Dave’s Mailbag: BB wants to save my soul

This is from a comment thread on a YouTube video of mine. This fellow, BB, posted 14 comments back-to-back due to character limits. I told him I’d respond in a blog post rather than leave a huge string of comments in return. Here are his posts reconstructed into one block, and my response:

BB:

have you accepted God into your life and turned away from sins and shared the gospel with everyone you care about and know?

Dave:

Um, I’m the Public Relations Director for American Atheists.

BB:

Well, you probably make a living selling books on the philosophy of Atheism. Which is a motivation for thinking you might be intellectually dishonest as your living relies on selling this philosophy, which makes it hard to ever convince you otherwise.

If not then we can have an honest and open discussion based on just logic without any agenda behind it from both our parts.

Dave:

No, I don’t sell books for a living. I’m not a bookstore. I do public relations.

BB:

You seem like a cool intelligent guy. I can convince you that no religion, no church can ever cleanse you of sin, only sincere repentance, and trusting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

If it’s true we just go in to the ground when we die then you can’t say ‘See, I told you I was right’ and I can’t tell you ‘I’m sorry I was totally wrong’. But if it’s true there is a heaven and you can go there, wouldn’t it be logical to find out how to get there?

Dave:

There’s no such thing as sin. It’s an imaginary concept. Sin (i.e. “transgression against divine law”) doesn’t really exist, because “divine law” is imaginary.

Yes, IF it were true that there is a heaven and you can go there, it would be logical to look into it. But there isn’t, and you can’t. If you want to claim otherwise, you have the burden of proof. Good luck.

BB:

ok well the burden of proof is actually on you as you claim to have proof that God doesn’t exist. If you’re not saying that you have proof then I respect your intellectual consistency and honesty. This is because the best we can do is follow the evidence, because nothing can be proved.

You can’t prove that you walked the earth yesterday. We have to go by evidence such as eye witness testimony.

So we’ve recognized that proving anything is impossible. So the next step is to trust Evidence. We can only trust Evidence if it is shown to be reliable.

So the only thing stopping you from investigating heaven and grabbing the only ticket that will get you there is because you are unsure if there is such a thing as sin.

Well I can tell you that there is such a thing as sin.

There is such a thing as sin because sin is defined outside of culture. Everyone refers to a moral code outside culture because if we lived in a culture where gassing jews or slavery was ok, it still wouldn’t make it right.

That’s why Ghandi and Martin Luther king and others like them existed. They went against their culture because they put objective moral law on top of cultural laws.

No one can live atheism out in real life consistently. For example if you found your wife in the arms of another man you wouldn’t say hey it’s your right to believe unfaithfulness is wrong so I’m not gonna judge you for it.

Loyalty is right not because anyone defines it, it’s right because that’s what we know in our hearts to be true.

God says he has written these moral codes in our hearts. These objective moral laws are intelligently and lovingly created by an intelligent and loving being.

God respects our free will to choose to do right or to do wrong, that’s why people choose to be unfaithful and others choose to be faithful.

So if there is no God then morality is subjective, it’s all relative so Hitler was right in his opinion and I am right in my opinion. Then chaos erupts.

No God, no harmony, no justice. Just chaos and destruction.

Which speaks allot to the condition and the reason for the condition of some parts of the world today.

So once we’ve deduced rationally that there is a God who gives us objective moral values and we can choose or not choose to follow these, then we can go on to find out what happens if we choose to follow these or not.

If we don’t then God grants us our desire. Eternity away from him. If we do then God grants us our desire. Eternity with him.

I’d say I wouldn’t want to find out what eternity is like without him, why? because Satan is without God by his own choosing and he rules hell. Would you want to meet Satan and find out what kind of gastly things he would do to you?

I’d prefer heaven where everything is awesome.

Also I want to take as many people with me to heaven cuz I love my fellow human being. 100 years is nothing vs eternity.

If someone gave me a billion dollars to be without God I’d rather be a homeless person with God because this life is so short anyways.

Okay, so we’ve defined how God exists, what’s good and evil, free will and what sin is.

Now we have to find out what God wants from us. 1. Put your trust in him to guide your life. 2. To show loyalty, love and trust, then turn from sin, otherwise you become a hypocrite.

No sin is worth going to hell over. Remember Jesus spoke more about hell then he did about heaven. He described it as a lake of fire. I would assume that it’s a place of total destruction and chaos. Maybe the equivalent of a dentist poking your nerve for eternity.

Not paradise. lol

In the end, not sinning and praying sincerely from forgiveness isn’t hard.

I don’t think if someone offered you 100 women to pleasure you sexually outside the blessing of God, but you had to site in a dentists chair and take him touching your nerve for 8 hours, you would absolutely deny it. Why? Because it ain’t worth it.

