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.

Reasons and Causes

The subject of free will comes up often in discussion of philosophy of mind. Strict determinists hold that since all effects have a cause, there is no free will. Mind-body dualists insist that choices occur out of a magic vacuum, and decisions are not determined by anything.

Both are wrong.

Free will is what happens when our choices are made for reasons. Free will is circumvented when external causes trump our reasons. Reasons are derived from reason itself--that is, we do what we do because there is a chain of reasoning that leads to that outcome. Causes trump that chain of reasoning. We are constrained by circumstance, are driven temporarily mad, or our chain of reasoning is derailed by events beyond our control.

By analogy, when a computer fails due to hardware malfunction, we do not hold the program 'responsible' for the crash. A defective hard drive can cause a crash, in which case we do not blame the logic of the program. The program is sound, it is the hardware that is to blame. But if the system is functioning properly, then the program is defective, and we disdain the shoddy construction of the program. We expect the program to deal with bad data, poor input, and the like. But if the machine is compromised, all bets are off.

So, an individual is responsible for reactions to situations, even extreme ones. But genuine brain malfunctions--schizophrenia, manic-depression, or drugging not deliberately incurred by the individual--are all causes beyond control, and responsibility may be waived. But any bizarre and irrational act will be met with the indignant query, "What were you thinking?" This is why black-box AI is not sufficient for proof of intelligence. The Turing test fails, because as fellow intelligences, we demand access at the debug level. We demand internal access to figure out what went wrong--and the AI had damn well better deliver. If you do something stupid, you had better have a damn good reason.

Reasons operate at the level of abstraction of consciousness, the software level. Causes are physical determinants that override our reasons. Reasons are software logic, while causes are hardware flaws. So long as there are no causes that prevent us from arriving at decisions based upon the level of abstraction at which conscious choice operates, we have chosen freely, and are entirely responsible for our actions. But we are also responsible for those actions which are the consequences of causes we inflict upon ourselves. You cannot beg for pardon for actions taken under the effects of drugs that you took voluntarily--these are causes inflicted for your own reasons.

There is no magic vacuum. If your decisions were not dependant upon reasons, then you would be acting randomly, and would be insane. Sane decisions rely upon cognitive determinants--reasons--which are not at all the same as physical determinants--causes. Indeterminacy has no part in free will. A free rational being can trace his or her decisions to a set of beliefs, a logical chain, and an outcome. Indeterminacy is a red herring. The critical factor is the level of abstraction.

So, as long as your mind is not addled by factors not within your control, you are responsible for your actions. But note that claiming that events drove you to do what you did will, if what you did was morally reprehensible, encourage the judge and jury to find you habitually morally deficient, and therefore justify a long sentence for the protection of society. The nature of the situation will not excuse morally deficient actions. Only temporary insanity, provoked by other (involuntary) causes, will secure clemency. And these are, of course, out of your control.

In short, there is no deliberate excuse for bad behaviour. Determinism makes you even more responsible than traditional doctrines of free will.

The Demonization-Strawman Fallacy

The worst feature of partisan politics is a form of strawman argument encouraged by demonization. Its general form is as follows: our opponents wish to impose their policies upon us for nefarious ends. Their primary motivation is greed, treachery, moral turpitude, sloth, or a simple desire for power. Because of these motivations (which are quite obviously evil) our opponents must be stopped at all costs.

There are several components to this fallacy. The root is demonization, the opinion that the opposition is evil. This is a fallacy in and of itself without solid proof of deliberate malfeasance (unambiguous criminal action.) But it also rests upon a broad claim of priveleged insight into the psychology of the enemy; the claimant is in fact asserting a telepathic mastery over the inner life of his opponent. Yet no one may claim such a mastery, so this too is false. So far, we have two fallacies: the claim of evil intent without proof, and the psychologistic claim of telepathic omniscience; in large part the detritus of a hundred years of Freudian nonsense.

The result of these fallacies is a third fallacy of the strawman form; those arguing for a position state the contrary position in its weakest form, which bears little or no resemblance to their opponents' actual arguments. The effect of this fallacy depends on the current beliefs of the viewer. Those already amongst the converted feel vindicated, and now believe that their opponents are not only wrong, but evil, which means that they cannot be bargained with, only crushed. This attitude encourages vitriol and violence. Opponents, on the other hand, will be affronted by the stupidity of the pundit, who appears to be incapable of grasping even the simplest of arguments. They will consider their opponents to be fools at best, bald faced liars at worst--and if they are the latter, then it is they who are evil. Such a split is almost impossible to heal, because both sides now think the worst of the other.

To see this in action, consider two examples, one from the right, and the other from the left. Supporters of the Iraq war on the right argued that those opposed to the war were soft on terrorism, traitors, and collaborators with enemies of the West. A few of these opponents did fit this description, and there was no shortage of Islamicists willing to jump on this bandwagon in order to generate sympathy for their cause. But many regarded Iraq as a distraction from the real problem which would make it worse, and were wary of the very opportunities it presented for Jihadist propaganda. Iraq diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, where there was no doubt of a terrorist presence, and while there was little question that America could win the war in Iraq, no effort had been paid to winning the peace. Iraq might still end up as an extremist theocracy, the sister state of Iran. Hardly a word of this ever reached the ears of viewers of Fox news.

The other example is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. The thesis of this book is that free market fundamentalists, followers of Milton Friedman, exploited or even created disasters to impose their own economic doctrine upon helpless peoples. Never does it seem to occur to Klein that Friedman and his associates earnestly believed that these policies were the best chance for these people to recover, and that they believed they were doing them a genuine kindness. Nor was this belief without merit; globalization has indeed enhanced the average standard of living throughout the world, discouraged war, and enriched, overall, even the poorest. It simply never occurred to Friedman and company that their economic ideology might have some serious limitations. Klein does not address these limitations (other economists were left to do that work): Friedman's theories are based upon the mythical Homo Economicus, a human being who is all wise and all knowing. But Homo Economicus does not exist. Homo Sapiens, on the other hand, employ heuristic modes of reasoning which are prone to systematic errors, often leading us to make decisions which are irresponsible and very much against our own best interests, creating bubbles and busts and leading to irrational expenditures and debts and all manner of self-destructive behaviours. We don't even know how to prevent much of this, but neither does the free market. Friedman et al simply did not consider what might happen if their theory was wrong. They really did believe it, and believing it, thought that what they were doing was the right thing. There was no nefarious intent on the part of Friedman and the Chicago school.

