Camels With Hammers

Physics is Grounded in Mathematics

March 3, 2011 – 10:54 am

Mathematics is effective in science. Wigner (1960: 14) regards this effectiveness as magical: “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” The prudent reply that it is surely not very scientific to base scientific reasoning on miracles. A more rational alternative says that mathematics is effective in science because physical reality is grounded in mathematical reality.

The Effectiveness Argument goes like this: (1) Mathematics is effective in science. (2) The best explanation for this effectiveness is that physical reality is grounded in mathematical reality. (3) So, by inference to the best explanation, all physical reality, including our universe, is grounded in mathematical reality – in pure mathematics.

The second premise in the Effectiveness Argument is supported by a variety of writers. Dipert (1997: 332) argues that “the very possibility of a clear understanding of the world requires the possibility that it is a simple mathematical structure”. Steiner (1998: 4 – 5) puts it even more powerfully like this:

The strategy physicists pursued . . . to guess at the laws of nature, was a Pythagorean strategy: they used the relations between the structures and even the notations of mathematics to frame analogies and guess according to those analogies. The strategy succeeded. . . . The success of the Pythagorean strategy might lead the reader to conceptual Pythagoreanism, the view that the ultimate properties or ‘real essences’ of things are none other than the mathematical structures and their relations. More radically, one might adopt metaphysical Pythagoreanism, which simply identifies the Universe or the things in it with mathematical objects or structures. (Some physicists write as though an elementary particle just ‘is’ an irreducible group representation, or even that the entire universe is.)

Steiner (1998: ch. 4) brilliantly discusses many examples in which the pythagorean strategy of identifying physical things with mathematical things is successful. His cases include: Maxwell’s study of electromagnetism; Schroedinger’s study of wave mechanics; Dirac’s study of the positron; Schwarzschild’s solution for the equations of general relativity (i.e. black holes); Heisenberg’s study of the symmetries of nucleons; Kemmer’s study of pions; Gell-Mann’s and Ne’eman’s study of particle systems with unitary spin and the consequent discovery of quarks; Einstein’s inference of the field equations for general relativity; the Heisenberg-Born-Jordan derivation of matrix mechanics; Schroedinger’s derivation of the Klein-Gordon equation; the derivation of the Yang-Mills equation; the study of analytic continuations in crossing symmetries.

As a continuation of Steiner’s reasoning, Tegmark (1998: 44) says: “the usefulness of mathematics for describing the physical world is a natural consequence of the fact that the latter is a mathematical structure.” Accordingly, Tegmark (1998: 46-47) simply collapses the distinction between mathematical and physical existence:

One might say that wherever there is light, there are associated ripples in the electromagnetic field. But the modern view is that light is the ripples. One might say that wherever there is matter, there are associated ripples in the metric known as curvature. But Eddington’s view is that matter is the ripples. One might say that wherever there is physical existence, there is an associated mathematical structure. But according to our TOE [theory of everything], physical existence is mathematical existence. (The italics are Tegmark’s.)

Dipert, R. (1997) The mathematical structure of the world: The world as graph. Journal of Philosophy 94 (7), 329-358.

Steiner, M. (1998) The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Tegmark, M. (1998) Is ‘the Theory of Everything’ merely the ultimate ensemble theory? Annals of Physics 270, 1-51.

Wigner, E. (1960) The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, 1-14.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is an associate professor of philosophy at William Paterson University. Many of his papers can be found here . All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (6)

Disambiguating Faith: Why You Cannot Prove Inductive Reasoning Is Faith-Based Reasoning But Instead Only Assert That By Faith

March 3, 2011 – 10:16 am

In the comments section of a post I asserted that, “We can say we know induction works to a high degree of certainty.” James Sweet, of No Jesus, No Peas, responds:

How do we know that? The only reasons I can come up with rely either on inductive reasoning — circular argument.

Remember also that I am in the camp which feels that with induction as a given, deduction falls away as well. I feel that while you can always show a perfect deductive proof within a given logical framework, you cannot argue that any given logical framework has the slightest bearing on reality, until you accept inductive reasoning and use that to show as much.

I had also stated that because induction works to a high degree of certainty that belief in it is “a matter of knowledge until it is demonstrated otherwise.” James asks:

How would one demonstrate otherwise? Because it stopped working? That would also be inductive reasoning…

I had also made a distinction that clearly we need to have different words for knowledge than for faith-beliefs since some beliefs are held proportional to high degrees of evidence and others are held despite high degrees of contrary evidence (or in lieu of evidence), and our language would be outright misleading if it did not distinguish between these two different kinds of belief. James grants this in normal cases but does not think that inductive reasoning itself can be evidentially warranted without a question-begging appeal to its own standards for validity. Specifically he writes in favor of saying we have “faith” in inductive reasoning:

I can think of no non-circular justifications for trusting inductive reasoning, and I can’t think of any ways it could be falsified without relying on induction (which of course would be a paradox).

I’m not losing sleep over it, because as I say, it seems a bit grandiose to label a belief as “faith” when it is shared by literally everyone, except maybe a few nihilists, and even then they behave as though they accept it even if philosophically they don’t. But by a strict definition of faith, I don’t see any way around it.

Yes, the validity of inductive reasoning could only be vindicated in a circular manner since we can only use methods of inferential reasoning to even attempt to show that it is truth conducive. Any argument in favor of inductive reasoning will necessarily be an inductive argument. So if the validity of inductive arguments is precisely what is at stake, how can resorting to an inductive argument to demonstrate it be anything but circular?

The skeptic, however, has no reason to go so far as James does and say that inductive reasoning is not evidentially warranted and, therefore, a matter of faith either. It is only inductive standards of evidence that could rule any evidence as warranting any belief in the first place. If inductive reasoning is an arbitrary, non-truth conducive matter, then its own standards of evidence are irrelevant to truth too. If all we have is an unjustified faith in inductive reasoning then it is not even a sufficient standard to prove to us that it is invalid or that it is a matter of faith. Sure, if James’s understanding of inductive reasoning is right (but I will argue next time that it is not), by its own standards inductive reasoning would have to rule itself an unwarranted faith-based method of deriving truths, but unless we continue adhering to inductive reasoning we have no reason to believe that.

So, it makes no sense to infer based on inductive reasoning that one can know, i.e., have a justified belief, that inductive reasoning itself can only give faith beliefs, i.e. unjustified beliefs. Because if inductive reasoning only gives unjustified, faith beliefs, then one’s inference that inductive reasoning only gives unjustified, faith beliefs is itself just an unjustified faith belief. James’s own understanding of his own inference should lead him to declare it as dogmatic. Even though he reasoned his way there, he did so only from faith-based premises and using a faith-based methodology.

James is like any other fideist. Take the normal fideist, a religious believer who admits that all religious truth is faith-based and cannot be validated by reason. And let us be even more specific in our example and take a fideistic Christian who grants the Bible full authority. This person still reasons in that she infers such things as “Jesus rose from the dead” based on her reading of the Bible. But her thinking is still entirely faith-based since her belief in the Bible itself is unwarranted.

And even though James reasons based on his faith in inductive reasoning, he still is faith-based since confidence in inductive reasoning itself, on his own account, is just a matter of unjustified faith.

But can I do any better than James? Can I avoid only having faith but actually have a justified belief? Can I say my use of induction is not faith-based but rather is evidentially warranted? Can I argue for this in a way that does not assume from the outset what I aim to prove? Is there a way that inductive reasoning might be understood to be circular, but not viciously circular, but virtuously circular? I think there is and I will explain why in a future post, so come back.

In the meantime,

Your Thoughts?

__________________

For more on faith, read any or all posts in my “Disambiguating Faith” series. It is unnecessary to read all its posts to understand any given one.

Trustworthiness, Loyalty, And Honesty

Faith As Loyally Trusting Those Insufficiently Proven To Be Trustworthy

Faith As Tradition

Blind Faith: How Faith Traditions Turn Trust Without Warrant Into A Test Of Loyalty

The Threatening Abomination Of The Faithless

Rational Beliefs, Rational Actions, And When It Is Rational To Act On What You Don’t Think Is True

Faith As Guessing

Are True Gut Feelings And Epiphanies Beliefs Justified By Faith?

Faith Is Neither Brainstorming, Hypothesizing, Nor Simply Reasoning Counter-Intuitively

Faith In The Sub-, Pre-, Or Un-conscious

Can Rationality Overcome Faith?

Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion

Faith As Deliberate Commitment To Rationalization

Heart Over Reason

Faith As Corruption Of Children’s Intellectual Judgment

Faith As Subjectivity Which Claims Objectivity

Faith Is Preconditioned By Doubt, But Precludes Serious Doubting

Soul Searching With Clergy Guy

Faith As Admirable Infinite Commitment For Finite Reasons

Maximal Self-Realization In Self-Obliteration: The Existential Paradox of Heroic Self-Sacrifice

How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist

Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”

Not All Beliefs Held Without Certainty Are Faith Beliefs

Defending My Definition Of Faith As “Belief Or Trust Beyond Rational Warrant”

Implicit Faith

Agnostics Or Apistics?

The Evidence-Impervious Agnostic Theists

Faith Which Exploits Infinitesimal Probabilities As Openings For Strong Affirmations

Why You Cannot Prove Inductive Reasoning Is Faith-Based Reasoning But Instead Only Assert That By Faith

How Just Opposing Faith, In Principle, Means You Actually Don’t Have Faith, In Practice

Naturalism, Materialism, Empiricism, And Wrong, Weak, And Unsupported Beliefs Are All Not Necessarily Faith Positions

How Faith Poisons Religion

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, Philosophy | Tagged Deductive Reasoning, Inductive Reasoning, Inferential Reasoning | Comments (7)

On Zealously, Tentatively, and Perspectivally Holding Viewpoints

March 2, 2011 – 4:13 pm

In a recent post, I wrote the following:

Changing people’s minds to make them stop holding positions dogmatically and instead hold them tentatively is still a change of mind one may zealously pursue.

On Facebook, Greg writes in reply:

I want to address the peculiarity of this statement. One may passionately pursue such a change of mind, but the change of mind is one such that zealous pursuit is tempered/negated by the tentativeness of the mindset itself. Dan’s statement here is akin to saying that we can zealously present non-zealousness. It’s like saying we can coerce people to be free. Inherent in the content advocated is a negation of the activity. Entertaining.

Even if Greg does not hold the content of his beliefs more than tentatively, he does not tentatively hold his standards of evidence or, at least, his commitment to tentativeness itself merely tentatively. There is nothing contradictory in him firmly adhering to a standard of tentative assent to propositions and simultaneously zealously insisting that someone else loosen a death grip on a questionable idea and instead hold that idea more tentatively.

If one’s zealous appeal to the standards of careful evidence persuades that person to now only scrupulously and, even, zealously, hold that idea at arm’s length as it deserves then one’s zealousness about believing tentatively can translate into appropriately tentative beliefs. There is no contradiction in that.

Of course one might not zealously hold to a standard of evidence and standard of affirmation that demands tentativeness. One might non-zealously commit to tentativeness. But what happens in that case? Well, one might go ahead and abandon tentativeness for some other standard of affirmations since this standard was only held tentatively and not as an inflexible principle. I am okay with that (should a persuasive argument for not holding beliefs tentatively arise).

