Interlude: Obama’s “New Draft”?

The upcoming Obama administration has created a website called the Office of the President Elect. On the site, the administration announces its intention to require/encourage community service among high school and college students. (Per the website, the administration would require 50 hours of community service from high schoolers and 100 from collegiates.)

Because the language smacks of conscription, conservatives like Greg Mankiw are crying out against it, going so far as to call it “a new draft”.

I can understand where these conservatives are coming from. Really, I can. Community service? As in service to the community ? That’s going a bit far. I mean, these poor kids are already required to learn basic mathematics and how to read! How far will they be pushed against their free wills?

We should let these kids choose for themselves. I propose that, as a first step, we let them opt out of learning anything about economics. Then they can choose their way out of mathematical literacy, out of appreciation of poetry and painting, out of the ability to discriminate a valid argument from a bogus one. And we won’t rest until the whole nation has opted itself into the kind of ignorance, apathy, and self-consumption that conservatives advocate. Oh, glorious!

What’s happening here is that conservatives, embittered by Obama’s election and the severe fragmentation of their party and their worldview, are falling back on their oldest ace: their threatened freedoms. (Interesting, isn’t it, that these “threats” never bloom into realities? As the Bush administration demonstrated, conservatives never see the real danger coming.)

That’s the twisted reasoning that can put a perfectly healthy proposal for mandatory community service to the plucking of healthy men and women from the domestic resource pool to put their lives at risk in the course of dubious and outrageously costly wars.

It’s strange: conservatives see the word “require” and they’re immediately up in arms. But where were they when their sometime golden-boy Bush was brushing aside the Constitution to bug the phones and computers of American citizens? Where were they when the Bush administration locked away crucial documents concerning his pappy and Ronald Reagan? Where were they when he was lying to the American public left and right in his service to an agenda the goal of which is still not clear to those whom he was morally and legally bound to represent to the best of his ability?

As a college student, I am always looking for community service opportunities, and I wish they were more frequent. I hope the Obama administration comes up with some good stuff for us.

Why You Should Be Suspicious of Intelligent Design Theory

At the risk of preaching to the choir, I want to make some remarks on intelligent design (ID) theory. Specifically, I want to share why a person should be wary of ID, even before s/he knows anything about its gruesome details.

There are two general reasons to mistrust it from the outset.

First, ID offers no positive evidence in its own favor. In fact, anyone who has ever read an ID argument knows that all of their arguments are arguments against evolutionary theory.

Let’s think about this. Suppose I want to prove that my friend Tom is in the kitchen. Will it suffice if I demolish all the arguments in favor of Tom’s being in the living room? Of course not! All I have shown is that there is no reason to believe that Tom is in the living room. I have given no reason to believe that he is in the kitchen.

Of course, showing that there is no reason to think that Tom is in the living room would suffice to prove that he is in the kitchen, provided that it is known beforehand that Tom must be either in the kitchen or in the living room. However, if there is any chance that Tom is in the bathroom, or the bedroom, or the garage, then we cannot justifiably restrict the alternatives. This is called “false dichotomy” and is an illegal maneuver in logic.

ID theory is one enormous false dichotomy. Its proponents believe that, if they can poke enough holes in evolutionary theory, they will have “demonstrated” that their deity exists and is responsible for the design and creation of the world and its living forms.

In the first place, it should be noticed that this strategy rather too conveniently absolves ID theorists of the normal scientific responsibility of rigorously and repeatedly testing any claim about how the world works. In the second place, as David Hume pointed out long ago, even if ID proponents did manage to demolish evolutionary theory, this would not necessarily establish the existence of an intelligent designer, and it certainly would not demonstrate the existence of a particular deity, such as Yahweh, Christ, or Allah. Indeed, it could just as easily be used to prove that our universe is an experiment being conducted by extraterrestrials as that it was created with loving care by God.

The second general reason to mistrust ID theory from the outset is that it is ex post facto in its nature. ID theory is an attempt to justify a set of beliefs that were around long before the need to justify them was felt or the means of justifying them had been developed.

