemy. Where things get trickier is when the enemy is not so clear cut. When American soldiers killed civilians in Vietnam, they were killing people who had the same desires, goals and instinctive drives as everyone else. To the Vietnamese families, the Americans were the enemy, and rightly so.

The goals of the war were based on a great many false beliefs. The North Vietnamese government believed that communism was a workable political system. Experience and science have taught us that this is false. Americans believed that stopping communists at all costs was a reasonable goal. Much of the American public believed that the war was started by the communists, when in fact, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was likely provoked by the Americans. Few Americans knew of the American and French governments' politically suspect motivations for being involved in the first place.

Could knowledge of reality have changed history? If the leaders of the communist regime knew for certain that communism would collapse under its own weight, would they have continued to infiltrate other countries? Would America have gone to war if it was universally known that there were nefarious reasons for doing so? It's impossible to answer these specific questions, but we can use the questions themselves as evidence of our incredibly dynamic sense of morality.

At this point, we can review history and see how science has improved the human condition, specifically with regard to morality. Once we learned that there are no such thing as witches, we recognized the inherent danger of allowing young girls to point out people at random and use that 'evidence' to justify killing those who were likely innocent of any wrongdoing. We know from history and from psychology that humans given unchecked power over others will abuse their power for their own gain, and so we create governments with checks and balances. We know that our instincts instill in us desires that often contradict our own best interests, so we learn to balance our instincts against our goals.

Finally, we know that the human condition is dependent on competition. From the level of our genes up to individuals, and ultimately to global alliances, competition is inherent in nature, and will never go away. We recognize that even though these questions of morality do not have universal answers, they most definitely have answers on a local level with regard to a specific goal. The more we acknowledge our instinctive desires, the more accurately we can judge whether or not they apply to a specific situation. If we are aware that our inherent desire is to kill all of our adversaries, it becomes easier to recognize that our desire to go to war with a rival country might be detrimental to everybody, and that there might be a middle ground, as there is with sugar consumption. By allowing science to document human nature in an unbiased manner, we can recognize the dangerous legacy of some of our instincts. Again, by using science, we can objectively evaluate which goals truly are better from whatever perspective we agree on. We can set our goal and then determine the best way to get there. It's not a perfect answer for those who still want to believe that utopia is possible, but it is the real answer.

On The Afterlife, and Meaning in This Life

2008-07-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

Is This Really All There Is?

When you started thinking critically about the existence of God, did you ask yourself this question? If you did, you're not alone. Nearly everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, asks it at some point. We're all worried about what life is about, and what we can realistically expect. Even so, this question is loaded, and not just a little bit. Let's apply our critical thinking skills, and see if we can determine what we really want to know, and what the answer might be.

First, let's make sure we have our words properly defined. We'll skip over the definition of “is,” since that was defined on all the major news networks several years ago. The very next word, however, is crucially important. What does “this” refer to? In this sentence, it's not completely clear. The obvious answer for most people would be something like “Being alive once and then dying,” or perhaps “The universe that we can see.” Let's not be vague about it. Let's settle on what we're actually talking about. We'll look at several different meanings, one by one.

Is this one life all there really is?

All the evidence says that it is. Despite hocus pocus claims from preachers and urban legends about people who have been to heaven and come back, there's no evidence that life goes on after death. Consciousness is dependent on physical processes. When the brain dies and the body decays, there is no longer an organized physical process, so the only logical conclusion is that there is no consciousness.

But what about near death experiences? Couldn't they be proof of an afterlife? Let's examine the evidence. All the stories are just that – stories. Anecdotal evidence, as we've seen, is extremely weak, and should only be considered when stronger corroborating evidence exists. Were the people who experienced NDEs in good mental and physical condition? Obviously not, as near death is a pretty bad situation, both physically and mentally. We know that even minute changes in the brain can trigger wildly erratic perceptions and behaviors. Dying is considerably more than a minute change in the brain. On the surface, the evidence for NDE's as proof of an afterlife seems fragile at best.

We're still not done, though. Is there better evidence that NDE's are simply physical, and that the perceptions of heaven and hell are illusions? It turns out that there is quite a lot. Before discussing NDEs directly, we need to be clear on a few terms.