But is Greg willing to be tentative about the tentativeness standard or is it itself something he holds more than tentatively?

But even though I was only talking about zealousness about one’s standards for affirmation of propositions and practices of affirming (and not affirming) to various degrees, I will nonetheless go further and affirm the proposition I was not saying before but which Greg accused me of saying and which he considered ludicrous.

I will say that yes, we can hold beliefs both zealously and tentatively at the same time, only in different ways. I have certainly done so before (and do so all the time actually).

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Featured, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophy, Skepticism, Skepticism | Tagged Nietzsche's Perspectivism, Nietzsche's Perspectivist Theory of Truth, Perspectival Epistemology, Perspectivalism | Comments (5)

Can Atheists do Math?

March 2, 2011 – 10:05 am

Leibniz’s version of the cosmological argument (his Sufficient Reason Argument) runs from the continency of our universe to the existence of some necessary being. This necessary being is the ground of our universe. The ground isn’t part of our universe – it stands in no spatial, temporal, or causal relation to any thing in our universe.

The ground doesn’t even come close to matching any of the descriptions of any of the gods of mythology or even philosophy. So it’s hard to see why affirming the existence of the ground would be offensive to atheists. And yet, looking at the various responses to my last post, it seems that many atheists object. Why?

The ground is not mysterious. Leibniz has given us a great deal of information about it. First, it exists necessarily. Second, the very fact that the ground is not involved in physical relations is informative. To say that the ground is not involved in physics means that the ground is an abstract object. Abstract objects are objects that don’t participate in any spatial, temporal, or causal relations. Mathematical objects are abstract.

Mathematical objects include things like sets, numbers, vectors, functions, and so forth. If mathematical objects exist, then they aren’t physical. And, just to be clear, they aren’t concepts. Numbers aren’t things in your brain. There are infinitely many numbers; but you don’t have infinitely many things in your brain. If numbers exist, then they have an entirely objective existence that doesn’t depend on you or your thoughts at all. If you think math is all in your head, then you can’t do math.

Mathematical objects obviously play roles in science (especially in basic physics, which is intensely mathematical). The Quine-Putnam Indispensability argument says that since mathematical objects are needed for science, they exist. If you believe in quarks and gravity, you ought to believe in math. If there are no numbers, what sense would it make to use equations to describe the physical world? And, of course, you can’t just say you believe in some mathematical objects and not others. You get the whole system or none of it. And, looking back to Leibniz, mathematical objects exist necessarily.

These ideas about mathematics are known in metaphysics as platonism. Platonists affirm the objective reality of a world of mathematical entities. And, even though we can’t see or touch mathematical objects, we obviously know a lot about them. Indeed, math is the most stable and enduring part of human knowledge. Math involves proof – everything else is uncertain. Of course, platonism, like every part of philosophy, is controversial. But platonism comes with enormous benefits. Why not use them?

You can use platonism to complete Leibniz’s Sufficient Reason Argument. The following logic justifies the thesis that the ground is a mathematical object: our universe is mathematically structured; the best explanation for the mathematical structure of our universe is that it is generated by a mathematical object. It’s reasonable to believe the best explanation. Accordingly, there is some mathematical object that generates our universe. And that object is the ground.

How could the ground be a mathematical object? What does that even mean? To start to answer this question, consider a cellular automaton like the game of life. Such cellular automata can have incredibly rich physical content. Any instantaneous stage of some game of life can be encoded in a bit string – a sequence of 0s and 1s. Another way of putting this is to say that the stage supervenes on the bit string. A game of life is a series of stages; so any game of life supervenes on a series of bit strings. The bit strings aren’t arbitrary. They are generated by the iteration of a function which encodes the causal laws for the game of life. The function is Turing-computable. So every game of life supervenes on a sequence of bit strings generated by the iteration of an abstract Turing machine. The abstract Turing machine is itself just a function from numbers to numbers.

Many writers have thought hard about the possibility that our universe supervenes on the iterations of some abstract Turing machine. This is the computable universe hypothesis. (See, for instance, the work of Ed Fredkin or Jurgen Scmidhuber). I suspect our universe is too complex to supervene on the iterations of a Turing machine. But there are far more complex abstract machines. So the hypothesis that the ground is a kind of mathematical object is perfectly intelligible.

It’s easy to see why a theist might object to the mathematical ground – it directly competes with the theistic god! If the mathematical ground exists, then the theistic god doesn’t exist (or at the very least, that god is cosmologically unemployed).

Should atheists object to the mathematical ground? If so, why? Platonism gives atheists an enormously powerful metaphysics – a world of abstract, eternal, transcendental, necessary objects. But none of them are gods. And that world is knowable by reason (it’s the very peak of rationality). You’d expect atheists to embrace that.

So I’m wondering: can atheists do math?

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, God, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (7)

The Flexibility of the Word “Evangelical”

March 1, 2011 – 7:11 pm

In a previous post, I conceded that it was acceptable to call at least some activist atheists like me “evangelical atheists” on some possible senses of the word “evangelical”. Greg wanted to say that this could not be so because all that atheists do (or should) advocate is tentative, skeptical empiricism, and that we do not (or should not) advance any strong guiding beliefs that rise to the level of dogmatism of faith beliefs. To that general line of argument, I wrote the following:

Fine, but my point is that even such a skeptic can be broadly “evangelical” if she elevates allegiance to skepticism itself to the level of epistemological and ethical principle worth confronting people over publicly and privately with a strong concern to persuade them to change their minds. Changing people’s minds to make them stop holding positions dogmatically and instead hold them tentatively is still a change of mind one may zealously pursue.

In reply, Greg writes to me that:

What this essentially represents is a denial of my claim that the content matters when it comes to evangelism.

Now, I put it to you that your understanding of “evangelism” doesn’t match natural usage – that there is content in the term that you are not recognizing. Let me provide an example: We do not speak of an advertiser or car salesperson as “evangelizing” despite that the advertiser is presenting the target with “a strong concern to persuade them to change their minds.” In this example about the expenditure of the target’s money. To depict evangelizing as merely “forcefully presenting” or “arguing” is an error evangelists use to try to place tentative positings on the same playing field as dogmatic truisms. It is not the case that this is just a matter of equal and competing ideologies; those of us who refer to empirical reality are appealing to something external – empirical reality. This is an error that some buy into. I’m sorry to say, that that seems to be the case with Dan.

Nowhere have I ever said anywhere on this blog that this is a matter of just “equal and competing ideologies”. For one thing, I only ever use the word ideology in a very narrow sense typically and never with respect to atheism. But, more to the point, I could not be clearer, over and over and over again, that I find faith-based reasoning to not only be epistemologically unsound but to be ethically unsound. I positively rail against authoritarianism in belief, thinking that appeals to tradition and faith as justifications in themselves are the deepest problem with institutionalized religions as they are.

There is no false equivalence on this issue in my mind or in any of my writing.

But being loosely describably as “evangelical” does not mean being a faith-based thinker. In fact, I have also been trying to distinguish that being “religious” may not have to require being “faith-based” in some sense. Maybe even being “spiritual” need not.

My point in all of this is to say that faith is a bad epistemological and ethical practice that should absolutely be jettisoned. We should live lives in which all our beliefs are scrupulously protected from prejudice and in which blatant, willful prejudice or decision to believe things contrary to evidence (or with insufficient evidence) is avoided wherever possible, rather than trumpeted as a virtue.

But that does not mean that much human practice and feeling that is presently exploited and molded to the ends of faith-based, faith-exploiting institutions cannot be put into the service of more rational lives. In this way much that is quite naturally understood to be “religious” or “spiritual” might yet get genuine and valuable expression in atheistic, rationalistic, empirically and philosophically sensitive and informed shapes.

And someone like me can (and does) have great zeal for seeing this happen. Like the Evangelicals I have a desire to change people’s minds about issues that are of central identity-forming impact on their lives. Most Americans find such desires and efforts gauche or intrusive. They think that it somehow must always be an assault on the personal conscience to go after people’s idiosyncratic faith posits that (allegedly) orient their ethics and spirituality.

My argument is that as long as I do not manipulate people or treat them like “projects” or disregard particular individuals’ wishes to be left alone or demand people submit to arbitrary authorities or try to use the law to force anyone into disbelief or belief, etc., that I can avoid the vices associated with Evangelicals, while still affirming that the endeavor to persuade people about the truth about metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and religion is not itself a bad thing, even if it is the same kind of goal Evangelicals pursue with notoriously bad attitudes and methods.

People mistake the Evangelicals’ conscience disrespecting approaches to evangelizing with an illegitimacy of talking about the topics they raise themselves. I think there is a way to “evangelically” appeal to the conscience rather than just disrespect the conscience, as some of their methods clearly do.

Whatever the particulars of the content, the content is important when using the word “evangelize.” Given the most common natural usage of the word, religious elements are involved in the content (i.e.: religious truth claims).

I maintain that mere advocacy is not evangelism. I suspect we have different words for these for a reason (they refer to different kinds of content), and I suspect that to confuse the two is a misrepresentation of the differences of content implied (entailed) in the uses of the different words. And no, I don’t think degree or intensity of advocacy is sufficient to span the gap between these two words, and I suspect natural language, despite the best efforts of evangelists and evangelist-influenced thinkers, supports my view.

I have no problem with most of this. I am not saying that the natural meaning of evangelism applies to all forms of advocacy. But language is naturally flexible too and all the way back to the Enlightenment secular humanists have been (sometimes gleefully and in a spirit of defiance) appropriating religious imagery, symbols, practices, etc. and filling them with their own content.

That is part of what I am doing here. I am accepting, for example, that my own personality and enthusiasm for persuasion about matters of metaphysics, ethics, and identity-forming beliefs was shaped by my evangelical upbringing. I am finding a continuity in my own psychology and saying that in a way I am still an “evangelical” in temperament (even though I am evangelical about some decidedly anti-faith ideas and abhor and denounce some of my Evangelical tactics and mindsets of my youth).

My spirit of advocacy is not rooted in car salesmanship (though my mother is a natural born, and professional, saleswoman and that’s part of my personality too), it is rather rooted in being on the opposite side of the same debates I am presently in. My sense of propriety was not shaped, for example, by a common enculturation that would make me feel like it is impolite (or even “hateful”!) to challenge people’s religious beliefs (or lackthereof).

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Personal | Comments (1)

Atheism and Leibniz

February 28, 2011 – 7:18 pm

The cosmological argument is really a family of arguments. Some of the cosmological arguments are very concrete. Aquinas’s Second Way and the Kalam Argument (popularized by William Lane Craig) reason back to some first cause of the universe at the beginning of time. Atheists (like Quentin Smith) have given various replies to these first cause arguments (often based on the big bang, or some deeper physics).

These first cause arguments are debates about the structure of contingent physical existence. It’s fun to reason backwards in time along causal chains, but that reasoning remains entirely within the system of contingent physical things. The deeper questions are these: Why is there a universe rather than no universe? Why are there any physical things rather than no physical things? Why are there any contingent things rather than no contingent things? No first cause argument (or atheistic reply) even tries to answer those questions.