Nor did the fiscal libertarians ever equate what they proposed with any form of totalitarian rule. How could they, when the whole point was to provide individuals with "The Freedom to Choose." Never did it occur to them that by sweeping aside large swaths of rules and regulations created over generations by democratically elected governments, they might in fact be imposing an undemocratic order. They were caught in their own frame of language, which emphasized the benefits and concealed the dangers.

The ideas of the Chicago school, of course, did lead to a great deal of ruthless exploitation by people who saw an opportunity to take advantage of a chaotic situation to make a quick buck. It created moral hazards. But Friedman had no such intention, and might now be as stunned and perplexed as former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who was caught like a deer in the headlights by the economic collapse. We now find ourselves in a place which was simply not on their map--and since it is not on their map, they have no idea of how to get anywhere from here.

Yet by demonizing the leaders of the Chicago school, their opponents surrender the chance to debunk their theories in their strongest form, which means that followers of the Chicago school will go unconvinced, and will never be forced to address the real weaknesses of their ideas. This amounts, very nearly, to having no opposition at all; Klein's audience is hermetically sealed, and will grow or shrink with the vicissitude of fashion. In five or ten years her arguments may come to sound horribly dated and naive. By going for the emotional jugular she has missed the heart, and the beast lurches on. This is the real weakness with the demonization-strawman fallacy; it is almost completely ineffectual, even against positions which foster genuine evil.

Conspicuous Exceptionalism

There is a particular rhetorical maneuver which I have encountered on numerous occasions amongst promoters of new age nonsense, pseudo science, conspiracy theories, and religious, political or metaphysical doctrines. This fallacy consist of calling into doubt for the sake of argument a principle which the person accepts constantly in all other considerations and actions. Such a principle is fundamental to their very existence, relied upon not only day to day, but moment to moment, without which their life would not only be unlivable, but incomprehensible. I call this rhetorical dodge conspicuous exceptionalism.

Take, for example, the principle of empiricism; the idea that knowledge arises from experience. There is no commonplace action or consideration which does not take into account facts about the world. Simply to walk across the room requires that you observe and avoid the furniture in it, the shape and size of the room, and the location that you wish to go to. All of these are empirical facts. You cannot even form an argument without reference to the world, and this too is based upon the assumption of the principle of empiricism. Another is the validity of reason, our ability to draw conclusions by logical inference from facts already known. Again, you cannot even begin to make an argument without employing reason, and the very attempt implies an acceptance of the principle. To these I would add the existence of the world, the existence of other people, the assumption that others are conscious, and so on.

Any argument can be summarily dismissed which relies upon calling into question a principle which the arguer must, and does, employ on a constant basis; the person advancing the argument has already given full recognition of and consent to these principles simply by being present in the discussion.

Conspicuous exceptionalism is often used in the epistemological maneuver of radical skepticism, sometimes called the nuclear option because it attempts to destroy the very foundations of knowledge and therefore the basis of all debate. Radical skepticism is an act of wild desperation on the part of the person advancing it, who knows that their case is lost unless the debate is brought to a halt. Radical skepticism is used as means of stopping the opposing argument, after which it is relaxed to slip in the arguers case. As with any form of conspicuous exceptionalism, radical skepticism is never a serious position, merely a temporary refuge from opposing points of view.

Who Shall Rule vs. How Shall We Rule

In discussions with my friend Pat, one item of distinction between conservatives vs liberals is that conservatives tend to think that the most important question in government is who shall rule, while liberals ask how those in power should be allowed to rule. This especially applies to the American system: republicans believe that the appointed government should have the power to do what is needed, while liberals address the mechanisms of government, so that the systems in place will prevent even the worst people from doing much damage. The republicans believe in laissez faire, while the democrats are in favour of regulation.

If the question is who shall rule, then if the right people are in power, all restraints should be loosened and they should be given the power to do what must be done. This runs both for and against libertarianism, because sometimes those in power are private interests, and sometimes they are in government. The epitome of this ethic is the Bush administration, where the government claimed extraordinary powers, while at the same time providing carte blanche to financial leaders to do as they pleased.

The results are catastrophic.

Social, political, and economic systems are artificial intelligences. They are not human, have no human concerns, and have no qualms about maiming, killing, or debasing their human participants. They have no ethical intelligence. They follow the dictates of their own internal logic. A man who takes money from investors, collects through force or guile a cadre of young girls to be sold as sex slaves, and thereby returns to his investors a great profit, is a good capitalist. He is not a good man, but the market does not concern itself with this. This is not to say that capitalists are evil, or that the capitalist system is evil. Rather, the capitalist system does not, in and of itself, have any regard for ethical concerns. It is merely an instrument, a machine that can be used for good or ill, and so too are religions, political organizations, corporations, media, or other systems of mass persuasion. These are all artificial intelligences, with human participants but with no soul of their own. These are tools, not ends in themselves, and they will act according to their own internal logic regardless of the effects of that logic upon actual human beings. We must not expect such blind processes to deliver, in and of themselves, ethical goods. A conscious and scrupulous human hand in needed to bring their effects to good ends.

Furthermore, these systems have the power to shape human beings to their own goals, if their human participants come to see the system itself as having some moral imperative. This belief is a product of the naturalistic fallacy; these processes appear to predate contemporary efforts at regulation and so seem to be the natural order of things. This appearance is in part due to inborn tendencies in human beings, but is also due to the existence of long tradition, and any tradition can seem long if its participants have not bothered to learn any history. Any direct intervention to change these practices is therefore seen as unnatural. The naturalistic fallacy, simply phrased, is that what is natural is good and right. But it is human nature, practice, and history, that we challenge the natural and change it to suit us; nor is the natural good. It is natural that we should die before we reach the age of 40--because that is what happens in a state of nature. Are we content with this? Of course not--we thwart nature at every turn, when natural processes threaten our dearest hopes. It is natural that in primitive societies the people murder each other at astonishing rates. Is this good?

