The Heroic Ideological Myth

A plucky band of adventurers pit themselves against an evil empire, led by (what else) an evil Emperor or an evil Cabal. But with assistance from a mysterious power, the adventurers, by defeating the malevolent power behind the empire, will establish a better world, a world guided by the mysterious power

This is the plot of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and dozens of other works of science fiction, fantasy, and mythology. It is also the plot espoused by dozens of religions and political ideologies. It was the plot that Stalin used to justify the Gulag, and Hitler used to justify the Holocaust. It is the most popular plot in the world.

For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. If your solution follows this plot, it is almost certainly one of those.

So let's pick out the basic elements of the myth. There is a plucky band of adventurers struggling against an Evil Empire, led by an Evil Emperor or Organization. There is a Mysterious Power of Good which will both aid the adventurers and guide the outcome. There is a Malevolent Power to be overcome, and a Utopia that will result.

So, Star Wars:
The Rebels pit themselves against the empire, led by the Sith Lords. But with the power of the Light Side of the Force, the Rebels, by defeating the Dark Side, will restore the Republic, which will by guided by the Light Side of the Force.

The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring pit themselves against Morder, led by Sauron. But with assistance of the Valar, the Fellowship, by destroying the Ring, will restore Gondor, a kingdom ruled by a just king guided by the Valar.

Harry Potter:
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the Order of the Pheonix pit themselves against the Death Eaters, led by Voldemort. But with the power of love, Harry and his allies, by destroying the Horcruxes, will restore the wizarding world, a world guided by love.


Those are the myths of fantasy. These are the myths that operate in our own world:

Fundamentalist Islam
Faithful Muslims pit themselves against the Satanic forces of the West, led by the President of the United States. But with the power of Allah, True Muslims, by defeating the Great Satan, will establish the Caliphate, a world guided by Allah.

Fundamentalist Christianity
Faithful Christian pit themselves against the Satanic forces in the world, led by Satan himself. But with the power of God, Christians, by defeating the forces of immorality, will establish the Kingdom of God, a world guided by Jesus.

Marxism
The Proletariat will pit themselves against Capitalism, led by the Capitalists. But with knowledge of Dialectical Materialism, the Proletariat, by defeating Capitalism, will establish the workers paradise, a world guided by egalitarianism, the final product of Dialectical Materialism.

Conspiracy Theorist
Those in the know will pit themselves against the World Order, led by the Illuminati. But with the power of the Truth, the Informed, by defeating the Global Conspiracy, will lead the sheeple to enlightenment, a world guided by the Truth.

Post-Modernism
The postmodern critics shall pit themselves against the dominant narrative, led by cultural hegemons. But with the knowledge of Critical Theory, the postmodernists, by defeating the narrative of dead white European males, will establish a truly multicultural world, a world guided by Theory. (Theory here is a catch-all which may be replaced by dialectical materialism--many postmodernists are practicing Marxists.)

Libertarianism
Libertarians pit themselves against government, led by the liberal elite. But with the power of the market, libertarians, by defeating socialism, will establish a libertarian utopia, a world guided by the free market.


You will notice that liberals and conservatives are not on this list. Both positions are complex enough that they do not fit a mythological narrative, although there are members of both camps that do fall into this template (not surprisingly, the most strident of the lot.) But the luminaries of both positions do not fall into this trap: Keynes, for example, despised state-run economies, while Hayek supported the welfare state. Radical culture warriors on both sides, however, may fall into this trap, identifying each other as the Malevolent Power or Evil Empire. The curious thing is that both may look to the same Mysterious Power of Good (the people, the founding fathers, Democracy, etc) for victory amd guidance.

The particulars are irrelevant and can be easily replaced, so changes in any of the basic elements--the adventurers, the Evil Empire, the Evil Leaders, the Mysterious Power of Good, the Malevolent Power, or the Utopia--are not important. The essential thing here is the form, which is the same in all cases.

The adherents of the myth are the adventurers here, and this is a rather flattering position. Everything depends upon them. They alone have the secret, the aid of the mysterious power, and the knowledge of the enemy. Because the enemy is the personification of evil, they are good by definition. Theirs is a holy mission, and anyone who opposes it is in the wrong. Whatever is done in the cause is justified. They alone can lead the way to the promised land.

The Enemy is likewise special, in that they wield the malevolent power, but they are both wise and foolish--wise in that they can wield this power, foolish in that they have not chosen the true power. They are almost gods themselves, in that they have conquered the world and seem to be able to control it through near omniscience and omnipotence. But the adventurers have the true power, which evil cannot touch or understand, and this will lead to their inevitable victory.

The Utopia that will result will not be a result of hard work or understanding, but will be the automatic product of the ascendance of the mysterious power. All will be well. There will be no messy details to deal with, because everything will fall into place. The right people will rule, justice and wisdom shall rain from the skies, and a perfect world will spring back into being, just as it was meant to be.

But it should also be noted that the adventurers, or adherants, are to become the new rulers. For mythologies that supposedly take place in the real world, the gods, theories, principles, or knowledge that constitute the force for good are accessible only to the adventurers. In other words, they themselves are to be the mysterious power and the guiding force. What they propose is not anything resembling a democracy, but a dictatorship of the ideologues. This is obvious when considering the communists (and even the post-modernists), and the fundamentalists (conspiracists will never gain power unless allied to another ideology.) But this is also why I consider libertarians to be the new bolsheviks, who also promised the end of the state.

The comparison between bolsheviks and libertarians may seem a stretch, but consider this: capitalism requires the protection of the state. The state must enforce contract law, permits and facilitates incorporation, and enforces criminal law. Let us consider what seems to be the least problematic: criminal law. Your life is worth a price. You may be outraged to consider how low that price may be--in a place like Somalia, it might be as low as ten or twenty dollars. This is the free market in action. What the state attempts to do through criminal law is to make goods like your life prohibitively expensive. It is the business of the state to interfere with the market. And the libertarians, once in power, will quickly realize this, as the bolsheviks quickly discovered the limitations of their own ideology. What other restrictions might they put on the market--particularly when self-interest, their universal justification, comes into play? Might the powerful rob the weaker? Might they skew contract law in their favour? And if you find their regime onerous, might they prevent people from voting with their feet to leave their "utopia"? The bolsheviks did. Why not the libertarians?