In contrast to a scientifically derived theory, such as evolutionary theory, which is initially surprising and even offensive to popular sensibility but nevertheless prevails on the strength of the evidence, ID theory fits all too comfortably in the worldview of traditional Christians to believe that they are doing anything more dignified or professional than manufacturing “reasons” for believing what they would believe even without those “reasons”.

In other words, ID theory is never the result of putting the hypothesis of an intelligent designer to the test of public and repeatable experiment. Instead, it stems from the desire of a religious faction to subordinate the world to its beliefs, rather than its beliefs to the world.

God’s Big Chance

As this historic presidential election wallows in its eleventh hour, it grows bigger with meaning. Another layer of significance has been added, this one perhaps trumping all the rest.

You see, with this election the stage has been set for the Almighty to demonstrate his existence and potency once and for all.

Who dared set the stage thus for the Omnipotent? The faithful themselves, of course. All across America, prayers are being whispered and shouted for God to put the “right man” in the Oval Office.

One Pam Olsen, co-pastor with her husband of a church in Florida, insists to her fellow believers that

[w]e have just days to pray that someone who upholds the sanctity of life and marriage between one man and one woman will win.

Olsen also urgers anyone who will listen to implore “the Lord to move in swing states”.

This puts believers (and God!) in a mildly interesting but not necessarily favorable scenario. What happens when Obama wins and perhaps goes on to push for pro-gay-marriage or pro-choice legislation? Will Olsen and her ilk come to the unavoidable conclusion that God either respects the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry and of a woman to choose or would allow this “evil” to persist, in spite of the fervent pleading of his “elect”? Either way, conservative Christianity receives another well-deserved blow.

Of course, if their greatest fears should come true, these Christians will most likely resort to their stock rationalizations, e.g., men are exercising their free will to pursue the lusts of the flesh, the End Times are coming, etc.

So if McCain wins, then this will be evidence that God is in control and the prayers were answered. But if Obama wins, then this will be evidence that – what?

That God is in control, even though the prayers were not answered?

This is another example of the non-falsifiability of religious claims. Why are they non-falsifiable? Because they are not connected in any way to the world as it really is. If they were, then it would be possible, at least in principle, to delegitimate them, even in the eyes of those who hold them most dearly.

This non-falsifiability is quite contrary to the spirit of the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel, where God sent fire from the sky in a drastic, and drastically empirical, demonstration of his power. Because history is written by the winners, we have no inkling what Elijah’s response would have been if Yahweh’s offering had not been consumed but Baal’s had.

I have a feeling we’ll get an inkling when Obama gains the presidency. Furthermore, I have a feeling it will make no sense at all.

This Says It All!

Insights into Religion and Atheism

Around 1940, philosopher A.N. Prior put the following words, concerning religious people, in the mouth of a psychoanalyst in a dialogue called “Can Religion Be Discussed?”:

But a time may come […] when circumstances will push them into an emotional crisis in which they will go mad unless they do something about it, and then in the painful process of their own analysis they will see for themselves the roots of their urge to believe. Only in this way are genuine atheists made. Atheists by pure persuasion are usually, perhaps always, afflicted with a guilty conscience; the urge to believe is still in them, and they either try to quench it by becoming violent or unfair in their attacks on religion, or try to satisfy it by inventing milk-and-water religions […], using religious language to describe anything they find impressive or moving or mysterious.

Interlude: Another Great Depression?

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw weighs in on the question.

A Friendly Reply to David G. Meyers: Part Three

[This is the third in a series of blogs in which I respond to a recently published book by acclaimed psychology professor, author, and columnist David G. Meyers. The book is called “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists”; I recommend the book to anyone interested in religion and the “New Atheism”. It is available for purchase at amazon.com.]

In the first part of this reply, I argued that the distinction between healthy and unhealthy forms of religion does not hold, on the grounds that all religion is unhealthy insofar as it is false. In the second part, I argued that atheists and skeptics do indeed recognize the diversity within and between particular religions, and that this diversity discredits the claims of each religion and of religion in general.