Aquinas’s Third Way and Leibniz’s Sufficient Reason Argument are much deeper arguments. Theists and atheists both ought to study them carefully. Leibniz’s Sufficient Reason Argument is especially interesting. Here it is:

(1) Neither in any single thing, nor in the total aggregate and series of things, can the sufficient reason for their existence be discovered. (2) Let us suppose a book entitled The Elements of Geometry to have existed eternally, one edition having always been copied from the preceding. (3) Although you can account for the present copy by a reference to the past copy which it reproduces, yet, however far back you go in this series of reproductions, you can never arrive at a complete explanation; (4) You always will have to ask why at all times these books have existed, that is, why there have been any books at all and why this book in particular. (5) What is true concerning these books is equally true concerning the diverse states of the universe, for here too the following state is in some way a copy of the preceding one (although changing according to certain laws). (6) However far you turn back to antecedent states, you will never discover in any or all of these states the full reason why there is a universe rather than no universe, nor why it is such as it is. (7) You may well suppose the universe to be eternal; yet what you thus posit is nothing but the succession of its states, and you will not find the sufficient reason in any one of them, nor will you get any nearer to accounting rationally for the universe by taking any number of them together; (8) The reason must therefore be sought elsewhere. (9) Things eternal may have no cause of existence, yet a reason for their existence must be conceived. . . . (10) Hence it is evident that even by supposing the universe to be eternal, the recourse to an ultimate reason for the universe beyond this universe . . . cannot be avoided. (11) The reasons for the universe are therefore concealed in some entity not in the universe, which is different from the chain or series of things, the aggregate of which constitutes the universe. (Leibniz, 1697)

As it stands, this argument has some well-known problems (it isn’t really even an argument, it’s just a proto-argument). But the argument can be rebuilt in ways that make it incredibly strong. Rebuilding it is mostly tedious logic. There’s no need to do that here. I’m going to assume that some rebuilt version of the argument is sound. What’s most interesting about this argument is what it says about existence.

Leibniz says the universe is the totality of physical things. It’s a spatially, temporally, and causally closed system. The entire universe is contingent – it might exist but it might not exist. Why does it exist? Why is there a universe at all? You can’t answer that question by appealing to anything that is internal to the universe. You can’t answer that question by appealing to any entity that participates in any spatial, temporal, or causal relations. This isn’t an inference back in time to a first cause. If there is a first cause, then it falls within the scope of the question. If there’s a first cause, it’s just another part of the universe – and thus it needs to be explained. And Leibniz is perfectly happy to say that the universe has always existed – no first cause at all. Leibniz says that “the reasons for the universe are concealed in some entity not in the universe”. Call this entity the ground.

Contrary to theists, the ground isn’t any concrete god. It isn’t the god of the Old Testament. It isn’t the creator of Genesis. It isn’t Yahweh or El-Elyon. And it isn’t any of the gods that have appeared in any of the mythologies of old paganisms. It isn’t Zeus or Thor. All those old gods are just concrete physical things – they participate in spatial, temporal, and causal relations. And since creation seems to entail causing an effect at some time, the ground isn’t a creator at all. For the theists, it just gets worse. Since the ground doesn’t participate in spatial, temporal, or causal relations, it can’t be a person. The ground doesn’t have any psychology. The ground doesn’t perceive the universe or intervene in it. The doesn’t have any thoughts, no beliefs, no desires. And the ground isn’t the god of deism. After all, that god is a first cause. The ground is deeper than all those gods.

What about the gods of the philosophers? Well, the ground exists. So it can’t be Plato’s form of the good; it isn’t the One of Plotinus. All those old philosophical gods are somehow beyond existence. And the ground isn’t Tillich’s ground of all being; on the contrary, it’s just the ground of the physicality of our universe. What about Spinoza’s god? I have to confess that I don’t entirely understand what that god is supposed to be – which makes me doubt that it’s Spinoza’s god. Anyway, the argument from evil entails that the ground certainly isn’t all-powerful and all-good and all-knowing. So the ground can’t be the big 3O god of classical theism. Leibniz’s argument doesn’t seem to support theism at all.

Onwards, then, to the atheists. Assuming that the ground isn’t one of those old-fashioned religious or theological entities, what would it be? Well, the ground isn’t any physical thing or structure or event. The ground isn’t the big bang or the cause of the big bang. It isn’t space-time or some quantum field or some black hole or any other exotic physical thing. It isn’t any physical thing at all. It’s important to understand the scope of this assertion.

It may very well be true that our observable cosmos, including everything that we can measure or empirically detect, is a simulation running on some alien super-computer. But if that’s true, then our observable cosmos isn’t the universe – it’s just the part of the universe that we can observe. The whole universe is a much bigger place. If our universe is running on some alien super-computer, then the Leibnizian question applies to that super-computer and to the aliens that made it. Why do those contingent physical things exist? The ground isn’t the super-computer or the alien civilization. The ground explains the aliens and their artifacts. Perhaps our universe contains many smaller cosmic domains (as in inflationary cosmology, or Smolin’s fecund universe hypothesis). If it does, then that entire multiverse is a contingent thing. Why is there a multiverse rather than no multiverse? The multiverse needs to be explained. If our universe is a big foam composed of lots of cosmic bubbles, then the ground explains that foam.

Given all this metaphysics, here’s the test question: Should atheists affirm or deny the existence of the ground?

Leibniz, G. W. (1697) On the Radical Origination of the Universe. In P. Schrecker & A. M. Schrecker (Trans.) (1988) Leibniz: Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays. New York: Macmillan, 84-86. The translation is slightly edited for consistency.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Science | Comments (11)

Is it Too Risky to Debate Morality’s Foundations in the Public Square?

February 28, 2011 – 10:50 am

Jean Kazez argues that the public square is not the place for atheists to be arguing that science and religion are incompatible. I strongly reject her position on this point because not only do I believe that ordinary people are quite capable of handling a vigorous, no-holds-barred debate about religion but because I believe the countless atheists and only weakly religiously affiliated people among the general public deserve to have expert representatives for their views in the public square.

And I believe that it is an abrogation of duty to the public for intellectuals to hide safely in the ivory tower and never challenge religions’ systematic efforts to inculcate bad habits of thought for the sake of social and political control. It is messy to get involved in the public domain and demand that the strict rigorous standards for pursuing knowledge and establishing just authority be consistently applied in social, ethical, spiritual, and political matters no less than in scientific and other academic matters, but it is our responsibility. What else are philosophers here for if not this role of public education about vital philosophical issues?

But to illustrate her point that at least some issues should not be debated carelessly before an audience that cannot properly handle it, she explains the possible dangers of incautiously advocating that atheism leads to moral anti-realism. More specifically she explores what the consequences for atheism itself might be like if moral error theorists, such as Russell Blackford, with whom she is currently debating and who recently criticized Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape on error theorist grounds, were ever to become prominent cultural voices. (An introductory post to error theory by me can be read here. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s explanation is here.)

She gives a serious warning about an issue that has certainly weighed on me and influenced my own decisions often. Both personally and philosophically I care deeply about metaethics, atheism, and the causes of rationalism and liberalism. And I also spent years writing a dissertation on that self-confessedly polemical, rhetorically reckless, self-proclaimed “immoralist” and “antichristian” Friedrich Nietzsche, who says a lot of things that can be used against a lot of things I defend.

I think that in the end, when read carefully, Nietzsche is ultimately a naturalist and realist about value (in fact, in my case studying him helped convince me of both positions). He just calls for massive work psychologically analyzing, contextualizing, and reassessing the values of particular moral systems according to what he takes to be a truer naturalistic value standard than is often admitted. But, nonetheless, his skeptical and iconoclastic rhetoric both tantalizes many readers into anti-realism and gives fodder to a great many religionists who see him as a confirmation of their fears (or hopes?) that atheism inevitably leads to moral nihilism.

But before I get into my views of how to respond to these problems, I want to give Kazez’s case against indiscriminately public debates on metaethics the full vent it deserves:

A view Russell’s been promoting lately is not science/religion incompatibility but atheism/objective morality incompatibility. He argues that atheism leads to an “error theory” of morality like that defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce.  Take the sentence below–

Torturing babies just for fun is wrong.

Most people think it’s true. The error theory disputes this. Mackie says all moral statements are false, while Joyce just says they’re not true. (There’s a difference–with different logical problems whichever way you go.)

Suppose Russell gets lots of fame and acclaim, and starts promoting the error theory all over the place. So he starts influencing people to think that atheists must believe the sentence above is false, or at least not true. I wouldn’t hesitate to say I thought that was a bad idea. It wouldn’t be my place to address him in the second person and tell him what to talk about, but I’d be perfectly entitled to my opinion that spreading this view is unwise.

And it would be a perfectly cogent and respectable opinion. This sort of meta-ethics would likely increase public distrust of atheism and discourage people from accepting atheism. I’d also make another sort of argument–that meta-ethics can’t be discussed coherently in the public square. It’s a highly technical area of philosophy, where philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and logic intersect. There is simply no way that the ordinary person, with little or no education in philosophy, can get a grip on the pertinent issues.

Furthermore, there’s just no point in the public worrying about meta-ethics. All sane people are committed to not torturing babies just for fun and will do the very same things to stop would-be baby torturers. For all intents and purposes, we may as well say the sentence above is true.   Everyone in philosophy converges on the idea that roughly speaking, anyway, it’s at least kind of like true. Nothing whatever is gained by associating atheism with an anti-realist view of morality.

Now, that doesn’t mean the error theory should never be discussed. Of course it should.   In philosophy books and philosophy seminar rooms, and by anyone who’s willing to spend a couple of years gaining the expertise required to discuss these things proficiently. If you get yourself into that milieu, you’ll find out there are big problems with the error theory, and there are many, many impressive competitors in logical space. In fact, there’s a very close competitor that [on some versions...] makes the sentence above true (moral fictionalism, which compares it to “Harry Potter is a wizard”). There is no reason at all to foist the error theory on the public (at the price of atheists seeming bizarre), and not one of these competitors, given the total lack of consensus even among meta-ethics experts.

In any event–the point is that there’s nothing remotely scandalous about saying that the public square is the wrong place to promote atheism/objective morality incompatibility*.

My response:

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Secularism, Skepticism, Skepticism | Tagged J.L. Mackie, Jean Kazez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Moral Anti-Realism, Moral Error Theory, Moral Realism, Pragmatism, Russell Blackford, Sam Harris, The Death of God | Comments (7)

The Secret Agreement between Atheists and Theists

February 27, 2011 – 4:10 pm

Atheists and theists have a strange secret agreement. You can see it if you look at the way they treat the arguments for God, like the cosmological argument.

The theists say: (1) If the reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct, then God exists. (2) The reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct. (3) Therefore, the argument proves that God exists.

The atheists say: (1) If the reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct, then God exists. (2) The reasoning in the cosmological argument is not correct. (3) Therefore, the argument fails to prove that God exists.

Atheists and theists both agree on the major premise: if the reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct, then God exists. Why the agreement? Why grant that the cosmological argument is an argument for God? Sometimes atheists do point out that it might not be an argument for God – it might be an argument for something else. But I’ve never seen that possibility seriously explored. And it’s too bad.