The real world is far more complex than the heroic myth can deal with. Progress is made on a halting basis, two steps forward, one step back. We must constantly submit to evidence and peer review, argue with people who disagree with us, check our facts, and find ourselves surprised by unexpected information. Reality is messy, difficult, and counter-intuitive. Human beings usually rely on heuristics that mislead them. The heroic mythology, like the god in the sky, is an amateur's first guess. Humility alone should convince us that it is wrong.

How I Became an Atheist

I came to be an atheist by an unusual path: I had a period of intense religious satori when I was 25, lasting several months, during which I realized that the experience of prophetic or messianic consciousness was mundane--that is, anyone could experience it, and that the essence of the experience was emotive rather than propositional. The ineffable was truly ineffable; the emptiness of the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem equated to Socrates claim that "All I know is that I know nothing." This meant that the worship of historical messiahs, prophets, and their utterances was bald idolatry. Those who did claim that their experience of the ineffable was unique were taking expedient advantage of their followers. This experience also led me to a position of radical apophatic theology, via the Tao te Ching; "The way that can be spoken is not the true Way." All of the scriptures were merely subjective reports of personal ruminations. These had contemplative and psychological value, but held no epistemological weight regarding objective reality.

It took another 15 years for the other shoe to drop. You see, I desperately WANTED to believe. Peter Hitchens' claim that atheists are atheists because they don't want to believe in God is patently false--like me, most of the atheists in my neck of the woods fought tooth and nail, at great personal expense, to remain believers. Hitchens the younger would, of course, like to imply, as all believers do, that it is our wickedness that leads us astray; we don't want to believe in God because God would impose morality upon us. But he ignores the laments of many atheists, like Sartre who said "God doesn't exist... the bastard!" What is pathetic, and indeed tragic about this, is that not only does he not understand atheists, but he does not even, nor can be bothered to, understand his own brother. Lifetime atheists like Christopher Hitchens take their conception of God by survey from the majority of believers, who really do, as the elder Hitchens has pointed out, worship a celestial version of Kim Jong Il. Believers, and former believers like myself, cherry picked from their religion a version of God that was far less totlitarian and much more kind. Only when we give up the need to believe in it do we take a serious look at what our religion really had in mind. It's really no surprise that we don't want to believe in a cosmological petty dictator. The wonder is that anyone would think we would want to.

My rejection of God and religion rests, not on my wish to disbelieve, but on my desire to believe--it's too damn convenient. In the absence of evidence, the only thing left to be explained is the persistance of the belief, and in a battle between faith and the truth, I have chosen the truth. Faith, after all, is the deliberate maintenance of a confirmation bias. Knowing that, one must abandon it to see things as they really are, and let the evidence speak for itself. But the evidence is silent, because there is none. Believers claim that we atheists know nothing about theology, but what they really mean is that we do not take speculative ramblings of theology as proof. They believe that the evidence is somewhere in their theology, but none of them can point out exactly where. A dozen weak arguments constitute a strong argument only to those whose reasoning is motivated--that is, to those who already agree with the conclusion. But in reality, a case is only as strong as its strongest argument.

Most of the current weak arguments rest on ambiguous definitions of God, by which God is "so powerful that he doesn't exist", and similarly nonsensical deepities. If God can mean anything, then the word means nothing. But whenever you define God, you claim to know what you cannot, and you commit idolatry. On the one hand everything you say is nonsense, and on the other, everything you say is blasphemy. There is no room, in philosophy or religion, for belief. As for "the God beyond God", the defense of this vaporous idea falls to people who begin their argument with the words "I'm an atheist, but..." These are the atheist butts, or the Newfangled Atheists. Believers and atheists alike have contempt for the lot, and the contempt is well deserved. This is often touted as the best argument for theology--but if it doesn't even convince the people who advance it, how can it be considered the best argument?

Determination and Conscience

In the eulogy that I wrote for my father, I said that while determination may make bullies of us all, conscience makes cowards of us all. The second half is from Macbeth, and while the character was hardly a reliable witness, I think Shakespeare was right. W. B. Yeats echoes this in The Second Coming: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst \ Are full of passionate intensity." He is almost certainly talking about conscientious people as the best, and ideologues as the worst. Ideologues are but the latest incarnation of men of certainty--the type that founded our religions and most of the major political movements.

Of course, there have been lot of bad religions and political changes. "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ to consider that you may be wrong", said Oliver Cromwell, yet he seemed to be immune to second thoughts himself, and scarcely ever considered himself wrong. Cromwell was one of the lowest points in English political history--he beheaded Charles I, became king in all but name, and employed his New Model Army to impose draconian policies both in England and in Ireland, even abolishing Christmas. If you are determined to change the world, the last thing you can afford is cowardice. If your intention is to be the overman, you cannot afford doubt, unless it is about the opinions of others. The conscientious, on the other hand, sometimes harbour doubts only about their own opinions.

And yet, if it is disastrous never to question yourself, it is equally disastrous, if not outright immoral, to be paralysed in the face of opposition. There is evil in the world, and opposing it requires that we take a stand, even if we cannot be certain of all the details. But certainty is an unrealistically high standard; human beings never really get to be certain about anything. Many try to finesse this certainty by invoking God, but this is no more than projecting their own beliefs onto the stars. For while they may convince themselves that they are acting upon the standards of their faith, it is they that choose the religion, the pastor, minister, imam, or guru, the interpretation, and they who choose which parts they like, and which doctrines they discard. All religion is a la carte. In the end, it's just us.