If you've ever watched the movie, The Princess Bride, you will remember Miracle Max's famous words about death: “Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change.” The scientific descriptions are not as witty, but they're not radically different. There is a big difference between clinical death and brain death. Clinical death usually results from cardiac arrest. When the heart stops pumping, neurons no longer receive oxygen. Without new oxygen, they continue to fire for a short while, sometimes with odd side effects. It would only be a slight stretch to say that a clinically dead person is mostly dead.

Brain death, on the other hand, is all dead. Clinical death can be reversed within a certain time frame. We've all heard stories, and seen depictions on medical dramas. The heart can be started chemically, electrically, and manually, depending on the situation. Assuming that there is still some neural activity, starting a clinically dead person's heart will bring them “back to life.” Not so with brain death. Once the brain dies, the person is fully dead, and will not come back.

What, then, can we say about people who are clinically dead? For one thing, they are the only people who have ever had NDE's and lived to tell about them. For another, we can make some observations about what happens when the brain begins to die. If these observations form a parsimonious explanation for NDE's, we will have a compelling reason to believe they are not supernatural, and do not give proof of an afterlife.*

As the brain becomes oxygen depleted, neural networks begin to break down. Infants and small children have small neural networks. As they age, they form larger and larger networks as they process more and more information. An adult can temporarily break down access to fully formed networks by using drugs, or possibly meditative practice (although the latter is the subject of considerable debate). In fact, it's ironic that in the vernacular, many people say they have “transcendent” experiences while on mind altering drugs. The reality is that they are actually moving to a lower level of consciousness!

The sense of “loss of self” is a commonly reported experience in NDEs, and it has a well understood cause. Though the technical explanation sounds quite daunting to non-scientists, the cause is quite simple. In some cases, extreme overproduction of serotonin can inhibit the ability of neurons to pump potassium out of neural channels, effectively de-electrolyzing the neurons. In others, drugs can perform a function known as transmitter masking, essentially inhibiting the ability of transmitters to function properly by substituting an imposter chemical (such as an opiate) for the “proper” chemical. The end result is that synaptogenesis (the process of forming synapses) becomes temporarily “flooded.” In other words, new synapses are formed and then overturned so quickly that the brain becomes unable to process them effectively.

Critics will often object at this point in a conversation. After all, scientists have not explained every aspect of NDEs. In fact, most scientists are perfectly willing to admit that there are some very puzzling things about them, and the explanations are not always apparent. Hopefully, you've gotten good at spotting the fallacy. Someone who wants to believe in NDEs will say, “Since science doesn't have an answer, it must be proof of the afterlife.” This is a fallacy of ignorance, and is not valid logic. Still, many will argue that there are common threads. People from different religions have the same kinds of experiences. Kevin Nelson, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, has this to say: "People say that because there's a common thread running through them all there must be a spiritual element," he says. "I look at that common thread and I see a biological process." (New Scientist, October 17, 2006) Nelson believes that he can explain the entire experience in purely scientific terms. He might be able to, but then again, he might miss something. This is not as relevant as it may seem. The important point is that good critical thinking demands that we not make up answers.

In fact, there is a common misconception about NDEs. It's not necessary to be at death's door to experience one. Quoting from the New Scientist article:

Nelson says that that's because despite the name, NDE has little to do with actually being close to death. He argues that the experience stems from an acute bout of "REM intrusion" - a glitch in the brain's circuitry that, in times of extreme stress, may flip it into a mixed state of awareness where it is both in REM sleep and partially awake at the same time. "The concept that our brain is either 100 per cent awake or 100 per cent in REM sleep is absolutely erroneous," says Mark Mahowald, a neurologist at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis. "We can have pieces of one state intruding into another, and that's when things get interesting."