In the case of religion, God becomes the author of the natural, and tradition seals the validity of the status quo. Amongst those ignorant of history and the history of theology, the latest whims of the local pastor become eternal tradition. Yesterday's heresies becomes today's orthodoxies, and the line between cult and religion is erased. So too with economics; free market advocates might be stunned to discover that the system that they champion has only existed in its current form for a decade or two, and that the defenders of the free market that they cite from bygone centuries intended nothing like the current situation. Political ideologues reinvent their ideologies on an almost daily basis, and partisan pundits change their views with the rapidity of the Orwell's rabid mobs in Nineteen Eighty-Four, forgetting the past with the blink of an eye. The enemy is Eurasia. The enemy has always been Eurasia.

Returning to system as moral imperative, this assumption paves the way to serving the machine. Too many of the left see deliberate malevolence when all they are really dealing with is unquestioning accommodation. This too will create true evil in the long run; consider Eichmann. But the mischief is hidden till the bubble bursts, the plane crashes, the bridge collapses, the levee breaks. Layers of abstraction hide the true costs. We have brokers selling financial products that no one understands, and so they cannot see the consequences of their own actions. Adult supervision is required. One should not assume that the people in power know what they are doing; someone must have the job of figuring out what they are doing, and deciding whether it shall be allowed or not. That is what a government is for.

Americans and Canadians hold an estimated wealth of three quarters of a million dollars of intangible wealth per capita--even the poorest of us. Nearly all of this is in the form of trust, and this trust is directed towards or maintained by our governments. We have regulations that safeguard our food, clothing, housing, transport, industry, environment, banks (though, apparently, not in the U.S.), and in Canada, health care. We have trustworthy courts and police, extensive systems of roads, water, electricity, fire departments, welfare, and the popular welfare alternative, prison, which costs four times as much--and yet, a lot of people who rather pay for that than welfare. On any given day I would guess that the average person makes a thousand unconscious decisions which assume the competent action of government, and yet, like a fish who is always wet and thinks that it does not need water, many now believe that government is largely unnecessary. If you really think that the government that governs best governs the least, move to Somalia. The lesson will be short, brutal, fatal--and unequivocal.

But democratic government is not a system of unilateral imposition. In the early years of the Bush administration, and today in the Harper government, those in power hold the misguided opinion that gaining political office is the end of all debates, and that no further compromise is required. This has led Bush to ignore all detractors and to act in a purely partisan manner with his power for veto. Harper, having lost the confidence of the house twice in three months, calls this a coup, grossly misrepresenting the parliamentary system of government. The fallout for Bush was the decimation of the Republican Party; Harper now faces not only the possibility of an opposition coalition, but a knife in the back from his own party. The central principle of democracy is peer review, bringing into play a partial gridlock of various government branches and of opposing parties. Just as in scientific research and in the math tests we all took in school, you have to show your work so that other people can check it. Politicians who can't do this will get a failing grade. This is the real meaning of governing the least. No government can do everything it wants, but hopefully, after the checks and balances have been done, it will do what needs to be done.

Without an insertion of human values through government regulations, no system will produce the results we want. In the early 20th Century, the most successful and prolific serial killers in history thrived in the patent medicine business, poisoning customers and discouraging legitimate medical consultation amongst a vast clientele, with the result that tens of thousands died. The free market system did nothing to prevent this; dissatisfied customers may discourage others from buying your product, but dead men tell no tales. Without regulations to prevent certain kinds of ruthless profit seeking behaviour, the free market system poses moral hazards which will draw people into them, and these people will not just be ruthless sociopaths, but the Eichmanns among us, those of weak character who lack the capacity for ethical reflection needed to avoid such traps. The wild and unrestrained methods of financial institutions permitted financial managers to compete in a race to the bottom. It would be just deserts to visit a plague on all their houses and let all the banks crash and burn, but the money they have been gambling with is ours, and it will be our money that will be lost. The greatest irony is that the final product of all this freewheeling speculation will be that the government will hold the reins of these institutions, and that the very people let loose to do as they pleased will now have the government as their boss. I'm not certain that this is the solution either. Rather, this is the dog breaking its neck after being allowed to run on too long a leash.

That Kind of Person: The Genetic Fallacy

I have observed a recurrent pattern in partisan politics; the trope that "that kind of person" holds a certain opinion, and therefore that opinion is without merit. This is called the Genetic Fallacy. As an example, Adolf Hitler believed that smoking was bad for you. Does this mean that smoking is good for you?

Of course not. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But beyond the obvious fallacy, there is something even more insidious going on here: stereotyping and demonization. For an example of the first, lets take Stuff White People Like. It should be just a joke, but some take it seriously as a list of things that "that kind of person" like. I have news for them. At least half of these things are liked by people who are not at all the people you might expect them to be. If you assume they are bleeding heart liberals, some of them might surprise you by getting offended if you call them that. I know a few people who are "to the right of God" who like more than half the things on that list--but the list is supposed to be a litany of liberal values. This is another kind of fallacy: the Strawman fallacy. Never mind who people are, let's create a fantasy and attack that.

Guess what: people don't come in brands. They aren't stamped out on a cookie press with labels on them. Everyone is a mixed bag. Some of the people I really like and spend a lot of time with hold opinions that I abhor, and I still like them. Mostly, what I find is that they haven't really considered them that much, because these are issues that don't really concern them, and for the most part, I don't challenge them on it unless they invite the challenge. They take the most common opinion on the matter offered to them, whether it be their parents or their parish or their friends, and that's that. And its all wildly divergent, like the company they keep. I do, however, have an issue with those who presume to inform them without any qualifications. I'm really not big on demagogues, cult leaders, con-artists, pseudo-scientists, and pseudo-intellectuals. Those people are just begging to be challenged, and I'm happy to oblige. Fortunately, they do come with labels attached; usually, towering neon signs, with newspaper ads weeks in advance.