That’s just 8 hours. lol imagine forever. So in perspective it’s good news.God offers you a free ticket to heaven, just take it man and share it with as many people as possible, especially those you wanna see in heaven with you such as your loved ones.

Dude, I’m pleading with you just do it. Any reputation or wealth in this life is not worth it. Now why would I sit here and write a 13 comment reply to you, not asking for money, not to join a religion or to even go to a church, spending my own time?

I don’t believe in silly things. Please for the love of God, do it.

Thanks for listening. Any other questions you might wanna ask?

Dave:

You’ve got to be kidding me. First of all, just, wow, 14 comments back to back. I’m strongly considering banning you, except that skimming them, it appears you are sincere. I’m going to respond to this, but not here; I have a blog and I’m going to do it there. The blog is at muSASHA . o r g. I can’t do it tonight but I’ll get to it when I can.

And here’s my full response:

If you are making the positive claim that a god exists, you have the burden of proof. Same goes for sin.

I agree with you about your stance on evidence and our inability to prove things with 100% certainty. It’s called the problem of induction and I’m totally with you there.

I’m not “unsure” about the existence of sin. I mean, in a very technical sense, I’m agnostic about it, but for all practical purposes, I don’t believe sin exists, because I don’t believe in divine law, because I don’t believe in anything supernatural. If you want to convince me sin exists, you first have to show me that divine law exists. In order to do that, you have to convince me that a divine lawgiver exists. So really, being “unsure” about sin is NOT the “only thing” holding me back. I don’ t believe in your god, either.

You speak of objective morality. Objective from what? You mean, outside of culture? It seems like that’s what you’re saying. If all life in the universe were to be wiped out at the same instant, would slavery still be unethical? I don’t know if we can really answer that. It wouldn’t matter at that point. Ethics, the subfield of philosophy that prescriptively tells us how we ought to act, is a human invention—and we are the only species that has them, that we’re aware of—but morals (a subfield of ethology, that descriptively tells us how animals interact) evolve in cooperative species all by themselves. There’s a lot of game theory involved but this is not a mystery to science. If you’re interested in how morality evolved, I recommend Matt Ridley’s wonderful book, “The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.” Other good books are Robert Axelrod’s “The Evolution of Cooperation” and Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis’ “A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution.“ The last two are pretty math-heavy but they do an excellent job of explaining how this works, and Richard Dawkins wrote the forward of the former.

Slavery is wrong because we decided that people have rights and shouldn’t be owned by other people. That’s not objectively provable, and it wasn’t always the case. Our society has progressed ethically from the time when slavery was the norm (although by raw numbers, not per capita, there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in history). I disagree with your conclusion that sin exists and we can know this because everyone “refers” to a moral code outside of culture. I don’t, for one. Moral codes are inextricable from culture from an ethology perspective.

On to your next point: You say “no one can live out atheism consistently” because, for example, if I found my wife in bed with someone else, I wouldn’t be okay with it. What?…

First of all, that’s a non sequitur. Atheism is the simply the lack of belief in the existence of all gods. This has absolutely nothing to do with sexual ethics?… You seem to be missing about a dozen premises between your first premise and your conclusion there. Second of all, you don’t know me. I would be fine with that; I’m polyamorous. I would hope that she’s being safe about it, but I wouldn’t begrudge someone for having consensual sex. My wife is not my property and as an adult, she can make her own decisions about who she has sex with. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s none of my business, but I would not be mad or jealous. Please note: I’m speaking hypothetically because I’ve never been married, although I was engaged for awhile once.

Then you go on to say that loyalty is right not by definition but because “we know in our hearts” that it is. Yeah, that’s the evolved morality thing we were talking about earlier. See 3 paragraphs up. By the way, loyalty is not always right; it depends on your system of ethics. Hitler’s troops were following orders when they gassed Jews. I think we’d both agree that what they were doing wasn’t ethical, even though they were being loyal when they did it.

Next you claim that God has written these moral codes in our hearts. A couple of major problems here: You jumped right into “God has…” without first showing that a god exists in the first place. What is your argument for god’s existence? Secondly, what do you mean he has “written in our hearts” blah blah blah? I assume you don’t mean that literally; a heart is a muscle and I’m pretty certain there’s no classical Hebrew etched in there, although I haven’t physically checked because that could prove rather tricky If you mean that God has imprinted a gut feeling of these moral codes, then we can work with this. First of all, I try not to think with my gut; I try to think with my brain. The reason I try not to think with my gut is that my gut and your gut can disagree and there’s really no good way to resolve that as far as knowing who’s right and who’s wrong. Only with evidence and logic can we systematically rule out wrong answers and settle on right ones. Second, again, we have this problem that you haven’t shown your god exists at all, let alone that he has done any such thing as imprint moral codes into us. Citation needed!

