Category: Philosophy – Religion – Science – Pseudoscience

The Irrational Atheist

I once wrote something along these lines:

[T]he very idea that one’s personal opinion has anything to do with the existence or non-existence of God is fundamentally irrational.

The writer, in this instance, is one “Vox Day,” author of The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. For my dissections of that trinity, and of irrational atheism, see:

“Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance” (26 Nov 2004)
“Atheism, Religion, and Science ” (03 Jan 2005)
“The Limits of Science ” (05 Jan 2005)
“Beware of Irrational Atheism” (22 Jan 2005)
“Science, Logic, and God” (08 Nov 2005)
“Debunking “Scientific Objectivity”” (16 Jan 2006)
“The Big Bang and Atheism” (04 Nov 2006)
“The Universe . . . Four Possibilities” (07 Jan 2007)
“Einstein, Science, and God” (06 Apr 2007)
“Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux” (01 Jul 2007)
“A Reminder” (15 Aug 2007)
“Collegiate Crap-ola” (28 Sep 2007)
“A Non-Believer Defends Religion” (31 Oct 2007)
“Evolution as God?” (02 Nov 2007)
“The Greatest Mystery” (24 Dec 2007)
“A Sensible Atheist Speaks” (16 Jan 2008)
“In Search of Consistency” (12 Mar 2008)
“Religion in Public Schools: The Wrong and Right of It” (03 Apr 2008)

Intellectual Hazards

Guest post:

When reading The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman it is clear why the book has been so highly praised by people from very different viewpoints. It is a work of tremendous discernment. I don’t need to add anything to what Cardinal Newman says other than to put it into context, since the excerpt (from Discourse IV on University Teaching) is a lengthy one.

Newman begins by explaining that all men are “philosophical” to some extent:

One of the first acts of the human mind is to take hold of and appropriate what meets the senses…. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not have been seen or heard except in its constituent parts. It discerns in lines and colours, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea. It gathers up a succession of notes into the expression of a whole, and calls it a melody; it has a keen sensibility towards angles and curves, lights and shadows, tints and contours. It distinguishes between rule and exception, between accident and design. It assigns phenomena to a general law, qualities to a subject, acts to a principle, and effects to a cause. In a word, it philosophizes; for I suppose Science and Philosophy, in their elementary idea, are nothing else but this habit of viewing, as it may be called, the objects which sense conveys to the mind, of throwing them into system, and uniting and stamping them with one form.

Few people are so brutish and sensual so as to avoid intellectualizing completely. Most of us feel the need to take the material world and put it into some sort of mental order. This is invariably seen as a good thing—a noble “idealism” pursued for its own sake. But Newman notes its drawbacks when conducted without the right training and discipline (the emphasis on the key phrase is mine).

This method is so natural to us, as I have said, as to be almost spontaneous; and we are impatient when we cannot exercise it, and in consequence we do not always wait to have the means of exercising it aright, but we often put up with insufficient or absurd views or interpretations of what we meet with, rather than have none at all. We refer the various matters which are brought home to us, material or moral, to causes which we happen to know of, or to such as are simply imaginary, sooner than refer them to nothing; and according to the activity of our intellect do we feel a pain and begin to fret, if we are not able to do so. Here we have an explanation of the multitude of off-hand sayings, flippant judgments, and shallow generalizations, with which the world abounds. Not from self-will only, nor from malevolence, but from the irritation which suspense occasions, is the mind forced on to pronounce, without sufficient data for pronouncing. Who does not form some view or other, for instance, of any public man, or any public event, nay, even so far in some cases as to reach the mental delineation of his appearance or of its scene? yet how few have a right to form any view. Hence the misconceptions of character, hence the false impressions and reports of words or deeds, which are the rule, rather than the exception, in the world at large; hence the extravagances of undisciplined talent, and the narrowness of conceited ignorance; because, though it is no easy matter to view things correctly, nevertheless the busy mind will ever be viewing. We cannot do without a view, and we put up with an illusion when we cannot get a truth.

Part of the problem is the tendency of people, who suffer from a limited education and/or a philosophical bias, of trying to fit the world into their own little box. This is the behavior of intellectual cranks and bullies.

Now, observe how this impatience acts in matters of research and speculation. What happens to the ignorant and hotheaded, will take place in the case of every person whose education or pursuits are contracted, whether they be merely professional, merely scientific, or of whatever other peculiar complexion. Men, whose life lies in the cultivation of one science, or the exercise of one method of thought, have no more right, though they have often more ambition, to generalize upon the basis of their own pursuit but beyond its range, than the schoolboy or the ploughman to judge of a Prime Minister. But they must have something to say on every subject; habit,
fashion, the public require it of them: and, if so, they can only give sentence according to their knowledge. You might think this ought to make such a person modest in his enunciations; not so: too often it happens that, in proportion to the narrowness of his knowledge, is, not his distrust of it, but the deep hold it has upon him, his absolute conviction of his own conclusions, and his positiveness in maintaining them. He has the obstinacy of the bigot, whom he scorns, without the bigot’s apology, that he has been taught, as he thinks, his doctrine from heaven. Thus he becomes, what is commonly called, a man of one idea; which properly means a man of one science, and of the view, partly true, but subordinate, partly false, which is all that can proceed out of any thing so partial. Hence it is that we have the principles of utility, of combination, of progress, of philanthropy, or, in material sciences, comparative anatomy, phrenology, electricity, exalted into leading ideas, and keys, if not of all knowledge, at least of many things more than belong to them,— principles, all of them true to a certain point, yet all degenerating into error and quackery, because they are carried to excess, viz. at the point where they require interpretation and restraint from other quarters, and because they are employed to do what is simply too much for them, inasmuch as a little science is not deep philosophy.

