The Objectivist
THE IRAQ WAR: THREE BAD ARGUMENTS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 14, 2007
The Theist's powerful and interesting arguments for continuing to pour money and lives into the Iraq are worth close consideration. He provides three arguments for continuing the war. First, we want to demoralize the Middle Eastern terrorists. Second, we destroyed Iraq's country (their internal security forces and infrastructure) and thus owe it to the Iraqi citizens to leave the country on firm footing. Third, it is in our economic interests because further terrorist attacks will cripple our economy. Seeing why these arguments fail highlights what's wrong with the view that we should fight on no matter what the costs.
Consider The Theist's first argument: the war demoralizes Islamic terrorist organizations. The Theist concedes that the purpose of the war is not to defeat Al Qaeda. He likely does so because continuing the war will at most set them back. It probably won't eliminate them in Iraq and has little to do with their presence elsewhere. Even General David Petraeus, the commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq and leading proponent of continued U.S. effort there, admitted in his report to Congress that rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would not result in Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground. It's also worth noting that as of this past August, violence in Iraq was at an all-time high (measured in terms of average daily attacks against coalition, Iraqi security forces, and civilians). Any gains are very recent and probably don't reflect the terrorist organizations' death throes.
Consider how unsuccessful the demoralization strategy has been against other terrorist groups. Most of Israel's recent gains against Palestinian terrorist groups didn't come about by demoralizing them. They came about when Israel withdrew from the occupied territories and built a wall to isolate itself from them. Great Britain didn't defeat the Irish Republican Army by breaking their morale. Ditto for the Soviet Union against the mujahadin and the United States against the Viet Cong. If a strategy has repeatedly proven itself to be a loser, we shouldn't adopt it.
I issue two challenges to the pro-war side.
1) Provide a list of more than a few or handful of ethnic or religious terrorist attacks when the target wasn't occupying or helping to occupy the terrorist's homeland.
2) Provide historical examples when ethnic or religious terrorist groups have been defeated by demoralizing them, as opposed to killing them or negotiating an agreement.
Answer or admit defeat.
The Theist's second reason is that because we destroyed their country, we should rebuild it for them. This is a version of the Pottery Barn slogan, "You break it, you buy it." This rests on a mistake about the duty to compensate those we've injured. If you defend innocent victims against an unjust attacker, you need not compensate those indirectly harmed by the defensive action. For example, if a rapist attacks a woman in a parking lot and you club him into submission, you don't owe compensation to his children for the income and support they lost as their dad lay in the hospital. Similarly, if Saddam Hussein was indeed an unjust and cruel tyrant, and this is uncontroversial, and the U.S. removed him using proportionate defensive force, then it doesn't owe compensation to those who were indirectly harmed by the defensive violence.
The Theist might respond that it is still be a nice gesture to hand over another trillion dollars (another $14,000 per working couple) and spend a thousand more lives to help out the Iraqis. The notion that taxpayers' wallets should be drained and the U.S. military turned into an international charity is an expansive view of our government that is distasteful for anyone who thinks that the military should only be used to defend Americans against attack and who doesn't think that Washington should show compassion by shoveling dollars to foreigners.
The Theist's third argument is that ongoing war is economically prudent because it will prevent a future attack that would cripple our economy. This is a mistake for a couple of reasons. Nothing wrecks an economy like high taxes and this war is a massive source of increased spending that helps to maintain anti-competitive tax rates. The U.S. already has some of the highest corporate income-tax rates in the world. Only Germany and Japan have higher corporate-tax rates and only Japan has a higher inheritance-tax rate. If we continue to have an atmosphere that is hostile to business, our economy will suffer. Politically, the war has helped put taxpayer-haters like Charles Rangel (D-NY) into the driver's seat. They then spend their days figuring how to jack up capital-gains and dividend-tax rates. Also, if our continuing presence in Iraq makes terrorists attacks more likely (see above challenges), then The Theist's argument doesn't even get off the ground. Also, if it leads to a war in Iran, even he would have to admit that this war has generated an unbelievably expensive mess.
One related argument is that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists will turn their attention to Israel and we will be drawn into defending them, which will be far more expensive. Israel has no problem defending itself. They have the best military in the Middle East and a well-known and potent nuclear arsenal. Terrorist groups and especially their state sponsors know full well that starting a fight with Israel leads to certain death and destruction. Even if that weren't the case, we give Israel more than $2.5 billion in welfare a year. Even if this were justified, and I don't see why it is, this is more than generous enough.
The Theist's arguments are unconvincing. They rest on misconceptions about stopping terrorist attacks, our responsibility for economic harm that resulted from our removal of Saddam Hussein, and the war's continuing costs. Dumping another trillion dollars and a thousand more lives into Iraq is just not prudent.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "The Theist". Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "The Theist". Sort by date Show all posts
19 December 2007
28 September 2006
Objectivist: An Ugly Choice--The Problem of Evil
AN UGLY CHOICE: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
09/27/06
The existence of evil is obvious. All one has to do is read about Auschwitz, watch shows about rebels cutting off of arms in Sierra-Leone, or listen to calls on a rape crisis hotline. Evil presents a real problem for theists (those who believe that God exists). They often believe that God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, but it is hard to see how this fits with widespread evil. If God allows evil to occur, then it appears that he is uncaring and thus not all-good. If God doesn't allow it, but instead is powerless to do anything about it, then it seems that he is unable do something or doesn't know how to do it. As a result, he would not be all-powerful and all-knowing.
There are several evil-related problems that The Theist might consider. He might want to explain why there is any evil, why there is so much evil, and why evil plagues innocent creatures like infants and cute furry animals. The theist might assert that good can't exist without evil and hence evil is a means by which God makes the world a better place. The idea might be that only in the context of human suffering can persons can exhibit sympathy, courage, and kindness and that these virtues are the best features of the world. Hence, widespread suffering is necessary for human beings to shine and make the world a better place.
If this response involves the notion that good can exist only in the context of evil, then it is unconvincing. It is certainly possible for God to create a world without suffering. For example, he might have created a planet in which ET (the extra-terrestrial) and Barney the Dinosaur spend their time hugging, exchanging gifts, and giggling. This is a nauseating scenario, but nonetheless one in which there is good in the absence of evil. Even if this response were convincing, the theist still wouldn't have explained why there is moral evil. For example, he still wouldn't have explained the cruelty and malice that have characterized so much of human history and that regularly appears on the Jerry Springer show.
The Theist's best bet would probably be to argue instead that both natural evil (for example, disease-related suffering) and moral evil (for example, cruelty) are explained by the value of having creatures who have free will. The argument would be that the world is a better place when it has free beings who choose to do good but who can do evil, rather than robots that are mechanically designed to do good. Since God wants to create a really good world, he has chosen to create a world populated with free beings. On this account, then, the value of beings with free will in part explains why there is evil.
There are a couple of problems with the notion that human beings have free will, at least in the radical way that theists think they do. First, a human being is best thought of as similar to a really complex computer. Both have a processing unit (silicon chips in a computer and neural circuitry in the brain) and input (typed in commands or mouse clicks in the computer and environment influences in a person). On this account, a person's thoughts and actions are determined by the combination of circuitry and the input just as is the output of any other complex machine. Like other complex machines, persons cannot reshape the processing unit or input any more than they can jump out of their skin. That is, an individual's decision to reshape his brain or environment would itself have to be the result of what happened in the processor or the environment.
Second, on The Theist's account, a person has free will because he is a spiritual entity that is distinct from his brain and thus not at all like a complex computer. However, this position is so unscientific it hurts. There is a mountain of evidence that consciousness occurs in the brain. For example, different types of abilities (for example, speech and face recognition) have been found to correlate with activity in specific parts of the brain. Various changes in the brain (for example, the neural degeneration of Alzheimer's or the introduction of alcohol or LSD) produce changes in thought patterns. In addition, there is no evidence I'm aware of that persons exist after their brains have been destroyed. Also, the similar brain structure of human beings and other primates reflects their similar evolutionary past and the theist's ghost-in-the-machine account is at odds with evolution.
Given the problem of evil, the theist can retain his belief in God only by adopting philosophically indefensible and thoroughly unscientific views of human beings. What an ugly choice.
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
09/27/06
The existence of evil is obvious. All one has to do is read about Auschwitz, watch shows about rebels cutting off of arms in Sierra-Leone, or listen to calls on a rape crisis hotline. Evil presents a real problem for theists (those who believe that God exists). They often believe that God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, but it is hard to see how this fits with widespread evil. If God allows evil to occur, then it appears that he is uncaring and thus not all-good. If God doesn't allow it, but instead is powerless to do anything about it, then it seems that he is unable do something or doesn't know how to do it. As a result, he would not be all-powerful and all-knowing.
There are several evil-related problems that The Theist might consider. He might want to explain why there is any evil, why there is so much evil, and why evil plagues innocent creatures like infants and cute furry animals. The theist might assert that good can't exist without evil and hence evil is a means by which God makes the world a better place. The idea might be that only in the context of human suffering can persons can exhibit sympathy, courage, and kindness and that these virtues are the best features of the world. Hence, widespread suffering is necessary for human beings to shine and make the world a better place.
If this response involves the notion that good can exist only in the context of evil, then it is unconvincing. It is certainly possible for God to create a world without suffering. For example, he might have created a planet in which ET (the extra-terrestrial) and Barney the Dinosaur spend their time hugging, exchanging gifts, and giggling. This is a nauseating scenario, but nonetheless one in which there is good in the absence of evil. Even if this response were convincing, the theist still wouldn't have explained why there is moral evil. For example, he still wouldn't have explained the cruelty and malice that have characterized so much of human history and that regularly appears on the Jerry Springer show.
The Theist's best bet would probably be to argue instead that both natural evil (for example, disease-related suffering) and moral evil (for example, cruelty) are explained by the value of having creatures who have free will. The argument would be that the world is a better place when it has free beings who choose to do good but who can do evil, rather than robots that are mechanically designed to do good. Since God wants to create a really good world, he has chosen to create a world populated with free beings. On this account, then, the value of beings with free will in part explains why there is evil.
There are a couple of problems with the notion that human beings have free will, at least in the radical way that theists think they do. First, a human being is best thought of as similar to a really complex computer. Both have a processing unit (silicon chips in a computer and neural circuitry in the brain) and input (typed in commands or mouse clicks in the computer and environment influences in a person). On this account, a person's thoughts and actions are determined by the combination of circuitry and the input just as is the output of any other complex machine. Like other complex machines, persons cannot reshape the processing unit or input any more than they can jump out of their skin. That is, an individual's decision to reshape his brain or environment would itself have to be the result of what happened in the processor or the environment.
Second, on The Theist's account, a person has free will because he is a spiritual entity that is distinct from his brain and thus not at all like a complex computer. However, this position is so unscientific it hurts. There is a mountain of evidence that consciousness occurs in the brain. For example, different types of abilities (for example, speech and face recognition) have been found to correlate with activity in specific parts of the brain. Various changes in the brain (for example, the neural degeneration of Alzheimer's or the introduction of alcohol or LSD) produce changes in thought patterns. In addition, there is no evidence I'm aware of that persons exist after their brains have been destroyed. Also, the similar brain structure of human beings and other primates reflects their similar evolutionary past and the theist's ghost-in-the-machine account is at odds with evolution.
Given the problem of evil, the theist can retain his belief in God only by adopting philosophically indefensible and thoroughly unscientific views of human beings. What an ugly choice.
27 October 2006
God and the Meaning of Life
ATHEISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 25, 2006
The Theist argues that if atheism is true then life is meaningless. I think he's wrong. The question of what constitutes a meaningful life is ambiguous. The question might be asking what makes a person's life go well for him. Alternatively, it might be asking what about a person's life makes the world a better place (that is, what makes it morally good). Let's focus on the first question.
There are two general types of theory about what makes someone's life go better. The internalist theory says that how well someone's life goes depends solely on what goes on in our head. Usually these theories focus on pleasure. The externalist theory says that how well someone's life goes depends in part on things outside of our head. Usually, this involves things like meaningful relationships, true beliefs, etc. On this second theory, a life consisting of laughter, Hostess products, and sex with Paris Hilton is not a great one, even if it is very pleasurable. Now let us ask ourselves whether on either theory the existence of God would make our lives great. That is, would the presence of God lead to greater pleasure, more loving relationships, or true beliefs? No. God might cause these things to happen but his mere presence doesn't bring them about.
Even the notion that God causes these things to come about is doubtful. After all, how happy someone appears to be is a result of how healthy he is, how well his relationships with his family and friends go, whether he is free from violence, and so on. Unless one thinks that God constantly intervenes in our lives, it is hard to see why someone would think that God affects these factors. Even on the usual theist account, persons' relationship with God is so plagued by guesswork, unfamiliarity, and faith that it is hard to see how it could have much affect on how well persons' lives go. For example, whether Princess Diana had children and got divorced had a much bigger effect on her happiness during her lifetime than her personal relationship with God.
If we instead focus on what about a person's life makes the world a better place, it is still hard to see how God's existence affects this issue. We often think that persons whose lives go well make the world a better place, whereas suffering ones do the opposite. This idea might have to be tweaked a little bit to take into account what people deserve. For example, it might be better if bad guys like Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler suffer rather than flourish. With regard to the living, it is again hard to see how God comes into play here. Unless he is, like Santa Claus, constantly handing out pleasure to good boys and pain to bad ones, he doesn't seem to affect these factors. And if he did frequently intervene, then he would be making a mockery out of the notion that we should live with the consequences of our freely chosen actions, a notion that lies at the heart of contemporary theism.
A theist might object that a meaningful life depends on God because it is God who decides what is meaningful. However, this doctrine generates the absurd consequence that God has no reason to make some things meaningful (for example, love and knowledge) and other things not (for example, prison rape and Spam). He could have just as easily decreed the opposite since there is no answer to what is meaningful before he laid down standards. Since no theist wants to sign on to such absurdity, this objection isn't helpful.
Other objections based on flaky views of what makes the world a better place don't help the theist's case. For example, on Christopher Hitchens's interpretation, Mother Teresa viewed suffering as something that is good for the world because it is an expression of affiliation with Jesus Christ and his ordeal on the cross. Others view lives lived in fellowship with God as the only way that persons make the world a better place. Such views are less helpful than an anvil is to Wiley E. Coyote.
The theist's best response here is to acknowledge the above arguments but claim that a meaningful life is closely tied to immortality and it is only through God's efforts that persons live eternally. If this claim were plausible, then the theist would be in a strong position. But why think that a meaningful life is closely tied to immortality? A finite life (for example, Ronald Reagan's life) can include love, laughter, and knowledge that make it a successful one. Also, such a life seems to make the world a better place. For example, we would prefer world-creators who bring about more of these lives and fewer lives that are nasty, brutish, and short. Certainly, an ecstatic life that is infinite is better than a finite one, but the latter is still good.
In short, atheism doesn't result in life being meaningless. Luckily for the theist, he need not sign on to such a claim. However, like the Egyptian Pharaoh, the theist is still subject to plagues, in this case the plague of having a contradictory and unscientific world view.
***
KNOW GOD, KNOW MEANING
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 25, 2006
Many theists say that a life without God is meaningless, or that if atheism were true, human life would have no meaning. In a sense, these claims are true, but we must be clear about what we're saying and what we're not saying--"meaning" is a very ambiguous term.
Even if atheism were true, life might still have "meaning" in several senses. First, if a "meaningful" life is a morally good one, then yes, even if God doesn't exist, people's lives can be more or less meaningful. One who raises responsible children lives better than one who becomes a serial rapist. Second, if a "meaningful" life is one filled with activities which you desire or value, then sure, even if God doesn't exist, your life may have meaning. You may, if you're lucky, mostly get what you want. Of course, you may place a high value on, say, stealing, rather than on something obviously good, such as loving personal relationships. But either way, yes, your life may have meaning, in this sense, even if God exists but you ignore him, and even if God is simply a fiction. Third, when some people talk about a "meaningful" life they mean one which significantly benefits others. Again, even if God doesn't exist, your life may benefit others; for example, without God you may relieve suffering, help to mend broken relationships, and promote tolerance and kindness. So in any of these three senses of "meaning," if someone says "If there's no God, then life is meaningless," she speaks a falsehood.
It would be highly premature, though, to stop here, declaring that God's existence isn't relevant to the meaningfulness of our lives. If God exists, then he has a purpose for creation as a whole, for the human race, and for your life. Let's focus on this last one. If God exists, then there is a purpose for your life--one which neither you nor any other human created, and one which you can't just will to go away. And this isn't just any purpose--it was picked by a perfectly good, all-knowing being, who is in charge of history. Your life was meant to fit in with his project in history, with his aims--what the Bible calls his "Kingdom." Moreover, this purpose is a perfect fit for you, as it takes into account all those things which together make you unique; an all-knowing being doesn't try to cram square pegs into round holes.
Further, you might think that a "meaningful" life can't be one which has always been doomed to utter loss. But if atheism is true, then you, your family, the human race, and every cause you've ever worked for, is ultimately doomed--all of these things will cease to exist, and the universe won't miss them as it reverts to a lifeless state. Not so, for the theist--she looks forward to life everlasting.
Even our concessions in the second paragraph need qualifying. Theists (especially Christians) hold that there's a deep, consistent, self-sacrificing kind of moral goodness which is out of people's reach unless they deliberately accept divine help ("grace"). If they're right about this, then in an atheistic universe, or a theistic one in which you're a mistaken non-theist, there's a kind of beyond-the-norm goodness which is beyond your reach. Further, theism is an enormous help to moral motivation. If I believe that God is always watching, and will some day hold me to account, I'll be motivated to behave even when no one else is looking.
Even more importantly, if God exists, there can't be a conflict between my self-interest (what is beneficial to me) and what morality requires. If I get into a situation where only I can jump on the hand grenade, saving five other lives, I'll be fully motivated to jump on it--it is moral, and it'll be a net gain for me as well, thanks to God. Of course, atheists are capable of such heroic goodness as well, but it seems to them that self-interest and moral duty frequently conflict, which tends to reduce their motivation to do what is right.