On the one hand, atheists can attack theism by showing that the classical arguments for God are logically flawed. On the other hand, atheists can attack theism by showing that those very same arguments are arguments for things that are not God. Which attack is deeper?

I think it’s clear that the second line of attack is much deeper – it’s much, much more threatening. When your enemies attack your arguments, well, you can always deal with that. But when your own arguments turn against you, you’re in big trouble.

So I’m going to encourage atheists to look at the classical arguments to see what else they might be used for. Fix them up, make them all shiny, and use them to drive to some new place. For an illustration, stay tuned . . .

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Uncategorized | Comments (17)

Why Atheists Should Not Give Up Challenging Theism And Theists

February 25, 2011 – 11:08 pm

GreenGeekGirl advises the atheist community (and she has a nice defense of the existence of an atheist community against those who do not believe one exists) that we should no longer bother arguing with theists, since this is supposedly futile, but should rather accept we have it pretty good in America and focus on protecting the separation of religion from state, school, and science. She implies the debate over God is a counter-productive distraction from these more desirable goals.

First of all, theists can definitely be dissuaded. In her post GreenGeekGirl asks us to ask how we came to be atheists and describes her own awakening to atheism which involved only engagement with science and no antagonistic confrontation from atheists. But there are a good many atheists who were formerly believers (myself included) and who were indeed argued out of our former beliefs. We count too and many of us are the most optimistic about the potential for reason to make a big difference in persuading people.

Of course people will not fall down and renounce their faith at the end of any argument. That’s for sure. But that’s not the point. Let’s get some perspective and have some patience. And let’s come to understand that over time many, many people are either moderated in their beliefs, forced to develop more sophisticated and less insane understandings of the meaning of their beliefs, or even over time come to abandon their religious beliefs altogether as a result of innumerable accumulated rational challenges from more liberal religious people and from atheists alike. It’s a long, long tug of war, in which even if we do not pull people over the line and make them fall down, we can still pull them further towards the middle and keep them from going all the way in the other direction.

But, more importantly, when we argue with the more vociferous and entrenched believers publicly, there are the silent watchers who we persuade. The majority of people are neither passionately religious nor passionately irreligious. The intellectual pressure we put on theism helps to inoculate the people in the middle against one day being swayed into fallacious beliefs by getting ideas into their heads about the deep problems of religious belief and practice. Giving religion a bad name is a good step for preventing future religious revivals.

And while seemingly every argumentative atheist gets fatigued with the redundant task of rebutting theism, our work is far from done. There is a long way to go before we persuade a majority of people to our side and there are plenty of theists for whom our arguments will be new, for whom the whole question is live, and for whom our efforts can be decisive in making them reject radical fundamentalism or their faith altogether. This is a long moral, cultural struggle that has been going on for centuries. As GreenGeekGirl indicates, atheists who came before us had it much harder. It would be a shame if we did not speak out about the whole truth now that we have the opportunity and the opening to make significant progress.

But why should we care about any of this? Should we not just want to be “left alone” and have science be left alone, as GreenGeekGirl suggests? No, we should care about the truth and dissuading mass opinion away from falsehoods, fallacious habits of reasoning cultivated by religions, damaging irrational ethical codes, and presumptuous, self-serving religious institutions which claim moral, spiritual, and intellectual authorities they do not deserve.

The problems of church incursion on politics and science are a symptom of the problem of culturally acceptable religious irrationalism, bullying, and moral authority. You will not stop the theocrats and know-nothings by meeting them only at the statehouse, the courthouse, and the schoolhouse. You need to first empty the church house.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats | Comments (15)

The Simulation Hypothesis

February 24, 2011 – 9:14 am

Atheists can use the traditional arguments for God in strange new ways. There’s no reason to reject those arguments – on the contrary, I think they should be carefully studied, and their flaws should be repaired. But I don’t think they lead to God. I love the Cosmological Arguments. And the ones I love most are Aquinas’s Third Way and Leibniz’s Sufficient Reason argument. I also love the universe-level versions of the Design Argument. These include arguments that aim to explain the fine-tuning of fundamental physical constants as well as arguments that aim to explain the regularity or complexity of our universe. All those are fascinating arguments. But not for God.

It’s far more natural to think that these arguments justify the Simulation Hypothesis. The Simulation Hypothesis says that our universe is a software process running on some deeper computational substrate. The physicist Ed Fredkin refers to this substrate as “the Engine”. Using his term, our universe is to the Engine as software is to hardware. Our universe is analogous to a video game running on the Engine. The old Cosmological and Design arguments are very nice arguments for the Engine.

The great advantage of the Simulation Hypothesis is that it isn’t mysterious. Computer science involves precise mathematical definitions of computing machines (e.g. finite state machines, Turing machines, transfinite machines). Software engineering is a rational discipline. We know how to construct computer simulations of physical universes (including our universe). We know how to develop video games. There is a large and fascinating literature on computational world-design.

Many people have written about the Simulation Hypothesis, including David Chalmers and Nick Bostrom. Bostrom maintains a website on the hypothesis. Many of these writers suggest that simulation means that we are being simulated by some superior society. The idea is that there is some Alien Society. The engineers in that Alien Society built computers. They programmed them to run an artificial universe. This version of the Simulation Hypothesis is familiar from old movies like The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor. Dawkins mentions it: “Science fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization.” (The God Delusion, p. 98) And Harris mentions it too: “If intelligently designed, our universe could be running as a simulation on an alien supercomputer.” (Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 73)

But the Alien Society interpretation isn’t the only way to understand the Simulation Hypothesis. The Engine need not be an artifact. It might be entirely natural – a product of some sort of evolution. After all, human beings are very powerful computing machines. And we are natural products of natural evolution. Alternatively, if you’re a Platonist, or Neoplatonist, you might want to think of the Engine as a purely mathematical machine. It would be a machine existing eternally in the non-physical system of Platonic Forms. On this interpretation, some Platonic objects emanate universes. They are the relatively abstract grounds of physicality. They exist eternally and necessarily.

On any interpretation, the Simulation Hypothesis involves the idea that the Engine is running some world-actualizing algorithm. Perhaps it is just doing a brute-force iteration through some set of possible universes. Perhaps it is using some optimization algorithm to maximize some feature of universes – it is conducting a rational search for maximally regular universes, or universes that contain the most internal computation. Perhaps it is using some genetic algorithm to evolve universes – it might be evolving universes for maximum logical depth or for some other type of internal complexity.

Obviously, the Engine has some degree of computational power – it has the power to run some universe of some complexity. Its power can be measured using standard technical scales (e.g. the cardinality of its state set; the cardinality of its halting conditions – does it halt after finitely many states, or can it run out to transfinite limit cardinals).

Any Engine running something as complex and valuable as our universe has to have some degree of benevolence. This benevolence need not be anything like human morality. It is far more likely that it is simply an abstract orientation towards the maximization of certain computational values like logical depth or intensity of information processing. The Engine would have its own axiological imperatives, and these would all be defined in computational terms. Perhaps these would be game-theoretic – think of the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma. Life on earth might have very high computational value because living things encode programs for their own construction. And evolution shows that they are recursively self-improving. Now, recursion is computationally deep. Perhaps the Engine aims to maximize recursive depth or recursive intensity of some type.

What about humans? Are we valuable because we have consciousness? Maybe. But there might be even stranger features of human being that make us computationally valuable. Our immune systems are capable of running genetic algorithms – they run their own simulations of Darwinian evolution to design antibodies. This means that, in our immune systems, an evolutionary algorithm is stacked on top of an evolutionary algorithm. Perhaps this sort of stacking is a primary computational value: more valuable systems support higher stacks of virtual machines, simulations running inside simulations.

Perhaps the Engine is intelligent. Here again, its intelligence has a precise computational analysis. And the intelligence of the Engine need not be anything like human intelligence. It might not have a mind. It wouldn’t have to be conscious or have emotions or desires or beliefs or understanding. It need not be psychological in any recognizable sense. It might be a vast statistical machine (like Google Translate).

So the Engine has some degrees of power, benevolence, and intelligence. Heaven forbid, it looks like God! Well, no, it doesn’t. Its power and benevolence and intelligence are all defined in purely naturalistic ways. And those qualities are not maximal in the way they are for God. On the contrary, those qualities are defined in precisely technical ways exactly up to specific cardinal numbers. There is nothing at all mysterious about the Engine. It is an entirely lawful entity defined using mathematics and computer science.

But where did the Engine come from? You know the drill: if the Engine created our universe, then what created the Engine? Here’s a nice quote from Dawkins:

Science fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution: some sort of cumulatively ratcheting ‘crane’. (The God Delusion, pp. 98-99)

Dawkins is using the Alien Society interpretation of the Simulation Hypothesis. And that’s fine. But on the naturalistic interpretation, the Engine is itself a product of a deeper type of evolution. The Engine is the product of an evolutionary algorithm. It is the product of some kind of recursively self-improving algorithm. Perhaps that algorithm is just the deepest algorithm there is. It is necessary and eternal. Just as the fact that 1+1=2 does not require an explanation, so the deepest evolutionary algorithm does not require any explanation. It’s part of the harmony of things. Here’s a lovely quote from Leibniz:

For it is necessary to refer everything to some reason, and we cannot stop until we have arrived at a first cause – or it must be admitted that something can exist without a sufficient reason for its existence, and this admission destroys the demonstration of the existence of God. Yet what is the ultimate reason for the divine will? The divine intellect. For God wills the things which he understands to be best and most harmonious and selects them, as it were, from an infinite number of possibilities. Yet what provides the reason for the divine intellect? The harmony of things. What the reason for the harmony of things? Nothing. For example, no reason can be given for the ratio of 2 to 4 being the same as that of 4 to 8, not even in the divine will. (Leibniz, in Rescher’s edition of The Monadology, p. 148)

Did Leibniz just admit to being atheist? Well, that’s a topic for another day. The point here is that mathematical necessity itself might be the ultimate sufficient reason for the existence of each and every actual physical universe. Some purely mathematical things, namely, abstract computers, actualize selected possible universes. The naturalistic interpretation of the Simulation Hypothesis is ultimately mathematical. It therefore shades off into the Platonic interpretation – they aren’t really different.

On the Platonic interpretation of the Simulation Hypothesis, the Engine is like a number. It exists in a sequence of engines just like the sequence of numbers. There is an initial engine. This is the zero-engine. For every engine, there is a greater engine. The sequence of engines is a recursively self-improving sequence just as the sequence of numbers is a recursively self-increasing sequence. The rules for the existence of engines are just like the rules for the existence of numbers or like the axioms of pure set theory. Engines, like numbers or sets, are eternal and necessary mathematical objects.

However you decide to work it out, the Simulation Hypothesis is an interesting non-theistic alternative to theism. It has positive metaphysical and ethical content. It may even provide an entirely naturalistic theory of life after death.

Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is an associate professor of philosophy at William Paterson University and the author of More Precisely: The Math You Need To Do Philosophy, On Nietzsche (Wadsworth Philosophers Series), and The Logic of Metaphor – Analogous Parts of Possible Worlds (Synthese Library, Volume 299). Professor Steinhart has explained many of his views on metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and Richard Dawkins in an audio interview with The Pale Blue Dot. Abstracts to his papers on the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, the metaphysics of persons, Nietzsche, and analogy and metaphor can all be found here (in some cases with links to the papers themselves). All of his guest posts at Camels With Hammers are archived here.