Newman concludes with Aristotle’s adage: “they who contemplate a few things have no difficulty in deciding.”

(My thanks to http://www.newmanreader.org/ for the online version of The Idea of the University. It saved me a lot of typing!)

Religion in Public Schools: The Wrong and Right of It

Below the Beltway scorns a lawsuit, which (as FoxNews reports)

demand[s] that a popular European history teacher at California’s Capistrano Valley High School be fired for what they say were anti-Christian remarks he made in the classroom….

[Chad] Farnan recorded his teacher telling students in class: “What country has the highest murder rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? The South!”

Scorn is the wrong reaction. If employees of public schools are forbidden, as they are, to proselytize for religion (or to allow students to do so through voluntary activities that might somehow be related to school), then employees of public schools, by the same token, should be forbidden to proselytize against religion. And that is evidently what the “popular” teacher did.

Classical Values, on the other hand, has it right. First, the relevant bits from another FoxNews story:

A Tomah [Wisconsin] High School student has filed a federal lawsuit alleging his art teacher censored his drawing because it featured a cross and a biblical reference….

According to the lawsuit, the student’s art teacher asked his class in February to draw landscapes. The student, a senior identified in the lawsuit by the initials A.P., added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A sign of love” in his drawing.

His teacher, Julie Millin, asked him to remove the reference to the Bible, saying students were making remarks about it. He refused, and she gave him a zero on the project.

Millin showed the student a policy for the class that prohibited any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs in artwork. The lawsuit claims Millin told the boy he had signed away his constitutional rights when he signed the policy at the beginning of the semester.

The boy tore the policy up in front of Millin, who kicked him out of class. Later that day, assistant principal Cale Jackson told the boy his religious expression infringed on other students’ rights.

Jackson told the boy, his stepfather and his pastor at a meeting a week later that religious expression could be legally censored in class assignments. Millin stated at the meeting the cross in the drawing also infringed on other students’ rights.

Here’s what Classical Values has to say about that:

This is a public school, and the state is not supposed to take positions on religion. It would be one thing had the school told students that they must depict or display images of the cross, but here a student acted on his own, and in a constitutionally protected manner.

Precisely.

Post-Season Play, Atheism, and the Worrying Classes

Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics yesterday published an interview of Bill James, founder of sabermetrics (statistical analysis of baseball). The interview reveals James as a no-nonsense purveyor of wisdom, and not just about baseball. Some examples:

Q: Billy Beane, G.M. for the Oakland A’s, has made sabermetric stats a major part of his “value” philosophy when building a baseball team. He’s frequently said that his method will build regular season winners but it doesn’t seem to work in the playoffs. Do you think that this is simply a result of a small sample size or the wrong statistics being used, or is it something more fundamental about “unmeasurable” statistics, like the ability to perform under pressure and “heart?”

A: Oh, I thought people had stopped asking that. Blast from the past there. Look, there’s a lot of luck in winning in post-season. You’re up against a really good team, by definition, and you’ve only got a few days to get it right. It takes some luck.

Are there also types of players and factors that are helpful in that situation? Of course. It’s like asking a physics professor whether there is a God. Scientists don’t know anything more about whether there is a God than morons do, because it’s not a scientific issue. This isn’t something I can measure. It’s a matter of faith.

James agrees with me about the meaning of post-season play, or, rather, its meaninglessness. James also reveals himself as a true scientist when he rejects “scientific” atheism.

Q: What unanswered questions (either baseball-related or not) are you thinking about right now?

A: Why does American society always perceive itself as becoming constantly more and more dangerous — and thus devote ever more and more effort to increasing security — even though almost all measurable dangers, including crime rates, have been falling throughout most of my lifetime? And … is this a good thing?

There speaks a man who seems to understand that we are over-regulated because of the “worrying classes” and their fear of the free market.

Morality and Consequentialism

The text for this post comes from Freespace:

…Many [libertarians] are purely consequentialists—that is, they believe that morality simply cannot be the subject of disciplined inquiry, and that all that a libertarian can talk about is practical reasoning. In other words, they can’t argue that liberty is morally right; they can only argue about how as a practical matter free social and economic networks are organized. I have argued that if consistently followed, this practice will lead them to default on the responsibility of moral judgment, and ultimately they [will] fall into … cultural relativism….

I have argued in many posts that libertarianism properly understood must be based on an objective, universal morality….

The aim of this disciplined (albeit brief) inquiry is to show that “objective, universal morality” is a philosophical delusion. It follows that libertarianism must justified by its consequences.

First, Some Words about Philosophical Moral Absolutism and Religion

I cannot resist observing that philosophical moral absolutism seems to be a religion-substitute for libertarian moral absolutists, who tend to be atheists (e.g., the authors of Freespace, A Stitch in Haste, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and various of the bloggers at The Panda’s Thumb).

Libertarian moral absolutists, especially so-called libertarians of the Left, exude a “more moral than thou” attitude. I take it as a way of saying “Look at me, I’m an atheist but I’m a moral person, my religion-bashing notwithstanding.” As I say here,

[i]t is disheartening … when libertarians join the anti-religio[n] chorus. They know not what they do when they join the Left in tearing down a bulwark of civil society, without which liberty cannot prevail….

[A]s time passes the moral lessons … older Americans learned through religion will attenuate unless those lessons are taught, anew, to younger generations.

Rather than join the [anti-libertarian] Left in attacking the Judeo-Christian tradition, libertarians ought to accommodate themselves to it and even encourage its acceptance — for liberty’s sake.

See also this post and the links therein.

Philosophical Moral Absolutism as a Logical Fallacy

Returning to the matter of philosophical moral absolutism, let us consider murder: the taking of a human life, absent the motive of self-defense (be it individual or communal). According to proponents of natural rights based on self-ownership (i.e, philosophical moral absolutists), murder is wrong because it is a denial of the natural right to life (the ownership of one’s own life). (As I discuss below, it is an inconvenient fact that not all libertarian absolutists agree about the specific implications of their absolutism.)