And yet, we are social creatures. We have evolved moral instincts which are shy on particulars at the outset, but are quite emotionally demanding, because they are instincts which encourage us to live harmoniously with other human beings--a minimum requirement for human survival. We despise injustice, cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness, particularly when we suffer it, and we value truth, beauty, justice, and mercy. These are what we need to live, and we appreciate those who act in accordance with them, and will punish, even at our own expense, those who violate them. We are not rational self-interested actors, however much some economists might suggest we are. We will often go out of our way to punish those who transgress against these values. Through the medium of culture we have reflected en masse through the centuries upon these core sentiments and have arrived at principles which we believe best express and support them.

These advances are neither individually nor culturally relative. Human nature and human circumstances are real and non-negotiable. Years ago I read Satre and thought him great and wise; I recently re-read excerpts of Being and Nothingness and realized that, like much of late 20th century continental philosophy, it all hung upon the assumption of the blank slate, the conviction that there is nothing fixed in human nature. This is false, and so the whole edifice collapsed before my eyes. We are done with Sartre and the relativists. But that does not mean that anyone has the final answer, the perfect solution--nor should anyone be required to. Certainty breeds monstrosities, but neurotic perfectionism is a self-indulgence we cannot afford.

The West now seems transfixed in a state of moral cowardice. Embarrassed by our less than perfect past, we forget that other people in other cultures may be planning a less than perfect future. Many in the West are transfixed by the accusation of Islamophobia, forgetting that the egotism of Mohammud has held an entire culture locked in place for a thousand years that could have been better spent learning about themselves and the world. China and the Middle East have not given up on the idea of a colonial empire--they are buying up arable land in substandard Africa. What will the Africans eat? Nothing. We are on the brink of the worst genocide of human history, because millions of conscientious hand wringers cannot be bothered to look beyond their own navel.

The most assertive figures remain the ideologues; people who start out with a fixed idea and stick to it no matter what. When the facts come in, they are suspect, the work of a conspiracy; the more compelling the evidence, the bigger the conspiracy. Ideologues are at war with reality. In Canada, we now have a government that wants to shut down Statistics Canada, and is at war with our Public Service because they don't like their recommendations. They are convinced that these people have a liberal bias, but as Stephen Colbert quipped, the facts have a liberal bias. No one can win a war with reality, and not only is the cost of waging such a war prohibitive, but everything spent in it is lost.

In service to this war on reality we have a war on science, often justified by appealing to Thomas Khun's theories on scientific revolutions. But Khun was wrong. Science does not change by radical paradigm shifts, throwing everything away. Even Copernicus himself did not fit this pattern; he maintained the Ptolemaic idea of orbits, simply swapping the Sun and the Earth in the scheme. Galileo built on Copernicus, Newton on Galileo, Laplace on Newton, and Einstein on Laplace and Newton. The relativistic and quantum terms vanish on scales of the middle world--nearly all engineering applications still rely entirely on Newtonian physics. Only in extremely large or small scales do we need the mathematics of relativity or quantum mechanics. If we see far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Khun implies that nothing needs to be known of the achievements of the past, because all can be swept away in a heart beat.

Epistemological relativism is attractive because it allows the ignorant to claim equal footing with the educated. It's another form of the blank slate; everyone starts from scratch, so anyone can spin theories to their heart's content and demand equal time. But reality is no myth. "I am who am" says the God of the Old Testament--in other words, I am reality. Note that this is not the same as saying God is real--that is an invitation to invent reality, rather than taking it as it is and understanding it. To say that something is real is simply to assert the reality of something regardless of its essence, but to say that something is reality is to define that essence. Religion was an attempt to put a human face on reality, but the mask won't stay put. What has not changed is that reality is still as cantankerous and destructive as ever when ignored, as vengeful as Old Jehovah. Any attempt to create your own reality, however determined, will fail if you ignore the truth.

Eulogy to My Father

It's hard to believe that Dad is actually gone. I just didn't think old age was up to the job. A meteor strike, an earthquake, a bolt of lightning maybe. The man was more durable than Keith Richards. And now that he is gone, I find myself surprised that there are were no headlines to mention it: "H. A. Dead at 92" on the cover of the New York Times, or at least the Citizen.

Dad was large and in charge. Even in old age, when most people shrink and become frail, Dad just got bigger. And he wasn't exactly diminutive to begin with. A worker in his father's warehouses since the age of 14, Dad would spend 18 hour days tossing 120 lb bags of sugar, flour, salt, or whatever up to the top of 12 foot stacks. One of my favourite stories of his took place when he and Bud were in their late 20's or early 30's. God Almighty Fournier had left for a mover's convention in Detroit, and Dad and Bud discovered that there was not enough money in the bank to meet the payroll at Fournier Van and Storage. The old man had told Dad that a good businessman was a good collector--and then apparently forgot his own advice. The books showed numerous accounts owing. So Dad and Bud set out to collect debts, with the clock ticking urgently.

Now, can you imagine the reaction of their clients to the sight of these two irish gorillas, shoehorned into suits, knocking on their doors and very firmly asking for the money owed to them? They must have looked like the Kray Brothers."Hello. We have been reviewing our accounts, and we have discovered that you owe us this amount of money. We would like to collect it. Now. In cash.... Nice place you have here. Here's a picture of our Mum." By the end of the week, they had money to spare. It would only be years later that Dad found out just how much he had terrified these people. Dad didn't do subtle.

As for being in charge, Dad liked to plan projects. Under Dad's guidance, we would move a mountain two feet to the left on Saturday, and two feet to the right on Sunday. I would eventually discover that it had less to do with moving the mountain than with playing foreman. During the building of Chris's cottage, Don Blakesly took a picture of Dad, scowling at the camera, and framed it, with a caption that was a refrain we'd heard often during that summer: "Well, if you'd done what I told you..." Chris's cottage was fine, except for the roof. Dad was impatient, and decided that we didn't need to do extra measurements to square it. Chris gave in, and the roof has waves and troughs in it. I have to say that Dad always got the job done though. Not always the right way, and sometimes the job didn't really need to be done, but he made sure it got done.