REM intrusion is a common feature of narcolepsy - a neurological disorder characterised by uncontrollable bouts of sleep that can cause elaborate hallucinations and, sometimes, out-of-body experiences. But REM intrusion can affect anyone, and frequently does. Recent estimates suggest that up to 40 per cent of people have experienced "sleep paralysis", a form of REM intrusion in which you awaken with part of your brain still in REM sleep and your body paralysed. Often the result is a terrifying feeling of being unable to move, accompanied by visual or auditory hallucinations and pressure on the chest. Sleep paralysis has been offered as a rational explanation for many apparently supernatural phenomena, including witch attacks, visitations by the dead, and more recently alien abductions.

Scientists are experimenting with the phenomenon of out of body sight, too. Olaf Blanke, a cognitive neurologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, has caused subjects to see their legs, disembodied, from a floating perspective, simply by applying an electrical stimulus to the angular gyrus, a part of the brain involved with processing sensory information. (New Scientist)

There's yet another example of transcendental experiences that we should look at. Epileptics often report NDE-like perceptions after having particularly intense seizures. Seizures which effect the limbic system are well known for causing religious or transcendent experiences. In a way, this is an opposite cause for a similar effect. When a person has a seizure, their brain is firing too many neurons at once. Just like a computer, our brain seldom uses all of it's capacity at once. The myth that we only use 10% of our brains comes from a simple misunderstanding of this concept. When a computer is idle, or is only running a few processes, it uses a small percentage of its total processing power. Our brains function essentially the same way. Also, just like a computer, when we over tax our brains, the results are not always pleasant. How this relates to clinical death is simple. When the heart weakens, the body must compensate by increasing blood pressure drastically, keeping precious oxygen flowing to the brain. The increase in pressure wreaks havoc on the brain. Though it is still alive, it is far from normal functioning.

There is much speculation about the connection between epilepsy and religion. A nun at a Carmelite monestary in California recently discovered that the visions and transcendental raptures she'd been experiencing for years were actually epilepsy. Careful review of the private lives of many religious figures has prompted the question, were many of the prophets and religious visionaries of the past epileptics? In the end, we will probably never know about those who have long since passed. New research is coming in all the time, however, and as the connection becomes more and more concrete, it's becoming harder and harder to dismiss the evidence that NDEs, as well as mystical experiences not associated with dying, are simply misfiring neurons playing a game with our perception.

We can look at this another way. Dismiss for a moment all the possible explanations that scientists have come up with. In a recent survey, researchers found that among people who had had NDEs, a full 60 percent had sleep problems involving REM intrusion. Only 24 percent of people who had not had NDEs had similar problems. There is clearly a physical connection between REM intrusion and NDEs. Which explanation makes more sense? That there is an afterlife, and the apparent connection to sleep problems is coincidence, or that the connection is evidence of what really causes them? (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12274186/)

So, in the end, we have to concede that though there might be compelling emotional reasons to want to believe in life after death, there's simply not enough compelling logical reasons. In fact, if we apply our objectivity test by substituting another trivial question, we see clearly that without the emotional tug on our reason, we would dismiss the question out of hand. There is simply no reason to believe it.

Is the universe we can perceive really all there is?

The short answer is that we don't know. Remember, though, that the argument from ignorance is not a valid reason for making up an answer. Describing a thing about which we know nothing is absurd. If there is something that we cannot perceive, how could we ever know about it? Many things are very hard to perceive, such as subatomic particles. However, they are not imperceptible. If something were truly imperceptible to humans, then there would literally be no way to say anything about it! To give it a name would be to define it in some way. To say what it is not is not to say what it is. Put another way, anything that exists which is truly imperceptible to man is completely irrelevant to man.

Here, you might object. Suppose there is something which we do not perceive now, but at some point in the future, it will become perceptible, and might even do something catastrophic. Surely I would not object to such a possibility! True. Scientists might discover something in the future which is completely imperceptible now. Nevertheless, this concession leaves us in exactly the same place. At this time, we cannot say anything about what this thing will be, or what it will do. There is a virtually endless number of possible things that might exist, but admitting this is just an exercise in logic. If we have no perception of a thing now, it is completely irrelevant to our lives.

What does the question really mean?