You wrote:

These objective moral laws are intelligently and lovingly created by an intelligent and loving being.

Bare assertion. Citation needed.

You wrote:

God respects our free will…

I’m not even remotely convinced that humans have free will. Free from what, anyway? The laws of physics? First define “free will,” then convince me that we have it, and we can go down this road. And you still haven’t explained how you know a god exists at all, nor how you claim to know that he respects our free will, even if we have it.

Next you go off on a spiel basically saying that if there were no god, then there would be ”no harmony, no justice. Just chaos and destruction.”

Well, that pretty much seems to be the case. The universe doesn’t know or care that we exist. Nature just does what it does, following simple patterns, or as we call them, laws. Complexity can come out of this, e.g. life on Earth as we recognize it. We have perfectly adequate, natural explanations for all of this. What makes you think there IS justice? Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good things happen to bad people. Lots of people in the world are dying of starvation and elsewhere in the world, someone is tying $4,000 to some helium-filled balloons and letting it float away just because he can afford it and he’s bored. Look around, man. There’s no justice. The world is what we make of it.

Reading through the rest of your post, I don’t even really see the point of continuing from here. Your argument is a mess and since your later premises depend on your earlier ones, I think you need to go back and revisit them before we can move forward.

Feel free to try again! Thanks for your message(s).

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Well, at least he’s not doing anything useless… wait…

Last week marks the end of an era: Pope Benedix XVI delivered his final public blessing, according to CNN Breaking News.

The Pope said he will continue serving the church by, according to the article, “taking up a life of prayer and meditation.”

Um… what?

How is this serving anyone or anything?

Meditative prayer has been linked to things like reducing stress and lowering blood pressure, but let’s not kid ourselves here: The Pope is not serving anyone by taking up a life of prayer. What is a life of prayer, anyway? That’s essentially saying, “I’m done contributing to the world.” There has never been a proper double-blind study that has shown any statistically significant effect of intercessory prayer. Not one.

At best, the Pope is no longer doing damage as leader of an organization which rails against condom use, abortion, stem-cell research, gay civil rights, women’s rights, etc, etc, etc.

Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, made an excellent point in a Huffington Post article that I think bears repeating: A new pope, regardless of whether he is more liberal or more conservative, will be a good thing for rational people. If the new pope is liberal, he will work to enact policy changes that are better for stem-cell research, AIDS prevention, abortion access, women’s civil rights, LGBTQ civil rights, and relations with secular people. If the new pope is conservative, he will drive even more “C&E” Catholics (Catholics who only care about their religion on Christmas and Easter) away from the Church and toward the wonderful world of reality in the 21st century.

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Why not live and let live?

This article originally appeared on SkepticFreethought.com and is reposted here with permission.

Hello everyone! Dave Muscato here.

This is a difficult post for me to write. I’ve spent two days on this, actually. For most of my life, I’ve been natural inclined to be non-confrontational, and I think my friends and family would characterize me as a gentle person. It is not easy for me to say these things, but I feel like the time has come for me to take a stand.

I had lunch with a friend the other day and the subject of religion came up—I know, big surprise. My friend’s girlfriend had posed to him a question about the purpose of atheism activism:

“Why not live and let live?”

Aside from being intellectually wrong, what’s so bad about believing in a god? What’s the harm? Is it just academic?

Some background: His girlfriend is “not religious, but open-minded,” and teaches their 3 kids to be accepting of all different religions. He is an atheist and passionate about critical thinking and skepticism. He is concerned because he overheard one of their children praying before going to bed.

He asked me, “What can I tell her?”

Here’s my response:

Because they’re not letting us live and let live. Because, for no rational reason, gay people can’t get married in my state. Because they’re teaching the Genesis creation myth as fact in science classes. Because they’re teaching “abstinence-only” sex ed, which is demonstrably ineffective. Because, despite Roe v. Wade recently celebrating its 40th anniversary, we’re STILL fighting for abortion and birth-control access. Because priests are molesting children and nobody is getting in trouble for it. It’s been said before, but if an 80-member religious cult in Texas allowed some of their leaders to molest children, there would be a huge outcry. It would be front-page news. People would be up in arms! But when it’s the Catholic Church, we barely even notice. It’s gotten to the point where we’re not even surprised anymore—it’s barely even news anymore—when another molestation is uncovered. Like the saying goes, “The only difference between a cult and a religion is the number of followers.” Or worse, “One rape is a tragedy; a thousand is a statistic.”