Second, how do we know which things are worthy of being valued by us? Some projects are futile (e.g. the Walter Mondale campaign), and others, if they succeed, prove to be disastrous, despite the noble intentions of their promoters (e.g. the so-called Cultural Revolution in China). Others are simply a waste of time (e.g. completing your collection of “Family Guy” paraphernalia). But a person who actually cooperates with God promotes a project (God's Kingdom) which is guaranteed to succeed, and which will be supremely and purely good when it does. This project is the assembling of a group of people, from all corners of human society, who above all love God and their neighbor. These people freely cooperate with God, and by his grace become increasingly like him.
No--we're not talking about electing more Republicans, people. Or Democrats. We're talking about something which works by love, friendship, and rational persuasion, not coercion of any kind, and so transcends politics, and accomplishes more than merely political means ever could--which is inviting people to become God- and other-centered, and then (here’s the kicker) actually making that possible.
Is this the only way to make the world a better place? No. But it's the only way which has no significant downside and which is destined to succeed long-term.
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 25, 2006
The Theist argues that if atheism is true then life is meaningless. I think he's wrong. The question of what constitutes a meaningful life is ambiguous. The question might be asking what makes a person's life go well for him. Alternatively, it might be asking what about a person's life makes the world a better place (that is, what makes it morally good). Let's focus on the first question.
There are two general types of theory about what makes someone's life go better. The internalist theory says that how well someone's life goes depends solely on what goes on in our head. Usually these theories focus on pleasure. The externalist theory says that how well someone's life goes depends in part on things outside of our head. Usually, this involves things like meaningful relationships, true beliefs, etc. On this second theory, a life consisting of laughter, Hostess products, and sex with Paris Hilton is not a great one, even if it is very pleasurable. Now let us ask ourselves whether on either theory the existence of God would make our lives great. That is, would the presence of God lead to greater pleasure, more loving relationships, or true beliefs? No. God might cause these things to happen but his mere presence doesn't bring them about.
Even the notion that God causes these things to come about is doubtful. After all, how happy someone appears to be is a result of how healthy he is, how well his relationships with his family and friends go, whether he is free from violence, and so on. Unless one thinks that God constantly intervenes in our lives, it is hard to see why someone would think that God affects these factors. Even on the usual theist account, persons' relationship with God is so plagued by guesswork, unfamiliarity, and faith that it is hard to see how it could have much affect on how well persons' lives go. For example, whether Princess Diana had children and got divorced had a much bigger effect on her happiness during her lifetime than her personal relationship with God.
If we instead focus on what about a person's life makes the world a better place, it is still hard to see how God's existence affects this issue. We often think that persons whose lives go well make the world a better place, whereas suffering ones do the opposite. This idea might have to be tweaked a little bit to take into account what people deserve. For example, it might be better if bad guys like Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler suffer rather than flourish. With regard to the living, it is again hard to see how God comes into play here. Unless he is, like Santa Claus, constantly handing out pleasure to good boys and pain to bad ones, he doesn't seem to affect these factors. And if he did frequently intervene, then he would be making a mockery out of the notion that we should live with the consequences of our freely chosen actions, a notion that lies at the heart of contemporary theism.
A theist might object that a meaningful life depends on God because it is God who decides what is meaningful. However, this doctrine generates the absurd consequence that God has no reason to make some things meaningful (for example, love and knowledge) and other things not (for example, prison rape and Spam). He could have just as easily decreed the opposite since there is no answer to what is meaningful before he laid down standards. Since no theist wants to sign on to such absurdity, this objection isn't helpful.
Other objections based on flaky views of what makes the world a better place don't help the theist's case. For example, on Christopher Hitchens's interpretation, Mother Teresa viewed suffering as something that is good for the world because it is an expression of affiliation with Jesus Christ and his ordeal on the cross. Others view lives lived in fellowship with God as the only way that persons make the world a better place. Such views are less helpful than an anvil is to Wiley E. Coyote.
The theist's best response here is to acknowledge the above arguments but claim that a meaningful life is closely tied to immortality and it is only through God's efforts that persons live eternally. If this claim were plausible, then the theist would be in a strong position. But why think that a meaningful life is closely tied to immortality? A finite life (for example, Ronald Reagan's life) can include love, laughter, and knowledge that make it a successful one. Also, such a life seems to make the world a better place. For example, we would prefer world-creators who bring about more of these lives and fewer lives that are nasty, brutish, and short. Certainly, an ecstatic life that is infinite is better than a finite one, but the latter is still good.
In short, atheism doesn't result in life being meaningless. Luckily for the theist, he need not sign on to such a claim. However, like the Egyptian Pharaoh, the theist is still subject to plagues, in this case the plague of having a contradictory and unscientific world view.
***
KNOW GOD, KNOW MEANING
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 25, 2006
Many theists say that a life without God is meaningless, or that if atheism were true, human life would have no meaning. In a sense, these claims are true, but we must be clear about what we're saying and what we're not saying--"meaning" is a very ambiguous term.
Even if atheism were true, life might still have "meaning" in several senses. First, if a "meaningful" life is a morally good one, then yes, even if God doesn't exist, people's lives can be more or less meaningful. One who raises responsible children lives better than one who becomes a serial rapist. Second, if a "meaningful" life is one filled with activities which you desire or value, then sure, even if God doesn't exist, your life may have meaning. You may, if you're lucky, mostly get what you want. Of course, you may place a high value on, say, stealing, rather than on something obviously good, such as loving personal relationships. But either way, yes, your life may have meaning, in this sense, even if God exists but you ignore him, and even if God is simply a fiction. Third, when some people talk about a "meaningful" life they mean one which significantly benefits others. Again, even if God doesn't exist, your life may benefit others; for example, without God you may relieve suffering, help to mend broken relationships, and promote tolerance and kindness. So in any of these three senses of "meaning," if someone says "If there's no God, then life is meaningless," she speaks a falsehood.
It would be highly premature, though, to stop here, declaring that God's existence isn't relevant to the meaningfulness of our lives. If God exists, then he has a purpose for creation as a whole, for the human race, and for your life. Let's focus on this last one. If God exists, then there is a purpose for your life--one which neither you nor any other human created, and one which you can't just will to go away. And this isn't just any purpose--it was picked by a perfectly good, all-knowing being, who is in charge of history. Your life was meant to fit in with his project in history, with his aims--what the Bible calls his "Kingdom." Moreover, this purpose is a perfect fit for you, as it takes into account all those things which together make you unique; an all-knowing being doesn't try to cram square pegs into round holes.
Further, you might think that a "meaningful" life can't be one which has always been doomed to utter loss. But if atheism is true, then you, your family, the human race, and every cause you've ever worked for, is ultimately doomed--all of these things will cease to exist, and the universe won't miss them as it reverts to a lifeless state. Not so, for the theist--she looks forward to life everlasting.
Even our concessions in the second paragraph need qualifying. Theists (especially Christians) hold that there's a deep, consistent, self-sacrificing kind of moral goodness which is out of people's reach unless they deliberately accept divine help ("grace"). If they're right about this, then in an atheistic universe, or a theistic one in which you're a mistaken non-theist, there's a kind of beyond-the-norm goodness which is beyond your reach. Further, theism is an enormous help to moral motivation. If I believe that God is always watching, and will some day hold me to account, I'll be motivated to behave even when no one else is looking.
Even more importantly, if God exists, there can't be a conflict between my self-interest (what is beneficial to me) and what morality requires. If I get into a situation where only I can jump on the hand grenade, saving five other lives, I'll be fully motivated to jump on it--it is moral, and it'll be a net gain for me as well, thanks to God. Of course, atheists are capable of such heroic goodness as well, but it seems to them that self-interest and moral duty frequently conflict, which tends to reduce their motivation to do what is right.
Second, how do we know which things are worthy of being valued by us? Some projects are futile (e.g. the Walter Mondale campaign), and others, if they succeed, prove to be disastrous, despite the noble intentions of their promoters (e.g. the so-called Cultural Revolution in China). Others are simply a waste of time (e.g. completing your collection of “Family Guy” paraphernalia). But a person who actually cooperates with God promotes a project (God's Kingdom) which is guaranteed to succeed, and which will be supremely and purely good when it does. This project is the assembling of a group of people, from all corners of human society, who above all love God and their neighbor. These people freely cooperate with God, and by his grace become increasingly like him.
No--we're not talking about electing more Republicans, people. Or Democrats. We're talking about something which works by love, friendship, and rational persuasion, not coercion of any kind, and so transcends politics, and accomplishes more than merely political means ever could--which is inviting people to become God- and other-centered, and then (here’s the kicker) actually making that possible.
Is this the only way to make the world a better place? No. But it's the only way which has no significant downside and which is destined to succeed long-term.
14 March 2007
Moral Responsibility: Part 2
The Objectivist
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY: NO GUILT, NO REMORSE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 11, 2007
The Theist argues that persons are morally responsible for their actions. He thinks that our experience of freedom is enough to show us that they are. I disagree. Let’s revisit my earlier argument, which came in part from philosopher Galen Strawson.
A person is morally responsible for his action only if he chose to do that action and was morally responsible for so choosing. But this is impossible. A human being’s choice is the result of his beliefs, desires, and other mental states (the input) and how he reasons about them (processing). However, a person is responsible for a choice only if he in turn chose what went into making it (that is, the input or how to process it). But this just pushes the question back one step. That is, it raises the issue of whether he was responsible for the earlier choice. In the end, a person can’t be responsible for his choice because he didn’t choose what went into making it or, if he did, he didn’t choose what went into making that earlier choice.
The Theist argues that this is not how we experience the world. We seem to see ourselves as freely able to decide between different paths. We feel free to do something good (for example, donate time at the humane society) or bad (for example, have a torrid fling with a hardbody co-worker). What’s more, we often have emotions that presuppose moral responsibility. Examples include attitudes toward our selves (for example, pride and shame) and others (for example, gratitude and resentment). For example, one can’t meaningfully resent a tree that fell onto one’s car or an alligator that bit one’s mother-in-law because neither the tree nor the alligator is morally responsible for the harm it caused. The Theist’s underlying idea seems to be that unless we have strong evidence to the contrary we should assume that our everyday beliefs about the world are true.
However, I don’t think this is how we experience the world. Our sense of freedom focuses on the lack of coercion or force, rather than radical control over our choices, which is what moral responsibility requires. In ordinary cases, given persons’ preferences and holding their options fixed they will always make the same choices. For example, if you hate anchovy pizza and love sausage pizza and choose which one to buy for yourself, you will always choose the latter. Given what you like, choosing anchovy makes no sense. You are free in the sense that no one is holding a gun to your head, but you always make the same choice in this scenario. Thus, it is not clear that we think of ourselves as having the robust freedom that The Theist has in mind.
The Theist is right about many of our emotions presupposing moral responsibility, but these emotions are mistaken. They’re likely explained by their evolutionary advantages rather than their being true. This explains why they seem to be found in primates and other animals that are clearly not morally responsible for their actions.
The notion that persons have free will in the sense that their future is not already determined by past events is similarly mistaken and in any case fails to support moral responsibility. If human beings are merely their brains, then they are likely determined by their environment and genes. This is because such forces alone shape what goes on in their brain and this determines what they think and how they act. There is a concern here about indeterminacy at the level of sub-atomic particles, but this is irrelevant to moral responsibility.
The Theist denies that a person’s brain is a part of him, but in doing so he has to reject the best explanation for the close connection between mental states and brain states. For example, damage to particular parts of the brain correlates with the loss of various abilities (for example, the ability to recognize faces or speak). In addition, chemical changes in the brain (for example, anesthesia or LSD) produce predictable changes in how we think.
Even if we are ghost-like souls rather than brains, it is hard to accept that our thoughts and actions are not caused by previous events. It seems that if an event is not caused by previous events, then it comes about in a random or arbitrary manner and it is hard to see how a person might be responsible for thoughts and actions that come about in a random and arbitrary manner.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t give persons incentives to behave one way rather than another and even judge them negatively for their decisions. This is a useful way to get persons to behave in ways that we want. However, saying that praise and blame is useful is a far cry from saying that it is justified. For example, blaming Homer Simpson for donut gluttony or a cat for scratching the couch might produce less donut-eating and couch-scratching, but this doesn’t mean they’re blameworthy.
Human beings are not morally responsible for their actions. This is a troubling conclusion, but a true one nonetheless.
***
The Theist
Experience and Common Sense Trump Weak Arguments
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 12, 2007
Suppose you’re sitting in the back of the classroom of one of those tedious safe driving classes. Seated in the row in front of you is your least-favorite neighbor Buford--the guy with the five big dogs who bark all night. Suddenly, a twenty dollar bill falls out of Buford’s pocket and lands at your feet. No one’s looking. What will you do? Morality tells you to return it to Buford, and your desires tell you to pocket it. (Twenty dollars buys many donuts.) You go back and forth for half and hour, and finally, heart pounding, you steal Buford’s money. But your momma raised you right; you feel guilty shortly thereafter.
My friend The Objectivist holds that at this point, you’re afflicted with an irrational emotion (guilt). He holds that in the above episode, you experienced not freedom, but only a lack of coercion; that is, you were aware that nothing outside you was forcing you to choose take the money. He believes that given the available options, and the motives you had while sitting behind Buford, it was inevitable that you would steal the money.
As best I can tell, the outlook expressed in the previous paragraph has only two things going for it. First, it can seem practically advantageous to cast off the whole moral outlook. (Conscience--who needs it? It only gets in the way, right?) Second, one might think this outlook fits hand in hand with what philosophers call “naturalism.” This view holds that only physical things are real, and that the world, with all its current splendors, came to be from nothing, for no reason, without any intelligent agency involved. Sometimes naturalism goes with what we can call the clockwork universe idea--the view that all that happens is the result of the circumstances plus the laws of nature; every event is part of a tight, chain-like matrix, and so it is not even possible that some persons should control whether or not some event, such as a choice, occurs. Not all naturalists hold to this idea, but some, like The Objectivist, think it fits hand in glove with naturalism.
Some people, then, find the view that humans are never responsible practically and theoretically convenient. Though that’s so, The Objectivist has not given us any good reasons to believe it, nor has he refuted the strong reasons we have to deny it.
When you took Buford’s money, you of course were aware that nothing outside you forced your choice. (No thug threatened you at gunpoint.) But you’re also, aware of two conflicting impulses within you--the moral one pushing you to give the twenty back to Buford, and the non-moral one pushing you to take the money. You feel free; you’re convinced that you could make either choice. When you choose to steal, you as it were feel yourself shouldering aside that voice of morality, and embracing the inner donut glutton. You know that you are in control--that you’re freely choosing, and that you could have made the other choice. You also know that it’s morally wrong to steal. The emotion of guilt you later feel depends on these twin convictions. If you really believed that your theft was inevitable, and/or that stealing is morally permissible, then you simply wouldn’t feel guilty at all. But you do believe those things. The freedom belief is usually a firm one, based on a vivid memory of what it was like to freely choose to steal. You shouldn’t doubt it unless someone gives you strong reason to.
Do we have these beliefs and the accompanying emotion because they did or do confer some survival advantage on our species? Maybe--it doesn’t matter. Our ability to remember what happened yesterday surely contributes to the “fitness” of our species. But that’s no reason to doubt your memory of taking Buford’s money yesterday.
The Objectivist argues that you can be morally responsible for a choice only if you’ve also chosen and are responsible for every belief and desire that was relevant to the choice (e.g. your belief that stealing is wrong, that there’s a twenty dollar bill on the floor, that you like donuts). But why accept that? Maybe my preference for donuts is the product of my genes and my environment, and my belief that the bill lies there for the taking just occurs when my eyes receive certain stimuli--I chose neither the desire nor the belief. It still seems that I can freely choose to steal, and thus, become guilty of wrongdoing.
He further argues that “if an event is not caused by previous events, then it comes about in a random or arbitrary manner,” and thus isn’t something anyone could be morally responsible for. By “caused” he means that the choice was such that given previous events, it had to happen. But that’s the very point at issue. When we believe we’ve chosen freely, we believe that choice could, in those very circumstances, have not occurred. Thus, in the above sense, we hold the free choice to be “uncaused.” However, that doesn’t mean the event has no explanation. The explanation for your choice to steal, is that you desired donuts, knew that twenty bucks could buy a lot, believed that no one was looking, and thought that Buford deserved to lose the money anyway. The choice is “random” in that nothing forced it to happen, but not in the sense of being inexplicable or chancy.
In sum, we should prefer experience and common sense to unproven and implausible theories.
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY: NO GUILT, NO REMORSE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 11, 2007
The Theist argues that persons are morally responsible for their actions. He thinks that our experience of freedom is enough to show us that they are. I disagree. Let’s revisit my earlier argument, which came in part from philosopher Galen Strawson.
A person is morally responsible for his action only if he chose to do that action and was morally responsible for so choosing. But this is impossible. A human being’s choice is the result of his beliefs, desires, and other mental states (the input) and how he reasons about them (processing). However, a person is responsible for a choice only if he in turn chose what went into making it (that is, the input or how to process it). But this just pushes the question back one step. That is, it raises the issue of whether he was responsible for the earlier choice. In the end, a person can’t be responsible for his choice because he didn’t choose what went into making it or, if he did, he didn’t choose what went into making that earlier choice.
The Theist argues that this is not how we experience the world. We seem to see ourselves as freely able to decide between different paths. We feel free to do something good (for example, donate time at the humane society) or bad (for example, have a torrid fling with a hardbody co-worker). What’s more, we often have emotions that presuppose moral responsibility. Examples include attitudes toward our selves (for example, pride and shame) and others (for example, gratitude and resentment). For example, one can’t meaningfully resent a tree that fell onto one’s car or an alligator that bit one’s mother-in-law because neither the tree nor the alligator is morally responsible for the harm it caused. The Theist’s underlying idea seems to be that unless we have strong evidence to the contrary we should assume that our everyday beliefs about the world are true.
However, I don’t think this is how we experience the world. Our sense of freedom focuses on the lack of coercion or force, rather than radical control over our choices, which is what moral responsibility requires. In ordinary cases, given persons’ preferences and holding their options fixed they will always make the same choices. For example, if you hate anchovy pizza and love sausage pizza and choose which one to buy for yourself, you will always choose the latter. Given what you like, choosing anchovy makes no sense. You are free in the sense that no one is holding a gun to your head, but you always make the same choice in this scenario. Thus, it is not clear that we think of ourselves as having the robust freedom that The Theist has in mind.