Now to my second point: stereotyping invites demonization. If you have a bunch of boxes prepared for the rest of humanity, with a mindlessly facile means of categorizing them, then you will go through life dropping people in boxes. He's one of those (hate them.) She's one of these (hate them.) Not really a good way to approach the world, is it? Hatred closes the door to understanding. You will never know whether you might like these people. More to the point, you will never really understand what it is they really think, or why they think it; strawman arguments prevent you from meeting the real argument, which means that you will never have any hope of convincing someone from the other side, because you are arguing with a fictional character of your own creation. And frankly, it's a good idea if you approach people as someone you might like if you had the time, even if you don't have the time. It makes simple human courtesy a lot easier than just hating them on the basis of their choice of cheese, just because some brainless drooling pundit said that that kind of person likes that cheese.

Worst of all, thinking of people as "that kind of person" makes you "that kind of person."

The Defector Problem

Pursuant upon my last post, I return the problem of defectors. Jonathan Haidt has once again returned to his theme of the moral criteria of tribe/purity/respect. Again, it does not occur to Haidt that these impulses should not be labeled moral motivations at all, but prejudices, and that academics do not reject them because academics are liberals, but because they have such a scandalous history. Consider this formulation of these same values: Ein Reich (tribe); Ein Volk (purity); Ein Fuhrer (respect). These do not deserve to be placed upon the same footing as justice and caring, and do not command the same respect simply because they have done nothing to earn it.

The responses are varied, many of which seem to miss the point entirely. Sam Harris's response was the closest to the mark. Michael Shermer's is very interesting, in that Shermer does not seem to realize that he has repudiated Haidt's main thesis, that conservative values are communitarian rather than individualistic values. Shermer is an extreme Libertarian (big L), which is a profoundly individualistic political position, and yet he defends the Republicans with this in mind. This illustrates one of the deepest divides in the republican party--they embrace both the religious right (which supposedly embraces communitarian values, though this may not actually be the case) and the libertarians, who are almost diametrically opposed to them.

Haidt seems unaware of this. Furthermore, he seems oblivious to these values on the left. In the vaccination scare, certain elements of the environmentalist movement, in the organic foods movement, and in the entire ideology of political correctness, there is an overwhelming emphasis on purity, so much so that when I first encountered the politically correct at university I called them The New Puritans. I won't go into depth about the ingroup/outgroup dynamic between the old and new left, or upon the reliance upon authority rather than evidence typified by the post-modernists--this would take more time than I have. When these emotional motivations do raise their head, pundits on the right attack them mercilessly, to which criticism I must, reluctantly, concede. Not only do I find these values on the left, I often find that they predominate to the point of embarrassment, and so I find Haidt's claims rather startling--how could he have missed something so blatantly obvious, and why didn't Shermer realize that he was refuting Haidt's central thesis?

Scott Atran's response was more to the point, but misses something alarming about religion. Yes, religion does encourage social solidarity, but at a cost. At a grassroots level, religion encourages cooperation and action as an interest group. And it does, at a grassroots level, discourage defection. But pay attention to what happens at the level of leadership. Consider the founders of three modern religions: Mormonism, Scientology, and the Unification Church.

They were all con men.

Joseph Smith had been imprisoned on charges of fraud before hitting upon the scheme of the golden tablets which purportedly contained the Book of Mormon. His earliest converts left him in disgust, having been swindled of most of their funds, and finally, Smith was lynched by a Christian mob who had had enough of his efforts to twist their religion to his own benefit. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard started his religion on a bet and lived a life of vindictive paranoia, culminating in the "Sea Org", a floating ministry made necessary by criminal investigations in several countries. The Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon, was primarily built around Chinese brainwashing techniques he encountered during the Korean War. Employing these techniques upon first world baby boomers, Moon built a large financial empire upon slave labour. The theology (as with Mormonism and Scientology) is a hallucinagenic montage of various elements which places Moon as Jesus' Superior.

The story of Mohammad had many parallels to that of Smith; his revelations seemed to conveniently coincide with his own desires, allowing him to marry any woman he had a hankering for, to wage war against anyone who disagreed with him, and to keep the lion's share of the spoils of those wars. When I first came across his story, decades ago while I was still a religious believer, he struck me as an obvious fraud. Nothing I have encountered since has changed my mind, and much has confirmed that opinion.

Let's leave aside the hordes of cult leaders (although it is an open question as to what distinguishes a cult from a religion, beyond the fact that religions outlive their founders), but let us pay attention to what is happening at the top of the religions, amongst the leaders. We have pedophile priests, terrorist demagogues, crooked televangelists, and closeted homosexuals campaigning against gay rights (what, was there no one in Haggard's congregation with gaydar?) All are defectors--and these defectors are at the top of the hierarchy. But for defectors, you must stand in awe of Karl Rove, a man who in public said that he was not fortunate enough to believe, and in private called the religious right "the crazies'. And yet this man commanded the position of at least a bishop, if not a pope, invoking God through targeted campaigns to motivate people en masse to political action. The Religious Right in America--that 15 to 30 percent who support Sarah Palin--is still called "Karl Rove's base".

To understand how this can be, consider this; what kind of person could claim, against all opposition, that they are the chosen of the Creator of the Universe, effectively the most important person in all that creation, and that they know with absolute certainty the infinite mind of that Creator? The arrogance of this claim, the sheer cock sureness, beggars imagination. Even the most manic episode will eventually come to an end, and then the claimant will slink off to the shadows. The only type of personality that could sustain such an imposture is that of a thoroughly unrepentant sociopath--the ultimate defector. The founder of a religion might possibly be a man or woman of great faith, but it is far more likely that they will be a consummate confidence trickster. And the historical record suggests that this is exactly the case. Indeed, the Bible is littered with warnings about false prophets. The problem has apparently been so ubiquitous, and so long present, that it was recognized even in ancient times.