Still, the results could be spectacular; an acre lot, clawed out of rumpled mud and rocks by my father and my brothers, that became a magazine perfect lawn, fringed with lilacs and apple blossoms whose scent was ecstasy on a spring morning; a bay of dead fish, debris, and scrub trees that became the site of the most magnificent chalet on Lake Pemichangan; hundreds of flawless roses, arraigned along the back of Des Pommiers or on the slope of the hill of the cottage. Those who bought the cottage in the interim could improve the building and buy bigger boats, but they could not sustain or equal Dad's daily efforts.

Dad had a good life. Varicose veins in his legs spared him from going to war and left him to raise his family in peace, but never much inconvenienced him otherwise. He worked for his father at Fournier Van and Storage until he partnered with his brother Bud at Moloughney's Van and Storage. As his family grew, he worried that he would not be able to provide for so many children--in most pictures taken of him during the 50's and 60's, he has a worried expression--though maybe he was just worrying about his camera in the hands of someone else. But by the time I was a child, steak was a fixture on the table on Saturday nights, he built the house on Des Pommiers and the cottage on Pemichangan, and even the steaks got bigger and better, with sirloin eventually giving way to filet mignon. He sold his business when he was 57, just before deregulation made the moving business go sour, spent every summer of the next 25 years at the cottage, and often travelled to warmer climes in the winter. And still he managed to party like it was 1949. If you'd told me a man with his lifestyle would make it in good health to age 92, I would never have believed you. And this is the same man who has been telling us for the past 40 years that he would be gone soon. We all hope to inherit his constitution, if not his habits.

I have heard it said that old age is not for the timid. Old age for dad came suddenly at crucial milestones: when he could not pull the motor off the boat, when he could no longer hear his beloved music (and we will always be grateful that he passed this love on to us), but most of all, when Mom died. In the days that followed he became a babe in arms, handing all control over to his children. From this point on he was often rudderless. In a retirement home, widows sought him out; he was a catch, but he would never give up the torch he carried for Gladys. His solution was to help Ann buy a house with a granny suite, a new place he could call home. And so it was for seven years, until late December, when he went into sudden decline, stopped reading his daily newspapers, and then collapsed. All he wanted at the hospital was to go home. The final milestone was reached when Ann had to tell him that it was no longer possible for him to come home. The care he required could only be given in a nursing home. "Oh, no." was all he said, and then he set out to die. And that he did, and quickly.

So I'm glad he's gone, because that's what he wanted. I can only hope to live and die as stubbornly as he did. Fortunately we are a stubborn family, on both sides. If your intent is to be a force of nature, like my father and grandfather, you spend little time in self-reflection and a lot of time in bulldozer mode. But while determination may make bullies of us all, conscience makes cowards of us all. There is a balance to be struck, and Dad was never entirely one or the other.

Goodbye, Dad. I shall always miss you and keep you.

The Ethics of Atheists and Skeptics

A recent study has shown that almost 40% of Americans consider atheists to be the worst part of their society. This perception hangs upon several convictions: 1) atheists have no morals; 2) atheists are materialistic; 3) atheists are elitists, and 4) atheists represent the worst of modernity.

To the first, that atheists have no morals: in the absence of divine authority, atheists are required to revisit moral questions in naturalistic terms. This effort has been rewarded on several fronts. First, as the natural order represents no divinely ordained moral order, you cannot get an ought from an is--that is, the status quo is not morally sufficient simply because it exists. There is always room for improvement. This insight is from Hume, a refutation of natural law, though often pressed into dubious service particularly by the religious. Furthermore, absent the interests of a meddling deity, morality is a human concern, subject to human needs and desires. There is no excuse for subjecting the populace to odious measures for the benefit of a mysterious authority, who is in fact the sock-puppet of a theocratic elite. Finally, in the absence of divine omniscience, we are required to establish our own knowledge by submitting ourselves, not to divine authority, but to the authority of evidence. Ours is a harsher discipline, harder won and less forgiving. Believers choose the God who agrees with them, but we do not have the luxury of choosing our evidence. It is what it is, and we must adapt to it. In selecting a deity who is never their opposition, believers are effectively solipsists, alone and unchallenged in their beliefs, which they choose with their God.

Why be ethical? As Aristotle stated in the opening of the Ethics, man is a social animal. We live, and indeed only survive, in the company of others. I am perpetually amused by survivalists who expect to thrive on their own, forgetting the thousands of ways that they are dependant upon others. Let us consider the dynamics of the social contract. A simple example then: say that I build boats, and another is a fisherman. This is an example of specialization, but with specialization arises another problem: informational disparity. That is, those who do not share my specialization know little or nothing about my trade. Now suppose it takes me four days to build a fisherman's boat, plus one day's labour worth of materials. In five days, the fisherman might catch enough fish to feed me and my family for a month--a quantity that I, knowing nothing about how to fish, might take twenty days to catch, while the fisherman might take twenty days to build a boat of inferior quality. So I charge the fisherman ten days worth of catch for the boat, amortized over several months--the boat, after all, permits him to pursue his trade and is better than what he might make. I show a 100% profit, as does he. This is the optimal arrangement, quite beneficial to both of us. But suppose I exploit informational disparity, and claim that my efforts take twenty days, and try to charge him for that. Now he shows no profit, while I gain 400%. If he discovers this (and he will), he will refuse to do business with me, and both of us will lose the advantages of specialization, reverting to primitive self-sufficiency at enormous cost to us both. Competition is generally regarded as the solution to this, but guilds and cartels prevent competition. Yet if the exploitation of informational disparity is discovered, even conspiracy won't solve the problem.