The Theist is right about many of our emotions presupposing moral responsibility, but these emotions are mistaken. They’re likely explained by their evolutionary advantages rather than their being true. This explains why they seem to be found in primates and other animals that are clearly not morally responsible for their actions.
The notion that persons have free will in the sense that their future is not already determined by past events is similarly mistaken and in any case fails to support moral responsibility. If human beings are merely their brains, then they are likely determined by their environment and genes. This is because such forces alone shape what goes on in their brain and this determines what they think and how they act. There is a concern here about indeterminacy at the level of sub-atomic particles, but this is irrelevant to moral responsibility.
The Theist denies that a person’s brain is a part of him, but in doing so he has to reject the best explanation for the close connection between mental states and brain states. For example, damage to particular parts of the brain correlates with the loss of various abilities (for example, the ability to recognize faces or speak). In addition, chemical changes in the brain (for example, anesthesia or LSD) produce predictable changes in how we think.
Even if we are ghost-like souls rather than brains, it is hard to accept that our thoughts and actions are not caused by previous events. It seems that if an event is not caused by previous events, then it comes about in a random or arbitrary manner and it is hard to see how a person might be responsible for thoughts and actions that come about in a random and arbitrary manner.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t give persons incentives to behave one way rather than another and even judge them negatively for their decisions. This is a useful way to get persons to behave in ways that we want. However, saying that praise and blame is useful is a far cry from saying that it is justified. For example, blaming Homer Simpson for donut gluttony or a cat for scratching the couch might produce less donut-eating and couch-scratching, but this doesn’t mean they’re blameworthy.
Human beings are not morally responsible for their actions. This is a troubling conclusion, but a true one nonetheless.
***
The Theist
Experience and Common Sense Trump Weak Arguments
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 12, 2007
Suppose you’re sitting in the back of the classroom of one of those tedious safe driving classes. Seated in the row in front of you is your least-favorite neighbor Buford--the guy with the five big dogs who bark all night. Suddenly, a twenty dollar bill falls out of Buford’s pocket and lands at your feet. No one’s looking. What will you do? Morality tells you to return it to Buford, and your desires tell you to pocket it. (Twenty dollars buys many donuts.) You go back and forth for half and hour, and finally, heart pounding, you steal Buford’s money. But your momma raised you right; you feel guilty shortly thereafter.
My friend The Objectivist holds that at this point, you’re afflicted with an irrational emotion (guilt). He holds that in the above episode, you experienced not freedom, but only a lack of coercion; that is, you were aware that nothing outside you was forcing you to choose take the money. He believes that given the available options, and the motives you had while sitting behind Buford, it was inevitable that you would steal the money.
As best I can tell, the outlook expressed in the previous paragraph has only two things going for it. First, it can seem practically advantageous to cast off the whole moral outlook. (Conscience--who needs it? It only gets in the way, right?) Second, one might think this outlook fits hand in hand with what philosophers call “naturalism.” This view holds that only physical things are real, and that the world, with all its current splendors, came to be from nothing, for no reason, without any intelligent agency involved. Sometimes naturalism goes with what we can call the clockwork universe idea--the view that all that happens is the result of the circumstances plus the laws of nature; every event is part of a tight, chain-like matrix, and so it is not even possible that some persons should control whether or not some event, such as a choice, occurs. Not all naturalists hold to this idea, but some, like The Objectivist, think it fits hand in glove with naturalism.
Some people, then, find the view that humans are never responsible practically and theoretically convenient. Though that’s so, The Objectivist has not given us any good reasons to believe it, nor has he refuted the strong reasons we have to deny it.
When you took Buford’s money, you of course were aware that nothing outside you forced your choice. (No thug threatened you at gunpoint.) But you’re also, aware of two conflicting impulses within you--the moral one pushing you to give the twenty back to Buford, and the non-moral one pushing you to take the money. You feel free; you’re convinced that you could make either choice. When you choose to steal, you as it were feel yourself shouldering aside that voice of morality, and embracing the inner donut glutton. You know that you are in control--that you’re freely choosing, and that you could have made the other choice. You also know that it’s morally wrong to steal. The emotion of guilt you later feel depends on these twin convictions. If you really believed that your theft was inevitable, and/or that stealing is morally permissible, then you simply wouldn’t feel guilty at all. But you do believe those things. The freedom belief is usually a firm one, based on a vivid memory of what it was like to freely choose to steal. You shouldn’t doubt it unless someone gives you strong reason to.
Do we have these beliefs and the accompanying emotion because they did or do confer some survival advantage on our species? Maybe--it doesn’t matter. Our ability to remember what happened yesterday surely contributes to the “fitness” of our species. But that’s no reason to doubt your memory of taking Buford’s money yesterday.
The Objectivist argues that you can be morally responsible for a choice only if you’ve also chosen and are responsible for every belief and desire that was relevant to the choice (e.g. your belief that stealing is wrong, that there’s a twenty dollar bill on the floor, that you like donuts). But why accept that? Maybe my preference for donuts is the product of my genes and my environment, and my belief that the bill lies there for the taking just occurs when my eyes receive certain stimuli--I chose neither the desire nor the belief. It still seems that I can freely choose to steal, and thus, become guilty of wrongdoing.
He further argues that “if an event is not caused by previous events, then it comes about in a random or arbitrary manner,” and thus isn’t something anyone could be morally responsible for. By “caused” he means that the choice was such that given previous events, it had to happen. But that’s the very point at issue. When we believe we’ve chosen freely, we believe that choice could, in those very circumstances, have not occurred. Thus, in the above sense, we hold the free choice to be “uncaused.” However, that doesn’t mean the event has no explanation. The explanation for your choice to steal, is that you desired donuts, knew that twenty bucks could buy a lot, believed that no one was looking, and thought that Buford deserved to lose the money anyway. The choice is “random” in that nothing forced it to happen, but not in the sense of being inexplicable or chancy.
In sum, we should prefer experience and common sense to unproven and implausible theories.
12 October 2006
Is God Possible?
BAD NEWS FOR GOD
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06
The best arguments for God presuppose that he is perfect. Some theists (persons who believe in God) argue that God exists because he alone can explain where the universe comes from. The underlying idea is the Stevie Wonder principle that you can't get something from nothing. The theist then argues that since the universe couldn't have come from nothing, God must have created it. The theists then note that because God is perfect he has to exist and hence was not created by something else.
Consider what a perfect being is like. He must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. The absence of one of these features would be a flaw and perfect beings don't have flaws. Unfortunately for theists, no being can have all three features.
Consider whether there can be a person who is both all-powerful and all-good. Many readers enjoy malicious pleasures. These are pleasures that accompany evildoing. For example, many of Stanley Kubrick's fans enjoy watching out-of-control criminals and abusive drill instructors wreaking havoc (for example, Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket). Males who went to high school often snicker at the time-honored tradition of senior athletes giving wedgies to freshmen (pulling the top of someone's underwear until it hurts). An all-good person can't enjoy such pleasures and hence doesn't know something, namely what these pleasures are like.
A similar thing is true with regard to being all-powerful and all-knowing. An all-powerful person can't be harmed. If such a person had great knowledge, then he would know that he can't be harmed and hence can't feel fear. As a result, there would be something that an all-powerful person can't know.
A person also can't be all-good and all-powerful. For example, an all-powerful being can do evil. For example, he can kill and eat the weak just for the fun of it. An all-good being can't this because he can do something only if he can be motivated to do it and an all-good being can't be motivated to do such monstrous acts. Worse yet, given the importance that the theist assigns to free will--he needs it to account for evil--he has a problem in explaining why God has free will. A being that freely does good has the option of doing evil. However, since an all-good being can't do evil, he doesn't have that option, and lacks free will. Hence, an all-good being can't be all-powerful or have free will.
These results drive a stake into the heart of theism. The best arguments for God's existence depend on his being perfect and yet a perfect being is impossible. At this point, the theist has at three options: he can deny that God is subject to logic, he can deny that God is perfect, or he can claim that a perfect being need not have the above features.
The notion that God is not subject to logic reduces most religious doctrines to hash. For example, when persons say God is great, they mean to rule out that God tortures puppies for fun or has a temperament nearly identical to Roseanne. When they say they believe in God, they mean to rule out his not existing. However, if God is not subject to logic then neither thing follows. In fact, were this notion true, then human beings would not be able to reason correctly about God.
The theist might deny that God is perfect, perhaps by saying that perfection is no more possible than is a largest number. The problem with this move is that it undermines the best arguments for God's existence. For example, it undermines the argument that attempts to show that the existence of God explains why there is a universe.
The theist's best bet is to deny that a perfect being is all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful, and has free will. The problem with this is that the theist will then have to specify which features God has. For example, does the theist concede that God is a little bit evil or does he deny that God has free will? The problem with this escape route is that the choice of which features God has and doesn't have is arbitrary and his perfection can't rest on arbitrary things. If it did, then God's perfection would depend on chance or external causes and such dependence is a flaw.
Bad news for God, he doesn't exist. However, this doesn't prevent us from having great families, leading moral lives, and laughing at the politicians the devil has placed in Washington and Albany.
***
Defining God Out of Existence
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06
Atheists make poor theologians. Still, we find them telling everyone about how God would have to be, if there was one (but of course, there isn't). What is going on? They're searching for a simple, knock-down argument against belief in God. Let me explain.
If some claim is inconsistent with itself, it is false. Further, once we understand it to be contradictory, we all know it is false. If I tell you that I've got a brother who is five feet tall, and who is also (at the same time) six foot three, you don't need to go asking my family whether or not I have such a brother. As soon as you understand my claim to be inconsistent, you know it's false. And if I tell you that there's exactly one god, and that there's also exactly fourteen (using the word "god" in the same sense both times), I'm propounding a contradictory religion--one which couldn't possibly be true, and must be false. Now some claims may at first appear to be self consistent, but upon inspection, they turn out to be contradictory, such as "There's a square circle" or "I drew a right triangle with an interior angle larger than ninety degrees."
The atheist is tempted to argue that "God exists" is a claim of this sort. Wouldn't that be convenient? If that were true, the atheist could ignore what feels like the voice of God calling out to him through the glories of the natural world, and the testimony of millions of apparently sane and sober people who have experienced God’s reality--his love, his presence, even his voice. The atheist could also skip a serious, thoughtful look at the reported careers and teachings of people such as Moses and Jesus. What a time-saver! How does it work? Simply define the divine attributes so as to be inconsistent with one another, making the very idea of God a contradictory one. Presto! It will follow that there couldn't be a God, so defined. So, for example, if he's all-powerful, that means he can do anything at all, but that conflicts with his being perfectly good.
The problem with this sort of argument is that only a chump of a theist would accept the proposed definitions of the divine attributes. God is traditionally thought to be a bodiless being, the Source of the cosmos, with in some sense limitless power. But pretty much no theologian has wanted to say that God can do anything we can name. For instance, God can't lie, can't commit suicide, can't make square circles, and can't steal children's Halloween Candy just because he likes to hear them cry. Similarly, God is supposed to have unlimited knowledge, as he's in control of history, is present everywhere, upholds all things in existence, and is eternal. But, one may object, if he can't do evil, he therefore can't know certain things, such as, what it's like to rob a bank. This is a lame objection--as if God would have no imagination whatsoever, no ability to vividly imagine, in perfect detail, what it is like to rob a bank.
Divine freedom is a more difficult issue. The claim that a being which is free to do good must also be free to do evil is false. If I were perfectly good, I might be able to give a certain panhandler one dollar or five dollars, even though I'd be unable to insult him and push him down. And whether I gave one or five, I would still be deserving of thanks. Still, one might think that an important kind of freedom is freedom to form one's own character for good or evil, through a series of free choices, over the course of time. All of us believe that we have this sort of freedom, but does God have it as well? The traditional answer is "no"--a being who knows everything and has no pressing needs can't even be tempted to do evil, much less go through with it. I don't see anything wrong with this answer.
In sum, this atheist attempt at a home run is just a big swing and miss. Theists should call atheists' bluff on this sort of argument, and not take refuge in the easy out of disparaging "human logic." This is a silly reply, because there's nothing specifically human about the fact that contradictions can't be true. The idea may be that, given our finite minds, when we start thinking about something as far beyond us as God, we'll run into paradoxes. Maybe so, but that's no excuse to accept contradictions only when they provide easy escapes from atheistic objections. In the rest of life, as in religion, we all eschew inconsistent claims, because we want to get true beliefs and to avoid false ones. Our human minds are the most amazing thing in God's creation, and he expects us to use them well.
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06
The best arguments for God presuppose that he is perfect. Some theists (persons who believe in God) argue that God exists because he alone can explain where the universe comes from. The underlying idea is the Stevie Wonder principle that you can't get something from nothing. The theist then argues that since the universe couldn't have come from nothing, God must have created it. The theists then note that because God is perfect he has to exist and hence was not created by something else.
Consider what a perfect being is like. He must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. The absence of one of these features would be a flaw and perfect beings don't have flaws. Unfortunately for theists, no being can have all three features.
Consider whether there can be a person who is both all-powerful and all-good. Many readers enjoy malicious pleasures. These are pleasures that accompany evildoing. For example, many of Stanley Kubrick's fans enjoy watching out-of-control criminals and abusive drill instructors wreaking havoc (for example, Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket). Males who went to high school often snicker at the time-honored tradition of senior athletes giving wedgies to freshmen (pulling the top of someone's underwear until it hurts). An all-good person can't enjoy such pleasures and hence doesn't know something, namely what these pleasures are like.
A similar thing is true with regard to being all-powerful and all-knowing. An all-powerful person can't be harmed. If such a person had great knowledge, then he would know that he can't be harmed and hence can't feel fear. As a result, there would be something that an all-powerful person can't know.
A person also can't be all-good and all-powerful. For example, an all-powerful being can do evil. For example, he can kill and eat the weak just for the fun of it. An all-good being can't this because he can do something only if he can be motivated to do it and an all-good being can't be motivated to do such monstrous acts. Worse yet, given the importance that the theist assigns to free will--he needs it to account for evil--he has a problem in explaining why God has free will. A being that freely does good has the option of doing evil. However, since an all-good being can't do evil, he doesn't have that option, and lacks free will. Hence, an all-good being can't be all-powerful or have free will.
These results drive a stake into the heart of theism. The best arguments for God's existence depend on his being perfect and yet a perfect being is impossible. At this point, the theist has at three options: he can deny that God is subject to logic, he can deny that God is perfect, or he can claim that a perfect being need not have the above features.
The notion that God is not subject to logic reduces most religious doctrines to hash. For example, when persons say God is great, they mean to rule out that God tortures puppies for fun or has a temperament nearly identical to Roseanne. When they say they believe in God, they mean to rule out his not existing. However, if God is not subject to logic then neither thing follows. In fact, were this notion true, then human beings would not be able to reason correctly about God.
The theist might deny that God is perfect, perhaps by saying that perfection is no more possible than is a largest number. The problem with this move is that it undermines the best arguments for God's existence. For example, it undermines the argument that attempts to show that the existence of God explains why there is a universe.
The theist's best bet is to deny that a perfect being is all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful, and has free will. The problem with this is that the theist will then have to specify which features God has. For example, does the theist concede that God is a little bit evil or does he deny that God has free will? The problem with this escape route is that the choice of which features God has and doesn't have is arbitrary and his perfection can't rest on arbitrary things. If it did, then God's perfection would depend on chance or external causes and such dependence is a flaw.
Bad news for God, he doesn't exist. However, this doesn't prevent us from having great families, leading moral lives, and laughing at the politicians the devil has placed in Washington and Albany.
***
Defining God Out of Existence
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06
Atheists make poor theologians. Still, we find them telling everyone about how God would have to be, if there was one (but of course, there isn't). What is going on? They're searching for a simple, knock-down argument against belief in God. Let me explain.
If some claim is inconsistent with itself, it is false. Further, once we understand it to be contradictory, we all know it is false. If I tell you that I've got a brother who is five feet tall, and who is also (at the same time) six foot three, you don't need to go asking my family whether or not I have such a brother. As soon as you understand my claim to be inconsistent, you know it's false. And if I tell you that there's exactly one god, and that there's also exactly fourteen (using the word "god" in the same sense both times), I'm propounding a contradictory religion--one which couldn't possibly be true, and must be false. Now some claims may at first appear to be self consistent, but upon inspection, they turn out to be contradictory, such as "There's a square circle" or "I drew a right triangle with an interior angle larger than ninety degrees."
The atheist is tempted to argue that "God exists" is a claim of this sort. Wouldn't that be convenient? If that were true, the atheist could ignore what feels like the voice of God calling out to him through the glories of the natural world, and the testimony of millions of apparently sane and sober people who have experienced God’s reality--his love, his presence, even his voice. The atheist could also skip a serious, thoughtful look at the reported careers and teachings of people such as Moses and Jesus. What a time-saver! How does it work? Simply define the divine attributes so as to be inconsistent with one another, making the very idea of God a contradictory one. Presto! It will follow that there couldn't be a God, so defined. So, for example, if he's all-powerful, that means he can do anything at all, but that conflicts with his being perfectly good.
The problem with this sort of argument is that only a chump of a theist would accept the proposed definitions of the divine attributes. God is traditionally thought to be a bodiless being, the Source of the cosmos, with in some sense limitless power. But pretty much no theologian has wanted to say that God can do anything we can name. For instance, God can't lie, can't commit suicide, can't make square circles, and can't steal children's Halloween Candy just because he likes to hear them cry. Similarly, God is supposed to have unlimited knowledge, as he's in control of history, is present everywhere, upholds all things in existence, and is eternal. But, one may object, if he can't do evil, he therefore can't know certain things, such as, what it's like to rob a bank. This is a lame objection--as if God would have no imagination whatsoever, no ability to vividly imagine, in perfect detail, what it is like to rob a bank.
Divine freedom is a more difficult issue. The claim that a being which is free to do good must also be free to do evil is false. If I were perfectly good, I might be able to give a certain panhandler one dollar or five dollars, even though I'd be unable to insult him and push him down. And whether I gave one or five, I would still be deserving of thanks. Still, one might think that an important kind of freedom is freedom to form one's own character for good or evil, through a series of free choices, over the course of time. All of us believe that we have this sort of freedom, but does God have it as well? The traditional answer is "no"--a being who knows everything and has no pressing needs can't even be tempted to do evil, much less go through with it. I don't see anything wrong with this answer.