But the argument from natural rights is both circular and consequential. It is circular in that it seeks to prove that murder is wrong by citing the unprovable axiom that humans possess natural (innate) rights, from which (the absolutist argues) the wrongness of murder flows. The argument is consequential (albeit circular) because the wrongness of murder is characterized in terms of its consequence: the denial of a natural right.

In fact, philosophical moral absolutists are hard-pressed to avoid invoking consequences. The author of Freespace, for example, says that

the framers were right to believe that government is limited by our natural rights, and that our natural rights protect our right to act so long as we harm no other person. This last observation was hardly new or unique to Mill; it is in Locke’s Second Treatise, for instance….

Putting it negatively (“our natural rights protect our right to act so long as we harm no other person”) is just another way of saying that natural rights do not include the right to harm another person. The writer would be quick to add, of course, “except in self-defense or in the course of preventing harm to a third party.”

And, for another example, we have the author of Dispatches from the Culture Wars asserting that

[u]nder libertarian standards, each individual is free to live their [sic] life as they [sic] see fit as long as they [sic] do not impose harm on another person against their [sic] will.

“Harm” is to “consequence” as apple is to fruit. That is, “harm” just a more specific (though still vague) term for an act’s effect on another person or persons. Philosophical moral absolutists, having conceded that libertarianism rests on the harm principle (whether Mill’s or Locke’s) have conceded that it rests on the consequences of acts.

It is impossible to label a specific act as an immoral one merely by stating that it is a violation of natural rights. Instead, the libertarian absolutist is forced to confront the consequences (actual or potential) of the act (event if he does so inwardly).

In sum, a libertarian absolutist’s invocation of natural rights is a ritual: an intellectual genuflection, if you will.

The Indeterminacy of Philosophical Moral Absolutism

It is telling that libertarian absolutists cannot always agree that an axiomatic principle translates into a unique set of moral judgments about particular acts. For example, some absolutists not only claim that there are natural rights, but that those rights lead to the certain moral prescriptions; for example: preemptive war is wrong; abortion is a justifiable act of self-ownership; and income redistribution is just in that it “actualizes” the otherwise theoretical liberty of its beneficiaries. (These are just examples; not all absolutists claim the same three things.)

The problem, for absolutists, is that a given axiomatic principle can be interpreted to justify almost any act, depending on the judgment of the individual who espouses that act. I could, for example, assert that I believe in self-ownership or natural rights and thence argue to the following conclusions: preemptive war is just when it averts an attack on innocent civilians; abortion is an unconscionable act, legally distinguished from murder only by the instant between gestation and birth; income redistribution harms its intended beneficiaries by making them dependent on it and by penalizing growth-inducing activities, such as invention, innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital investment.

My assertions would be no less valid than those of any absolutist, and might (as a set) even coincide with the assertions of some absolutists. How would those concurring absolutists know that I am not of their ilk, except by my own admission? They wouldn’t.

Q.E.D.: Philosophical moral absolutism is indeterminate.

Philosophical Moral Absolutism as a Semantic Illusion

The consequential aspect of morality tends to be overlooked because words for heinous acts (murder, rape, etc.) merely imply the consequences of the acts to which they refer (consequences such as involuntary death, involuntary sexual intimacy, etc.). It is that semantic subtlety which allows philosophical moral absolutists (usually deontolgists and Objectivists) to believe — mistakenly — that they are morally superior to consequentialists because they (the absolutists) have an a priori method for deducing morality.

In denouncing certain acts, philosophical absolutists are in fact denouncing the consequences of those acts, as I have discussed. Absolutists delude themselves by proclaiming that such denunciations really flow from an axiomatic principle, such as natural rights.

The Psychological and Sociological Sources of Moral Judgments

Concepts such as self-ownership and natural rights are, at best, after-the-fact justifications of one’s moral judgments about particular acts. Less charitably, they are shibboleths spouted by sophomoric pretenders to philosophical profundity.

Jim Manzi of The Corner puts it this way:

Any … moral argument, however, will ultimately rest on a set of beliefs that could be characterized as being “coughed up by an unconscious emotion”. We might call these, in a less loaded term, moral axioms. You don’t get a free pass out of this game [as a libertarian absolutist] by just saying you favor any non-coercive behavior, because either the restriction on coercion must itself be a moral axiom, or it must, in turn, rest upon some other more fundamental moral axioms.

The funny thing about axioms is that if they are so basic that pretty much everybody agrees with them, then reasoning from them to conclusions about specific policies will often lead different people to very different conclusions. If, on the other hand, they are highly developed, then lots of people won’t agree that they are axioms.

So, in the end, we are left with judgments about acts whose consequences repulse us, not free-floating universals that exist apart from human nature. Those judgments often are instinctive, and also are “built into” evolved social norms, which reflect accrued knowledge of the consequences of various acts. Thus:

We (most of us) flinch from doing things to others that we would not want done to ourselves. Is that because of inbred (“hard wired”) empathy? Or are we conditioned by social custom? Or is the answer “both”?

If inbred empathy is the only explanation for self-control with regard to other persons, why is it that our restraint so often fails us in interactions with others are fleeting and/or distant? (Think of aggressive driving and rude e-mails, for just two examples of unempathic behavior.) Empathy, to the extent that it is a real and restraining influence, seems most to work best (but not perfectly) in face-to-face encounters, especially where the persons involved have more than a fleeting relationship.

If behavior is (also) influenced by social custom, why does social custom favor restraint? Here is where consequentialism enters the picture.