Here trust and honesty enter the picture. Honesty inspires trust, and with it, the advantages of specialization. It appears that homo sapiens may have defeated Neanderthals on precisely this issue. Homo sapiens traded over long distances, while Neanderthals did not--is it such a stretch to consider that Neanderthals may have failed because they did not master the social competence required to achieve the solution to specialization? Trust would certainly have been required to form long range trading. Without it, Neanderthals would have been on their own, isolated in rather inclement weather and against superior competitors. The cause of Neanderthal extinction might have not been physical (they were the stronger of the races) but cultural--they failed to learn basic ethics in time. However the truth of that matter may be, there can be no doubt that the most basic of moral codes is essential to any form of economics, and hence to profit, leisure, progress, and culture for its own sake. The alternative is the most primitive barbarism imaginable, a war of all against all, without even the respite of clan solidarity.

Upon this most elementary of foundations we have built, extending our concepts of justice, freedom, and truth. Religions may have been expressions of these sentiments, but they were not originators, merely repositories. Those that best encapsulated our moral intuitions survived and evolved. But while many argue for the essential truth of Christianity due to its persistence through the Enlightenment, how many argue for the truth of Greek religion, even though the philosophy of Greece moved us beyond the dark ages and into the Renaissance? The reason is that we know that Greek religion was not the source of Greek philosophy. Can we not now agree that our own religions are merely expressions for our moral yearnings, and that these same ideas would have found other vehicles of transmission without religion? Furthermore, can we now recognize that in the moral advances of the modern era, religion has always played a rearguard role, fending off genuine moral advances to the best of its ability?

On the second count, that atheists are materialistic, we are dealing with a philosophical mistake. Atheists are philosophical and methodological naturalists--we do not believe in the supernatural. But materialism has two meanings: philosophical materialism, and economic materialism, and atheists are only philosophical materialists. The avowed enemy of moral philosophy has always been economic materialism--greed, and all the injustices that result from it. Atheists are no more prone to this than any other selection of society. Indeed, the only atheistic group that espouses economic materialism explicitly are the Objectivists, and this is the one cult of atheists that the religious seem eager to embrace--witness the travesty of Conservapedia's attempt to recast the New Testament in free market terms. In fact, atheists are more likely to condemn or condone economic materialism in accordance to its utility towards charity and social justice. It is a sad fact that the majority of religious believers today have no problem with greed. They are the true materialists.

In fact, economic materialism may have less to do with physical materialism than it does with positional goods--envy, rather than any real material standard. It is essentially ephemeral, a social and emotional construct rather than anything to do with actual physical need. If everyone is equally poor or rich, there is no need for conspicuous consumption, no need to keep up with the Joneses. Philosophical materialism is about reality, but the problem is not with reality, but with perception. Religion might have some competence in dealing with this, but in the age of the Prosperity Gospel, preached by the likes of the superbly named Creflo Dollar, there will be none of that. Materialism of the economic variety runs through the religion of today like a river of molten gold.

On the charge of elitism, it is inescapably true that religion is the most elitist enterprise ever devised. This leads back to the problem of idolatry--the believer concedes absolute authority to scripture and to the authors and interpreters of that scripture. These are the elites of the religious domain, and they are held in far higher regard, and subject to far fewer challenges, than any elite in the secular world. This is not only indefensible by modern democratic principles, but by the very standards of scripture itself. Idolatry is not just the worship of a carved or painted image, but of any image, whether it be constructed of stone, clay, paint, words, or ideas. It can be a book or a person just as easily as a golden calf. Furthermore, the secular elite do not demand blind obedience, only that their audience consider, in calm rational contemplation, the evidence. Again, the secular submit themselves to the discipline of evidence, while the religious submit themselves only to the authority of their chosen elite. And we are the elitists?

Related to this is the question of who are the true elite--not just talking heads in the popular media. In the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions, the elite were the prophets. But the prophets looked forward, and told their people what was coming. Today, believers look back, and as they are forced as all of us to move forward through time, they walk backwards, ignorant of what they might walk into. They are blind, obsessed with the minutiae of scribblings which have long since expired in relevance. The prophets have left the congregation. Is it any wonder, then, that the faithful hang so desperately upon mythical death bed confessions of luminaries: Charles Darwin, Antony Flew, and other atheist intellectuals? As Martin Gardner, a lifelong believer, admitted, the atheists have the best arguments. Rebecca Goldstein's book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, lays out all of the best arguments for theistic belief--and then promptly demolishes them all. None of them are very good. As Christopher Hitchens himself admits, to refute an argument, you must face it in its strongest form, but which of the notorious four horsemen is really ignorant of theology? Hitchens, with an encyclopedic knowledge of literature. history, philosophy--and judging from his writings--theology as well? Harris, originally a Jew, who travelled with the Dalai Llama as a bodyguard? Dawkins, who, as an Oxford don, no doubt spent hours in a discussion with Oxford theologians intent on teaching him the error of his ways? Or Dennett, a distinguished professor of philosophy, of which theology is considered a branch?

The problem with theology is that it takes as its opening premise the existence of God, and none of the arguments for this withstand challenge, so the prophets of our age ignore it and move on to more promising pursuits. The opinions of a Darwin, or a Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, or Harris, matter--these are amongst the prophets of the modern world. Alistair McGrath, or any of their other detractors (or fleas, as Dawkins calls them), gain prominence only by reflected lustre. How many would ever have heard of McGrath were it not for Dawkins? No wonder he constantly refrains, "Well, I welcome the debate." I've said before that any sufficiently advanced theology is indistinguishable from atheism. But I would now go further to say that the final product of theology is atheism. For if any idea of God is idolatry, if the Holy of Holies is empty, if God is truly beyond comprehension, as an entity beyond space and time would be beyond all categories of mortal thought--don't be so arrogant or sentimental as to give It a personal pronoun, He or She, but treat It as alien as It would assuredly be, if It exists--then we know nothing of the matter. And there we stop. To say that anything is possible is to say that nothing is known, for knowledge truncates, it elides the possible to the actual, leaving the once possible but now disproven in the ditches as road kill. Knowledge converges, theology proliferates. Nothing comes of nothing. Atheism tells you to leave the temple, but apophatic theology burns the temple down. There is no going back. All roads, secular as well as theological, lead to atheism. Every religion is sitting on a bomb. They just choose not to look.