In sum, this atheist attempt at a home run is just a big swing and miss. Theists should call atheists' bluff on this sort of argument, and not take refuge in the easy out of disparaging "human logic." This is a silly reply, because there's nothing specifically human about the fact that contradictions can't be true. The idea may be that, given our finite minds, when we start thinking about something as far beyond us as God, we'll run into paradoxes. Maybe so, but that's no excuse to accept contradictions only when they provide easy escapes from atheistic objections. In the rest of life, as in religion, we all eschew inconsistent claims, because we want to get true beliefs and to avoid false ones. Our human minds are the most amazing thing in God's creation, and he expects us to use them well.
07 November 2007
Iraq War: Round #3
The Objectivist
THE IRAQ WAR: LESS SAFETY, MORE COST
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 4, 2007
The Theist presents a clear case for continuing the Iraq War. He notes that even if our initial reasons for going to war were mistaken, we should still continue the war because doing so is now in our interests. He argues that the incredible costs should not dissuade us from continuing the war because we need to destroy Al Qaeda. If we don’t, he claims, we make it more likely that we’ll be hit with future terrorist attacks, particular catastrophic nuclear ones. The Theist probably would broaden this claim to include attacks involving other weapons of mass destruction, but for simplicity we’ll focus on a nuclear attack.
Continuing the Iraq War actually makes such an attack more likely. Occupying an ethnic-terrorist organization’s homeland (view homeland broadly here) makes it more likely that the organization will attack you. By “ethnic-terrorist organization,” I mean a terrorist organization that is tied to an ethnic or religious group rather than pure ideology. A Marxist terrorist group is an example of an ideological one. Don’t believe me? Try to come up with more than a handful ethnic-terrorist attacks when the target wasn’t occupying or helping to occupy the terrorist’s homeland. If you can’t, you haven’t thought this through.
This pattern has certainly characterized recent Middle Eastern terrorism against the U.S. Al Qaeda’s various attacks included its attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia in 1995, the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, and the 9-11 attacks. All occurred when we had a major military presence in Saudi Arabia and vast influence in Iraq. An earlier attack, a suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 resulted in the deaths of 241 American servicemen. Again, there was a significant U.S. military presence in Lebanon. Thankfully, in roughly four months, President Reagan withdrew the Marines from Lebanon.
In addition, the war makes Al Qaeda’s continuing existence more likely. The war continues to poison our relations with Iran and Syria and strains it with Pakistan. All this makes it more likely that other countries will tolerate Al Qaeda as a means of putting pressure on us to get out of the Middle East and playing to crowds who are increasingly hostile to the U.S. As a side note, we need not even stop giving Israel $2.5 billion plus a year in welfare because by itself this is unlikely to trigger a catastrophic terrorist attack. Whether there are other reasons to do so is a discussion for another time.
Even if continuing the war lessened the risk of attack, although only to a small degree, the expected benefits are swamped by the costs. A recent Congressional Budget Office estimate puts the costs of the Iraq war at roughly $1.92 trillion dollars. Remember that in this country the poor and lower middle class suckle on others’ taxes. In 2005, the bottom 50% of taxpayers paid roughly 3% of the income taxes. That is not a typo. In 2004 the bottom fifth of households got roughly $31,000 in benefits above what they paid in taxes and the next fifth got roughly $18,000. As a result, if the war is paid for by 50% of the citizens, then it costs each of these taxpayers $13,000. It costs dual-income couples $26,000. Would you vote for a plan in which Bush and company lessened the chance of a catastrophic attack, although only to a small degree, if you had to write a check for $26,000 to pay for it? Even if the check is less because some of the bill has already been paid, the cost is still outrageous.
In addition, The Theist ignores other dangers that the continuing war poses. Money spent on the war might be better spent securing our borders against illegal aliens and tracking down the roughly 20 million already here. Given that four of the 9-11 terrorists were illegal aliens, one might think this is a good step.
In addition, our continuing presence makes it likely that we’ll get caught between the Shiites and Sunnis and perhaps also between the Turks and Kurds. If we use a heavy hand to stop these conflicts, we’ll create fertile grounds for terrorist groups to recruit. In addition, the combination of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq and their attempt to develop a nuclear weapon results in our creeping ever closer to a bloody and expensive war against them. Our withdrawal reduces these various risks.
The decision to pour money and lives into Iraq makes us less safe. Even if the war made us slightly safer, the expected benefit is swamped by the massive costs. The war also runs the risk of getting us caught between sides in a civil war and a war between neighbors. It also makes a bloody and expensive war with Iran more likely.
THE IRAQ WAR: LESS SAFETY, MORE COST
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 4, 2007
The Theist presents a clear case for continuing the Iraq War. He notes that even if our initial reasons for going to war were mistaken, we should still continue the war because doing so is now in our interests. He argues that the incredible costs should not dissuade us from continuing the war because we need to destroy Al Qaeda. If we don’t, he claims, we make it more likely that we’ll be hit with future terrorist attacks, particular catastrophic nuclear ones. The Theist probably would broaden this claim to include attacks involving other weapons of mass destruction, but for simplicity we’ll focus on a nuclear attack.
Continuing the Iraq War actually makes such an attack more likely. Occupying an ethnic-terrorist organization’s homeland (view homeland broadly here) makes it more likely that the organization will attack you. By “ethnic-terrorist organization,” I mean a terrorist organization that is tied to an ethnic or religious group rather than pure ideology. A Marxist terrorist group is an example of an ideological one. Don’t believe me? Try to come up with more than a handful ethnic-terrorist attacks when the target wasn’t occupying or helping to occupy the terrorist’s homeland. If you can’t, you haven’t thought this through.
This pattern has certainly characterized recent Middle Eastern terrorism against the U.S. Al Qaeda’s various attacks included its attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia in 1995, the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, and the 9-11 attacks. All occurred when we had a major military presence in Saudi Arabia and vast influence in Iraq. An earlier attack, a suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 resulted in the deaths of 241 American servicemen. Again, there was a significant U.S. military presence in Lebanon. Thankfully, in roughly four months, President Reagan withdrew the Marines from Lebanon.
In addition, the war makes Al Qaeda’s continuing existence more likely. The war continues to poison our relations with Iran and Syria and strains it with Pakistan. All this makes it more likely that other countries will tolerate Al Qaeda as a means of putting pressure on us to get out of the Middle East and playing to crowds who are increasingly hostile to the U.S. As a side note, we need not even stop giving Israel $2.5 billion plus a year in welfare because by itself this is unlikely to trigger a catastrophic terrorist attack. Whether there are other reasons to do so is a discussion for another time.
Even if continuing the war lessened the risk of attack, although only to a small degree, the expected benefits are swamped by the costs. A recent Congressional Budget Office estimate puts the costs of the Iraq war at roughly $1.92 trillion dollars. Remember that in this country the poor and lower middle class suckle on others’ taxes. In 2005, the bottom 50% of taxpayers paid roughly 3% of the income taxes. That is not a typo. In 2004 the bottom fifth of households got roughly $31,000 in benefits above what they paid in taxes and the next fifth got roughly $18,000. As a result, if the war is paid for by 50% of the citizens, then it costs each of these taxpayers $13,000. It costs dual-income couples $26,000. Would you vote for a plan in which Bush and company lessened the chance of a catastrophic attack, although only to a small degree, if you had to write a check for $26,000 to pay for it? Even if the check is less because some of the bill has already been paid, the cost is still outrageous.
In addition, The Theist ignores other dangers that the continuing war poses. Money spent on the war might be better spent securing our borders against illegal aliens and tracking down the roughly 20 million already here. Given that four of the 9-11 terrorists were illegal aliens, one might think this is a good step.
In addition, our continuing presence makes it likely that we’ll get caught between the Shiites and Sunnis and perhaps also between the Turks and Kurds. If we use a heavy hand to stop these conflicts, we’ll create fertile grounds for terrorist groups to recruit. In addition, the combination of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq and their attempt to develop a nuclear weapon results in our creeping ever closer to a bloody and expensive war against them. Our withdrawal reduces these various risks.
The decision to pour money and lives into Iraq makes us less safe. Even if the war made us slightly safer, the expected benefit is swamped by the massive costs. The war also runs the risk of getting us caught between sides in a civil war and a war between neighbors. It also makes a bloody and expensive war with Iran more likely.
12 January 2009
The Trinity (The Theist)
The Theist
Thinking about the Trinity
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 26, 2009
Perhaps, dear reader, you’re a Christian considering New Year's resolutions. Let me suggest a resolution to reflect more on theology to which you are committed. Trinity theories (there are many) are attempts to reconcile an apparently inconsistent set of four claims many readers find in the Bible: There is only one God, the one Jesus calls Father is God, Jesus is God, and Jesus is not his Father. From any three of these, it seems to logically follow that the fourth is false. (Go ahead - try out all the combinations.)
There is an official answer to this difficulty, dating from the late fourth century: God is one "being" or "essence" containing three "persons" - the Father and Jesus being two (the third being the Holy Spirit). Thus the above four statements are, properly understood, consistent. In order, they mean: There's only one divine being, the one Jesus calls his Father is a person in God, Jesus is a person in God, and Jesus is not the same person in God as his Father. Thus the official answer is to distinguish "persons" is God from the one "being" or "essence" of God - there are three of the former, but just one of the latter.
Yet this official answer is itself a head-scratcher. What are these three "persons"? Some trinitarians think of them as personalities of the one God. Here we have undisputed monotheism, but it is hard to square with the picture of Jesus and his Father in the Bible. Are we to understand seemingly interpersonal relationship as God, in one personality, interacting with himself in another personality? On the other hand, some trinitarians think of the three "persons" as selves, divine selves, each of which has all the divine attributes (being all-knowing, being all-powerful, etc.). But what is this, if not belief in three gods, that is, not monotheism but tritheism? This flies in the face of the Bible, which emphasizes monotheism. Some have replied that the one God is the society, the group of the Three. But this is hard to square with the Bible, which portrays God not as a group, but as a perfect, non-bodily, personal agent.
There are essentially four ways out of this pickle. First, the Ostrich approach - head in the sand. What does all this have to do with loving my neighbor anyway? And isn't this just some sort of attack on the faith?
Second, embrace the mystery. Some gladly avow that they have no idea what a "person" is in the official answer - it's just a label for a distinction within God which we don't understand at all. Others argue that we should expect to run up against apparent inconsistencies which thinking about such a Transcendent being, something so wonderfully beyond us.
Third, break out some fancy philosophical moves. Perhaps there's a way past the dilemma for the official answer above (that whether the "persons" are personalities or selves, the theory is unacceptable). Let’s not be hasty - perhaps there's a third way to understand what the "persons" of the Trinity are. (A number of well-known Christian philosophers have recently attempted this feat in different ways.)
Fourth, one can accept that the four claims we started with really are inconsistent. So to remain consistent, one denies one of them - the most popular candidate being the third.
Each approach comes with its own challenges. Why isn't the first mere intellectual irresponsibility? Why isn't the second a perverse obscurantism, a disingenuous attempt to spin an incoherence as a profundity? As to the third - what exactly are these newfound distinctions, and are they theologically kosher? As to the fourth, is this heresy, or fighting against the Bible, rather than discovering the best interpretation of it?
There are no easy answers, but I believe that there are answers available to the diligent. I can only commend the recent work of many of my fellow Christian philosophy and theology professors, who have recently written much on this issue, in conjunction with a careful re-examination of what the Bible does and doesn’t say. Much of this work has been reviewed and summarized, in dozens of postings going back to 2006, at my blog, which attempts (not always successfully) to straddle the divide between the professionals and ordinary thinking Christians. (http://trinities.org/blog)
A word of caution: life is too short to waste on bad books. Go with recommendations, rather than grabbing the first book you find on the subject of the Trinity, for a randomly chosen book is likely to be both confused and confusing, and likely headache inducing as well.
I counsel avoiding the Ostrich approach. This is a serious discussion between Christians, not an external attack by hostile outsiders. Ignoring these difficulties won’t make them go away. Moreover, shouldn’t lovers of God want to think correctly about him? Quick: What does Jesus say is the first and greatest commandment, one even ahead of the command to love your neighbor? Right - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Wait – there’s one clause missing: "and with all your mind." People tend to overlook that last bit.
Thinking about the Trinity
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 26, 2009
Perhaps, dear reader, you’re a Christian considering New Year's resolutions. Let me suggest a resolution to reflect more on theology to which you are committed. Trinity theories (there are many) are attempts to reconcile an apparently inconsistent set of four claims many readers find in the Bible: There is only one God, the one Jesus calls Father is God, Jesus is God, and Jesus is not his Father. From any three of these, it seems to logically follow that the fourth is false. (Go ahead - try out all the combinations.)
There is an official answer to this difficulty, dating from the late fourth century: God is one "being" or "essence" containing three "persons" - the Father and Jesus being two (the third being the Holy Spirit). Thus the above four statements are, properly understood, consistent. In order, they mean: There's only one divine being, the one Jesus calls his Father is a person in God, Jesus is a person in God, and Jesus is not the same person in God as his Father. Thus the official answer is to distinguish "persons" is God from the one "being" or "essence" of God - there are three of the former, but just one of the latter.
Yet this official answer is itself a head-scratcher. What are these three "persons"? Some trinitarians think of them as personalities of the one God. Here we have undisputed monotheism, but it is hard to square with the picture of Jesus and his Father in the Bible. Are we to understand seemingly interpersonal relationship as God, in one personality, interacting with himself in another personality? On the other hand, some trinitarians think of the three "persons" as selves, divine selves, each of which has all the divine attributes (being all-knowing, being all-powerful, etc.). But what is this, if not belief in three gods, that is, not monotheism but tritheism? This flies in the face of the Bible, which emphasizes monotheism. Some have replied that the one God is the society, the group of the Three. But this is hard to square with the Bible, which portrays God not as a group, but as a perfect, non-bodily, personal agent.
There are essentially four ways out of this pickle. First, the Ostrich approach - head in the sand. What does all this have to do with loving my neighbor anyway? And isn't this just some sort of attack on the faith?
Second, embrace the mystery. Some gladly avow that they have no idea what a "person" is in the official answer - it's just a label for a distinction within God which we don't understand at all. Others argue that we should expect to run up against apparent inconsistencies which thinking about such a Transcendent being, something so wonderfully beyond us.
Third, break out some fancy philosophical moves. Perhaps there's a way past the dilemma for the official answer above (that whether the "persons" are personalities or selves, the theory is unacceptable). Let’s not be hasty - perhaps there's a third way to understand what the "persons" of the Trinity are. (A number of well-known Christian philosophers have recently attempted this feat in different ways.)
Fourth, one can accept that the four claims we started with really are inconsistent. So to remain consistent, one denies one of them - the most popular candidate being the third.
Each approach comes with its own challenges. Why isn't the first mere intellectual irresponsibility? Why isn't the second a perverse obscurantism, a disingenuous attempt to spin an incoherence as a profundity? As to the third - what exactly are these newfound distinctions, and are they theologically kosher? As to the fourth, is this heresy, or fighting against the Bible, rather than discovering the best interpretation of it?
There are no easy answers, but I believe that there are answers available to the diligent. I can only commend the recent work of many of my fellow Christian philosophy and theology professors, who have recently written much on this issue, in conjunction with a careful re-examination of what the Bible does and doesn’t say. Much of this work has been reviewed and summarized, in dozens of postings going back to 2006, at my blog, which attempts (not always successfully) to straddle the divide between the professionals and ordinary thinking Christians. (http://trinities.org/blog)
A word of caution: life is too short to waste on bad books. Go with recommendations, rather than grabbing the first book you find on the subject of the Trinity, for a randomly chosen book is likely to be both confused and confusing, and likely headache inducing as well.
I counsel avoiding the Ostrich approach. This is a serious discussion between Christians, not an external attack by hostile outsiders. Ignoring these difficulties won’t make them go away. Moreover, shouldn’t lovers of God want to think correctly about him? Quick: What does Jesus say is the first and greatest commandment, one even ahead of the command to love your neighbor? Right - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Wait – there’s one clause missing: "and with all your mind." People tend to overlook that last bit.
24 December 2008
The Trinity
The Objectivist
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 21, 2008
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is interesting. It holds that God exists as three persons: father, son (Jesus Christ), and spirit (Holy Ghost). Many Christians believe in it, including members of the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Reformation branches. This last branch includes Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Presbyterianism. The Bible also provides some support for it. This includes Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." An interesting question is whether a theist should believe in it. I should disclose that my Fredonia State colleague, Dale Tuggy, who writes here as The Theist, is an internationally recognized expert on the topic and the ideas here are influenced by his writings.
In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea held that the doctrine should be understood to involve the notion of one substance and three persons. On this account, according to The Sheed & Ward anthology of Catholic philosophy, the answer to the question: What is God? indicates the one-ness of God and the answer the question: Who is God? indicates the three-ness of the Trinity. The problem is that distinction is hard to understand.
The Trinity might mean that there are three different persons. This is analogous to three different roommates living together in an apartment (for example, Three’s Company). The concern is that if there are three distinct persons, then Christianity would be a polytheistic religion (believing in multiple gods) rather than a monotheistic one. The Christian might respond by claiming that one or more of these people is not divine (for example, Jesus is not divine), but then it is hard to square with Jesus Christ’s central role in Christianity. It is also hard to square with other parts of the Bible. Consider, for example, John 10:30, where Jesus says, "I and the Father are one."
In addition, the Council of Nicaea formulation can’t be squared with this account for if there are three different persons and if persons are distinguished because they are made out of different substances (that is, different objects), then it is hard to see how there could be just one divine substance. The notion that persons are differentiated by being made out of different substances (objects) makes sense once we recognize the logical incoherence of saying that one and the same object could constitute different persons. This is true regardless of whether the object is physical or spiritual.
Fans of the Trinity might assert that the three are different parts of the same whole. This is analogous to the way in which an elephant has different parts (for example, a trunk and two floppy ears). The problem is that a person cannot have another person as part of her. For example, a mother does not have an adult daughter as part of her even if the daughter were somehow to live inside her. If each member of the trinity were to have distinct thoughts, then it does appear that they are different persons and not merely part of one person. The notion that Jesus has thoughts that differ from those of God can be seen in that Jesus at times prays to God and this does not appear to be similar to a person conversing with himself. Also, Jesus is anguished at the thought of his future and this is not something that could be true of an all-powerful being like God.