We are taught (or we learn) about the possibility of retaliation by a victim of our behavior (or by someone acting on behalf of a victim). In certain instances, there is the possibility of state action on behalf of the victim: a fine, time in jail, etc. So we are taught (or we learn) to restrain ourselves (to some extent) in order to avoid punishments that flow directly and (more or less) predictably from our unrestrained actions.

More deeply, there is the idea that “what goes around comes around.” In other words, bad behavior can beget bad behavior, whereas good behavior can beget good behavior. (“Well, if so-and-so can get away with X, so can I.” “So-and-so is rewarded for good behavior; it will pay me to be good, also.” “If so-and-so is nice to me, I’ll be nice to him so that he’ll continue to be nice to me.”)

Why do we care that “what goes around comes around”? First, we humans are imitative social animals; what others do — for good or ill — cues our own behavior. Second, there is an “instinctive” (taught/learned) aversion to “fouling one’s own nest.”

Unfortunately, our aversion to nest-fouling weakens as our interactions with others become more fleeting and distant — as they have done since the onset of industrialization, urbanization, and mass communication. Bad behavior then becomes easier because its consequences are less obvious or certain; it becomes a model for imitation and, perhaps, even a norm. Good behavior then flows from the fear of being retaliated against, not from socialized norms, or even from fear of state action. Aggression — among the naturally aggressive — becomes more usual.

Social Norms (Including Those Inculcated by Religion) Are All That We Have

The Millian concept of harm, so blithely invoked by philosophical moral absolutists (among others), is a chimera. Harm, as an act of one person against another, cannot be defined by individuals; it can be defined only by social agreement.

The philosophical moral absolutist would like to find something “better than” social norms. Thus the accusation that one defends murder, rape, slavery, etc., if one rejects philosophical moral absolutism. It is as if morality cannot be grounded in human nature. But it can be, and it is.

Murder and other anti-social acts arise from human nature. Murder and other anti-social acts are condemned almost universally because of human nature. It is human nature that makes such acts easier to commit when social relations become less personal and more anonymous.

To the extent that human actions are influenced positively by religious precepts (and they are, on the whole), the general goodness of human beings testifies to the mostly benign influence of religion on human behavior.

Conclusion

In sum, consequentialist libertarianism is not a kind of moral relativism. Rather, it is based on realism about (a) the non-existence of philosophical moral absolutes and (b) human nature. It accepts the morality that has arisen from human experience (as influenced by religion), while rejecting absolutists’ Platonic mysticism. Consequentialism is therefore the only possible form of libertarianism, in the real world:

The virtue of [consequentialist] libertarianism … is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences [e.g., here and here]. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

That is,

predators … would take liberty from others, either directly (e.g., through murder…) or through the coercive power of the state (e.g., through smoking bans and licensing laws)…. [P]arasites … seek to advance their self-interest through the coercive power of the state rather than through their own efforts (e.g., through corporate welfare and regulatory protection).

Liberty, in the real world, is freedom (however elusive and episodic it may be) from predators and parasites. That freedom is to be found not through the invocation of philosophical moral absolutes (or anarchy), but through politics, policing, and war — as befits the circumstances.

Related posts:
“The Origin and Essence of Rights” (01 Jan 2005)
“A Non-Paradox for Libertarians” (15 Aug 2005)
“The Paradox of Libertarianism” (05 Jan 2006)
“Liberty as a Social Compact” (28 Feb 2006)
“This Is Objectivism?” (01 Mar 2006)
“Social Norms and Liberty” (02 Mar 2006)
“A Footnote about Liberty and the Social Compact” (06 Mar 2006)
“Finding Liberty” (25 Mar 2006)
“The Source of Rights” (06 Sep 2006)
“The Fear of Consequentialism” (26 Nov 2007)
“Pascal’s Wager, Morality, and the State” (09 Oct 2007)
“Religion and the Inculcation of Morality” (12 Nov 2007)
” ‘Family Values,’ Liberty, and the State” (07 Dec 2007)
“On Prejudice” (28 Feb 2008)
“In Search of Consistency” (12 Mar 2008)
“Objectivism: Tautologies in Search of Reality” (14 Mar 2008)

Related reading:
“What’s Right vs. What Works” (an undated colloquy on objective morality vs. consequentialism, with Charles Murray, David Friedman, David Boaz, and R.W. Bradford)
“Religion, Government, and Civil Society,” by Arnold Kling (21 Feb 2007)
“Is Atheism Only a Bundle of Sentiments?” by Mike Adams (24 Mar 2007)

"Isms"

I adhere to one “ism”: minarchism or, more specifically, Burkean conservativism-cum-Hayekian libertarianism.

I reject many “isms”; for example:

  • Pseudo-conservatism, in its various forms; e.g., European anti-capitalism, country-club/redneck yahooism (of all colors), and big–government/national-greatness corporatism

Objectivism: Tautologies in Search of Reality

From Ayn Rand’s pen to your brain, this is Objectivism. Rand’s dicta (in italics) are followed by my commentary.

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute — facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

It is true, and tautologous, to say that reality exists; that is, the real has “verifiable existence.” But there are many conceptions of reality, some of them based on identical observations of the physical world. (Read about physical cosmology and quantum mechanics, for example.) There may be an objective reality, but it is trivial to say so. The reality that we perceive depends on (a) the limitations of our perception (e.g., the degree to which telescopes have been improved), and (b) the prejudices that we bring to what we are able to perceive. (Yes, everyone has prejudices.) And it will be thus, always, no matter how many facts we are able to ascertain; the universe is a bottomless mystery.