This is what Atran and Haidt miss. Religion is a political tool, morally neutral in and of itself. It can be used for good or ill. At the grassroots level it is a community of mutual support; but thanks to the credulity it encourages amongst its adherents, religion is the ideal tool of the professional defector, permitting him to turn his followers into a political bloc, a cheap labour force, or an army. It is simply too easy to hack. The aura of righteousness that surrounds the leader blinds followers to the possibility of deceit.

The motive and mechanic is easy to understand--critical thinking is expensive, in both an economic and evolutionary sense. Consider lawyers; lawyers are hired skeptics. A good lawyer will scrutinize in exacting detail the terms of an agreement, looking for loopholes through which the other party could defraud the lawyer's client. But lawyers are expensive, and so too is the entire enterprise of skepticism. Imagine how much more efficient every transaction would be if both parties could be certain that trust was justified. And that is precisely what religion attempts; mere membership in the sect is supposed to be enough to certify good faith. Yet such an arrangement draws predators like flies to manure. A group of people who will not question my motives? Where do I sign on! The desire to arrange things so that trust is a given is not foolish; it is a rational arrangement worthy of that great fictional construct, homo economicus, the purely rational, self-interested actor, so popular amongst economists. If such an arrangement could truly be made, the benefits would be staggering. But any such arrangement will be sought out and exploited by the the most ruthless of predators. The price of freedom remains, forever, eternal vigilance.

Where such arrangements persist, they will begin to take on the characteristics specified by those predators. On occasions where I find myself reading Catholic apologists (as in First Things) I am repeatedly appalled by their hatred of the world and everything--and everyone--in it. There is an unmistakeably ripe smell of decay. Joy, beauty, friendship, comfort, and peace are all to be despised. These Catholic writers create a prison with walls of despair, a world of brambles and darkness, whose only light is the dim light of the Church. It is an orgy of nihilism that would make even Nietzsche blanch. There is nothing in life, and no escape, for suicide too is a mortal sin. All that is left is the afterlife. And what could be more useful to their clerical masters, for it is the church who claims the keys to heaven, the only good worth having. In pursuit of this good all other values are surfeit, to be surrendered up to the Church and its masters for their enjoyment. Thus, Opus Dei, the cult within a sect within a church, an organization which taps potentially wealthy professionals and turns them into cash cows. And so, we are told, by a Pope who arranged the clemency of child molesters and their protectors, that we need to trust the Church and obey its dictates. I left the Catholic Church amiably, thinking it the best of bad lot. But I find it too sullied by the hands of the worst of humanity to think this anymore.

The use of religion as a morally neutral political tool goes a long way to explaining how Christianity has been derailed from being a faith primarily about charity and mercy to being a religous movement almost exclusively focused upon sex, referenced by the code phrase "family values". The preoccupation with sex is expressed in the obsession with homosexuality, reproduction and reproductive rights, sex education, prurient obsessions with nudity, and women's rights (or the denial thereof.) There is remarkably little in the four gospels related to sex, but you wouldn't know it from the speeches of the evangelists. Add to this the resistance to evolution, and you have a religion obsessed with distracting trivialities, whose hollow core can now be filled with whatever its masters claim to be Christian values. The greatest threat to the world's religions is not the new atheists, but this gradual erosion of the spiritual and social aspect in favour of pure power politics; they stand to win the world but lose their souls, Nor does this side show or trivialities do anything to actually affect behavior; the most religious areas of America still have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, divorce, and children born of single mothers. A supernatural moral arbiter and conductor of mortal affairs can be petitioned and bribed; it doesn't matter what you do on Saturday night as long as you can pray for forgiveness on Sunday morning. For the secular there is no escape clause. Reality offers no such buffer between action and consequence. Whatever their stated intentions, the methods of religious leaders do not work.

The best analogy I can think of is the One Ring of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Each community bound by blind faith offers a means that can rule them all, that can be used to draw them all together and bind them to the darkness of ignorance. Religion is, of course, not alone in creating such a trap; political ideologies have proven their ability to do the same thing. The trick seems consist of promising a simple explanation for everything, a Utopian vision whereby, once we have dispensed with the evil of X, we shall all benefit from the ascendance of Y, leading us to the promised land. It is always a lie. It is never that simple. Religious believers and political ideologues alike must be made aware of the power they are handing over to the worst people possible. The Ring must be destroyed.

The Hard Problem

The main challenge of human society and politics is, in terms of game theory, the problem of defection. That is, how do you prevent free riders, thieves, bandits, and thugs? How do you ensure that those who are able contribute at least as much as they take, if not more? For surely, we do not begrudge the costs of supporting the unfit, those who are, by accident or by birth, incapable of carrying their weight. It is the mark of civilization that we find in the fossil record the presence of people who would not have lived without the care and support of others. To consign those who are unable through no fault of their own to destitution and death is to embrace barbarism.

Those who refuse to contribute by choice are another matter. Ayn Rand foolishly claimed that there can be no conflict of interest between rational actors, but if there is a good chance of escaping detection and of getting away with it, isn't defection a rational act? Isn't it perfectly rational for me to steal from you, if I think I can get away with it? Our disgust with cheaters is emotional, and in some circles, this disgust is barely present--if someone is clever enough to rob others blind and get away with it, there are people who will applaud his actions and even emulate them. I have no use for this sentiment, but the fact that some do demonstrates that our distaste for it is not entirely rational. It is a sentiment born of empathy, the basis for ethics.

In my recent ruminations on libertarianism, I have been struck by the fact that it is the new opiate of the intellectuals, a status formerly occupied by communism. So what is it, then, that communism and libertarianism--indeed, all the isms, including the religions, have in common that makes them attractive? What makes them all appear to be the ideal solution to all of society's problems?

The answer, I now believe, is that they ignore the hard problem of defection. A hard problem is not merely technically hard, to be solved by the application of current knowledge; it is theoretically hard, meaning that we don't even have the theoretical framework to address it. But the hard problem of defection is viewed by ideologies as a temporary and unnatural condition imposed by some social or political blight--call it X; once X is removed, through the mechanism or intervention of Y (the One True Way) the natural balance will be restored and the new utopia will result. X can be evil spirits, civilization, industry, marketing, atheism, secularism, capitalism, government, liberalism, conservatism, etc. Y can be any religion, communism, history, naturalism, spiritualism, environmentalism, libertarianism, central planning, anarchism, the market, etc.