Trinity proponents might instead assert that the three are different properties of a single person. For example, a person such as Winston Churchill was wise, courageous, and intelligent. If this is all that proponents of the Trinity are asserting then it seems obviously true. To say a perfect being like God has different properties such as vast knowledge, power, and goodness is uncontroversial. This would be unable to explain that vast amounts of ink, hard feelings, and church divisions that this doctrine has caused. In addition, this account would not explain the way in which God can be three persons.
One objection here is that all this shows is that the Trinity does not make sense when subjected to logic, but because God created logic and thus exists outside of it, this is not a problem. Exempting God from logic, however, runs the risk of reducing Christian beliefs to a contradictory morass. For example, when someone asserts that God is eternal, she means to rule out God’s having been created in 1984. However, if God is outside of logic, then the former does not rule out the latter. Similarly, when one asserts that God is all-good, she means to rule out the notion that God tortures puppies just for the fun of it. Again, this follows only if God is subject to logic. In addition, if God gave human beings reason to understand the world and then made the most important parts of it inaccessible to reason, this seems vaguely misleading, if not mean-spirited.
Some Christian philosophers such as Richard Swinburne of Oxford University and Stephen Davis of McKenna-Claremont College argue that there is good reason to believe that God has companions. They argue that God is perfect and that a perfect being will ensure that his life goes well. Because someone’s life goes well only if they have family or friends with whom to share their love, God would ensure that he has family or friends. This explains why there are the other members of the Trinity. This strikes me as a convincing argument, although it raises the issue of whether God created Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit or whether they exist independently of him. This argument strikes me as plausible, although it entails there are three divine beings and hence that Christians should be polytheists, that is, they should worship at least three gods and perhaps more.
The Trinity raises interesting issues. It is difficult to fit the traditional doctrine with the notion that there is only one divine being and ideas about what makes one person distinct from another. Christmas strikes me as a fun time to think about these issues.
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 21, 2008
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is interesting. It holds that God exists as three persons: father, son (Jesus Christ), and spirit (Holy Ghost). Many Christians believe in it, including members of the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Reformation branches. This last branch includes Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Presbyterianism. The Bible also provides some support for it. This includes Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." An interesting question is whether a theist should believe in it. I should disclose that my Fredonia State colleague, Dale Tuggy, who writes here as The Theist, is an internationally recognized expert on the topic and the ideas here are influenced by his writings.
In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea held that the doctrine should be understood to involve the notion of one substance and three persons. On this account, according to The Sheed & Ward anthology of Catholic philosophy, the answer to the question: What is God? indicates the one-ness of God and the answer the question: Who is God? indicates the three-ness of the Trinity. The problem is that distinction is hard to understand.
The Trinity might mean that there are three different persons. This is analogous to three different roommates living together in an apartment (for example, Three’s Company). The concern is that if there are three distinct persons, then Christianity would be a polytheistic religion (believing in multiple gods) rather than a monotheistic one. The Christian might respond by claiming that one or more of these people is not divine (for example, Jesus is not divine), but then it is hard to square with Jesus Christ’s central role in Christianity. It is also hard to square with other parts of the Bible. Consider, for example, John 10:30, where Jesus says, "I and the Father are one."
In addition, the Council of Nicaea formulation can’t be squared with this account for if there are three different persons and if persons are distinguished because they are made out of different substances (that is, different objects), then it is hard to see how there could be just one divine substance. The notion that persons are differentiated by being made out of different substances (objects) makes sense once we recognize the logical incoherence of saying that one and the same object could constitute different persons. This is true regardless of whether the object is physical or spiritual.
Fans of the Trinity might assert that the three are different parts of the same whole. This is analogous to the way in which an elephant has different parts (for example, a trunk and two floppy ears). The problem is that a person cannot have another person as part of her. For example, a mother does not have an adult daughter as part of her even if the daughter were somehow to live inside her. If each member of the trinity were to have distinct thoughts, then it does appear that they are different persons and not merely part of one person. The notion that Jesus has thoughts that differ from those of God can be seen in that Jesus at times prays to God and this does not appear to be similar to a person conversing with himself. Also, Jesus is anguished at the thought of his future and this is not something that could be true of an all-powerful being like God.
Trinity proponents might instead assert that the three are different properties of a single person. For example, a person such as Winston Churchill was wise, courageous, and intelligent. If this is all that proponents of the Trinity are asserting then it seems obviously true. To say a perfect being like God has different properties such as vast knowledge, power, and goodness is uncontroversial. This would be unable to explain that vast amounts of ink, hard feelings, and church divisions that this doctrine has caused. In addition, this account would not explain the way in which God can be three persons.
One objection here is that all this shows is that the Trinity does not make sense when subjected to logic, but because God created logic and thus exists outside of it, this is not a problem. Exempting God from logic, however, runs the risk of reducing Christian beliefs to a contradictory morass. For example, when someone asserts that God is eternal, she means to rule out God’s having been created in 1984. However, if God is outside of logic, then the former does not rule out the latter. Similarly, when one asserts that God is all-good, she means to rule out the notion that God tortures puppies just for the fun of it. Again, this follows only if God is subject to logic. In addition, if God gave human beings reason to understand the world and then made the most important parts of it inaccessible to reason, this seems vaguely misleading, if not mean-spirited.
Some Christian philosophers such as Richard Swinburne of Oxford University and Stephen Davis of McKenna-Claremont College argue that there is good reason to believe that God has companions. They argue that God is perfect and that a perfect being will ensure that his life goes well. Because someone’s life goes well only if they have family or friends with whom to share their love, God would ensure that he has family or friends. This explains why there are the other members of the Trinity. This strikes me as a convincing argument, although it raises the issue of whether God created Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit or whether they exist independently of him. This argument strikes me as plausible, although it entails there are three divine beings and hence that Christians should be polytheists, that is, they should worship at least three gods and perhaps more.
The Trinity raises interesting issues. It is difficult to fit the traditional doctrine with the notion that there is only one divine being and ideas about what makes one person distinct from another. Christmas strikes me as a fun time to think about these issues.
09 September 2006
Debating Abortion
We're back! Due to my inability to read katakana, I accidentally deleted the blog--right before Labor Day weekend, of course, so it took Blogger a little while to restore it for us. My apologies to all. The Objectivist has scared up a Fredonia Philosophy colleague to pinch-hit for a column or three while I'm in Japan, so without further ado, let me introduce The Theist.
--The Constructivist
***
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
The Standard Abortion Argument
On March 7, 2006, South Dakota's government enacted a law (HB 1215) that criminalized abortion except where it is necessary to save the woman's life. The law makes no exceptions for rape and incest. In November, South Dakota voters will face a referendum on the law. About 800 abortions a year occur within South Dakota and the state only has one abortion clinic, which is operated by Planned Parenthood. In 2000, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 8% of the pregnancies in South Dakota were aborted. This is low compared to the rest of the country where 21% of pregnancies were aborted (1.3 million abortions). At current rates, the Institute estimates that one third of American women will have had an abortion by the time they reach 45. Given the referendum, it's worth looking at the standard pro-choice argument.
In 1971, Judith Jarvis Thomson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology famously argued that women have a right to an abortion, by which she meant that no one may forcibly prevent her from having one. Her main idea was that in abortion-related cases, a fetus (that is, human life between conception and birth) does not have a right to be in the woman's body.
In some cases, Thomson noted, the fetus never had the right to be in the woman. In the case of rape or failed contraception, Thomson asserted, the woman did not consent to the fetus entering her body. Even in the case of intercourse without contraception, she says, the woman did not give the fetus permission to enter the woman. Critics responded that the woman took the risk by having intercourse under conditions that posed a substantial risk of pregnancy. But merely having taken a risk that someone will come into your body or property, even a negligent one, does not constitute permission. For example, imagine that I live in the worst part of Detroit and I leave my house unlocked. As a result, a homeless man enters it and proceeds to eat my Cool Ranch Doritos, I haven't given him permission to do so even if the threat of such break-ins is well-known and easily avoided.
In the case where the woman purposely became pregnant and then changed her mind, Thomson notes, the fetus had but then lost the right to remain inside the woman. This is similar to the way in which a woman having intercourse may withdraw her consent if it becomes painful. This is especially true if her partner prefers to continue for another hour.
The rest of the pro-choice argument is straightforward. On this account, the fetus has no right to be in the woman's body and may thus be forcibly removed. On this line of argument, since forcible removal can only be accomplished through killing the invading fetus and since the invasion is a very serious one, the woman is permitted to kill the fetus. Abortion is a killing since the most common methods involve the physician dismembering the fetus (for example, via suction tubes with sharp cutting edges and other methods involve poisoning the fetus).
Some pro-lifers concede that a woman may use lethal force against a rapist but assert that a fetus is nothing like a rapist. After all, they claim, fetuses are innocents and rapists are bad guys. However, this is to equate being an aggressor and moral guilt and they are not the same. An individual can be an aggressor even if he is not blameworthy. Consider the Staten Island Slasher, Juan Gonzalez. He was a schizophrenic who killed two and wounded nine with a sword. On some accounts, Gonzalez was morally innocent and in fact was called "a model patient" and "extremely well-mannered" in the psychiatric facility in which he lived. A woman endangered by Gonzalez may kill him regardless of whether Gonzalez knew what he was doing.
As far as I can tell, Thomson's argument is convincing. Compare it to the arguments that are sometimes used to oppose abortion. It is sometimes argued that abortion is wrong because all human beings have a right to life. The U.S. Catholic Bishops, for example, make this argument. This argument is plainly unsound. Last week I argued that it is persons and not human beings that have rights. Even if this conclusion were not true, human beings who attack or invade others temporarily forfeit their right to life. This explains why killing in self-defense and wartime is permissible. Some Christians argue that fetuses can't be killed because they have souls or because they have the potential to become persons. Of course neither claim establishes that the fetus has a right to be inside the woman when she doesn't want it there.
Pro-choice groups don't help things when they make silly arguments about avoiding back-alley abortions or allowing each woman to decide for herself when life begins. Nevertheless their position is correct and South Dakota is embarrassing itself by stepping on women's rights.
***
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Why Most Abortions Are Wrong
Why would it be wrong for me to kill you? If I did that, I'd be depriving you of something of great value, namely, the rest of your natural life. (I'd be depriving countless others as well, but the harm to you is usually enough to make the killing wrong.) Now in certain circumstances, say, if you're threatening to shoot me, or if you're a soldier in an opposing army, arguably, I'd do no wrong in killing you. But in most circumstances, it would be very wrong for someone to kill you.
You used to be a baby. If I'd killed you back then because I didn't like the smell of your diaper, I'd have done something very wrong. Before you were a baby, you were a fetus. If I had kicked your nine-months pregnant mother in her big stomach, resulting in your death, I would have done something very wrong. In general, fetus killing is morally wrong for the same reasons that most homicides are wrong--the victim is thereby deprived of the rest of its natural life. Now what if your mom had wanted to abort you in the ninth month? Most of us, again following common sense (and I note, even most professing "pro-choicers") would say that this would be wrong. Just as infanticide is wrong, for the same reasons, late-term abortions are wrong.
How far back in time does your life go? You didn't pop into existence at birth, or at the ninth month of pregnancy, or even at the point of "viability." The science of biology presents us with a picture of a single, continuously developing thing. There's no reason to think that you existed before a certain conception within your mother. But were you formerly a zygote? Perhaps--no one knows for sure. But that's a reason not to seek a very early term abortion. If I don't know whether or not killing the zygote is depriving a being of a future life containing the joys of music, sex, and NFL football, then I ought not kill that zygote. If I can't see whether or not any children are hiding in a large tree, then I ought not chop it down.
I'm glad I wasn't aborted, and I'll bet you are as well. Argue all you want about whether or not unborn members of homo sapiens are "humans," "persons," or endowed with souls. In any case, it seems that killing these things is generally wrong for the same reasons that killing adult humans is generally wrong. If we're going to deprive something of a massively valuable future life, we need to have a very good reason to do so, such as self-defense. Sorry, but "I really don't want to have a baby right now" doesn't seem to be a strong enough reason to make the killing morally permissible, any more than "I'm really tired of this marriage and don't have time for a divorce" would make it permissible for a man to kill his wife.
If like me you believe in God, you probably have additional reasons for thinking that most abortions are wrong. But note that none of the preceding depends on religious considerations. Careful reasoning can lead to a wide consensus on this, as it has on issues such as infanticide, slavery, and female genital mutilation, if people are willing to lay down their culture-wars mentality and carefully reason through the issue.
What The Objectivist calls "the standard pro-choice argument" is standard only among a small class of intellectuals. This argument is almost never heard at the popular level of discourse; it grants that the unborn are human persons, and argues that even so, at least if the couple used birth control which failed, the woman does no wrong in aborting, even in the ninth month. (Ever heard a "pro-choice politician or activist argue that way?) The deepest problem with the argument is its assumption that morality is fundamentally based on contracts. The idea is that as long as the woman didn't enter in to a contract with the fetus, or with society to support the fetus's life, she has no moral obligation not to kill the fetus. This assumption is false. She has obligations to the fetus in virtue of that fact that the pathetic little thing, a thing of great potential and value, needs help which only she can give, and has much to lose, and also the fact that she is its biological mother.
How would The Objectivist reply to my anti-abortion argument? Although he agrees that he was once a baby (fetus, embryo) he thinks that back then he had no moral rights at all. He holds that only "persons" (defined as beings with highly developed mental abilities) have moral rights. This claim pretty well refutes itself. Let it suffice to say that if this were true, then non-persons such as babies, advanced Alzheimer patients, and the mentally handicapped have no moral rights. So if you killed one just for fun, in The Objectivist's view, you wouldn't have done anything morally wrong (unless you thereby violated the rights of someone other than the victim). Yeah, sure.
--The Constructivist
***
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
The Standard Abortion Argument
On March 7, 2006, South Dakota's government enacted a law (HB 1215) that criminalized abortion except where it is necessary to save the woman's life. The law makes no exceptions for rape and incest. In November, South Dakota voters will face a referendum on the law. About 800 abortions a year occur within South Dakota and the state only has one abortion clinic, which is operated by Planned Parenthood. In 2000, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 8% of the pregnancies in South Dakota were aborted. This is low compared to the rest of the country where 21% of pregnancies were aborted (1.3 million abortions). At current rates, the Institute estimates that one third of American women will have had an abortion by the time they reach 45. Given the referendum, it's worth looking at the standard pro-choice argument.
In 1971, Judith Jarvis Thomson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology famously argued that women have a right to an abortion, by which she meant that no one may forcibly prevent her from having one. Her main idea was that in abortion-related cases, a fetus (that is, human life between conception and birth) does not have a right to be in the woman's body.
In some cases, Thomson noted, the fetus never had the right to be in the woman. In the case of rape or failed contraception, Thomson asserted, the woman did not consent to the fetus entering her body. Even in the case of intercourse without contraception, she says, the woman did not give the fetus permission to enter the woman. Critics responded that the woman took the risk by having intercourse under conditions that posed a substantial risk of pregnancy. But merely having taken a risk that someone will come into your body or property, even a negligent one, does not constitute permission. For example, imagine that I live in the worst part of Detroit and I leave my house unlocked. As a result, a homeless man enters it and proceeds to eat my Cool Ranch Doritos, I haven't given him permission to do so even if the threat of such break-ins is well-known and easily avoided.
In the case where the woman purposely became pregnant and then changed her mind, Thomson notes, the fetus had but then lost the right to remain inside the woman. This is similar to the way in which a woman having intercourse may withdraw her consent if it becomes painful. This is especially true if her partner prefers to continue for another hour.
The rest of the pro-choice argument is straightforward. On this account, the fetus has no right to be in the woman's body and may thus be forcibly removed. On this line of argument, since forcible removal can only be accomplished through killing the invading fetus and since the invasion is a very serious one, the woman is permitted to kill the fetus. Abortion is a killing since the most common methods involve the physician dismembering the fetus (for example, via suction tubes with sharp cutting edges and other methods involve poisoning the fetus).
Some pro-lifers concede that a woman may use lethal force against a rapist but assert that a fetus is nothing like a rapist. After all, they claim, fetuses are innocents and rapists are bad guys. However, this is to equate being an aggressor and moral guilt and they are not the same. An individual can be an aggressor even if he is not blameworthy. Consider the Staten Island Slasher, Juan Gonzalez. He was a schizophrenic who killed two and wounded nine with a sword. On some accounts, Gonzalez was morally innocent and in fact was called "a model patient" and "extremely well-mannered" in the psychiatric facility in which he lived. A woman endangered by Gonzalez may kill him regardless of whether Gonzalez knew what he was doing.
As far as I can tell, Thomson's argument is convincing. Compare it to the arguments that are sometimes used to oppose abortion. It is sometimes argued that abortion is wrong because all human beings have a right to life. The U.S. Catholic Bishops, for example, make this argument. This argument is plainly unsound. Last week I argued that it is persons and not human beings that have rights. Even if this conclusion were not true, human beings who attack or invade others temporarily forfeit their right to life. This explains why killing in self-defense and wartime is permissible. Some Christians argue that fetuses can't be killed because they have souls or because they have the potential to become persons. Of course neither claim establishes that the fetus has a right to be inside the woman when she doesn't want it there.
Pro-choice groups don't help things when they make silly arguments about avoiding back-alley abortions or allowing each woman to decide for herself when life begins. Nevertheless their position is correct and South Dakota is embarrassing itself by stepping on women's rights.
***
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Why Most Abortions Are Wrong
Why would it be wrong for me to kill you? If I did that, I'd be depriving you of something of great value, namely, the rest of your natural life. (I'd be depriving countless others as well, but the harm to you is usually enough to make the killing wrong.) Now in certain circumstances, say, if you're threatening to shoot me, or if you're a soldier in an opposing army, arguably, I'd do no wrong in killing you. But in most circumstances, it would be very wrong for someone to kill you.
You used to be a baby. If I'd killed you back then because I didn't like the smell of your diaper, I'd have done something very wrong. Before you were a baby, you were a fetus. If I had kicked your nine-months pregnant mother in her big stomach, resulting in your death, I would have done something very wrong. In general, fetus killing is morally wrong for the same reasons that most homicides are wrong--the victim is thereby deprived of the rest of its natural life. Now what if your mom had wanted to abort you in the ninth month? Most of us, again following common sense (and I note, even most professing "pro-choicers") would say that this would be wrong. Just as infanticide is wrong, for the same reasons, late-term abortions are wrong.