Throughout the first two replies, I stressed the importance of a respect for evidence as to the truth of religion’s claims, especially those regarding the existence of a deity.

Because you did not write your letter “as a sophisticated defense of theism”, it is not surprising that you offer very little in the way of evidence or argumentation supporting the theistic thesis that God exists.

However, in the chapter of your book entitled “The Benevolent, Fine-Tuned Universe”, you did submit some considerations, borrowed from fields of science, which you take to support the idea that God exists.

You write of nature’s “glimpses of transcendent genius” and of “the universe’s staggering biofriendliness, its miraculous-seeming congeniality to intelligent life.”

You refer to a famous book by a famous astronomer, who

described six physical numbers that, if changed ever so slightly, would produce a universe inhospitable to life. If nature had provided a universe with the speed of light a teensy bit faster or slower, or had the carbon proton weighed infinitesimally more or less, you wouldn’t be reading these words (which wouldn’t exist to be read).

Finally, you challenge the reader:

So what shall we make of this? Were we just extraordinarily, incomprehensibly lucky? The utter improbability of our biofriendly universe makes that an unsatisfying answer.

In this blog, I want to explain to you why these considerations, as engaging and even awe-inspiring as they certainly are, do not tilt the balance even slightly in favor of theism.

First, the reasoning implicit in your argument is fallacious. You cannot reason from the conjunction of the occurrence of a phenomenon and the improbability of the same phenomenon, to a conclusion that the phenomenon occurred at the intentional instigation of an intelligent agent.

If such reasoning is allowed, then we must admit that every windfall won at the lottery office and every score on a bet against the odds was consciously designed to happen. Indeed, we must concede, in this case, that every phenomenon the probability of whose occurrence is less than .5 is a direct result of intentional manipulation. Let’s face it: things happen that we would judge unlikely.

Second, you make a pretty big deal out of how narrowly the context of life is defined: if the carbon atom or the speed of light was altered just a smidgen, we wouldn’t have a universe!

If such figures were evidence of a designed universe, they would also be evidence of a universe designed to be extremely fragile. If this universe was designed and created by a benevolent God, why would that God poise it as perilously close to annihilation as you claim it to be? Why would he not have secured it within a broader, less precarious context?

To illustrate what I mean, consider Jesus’s own parable of the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. When you Christians tell us how very small an adjustment to our world would result in its complete destruction, you inadvertently depict your God as having foolishly built a house upon the sand.

I’m sure you’ll understand if we don’t fall to our knees.

Third, your argument fails because it leaves out relevant considerations. Your reasoning proceeds from an effect to its cause. However, we cannot be allowed to exclude any aspect of the effect in reasoning from it to its cause. So, as much as the world may contain “improbable” elements, which you claim argue for a “creative benevolent power”, it much more obviously and certainly contains elements of cruelty, suffering, waste, and senselessness that argue against such a power.

Fourth and finally, I would like to remark how peculiar your appeal to scientific fact appears, in light of your approving quotation, earlier in the letter, of C.S. Lewis as saying “impossibility of proof is a spiritual necessity.”

This is an example of the sort of duplicity that frustrates us atheists and skeptics. As long as science supports religion, you’ll cite its conclusions until you’re blue in the face. But as soon as it fails to support, or even discredits, religion, then all of a sudden you “know by faith”. Which is it? Do you know by faith, or do you know by science? If the answer is some combination of the two, then how do you arbitrate the matters on which they contradict one another?

This disgusting two-facedness is written all over Christianity, both now and in the past. As long as government wants to support your religion, then the first amendment can be relaxed. But as soon as the government refuses to fight on behalf of your religion, then you couldn’t hold the First Amendment more closely.

Similarly (as I mentioned in Part Two of this reply), as long as the Old Testament supports your current understanding of God, it’s a holy book. But as soon as it depicts a God contrary to the one you profess to worship, then it has been superseded by a “new covenant”.