Many people will find the previous two versions of our question to be lacking. There's something else hidden in the question. It's bigger than just the question of the nature of reality. What we really want to know is this: “If life is just the product of blind evolution and physical processes, what is the purpose of it all?” This comes closer to the question that's really on our minds, doesn't it? We want to know if there's room for hope in life. Is there something to look forward to, or is life really just an exercise in respiration, mastication, and procreation?

When we start thinking about the question this way, it becomes bigger, and more pertinent. We want to know what meaning this life might have. Why are we here? Is there something that we should accomplish? If there is no higher purpose, why are we bothering with all the drudgery and obligation? Why don't we just throw off our yokess and run free through the streets, or live out in the woods, solitary and blissfully unfettered?

Hopefully, you can see the disconnect between the question and these hypothetical answers. Regardless of the existence of an afterlife, we fulfill our earthly obligations because it's in our best interest to do so. Humans are social creatures. We crave love and friendship, and the best way to get them is to give them. As a result of a long and staggeringly complex chain of adaptive events, we have developed brains which drive us to reproduce and form long term bonds. When we have offspring, we have a natural bond with them, and we try to protect them, teach them, and give them the best possible chance to live happily. This stands to reason, of course. Those of our ancestors that did not have these drives as strongly tended not to reproduce as successfully.

Looking around the animal kingdom, we can see how this fits logically into place. Our brains come at a high cost. Such complex organs require many years to grow to maturity. During that time, we are quite vulnerable and easily killed. We do not have claws, or night vision, or highly developed senses of smell or hearing. We cannot survive most environments without clothing. Without protectors, human children would virtually always die. At least one parent is necessary for the continuation of the species. So, we can say with virtual certainty that there is a purpose in life. For the goal of continuing the human species, it is necessary that we live in such a way that our children have the best chance of growing old enough not only to reproduce, but to then live on long enough to provide the same chances for their children.

If this seems overly simple to you, you're thinking well. Intuitively, we know that there's something more than just reproduction. After all, many people do not, or cannot have children. Are we to say that their lives are worthless? Obviously not. What else is there, then? Here, we can go in many different directions, and we can find truth in almost all of them. Art, literature, invention, service, discovery – all these things are meaningful to us and bring us pleasure. Many of them benefit people in ways that we can link directly to reproduction, if we wish. The discovery and harnessing of electricity led to the invention of the transistor, which led to the invention of the computer. With the help of computers, we invented amazingly complex and powerful devices like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines. With these machines, we are able to detect and cure many physical illnesses that would otherwise lead to death, often before the sick individuals are able to reproduce.

Can we say, then, that everything is linked to reproduction, and leave it at that? I suppose we could, but that feels rather empty, doesn't it? Even if a childless inventor creates something that benefits someone else, who later has a child, it seems rather cold to suggest that this is the only purpose in his life. There are so many aspects of life, it feels impossible to reduce them down to a single, unified purpose. How could we possibly say that reproduction, or altruism, or money, or fame, or anything else, for that matter, is the single purpose in life?

Perhaps you have just had a “Eureka” moment. If not, bear with me for a bit longer. Think about everyone you know, and try to think of one or two people who seem to march to a different drummer. Almost everyone knows one of these people. Perhaps it's an eccentric artist who lives in a trashy house, doesn't own a car, and only eats rice and beans. Maybe it's that cousin who insists on remaining single, even though he's got enough money to have five wives and fifty children. Or, maybe it's the woman who has never wanted to have children, even though she's been happily married for ten years, and is in the prime of her life. What can we say about their sense of purpose? The answer, obviously, is that they each have very different goals in life!

Now, think about the last time you browsed through the self help section at a bookstore. Did you notice how many different versions of the “Truth that will set you free” there are? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of self-help books proclaim their own secret to living a happy life, filled with purpose. You know this already, but have you thought about what it means? Each of these books is selling well enough to still be on the shelves, and unless you live in a bubble, you've met someone who claims that they've found the answer they've always been looking for. (Except in rare cases, it seems that we never agree completely with these people!)

If the answer isn't obvious enough already, here it is: There is not one universal “purpose” for humanity. Because of differences in genetics, culture, and individual experience, each person has a built in set of likes, dislikes, and motivations. In short, each person has their own unique purpose.