How far back in time does your life go? You didn't pop into existence at birth, or at the ninth month of pregnancy, or even at the point of "viability." The science of biology presents us with a picture of a single, continuously developing thing. There's no reason to think that you existed before a certain conception within your mother. But were you formerly a zygote? Perhaps--no one knows for sure. But that's a reason not to seek a very early term abortion. If I don't know whether or not killing the zygote is depriving a being of a future life containing the joys of music, sex, and NFL football, then I ought not kill that zygote. If I can't see whether or not any children are hiding in a large tree, then I ought not chop it down.
I'm glad I wasn't aborted, and I'll bet you are as well. Argue all you want about whether or not unborn members of homo sapiens are "humans," "persons," or endowed with souls. In any case, it seems that killing these things is generally wrong for the same reasons that killing adult humans is generally wrong. If we're going to deprive something of a massively valuable future life, we need to have a very good reason to do so, such as self-defense. Sorry, but "I really don't want to have a baby right now" doesn't seem to be a strong enough reason to make the killing morally permissible, any more than "I'm really tired of this marriage and don't have time for a divorce" would make it permissible for a man to kill his wife.
If like me you believe in God, you probably have additional reasons for thinking that most abortions are wrong. But note that none of the preceding depends on religious considerations. Careful reasoning can lead to a wide consensus on this, as it has on issues such as infanticide, slavery, and female genital mutilation, if people are willing to lay down their culture-wars mentality and carefully reason through the issue.
What The Objectivist calls "the standard pro-choice argument" is standard only among a small class of intellectuals. This argument is almost never heard at the popular level of discourse; it grants that the unborn are human persons, and argues that even so, at least if the couple used birth control which failed, the woman does no wrong in aborting, even in the ninth month. (Ever heard a "pro-choice politician or activist argue that way?) The deepest problem with the argument is its assumption that morality is fundamentally based on contracts. The idea is that as long as the woman didn't enter in to a contract with the fetus, or with society to support the fetus's life, she has no moral obligation not to kill the fetus. This assumption is false. She has obligations to the fetus in virtue of that fact that the pathetic little thing, a thing of great potential and value, needs help which only she can give, and has much to lose, and also the fact that she is its biological mother.
How would The Objectivist reply to my anti-abortion argument? Although he agrees that he was once a baby (fetus, embryo) he thinks that back then he had no moral rights at all. He holds that only "persons" (defined as beings with highly developed mental abilities) have moral rights. This claim pretty well refutes itself. Let it suffice to say that if this were true, then non-persons such as babies, advanced Alzheimer patients, and the mentally handicapped have no moral rights. So if you killed one just for fun, in The Objectivist's view, you wouldn't have done anything morally wrong (unless you thereby violated the rights of someone other than the victim). Yeah, sure.
10 March 2007
Is Capitalism a Religion?
This is a somewhat parodic response to The Theist's recent suggestion that environmentalism is a religion. In it, he surveyed three major considerations of religion, which I'll mash up as follows: a religion is constituted by a set of beliefs, actions, and experiences, both personal and corporate, organized around a concept of an Ultimate Reality and offering a diagnosis and a cure with doctrinal, mythic, ethical, ritual, experiential, and social dimensions. So let's see: capitalism seems to fit this bill.
Ultimate Reality is survival, scarcity, and profit, nothing more; the problem is statist attempts to reduce scarcity and produce survival and profit; the cure is the free market; capitalist doctrines are provided by economists, who of course have split into various sects; the shared myth is the Invisible Hand; the ethics include "greed is good," theft is bad (and no, property ain't theft, nosireee Proudhon), and all the other propositions that make up "enlightened self-interest"; rituals abound: the shopping trip, going to the bank, buying a house, meetings with financial advisors, the job interview, the morning commute, opening and closing of stock markets, government release of economic data, Fed deliberations over interest rates, and really any purchase or sale, when you think about what's going on during a transaction; whether any of us have ever experienced "pure capitalism" is open to debate, but we've all felt the impact of some form of capitalism, in one way or another; Smith's discussions of trust (he was a moral philosopher, right?) indicate the social aspects of capitalism, as does the Cold War division between the "free world" and the "evil empire" and the debate over the relation between capitalism and democracy, among others.
Think about the way capitalism combines features of many world religions: the stock market is treated and spoken of as if it were the Oracle at Delphi; the capitalist priesthood of economists, financial analysts, stock traders, members of central banks and transnational institutions like the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund is as convoluted a hierarchy as any you'd find in Catholicism; its missionary impulse is as strong as any evangelical Christian church (or Mormon, for that matter); it has its saints and heretics, its saved and its lost, its debates over faith, works, and grace; it calls for a Buddhist detachment to live with the fear/greed overcorrection cycles of the stock market; it has its sacred sites--NY, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Las Vegas.... I'm sure our three regular readers and thirty googlers a day can come up with more examples on their own.
Here, following The Theist faithfully, as it were, although not quite as literal-mindedly as this guy, I'm going against the disclaimers of people like this guy, who concedes that a phrase like "market fundamentalism" is nothing more than a useful analogy.
To what end? I'm not sure. If you do a google search on just about any of the many clever phrases you can no doubt come up with on the capitalism=religion theme, you'll see that people have done any number of variations on it. In the interest of bloggy solidarity, I'll say that I am going for whatever The Theist was going for by arguing that environmentalism is a religion--until he clarifies what that is, and then I'll be against it. And against what The Objectivist is for. Because that's how we roll here, baby!
Ultimate Reality is survival, scarcity, and profit, nothing more; the problem is statist attempts to reduce scarcity and produce survival and profit; the cure is the free market; capitalist doctrines are provided by economists, who of course have split into various sects; the shared myth is the Invisible Hand; the ethics include "greed is good," theft is bad (and no, property ain't theft, nosireee Proudhon), and all the other propositions that make up "enlightened self-interest"; rituals abound: the shopping trip, going to the bank, buying a house, meetings with financial advisors, the job interview, the morning commute, opening and closing of stock markets, government release of economic data, Fed deliberations over interest rates, and really any purchase or sale, when you think about what's going on during a transaction; whether any of us have ever experienced "pure capitalism" is open to debate, but we've all felt the impact of some form of capitalism, in one way or another; Smith's discussions of trust (he was a moral philosopher, right?) indicate the social aspects of capitalism, as does the Cold War division between the "free world" and the "evil empire" and the debate over the relation between capitalism and democracy, among others.
Think about the way capitalism combines features of many world religions: the stock market is treated and spoken of as if it were the Oracle at Delphi; the capitalist priesthood of economists, financial analysts, stock traders, members of central banks and transnational institutions like the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund is as convoluted a hierarchy as any you'd find in Catholicism; its missionary impulse is as strong as any evangelical Christian church (or Mormon, for that matter); it has its saints and heretics, its saved and its lost, its debates over faith, works, and grace; it calls for a Buddhist detachment to live with the fear/greed overcorrection cycles of the stock market; it has its sacred sites--NY, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Las Vegas.... I'm sure our three regular readers and thirty googlers a day can come up with more examples on their own.
Here, following The Theist faithfully, as it were, although not quite as literal-mindedly as this guy, I'm going against the disclaimers of people like this guy, who concedes that a phrase like "market fundamentalism" is nothing more than a useful analogy.
To what end? I'm not sure. If you do a google search on just about any of the many clever phrases you can no doubt come up with on the capitalism=religion theme, you'll see that people have done any number of variations on it. In the interest of bloggy solidarity, I'll say that I am going for whatever The Theist was going for by arguing that environmentalism is a religion--until he clarifies what that is, and then I'll be against it. And against what The Objectivist is for. Because that's how we roll here, baby!
01 March 2007
Moral Responsibility
The Objectivist
MORAL RESPONSIBILTY: IT JUST AIN’T SO
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Sunday, February 25, 2007
A central issue in philosophy and politics is whether human beings are morally responsible for what they do. Persons really are morally responsible only if they really are worthy of praise or blame for what they do. The idea that human beings are morally responsible also lies at the heart of our emotional reaction to bad behavior. For example, our feelings of anger and resentment toward rapists presuppose that they are blameworthy.
To see why human beings are not morally responsible, imagine a computer that is conscious, that is, it has thoughts and emotions. Now all computers have three aspects: input, processing, and output. The input consists of the commands that the user types into it. The processing consists of the way in which the silicon chip converts the electric patterns that are the typed-in commands into electrical firing patterns that are the output. The output is often displayed via words or images on the computer screen. Even if the computer were conscious, it still wouldn’t be morally responsible for its output. This is true even if the computer had the power to re-shape its silicon-chip “brain” since the re-shaping decisions would be merely the result of the previous structure of the silicon chip and the typed-in commands. This wouldn’t stop us from getting angry at the computer, but it would make such anger misplaced.
Now consider an individual human being. By analogy, the input in this case is the environmental forces, the processor is the brain, and the output is the person’s behavior. Like a computer, an individual can change his brain states (and accompanying thoughts) only as a result of previous output, where this output is merely the result of previous brain states and external input. An individual can no more step outside of himself to shape his brain than he can jump out of his own skin. This discussion might be a little hard to follow, but the basic idea is that a person can’t stand outside of himself and decide what sort of person to become because the decision depends on who he already is.
One common objection to this argument is that human beings have free will. That is, given all of an individual’s mental states (for example, what he wants and believes), he still doesn’t have to do one thing rather than another. For example, even if we knew all of a person’s thoughts, he still wouldn’t have to do one action (for example, give chocolate to sick children) rather than another (for example, rob a liquor store). The problem is that if there are factors besides an individual’s preceding mental states that generate his actions, these factors are random or arbitrary. Random or arbitrary factors do not explain why human beings are morally responsible for their actions.
A second objection is that we are immediately aware of our own free will. In deciding what to do, we consider the pros and cons of various options and choose the best one. That is, we know that we are morally responsible because we can observe how we freely make decisions. Since a person knows that he is morally responsible for what he does, there must be something wrong with my argument. The problem with this objection is that our self-awareness doesn’t establish moral responsibility any more than a computer’s self-awareness would make it morally responsible. All we really observe is the translation of our thoughts into action and this doesn’t require free will.
A third objection is that we are morally responsible not because we have free will, but because we don’t have it. The idea is that we are responsible for what we do because our thoughts and actions reflect who we are. This objection is the opposite of the first two because it rests on the denial of free will. This view of responsibility is often held by persons who view the human mind as the brain since it allows them to hold that persons are responsible even though their actions are solely the result of what happens in their brain. The problem here is that if our thoughts and actions are dictated by what affects the brain and if we can’t control what affects the brain (for example, our environment and genes), we aren’t morally responsible for our thoughts and actions. This is analogous to the way in which I’m not responsible for who wins an Oscar because I have no control over it.
The implications of human beings not being morally responsible for their thoughts and actions are striking. First, if correct, this proves that God doesn’t exist. The underlying idea here is that a perfect being like God would tolerate the ocean of evil that has characterized human history only if it is explained by something really good and the only plausible explanation is that evil results from human beings being morally responsible. Since human beings aren’t morally responsible, the widespread existence of evil conflicts with the notion that the world had an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful creator.
Second, without moral responsibility, it’s unclear why human interests (specifically their pleasure and pain) should count more than that of other animals. That is, if human beings are merely another animal, albeit with a wider range of thought and behavior, it’s unclear why their well-being is more important than that of other animals (for example, pigs and chickens). This threatens to undermine the case for our current mistreatment of these animals in factory farming.
The idea that human beings are morally responsible for what they do lies at the heart of many of our beliefs and emotions. Sadly, we just don’t have it.
The Theist
THE BLAME GAME: A-OK
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Tuesday, 02/27/07
I’m certain that at least one morally responsible being walks the earth, because I know that my own actions are often blameworthy or praiseworthy. Let’s focus on the negative. When I lie, cheat, or treat someone cruelly, I not only believe, but know that I’ve done something blameworthy. But The Objectivist urges us to believe that no human is ever praiseworthy or blameworthy for anything. If he’s right, the entire realm of moral thought is based on a delusion. Do you think a wife-beater deserves punishment, while the man who jumped in front of the oncoming subway to save the seizure victim should be lauded? According to The Objectivist, you’re as mistaken as the astrologer who thinks people’s personality traits and fates are determined by imaginary influences from far-off planets.
Strong claims require strong evidence. If I tell you I had eggs for breakfast, you’ll reasonably just take my word for it. But if I tell you that I saw Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster going for a joy-ride in a UFO driven by Elvis, then you’ll demand somewhat stronger evidence than my mere word. So one would expect The Objectivist to offer us rock-solid evidence for his earth-shattering discovery that no action is ever praiseworthy or blameworthy.
Instead, we get only a flimsy analogy. Here it is: intentional action is to a human being like output is to a computer. The idea is that in both cases, the result (action, or “output”--say, on a screen or on a printer) is wholly determined by the “input”(total environment) together with the automatic “processing” (brain processes, computer chip process). Neither the human nor the computer has any real control over what it does--so my friend The Objectivist would have you believe.
You may be impressed by this analogy because some of our actions--be they thoughts, words, or bodily movements--do seem like that. Thus, if the phone rings, I automatically answer it, and if I suddenly stumble upon a fat man in a Speedo, I automatically let out a shriek and cover my eyes. But other actions do not seem that way--they don’t just automatically issue forth from us. Think about the last time you had to make a really difficult decision, such as whether to take one job or another. You have substantial reasons to accept, and to reject both jobs, but you may only choose one, and the jobs seem about evenly matched. When facing a choice like this, you feel free, that is, able to choose one, or to choose the other. Or suppose that you’re married, but you’re tempted to have an affair with your hottie co-worker. Here, your conscience says “No” but your body says “Yes.” (Your spouse, and his or her lawyer, say “No.”) Who will you listen to? It seems that it’s up to you. You’re like a king with multiple advisers giving him clashing advice. You’re free to take the advice of one or the other. Just because you’re subject to influences, doesn’t mean you have no control over the outcome.
Therefore, here’s a better analogy. A normal human is like a man paddling a canoe in a river. The currents are at various times and places on the river weaker or stronger. Sometimes, they push his little boat where they will. At other times, even though his boat is pushed, he puts the tip of his paddle in the water and steers. Sometimes he’ll move away from one current to another one. And sometimes, he even goes upstream, directly against the current. Sometimes he’s strong, and sometimes he’s weak. Sometimes his canoe has momentum, and sometimes it’s dead in the water. Sometimes he’s asleep at the paddle, and the river takes full control. Though he’s far from omnipotent, he is the pilot, and he does, sometimes and to some degree, control where that canoe goes.
This analogy seems to better fit our experience. We don’t stand aloof from the world; we’re almost always buffeted by influences from within and without. Still, we do sometimes freely decide, and freely act. Sometimes the current is strong, and our control is correspondingly week. But at other times, the river flows so slowly that it’s like paddling on a calm, windless lake.
One aspect our human agency that my analogy doesn’t do justice to, is that over the course of a lifetime, as we make a thousand small decisions, we can shape, as it were, the river’s currents. Think of the most disciplined, mature, and spiritual person you can imagine. Now contrast him or her with the poorest excuse for a human you can imagine--someone who is addicted to pork rinds and porn, thinks “Guess what--chicken butt!” is really witty, and devotes most of his waking hours to watching professional wrestling and kicking his dog. Even if their external circumstances were comparable, we believe that the “river” (the thoughts, emotions, and desires) of the mature person would be “calmer” than that of the undisciplined knucklehead. The latter would be frequently driven by his animal desires and emotions, while the former would be freer to say “Yes” or “No” to them. And we can further suppose that these two people are identical twins, and were raised in the same family, but over the course of their lifetimes, they freely made very different sets of choices.
In conclusion, a question to ponder: if you adopt the view that there’s no such thing as moral responsibility, which of these two people are you probably going to become more like?
MORAL RESPONSIBILTY: IT JUST AIN’T SO
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Sunday, February 25, 2007
A central issue in philosophy and politics is whether human beings are morally responsible for what they do. Persons really are morally responsible only if they really are worthy of praise or blame for what they do. The idea that human beings are morally responsible also lies at the heart of our emotional reaction to bad behavior. For example, our feelings of anger and resentment toward rapists presuppose that they are blameworthy.
To see why human beings are not morally responsible, imagine a computer that is conscious, that is, it has thoughts and emotions. Now all computers have three aspects: input, processing, and output. The input consists of the commands that the user types into it. The processing consists of the way in which the silicon chip converts the electric patterns that are the typed-in commands into electrical firing patterns that are the output. The output is often displayed via words or images on the computer screen. Even if the computer were conscious, it still wouldn’t be morally responsible for its output. This is true even if the computer had the power to re-shape its silicon-chip “brain” since the re-shaping decisions would be merely the result of the previous structure of the silicon chip and the typed-in commands. This wouldn’t stop us from getting angry at the computer, but it would make such anger misplaced.
Now consider an individual human being. By analogy, the input in this case is the environmental forces, the processor is the brain, and the output is the person’s behavior. Like a computer, an individual can change his brain states (and accompanying thoughts) only as a result of previous output, where this output is merely the result of previous brain states and external input. An individual can no more step outside of himself to shape his brain than he can jump out of his own skin. This discussion might be a little hard to follow, but the basic idea is that a person can’t stand outside of himself and decide what sort of person to become because the decision depends on who he already is.
One common objection to this argument is that human beings have free will. That is, given all of an individual’s mental states (for example, what he wants and believes), he still doesn’t have to do one thing rather than another. For example, even if we knew all of a person’s thoughts, he still wouldn’t have to do one action (for example, give chocolate to sick children) rather than another (for example, rob a liquor store). The problem is that if there are factors besides an individual’s preceding mental states that generate his actions, these factors are random or arbitrary. Random or arbitrary factors do not explain why human beings are morally responsible for their actions.
A second objection is that we are immediately aware of our own free will. In deciding what to do, we consider the pros and cons of various options and choose the best one. That is, we know that we are morally responsible because we can observe how we freely make decisions. Since a person knows that he is morally responsible for what he does, there must be something wrong with my argument. The problem with this objection is that our self-awareness doesn’t establish moral responsibility any more than a computer’s self-awareness would make it morally responsible. All we really observe is the translation of our thoughts into action and this doesn’t require free will.