I brought up Greta Christina’s wonderful book, “Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off The Godless,” and told him to read it, and to ask his girlfriend to read it. Nothing would make me happier than to live and let live. I dream of a world where humanity spends its time solving “real” problems, doing medical research, exploring space, fixing the climate, making art and music, studying philosophy. I would love for there to be no need for atheism activism. But I can’t do that, because I have a conscience.

He agreed with me on these points, but wanted to know about the problem with liberal churches. What’s the harm of religion so long as it supports gay marriage, comprehensive sex-ed, etc?

First off, it’s important to distinguish between believing in a deity, and believing in God. If we’re talking about a deistic creator, a god who allegedly sparked the Big Bang and hasn’t interfered since, I don’t really see any harm in this, other than that it’s unscientific and vastly improbable. I’d call this harmlessly irrational, on par with crossing your fingers for good luck. It’s magical thinking, which I think should be avoided, but it doesn’t really hurt anything.

But once we start talking about Yahweh, the Abrahamic god, the god of the Bible, we get into some sticky stuff.  I’m not the first to say so but the reason moderate religion is bad, even dangerous, is that it opens the door for religious bigotry and worse. If a religious moderate believes the proposition that the Bible is the inspired word of God, who is he to fault a religious extremist for actually doing what it says to do?

If you use faith as your justification for moral decision-making, you cannot reasonably point at someone more committed than you doing the exact same thing and make the charge that they’re wrong. A religious moderate cannot call a religious extremist crazy without being hypocritical.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

There is this idea among moderates that religious tolerance is an ideal condition. The whole “COEXIST” campaign is a prime example. There is this idea that all religions are somehow valid, despite contradicting one another. That no matter how much we disagree with someone, if it falls under the umbrella of religious tolerance, we should make every effort to find a way not to be offended.

To paraphrase Sam Harris, the idea that all human beings should be free to believe whatever they want—the foundation of “religious tolerance”—is something we need to reconsider. Now.

I will not stand by and tolerate the belief that it is moral to mutilate a little girl’s genitals.

I will not stand by and tolerate the belief that it is moral to hinder the promotion of condom use in AIDS-ridden regions, because they believe wasting semen is a “sin.”

I will not stand by and tolerate the belief that it is moral to lie to children and tell them that they will see their dead relatives again, or give them nightmares about a made-up “Hell.”

I will not stand by and tolerate the absurd and unsubstantiated proposition that humans are somehow born bad or evil, that we need to be “saved.”

It is offensive to me that, in the year 2013, people still think intercessory prayer works. Every time I hear about some poor sick child who has died because her parents decided to pray instead of take her to a hospital, I am horribly offended. When religious moderates tell me—although they also believe in intercessory prayer—that they, too, are offended by this, I am appalled at the hypocrisy. We should know better by now than to believe in childish things like prayer.

I am so sick of this crap. There is a time and a place for being accommodating of differences of opinion. If you think tea is the best hot drink, and I think it’s coffee, fine. No one is harmed by this. Insofar as your beliefs don’t negatively affect others, I do not care if we agree or not. But, I contend, your right to believe whatever you want ends where my rights begin. Religious moderation is literally dangerous because it opens the gate wide for religious extremism. A moderate cannot point to a religious extremist and say, “You are wrong. You are dangerous. You must not be allowed to continue.” However, I can. To stand up to religious extremism, we must come from a place of rational thought, of freedom to criticize, of ethics that do not depend on revelation or arguments from authority.

I make no apology for asserting that secular humanism is the most reasonable, most ethical, and best way for us to live. It is more rational than superstitious faith. It is more productive and humane than any religion. It is the ethical choice. To quote Sam Harris, “There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

We must become more reasonable if we want to survive. Our planet is in trouble. There is no divine guarantee that the Earth will always be able to support us nor that we will always be here. There is no life after this. What matters is how we are remembered, and the contributions to society we make while we’re alive. I assert that there is nothing more important or more urgent than this: Atheists, I call upon you to stand up to absurdity. If you see something, say something. Start the conversation.

I know that it is difficult to make waves. I know that it can be intimidating, especially when you’re outnumbered. But the facts are on our side, and the stakes are high. We must not be afraid to call bullshit where we see it. We must not allow religions to dictate what is and is not moral. We must speak up in the face of wrongdoing. We must make ourselves known. It can be as simple as correcting someone for using the word “fag,” or mentioning that you are an atheist if the subject of religion comes up.

Ending the danger and oppression of religion will not be easy, but if we work toward it, we can make it happen.

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Kansas/Missouri-Area Volunteer Network Coordinator for the Secular Student Alliance. He is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A non-traditional junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Dave’s Mailbag: “A question about your skepticism…”

B writes:

I just watched your 2 hour debate video and really enjoyed it! I thought you made some very rational arguments and definitely made your arguments more credible by giving sources and such. Overall a very thorough and superb debate on your part.