Not only is this self-contradiction, but it is also rank opportunism and base hypocrisy. Perhaps you believers would do better to make up your own minds before trying to make up anyone else’s.

To Be Continued

Interlude: Doomsday for the Banana?

They've joined pandas, gorillas, and McCain supporters on the endangered list.

For those of you who haven’t heard, the cherished banana is endangered. Apparently, this most important of fruits is rapidly succumbing to a fungal disease.

For those of us in the U.S., this is bad news. But for people in less developed countries, where bananas are a nutrional staple, this is really, really bad news.

Find out more about the beleagured banana in David Koeppel’s book “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World”. Also, you can visit Koeppel’s banana blog, where you can learn more about bananas than you wanted to know, or even thought there was to know. (Seriously.)

Come to think of it, this banana doomsday shouldn’t come as a surprise. I think the Reverend David Jeremiah found a prediction of it encrypted in the Book of Revelation.

A Friendly Reply to David G. Meyers: Part Two

[This is the second in a series of blogs in which I respond to a recently published book by acclaimed psychology professor, author, and columnist David G. Meyers. The book is called “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists”; I recommend the book to anyone interested in religion and the “New Atheism”. It is available for purchase at amazon.com.]

In my last blog, I argued against your attempt to distinguish between “Good Religion” and “Bad Religion”, between the “baby” and the “bathwater”. Here in Part Two I would like to respond to your accusation of “out-group homogeneity bias” on the part of atheists and skeptics.

In the chapter of your book entitled “Simplistic Stereotypes”, you write that

believers may have caricaturized images of the prototypical atheist (perhaps lumping Stalin with today’s humane scientific secularists). And to judge from their recent books, atheists sometimes return the favor by equating religion with its irrational aberrations. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris itemize seeming religious lunacies, including the nasty practices listed in Leviticus, as if they had the same standing as the later teachings of the second author of Isaiah or of Jesus’ beatitudes (for example, “blessed are the peacemakers”). ‘This is like talking of chemistry in terms of phlogiston and bodily humours, and mocking it for its crudity,’ observes the theologian Keith Ward […].

You then appeal to us skeptics not to “lump all faith-heads together”.

Here again, you seem to be trying to distinguish between “Good Religion” and “Bad Religion”, and you want atheists to refrain from lumping the Good with the Bad. I have already made a straightforward argument against the cogency and practicality of this distinction (see previous blog). Now I want to explore what this diversity within and between the world’s religions means for your argument and for atheism.

Calling attention to the diversity within and between religions does very little for your argument in favor of it. For not only do atheists recognize this diversity, but we also seize on it as one of our most powerful arguments against the legitimacy of religion in general.

Let’s first examine diversity within a religion, i.e., Christianity. In the quote I gave above, you drew attention to the disparity in biblical depictions of the Most High. You seem to argue that Leviticus, which is included in the canon of your own religion, contains “religious lunacies”. At the same time, you contrast such “lunacy” to other texts – such as the Book of Isaiah and the Gospel According to Matthew – that are also included in the canon of your own religion.

Reflect for a moment on what impression of your religion and its canon this attitude will leave on a reader. As for myself, I gathered from the foregoing paragraph that your religion is extremely incoherent, that it does not agree even with itself about its own object. How many Gods does your allegedly monotheistic religion acknowledge, and which of them does its practitioners actually value?
If your sect is as Marcionist as you seem to be saying, then why not exclude the “Old Testament” (more appropriately called the Hebrew Bible) from the canon?

This problem of incoherence is exacerbated in a later chapter of your book, where you appeal to the very “Old Testament” which you disparaged in the above quote, as an authority in regard to the meaning of “soul”. You write that the Platonic idea of a disembodied (or disembodiable) soul or mind is not only contrary to current scientific understanding but that it is also

quite unlike the implicit psychology of the Old Testament people, whose nephesh (soul) terminates at death. In the Hebrew view, we do not have a nephesh; we are nephesh (living beings). In most of its eight hundred Old Testament occurrences, biblical scholars report, this nephesh is akin to the soul we have in mind when saying ‘there wasn’t a soul (person) in the room’ or ‘I love you from the depths of my soul’ (being).