A third objection is that we are morally responsible not because we have free will, but because we don’t have it. The idea is that we are responsible for what we do because our thoughts and actions reflect who we are. This objection is the opposite of the first two because it rests on the denial of free will. This view of responsibility is often held by persons who view the human mind as the brain since it allows them to hold that persons are responsible even though their actions are solely the result of what happens in their brain. The problem here is that if our thoughts and actions are dictated by what affects the brain and if we can’t control what affects the brain (for example, our environment and genes), we aren’t morally responsible for our thoughts and actions. This is analogous to the way in which I’m not responsible for who wins an Oscar because I have no control over it.
The implications of human beings not being morally responsible for their thoughts and actions are striking. First, if correct, this proves that God doesn’t exist. The underlying idea here is that a perfect being like God would tolerate the ocean of evil that has characterized human history only if it is explained by something really good and the only plausible explanation is that evil results from human beings being morally responsible. Since human beings aren’t morally responsible, the widespread existence of evil conflicts with the notion that the world had an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful creator.
Second, without moral responsibility, it’s unclear why human interests (specifically their pleasure and pain) should count more than that of other animals. That is, if human beings are merely another animal, albeit with a wider range of thought and behavior, it’s unclear why their well-being is more important than that of other animals (for example, pigs and chickens). This threatens to undermine the case for our current mistreatment of these animals in factory farming.
The idea that human beings are morally responsible for what they do lies at the heart of many of our beliefs and emotions. Sadly, we just don’t have it.
The Theist
THE BLAME GAME: A-OK
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Tuesday, 02/27/07
I’m certain that at least one morally responsible being walks the earth, because I know that my own actions are often blameworthy or praiseworthy. Let’s focus on the negative. When I lie, cheat, or treat someone cruelly, I not only believe, but know that I’ve done something blameworthy. But The Objectivist urges us to believe that no human is ever praiseworthy or blameworthy for anything. If he’s right, the entire realm of moral thought is based on a delusion. Do you think a wife-beater deserves punishment, while the man who jumped in front of the oncoming subway to save the seizure victim should be lauded? According to The Objectivist, you’re as mistaken as the astrologer who thinks people’s personality traits and fates are determined by imaginary influences from far-off planets.
Strong claims require strong evidence. If I tell you I had eggs for breakfast, you’ll reasonably just take my word for it. But if I tell you that I saw Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster going for a joy-ride in a UFO driven by Elvis, then you’ll demand somewhat stronger evidence than my mere word. So one would expect The Objectivist to offer us rock-solid evidence for his earth-shattering discovery that no action is ever praiseworthy or blameworthy.
Instead, we get only a flimsy analogy. Here it is: intentional action is to a human being like output is to a computer. The idea is that in both cases, the result (action, or “output”--say, on a screen or on a printer) is wholly determined by the “input”(total environment) together with the automatic “processing” (brain processes, computer chip process). Neither the human nor the computer has any real control over what it does--so my friend The Objectivist would have you believe.
You may be impressed by this analogy because some of our actions--be they thoughts, words, or bodily movements--do seem like that. Thus, if the phone rings, I automatically answer it, and if I suddenly stumble upon a fat man in a Speedo, I automatically let out a shriek and cover my eyes. But other actions do not seem that way--they don’t just automatically issue forth from us. Think about the last time you had to make a really difficult decision, such as whether to take one job or another. You have substantial reasons to accept, and to reject both jobs, but you may only choose one, and the jobs seem about evenly matched. When facing a choice like this, you feel free, that is, able to choose one, or to choose the other. Or suppose that you’re married, but you’re tempted to have an affair with your hottie co-worker. Here, your conscience says “No” but your body says “Yes.” (Your spouse, and his or her lawyer, say “No.”) Who will you listen to? It seems that it’s up to you. You’re like a king with multiple advisers giving him clashing advice. You’re free to take the advice of one or the other. Just because you’re subject to influences, doesn’t mean you have no control over the outcome.
Therefore, here’s a better analogy. A normal human is like a man paddling a canoe in a river. The currents are at various times and places on the river weaker or stronger. Sometimes, they push his little boat where they will. At other times, even though his boat is pushed, he puts the tip of his paddle in the water and steers. Sometimes he’ll move away from one current to another one. And sometimes, he even goes upstream, directly against the current. Sometimes he’s strong, and sometimes he’s weak. Sometimes his canoe has momentum, and sometimes it’s dead in the water. Sometimes he’s asleep at the paddle, and the river takes full control. Though he’s far from omnipotent, he is the pilot, and he does, sometimes and to some degree, control where that canoe goes.
This analogy seems to better fit our experience. We don’t stand aloof from the world; we’re almost always buffeted by influences from within and without. Still, we do sometimes freely decide, and freely act. Sometimes the current is strong, and our control is correspondingly week. But at other times, the river flows so slowly that it’s like paddling on a calm, windless lake.
One aspect our human agency that my analogy doesn’t do justice to, is that over the course of a lifetime, as we make a thousand small decisions, we can shape, as it were, the river’s currents. Think of the most disciplined, mature, and spiritual person you can imagine. Now contrast him or her with the poorest excuse for a human you can imagine--someone who is addicted to pork rinds and porn, thinks “Guess what--chicken butt!” is really witty, and devotes most of his waking hours to watching professional wrestling and kicking his dog. Even if their external circumstances were comparable, we believe that the “river” (the thoughts, emotions, and desires) of the mature person would be “calmer” than that of the undisciplined knucklehead. The latter would be frequently driven by his animal desires and emotions, while the former would be freer to say “Yes” or “No” to them. And we can further suppose that these two people are identical twins, and were raised in the same family, but over the course of their lifetimes, they freely made very different sets of choices.
In conclusion, a question to ponder: if you adopt the view that there’s no such thing as moral responsibility, which of these two people are you probably going to become more like?
25 December 2006
Debating the Death Penalty
The Objectivist
DEATH PENALTY: TOO RICH FOR MY TASTES
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 20, 2006
In the United States, murderers are rarely executed. In 2003, 14,493 persons were murdered while only 65 murderers were executed. In thinking about whether to abolish the death penalty, we should begin by distinguishing the two main justifications of punishment. On a retributivist account, criminals should be punished because justice demands it. On a consequence-based account, criminals should be punished because doing so makes the world a better place.
Retributivists usually assert that punishment should be proportional to the crime. On this theory, then, murderers and rapists should receive punishments that are roughly as severe as the harm they caused. For example, few think that murderers or rapists should be given probation or a sentence of only a few months in prison. The idea behind this justification is that persons are morally responsible agents and as a result they can and sometimes do forfeit their right against punishment, whether it takes the form of a fine, incarceration, or execution.
One problem with retributivism is that it also supports torture. Consider persons who commit a rape-murder or multiple murders. Retributivists claim that we should punish them in a way that is as severe as the harm they caused, or at least get as close as possible to doing so. On retributivist grounds, executing these bad boys isn't enough, we should torture them first. This doesn't require high tech solutions; we could use many of ingenious means that despots have used over the years, including bone breaking and other forms of mutilation, dog rape, and electrical shocks to private parts.
Some retributivists, such as 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, claim that torture is unjust because it fails to respect the murderer's dignity. His idea was probably that torture removes, albeit temporarily, the murderer's ability to lead a self-shaping life by removing his rationality (ability to reason) and free will (ability to act on his reasoning). However, execution does the same thing. You can just see retributivists saying, courtesy of Homer Simpson, "D'oh." A few retributivists think that torture is an excellent idea precisely because murderers forfeit their rights. However, most people don't think that that we respect a prisoner if we repeatedly shock him when he is cowering in his own urine and feces.
In addition, we don't normally think that we have a duty to give persons what they deserve. For example, we think that employers may hire the best person for a job even if he isn't the most deserving. For example, a NFL team doesn't wrong anyone when it replaces a hard-working veteran who plays through pain with a flashy trash-talking rookie. Desert is also irrelevant to a range of state policies, including education, inheritance, and welfare.
On the second account, punishment is justified because it makes the world a better place. The way usually it does this is to make persons' lives go better and one of the best ways to measure this is to look at the costs and benefits of various options. On this cost-benefit analysis the death penalty is probably a loser. The costs of the death penalty are substantial in large part due to pricey trials and subsequent appeals. In 1992, the Dallas Morning News estimated that it costs Texas $2.3 million per death penalty case, which is about three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment in the highest security cell. In 1988, the Miami Herald estimated that the death penalty costs Florida $3.2 million per execution. In 1993, Philip Cook and Donna Slawson estimated that each execution costs North Carolina $2.16 million more than a life imprisonment. These are costs that only a school board could love.
The benefits aren't as clear. One purported benefit is deterrence. The problem is that the studies on the deterrent effect of the death penalty are mixed and controversial.
A second purported benefit is the psychological benefit to citizens. However, this benefit is probably not weighty enough. The likelihood of being murdered is very low. For example, in 2003 only about 1 in 20,000 persons in the U.S. was murdered. When a murder does occur, the chance of a murderer being executed is also low. In 2003, there was roughly 1 execution for every 223 murders. The average taxpayer would probably not to pay too much to ensure that if murdered, his murderer will have a 1 in 223 chance of being executed rather than a 0 in 223 chance. Also, the aggregate costs of the death penalty are significant. In 2000, the Palm Beach Post found that the state of Florida spends $51 million per year for the death penalty above and beyond what's needed for life imprisonment (note this figure is higher than the Miami Herald's estimate). Between 1977 and 2004, Texas executed 336 persons. If the cost were $2.3 million per execution, that's $773 million. It’s hard to believe that even when we put a thumb on the scale for psychological benefits, the benefits outweigh these costs. Until the death-penalty process is streamlined, it's probably too expensive.
***
The Theist
WHY WE KILL KILLERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 20, 2006
Not all killings are the same. Accidental killings, or those due to negligence, aren't in the same moral category as murders. And even among murders--intentional, morally wrong killings--there are differences. Some murders are the result of a drunken fight or a domestic quarrel which got out of hand. Others are pre-planned, what we call "cold-blooded." We might reserve the death penalty for these latter murders. Killing another human being is obviously a very serious matter. Why, then, do so many societies decide to employ the executioner?
Human life is a very precious thing. When someone steps so far out of line as to intentionally kill another, outside the context of any war or police context, society declares the value of human life by taking the killer's life as retribution for his crime. Some killers, it seems, just deserve to die--that they should go on living, even in a prison, seems unfitting. This is a fundamental moral intuition which probably most people have, at least at some point, although it can be extinguished by various ethical and religious beliefs. Perhaps the best way to highlight it, is to consider some objections to it.
"Killing the killer won't bring the victim back." What an irrelevant point, as no one ever fantasized that it would.
"Killing the killer makes us just like him." No, it doesn't. Executions and murders both involve killing a human, but they are not morally equivalent. The murderer does so for his own non-rational reasons--hate, lust, jealousy, vengeance, the desire for a thrill. The executioner carefully carries out the will of the government, which is acting with a view towards what is just. He acts as a legitimate instrument of that government, just as a soldier in a just war does.
"Studies show that enacting the death penalty doesn't deter future murderers." Let's grant for sake of argument that it doesn't. This is a relevant objection only if our main or only reason for employing the death penalty is that it prevents future harm. I don't think that that is the main reason why most people are for it. If someone, say, carjacked my wife's car and killed her, I just think he ought to die. I don't care whether it would prevent future murders or not. It'd be nice if it did, but that doesn't affect the fittingness of such a cold-blooded killer being executed by the state for his crime. I say this--that he ought to die--not in the grip of the searing pain of losing a spouse, but in a sober and reasonable state. I'd say the same about any such killing. Indeed, were I to become a cold-blooded killer, I think I would deserve to die.
"But we know that all killing is wrong. People are God's creatures." Sorry, but it is not a reasonable position to hold that all killing of humans is wrong. If some murderous thugs invaded your home, and were going to kill your children, you not only are permitted to use lethal violence, it seems that in some situations you'd be obligated to kill, to protect the innocent. "But I'd shoot 'em in the knee. Or just call 911." Sure, in some cases, that'd be the best policy. But there would be other scenarios where those responses would be impossible or unreasonable, and in some of those, the only reasonable and moral response would be to kill. That shows that it's false that all killing is morally wrong. Thus, no argument against the death penalty should rely on the claim that all killing is morally wrong. As to people being God's creatures, maybe you should read what you (the religious objector) hold to be God's book. According to it, God personally endorsed death penalty policies, at least for ancient Israel. If that's so, then such policies can't be morally wrong (a perfectly good being can't and won't endorse a policy which is morally wrong), although one might object to them on practical grounds.
"OK, I'll let go of the God-talk. I just think it's barbarous for the government to be involved in killing. I don't really want to go back to that ancient eye for an eye stuff." Some death penalty procedures surely are barbarous, but others, to most people, don't seem so. Now the "eye for an eye" comment raises an interesting point. I believe the point of that part of the Mosiac law was to prevent out of proportion penalties--where the aggressor would be punished with something much worse than he inflicted (e.g. a hand cut off for stealing a pear). The idea is that the criminal should lose at most what he took from the victim, not that he should suffer at least that much, or exactly as much. I think The Objectivist is mistaken in holding that if we endorse the death penalty for killers, then we'll also have to torture those killers who torture their victims. The killer should lose his own life. Justice doesn't also demand that the state also inflict on the killer the same sorts of horrors he inflicted on his victim(s).
"But killing people costs so darned much. And the benefits, such as peace of mind for the victims' families or various other members of the public, aren't worth that cost." This sounds like an argument for reforming our current system--keeping it fair while reducing the costs, probably by speeding up the appeals processes. It's hard to put a price on justice, and the better course seems to be to keep the justice, and reduce wasteful factors that run up costs.
DEATH PENALTY: TOO RICH FOR MY TASTES
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 20, 2006
In the United States, murderers are rarely executed. In 2003, 14,493 persons were murdered while only 65 murderers were executed. In thinking about whether to abolish the death penalty, we should begin by distinguishing the two main justifications of punishment. On a retributivist account, criminals should be punished because justice demands it. On a consequence-based account, criminals should be punished because doing so makes the world a better place.
Retributivists usually assert that punishment should be proportional to the crime. On this theory, then, murderers and rapists should receive punishments that are roughly as severe as the harm they caused. For example, few think that murderers or rapists should be given probation or a sentence of only a few months in prison. The idea behind this justification is that persons are morally responsible agents and as a result they can and sometimes do forfeit their right against punishment, whether it takes the form of a fine, incarceration, or execution.
One problem with retributivism is that it also supports torture. Consider persons who commit a rape-murder or multiple murders. Retributivists claim that we should punish them in a way that is as severe as the harm they caused, or at least get as close as possible to doing so. On retributivist grounds, executing these bad boys isn't enough, we should torture them first. This doesn't require high tech solutions; we could use many of ingenious means that despots have used over the years, including bone breaking and other forms of mutilation, dog rape, and electrical shocks to private parts.
Some retributivists, such as 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, claim that torture is unjust because it fails to respect the murderer's dignity. His idea was probably that torture removes, albeit temporarily, the murderer's ability to lead a self-shaping life by removing his rationality (ability to reason) and free will (ability to act on his reasoning). However, execution does the same thing. You can just see retributivists saying, courtesy of Homer Simpson, "D'oh." A few retributivists think that torture is an excellent idea precisely because murderers forfeit their rights. However, most people don't think that that we respect a prisoner if we repeatedly shock him when he is cowering in his own urine and feces.
In addition, we don't normally think that we have a duty to give persons what they deserve. For example, we think that employers may hire the best person for a job even if he isn't the most deserving. For example, a NFL team doesn't wrong anyone when it replaces a hard-working veteran who plays through pain with a flashy trash-talking rookie. Desert is also irrelevant to a range of state policies, including education, inheritance, and welfare.
On the second account, punishment is justified because it makes the world a better place. The way usually it does this is to make persons' lives go better and one of the best ways to measure this is to look at the costs and benefits of various options. On this cost-benefit analysis the death penalty is probably a loser. The costs of the death penalty are substantial in large part due to pricey trials and subsequent appeals. In 1992, the Dallas Morning News estimated that it costs Texas $2.3 million per death penalty case, which is about three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment in the highest security cell. In 1988, the Miami Herald estimated that the death penalty costs Florida $3.2 million per execution. In 1993, Philip Cook and Donna Slawson estimated that each execution costs North Carolina $2.16 million more than a life imprisonment. These are costs that only a school board could love.
The benefits aren't as clear. One purported benefit is deterrence. The problem is that the studies on the deterrent effect of the death penalty are mixed and controversial.
A second purported benefit is the psychological benefit to citizens. However, this benefit is probably not weighty enough. The likelihood of being murdered is very low. For example, in 2003 only about 1 in 20,000 persons in the U.S. was murdered. When a murder does occur, the chance of a murderer being executed is also low. In 2003, there was roughly 1 execution for every 223 murders. The average taxpayer would probably not to pay too much to ensure that if murdered, his murderer will have a 1 in 223 chance of being executed rather than a 0 in 223 chance. Also, the aggregate costs of the death penalty are significant. In 2000, the Palm Beach Post found that the state of Florida spends $51 million per year for the death penalty above and beyond what's needed for life imprisonment (note this figure is higher than the Miami Herald's estimate). Between 1977 and 2004, Texas executed 336 persons. If the cost were $2.3 million per execution, that's $773 million. It’s hard to believe that even when we put a thumb on the scale for psychological benefits, the benefits outweigh these costs. Until the death-penalty process is streamlined, it's probably too expensive.
***
The Theist
WHY WE KILL KILLERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 20, 2006
Not all killings are the same. Accidental killings, or those due to negligence, aren't in the same moral category as murders. And even among murders--intentional, morally wrong killings--there are differences. Some murders are the result of a drunken fight or a domestic quarrel which got out of hand. Others are pre-planned, what we call "cold-blooded." We might reserve the death penalty for these latter murders. Killing another human being is obviously a very serious matter. Why, then, do so many societies decide to employ the executioner?
Human life is a very precious thing. When someone steps so far out of line as to intentionally kill another, outside the context of any war or police context, society declares the value of human life by taking the killer's life as retribution for his crime. Some killers, it seems, just deserve to die--that they should go on living, even in a prison, seems unfitting. This is a fundamental moral intuition which probably most people have, at least at some point, although it can be extinguished by various ethical and religious beliefs. Perhaps the best way to highlight it, is to consider some objections to it.