That's great, but what is the purpose in life?

When I first began thinking about life without religion, this last epiphany was difficult for me to accept. Something deep inside me rebelled at the notion that we can just leave things so open ended. How can we really say that every person has their own purpose, and they're all equal? How can we hope to mobilize humanity towards a common goal if everybody just gets to make up their own meaning? What of morality? What of obligation to our fellow man?

As I struggled with these questions, I slowly began to realize something profound – something that would ultimately change how I viewed my own life as well as those of the people around me. Behind each of these troubling questions, there are hidden assumptions about the nature of reality. Without questioning these assumptions, we risk answering a question that isn't even valid to begin with.

Are all purposes equal?

This question is deceptive because it doesn't tell us in what way the word “equal” is being used. I know Americans are a bit wary of asking for too many definitions. Again, the word “is” is perfectly clear, and we know what happens when we start allowing too many questions about definitions, right? Actually, wrong. It's a mistake to take a political fiasco like the Clinton impeachment hearings and make such a sweeping generalization about critical thinking. The fact is, if we want good answers, we must ask good questions. What, then, does the word, “equal” mean in this sentence?

Suppose I place two identical dinner glasses next to each other and carefully measure out eight ounces of water from one source. Are they equal? Yes, and no. They contain roughly the same amount of water, so they are equal. However, they do not contain the same number of water molecules, and are not equal. The water in each glass came from the same source, so they are equal. However, the water at the bottom of the source container had some sediment that did not get poured into the first glass, but made it into the second. They are unequal. One glass is intended for a man who has not had a drink in three days. The other is intended for another man who has had over a gallon of water today. The glasses are not equal in the effect they will have on the people who consume them.

So, when we ask if all life purposes are equal, what is it that we're really asking? The standard Christian answer goes something like this: 'All lives are equal in the eyes of the Lord, for he loves us all equally.' Or, another pastor might tell us, 'In the end, the only difference that matters is whether or not we are saved. Your life is worth nothing if you go to hell, but your happiness will be complete if you accept Jesus and go to heaven when you die.'

Do you see the error in the question now? When we ask, “Are all purposes equal,” we are carrying the same baggage as when we were Christians. We are assuming that there is a single goal, granted by God, and that all lives can be measured by this goal. Now that we know there is no such thing, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can still ask the question in the same way. We must recognize that every person has their own drives and goals, and we must rethink our entire approach. The key to this is remembering that we must ask another question. When we say “equal,” we must ask, “equal in what way?”

Where does this leave us? It might feel to you that it leaves us in an impossible position. If we must specify exactly what we mean by equality, it's possible to ask the question of purpose in thousands of different ways, and every answer will be different! How are we to ever find something to hold onto? How do we find our own purpose? I promise I'll get to these questions, but for now, let's look at more of our initial questions.

Common Goals

Is it possible that humans can unite for a common goal if everyone gets to make their own meaning? Again, there is a hidden assumption in this question. In asking the question, we are assuming that it is a good thing for humanity to have a common goal! If you've assumed that, you must ask yourself, “How do I know that it's good for humanity to have a common goal?” “What is the common goal?” “When I say it's good for humanity, to which end is it good?”

The answers are difficult. We instantly recognize huge obstacles. Many nations are busy trying to feed their own people, while others throw away scraps that would be treasures for some. Is it fair to say that ending world hunger is a good goal? Though it seems noble enough on the surface, there are many scientists who say there are too many people on earth, and that we will not have enough resources if we continue to reproduce at current rates. Maybe the problem isn't a lack of food. Maybe it's a surplus of people. This might be a callous thing to suggest, but let's remember that our very own nation has only recently supported the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in a foreign country, with the stated goal of removing one man from political power. History is littered with tales of entire populations who willingly killed thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, for lesser goals than preserving the ecosystem and allowing the human species to continue to survive.

Many people, myself included, would like to see humanity united in the goal of sustainable coexistence with the other species on the planet. This seems a very noble goal, but the price would be high. Cars and electrical plants produce most of the greenhouse gases introduced into the environment by humans. Sustainable living might well involve severe restrictions on vehicles, fuel, and power consumption. We might have to restrict reproductive rights. Standards of living might have to go down for many wealthy nations. Is it fair for me to say that my goal is the one that we should follow? Should fairness be the measure by which we choose a goal?