By Eric Steinhart | Posted in Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Comments (0)

TOP Q: “How Is It Fair To Question Other People’s Identity-Forming Beliefs While Demanding Respect For One’s Own Belief-Formed Identities?”

February 23, 2011 – 8:00 pm

I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves. They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be able to improve their ideas and instead will be discouraged and personally threatened by revealing arguments which should be illuminating and, even, liberating.

By explicitly adopting atheism as a key part of our identities, do we forfeit (on pain of hypocrisy) the right to demand the religious to do what I demand of my students—hold their ideas separate from their senses of self—since we are no longer doing the same ourselves? Or are we actually still able to manage dispassionate distance from our atheism, even as we rally around it, raise consciousness about it, and form community with reference to it? What about religious people, can they dispassionately analyze their own views while forming their own identities based on their beliefs?

These questions arose in me based after I read a striking e-mail I got from an openly gay and atheist friend, whose atheism is matter-of-fact to him but far from central to his life. Last fall he reacted with a combination of surprise and revulsion to a controversial New York Times article about PZ Myers’s unabashed atheistic confrontationalism, which towards the end referred to a woman’s concern not to be “outed” as an atheist to her employers. He wrote me:

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Islam, Islam, LGBTQAA, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Today's Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q) | Tagged Evangelicalism, Identity-Politics, Tolerance | Comments (9)

The Religious Conservative’s False Choice: “Big Brother” Or “Heavenly Father”

February 23, 2011 – 10:00 am

In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs:

It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there are “decent and undecent men in every crowd” (Frankl), it is not likely that humanity and some sort of functional moralistic system would hold up under strained conditions. And even under a fairly prosperous society such as ours, how much can the law really control without a Big Brother system? It is imaginable that these spiritual notions that keep people hopeful and happy about their lives also serve to maintain functional morality at least. Isn’t it possibly that being quick to remove religions altogether could be a cure worse than the illness?

This view seems to echo the logic of much conservative thinking about religion and a free society. It seems that they implicitly think that people must inherently be controlled through formal channels or the social order will dissolve. Not preferring a statist solution in which this control has the force of law, they opt to promote the “voluntary” subordination of religion.

The idea is to let people be free but to politically, socially, culturally, and legally encourage them as much as possible to live lives of voluntary subjugation to religious authorities who will hold the reins of morality, rather than involuntary subjugation to the political institutions which would obliterate nearly all traces of genuine freedom if given the power to enforce private morality. The choice becomes either the formal structures of an actual, governmental, “Big Brother” monitoring and policing our every thought and deed or the informal structure of an internalized fear of an invisible, supernatural “Big Brother” (the “Heavenly Father”) who is monitoring your every thought and deed but who is not actually reporting you to the authorities who would actually take you to an actual prison. Just “when you die” you might suffer in hell. (And the enlightened conservative who promotes religion for these reasons knows there is no hell and so thinks no one actually is in any danger this way at all.)

This is, presumably, a strategy for giving less scrupulous and less conscientious people the functional equivalent of the sort of actual conscience that people need in order to be trusted to live peaceably and fairly in a genuinely free society. Free societies clearly need good people who will not use their freedom to be so disorderly that the state becomes ungovernable and misery spreads throughout the society as a result. If freedom leads to such chaos, it is only going to have to be stripped so that order can be restored. If we want liberty, we must handle autonomy responsibly.

And If there will inevitably be at least some people with faulty consciences of their own, creating in them a fear of an invisible God which produces the same effects on behavior that an internally motivating, conscience that respected order, society, law, and humanity would provides the necessary supplemental control over bad people so that we can have laws that let everyone be formally and legally free.

Also, because of this, the good people who are motivated by the good alone get the freedom they deserve and do not have to deal with excessive governmental restrictions which would otherwise have to be put in place to control the bad apples (with the consequence that liberty would be ruined for everyone). And even the naturally bad person who is religiously tamed only through exploitation of his superstitious fears and hopes himself gains from the arrangement too. Presumably, this is because even though he has to deal with perpetual ignorance and fear of hell, he keeps all sorts of freedom he would have lost for himself (and everyone else) with his unruliness if he believed there was no God and tried to test the limits of human power to control him.

And presumably this is also for his own good since being moral in most cases has actual tangible good consequences, regardless of one’s motivations. If cooperating with others out of religious fears leads the otherwise bad person to the practical benefits of gaining others’ beneficial cooperation, good will, and (even) love in return, then he has gained the benefits of morality through behaving as morality requires without ever having to grow the internal moral motivation that both does not come natural to him and to which he would presumably have been incapable of persuasion were he not susceptible to religious superstitions.

Even if they do not explicitly formulate their view in these terms, I think this account fleshes out many political conservatives’ assumptions about the necessity for people to be controlled and how they reconcile their rhetoric of political freedom with their equally adamant hostility to people who use their freedom to disbelieve in religious institutions. They do not really want people to be free since they do not trust human nature and think morality comes only unnaturally to us and requires instead “supernatural” sources, rewards, and punishments. So rather than wanting genuine autonomy and freedom, they want people to just be controlled by the churches (and the corporations) instead of the government.

Finally, there is one other challenge nestled in the end of Caroline’s question and it is whether religion can be pulled out of society in one fell swoop without recklessly risking destabilizing the society in unpredictable ways and risking ruining the joy of many presently hopeful and happy religious people.

So, what is there to say in reply to this conception of, and prescription for humanity’s psycho-socio-ethical-political situation?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, George W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Theocrats, Theocrats, Torture, Torture, Virtues, Virtues, World Affairs, World Affairs | Tagged Political Philosophy, Social Contract, Victor Frankl | Comments (3)

Top 10 Tips For Reaching Out To Atheists

February 22, 2011 – 12:00 pm

Last week I lambasted Rabbi Adam Jacobs who wrote an “open letter to the atheist community”. As someone else has astutely observed, the rabbi’s letter was practically a model for how not to address serious atheists. In hopes for better future discussions between believers and non-believers, I decided to give some advice to believers who would like to reach out to us in the future, whether publicly or personally. In some cases I will use examples that assume the reader is a Christian since I live in America and in America seemingly 99.99% of would-be proselytizers are Christians of some sort. But most of the principles will be valuable to Muslims and those rare proselytizing Jews too.

I completely understand if you do not want this advice or refuse to abide by it. I am fine with you not even trying to reach out to me. But if you would really like to try to reach out to atheists for some reason, I think I can speak for a lot of atheists when I offer these tips for how to make us like you and not be as insulted and unimpressed as many of us were by the Rabbi Jacobs’s letter.

1. Do not “share the Gospel” with us.

I know, I know, you’re really worried we’re going to roast in hell and it’s really urgent to make sure we have heard about Jesus before that happens. But here’s what you can do instead: pretend that we actually know all about the Gospel and that we are not just confused about what Christianity teaches. Because, and I know this may come as a shock: Assuming we come from a country where the dominant religion is Christianity, we actually have heard the Gospel. Many, many times. And (sit down for this one) the odds are pretty good that we once believed it too. Some of us even know the Bible better than many of you do.

The odds are that most atheists you encounter were raised as Christians. And even if we were not, you can bet good money that someone somewhere along the way has told us all about how Jesus died for our sins. We get it. We do not need to hear it again from you and you do not have a way of saying it that’s going to bowl us over with its genius. (Yes, that includes Pascal’s Wager, we have heard that one too, thanks!)

2. Do not lie.

I know, this one sounds vaguely familiar but you cannot quite place where you have heard it. Let me put it a way that might ring a clearer bell: THOU SHALT NOT LIE, EVEN TO ATHEISTS.

Try to persuade us, if you like, but do not try to manipulate us in any way whatsoever. Either reason with us like adults and equals or leave us alone. Do not befriend us with ulterior motives of saving us when you do not really like us, do not try to subvert our reason by appealing to our hopes and fears, do not threaten us with damnation, etc. Do not claim that you have no intentions of changing our minds when you do have intentions of changing our minds. Do not claim not to judge us when you in fact do judge us. Do not make arguments that you already know can be reasonably refuted. Do not raise evidence you know is misleading. And do not try to appeal to our emotions where your reasons fail since doing so is underhanded and dishonest.

If you cannot persuade us with reason to believe, then you have no reason to believe and we will have no reason to believe. If you cannot persuade us with the truth, then you do not believe the truth and those who are interested in the truth will not believe you.

3. Do not assume you are either morally better, spiritually more attuned, or happier than we are simply because you belong to your faith.

The trope that without God people are miserable and lost but with God they are happy and live lives of purpose is propaganda. Religious people have highs and lows and so do irreligious people. That’s called normal human psychology. If an atheist has a sour personality, it is quite likely no more or less because of her atheism than a sour religious person’s disposition is Jesus’s fault. People’s personalities are much deeper than their beliefs on the question of divine beings. And atheists’ troubles are not just signs we need Jesus. We will not appreciate it if you trivialize our complicated problems by treating them like they can be magically cured with the panacea of Christ.

Do not assume that the only way to be spiritually serious and feel emotionally secure is to be within the faith. You may not believe that it is possible outside the faith, but many of us are living proof it is. Especially if you thought we were spiritually deep before we left the faith, don’t condescend to us by treating us as though we must have suddenly turned shallow, confused, or anguished the moment we left the fold. We didn’t. Expand your mind to appreciate how people outside the faith can and do find meaning too, even if you think our views are somehow mistaken.

Also, on this score, do not assume that only you have beliefs you care about and that we are empty vessels just waiting for some substance from you. Some Christians think that atheists’ values are somehow transient or secondary to their own such that they can force us to go to church or talk to us like we could put aside our views on religion easily to accommodate them. That’s not always true and it is demeaning to be treated like our values are irrelevant or unserious.

Relatedly, it makes a big difference if you try to understand why atheists are interested in forming a community among ourselves for our own sake, rather than (a) assume that we do this only to attack you, (b) assume that what we are doing is trivial or unnecessary, or (c) try to score some cheap and meaningless rhetorical point by claiming that somehow our organizing proves we are just as guilty of all the well documented vices of institutionalized religion as your own faith is.

4. If you decide to debate us about God and employ a strategy to convince us, stick with the topic you raise and address our counter-arguments without constantly changing the subject.

One of the most frustrating things theists do is avoid addressing our arguments by just offering a new argument on a different tact. If you feel like your argument was refuted then either find another counter-argument on the same point or at least be big enough to admit outright that you lost that point and will abandon using that argument in the future before trying out another one.

In particular, make up your mind whether you believe there is evidence for God and say what you think about that. If you think there is evidence then stand up for the evidence. If you don’t, then don’t use it just to try to persuade us. Nothing is more maddening than when religious people offer reasons for belief as though they really want to consider evidence but then run straight for the cover of faith as soon as their evidence is shown to be shoddy. Make up your mind.

Do you believe only on faith? Then do not give a pretense of offering reasons that even you do not really believe are decisively persuasive. When you offer reasons and then abandon them at the first sign of trouble and claim that faith is the solution, it gives the impression you were insincere in offering all those reasons in the first place. Figure out what you believe by reason and what by faith ahead of time and be consistent. Or, at least, acknowledge if our arguments have forced you to change your mind.