How far you take your skepticism? The part of the video when the kid said there is more evidence of  the resurrection of Jesus than there is of Julius Caesar. You disagreed and argued that there are books written by Julius Caesar, so his existence is more credible. Would you be skeptic that the books were forged? I mean there would be no apparent reason as to why someone would forge the books, and a document in religion to promote an agenda would be more likely forged, but would you still be skeptical? At what point is it logical to say that something is true? How much and of what kind of evidence is needed?

Thanks for your time.

My response:

Hi B! Thanks for your message. I appreciate your comments.

It’s certainly possible that Julius Caesar’s books are forgeries, but it’s highly unlikely. We have no reason to suspect that they were, unlike, for example, the many irreconciliable contradictions in the New Testament about the details of Jesus’s alleged resurrection. Caesar’s books are, for the most part, lost to history—all we have today is his journals from war, which don’t make any unlikely or outrageous claims. Contrast this to the fact that a resurrection as alleged would contradict everything we know about biology, medicine, etc. The whole thing is just dripping with obviousness as mythology.

So in a technical sense, I am open to the idea that Caesar’s books are forgeries. Being skeptical means being open to the idea that you’re wrong, and never claiming 100% certainty in your conclusions. I feel comfortable saying that I believe to a very high degree of confidence that Caesar’s books are genuine, although I wouldn’t claim that zero editing has taken place, nor that I claiming certainty about these things. Hand-written copies of ancient documents have a tendency to change bit by bit, but that’s okay: Nobody is claiming that there is divine truth in Caesar’s books.

As far as the point it’s logical at which to say something is true, I’m not sure we can ever really say that with total certainty. In discussions of epistemology, I tend to side with this position:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

in basically saying that any knowledge about the universe at large, or indeed anything outside one’s own mind, is by definition an uncertainty. It’s all subject to the filter of our senses, and it’s clear that those aren’t perfect, or magic shows would be no fun at all!

The one thing I’m absolutely certain about is the fact of my own existence. Everything else, if we’re going to be precise, is technically a belief. I believe that evidence and the scientific method are the most accurate approach to knowledge on the basis that they are the most consistent and logical approach to knowledge. I believe that faith, because it is inconsistent and unfalsifiable and by nature not bothered by things like lack of evidence, is really a fundamentally useless approach to finding out what’s true about the world. To quote Carl Sagan, “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.”

Science is the best tool ever discovered for drawing up a consistent and clear picture of the world around us, but it’s still a picture, not the world itself. The problem of induction will always stand in our way of reaching 100% certainty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

So to answer your final question, within the system of empiricism, no amount of evidence is ever sufficient to say that something is true with 100% total certainty. That’s just not how evidence works, unfortunately. The more evidence you have that suggests a certain conclusion, and the better quality evidence you have, the more confident you can be in saying that it’s probably correct. But, there is always the possibility that you will discover additional evidence and find out that you were wrong all along. You can approach 100% confidence in statistics… 90%, 95%, 99.99999%, but under the banner of empiricism, 100% certainty is just not possible. That only works under the umbrella of rationalism (mathematical proofs), which are deductive, rather than inductive, and under the banner of faith, which—if you ask me—is just plain incorrect, because it incorrectly equates belief (a prerequisite for knowledge) with knowledge itself.

This article may also be helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#Belief

I hope that this helps!

- Dave

Dave Muscato is the 2012 Writing Intern for the Secular Student Alliance in Columbus, Ohio. He is also Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com. Opinions posted here do not necessarily reflect the views of MU SASHA, the Secular Student Alliance, nor the Humanist Community at Harvard.

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“Homophobia”? No, bigotry.

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I was just talking to Lyz Liddell of the Secular Student Alliance about this the other day.  Then I saw this post on Reddit, which reminded me about it, so I decided to write a quick post.

From now on, I’m no longer using the term “homophobia” to describe bigotry against gay people. I’m simply going to call it bigotry.

Bigot: one obstinately and irrationally, often intolerantly, devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion.*

I have yet to hear anything close to a rational, fact-based justification for why gay behavior or orientation is anything other than normal, natural, and harmless. Until someone can present this, obstinate, irrational, and intolerant devotion to anti-gay beliefs is simply another way of saying that someone is bigoted.

Phyllis Siegal, 76, and Connie Kopelov, 84, the first gay couple legally married under New York State’s recent marriage equality law. They have been together for 23 years.