Inherent in this view of the world is the idea of the noble savage, the marvelous creature that we would be if only we could conquer the worm that has turned us, the malevolent force that has corrupted us and defiled our true nature, But the truth is that we in the West live in a condition of unprecendented peace, prosperity, order, competence, and freedom. There was no golden age. The historical record has progress written all over it, and so far, so good. This is not to say that we have it all right, but we have it better than any of our ancestors. The fact is that we are it; we are what everyone, past and present, want to be. We have what they want and wanted. The average middle class westerner enjoys a standard of living, freedom, culture (if they so desire) and health that the kings of a century or more ago could only have prayed for.

The premise of the noble savage is nonsense, and the avoidance of the hard problem is nonsense on stilts. Implicit in the myth of the noble savage is the myth of Utopia, that magical world which we would achieve if only we defeated the unnatural circumstances which prevent us from reverting to our natural state. Ideologies sweep the hard problem under the carpet. Communists thought that if they got rid of capitalism, everyone would simply enthusiastically work for the common good. We all know how that worked out. Libertarians think that if they get rid of government restraints, everyone will suddenly be possessed of a sterling character. Do we really need to go down this road again? For once, can we not just take the lesson as a given and move on?

Ideology, and its bastard child partisanship, are of absolutely no use to addressing the hard problem. In fact, they are an impediment. Consider this conundrum: a government agency makes a mistake. The opposition party plays up this mistake to the press, blaming it upon the governing party. The press takes up the cause, and at length the governing party appoints an investigative committee. The committee performs its enquiry and makes recommendations, which almost invariably include a regulative body to ensure that such mistakes are not made in the future. The committee, and the new regulative body, are additional layers of bureaucracy. In Canada, the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal cost far more than the original scandal. The inquiry was demanded by the Conservatives, the same party who initiated the sponsorship program, and who spent most of the money. But when Gomery made his recommendations, the same party folded them into paper airplanes and tossed them out the window. And this was the party supposedly in favor of fiscal responsibility. But it could have gone the other way, with the positions of the parties reversed. Partisanship costs us a fortune.

There is no theoretical or ideological solution to the hard problem of defection. Religion specializes, not in spirituality, but in communitarian solidarity and conformity. I recently heard an interview on the CBC with a man who stated that people who go to churches do so not to seek spirituality, but to avoid it; those who go to church have far fewer spiritual experiences than those who don't. But you would think that community would solve the problem of defection. It doesn't. If it did, there were be no priestly pedophiles. Religious authority provides the ideal cover for the defector; if there is an interventionist God, he certainly would not allow such and egregious abuse of power in his name. But there is no such God, and the belief that he will intervene to prevent such offenses provides superb cover for those intending to commit them. The history of Christianity is a story of the abuse of power, and splinter groups formed to avoid such abuses only to be infected themselves. Islam is riddled with similar blights, but far worse. And because religions are mutually antagonistic, they disrupt attempts at cooperation across religious lines. Religion does not work.

The problem runs far deeper. The solution to it is something called Intangible Wealth--a happy coincidence of faith in government and judicial systems, police, and other people--a conviction that one's society is a meritocracy that will recognize and reward effort and excellence, and will not silence the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. This, in a nutshell, is the American Dream--though not necessarily the American reality. Freedom works. My argument with libertarianism is not with that; freedom is strength, knowledge is power, trade is peace. My argument with libertarianism is that it is too simplistic. Hard core Libertarians are anarchist loons, and it is worth remembering that anarchism is a primitive state of social organization to which, by comparison, feudalism is considered a significant advance. Capitalism exists through a steady partnership with government. Intangible Wealth is, in large part, a trust in the system of government. Doctrinaire Libertarianism is a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

I find survivalists an endless source of mirth. These are people poised to bolt at the first sign of trouble, defectors in waiting. Yet there are perhaps ten thousand people in Canada who know how to survive and forage in the wilderness. That is extraordinary percentage for any population. Most survivalists will have their bones discovered in the mud fifty or a hundred years later. The proper response, in any time of crisis is to go to a densely populated area and say "Hi, I'm here to help. What can I do?" Fortunately, this is precisely what most people will do. Crises pull people together--the cowardly thoughtless sheeple who populate disaster movies and episodes of 24 are revealed for the lie they are by the thousands of feats of civilian heroism on 9/11. On that day it was the civilians who demonstrated their mettle, while the officials were notably absent. Civilization will not collapse--and there is no survival without it anyway. Civilization is precisely a system of solutions to the task of keeping large numbers of human beings alive. Isolation from society, for the vast majority of human beings, is death.

And therein lies the hope; most people are actually good. The problem with ideologies is not so much that they make good people bad, but that they can make bad people and evil acts appear to be good. They jam our moral compass. Fortunately, most people interpret them according to their own mores, but that still leaves room for the demagogues, who attempt to enforce one-size-fits-all solutions to extremely hard and complex problems.

It's never that simple.

In Defense of Reason

Recently New Scientist had a series of articles talking about the limitations of reason. They run from the hackneyed (Rowan Williams talking about how reason doesn't a basis for morality) to neuroscience (consciousness lags behind actual decision making) to the cliched--reason doesn't explain aesthetics, doesn't account for "other ways of knowing", etc.

Consciously used reason is like riding a bicycle with the training wheels--it's what you do till you get the knack. But practice makes perfect, and the way you practice making proper judgements is to apply reason to your decisions. The denigration of reason is like expecting you to play a sport perfectly without ever having practiced. I'm sure that the first time that Tiger Woods swung a golf club, he missed the ball, or knocked it off to the side. Even a natural needs practice. We practice thinking by using reason, by analyzing the roots of our decisions, ferreting out the unexamined and erroneous factors, and replacing these with sound principles. By doing so, we eventually learn to do it "without thinking"--but a lot of thought goes into this end result.