Now I am very confused as to what the place of the “Old Testament” is in your religion. Is it an authoritative text or not? If it is, then why are you calling its commandments “lunacy”? If it is not, then why are you deferring to its concept of “soul”? In the first place, this indecision begins to smack of shameless opportunism. Second, it seems likely that my confusion about your religion is an extension of the confusion inherent therein.

Your claim that your religion is best thought of as “ever-reforming” does not save your case. Such an “ever-reforming” religion indicates either an inconstant understanding of God or an inconstant God. Even a casual reading of the Christian Bible argues strongly in favor of an inconstant God, which carries obviously problematic theological implications, insofar as an inconstant God cannot be trusted in any meaningful sense.

Perhaps, then, you would rather argue for an evolving understanding of a constant God. This will not do, either. First you must argue plausibly that God is something distinct from the alleged understanding of him (her, it), and this has not been done.

Now I will briefly address the diversity among religions. This diversity severely weakens the position of each religion as well as that of religion in general, insofar as their separate claims to absolute and unique truth, being equally forceful, cancel one another out. As each religion clamors for proselytes, the outsider must ask, “How does one choose among these many religions?” The only answer is in some method of deciding that is not provided by any of the religions in question (as in this case the decision-making process would be hopelessly circular). At this point, the scientific method and logic come to the rescue.

This, however, is fatal to religion. For the scientific method and logic have not led to any conclusion indicating that any characteristically religious claim is true.

In short, we atheists and skeptics recognize very well the diversity of the faithful. We just prefer to call it their confusion.

To Be Continued

A Friendly Reply to David G. Meyers: Part One

[This is the first in a series of blogs in which I respond to a recently published book by acclaimed psychology professor, author, and columnist David G. Meyers. The book is called “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists”; I recommend the book to anyone interested in religion and the “New Atheism”. It is available for purchase at amazon.com.]

As an atheist and opponent of religion in all its guises, let me first express appreciation for the letter you have written to me and my ilk. In the midst of what can only be called a propaganda war, in which misinformation and mudslinging seem to be the norm, your voice of open scholarship and good sense is much appreciated.

With your letter, you

aim to suggest to skeptical friends how someone might share their commitment to reason, evidence, and, yes, even skepticism while also embracing a faith that makes sense of the universe, gives meaning to life, connects us in supportive communities, mandates altruism, and offers hope in the face of adversity and death.

More specifically, you spelled out two goals. The first is to “affirm […] indictments of religion”, and the second is to argue that “a progressive, biblically rooted, ‘ever-reforming’ faith” is “reasonable, meaningful, hopeful, inspiring, science-affirming, and profoundly humane.”

In this multi-part reply, I want to tell why you have not succeeded in persuading me.

As I have understood your letter, its spine consists of a distinction between “Good Religion” and “Bad Religion”. You make this clear right away:

Framed positively, the new atheist books are not just an attack on mindless, unbending religion but an affirmation of reason, evidence, and critical intelligence. Therein lies our common ground. We agree:let’s, with a spirit of humility, put testable ideas to the test and then let’s throw out religion’s dirty bathwater. And we differ: is there amid the bathwater a respect-worthy baby – a reasonable and beneficial faith?

You make this distinction again in the chapter, “Simplistic Stereotypes”:

To lump together Mennonites, Reform Jews, and the Taliban – labeling them all as “religion” […] is to gloss over some very important distinctions. Catholic liberation theology and jihadist beheadings are, um, a little different.

Finally, you make this distinction again when you separate “nominal” religion, which “feeds prejudice”, from “genuine” religion, which fosters tolerance.

If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that the objections raised against religion by atheists and skeptics do not apply to all forms and manifestations of religion. Put bluntly, it seems you would rather we not judge the faithful by their basest specimens. At the very least, you would like us to recognize and respect the diversity among the world’s faiths. Perhaps then we would see that faith is not in itself false and dangerous.