Phobias are medical conditions where someone has an irrational *fear* of something that’s normal or otherwise harmless. For example, there’s such a thing as a healthy fear of bears (a mother sow protecting her cubs can be very dangerous), but a phobia of bears is something else entirely. There may in fact be some people who are actually, irrationally afraid of gay people, despite knowing that they are normal, natural, and harmless. But that is not what we mean when we say “homophobic.” We mean “bigoted,” and it’s time we started saying so.

People who normally get called “homophobes” don’t have an irrational fear of gay people. They have an irrational *intolerance* to the belief that gay people are sinful, etc. That’s just bigotry, plain & simple.

That’s all. Good night!

- Dave

*”bigot.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (15 Jun. 2012).

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

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Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com – Iron Chariots Wiki – Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an – AtheismResource.com – TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

You don’t know Jack (nor could you)

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Today’s article is by SASHA member Alex Papulis.

In my last post, “Can we be atheists and believe in knowledge?“ I laid out an argument against the existence of free will and reasonable belief. In this post, I would like to sketch out an analogy to illustrate the argument that, given the premise that all causes are physical, there is no such thing as reasoned belief or knowledge.

Imagine that you want to learn about Jack. Imagine also that the only access (if any) we have to Jack is through Bob. We can ask Bob questions about Jack, and Bob gladly answers. Now the question is, how would we check to see if Bob is a reliable conveyor of information about Jack? Our only access to Jack (if any) is through Bob. We believe, that is, that Bob has access and that he tells us things about Jack. If we wanted to verify that Bob is reliable, though, we would need some way of receiving information about Jack that didn’t involve Bob. And further, we would then need some reason to think that that additional information source was reliable.

Bob is like our brain. It provides us with beliefs. Jack is like the world. We believe that our brain has access to it, and as a result gives us true beliefs. We see, though, that we are unable to check the belief-forming processes of our brain. We have nothing to verify our brain-formed beliefs against, as even beliefs about our brain and the beliefs it forms are the product of our brains. One person’s brain forms a belief in an afterlife, another person’s produces the opposite belief. Unfortunately, we don’t have any means of checking our belief-forming processes to know which are lead to truth and which don’t.

The conclusion of the argument: we have no reason to think that any particular belief is true, i.e. no beliefs are reasoned. The believer in Santa Claus does not hold a reasoned belief. Nor the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, or Muslim. Nor the atheist. The consistent atheist cannot believe that his beliefs are the product of reason. No one comes to any beliefs by reason.

Alex Papulis is a non-degree-seeking, non-transfer Degree-seeking Transfer student at Mizzou. After getting a B.A. in Economics in St. Louis and spending some time abroad, he’s settled on philosophy.  He’s enjoyed his year at Mizzou, and looks forward to starting an MA program in Milwaukee next fall.  It would be easier for him to get his assignments done if SASHA wasn’t around.

_________________________________________________________________________

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

SASHA Guest Post: “Can we be atheists and believe in knowledge?” by Alex Papulis

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Today’s article is a guest post by Alex Papulis.

I would like to address this question by first looking at the issue of free will. We start with one premise: all causes are physical. Events are caused by antecedent physical states of the world in conjunction with physical laws. Our thoughts, intentions, choices, decisions, deliberations, etc. are all physical events, and as such are caused by antecedent physical states of the world in conjunction with physical laws.

To say that something is free is to say, at least, that it is the source of its actions. It is clear, though, that our actions are the result of the world being the way it is, and not some “free” agent making a choice and acting it out. Our brains are the way they are at any given point as the result of antecedent states of the world and physical laws relevant to brain function, development, etc. Our thoughts, intentions, etc. are what they are, in turn, as the result of our brains being the way they are in conjunction with the relevant physical laws. The causal chain stretches through us, and so the source of our choices, thoughts, actions, behavior, the very state we are in now, lies beyond ourselves.

Now, it’s either the case that an event is deterministically caused or indeterministically caused. In either case, events are the result of antecedent states of the world acting according to the laws of nature, and whether or not an event is necessitated by antecedent states doesn’t alter the fact that it is the result of those states and laws. As such, an event that is indeterminately caused is still not the product of some “free” agent, as nothing besides the antecedent states of the world and the laws of nature is responsible for the resulting state.

We do not choose to anything. We “choose” to, say, get up and go to work for the same reason that our heart beats: the antecedent state of the world was such as to cause it to be so. When a leaf falls from a tree, it’s because the world was such as to cause that to happen. Likewise with our thoughts, intentions, decisions, emotions, preferences, actions, behavior, etc. There are no causally independent agents moving things.

We now turn to the larger question. Our beliefs are physical events, caused by antecedent states of the world in conjunction with physical laws. Just as our intentions, desires, choices, etc. are caused in us, so also are our beliefs. We hold the beliefs that we hold because the antecedent states of the world and the laws of nature are such as to cause them, and there’s no causally independent agent that influences which beliefs are caused/held.