The best analogy I can think of is from programming. When you begin writing a program, you first debug by eye, examining the logic manually to look for errors. The next step is compiling, where the compiler picks out syntax errors, which you must then correct. Yet even then, you run the program in debug mode; the code is festooned with symbols and error checking, which makes it slow, but which allows you to trace the logic and find the errors in your code. Only when it passes all these tests, and functions perfectly, do you compile a release build. The release build is optimized for speed and size, but it is incomprehensible, without symbols or the ability to trace the logic properly. It is unconscious code, no longer available for examination. Reason is the error checker. Once you've debugged your thinking, you can stop thinking about it--you reach your conclusions unconsciously.

While it may be true that reason alone will not lead to a complete system of ethics of aesthetics, it is also certain that the negligence of reason will result in a compacted version of both. It was only when the ideas of the enlightenment encountered the impulse of empathy that slavery and sexism were recognized as untenable and unethical. Or perhaps Rowan Williams would like to return to the primitive ethics of the ancient era, or those of the stone age, when murder was the leading cause of death. This was the product of ethics unleavended by reason. And reason may not be sufficient, in and of itself, for aesthetics, but it was responsible for the science of perspective which resulted in the artistic explosion of the renaissance, and for the ideas which have dominated every school of art from that point forward. I do not hear the anti-rationalists praising the skills of cave painters as the ultimate achievement of the arts. But if you want art without reason, that is what remains.

What I see in the denigration of reason is a culture of mediocrity, and ready-made excuse not to think or strive. I am reminded of the purile sentiments of the Star Wars movies: "Stretch forth with your feelings, use the force." Apparently heeding his own advice, George Lucas achieved new levels of mediocrity in big budget productions, assaulting his fans with wooden characters and dialogue desparately in need of some critical correction. Reason is critical, in both senses of the word--important, and corrosive when applied to nonsense.

But like knowledge, a little reason is a dangerous thing--the problem being not reason itself, but reason that stops and roots itself on what, in a search algorithm, we would refer to as "local minima"; this is a problem encountered when the search is too narrow. In pathing, the AI will get stuck in a dead end. Such a solution appears perfect only because too little critical thinking is applied to it.

I have been compiling a list of over 40 motivations for religious belief. Amongst these is the illusion of certainty, the conviction that you have a simple explanation for everything. I think this one lands in the top five, and it explains not only religions, but all the 'isms', those one-size-fits-all solutions to all the world's problems. None of these work. The influences upon the mind of a single human being include genetics, physical development, childhood and educational influences, culture, fashion, information or the lack thereof, physical states, emotional states, community membership and peer influence, self-interest, fear, and unexamined assumptions--and I'm sure I haven't caught everything here. When considering an entire society, you raise the level of complexity exponentially. No simple algorithm could encompass all that.

And still, even people who pride themselves on being rational fall for such simple-minded transcendalizations. Marxism used to be the opiate of the intellectuals; the flavour of the day is Libertarianism. There is nothing wrong with charity or freedom, just as there is nothing wrong with intuition, love, beauty, or even reason itself. The problem arises when you take any single principle and raise it to the level where you believe nothing else is required.

All have their place, just as reason has its place. But now we seem to be treated to a procession of people who would like to claim that reason isn't needed at all, or that it has done nothing for us. Of course, the argument is inherently contradictory, as you need reason to argue against reason. And invariably, when denigrating reason, there is something else that the critic would like to put in its place--usually faith, or some other, vaguely specified "way of knowing." But none of these ways of knowing actually produce knowledge, and all of them, if one examines them carefully, require the use of reason to train them and clarify them. Without reason, none of them would amount to much.

Flirting with Anarchy

Why does America have the highest rate of crime in the Western world, despite the highest incarceration rates, and extraordinary wealth? The explanation of poverty does not hold water--there are many poor countries where the poorest have little involvement in crime (this title goes to the middle class). Race and poverty do play a part, but not in the way that we expect. For underlying the argument that race and poverty are the causes of crime is the assumption, and indeed, the justification, of the idea that the downtrodden have the right to take justice into their own hands. It is believed that the disadvantaged have the right, even the responsibility, to 'fight the power.'

This is not simply an outgrowth of the ill-fated revolutionary movements of the sixties. The ideology of those movements followed a common stream of American thought laid down as early the second amendment, the right to bear arms. Those arms were aimed at foreign invaders, but they were also aimed--and more often, as time went on--at the gub'mint. For among the entrenched principles of individual action so esteemed in the American experiment, was the esteem of lone justice, the strong man with a gun and two fists who brought justice to his community, whether he was a lawman or not.

The lone bringer of justice enforced justice as he saw it, not the justice detailed by laws and governments. He did what needed to be done, whether it was legal or not. American settlers in the west moved into a vacuum; the people outraced the government. In Canada, settlers arrived to find the RCMP already in place. The RCMP has had a checkered career since: the brutality of the strikes during the 30's, thuggish behavior and intimidation during the 70's. But the establishment of official lawmen before settlement set a precedent and a mode of conduct. You didn't fight the power, you partook in it, through democratic and economic participation. Whatever followed, those early mounties did us proud, establishing global precedents of detective work and negotiation.

But in America, the love of lone justice has inspired a problem. If justice is left to the individual, if one person can be judge, jury, and executioner, then how do you ensure that that person is qualified? The answer is that you can't, and that means that all manner of imbeciles will arrogate to themselves the right to impose their own manner of justice by force. The result is not just the likes of Timothy McVeigh, but an endless procession of underclass losers who have decided that the world has done them wrong, and they are going to get their own back. It is no accident that so many American criminals are of the lowest tier of intelligence; these are the very people who are prone to assuming that their failures are the fault of the 'system', and taking violent action to address this perceived injustice. The old left's insistence that this is the case only makes this worse; it shifts the burden of responsibility onto external entities, rather than upon poor choices. This is sometimes true, as in the case of people who have invested for their retirement and find their saving wiped out by the rapacious manuverings of stock brokers. But for those who do nothing, save nothing, or waste their money on get-rich-quick schemes, the temptation to blame it all on anyone but themselves is very strong, and they have a readymade ideology that encourages them to do just that.