What of Morality?

Without mincing words, I will simply say that this question is ludicrous. Please pardon me for being blunt, but after more than a decade of answering this question, it gets tiring. Morality and purpose in life are not related to each other. Morality is our sense of right and wrong with respect to our fellow humans. Our purpose in life is our goal. A person can be either moral or immoral and still have purpose. He may accomplish his purpose, or not, and his morality has little or nothing to do with it.

I'll deal with morality thoroughly in another essay, but for now, let's just say that every action has a consequence. If we decide to act immorally, we risk social and criminal punishment. If the potential result of our action is worth the risk, we act immorally. If not, we don't. In any case, both moral and immoral people have goals. Purpose is a goal. Enough said.

The last question, “What of our obligation to our fellow man,” is simply a restatement of the question of morality. Our obligations to others are the very things which define morality. Imagine two men, each of whom take a bottle of wine from the cellar at a dinner party, and then put it into the trunk of their car. Neither man tells the host of the party what he has done. The first man is a great friend of the host, and has been told for years that he can always consider himself welcome to take a bottle, so long as he replaces it in the future. The other is a friend of a friend, and doesn't even know the host. He saw the door to the cellar open, and decided to take a bottle for himself. He has no intention of telling the host what he has done.

Clearly, these two actions are not remotely morally equivalent. The first man, a friend of the host, has been giving and receiving friendship and gifts with the host for years. They have established a sense of obligation to each other. The gift of access to the wine cellar was given as a means of solidifying social bonds. The act of taking advantage of the gift is both an act of gratitude and reciprocation. Surely the friend has done things for the host without receiving immediate benefit!

The second man, obviously, is a criminal. He has stolen from the host. He has no intention of giving him anything in return. He has broken the rules of societal obligation. Though the two acts were identical in one sense, they were vastly different in another. Again, morality and social obligation are two ways of describing the same thing.

If my purpose is my own, how do I judge whether it's good?

It may seem trite to say that we judge our lives by our own happiness, but it's not nearly as naïve or simplistic as it sounds. Again, I'd like to reach back to my Christian days and retrieve the standard religious response to happiness as its own purpose. “Judging our lives by our own happiness is selfish and short-sighted. God has a design for us, and often, we are called on to sacrifice our own happiness for what is good and right in God's divine purpose. Those who pursue happiness for its own sake are doomed to ultimate failure!”

Though this sounds menacing, it's psychologically empty. First, it's creating a strawman – a weak version of a philosophically sound version. The idea is that if a position can be made to appear ridiculous, it doesn't need to be argued against. People will reject it on their own.

Consider a hypothetical person, Bob, who decides that every decision in his life will be made based on which available action will make him the happiest. On the first day of his new life, Bob realizes that expensive gourmet food makes him happier than scrambled eggs, so he goes to the finest restaurant in town and orders their best breakfast. After breakfast, he considers whether to go to work or play a video game. His job is pretty boring, and he's often unhappy while there, so he decides to play the video game. By the end of the day, he's ready to go out. His wife wants him to go pick up the children from baseball practice, but the fact is, he doesn't want to deal with them right now. A beer would make him happier, so he goes down to the bar, leaving the kids without a ride. Somewhere around two in the morning, Bob realizes that paying money for a cab will not make him happy, so he gets into his own car even though he's drunk, and drives home.

Clearly, this situation is ridiculous, but why? At each crucial decision, Bob weighed each of his choices and decided on the one that would make him happiest. If we were to predict Bob's future, it's not very bright. He's going to get fired from his job. He will run out of money. His wife will divorce him, and his children will most likely hate him. It's also very likely that he'll lose his driver's license. He might even kill someone while driving and go to jail for the rest of his life. Since choosing happiness obviously doesn't lead to good decisions, we can see that the Christians are right... right?