Finally, concerning modernity. If you have followed this blog, you know the essence of the scientific method: seek and isolate the evidence, make it repeatable for everyone, and submit results to peer review to root out the distortions of opinion. This is also the root of our legal and political systems--trial by jury, and democracy. It might be more appropriate to call the scientific method the modern method. Indeed, modernity may be summarized as follows; it is the method used to achieve the solutions required for large populations and high population density, and the sum of those solutions thus far. When one takes into account the achievements of medicine, agriculture, public works like sanitation, public transport, and the like, and all of the benefits of modern technology, it is hard to imagine how we could have survived thus far. I have read, though I cannot remember where, that if everyone in North America lived like the early natives, the continent would be one huge toxic desert. The remnants of Native American cities might bear witness to this claim--apparently the only thing left of them is their garbage dumps, which are extensive and largely untouched by decay, while the cities themselves had long since crumbled before white settlers could reach them.

In the 19th century, it was said that if you were tired of London, you were tired of life. I would make a paraphrase of that regarding modernity, and furthermore ask, if you are tired of modernity, precisely whose life are you tired of? For the cost of losing modernity would be at least half and probably ninety percent of humanity. And if you want to be rid of the worst of modernity, what would you be rid of, for surely, you are asking for the restriction of some freedom or other. What will it be? Freedom of inquiry? Freedom of thought? Freedom of expression? For together, all of these will lead to atheism in some segment of the population. Demographic populists would like to say that since religious believers outbreed atheists, they will take over, and where will future atheists come from? The same places they come from now: religious schools of all kinds. We will take their best and brightest, as we always have. They can keep the rest. As I have already said, every religion is sitting on a bomb. But to see the bomb is to become an atheist. The teachers will never see it. They can never even admit that it exists.

The Tea Party

In an article in Policy Review, Lee Harris manages to convince himself that the Tea Party movement is a genuine uprising of the populace against tyranny, without the guidance of any elite. He celebrates their resistance to ideas, their broad political naivete, and argues that conservative intellectuals despise them because they have been co-opted by the liberal elite. He seems to think they echo the resistance to tyranny of the American Founding Fathers. What he so blithely ignores is the people who stand on the podiums at these gatherings; a conservative media elite heavily funded by a group of the financial and business elite.

All revolutions are the struggle of two elites against each other, with the people as pawns. The populists use their politically naive foot soldiers to tear down their opponents, and then establish themselves as the new rulers. Some of the spoils of war are dealt out to the pawns, but war always leaves the nation poorer, and the brunt of that cost will be borne by the people themselves. The most opportunistic of the old elite will worm their way into favour and power again. The most idealistic of both elites will be purged. The result will be that the worst, most cynical members of both will end up holding power. The government will be worse, and the very people who cheered and fought for the change will find themselves impoverished and besieged after a brief and riotous orgy of violence and revenge.

When revolutions do work, they are a revolt against a recently and largely externally imposed change in the status quo. The cause is not radical change, but resistance to a radical change. This was the nature of the American Revolution. Barack Obama, of course, is not a radical change--he has kept in place so many Bush policies that even his moderate supporters are becoming exasperated with him. It should also be pointed out that the American Revolution was instigated and shepherded by one of the most illustrious elites in history, who applied their brilliant minds to the problem of how to create a state that would resist tyrannical impulses, and they did so by creating one that was gridlocked, ensuring constant oversight by multiple branches. Whatever the Americans have now they voted for. The proof of this lies in a recent poll by libertarian economists, no less, who discovered that none of the American populace is willing to part with their entitlements, and so came to the only possible conclusion for balancing the budget--raise taxes.

The Tea Partiers do not, in any respect, resemble the American Founding Fathers, who were the ultimate liberal elite. They were elite in that they were, by and large, intellectual heavyweights. They were liberals because they fought for liberty--this is what the word liberal means. The word liberal has been much maligned of late, but liberal and liberty are both derived from the same root. Liberals are now equated only with social liberalism. But social liberalism also implies economic liberalism, as social conservatives, given sufficient power, will encourage the most meddlesome, intrusive, and expensive policies possible. It is to them that we owe prohibition, the war on drugs, the denial of gay rights, and a host of other measures which would give the state access and control over the most intimate details of our lives. The legislation of private morality is an extraordinary expansion of state power. The Soviets were very much in the business of legislating private morality, and their state grew to fill every nook and cranny of life.

The Tea Party has a much stronger resemblance to the Bolsheviks, but what it really brings to mind is the French Revolution, and the Terror. The radicalism at work here is not in the status quo, but in the ideology of those leading the movement. Their message appears to be that taxes must be reduced, and the budget balanced by cutting social programs. It is not for reduced government interference, because the social conservatism they espouse calls for more government interference, not less--more prisons, more police, more meddling in personal choices, all of which will cost a great deal of money. They want the state in the bedrooms of the nation. But what the elite behind the Tea Party really want is for themselves to pay less taxes towards programs that they don't need--medicare, medicaid, government pensions, and the like. They don't need these because they are an elite, and very rich. They have far more money than the vast majority of Tea Partiers. In fact, the Tea Party motif was coined by a Wall Street pundit complaining about a proposal to bail people of average or below average income out of predatory loans. The Tea Partiers are lobbying on behalf of the very people who robbed them, and then howled for government funds to cover their losses. Let's not forget that Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox news, also owns the Wall Street Journal.

What the Tea Party represents is not a cry against oppression, but the rise of inarticulate fear and hatred. The Tea Partiers are so oblivious to the realities of politics and finance that they are like a child who hears frightening sounds in the dark, and those sounds are coming from the pundits of the conservative media. This is a firestorm easy to ignite, but very difficult to quench or contain. It burns everything it touches, feeding as it goes, as it did in France, in Russia, in China, in Cambodia, and in so many other ill-fated revolutions. It will even burn the elite who kindled it. Lee Harris may someday find himself facing the equivalent of the Guillotine.