5. Do not try to offer us reasons to change our minds while refusing to open your own mind.

If you are committed on principle to never changing your mind, then do not try to change our minds. It is unfair to be closed minded while demanding others open their minds. If you won’t seriously consider the possibility you are wrong or open yourself to seriously considering the evidence we offer, then be honest about that fact and do not give the false pretense of listening to us. “Let your ‘yea’ be yea and your ‘nay’ be nay.” Either listen to us critically and introspectively or do not listen at all. Do not patronize us.

A religious friend once provoked me repeatedly to justify why I did not believe and to just come back to the faith already. When I finally took the bait and laid out a torrent of reasons for disbelief she pleaded she needed time to think about this. I insisted as she studied she consider atheistic resources and not just Christian ones. She said she would but refused to change her mind. I told her not to bother then making a pretense of studying if she was just going to close her mind. Same advice goes to everyone: an open book is wasted on a closed mind.

6. Do not try to tell us what we really must think about ethics or metaphysics or assume you know what any given atheist thinks about these issues.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion, Secularism | Comments (28)

Clarifying The Relationships Between Dogmatism, Skepticism, And Properly Proportioned Belief

February 22, 2011 – 9:09 am

In a post last weekend entitled ”Evangelical Atheism?“ I explored the ways in which some atheists may both be called “evangelical” with some justification and yet deserve to be spared the moral approbation aimed at the most notorious kinds of theistic proselytizers. In reply Greg Teed suggested to me that atheists could not be “evangelical” in any comparable way to religious people since unlike religious people we are essentially skeptics who do not affirm a position. In reply I argued that Atheists Have Affirmative Positions On The Status Of Evidence And On The Standards Of Belief.

But knowledge of those posts is not necessary to understand Greg’s next round of arguments or my interspersed replies since he introduces a whole new set of distinctions into the discussion:

Perhaps I wasn’t clear in my use of the word “affirm,” but at the same time Dan didn’t honour the time-honoured tradition of the generous reading. I shall try to clarify. It isn’t a matter of talking “positively” or “negatively” as the religious folks would have it.

When I say “affirm” or “affirmation” I am pointing to something taken as true, usually *a priori*. The taking as true means it is not approached at all skeptically much less provisionally – as are most of the assumptions and even conclusions presented by, say, science.

Then the right word is “assume”, not affirm, no? Or maybe posit a priori in some cases.

There is a radical difference in mindset between affirming some base supposition is unquestionably true (as in a dogmatic affirmation) and positing tentatively. This difference is the natural result of a thoroughgoing skepticism, which, as a philosophical skeptic, is where I am.

Fine, but my point is that even such a skeptic can be broadly “evangelical” if she elevates allegiance to skepticism itself to the level of epistemological and ethical principle worth confronting people over publicly and privately with a strong concern to persuade them to change their minds. Changing people’s minds to make them stop holding positions dogmatically and instead hold them tentatively is still a change of mind one may zealously pursue.

While it is true that atheists can (and sometimes do) affirm their position as Truth(TradeMark) in much the same way that a theists affirm their position as Truth(TradeMark), it is by no means necessary that they do so, and a more thoroughgoing analysis will often lead to tentative positing rather than affirmation of truth. We actually do see this in a modern trend among atheists to define themselves in terms of “lack of belief” rather than “belief in lack.” This distinction is not trivial. Contained within this distinction is the understanding that what we are talking about is our “knowledge states,” not facts, and provisional potential for revision based on evidence.

This is a false dilemma. The only choices are not dogmatic, over-confident claims on the one hand and complete lack of belief on the other. There are degrees of proportional belief. A gnostic atheist need not be a dogmatist who claims any more certainty than is warranted by evidence. Not all knowledge claims are dogmatic or claim any more certainty than fidelity to evidence permits. I know plenty of mundane facts non-dogmatically and with an exceedingly high degree of certainty (even if it is not absolute). For example, I know who the president of the United States of America is, the molecular composition of water, what the color purple looks like, etc.

And I know theoretical knowledge with high degrees of certainty, even if not with absolute certainty. I know that unguarded exposure to the sun can increase the risk of skin cancer, I know that evolution is real, I know that the idea of a omnipotent and omnibenevolent God is consistent with the world we live in, riddled as it is with numerous wasteful, unnecessary evils which lead to no demonstrable goods that could not be conceivably created through other, less evil means (and often which lead to no apparent goods whatsoever).

This is not being dogmatic, it is being rational. Dogmatism would require insisting others believe my positions without rational argument based in logic and evidence, or if I refused to seek or acknowledge all counter evidence, or if I claimed higher certainty for propositions than they merit. But simply making knowledge claims is not itself denying that my knowledge may be corrected in the future. Knowledge claims are revisable.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, Skepticism, Skepticism | Tagged Agnostic Atheism, Agnosticism, Evangelicalism, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, Sextus Empiricus | Comments (2)

Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution’s Mindlessness

February 21, 2011 – 8:57 pm

Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection was that it made the personal benevolent God hypothesis not only no longer the best explanation for the existence of complex organisms, but a superfluous and counter-indicated hypothesis. In some ways it is still possibility but is no longer at all likely.

We are left in a position in which saying that “we evolved by natural selection—and God guided it” becomes as superfluous and foolish as saying that “we fall because of gravity—and God pushing us”.

Today biologist Jerry Coyne made an informative post about specific attempts of theologians to squelch admission of evolution’s apparently mindless, blind, material, purposeless, undirected character in classrooms:

some people object to such a description as a needlessly “theological” assertion: a flat and insupportable claim that natural selection was not designed by, and is not being guided by, gods. How can you be so sure, some theologians say, that there really isn’t a goal, purpose, or mind behind evolution?

On this score they presume there can be no philosophical answers based upon inference to the best explanation, but only blind theological guessing in which no one answer is any more likely than any other simply because there is a faint possibility, however small, that a process that looks and effectively works as though it were unguided is actually guided after all.

You might remember that a while back the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) persuaded the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) to change its characterization of evolution, which originally read:

The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

As NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott recounts, the words “unsupervised” and “impersonal” led to pushback from the faithful:

As one Christian said to me, defining evolution as “unsupervised” and “impersonal” implied to many Americans that “God had nothing to do with it and life has no meaning.”

Theological ignorance strikes again. This time, it is the misconception that meaning and purpose in life require supernatural guidance. Rather than challenge most Americans to deal with the truth about how we evolved and engage with the question of meaning and purpose in philosophically respectable terms, we must leave them with their superstitions, however counter-indicated by the science they may be.

Reflecting these public concerns, two distinguished theologians, Cornell’s Huston Smith and Notre Dame’s Alvin Plantinga, wrote a polite letter to NABT’s board of directors, asking it to delete the two words “unsupervised” and “impersonal”. They specifically noted that the use of the two words has two unfortunate and unintended consequences. It gives aid and comfort to extremists in the religious right for whom it provides a legitimate target. And because of its logical vulnerability, it lowers Americans’ respect for scientists and their place in our culture.

Logical vulnerability? Scientists advance a philosophical conclusion that evolution is mindless, which is admittedly not 100% certain but which is “only” overwhelmingly indicated by the evidence. This foray into taking a philosophical stand that lacks 100% certainty makes them “logically vulnerable” to the bare possibility that they are wrong and actually a flying spaghetti monster created the universe. And such potential to be wrong makes them less estimable to the ignorant American public.

In particular the scientists would lose esteem with the radical right wing of the country, which does not believe in evolution at all and which is so authoritarian and nihilistic as to think that without a belief in an absolute, unquestionable rule- and meaning-giving God there would be mass immorality and suicide, and which bullies people into accepting its religious and policy prescriptions by exploiting these sorts of fears. And so rather than challenge and educate the American public, we will cave to right wing extremists so that a foundation of their worldview by which they emotionally propagandize both their regressive politics and their repressive religion will not be in the least disturbed. Brilliant!

This is why secularists always lose to religionists: because we refuse to offend them with the truth, and we refuse to ever publicly, rationally, vigorously, or coherently defend a counter set of values grounded in an alternative metaphysical and ethical world view with anything like the scope and popular appeal of theirs.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism | Tagged Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) | Comments (3)

Atheists Have Affirmative Positions On The Status Of Evidence And On The Standards Of Belief

February 21, 2011 – 7:58 pm

In reply to my defense of what is sometimes called “Evangelical Atheism” on my personal Facebook page, Greg Teed thinks my account comes “so close” to correct but argues that I missed something crucial:

All good points, but there is a radical difference *in kind* between what atheists/skeptics promote and what the religious evangelical proselytizes. Sometimes the content matters. Given that atheism is skepticism with regards to a particular claim, what is the content of skepticism…?

There is a difference between teaching what to think and how to think. Analogously, and on a philosophical level, there is a radical difference between teaching affirmations and teaching critical skills, and that difference is not only in the teaching itself – it is in the content.

Evangelism implies (possibly even entails) an “affirmation” to teach. Skepticism is the only philosophy that is critique-based rather than affirmation-based. It is the only philosophy that advocate thinking critically about everything, even itself. No other philosophy does that.

Evangelizing doubt (a critique-based way of thinking) is self-contrary, if not downright self-contradictory.

What do we teach children? To courageously question everything. What exactly are we evangelizing there?

There are a few issues raised by this thought-provoking remark.

For me, my activist “evangelical” atheism is indeed personally an extension of my life’s work as a philosophy teacher and academic philosopher. I do feel a strong urgency to attack not so much wrong opinions but fallacious and authoritative forms of reasoning themselves which have tremendous, unwarranted, and potentially deleterious cultural, political, psychological, moral, and epistemic power over people’s lives. And I do feel like it is a philosopher’s duty to get involved on the side of reason itself in the broader culture. I see it as an extension of my responsibilities as an educator, and, more specifically, as an extension of my responsibilities as a philosophy teacher.

But, advocating atheism itself is not the same thing as simply teaching critical thinking. And, in fact, in my actual philosophy classroom, which is devoted to teaching people critical thinking rather than advancing positions, I do not advocate atheism. I focus on guiding my students through major arguments so that they understand them and I help my students dialectically sort out their own views on issues. On some issues on which my students’ thinking is particularly complacent, I push them harder than others. Sometimes I help them develop one of their ideas’ implications and sometimes I help them find an idea’s flaws. But I am rarely interested in my students’ ultimate conclusions themselves.

Now, they are often more resistant to atheistic ideas, so those conversations definitely are more lively and consequently I sometimes play a harder devil’s advocate to them in those debates than when I am giving them arguments in favor of belief in God. But I still give equal time to both sides of the question in total and keep my gloves on in a way that I do not here at Camels With Hammers or in debates with friends and colleagues.

Now it is true that to an extent atheists are often in the unbelievable position of simply advocating critical thinking itself against those who insist that it is not necessary in all matters of beliefs and ethics. To this extent, we atheists may find ourselves not just defending atheism but skepticism, scientific rigor, statistical reasoning, etc., themselves. Can one be “evangelical” about these things?

Yes.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Education, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Secularism, Skepticism | Comments (4)

Worshipful Experience Of God? Been There, Done That.