"Killing the killer won't bring the victim back." What an irrelevant point, as no one ever fantasized that it would.
"Killing the killer makes us just like him." No, it doesn't. Executions and murders both involve killing a human, but they are not morally equivalent. The murderer does so for his own non-rational reasons--hate, lust, jealousy, vengeance, the desire for a thrill. The executioner carefully carries out the will of the government, which is acting with a view towards what is just. He acts as a legitimate instrument of that government, just as a soldier in a just war does.
"Studies show that enacting the death penalty doesn't deter future murderers." Let's grant for sake of argument that it doesn't. This is a relevant objection only if our main or only reason for employing the death penalty is that it prevents future harm. I don't think that that is the main reason why most people are for it. If someone, say, carjacked my wife's car and killed her, I just think he ought to die. I don't care whether it would prevent future murders or not. It'd be nice if it did, but that doesn't affect the fittingness of such a cold-blooded killer being executed by the state for his crime. I say this--that he ought to die--not in the grip of the searing pain of losing a spouse, but in a sober and reasonable state. I'd say the same about any such killing. Indeed, were I to become a cold-blooded killer, I think I would deserve to die.
"But we know that all killing is wrong. People are God's creatures." Sorry, but it is not a reasonable position to hold that all killing of humans is wrong. If some murderous thugs invaded your home, and were going to kill your children, you not only are permitted to use lethal violence, it seems that in some situations you'd be obligated to kill, to protect the innocent. "But I'd shoot 'em in the knee. Or just call 911." Sure, in some cases, that'd be the best policy. But there would be other scenarios where those responses would be impossible or unreasonable, and in some of those, the only reasonable and moral response would be to kill. That shows that it's false that all killing is morally wrong. Thus, no argument against the death penalty should rely on the claim that all killing is morally wrong. As to people being God's creatures, maybe you should read what you (the religious objector) hold to be God's book. According to it, God personally endorsed death penalty policies, at least for ancient Israel. If that's so, then such policies can't be morally wrong (a perfectly good being can't and won't endorse a policy which is morally wrong), although one might object to them on practical grounds.
"OK, I'll let go of the God-talk. I just think it's barbarous for the government to be involved in killing. I don't really want to go back to that ancient eye for an eye stuff." Some death penalty procedures surely are barbarous, but others, to most people, don't seem so. Now the "eye for an eye" comment raises an interesting point. I believe the point of that part of the Mosiac law was to prevent out of proportion penalties--where the aggressor would be punished with something much worse than he inflicted (e.g. a hand cut off for stealing a pear). The idea is that the criminal should lose at most what he took from the victim, not that he should suffer at least that much, or exactly as much. I think The Objectivist is mistaken in holding that if we endorse the death penalty for killers, then we'll also have to torture those killers who torture their victims. The killer should lose his own life. Justice doesn't also demand that the state also inflict on the killer the same sorts of horrors he inflicted on his victim(s).
"But killing people costs so darned much. And the benefits, such as peace of mind for the victims' families or various other members of the public, aren't worth that cost." This sounds like an argument for reforming our current system--keeping it fair while reducing the costs, probably by speeding up the appeals processes. It's hard to put a price on justice, and the better course seems to be to keep the justice, and reduce wasteful factors that run up costs.
24 November 2006
Faith, Self-Interest, and Belief in God
The Objectivist
PASCAL LOSES A BET
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 21, 2006
Many theists claim to rest their belief in God on faith. A person believes something on the basis of faith when he believes in it on the basis of what he knows to be inadequate evidence.
But consider how we normally react to the unsupported belief. Imagine you are in a bar and a biker sitting near you tells you that he is a white supremacist. You ask why and he explains that he while he doesn’t have a good argument for his views, but he nonetheless believes it strongly. In fact, he says, he takes it as a matter of faith. You would consider him to be sad and not just because his beliefs are destructive. Arguably, the opposition of some Catholic groups to free markets and birth control is similarly destructive. Rather your contempt will be based in part on the fact that the biker firmly holds beliefs that he can’t defend. Consistency requires that you take the same view of faith-based religious belief.
Recognizing this failure creates the logical space for Blaise Pascal’s wager. In the 17th century, Pascal argued that it is a good bet to believe in God. His argument makes three assumptions. First, Pascal asserts that while reason can’t tell us whether God exists, we know that he either does or doesn’t exist. Second, Pascal assumes that if God exists, he will send believers to heaven (an eternity of happiness) and will either annihilate non-believers or send them to hell (an eternity of suffering). Third, Pascal assumes that we can decide whether to believe in God and act accordingly.
Pascal argues that if we believe in God, we risk losing out on a few earthly pleasures but gain the chance of gaining an infinite reward. Okay, we’ll lose out on our chance to enjoy mushrooms while watching Martin Scorsese films and the occasional threesome, but these are small losses in the grand scheme of things. If we don’t believe in God then we can sleep late on Sundays and enjoy our sinful ways, but we risk being annihilated or, worse, eternal damnation. Pascal argues that it is irrational to risk an infinite loss just to secure a small gain. This is analogous to the way in which it is irrational to avoid other minor precautions (for example, wearing a seatbelt) that protect against catastrophic loss.
Pascal’s argument survives the usual criticisms that are leveled against it. Some critics argue that God wouldn’t reward someone who merely hedges his bet for self-interested reasons. However, Pascal would likely argue that he is talking about persons having a real commitment to God, which can occur even if the initial motivation to do so was a cynical appeal to self-interest. Other critics argue that the evidence against God’s existence is overwhelming and we are running the risk of shaping our life around a falsity. Even so, Pascal would likely respond, we can’t be sure that God doesn’t exist, any more than we can be certain about other arguments in math and science, and we can’t take the chance of a catastrophic outcome even when it is unlikely to occur. Still other critics argue that a just and loving being like God wouldn’t, and perhaps can’t, annihilate non-believers or send them to hell. Again, while this is likely true since reason suggests as much, the question remains whether we can afford to take this risk. We can’t.
The real reason this argument fails is that it doesn’t take into account all the outcomes that we can’t rule out with certainty. As mentioned above, these outcomes include scenarios where God exists and ones where neither God nor a similar being exists. However, they also include the case where an anti-Christian (or, perhaps, anti-theist) all-powerful god exists. This god hates believers since they annoy him with their constant prayers the way the paparazzi used to infuriate Sean Penn. This god sends believers to hell and all others to heaven. After all, what does he care? It doesn’t cost him anything to send someone to heaven and non-believers haven’t annoyed him. If this is correct, then believing in God poses a tremendous risk. The logic (and underlying mathematical calculation of self-interest) is identical and cancels out the risk one takes by not believing in God.
Pascal’s wager sinks and drags down with it the best case for faith-based religious belief. Faith and self-interest don’t shield believers from the onslaught of science and philosophy. And when we add beliefs about angels, the devil, magical spectacles, and bread being changed into the body of Christ, the need for faith intensifies and we’re moving in the wrong direction.
***
The Theist
BELIEF? YOU BET
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 21, 2006
Seventeenth century French genius Blaise Pascal assumed that in religious matters, nothing at all can be known. Still, in a passage now referred to as “Pascal’s Wager” he argued that one ought to believe in God--not because there is adequate evidence that God exists, but rather because it is prudent, that is, in one’s best interest.
Why? There are four possibilities, and in the absence of evidence, I must hold them to be equally likely. These are: (1) mistaken theism, (2) correct theism, (3) mistaken atheism, and (4) correct atheism. If I believe in God, I either lose little (1), or win infinite gain (2). If I disbelieve, I risk infinite loss (3), or a not-too-significant loss (4). How to bet? Clearly, believing in God is the safer bet; Pascal’s logic seems impeccable.
Despite the fact that Pascal was a mathematical genius, his logic is not impeccable. In fact, The Objectivist kicks a big hole in it. The problem is that if we know nothing at all in matters of religion, then how can we say that there are precisely four options (the numbered ones above)? We can’t. As The Objectivist points out, we’d have to consider anything which is conceivable, such as the scenario of the god who punishes only religious believers. We wouldn’t even be able to use his method of reasoning to decide what’s in our interest to believe, as the options would be infinite, and no human could go through such an endless train of reasoning.
What now? We can, like The Objectivist, reject Pascal’s way of reasoning altogether. But I’ll argue that the right response is to question his assumption that we know nothing in matters of religion. To the contrary, we do know that some religious claims are false, and moreover, everyone should agree that not all religions are equally plausible.
Some founders of religions (big and small) appear clearly in the historical record as power-, sex-, and money-hungry manipulators, and it is rational to trust them much less than founders who come off like genuine friends of God and humankind. Scientology was founded by a science fiction writer as a shameless money-making operation. This religion puts its adherents through a long, expensive, pseudo-scientific therapy, only after many years revealing to them L. Ron Hubbard’s ridiculous story of what’s wrong with the human race. (Search online for the word “Xenu” for this.) Other religions, such as some kinds of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, cut strongly against common sense, holding that the world we (seem to) see around us in an illusion, there really being just one indescribable thing (“Brahman”). Other religions, such as the “Ghost Dance” religion which swept through certain Native American tribes in the late 19th century, make predictions which turn out to be false. Tragically, one such prediction was that magical garments (“Ghost Shirts”) would repel even the white man’s bullets. You can guess how that claim was refuted. Similarly, there’s an endless parade of Christian sects which (sometimes repeatedly) unsuccessfully forecast the Second Coming of Christ.
Is it hard to grade some religions as more likely to be true than others? Sometimes. Is it rude? It can be. Will it spoil your Thanksgiving dinner if you bring this up? Probably. But if you’re interested in having true beliefs about religion, you have to think about these things. Pascal is too skeptical. There’s a boatload of testimonial evidence from sane, sober, and smart people, in favor of religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There’s no evidence of any kind for belief in the believer-hating god.
There are two “world views” which predominate right now. First, there’s what I’d call Abrahamic theism--belief in the one God of Abraham (see Genesis 12-25). Second, there’s the world view which is currently dominant around the world, at least in the more educated segment of societies--what philosophers call “naturalism” (roughly: atheism plus the view that all there is is the realm investigated by empirical science). For most thoughtful people nowadays (though by no means all), these are by far the top two contenders for belief--not the only conceivable options, but the only two ones we can imagine actually believing. If you’re in that category, then you’re deciding between naturalism and belief in one perfect personal God, who treats us seriously enough to allow us to reject him completely and permanently (he refuses to force himself on us).
If you’re such a person, it turns out you really should take a cue from Pascal, because you face the four numbered options above. The prudent bet? Believe in God. Pascal himself realized that one can’t simply "believe on command," even when one judges belief to be in one’s best interest. His advice? Take practical steps, such as associating with believers, sending up hope-fueled prayers, and participating in religious rituals. Such a lifestyle will probably, over time, incline one to actually believe.
PASCAL LOSES A BET
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 21, 2006
Many theists claim to rest their belief in God on faith. A person believes something on the basis of faith when he believes in it on the basis of what he knows to be inadequate evidence.
But consider how we normally react to the unsupported belief. Imagine you are in a bar and a biker sitting near you tells you that he is a white supremacist. You ask why and he explains that he while he doesn’t have a good argument for his views, but he nonetheless believes it strongly. In fact, he says, he takes it as a matter of faith. You would consider him to be sad and not just because his beliefs are destructive. Arguably, the opposition of some Catholic groups to free markets and birth control is similarly destructive. Rather your contempt will be based in part on the fact that the biker firmly holds beliefs that he can’t defend. Consistency requires that you take the same view of faith-based religious belief.
Recognizing this failure creates the logical space for Blaise Pascal’s wager. In the 17th century, Pascal argued that it is a good bet to believe in God. His argument makes three assumptions. First, Pascal asserts that while reason can’t tell us whether God exists, we know that he either does or doesn’t exist. Second, Pascal assumes that if God exists, he will send believers to heaven (an eternity of happiness) and will either annihilate non-believers or send them to hell (an eternity of suffering). Third, Pascal assumes that we can decide whether to believe in God and act accordingly.
Pascal argues that if we believe in God, we risk losing out on a few earthly pleasures but gain the chance of gaining an infinite reward. Okay, we’ll lose out on our chance to enjoy mushrooms while watching Martin Scorsese films and the occasional threesome, but these are small losses in the grand scheme of things. If we don’t believe in God then we can sleep late on Sundays and enjoy our sinful ways, but we risk being annihilated or, worse, eternal damnation. Pascal argues that it is irrational to risk an infinite loss just to secure a small gain. This is analogous to the way in which it is irrational to avoid other minor precautions (for example, wearing a seatbelt) that protect against catastrophic loss.
Pascal’s argument survives the usual criticisms that are leveled against it. Some critics argue that God wouldn’t reward someone who merely hedges his bet for self-interested reasons. However, Pascal would likely argue that he is talking about persons having a real commitment to God, which can occur even if the initial motivation to do so was a cynical appeal to self-interest. Other critics argue that the evidence against God’s existence is overwhelming and we are running the risk of shaping our life around a falsity. Even so, Pascal would likely respond, we can’t be sure that God doesn’t exist, any more than we can be certain about other arguments in math and science, and we can’t take the chance of a catastrophic outcome even when it is unlikely to occur. Still other critics argue that a just and loving being like God wouldn’t, and perhaps can’t, annihilate non-believers or send them to hell. Again, while this is likely true since reason suggests as much, the question remains whether we can afford to take this risk. We can’t.
The real reason this argument fails is that it doesn’t take into account all the outcomes that we can’t rule out with certainty. As mentioned above, these outcomes include scenarios where God exists and ones where neither God nor a similar being exists. However, they also include the case where an anti-Christian (or, perhaps, anti-theist) all-powerful god exists. This god hates believers since they annoy him with their constant prayers the way the paparazzi used to infuriate Sean Penn. This god sends believers to hell and all others to heaven. After all, what does he care? It doesn’t cost him anything to send someone to heaven and non-believers haven’t annoyed him. If this is correct, then believing in God poses a tremendous risk. The logic (and underlying mathematical calculation of self-interest) is identical and cancels out the risk one takes by not believing in God.
Pascal’s wager sinks and drags down with it the best case for faith-based religious belief. Faith and self-interest don’t shield believers from the onslaught of science and philosophy. And when we add beliefs about angels, the devil, magical spectacles, and bread being changed into the body of Christ, the need for faith intensifies and we’re moving in the wrong direction.
***
The Theist
BELIEF? YOU BET
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 21, 2006
Seventeenth century French genius Blaise Pascal assumed that in religious matters, nothing at all can be known. Still, in a passage now referred to as “Pascal’s Wager” he argued that one ought to believe in God--not because there is adequate evidence that God exists, but rather because it is prudent, that is, in one’s best interest.
Why? There are four possibilities, and in the absence of evidence, I must hold them to be equally likely. These are: (1) mistaken theism, (2) correct theism, (3) mistaken atheism, and (4) correct atheism. If I believe in God, I either lose little (1), or win infinite gain (2). If I disbelieve, I risk infinite loss (3), or a not-too-significant loss (4). How to bet? Clearly, believing in God is the safer bet; Pascal’s logic seems impeccable.
Despite the fact that Pascal was a mathematical genius, his logic is not impeccable. In fact, The Objectivist kicks a big hole in it. The problem is that if we know nothing at all in matters of religion, then how can we say that there are precisely four options (the numbered ones above)? We can’t. As The Objectivist points out, we’d have to consider anything which is conceivable, such as the scenario of the god who punishes only religious believers. We wouldn’t even be able to use his method of reasoning to decide what’s in our interest to believe, as the options would be infinite, and no human could go through such an endless train of reasoning.
What now? We can, like The Objectivist, reject Pascal’s way of reasoning altogether. But I’ll argue that the right response is to question his assumption that we know nothing in matters of religion. To the contrary, we do know that some religious claims are false, and moreover, everyone should agree that not all religions are equally plausible.
Some founders of religions (big and small) appear clearly in the historical record as power-, sex-, and money-hungry manipulators, and it is rational to trust them much less than founders who come off like genuine friends of God and humankind. Scientology was founded by a science fiction writer as a shameless money-making operation. This religion puts its adherents through a long, expensive, pseudo-scientific therapy, only after many years revealing to them L. Ron Hubbard’s ridiculous story of what’s wrong with the human race. (Search online for the word “Xenu” for this.) Other religions, such as some kinds of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, cut strongly against common sense, holding that the world we (seem to) see around us in an illusion, there really being just one indescribable thing (“Brahman”). Other religions, such as the “Ghost Dance” religion which swept through certain Native American tribes in the late 19th century, make predictions which turn out to be false. Tragically, one such prediction was that magical garments (“Ghost Shirts”) would repel even the white man’s bullets. You can guess how that claim was refuted. Similarly, there’s an endless parade of Christian sects which (sometimes repeatedly) unsuccessfully forecast the Second Coming of Christ.
Is it hard to grade some religions as more likely to be true than others? Sometimes. Is it rude? It can be. Will it spoil your Thanksgiving dinner if you bring this up? Probably. But if you’re interested in having true beliefs about religion, you have to think about these things. Pascal is too skeptical. There’s a boatload of testimonial evidence from sane, sober, and smart people, in favor of religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There’s no evidence of any kind for belief in the believer-hating god.
There are two “world views” which predominate right now. First, there’s what I’d call Abrahamic theism--belief in the one God of Abraham (see Genesis 12-25). Second, there’s the world view which is currently dominant around the world, at least in the more educated segment of societies--what philosophers call “naturalism” (roughly: atheism plus the view that all there is is the realm investigated by empirical science). For most thoughtful people nowadays (though by no means all), these are by far the top two contenders for belief--not the only conceivable options, but the only two ones we can imagine actually believing. If you’re in that category, then you’re deciding between naturalism and belief in one perfect personal God, who treats us seriously enough to allow us to reject him completely and permanently (he refuses to force himself on us).
If you’re such a person, it turns out you really should take a cue from Pascal, because you face the four numbered options above. The prudent bet? Believe in God. Pascal himself realized that one can’t simply "believe on command," even when one judges belief to be in one’s best interest. His advice? Take practical steps, such as associating with believers, sending up hope-fueled prayers, and participating in religious rituals. Such a lifestyle will probably, over time, incline one to actually believe.
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