Perhaps you do not fully understand the nature of the skeptic’s objection to religion. While I cannot speak for all atheists, I believe that most of us object to religion primarily because it defies the available evidence by believing and organizing behavior around conclusions which that evidence does not sustain.

That religion has often been an engine of violence, oppression, intolerance, censorship, and toxic emotion is certainly a key part of our objection. However, it is chiefly the falsehood of the claims on which such dangerous behavior is based that frustrates us.

For consider: If faith were only false, and not dangerous, then atheists would have no grounds for objection, insofar as a the truth-content of a belief that does not motivate or inform behavior is irrelevant. Similarly, if faith were violent and oppressive, but based on evident truths, then we would still have no grounds for objection. For in that case, we would recognize the violence and oppression as sanctioned by the Highest Power.

Therefore, it is the conjunction of danger and falsehood that worries and offends us skeptics.

People with this objection to religion (that is, most atheists) will never be satisfied by your distinction between “moderate civil religious interpretations and violence-prone fundamentalist ones”. For I would paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and say that

Untruth anywhere is a threat to truth everywhere.

In other words, a lie is a lie is a lie, regardless of the desirability or undesirability of its consequences. The notion that belief in a proposition unsupported by reproducible, publicly available evidence ought to be sanctioned on the basis of its consequences is open to the following objections:

1. By condoning, and even requiring, a flagrant disrespect of evidence in one area, it encourages such disrespect in other areas. If we are to conclude beyond what the evidence allows in respect to the claims of religion, why can we not conclude beyond what the evidence allows in any number of other domains of human endeavor? Conversely, if in other domains we must restrict our assent to what is sustained by evidence, why ought we be released from this obligation in the single case of religion?

2. By supporting any religion, in spite of the falsehood of its claims, on the grounds that it provides people with a sense of meaning and an impetus to charity, we leave no check in place to safeguard anyone from the dangers that may ensue when that religion becomes an instrument of violence and oppression (as has often happened). In such a case, the religion might be opposed on the grounds that it is harmful; however, such harm will be easily justified by the truth of the religion’s claims, which will be impregnable insofar as no method has been established by which to judge it. However, if a method is used to judge the truth of the religion’s claims, that method will be the very scientific one which presently fails to support any theistic religion!

3. In the long run, no false belief, if acted on, can prove beneficial either to those who act on it or to those influenced by those who act on it. For instance, let us assume that the claims of religion are false, i.e., there is no God, no Savior, no Holy Spirit, no afterlife, etc. In this case, a great deal of what religion has accomplished, both for good and for ill, has been in vain. Incalculable amounts of time, money, land, labor, blood, thought, and breath will have been spent in the service of a fiction, where they could have been turned to more profitable use. For instance, instead of building multi-million-dollar megachurches where people can gorge themselves on fast food and stare dumbly at giant LED screens, we might have donated vast resources to ailing schools and libraries, funded research into various diseases and disorders, or injected capital into the ailing economies of developing countries. It is for this reason – that we may use our resources to best advantage – that we must test our convictions well and constantly.

4. It is only within the context provided by the available evidence that danger and promise can be realistically assessed. To illustrate this, only imagine how differently these dangers and this promise appear on the supposition that Jesus has redeemed the world and will return for his “elect” from how they appear on the supposition that he has not and will not. These are very different worldviews with very different sets of priorities and implications, both for individuals and the global human community. What cannot be argued by anyone is that one of these suppositions is severely misguided. Either we test them against each other now, using the scientific method, or we test them later with the welfare of ourselves and the environment that sustains us.

What would you say of a doctor who gave a pleasing diagnosis despite very unpleasing lab tests? Or of an economist who advised everyone to act as though the economy were flush, when his analysis strongly suggests that it is sick? Would you applaud their insistence on optimism, or would you find fault with their glad tidings? I do not doubt that you would do the latter.

In short, no matter how innocuous or even helpful it may appear on its face, every body of doctrine unsupported by evidence is contrary to the interests of the global human community.

To Be Continued