We see, then, that our beliefs are not held for reasons. We don’t hold a belief because the evidence supported it. Rather, nature produces in us a “conclusion”, a belief that we have examined evidence, a belief that the process of examining evidence leads us to truth, and even a belief that we freely came to a conclusion. In fact, every belief we hold is equally the product of antecedent physical causes. We have the belief that we reason and listen to argument and deduce and infer, but the very belief that we do these things is just as much a product of antecedent physical states of the world as a leaf falling from a tree. Regardless of whether these events are determinate or indeterminate, there’s no agent independent of physical causes. Our beliefs are “given” to us by nature, and there aren’t causally independent agents that decide what to accept.

Why the believer in Mohammed and the believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster believe what they believe is explained in the same way: they don’t have a choice. Likewise with the atheist and the Buddhist. If all causes are physical, the Christian does not hold his beliefs for some reason. They’re simply what he was given.

We can be atheists and believe in knowledge, but what would be the reason for that belief?

Alex Papulis is a non-degree-seeking, non-transfer Degree-seeking Transfer student at Mizzou. After getting a B.A. in Economics in St. Louis and spending some time abroad, he’s settled on philosophy.  He’s enjoyed his year at Mizzou, and looks forward to starting an MA program in Milwaukee next fall.  It would be easier for him to get his assignments done if SASHA wasn’t around.

_________________________________________________________________________

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Reason Rally: 10 hours to go!

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First time here? Read this.

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Hello all!

After an 18-hour drive and a busy evening settling into the hotel, catching up with friends, and preparing for tomorrow, I am beyond exhausted. I’m going to keep this very short: All I have to say is that this is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m so grateful I get to be a part of it. I feel truly confident that things are going to be different after this — the way that atheists are treated by the American public, by the US government, and by our friends & family. I feel like we are making a difference. This is an epic tale, and we’re just getting in on the first pages!

If a picture’s worth 1,000 words, here are two that sum up my night!

Dave with Phil Mason (aka Thunderf00t)

Our group after dinner (Adams Morgan, DC)

(MUCH) more coming soon!

Follow me on Twitter @davemuscato for live updates of the Reason Rally, and throughout the American Atheists conference this weekend.

If you’re in DC and want to hang out, contact me via Twitter or text me at 573-424-0420. Looking forward to seeing you guys!

More to come!

Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

SASHA Guest Post: “Can rationalism become unreasonable?” by Rocket Kirchner

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First time here? Read this.

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Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!

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Today’s article is a guest post by musician, activist, long-time friend of SASHA, and Christian evangelist Rocket Kirchner.

One of the great contributions of Neitzche and Kierkegaard to philosophy, for better or worse, is that they both took the word ”irrational” out of the pejorative. These rebels of the 19th century stood against everyone using the Hegelian dialectic, insisting that existence is a category that relates to the individual, not based on axioms or systems. Both Kierkegaard and Neitzche stood shoulder-to-shoulder in their challenge to the mindset that rationalism was the be-all and end-all. Where they differed, however, was that Neitzche’s answer was the will to power, while Kierkegaard’s was surrendering the will to God. Either way, their inner journeys and how they so brilliantly expressed them in philosophical form were never objectively verifiable or subject to the approval of the Vienna school of Popperian falsification, either with a priori or a postiori certainty.

Rationalism, which sprung as a movement from the Cartesian cogito till now, has reached such a hyper-state in our time that–in my view–we need a balancing act (if only for the sake of argument) from these two genuis rebels to be thrown in the dialectical hopper, to see if rationalism itself has lost its sense of reason. Often when I am in discussions with very intellegent and well-meaning atheists, there seems to be a bottom line on an absolute rationality in order to settle issues concerning questions of perception of reality itself. A good case in point would be a conversation like this:

Atheist:

Seeing as you are a Christian practitioner, I like your practical elements of making this world a better place for others, even if you are philosophically coming from a place of unreality. (Substitute Easter Bunny, Spaghetti Monster, et al).

Me:

Yes, we can agree on making this world a better place, but in all due respect, I fail to see why you would posit a tautological statement that I am coming from a place of unreality.

Atheist:

Why do you fail to see that?

Me:

Because in order to define unreality, you must first define its opposite, namely reality, and that is a very tall order.

And so it goes. The atheist  in question here will, 9 times out of 10, define reality in the Hegelian sense that “the real is rational and the rational is real.” But is it?