Moral Identity

The leading edge of moral progress, both for the individual, and for society as a whole, is the process of overcoming prejudice. The battle against prejudice has taken on discrimination based upon clan, tribe, race, nationality, religious belief, gender, and sexual preferences. But at the heart of all prejudice lays the fact of moral identity.

Moral identity is the belief that one's claim to moral character is based upon membership in a group, and that others who are not of this group are morally suspect. It is a heuristic, or rule of thumb, a grossly oversimplified way of making snap judgements about the trustworthiness of others without taking the time to judge each person as an individual. This results in two kinds of blindness: first, others of the same in-group are given a pass even when they are caught doing unethical things, and people of other groups are judged to be unworthy of trust despite their best efforts. A good example of the first kind of error was the tendency amongst Western Communists to excuse the excesses of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. The second type of error is even more common, as evidenced by the attitude of whites towards blacks a century ago, and the recurring blight of anti-semitism.

The culture wars in the politics of many Western nations, particularly in American politics but now spilling over into other countries, are deeply rooted in the moral identities of Conservative and Liberal. In fact, the labels have so often been skewed and misappropriated that they no longer mean much of anything, and yet extraordinary amounts and ink and bandwidth have been spent defending or attacking one or the other. Strip them of their labels, though, and you often cannot tell these pundits apart, and even as they distort the position of their opponents in strawman arguments, they warp their own ideology through sheer vitriol. We also have the often outrageous and sometimes comical attempts to appropriate great historical figures for the cause, often by grossly misrepresenting their views, or by inventing opinions that they never held. If our side is good, then good people must belong to our side. Likewise, vilified figures are given membership in the other side. The other side is evil, so anyone evil must be one of theirs. This distorts history, weakens our understanding of human nature, and warps our view of the world into simple binary opposites. This blindness is far more debilitating than the ideologies themselves; indeed, partisans threatens to devour the very ideologies they claim to support and turn the debate into a simple battle of red vs. blue, with neither colour signifying anything more than itself. Problems are created, or left unsolved, by the simple fact of partisan animosity, which diverts attention, energy, and resources from useful work.

Those who share a moral identity are inclined to let others in their group get off lightly, a tendency which impairs corrective efforts. Furthermore, moral identities not only excuse the actions of others who hold the same identity, but our own actions as well. If my own moral identity is a guarantee of righteousness, I am far less inclined towards self criticism, and more optimistic about my own moral character. A recent study found that religious adherents "considered themselves, on average, almost twice as likely as their peers to adhere to such biblical commandments as 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'" Fundamentalists ranked highest on this scale. This may be the reason why religious people are found to be happier than those without faith--they have higher self-esteem. But high self-esteem is no predictor of moral character, nor has any correlation been found between religious identity and ethical competence. Moral identities contribute strongly to perceptions of ethical character, but not to the creation of them.

With the fall of Adolf Hitler, the very idea of moral identity was cast into doubt, because the Nazi regime was itself based upon a moral identities; German citizenship and the Aryan race. This threw both nationalism and racism into disgrace, particularly in Europe, and this constitutes genuine ethical progress. But this resulted in a general malaise as many learned the wrong lesson; from discovering that no race, nation, or ideology established moral credentials, many people went on to the mistaken and unfounded belief that not only was no group better than any other, but that nothing was better than anything else.

This is an immediately contradictory idea, because it is itself based upon an ethical claim. The validity of moral judgement does not derive from a special claim of moral authority, but upon argument and evidence in open debate, and has many similarities to the scientific method. Social experiments are attempted, some of which fail, and some of which succeed. Attempts at radical experiments, based purely on ideology, can prove disastrous. Real progress is gradual and incremental, sometimes frustratingly slow as old traditions based upon incorrect assumptions are slowly uprooted or corrected. Pushing too hard can cause traditionalists to become reactionaries, but not pushing hard enough will leave entrenched prejudices in place. Any challenge to cherished beliefs will be considered rude by some, but the best approach may be outright ridicule, which exposes the weaknesses of an ethical position in the highest contrast possible. Since moral identities are held sacred by their members, it is often necessary to deflate them with humour, and make them a point of embarrassment, rather than an object of pride. The danger that must be avoided is that in ridiculing a position, the satirist may resort to a strawman caricature. When this happens, only the converted are convinced; the opposition sees nothing of themselves in the caricature, and considers the one who draws it a fool.

The real lesson of the Third Reich was the invalidity of moral identity, but moral identities have made a comeback through identity politics, particularly amongst minorities. Although moral identity is not tolerated in anyone viewed to be the majority, or to be in a position of power, the moral identities of those who are regarded as being oppressed are encouraged--and the mere fact that they are a minority, or not in power, is now regarded as enough to establish a claim to oppression. This is entirely the wrong approach, because it splinters society into warring factions, each judging itself to be morally superior, while anyone in a position of power is, by default, judged to be ethically suspect. The result is perpetual deadlock. All are stuck in place, and even a change in the power structure becomes pointless because the new boss is always believed to be the same as the old boss, simply because he or she is the boss. Politics becomes a fight between special interests, and calls to non-partisan cooperation are regarded as an affront to other factions, a call to surrender the grievances and pride they hold most dear. Nothing is good in itself, only good from some group--and if they can have something, everyone else wants something too. Again, nothing can be accomplished, and every bill that is passed becomes a byzantine nightmare of riders and earmarks.

The most recent offshoot of this ethical relativism is multiculturalism. Believing that moral judgments concerning the practices of other cultures were the product of claims to higher authority, many in Europe abandoned the capacity for moral judgment altogether when it came to people of other cultures. Europeans refused to share the lesson they learned in the war, employing a double standard when dealing with other cultures, celebrating the very hubris in others that had been so disastrous to themselves. We are not better because of who we are, but you are better because of who you are. This has already begun to bear fruit in an atavistic trend amongst cloistered communities, and a return to violence based upon moral identities rooted, primarily, in religious and cultural identities amongst minorities.