So the gap between the far right militias and the ghetto gangs is not so far distant. Both are united in the belief that if you want justice, you have to impose it yourself. This belief not only encourages violence, it undermines faith in the democratic process. This is the dark underbelly of libertarianism; the government cannot be trusted to do anything. You have to do it yourself. And yet, this includes violence, and the government monopoly on violence is an integral part of the rule of law, without which you have anarchy. Libertarians would, no doubt, flinch from the very phrase "state monopoly of violence", but that is the price of peace, order, and good government. That is the Canadian promise, but at the moment, it seems to be the American dream. Perhaps it is time for them to look north, and understand how we did it.

It's Really A Something

In arguments against the physicality of mind, the subject of qualia often comes up. Qualia are direct experiences unmoderated by interpretation--the experience of seeing the color red, what it is to be a bat, and the like. Qualia are experiences which are ineffable (inexpressable and not communicable), intrinsic (self-contained and not dependent upon other knowledge), private (we cannot compare them), and immediately apprehensible (if you have the experience, you know it, and you know everything there is to know about it.)

Most of the arguments for qualia and against the physicality of the mind employ thought experiments which slip in the assumption that no physical change has been wrought in the body or brain by the experience, effectively assuming the consequent; we assume no physical basis for the experience, and presto, there is no physical basis! The inverted spectrum and zombie thought experiments are examples of this. Others hinge on the idea that qualia are inexpressable--but this says nothing about qualia, and much about the limitations of language. In any case, one would expect that a purely idealized form of expression would be ill suited to describing purely physical phenomena--these arguments actually support the physical basis of mind and experience, rather than weaken it. To be a bat, to see a color, or to have any direct experience is a physical event, involving deep underlying experiences involving sensory organs, muscular/skeletal sensations, and so on. Choreographers are still seeking a notation for dance which can express even the most basic repertoire of movements. Imagine trying to describe not only the movements in detail, but the detailed experience of performing them! And yet, there can be absolutely no doubt that these are physical actions and sensations.

In fact, qualia are the most physical aspect of consciousness. In discussions of the ineffable, mystical insights are usually regarded as the ultimate ineffable experiences. But how do these often come about? Through extreme conditions of the body--fasting, exertion to the point of collapse, drugs, the deliberate self infliction of pain, or repetitive or long held postures or activities. These experiences are commonly induced through direct or indirect manipulation of neurochemical states. Yet the claims of mysticism are that one has overcome the body, when in fact they have manipulated their bodies to achieve these states. Even the most spiritual of experiences is, at its very roots, physical.

Steven Pinker, in a recent article regarding The Stupidity of Dignity notes that Leon Kass, who loaded a council on bioethics with staunch Catholics, regarded any physical act, even eating, as undignified--Kass railed against the indignity of eating ice cream cones in public. Likewise, Kass exalts the imagined spiritual properties of an ovum over the physical good of living people. His sympathy with Catholicism is all too clear; Catholicism too values the mortification of the flesh and the exaltation of spirit. But this is simple vanity; a disgust with the limitations of human physicality in comparison with the exalted qualities of imagined gods and perhaps even with more perfect human specimens, a desire to be perfect, ideal in a Platonic sense, a resplendant being of light who does not fart or fuck or belch. A belief in spirit detached from the physical invites the hatred of life in all but principle, as all but stepping stone to the afterlife. The love of spirit becomes a loathing for humanity.

Finally, there is a claim that qualia are the most meaningful and significant of all experiences. The title of this post suggests the opposite. People that I have met who were veteran drug users are in the habit of making statements like "It's really a something!" "He's really doing something." "He's doing his scene." What do these statements mean? Nothing. They are utterly devoid of content, because they refer to the type of drug experiences in which the person is unable to integrate the experience. The tragedy of the youth drug culture is that, unlike the first pioneers of psychedelics, who were usually well versed in science, philosophy, literature, and mysticism, barely literate teenagers have no frame of reference. All they can say is "Wow!", and in retrospect, one wow is very much like another. These are raw qualia, but until they are drawn into the world of expression and related to other experience and knowledge, they remain physical noise. Qualia must cease to be qualia to acquire meaning. Only then do they properly become aspects of consciousness rather than the signals of the autonomic nervous system. Furthermore, it should be immediately apparent that, having been caused by a chemical, these experiences--which often approach the mystical--have an entirely physical basis.

There is a particular style of philosophical discussion which is properly called "nonsense on stilts"--discussions of things which neither refer to facts about the real world (do not touch the ground) nor involve precisely defined terms (nonsense). I suspect that metaphysics has not gained any ground since the ancient Greeks. It is not that they gave the final answers; they may not have even asked the right questions. The same arguments run back and forth without any resolution in sight, revolving around the definitions and redefinitions of vague words and concepts. These are language games. Some philosophers were so caught up in these games that they decided that all human interaction consisted of nothing more than language games, forgetting that most people actually devote most of their time talking about real things and events in the physical world. They had become so divorced from reality that they decided it did not exist. But any subject which does not bow to carefully gathered fact, or which does not restrict itself to concepts of near mathematical precision, will soon find itself building castles in the sky, to be cast down and raised again by whims of opinion. This is not knowledge, nor any way to achieve knowledge. This is mere sophistry. The stagnant condition of metaphysics and theology suggest that these disciplines are in precisely this rut.

When I first encountered metaphysics as a young undergraduate, it was my favorite topic. I thought I had discovered magic, a means of unraveling the secrets of the universe without ever being forced to learn about the world. Through the simple exploration and combination of vague concepts I could understand, and perhaps even affect, the world. I wonder how much of this still animates enthusiasm for metaphysics, and for non-physical explanations of reality. If consciousness is non-physical yet can still influence reality, then perhaps one can do away with the whole bother of moving and exploring, avoid death, even avoid the physical disciplines of the mystics required to attain peace of mind. It is this aspect of wishful thinking most of all that makes arguments for non-physicality suspect.