In my experience, Objectivists flaunt their dedication to reality in order to assert their prejudices (e.g., “natural rights” exist) as if they were facts. The concept of “natural rights” is an abstraction, not a concrete, verifiable reality. Abstractions are “real” only in a world of Platonic ideals. And, then, they are “real” only to those who posit them. Objectivism is therefore akin to Platonism (Platonic mysticism), in which ideas exist independently of matter; that is, they simply “are.”

It would be fair to say that Objectivism is a kind of unreality.

2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

Reason operates on perceptions and prejudices. To the extent that there are “real” facts, we filter and interpret them according to our prejudices. When it comes to that, Objectivists are no less prejudiced than anyone else (see above).

Reason is an admirable and useful thing, but it does not ensure valid “knowledge,” right action, or survival. Some non-cognitive precepts — such as the “Golden Rule,” “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” and “talk softly but carry a big stick” — are indispensable guides to action which help to ensure the collective (joint) survival of those who observe them. Survival, in the real world (as opposed to the ideal world of Objectivism) depends very much on prejudice (see Theodore Dalrymple’s In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas).

3. Man — every man — is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

This dictum is an attack on the straw-man concept of altruism, which has no basis in reality, as I explain here and here. All of us are individualists, at bottom, in that we seek our own happiness. It just happens that some of us correlate our happiness with the happiness of (selected) others. Dictum 3 is both a tautology and a (lame) justification for behavior that violates social norms. Objectivists (like anarcho-capitalists) seem unable to understand that the liberty which enables them to spout their nonsense is owed, in great measure, to the existence of social norms, and that those norms arise (in large part) from observance of the “Golden Rule.”

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Here, Rand shifts gears from preaching the bed-rock prejudices and tautologies of Objectivism (dicta 1, 2, and 3) to the “ought” of Objectivism. It is hard to distinguish dictum 4 from the tenets of libertarianism, which makes me wonder why some Objectivists scorn libertarianism (e.g., go here and scroll down). It is not as if Objectivism is reality-based, as opposed to libertarianism. In fact, consequentialist libertarianism (anathema to anarchists and Objectivists, alike) has the advantage when it comes to defending laissez-faire capitalism. The facts of history and economics are on the side of laissez-faire capitalism because it yields better results than statism (see this, this, and this, for example).

I will not bother, here, to dismantle the jejune rejection of preemptive self-defense: the so-called non-aggression principle, which I have addressed in this post (and in several of the links therein). Nor is the notion of complete separation of state and church worth more than a link this post (and the links therein) and this one.

In sum, Objectivism reminds me very much of a late-night, dorm-room bull session: equal parts of inconsequential posturing and uninformed “philosophizing.” Sophomoric, in a word.

Related post: “This Is Objectivism?” (01 Mar 2006)

In Search of Consistency

I have written:

Think of the fine mess we’d be in if the courts were to rule against the teaching of intelligent design not because it amounts to an establishment of religion but because it’s unscientific. That would open the door to all sorts of judicial mischief. The precedent could — and would — be pulled out of context and used in limitless ways to justify government interference in matters where government has no right to interfere.

It’s bad enough that government is in the business of funding science — though I can accept such funding where it actually aids our defense effort. But, aside from that, government has no business deciding for the rest of us what’s scientific or unscientific.

The context for those observations was the legal controversy (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District) about the decision of the Dover, Pennsylvania, School Board to mandate that students in public school biology classes be taught the theory of intelligent design (ID) as an alternative to evolution.

Timothy Sandefur seems sympathetic to my general point, when he writes about

the public policy problem of the courts determining what sets of unprovable beliefs are and are not objectively irrational. On one hand, courts have even gone so far as to take judicial notice of the irrationality of certain beliefs. See, e.g., United States v. Downing, 753 F.2d 1224, 1238 n. 18 (3d Cir. 1985) (courts may take judicial notice of the invalidity of phrenology or astrology). But on the other hand, taking a step in this direction threatens important Establishment Clause and Free Exercise rights. That’s why in United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944), the Court found that it could not inquire into the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of faith healing, in a case involving a mail fraud prosecution. If courts can determine that certain beliefs with regard to ghosts are objectively irrational and untrue, then what about religious beliefs (which are, in fact [according to Sandefur: LC], objectively irrational and untrue)?

And, yet, Sandefur has been a vocal defender of the Kitzmiller decision, in which Judge John E. Jones III held that

the facts of this case make[] it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not… (emphasis added).

Perhaps Sandefur will tell us how he has reconciled his apparently conflicting views. He does not tell us in his paper, “A Response to the Creationists’ “Neutrality” Argument.” The argument of that paper boils down to this:

  • Schools exist for the purpose of teaching facts and sound thinking.
  • Therefore, schools should not teach things like ID, which Sandefur calls “objectively irrational and untrue), even though there is no scientific basis for accepting or rejecting ID. (See, for example, this post and the posts linked therein.)
  • Public schools are governmental institutions.
  • Government cannot be in the business of establishing religion.
  • Therefore, as governmental institutions, schools should not teach ID (a cover story for creationism) as an alternative to evolutionary theory.

In sum, Sandefur parlays an unprovable allegation about ID into a first-amendment case on the strength of the fact that public schools are governmental institutions. That’s true enough. But public schools are not government. That is, unlike legislatures, executives, and judges, they do not control the machinery of the state. Public schools are governmental institutions in the same way that my city-owned electric company is a governmental institution. In both cases, government simply has seized control of what could just as easily be a private institution (and a better one for it). Public schools become “government” only to the extent that government dictates what is taught (or not taught) in public schools, as it does in Kitzmiller.