This hypothetical situation is an example of something called reductio ad absurdum. (That's Latin for “reduction to the absurd.) What I've done is taken the spirit of the Christian argument and taken it to a logical conclusion to demonstrate that it's absurd. When Christians say that pursuit of happiness is a dead end, or that it will end in destruction, they are talking about pursuit of instant happiness. As intelligent beings, we are able to make predictions of the future and realize that there is short term happiness and long term happiness. Unless Bob is insane or incredibly stupid, he will realize that he cannot spend all his money in one day, and that he must go to work, and that he must pick up his children. He will hopefully realize that the short term sacrifice of a few dollars far outweighs the consequences of being arrested for driving under the influence. In short, he will realize that short term happiness often must be sacrificed for long term happiness. This doesn't take religion to figure out. It only takes a little common sense. Very little.

When we say that happiness is its own goal, we are obviously not talking about only short term happiness. We mean a more or less continual state of contentment and long term happiness, derived from both instant gratification and immediate sacrifice for a greater long term good. We are constantly making conscious and unconscious decisions about what will be best for us. In the end, it's about a balance of long and short term satisfaction – having enough happiness now, but sacrificing enough that we can continue to be happy in the future.

Perhaps you will object that the pursuit of happiness as its own goal doesn't take altruism into account. If we're always looking out for ourselves, how can we account for helping others, even when there is no direct benefit to us? To answer this question, simply think back to the last time that you sacrificed something of your own – something that you valued highly – for the good of another person. Maybe it was your valuable time donated to a blood drive. Maybe you sat through a tedious photo presentation of your neighbors' trip to Branson, Missouri because you knew how much it would mean to them. When it was all over, and you thought back on what you had done, and realized that it was the right thing to do, how did it make you feel?

The reason we do things for others is that it makes us feel good. Perhaps we don't enjoy it at the time, but in the long run, we feel like we have done a good thing, and we are happy with ourselves. It's simply an example of sacrificing short term happiness for long term happiness. It may seem flippant to dismiss such a big question with such a simple answer, but science backs it up.

Humans are social animals. We have to be – our survival literally depends on it. At the time of this writing, there are many popular television shows about surviving alone in the wilderness. One of the reasons these are so popular is that the thought of being alone in a survival situation is very scary to us on a primal level, and we admire the bravery of people who are willing to take that risk. Our animal instincts tell us that we need to be with the group to survive. Before we had spears and axes and city walls, the group really was our best hope of survival.

As social animals, we developed ways of strengthening bonds. Love, respect, altruism, and loyalty are all adaptations to the need for close knit groups. When one of our own was unable to find any food for himself, it was in our best interest to give some of ours up, for in realizing his own plight, we were able to see the possibility that one day, we would also be in the same situation. Long term prediction allowed us to sacrifice short term gratification for long term survival.

Fine. So what is the purpose of life?

Now, finally, we can return to our original question. What is the purpose of life? The answer, simply enough, is that your purpose is your own. Everyone else has their own purpose, too. Many people accomplish great things in their lives and feel a great sense of fulfillment. Others live their entire lives without doing much of anything by most standards. In the end, each person must judge themselves by their own standards.

There is no final judgment, but there is constant judgment while we're alive. There is no divine forgiveness of sins, and no wiping clean of the slate. If we screw up our own lives, there is not always a way to fix it. In one sense, we can do whatever we like with our lives, but we are constantly beholden to those around us. When we die, we will no longer exist, and none of it will matter to us. What greater motivation is there for living the best life possible? What other purpose do we need than the realization that we only get one chance, and if we mess it up, there are no mulligans? Life, then, is its own purpose, and we, as individuals, have the chance, but not the obligation, to live happily.

* It's worth pointing out that if there were cases of complete brain death where the patient came back and reported an NDE, that would defy the natural explanation and would suggest the possibility of consciousness after death. It's crucial to notice that there has never been one case. In this instance, a lack of evidence is most certainly evidence of lack. With so many millions of deaths in hospitals, we would expect at least one case that defied science if there were life after death.

Why Are Atheists So Angry?

2008-07-01T17:57:00.001-07:00

"Why are all atheists so angry?"