February 21, 2011 – 5:21 pm

One Luke Muelhauser’s readers challenged him that all his pursuit of evidence just would not matter if only he would experience “believing in Jesus and God” for himself. In reply, Luke opens up about his emotionally intense experience of Christianity:

Things went so well over the next year that I started to feel like quite a success. The sin of pride was creeping in. God spoke to me² about this with special force during a worship service at my church. I was still pretty shy at that time, but over the past year I had become more comfortable doing “charismatic” things during worship, such as raising my hands, and maybe even jumping up and down if I really felt the presence of God. But now I felt moved to do something that would not only glorify God, but would also push my mind away from pride and toward humility.

I decided that putting my body into a position of humility would probably help. Then I felt God calling me to kneel before the cross at the front of my church. But that would mean leaving my row and doing something unusual in front of 100 people – 100 people I knew, and would have to speak with sometime after. I stared at the cross for a good 10 minutes, asking God to help me move from my spot.

Finally, I just asked God for peace, and he gave it to me:³ My whole body relaxed. I took a deep breath, pushed my the anxiety out of my mind and instead focused on the goodness of God. I squeezed my way out of my row and walked up the center aisle. When I got to the front, I kneeled before the cross and lifted my hands.

But it wasn’t enough. I laid down on my face, arms outstretched before the cross, and worshiped my Savior.

There I was, lying face-down in front of 100 people like a fool. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to glorify God and humble myself. I praised God for all the beauty he gave me. I cried for joy the whole time. My whole body felt warm – almost like it was vibrating, but peacefully.

I don’t know how much time passed. I was only vaguely aware of the worship music. Maybe something like 15 minutes later I got up on my knees and looked around. Half the worship team had stopped playing and had also turned to kneel before the cross, arms raised in praise to God. A few other people had lined up before me, kneeling or prostrate before the cross. God was moving among us.

Luke’s conclusion, having experienced the evidence he has been asked to consider:

I did experience it for myself. I did live it. I did believe, and I saw great things happen in my life.

It just isn’t true, is all I’m saying.

More from Luke about his religious experience and his deconversion here.

I sure had many similarly intense and wholehearted, whole-minded experiences (so many that I have to admit I briefly felt their seductive power again while reading Luke’s account of his own), but, like Luke, I had to leave the faith on intellectual grounds, kicking and screaming, against my will.

Do I miss it?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Faith, Faith, Featured, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian | Comments (2)

“If You Believe In God, You Have To Believe In The Devil”

February 20, 2011 – 2:42 pm

Last summer there was a cheesy ad for the latest Exorcist film, and the tagline epitomized and exploited a key twist of twisted religious logic. The film’s tagline was “If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.” What’s the idea behind this?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates | Tagged Fundamentalism and Modernity | Comments (2)

Evangelical Atheism?

February 19, 2011 – 8:45 pm

So we activist atheist types who like to be outspoken about our atheism and network with other atheists are often derisively called “evangelical” or “proselytizers”. In all cases, the irony is clear and in some cases there are allegations of hypocrisy attached to the claim that we aim to “convert” people. Is it right to call us “evangelical”? And if so, does this mean that we are guilty of some sort of bad behavior which we do not approve of from religious people?

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion | Tagged "Atheists Are Just As Bad As Religious People", Atheist Evangelism, Atheist Proslytizers, Christian Evangelism, Converting People, Deconverting People, Emotional Argumentation, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional Persuasion, Evangelical Atheism, Evangelicalism, Evangelism, Evangelism Tactics, Irrational Debate, Proselytizing Atheism, Rational Debate, Street Preaching | Comments (14)

I Am Interviewed About My Personal (Atheistic) Religiosity/Spirituality

February 19, 2011 – 1:00 pm

Through Facebook, I was recently contacted by an old friend from high school (who was actually the first girl to go on a date with me). She is working on her Master’s in nursing and has an assignment which involves interviewing people about their views on religion and spirituality, for the purpose of thinking about approaches to holistically caring for patients. She asked if she could interview me and I said she could if I could blog the results. She agreed. Here is part 1 of our interview. Her questions and comments are in bold:

Do you think of yourself as religious or spiritual?

Well, I am neither religious in any institutional, theistic, or superstitious senses, nor spiritual in any superstitious, other-wordly, or particularly mystical sense. But I not only grew up religiously but was religious into my early adulthood and my rejection of faith-based thinking was out of adherence to principles that I got from my religion. And I have retained my spiritual intensity, my concern for truth, my adamant attitude that certain primary ethical values be universally respected, and my speculative, metaphysically interested side.

I’ve also retained the highly social and therapeutic, introspective, and self-critical psychologically focused attitudes that are nurtured in both church contexts in general and the modern evangelicalism I was raised in in particular. And there is most notably a zealous, “evangelizing” side to me that wants to work for the cause of people’s deconversions, that wants to help people reject authoritarian thinking and institutions and instead to reason for themselves. So, in some ways my views and goals have religious parallels. Instead of God, I want to promote Truth, and instead of faith, freethinking, and instead of seeing people as sinners in need of redemption, I see people as evolutionarily imprecisely evolved reasoners and ethical judgers who need to scrupulously train themselves in better habits of reason in order to make for greater knowledge, better ethics, and more just politics. And I am admittedly, in temperament, “religious” about advancing this paradigm shift. I do believe in reason’s power to “save” and am willing to sacrifice with religious intemperance to do it.

To whom do you turn when you need support? Or, is there a person or group of people who are really important to you?

I turn to close friends and to my parents. The only group I turn to is EVERYONE ON FACEBOOK.

Pretty big group, apparently you are not shy!

Right, I am comfortable broadcasting to the world. I only feel comfortable in two sorts of settings—

They are?

one on one and talking to large groups of people. One on one I can find that intersection between my personality and someone else’s where we both feel comfortable and relate to one another.

One on one I can understand.

And talking to groups, either my classes of students or my readers on my blog or the readers of my status updates, I feel very comfortable because I feel like an equal half of the equation, just like in a one on one conversation. Whereas, in small groups, the dynamic is not “me and you” or “me and the group”, there’s the 5 people and each of the 5 is 1/5, so I’m 1/5, and if I do not click with the group personality I will feel outnumbered, four to one.

If I get lucky and the whole group, including me, is on the same page, or if it’s a situation where my personality dominates the group, then I feel okay in the small group. But if there is a stronger personality than my own and that personality sets the group personality, or if it organically has a personality that is very different from my own, then I feel like I completely can’t express myself and close down. Once I was with two of my closest friends who I was used to interacting with primarily one on one or with other groups but never with just the two of them and me. We were together just the three of us for this rare occasion and their dynamic between them made me feel so excluded. They indulged a shared side of their personalities that felt so alien and antagonistic to me that I felt as incredibly lonely and rejected as I’ve ever felt. That night is a terrible memory.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Indie Music, Indie Music, Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Music, Music, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophy, Religion, Religion, Secularism | Tagged Eternal Recurrence, Eternal Recurrence of the Same, Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Stoicism | Comments (0)

Apostasy As A Religious Act (Or “Why A Camel Hammers The Idols Of Faith”)

February 17, 2011 – 11:00 am

In “The Three Transformations of the Spirit” in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes the human spirit as successively taking three different forms: the camel, the lion, and the child. The transformations begin with the spirit of the camel, which Nietzsche characterizes as consisting of obedient, self-sacrificing, reverential, principled, moralism. Essentially this is a religious animal, who pursues the truth at great pains to himself because it is, what we may infer to be, a religious requirement to be moral, and therefore truthful, in the utmost.

In Nietzsche’s mind such moralistic attachment to truth, though inspired by a religious and moral injunction that none shall lie, leads to the discovery of truths that undermine religion and moralism themselves—partly by showing that many religious and moral beliefs are rooted in falsehoods and partly by exposing the truth about some of the immoral and dishonest ways that religions and moralities actually propagate themselves as real world systems of domination and control.

Morality itself, in Nietzsche’s view, is deeply hypocritical according to its own standards. And any Christian who takes the commandment against lying seriously at all is going to have to leave Christianity on precisely that account.

I am like Nietzsche’s camel. While I am many miles away from morally perfect, I have been a generally conscientious person since I was a child and was devoutly, zealously, evangelically, self-sacrificially, and mildly puritanically religious until I was 21. And I am open to certain interpretations of my personality that see it as still fundamentally religious—as long as they do not confuse that for faith-based thinking or other forms of closed-mindedness, authoritarianism, or deference to unwarranted authorities of thought or practice. I think a fair accounting would acquit me of such charges, whatever the other inadequacies of my intellect and character.

What I am stressing here is something that both the faithful and the always-secular rarely seem to understand about at least some of us apostates. For some of us, our rejection of our faith is not merely the abandonment of our religious values but, at the same time, very much our fulfillment of them. It was Christianity that led me to reject Christianity.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian | Tagged "The Three Transformations of the Spirit", Camels, Camels With Hammers, Nietzsche on the Camel, Nietzsche on the Lion, Thou Shalt Not Lie, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Truth, Truthfulness | Comments (8)

What Can An Atheist Love In People’s Religiosity?

February 15, 2011 – 11:22 pm

Earlier today, I argued that atheists can vigorously and outspokenly oppose bad faith-based ideas, values, and behaviors, but still love other aspects of the religiosity of their religious friends (and of religious people in general). I argued that religion can be as central to personal identity formation as sexuality is and that to indiscriminately hate everything religious about religious people would be to effectively make loving them overall impossible. I essentially tried to distinguish that you can reject the cognitive errors and the specifically immoral parts of their beliefs and practices without rejecting everything religious about them. You can more narrowly “hate” specific sins without hating the entire “religious” orientation of their personalities. In short, you can oppose their religion, without entirely opposing their religiosity–but can even love parts of their very religiosity itself.

Mary, who is a Roman Catholic theology student and a personal friend, is skeptical:

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Prejudice, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Virtues, Virtues | Comments (13)

Can You Really Love Religious People If You Hate Their Religion?

February 15, 2011 – 2:00 pm

Atheists do not exactly claim to “love sinners but hate sins” (if for no other reason than that most, if not all, of us reject the category of “sin” as a meaningful or valuable way to talk about ethical failure). Also, atheists may be more realistic than to think that we really do, or feasibly could, actually love all people. And atheists may very well have different opinions on whether such indiscriminate loving would be a worthwhile ideal even if people could do this. (As I have argued before, there are ethically right and wrong ways to feel towards things and people based on what their objective value merits.)

But, nonetheless, insofar as atheists share Western liberal secularist values, I would hope that all of us share a moral, and not merely political, ideal that involves respecting and honoring the dignity of all people. I would hope that more than just politically tolerating people with whom we disagree, that we also seek to have generally benevolent dispositions towards all the people we encounter socially, as much as this is possible consistent with respect for truth in value judgments.

While some enemies in life are inevitable (and sometimes actually wind up providing as much or more benefit to each other as friends do), we should want as much goodwill and positive interaction with other people as possible, despite their manifold manifest flaws. And this means that even though we disagree with people’s immoral behaviors, we should try to be as sympathetically inclined to them as we can, consistent with justice, truthfulness, and their own well-being.