Sandefur, in essence, argues that government ought to control schools (an anti-libertarian idea) so that it can control the content of what is taught in schools. And that content should advance his “objectively” correct atheistic agenda. Sandefur (like Marx) evinces a naïve faith in what he calls science:

Science’s focus on empirical evidence and demonstrable theories is part of an Enlightenment legacy that made possible a peaceful and free society among diverse equals. Teaching that habit of mind is of the essence for keeping our civilization alive. To reject the existence of objective truth is to reject the the possibility of common ground, to undermine the very purpose of scholarly, intellectual discourse, and to strike at the root of all that makes our values valuable and our society worthwhile…. At a time when Americans are threatened by an enemy that rejects science and reason, and demands respect for dogmas entailing violence, persecution, and tyranny, nothing more deserves our attention than nourishing respect for reason.

In fact, Americans — and liberty — are threatened by many things, not the least of which is dogmatism of the kind Sandefur evinces. As I say here, “Liberty … to the ‘libertarian’ Left, is the ‘right’ to believe as they do.”

Liberty demands, first and foremost, mutual respect. Science is not a breeding ground for mutual respect, as the controversy about global warming (among other issues) should remind us. Ironically (for Sandefur), mutual respect arises mainly from a concept that is widely associated with religion, namely, the “Golden Rule.”

Religious Discrimination or Free Exercise?

Eugene Volokh is exercised about a ruling by the Supreme Court of Michigan in a child-custody case, which he characterizes as unconstitutional:

Michigan parents know that, to maximize their chances of keeping custody of their children, they need to go to church more often. A solid violation of the Establishment Clause, I think, plus of the Michigan Constitution’s religious freedom provision:

Every person shall be at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend … any place of religious worship …. The civil and political rights, privileges and capacities of no person shall be diminished or enlarged on account of his religious belief.

Volokh’s real beef is with the Michigan statute (Child Custody Act of 1970), which spells out the “best interest” factors to be considered in child-custody cases. He specifically objects to the italicized portion of section 3(b):

The capacity and disposition of the parties involved to give the child love, affection, and guidance and to continue the education and raising of the child in his or her religion or creed, if any (emphasis added).

I cannot grasp the basis of Volokh’s objection. Neither the statute nor (in what I have read) any court’s interpretation of it seems to violate the relevant portion of the First Amendment:

Congress [and by incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment, the States] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

The Michigan statute wisely gives proper recognition to the importance of religion (among several other factors) in the upbringing of a child. That’s all it does.

The clause at issue is not an establishment of religion. It does not force anyone to practice a religion. It simply gives due credit to a parent who continues to raise his or her child in the religion in which the child already was being raised, if any.

The clause at issue does not bar the free exercise of religion. Contrary to what Volokh seems to think, it is not a child’s place to dictate his or her religious upbringing. Would Volokh think it good to allow a child to decide (against parental command) to drop out of school at the age of, say, ten? I don’t think so. What makes religion different than education? Nothing, except that Volokh finds it objectionable that Michigan’s legislature and courts recognize the value of religion in the upbringing of a child.

Volokh, like so many other determined secularists, cannot countenance any governmental act that seems to approve of religion. But, contrary to Thomas Jefferson, there is no “wall of separation” between church and state, as Justice Antonin Scalia reminds us:

The same week that Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate…. The day after the First Amendment was proposed, the same Congress that had proposed it requested the President to proclaim “ a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed, by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many and signal favours of Almighty God.”… President Washington offered the first Thanksgiving Proclamation shortly thereafter, devoting November 26, 1789 on behalf of the American people “ ‘to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that is, that was, or that will be,’ ”… thus beginning a tradition of offering gratitude to God that continues today…. The same Congress also reenacted the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787,… Article III of which provided: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”… And of course the First Amendment itself accords religion (and no other manner of belief) special constitutional protection.

These actions of our First President and Congress … were not idiosyncratic; they reflected the beliefs of the period. Those who wrote the Constitution believed that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality.

And they were right.

An Embarrassment of Ignoramuses

This reminds me of the multitude of lemming-like politicians and celebrities who have joined the “crusade” against global warming. (It would be a lot cooler if they would just close their mouths.)

Will those multitudes be embarrassed a few years from now when the scientific “consensus” turns against them? Not at all. They’ll have by then joined other ill-conceived “crusades” against other imaginary ills, or ones that cannot be cured by government. Why? For the sake of having government tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

And so it goes in the never-never land of the fashionable doom-sayer.

Related posts:
“The Worriers” (13 Jun 2004)
“More about the Worrying Classes” (17 Jun 2004)
“‘Warmism’: The Myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming” (23 Aug 2007)
“Re: Climate ‘Science’” (19 Sep 2007)
“More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming” (25 Sep 2007)
“Yet More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming” (04 Oct 2007)
“Global Warming, Close to Home” (22 Dec 2007)
“You Know…” (02 Jan 2008)
“Global Warming, Close to Home (II)” (06 Jan 2008)

Religion and the Inculcation of Values

Apropos the preceding post and “Religion and the Inculcation of Morality,” I offer these thoughts by Christopher Dawson:

[T]he Liberal movement, with its humanitarian idealism and its belief in the law of nature and the rights of man, owes its origin to an irregular union between the humanist tradition and a religious ideal that was inspired by Christian moral values, though not by Christian faith…. [T]he whole development of liberalism and humanitarianism, which has been of such immense importance in the history of the modern world, derived its spiritual impetus from the Christian tradition that it attempted to replace, and when that tradition disappears this spiritual impetus is lost, and liberalism in its turn is replaced by the crudity and amoral ideology of the totalitarian state.