In Canada, where multiculturalism was first embraced, the idea was a different one. Canada accepted and encouraged different races, religions, and cultural expressions, but never renounced its right to make ethical judgements about cultural practices which violated Canadian standards. Far less traumatized by the war, and escaping much of the taint of collaboration which touched many Europeans under occupation, Canadians and Americans remained confident in their ability to make sound ethical judgements. In a very real sense, the Canadian identity is the lack of identity, specifically, the lack of moral identity. Forced to this position by a split between English and French Canadians, Canada was already well on its way towards this even before the war. It's main failure in this regard has been the treatment of natives, who are maintained as a separate entity, and have a moral identity thrust upon them, much as European minorities retain their own moral identities whether they like it or not. As with Europeans, this blunder was motivated by a sense of guilt. This is a road to hell paved with good intentions.

The moral identities of minorities make them oil in the water of their societies, greatly limiting economic opportunities with all but their own people. Encouraged to keep their own traditions, they may lack much of the knowledge they need to succeed in the general economy. Thrust back into their own neighbourhoods, they form ghettos of the disenfranchised, with all the problems that poverty is heir to. They are caught in the perfect trap. To escape, they must relinquish the one claim upon which their self-worth is based; the claim to moral and spiritual superiority. Yet, all the while, they are forced to work in menial jobs, or accept welfare. Their demands for respect are futile; pity undermines respect, both the respect of others and the respect of self. We are often astounded at stories told of people who stand at the brink of destitution, but who nevertheless refuse charity. Foolish pride, we call it, but in many circumstances, the recipient of pity suffers an immediate and irreversible decline in status, and this status is the equivalent of a social credit rating. Good enough they may be for a trickle of charity to keep them alive, but they are no longer worth the risk of investment. For those in such circumstances, charity may come at too high a price. It is one thing to be lost, but it is quite another to be branded a loser.

The walls that surround the ghettos are reinforced on both sides, by resentment and by the conviction of superiority. The general populace celebrates their own goodness in the welfare and tolerance of the minority, who are kept like pets in a menagerie, quaint and colourful, but economically and politically neutered. Their own moral identity has crept back in unannounced and unacknowledged, white man's burden with a liberal mask. The members of the minority supplement their claims of spiritual superiority with claims of martial might. They stick it to the man, and the man, who is all too ready for this, strikes back. The minority gang member trades the prison of the ghetto for a real prison, if not a coffin, and his transition to the status of slave is complete.

The route out of this is the renunciation of all moral identities, including that of the minority--but not the right to make ethical judgments. Laws and expectations must be applied to all equally, and considerations of race, religion, or culture should play no part in their application. There is no advantage in preserving these cultural enclaves, and the worst of the disadvantages are borne by the minorities themselves. We are doing them no favours. The walls must come down. But to do this, both sides must surrender their claims to moral superiority and see the situation as it is, with all its horrors and disgraces. But they do not both have to do it at once. Either side may choose to initiate the change, making it only a matter of time before the other side recognizes the problem.

Religious moral identities are a special problem. Unlike those of race, nation, gender, or sexual preference, religion is voluntary, and indeed, its stated purpose is to create a moral identity, which it is hoped will improve the character of believers. Sometimes it does, but a moral identity which can be assumed at will can be feigned. And a good reputation confers an advantage that will draw the worst, who will desire that reputation for their own ends. The Franciscan order, which began as a collection of men and women of genuine intent, attracted so much wealth and respect that it quickly went rotten. There is no way to prevent this short of the most draconian strictures upon adherents of the sect. This is the meaning of religious sacrifice; It is not the peacock's tail, meant to prove your fitness, but a handicap intended to be severe enough to discourage the purely self-interested from joining. Yet any system severe enough to prevent this will also, in all likelihood, cripple the community and prevent it from thriving to be more than a short lived minor sect. Any practical system of religious observance can be gamed.

The Jains have an interesting tradition for their holy men. A holy man must take a vow of absolute poverty, and holds no office. He has one perk: he may ask for a meal from any follower. And he has one power: he may refuse this meal! This casts the sincerity of the follower into doubt. The holy man's influence may be exercised only at the cost of his one advantage. It may be that there are ways to game this system--almost any system is open to exploitation--but this is about as close as you can get to a sure fire method of discouraging anyone who isn't serious from going for the job. Contrast this to luxury of bishops (created as the equivalent of medieval lords and princes), the power and wealth of megachurch ministers, or the outrageous lifestyles of the televangelists. Muslim clerics wield even greater power; with sharia law, they act as judges, and even claim the right to set the laws of the land. These powers will draw the worst to the clergy. Religions can never guarantee, as they claim, the moral qualifications of their adherents. A peculiar balance exists: the higher the moral standards of its members, the greater the pull for the unethical if the reputation of the sect conveys economic or political advantage. The one will balance the other until the sect is no better or worse than any other.

Yet, the sum total of positives and negatives may be less than zero, when we consider the other pitfalls of moral identity, particularly the tendency to excuse the actions of those who hold that identity. This was obviously at work when the current pope permitted known pedophiles to be shuffled around to escape detection and prosecution; he considered them good Catholics. But he was also protecting the moral identity of other Catholics, by trying to spare them the cognitive dissonance of a catholic who is capable of evil. This points to another problem particular to religion: if God exists, then he should act to prevent his ministers from doing evil. God does intervene, doesn't he? Despite all assertions to the contrary by those who insist that Christianity is predominantly a mystical, non-interventionist religion, the pope knows that this is nonsense. The Vatican has done the research, and they know very well what their product is; magic, healing, fortune! No one will pay for a deist God, a non-interventionist God, a God who pays no attention to events in time. Very few people worship "the ground of all existence," if any. They want a God who does tricks and helps people when they need it, and such a God should not tolerate evil priests. The existence of pedophile priests throws this God into question, or worse, throws the connection of the Church to this God into question. The problem of evil has always been a major stumbling block to religion. The problem of evil within a religion is even worse.