And as much as we disagree with and vociferously challenge people’s wrong and/or pernicious ideas, we should be able to bracket (or at least contextualize) these qualms as much as possible when considering people as whole people. For example, we should not let a philosophical disagreement, even a serious one, completely cloud our ability to appreciate someone’s overall excellent character where it exists. We should keep conflicts of the mind from precluding friendships of the heart. And a friendship of the mind where the minds disagree is in most cases something to cherish since it provides the benefits both of productive enmity and of harmonious concord.

But in order to walk the line between intellectual disagreement and personal friendship, the atheist must consider a difficult question. Can she both hate religion, as many atheists seem to, and yet simultaneously love the religious person any more realistically than the fundamentalist religious person can love gay people while hating homosexuality?

Of course, an atheist can say to the religious person something analogous to what the fundamentalist religious person says to gays, “I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own church or home, but I just don’t want to hear about it. Leave all your crazy ideas for when you’re with your other religious friends. I don’t want you to talk about praying for me or about your spiritual experiences or about your ignorant opinions that come only from superstitions. I hate all this stuff about you, even though I otherwise think you’re great and totally honor your overall character.”

The problem is that comparable to the way that most gay people do not think they can closet their sexual identity and be comfortably themselves and the way most gay people resent anyone who asks them to be closeted as callously rejecting them, it may not be entirely unreasonable for many religious people to say that their faith is too central a part of who they are to feel pressured to stifle it every time they go out in public. I’m not talking about theocratic religious people who want to impose their faith or its more arbitrary moral ideas through legislation or who crave for special recognition of their religion or of prayer, etc. in government settings. Of course we can ask that people not try to make the government an arm of their faith or a vehicle for its expression without being confused for being “hateful”.

But even politically secular and tolerant religious people have a lot of other ways in which being openly and fully themselves means expressing themselves religiously. And similarly, for many atheists our atheism is not a small issue but an important part of our identity. This might be because our atheism makes us feel alienated from friends, family, the larger and more religious body of humanity, etc. And/or it might be because we were once religious ourselves and rejecting religion was a key moment in our self-formation that is important to us still. It might also be because in questions of religion, and specifically in contradistinction to it, we most clearly see what our intellectual and moral values are and find the greatest conflict with others over these core character issues.

And of course, for many religious people, we are talking about a key way in which they form their own sense of identity, in which they fundamentally connect with their family and with the “spiritual”, hopeful, reverential, moral, loyal, ritualistic, traditional, communal, purpose-oriented, and/or intellectual sides of their nature. Their embrace of their religiosity can be a major part of their self-formation and their way of life itself. It can profoundly shape core values—or at least their personal conceptualization of them.

So, both serious atheists and religious people can have a lot of themselves bound up in their complicated relationships to religion. The stories of their lives and the dynamics of their psychologies would likely be woefully distorted were there religiosity or irreligiosity, their belief or their unbelief, scrubbed out of them.

Now, of course, for the sake of each other’s sanity and their mutual friendship, both serious atheists and religious people may make truces as far as their personal friendships are concerned, by which they either do not discuss religion or by which they employ deliberate or implicit means of not letting it become a wedge between them. But to the extent to which this is necessary, there is a fundamental alienation between people who are otherwise friends, which can still be lamentable. Maybe adherence to intellectual principle is a great enough good that it is justifiable to prioritize it even at the expense of better friendships and more “truces”. But if there is a way to separate intellectual criticisms of each other’s core beliefs and values from emotional, visceral dislike or hatred?

There is a potential trade off in making our dislike of existing religion less emotional—it might mean not accurately enough feeling negatively towards what is genuinely bad in the existing religions. It is a good thing to feel dislike for what is bad. The bad deserves that. And negative emotional dispositions provide motivational aid to get us to work reducing the bad.

But this brings me to the real crux of the problem. When we orient our minds to eliminate the bad of religion, we are also possibly orienting ourselves to eliminate constitutive parts of our religious friends’ ways of life. Describing how we want people to never again do or think the things our friends do or think risks saying to them, “we don’t want people to be the way you are. We don’t want stories like yours to exist. We don’t want the practices, traditions, rituals, etc. in which you form yourself and live your life to exist. We don’t want people to have psychologies like yours or values like yours.”

Looked at in this way, of course religious people feel threatened and sometimes hated by our more vituperative denunciations of the beliefs, practices, institutions, and values through which they live their lives and construct their identities, hopes, moral judgments, etc. It can be as bad for them to be told their religions should not exist as it is for gays to be told that their basic psycho-sexual love drive and love relationships should not exist.

And, of course, this door also swings the other way. Religious attitudes that wish atheists out of existence and vilify us are alienating and harmful to some of us in comparable major ways too.

Is there a solution? I think so.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Prejudice, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Virtues, Virtues | Comments (10)

Why “Loving The Sinner But Hating The Sin” Is Not An Option When Dealing With Gay People

February 14, 2011 – 5:00 pm

Many a homophobic religious person has infamously claimed that when it comes to gays he “loves the sinner but hates the sin” and many a defender of the full dignity and ethical lives of gay people has judged such a compromised offer of love inadequate (if not insincere).

This cannot be because it is impossible in principle to love someone and yet hate what they do. Probably all of us love someone who does some things that we think are immoral and which deserve to be hated (or, at least, disliked) as such. In fact, many of us share the same ideal of “unconditional love” which encourages loving people despite some of their flaws (though, strictly speaking, I think this is better conceived of as “volitional”, rather than “unconditional”, love since the idea of “unconditional love”, taken literally, is logically and practically incoherent and in some important ways undesirable). We think the best love includes a kind of loyalty and volitional commitment to people as they are. Sometimes we are tenderhearted enough even to find their flaws endearing. But often we will keep an honest perspective that they are flaws and not themselves good things, even as we keep this from reducing our affection for those we love. In sum, we effectively hate their wrongdoing but still love them.

So what is wrong with religious people (or others even) saying that they can love their gay friends and family—and maybe even gay colleagues, gay acquaintances, and gay strangers—without loving their homosexual deeds? They are saying, essentially, that they have plenty of affection and commitment to give the gay people in their lives, independent of their judgments about the sinfulness of their behaviors.

But it is that word “behaviors” that is one of the main sticking points. To gay people, who understand their homosexuality as a key part of their very psycho-sexual identity—which is as fundamental to their self-conception as heterosexuality is to straight people—their homosexuality is not just a “behavior” but a rather fundamental expression of themselves with far reaching consequences for their entire lives.

Of course, that is not to say that being gay is the only important, identity-forming thing in their lives—anymore than a heterosexual person’s straightness is the only thing in her life which contributes in an essential way to her identity. Gay people want and deserve both to not be belittled by being reduced to being only their sexuality as though they were not also full people in the whole other range of ways that straight people are, and at the same time they want and deserve not to have their sexuality treated like just an unusual kinky fetish, a dirty secret, or an embarrassing “unnatural”, “disordered” urge which they “struggle to control”. They do not warrant straight people’s “sympathy” for their “condition”. And while they have no more interest than straights do in regaling strangers or the squeamish with the nitty gritty details of their sex lives, they nonetheless want to be able to be as forthright as straights about the simple fact of their love relationships without it being confused for the improper revelation of their sexual exploits.

In telling someone they are gay, they are not revealing a quirky bedroom desire that’s impolite to mention in casual conversation, and to treat them like that’s what they are doing demeans their entire love orientation, and disrespects some of the most important relationships and desires for love and companionship in their lives. This is why the homophobic cop out that goes, “I don’t care what people do in their bedrooms, I just do not want to know about it” is so insulting to gays. Gays are not telling you about their sex lives when they tell you about their sexual orientation. They are telling you about a much deeper and much more central part of their identity—again, something as important to them as being straight is to a straight person.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, LGBTQAA, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Prejudice, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Same Sex Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Sex | Tagged Hate The Sin But Love The Sinner, Love The Sinner But Hate The Sin | Comments (11)

What Is Love? Here’s My Theory.

February 14, 2011 – 11:51 am

This is a renamed repost of July 24, 2009 post called “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways”:

In the first part of this series, I explored the reasons for rejecting “unconditional” love as a candidate for the ideal essence of love since as a concept it is riddled with numerous problems as a recommendation for human psychology it is hopelessly unrealistic. In this part of the series, I sketch out a theory of love as any combination of 10 essential features, with the maximum ideal involving all 10 components in maximum strengths, and with various other combinations of only some of the possible components representing other genuine instances of love, but still only approximations of the maximum ideal of love.

We use the word love to refer to a number of different relationships, volitional commitments, attitudes, dispositions, behaviors, and feelings and to various combinations of them. We also distinguish different love relationships as being of different characteristic types. Below I have sketched out a list, which I concede may not be exhaustive or in every respect draw lines in the best places between related concepts. Nonetheless it seems to me like a workable list of distinguishable features which can account for other related psychological states and actions associated with love (both when we describe our experiences of it and when we formulate our ethical ideals for it).

The various major things love refers to:

1. Intensity of affection for someone or something.

2. Intense platonic desire for someone or something.

3. Intense erotic/sexual/romantic desire for someone or something.

4. Intense admiration for someone or something.

5. Intense concern for someone or something’s well-being and flourishing, which is willing to prioritize bringing this about over attaining other goods.

6. A mutually shared, private intimacy, which excludes most all others.

7. Strong psychological attachment to someone or something.

8. Strong psychological identification between one’s own well-being and flourishing with the well-being and flourishing of someone or something.

9. Strong volitional commitment to the well-being and flourishing of someone or something, which stems originally from intensity of affection, eros, platonic desire, admiration, attachment, identification, intimacy, and/or concern for that someone or something but which also sustains itself even as some or all of these diminish as psychological motivators.

10. Intense affection, platonic desire, eros, concern, admiration, attachment, identification, intimacy, and/or strong volitional commitment to the well-being and flourishing of someone or something in spite of manifest flaws of the beloved (and sometimes even through affectionately reinterpreting flaws as “endearing”—although that word is misleading since it is the preexisting love that usually endears us to the beloved’s flaws rather than the other way around).

Does characterizing an essence and ideal for love involve combining all these various features into a unified ideal of complete love? In that case, we might say that minimally to be love one of the 10 features listed above must be present but to maximally be love all 10 are necessary.

One immediately recognizable drawback to this strategy for defining an ideal for love is that it would preclude all non-sexual loves from being complete loves or, worse, encourage us to turn all our loves sexual in order to maximize them as instances of love.

By Daniel Fincke | Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Virtues, Virtues | Comments (3)

Alan Cooper: Your use of the word “function” (rather than something more neutral such as “effect)...
James Sweet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S pecial_pleading
Heuristics: Theist here. Why is there something rather then nothing? This is because God is a necessary being, he...
Daniel Fincke: Thanks so much, Richard!
Richard Wade: Congratulations! I was hoping for the past couple of weeks to hear this news. I wish you all the best,...
Daniel Fincke: Hey, thanks, John! Hopefully you will find more of my unpacking of what’s going on in...
John M.: Hi Daniel, This is my reading of Nietzsche on morality and it’s so nice to see you interpret him in...
Daniel Fincke: Thanks, everyone. Colin, I will make a point to address Nietzsche and evolution at some point. To do...
Norman: What an awesome experiment in human behavior! – The woman actor who was lesbian – just became a...
Tisha Irwin: I love this idea.

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