“Europe in Eclipse” (1954), compiled in
The Dynamics of World History

UPDATE (01/19/08): Relatedly, Mark Steyn writes today:

…Jonah Goldberg has a brilliant new book out called Liberal Fascism, which I hope to address at length in the weeks ahead. I note, however, that American liberals, not surprisingly, don’t care for the title. As it happens, the phrase is H.G. Wells’s, and he meant it approvingly. Unity [Mitford]’s dreamboat Fuhrer described himself as “a man of the left.”… Even when they’re not in thrall to the personality dictators, a big chunk of Western elites have a strange yen for the sterner ways of distant cultures, from Hillary Clinton’s Hallmark sentimentalization (“It Takes A Village,” etc.) of a tribal existence that’s truly nasty, brutish and short to Germaine Greer’s more explicit defence of “female genital mutilation.” Late in life, Miss Greer has finally found a form of patriarchal oppression that gets her groove back as much as National Socialism did Unity Mitford’s.

If you’re unlucky, it’s not just the elites who fall for ideologically exotic suitors. It would seem to me, given how easily the Continent embraced all the most idiotic “isms” three-quarters of a century ago, that it will surely take up some equally unlovely ones as it faces its perfect storm of an aging native population, a surging Muslim immigrant population, and an unsustainable welfare state…

A Western nation voluntarily embracing sharia? Sounds silly. But so does Unity Mitford. Liberal democracy is squaresville and predictable, small-scale and unheroic, deeply unglamorous compared to the alternatives. And kind of boring. Until it’s gone.

A Sensible Atheist Speaks

David Friedman (Ideas) writes:

Part of my skepticism with regard to the efforts of my fellow atheists [e.g., Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris] to demonstrate how absurd the opposing position is comes from knowing a fair number of intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful people who believe in God–including one I am married to. Part comes from weaknesses I can perceive in the foundations for my own view of the world. At some point, I think, each of us is using the superb pattern recognition software that evolution has equipped us with to see a coherent pattern in the world around us–and since the problem is a harder one than the software was designed to deal with, it isn’t that surprising that we sometimes get different answers.

UPDATE (01/20/08): Friedman ends a follow-up post with this thought:

My own conclusion, as before, is that I do not think God exists. But neither do I think that conclusion so obviously true that all reasonable people ought to accept it.

Amen.

Related posts:
“The Universe…Four Possibilities” (07 Jan 2007)
“The Greatest Mystery” (24 Dec 2007)
“Religion and the Inculcation of Morality,” which links to many other related posts (12 Nov 2007)

The Best Advice Ever Given to Me

Let us not speculate.

Said by Anthony Y.C. Koo, professor of economics, when I asked him if he knew the whereabouts of my faculty adviser. Koo answered my question with the quoted statement, and a bit of research; that is, he checked my adviser’s calendar. Prof. Koo’s words, and example, have guided me these past fifty years.

The Greatest Mystery

It is fitting, at Christmas, to contemplate the greatest mystery of all: the mystery of existence.

Monotheists say that God exists and existence is God:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. (The Apocalypse of Saint John, 1:8)

Atheists say that things simply exist, that’s all. But atheism is a faith, not a scientific proposition. As a noted scientist and anti-religionist, Richard Dawkins, puts it:

I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design” anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection (emphasis added). It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

Even that seemingly forthright statement is evasive. It glosses over the atheistic assumption — faith — that the universe and its ingredients — the stuff of life — simply came to be. Atheism is a faith because the question of God’s existence is beyond the grasp of science, untestable by scientific methods.

The mystery of existence always will be the greatest mystery. But our mode of grappling with the mystery reveals much about ourselves: religious belief is affirmative, atheism is cynical, and agnosticism is cautious.

(For a list of related posts at Liberty Corner, go here.)

Schrödinger’s Cat Returns

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat:

It attempts to illustrate what he saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics when it is applied to systems large enough to be seen with the naked eye, and not just to atomic or subatomic systems.

It is accepted that a subatomic particle can exist in a superposition of states, a combination of possible states. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the superposition only settles into a definite state upon observation. This is known as collapse or measurement.

Schrödinger proposed his “cat”, after a suggestion of Albert Einstein‘s. Schrödinger states that if a scenario existed where a cat’s state of life or death could be made dependent on the state of a subatomic particle, and also isolated from any possible observation, the state of the cat itself would be a quantum superposition — according to the Copenhagen interpretation, at least.

Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility. Rather he believed the “absurd” conclusion indicated a flawed assumption.

The thought experiment serves to illustrate the strangeness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states.

We now read this:

Astronomers may have unwittingly hastened the end of the Universe by simply looking at it, according to a theory reported in the latest edition of New Scientist….

[C]osmologists have discovered that the Universe is still expanding.

And, they believe, a strange, yet-to-be-detected form of energy called dark energy pervades the universe, which would explain why the sum of all the visible sources of energy fall way short of what should be out there.

Dark energy, goes the thinking, is a result of the Big Bang and is accelerating the universe’s expansion.

If so, the universe is not in a nice, stable zero-vacuum state but simply [in a] state that may abruptly…again – and with cataclysmic consequences.

The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything in the universe, “wiping the slate clean,” says Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The good news is: the longer the universe survives, the better the chance that it will mature into a stable state. We are just beyond the crucial switching point, Mr. Krauss believed.

The bad news is: the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock.

Mr. Krauss and colleague James Dent pointed to measurements of light from supernovae in 1998 that provided the first evidence of dark energy.

These measurements might have reset the decay clock of the “false vacuum” back to zero, back before the switching point and to a time when the risk of catastrophic decay was greater than now, said Mr. Dent and Mr. Krauss.

“Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of the universe,” said Mr. Krauss.

“We may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay.”

The report says the claim is contested by other astrophysicists and adds reassuringly: “The fact that we are still here means this can’t have happened yet.”

And it ain’t gonna happen. My money is on Schrödinger.

Worth Reading

This. See also this and the links therein.

Religion and the Inculcation of Morality

Read this, by Maverick Philosopher.