I hear this question all the time. In fact, my Rambo-Kitty avatar is partially inspired by the question. Anyway, today I was reading an article about the debate between Sam Harris and Rick Warren, and was struck by Warren's statement, "I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry."

My first reaction was denial. Many atheists, myself included, are happy most of the time. My atheist friends are great fun to hang out with. We laugh and joke and drink beer, and hardly ever mention religion.

My second reaction, I confess, was anger. How dishonest of him to try to discount atheism by labeling us all as angry malcontents! This is exactly why people like him make me angry!

That's when it hit me, square in the forehead. He's not being dishonest. I don't doubt that every atheist he's met has been angry. If I met him, he'd almost certainly make me angry, too. That's just it! HE makes atheists angry, so they're all angry around him. So, I forgive him for thinking that all atheists are angry. I understand how he made the mistake.

Anyway, I'd like to reflect on "Atheist Anger" for a few minutes, and ask a couple of questions.

First, why is it a bad thing to be angry? The suffragists were quite angry, and for good reason. New Zealand had granted women equal voting rights in 1893, and America, supposedly the land of equality, was violently opposed to the idea twenty years later. There are still plenty of women who are angry because women make less money doing the same jobs as men in many industries, and women are often not even considered for promotions when they're equally (or better) qualified for the position. Are they wrong for being angry? Should they just sit quietly and wait for men to realize the error of their ways? Some people think so. I've noticed that the majority of them are men.

Am I making a valid comparison? Is it reasonable to compare life as an atheist in America in 2007 to life as a woman in the early 20th century? Clearly there are significant differences. Atheists can vote. They can, in theory, hold public office. They can get married, sign contracts, work wherever they're qualified. So, do we atheists have a right to be angry in the same way suffragists had?

To answer that question, I'll recall some more history. In Mosaic law, as we all know, women were slightly better than slaves. They had no property rights. In Roman law, women were completely dependent on male relations for all legal matters, and when they were married, it was a matter of purchase between two families.

Here, we can ask a pointed question. Do women have the right to be angry that they're not making as much as men in the workplace? After all, they can vote, own property, divorce their husband, sue him for child support and alimony, and live quite happily on their own. This country is one of the best places in the world to be a woman! What right do women have to be angry?

If your skin prickled a little bit when you read the previous paragraph, good for you. You're halfway to understanding why atheists have a right to be mad. The reason women still have a right to be mad is that things are still not equal. They have no obligation to remain silent simply because they have it better than someone who lived a hundred, or a thousand years ago. The reason women have it better now is that people were angry all through history, and made small gains here and there over many generations. Without the fuel of anger, women would still be property, and wouldn't even have the opportunity to be mad about making less money in the workplace.

So, what about us atheists? Do we have a right to be mad? Actually, yes. Did you know we've had atheist presidents? We have. I'll let you do your own homework on this, but it might surprise you to learn that many of the leaders of the U.S. throughout history have been openly atheist. Is this possible today? One congressman in California recently admitted to being atheist, and it caused a nationwide stir! It remains to be seen whether he'll be reelected. To be sure, he'll be attacked for being godless and amoral when election time comes around.

Until the McCarthy Era, the pledge of allegiance didn't have the word "God." Money didn't have "In God We Trust." Until the 70s, Christians were not actively involved in politics for the purpose of legislating religious values. Clearly, America is more theist than it used to be, at least politically. So, are things getting better for atheists? I dare say they're not. Unlike women, our situation is not improving. We are not being afforded more respect. Rather, we are being legislatively pushed farther into the margins where we have been quietly lurking for sixty years since the Red Scare.

To bring things back around, recall my comment about my atheist friends and I sitting around having beers and laughs. This is a good picture for you to hold in your mind's eye when you think of me, or any other atheist. This is what we want. We don't like being angry any more than women who'd like to be paid more. I'm sure all the angry feminists would rather things were better for women so they wouldn't have to be angry anymore. It's the same with atheists. If we were a bit less hated, vilified, and marginalized, it would be a lot easier for us to be in the presence of theists and not get angry.

Why are atheists so angry? Because things could be better, and we don't like being marginalized.