Related posts at Liberty Corner:
Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance
Atheism, Religion, and Science
The Limits of Science
Beware of Irrational Atheism
Religion and Personal Responsibility
Religion and Liberty
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
Science, Logic, and God
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Debunking “Scientific Objectivity”
The Big Bang and Atheism
The Universe . . . Four Possibilities
Einstein, Science, and God
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Religion as Beneficial Evolutionary Adaptation
A Reminder
Collegiate Crap-ola
A Non-Believer Defends Religion
Evolution as God?

Evolution as God?

In a lot of ways, evolution is like unto theology. “Gods are ontologically distinct from creatures,” said Damien Broderick, “or they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.” And indeed, the Shaper of Life is not itself a creature. Evolution is bodiless, like the Judeo-Christian deity. Omnipresent in Nature, immanent in the fall of every leaf. Vast as a planet’s surface. Billions of years old. Itself unmade, arising naturally from the structure of physics. Doesn’t that all sound like something that might have been said about God? (Eliezer Yudkowsky, “An Alien God,” Overcoming Bias)

Whence the stuff of which evolution was made, and the structure (i.e., laws) of physics that enabled it to be made? Answer that, Mr. Yudkowsky, before you get too invested in the claim that “Science has already discovered the sort-of-godlike maker of humans – but it wasn’t what the religionists wanted to hear.”

Yudkowsky wants to believe in only the first of four logical possibilities about the Universe:

1. Everything just is — without an outside cause or overarching design. Scientists claim to find “laws” governing the behavior of matter, energy, time, and space. But such laws only partly explain the universe; there is no grand unifying theory of everything. And those laws are subject to change as science unveils new aspects of matter, energy, time, and space — as it does continuously.

He ought to consider the other possibilities, including this one:

4. There is an external force or consciousness that brought everything into being. That force or consciousness may merely have set things in motion, or it may play a continuing role in some or all aspects of existence. The intentions of the external force or consciousness are known to religionists, by revelation and/or faith; science is inadequate to fathom those intentions or to prove that the universe conforms to an underlying “design.” Those who reject this fourth possibility as “unscientific” — that is, most scientists as well as the typical libertarian/Objectivist — can do so only by accepting one of the equally unscientific (i.e., untestable) possibilities outlined above.

In a sequel (“The Wonder of Evolution“) Yudkowsky reveals (in so many words) his fear of considering that fourth possibility. He does us a service, however, by adverting to a sentence from Thomas Henry Huxley‘s “Ethics and Evolution” (The Romanes Lecture, Oxford University 1893). Here is the sentence in full:

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

Elsewhere, we find this commentary on Huxley’s observation:

As his critics were not slow to point out, however, Huxley’s supposition that man can combat cosmic processes comes strangely from a Darwinian. For Darwin’s principal thesis is that man is part of Nature and subject, therefore, to its “cosmic forces,” in no sense standing outside or above them.

The subsequent explanation — that ethical progress is part and parcel of evolution — leads to this question: How do we “know” that we should move in a certain direction, ethically, in order to be more nearly perfect? Assigning evolution the role of judge is tantamount to assuming the answer, namely, “evolution is all.” But that cannot be the answer (except in the mind of an obdurate atheist), because there remains this scientifically unanswerable question: Whence the stuff of which evolution was made, and the laws (structure) of physics that enabled it to be made?

If you want to disbelieve in the fourth possibility, just say so. But don’t cloak your disbelief in the language of science, for science can neither prove nor disprove any of the possibilities.

Related posts:
Atheism, Religion, and Science
The Limits of Science
Beware of Irrational Atheism
Religion and Personal Responsibility
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
Science, Logic, and God
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Debunking “Scientific Objectivity”
The Big Bang and Atheism
The Universe . . . Four Possibilities
Einstein, Science, and God
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Religion as Beneficial Evolutionary Adaptation
A Reminder
Collegiate Crap-ola
A Non-Believer Defends Religion

The Fallacy of Particularism

UPDATED, BELOW

Here. Robin Hanson makes a mistake that is common to “rationalists”: He examines every thread of human behavior for “reasonableness.”

It is the fabric of human behavior that matters, not each thread. Any thread, if pulled out of the fabric, might look defective under the microscope of “reason.” But pulling threads out of a fabric — one at a time — can weaken a strong and richly textured tapestry.

Whether a particular society is, in fact, a “strong and richly textured tapestry” is for its members to determine, through voice and exit. The “reasonableness” of a society’s norms (if they are voluntarily evolved) should be judged by whether those norms — on the whole — foster liberty (as explained here), not by the whether each of those norms, taken in isolation, is “reasonable” to a pundit inveighing from on high.

UPDATE (11/01/07: Hanson has updated his post (first link above). But he digs himself a deeper, rationalistic hole when he says

I’ll now only complain about [Russ Roberts’s] bias to hold his previous beliefs to a lower standard than he holds posssible alternatives.

He should complain, rather, about his own, too-easy willingness to reject the wisdom of inherited beliefs on the basis of statistical analysis.

A Non-Believer Defends Religion

Theodore Dalrymple, writing at City Journal (“What the New Atheists Don’t See“) smacks down Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and their ilk. Dalrymple’s case is made all the more convincing by his admission, in the second paragraph of the essay, that he is a non-believer.

Among Dalrymple’s many excellent and well-aimed observations, this is my favorite:

The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith…can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality.

I (an agnostic) have made that point, and others, in my various defenses of religion against the “new atheism” of Dennett, Dawkins, et al.:

Going Too Far with the First Amendment
Atheism, Religion, and Science
The Limits of Science
Beware of Irrational Atheism
Religion and Personal Responsibility
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
Science, Logic, and God
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Debunking “Scientific Objectivity”
The Big Bang and Atheism
The Universe: Four Possibilities
Einstein, Science, and God
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Religion as Beneficial Evolutionary Adaptation