The question is begged–Can this all-encompassing rationalism take in (or leave out) enough of the big picture to become paradoxically in and of itself unreasonable? Even in this question, Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Schrodinger’s Cat gnaws at the hyper-rationalist, casting doubt on the ever-proving problem of exact reasoning and perfect verifiable measurement, leaving reality itself, as Kant said, unknowable.

It remains a mystery. Or does it? Now, the thinking deist, theist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim , et al lets the mystery be. Does that make them unreasonable, solipsistic, naive? Are they living in an unreal paradigm? Or is the shoe on the other foot? Is the atheist being unreasonable when embracing an all-encompassing rationalism that claims to have a patent on reality, something that cannot be proven anyway? In other words: Is the ”-ism” in rationalism an impossible overeach to unreality with a Spaghetti Monster and Easter Bunny lurking in their world?

I trust that the reader will not think I’m going out on a limb when I say that any man who becomes only a reasoning machine, no matter how brilliant, is in real danger of allowing his mind to become an ”interloper” that blocks the potential for a full sense of clarity, which we can embrace as human individuals. The fact of the matter is that as a Christian Humanist myself, I have worked well in Orthopraxis with my fellow atheist Humanist friends with no problems. But we all must be very careful, definitionally, with the word REALITY. Anyone who lays claim to it, or seeks to disprove it, becomes unreasonable, by way of assertion devoid of logical deduction.

Rocket Kirchner is a long-time friend of SASHA. He is a professional musician, pacifism activist, Christian evangelist, and life-long student of philosophy.

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Dave Muscato on Dr. Andrew Bernstein, Religion, and Morality

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Hello all,

I gave a talk, “Why Blasphemy Matters,” at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg on Monday (90 miles from Columbia). I look forward to giving the talk to more campus groups in the future. This was only the second time I’ve given that particular talk, and although I think it went well, I also think I can improve it. More about that another time: I found out that a philosopher named Andrew Bernstein would be in town the following evening giving a talk called “Religion vs. Morality.” I decided to stay in town an extra day so I could attend.

As it turns out, the Objectivist Club at UCM had scheduled a dinner with Dr. Bernstein before his 8 PM lecture, and I had the fortune of sitting next to him while we all ate. Dr. Bernstein, or Andy, teaches philosophy at SUNY Purchase. He is an objectivist and proponent of Ayn Rand’s work, as well as a philosopher (and novelist) in his own right. He’s written several books about capitalism, philosophy, and objectivism, lectures internationally, and he also wrote the Cliff’s Notes for Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Me with Andrew Bernstein (on left)

At dinner, topics ranged from the current crop of Republican candidates (he plans to vote for “whichever sorry candidate the Republicans nominate”) to how to get into grad schools (his advice: Where you studied isn’t as important as what you have to say). I told him that although one of my majors is economics, I really know relatively little about market forces, capitalism, international trade, finance, etc, compared to most econ majors. I’ve taken a few required courses in those sorts of things, but my interest is game theory. I study altruism and the evolution of morality, especially its interplay with the history of religion, using the tools from behavioral economics & economic modeling. I admitted that this was my first real exposure to what objectivism is all about. He told me that his talk is not about religion AND morality, but more specifically religion VERSUS morality: in his estimation, an either/or proposal. I thought, this should be interesting!

At 8 PM, I joined an auditorium of people on the UCM campus as Angel Munoz Gomez Andrade, the president of the Objectivist Club, introduced Bernstein. Watching Bernstein speak is a real treat: He has a thick New York accent and a raw, passionate tone. Throughout his speech, he spoke with his hands as much as with his voice. The way he rapped his fingertips on the podium, shifted his weight when weighing what to say next, and stood on his toes to emphasize his points immediately brought to mind Al Pacino’s passion and mannerisms. An audience member, during the Q&A, said that he, lacking a philosophy background himself, had trouble following Bernstein on some of the more complex philosophy, but I found myself having the opposite experience: I think Bernstein has a remarkable ability to take complex philosophical ideas and illustrate them with digestible examples in such a way that they are readily understandable [disclosure: I'm minoring in philosophy].

The purpose of Bernstein’s talk, as stated above, is to argue that religion and morality are fundamentally at odds. Religion, because it is necessarily founded upon faith, requires irrational thinking, which Bernstein argues necessarily leads humans away from our values, and results in nothing short of death. There are certainly historical examples of this — he mentioned faith healing a few times, and the abysmal life expectancy of the third-world versus the first-world today. He argued that morality is, in so many words, whatever helps living things achieve their values, which (objectivism argues) are necessarily dictated by nature. These values are neither subjective in the social-consensus sense, nor the individual “whim” sense, nor the religious sense (via sacred text or divine revelation). According to objectivism, we need only look to the facts of what nature has presented to us in order to determine our values: There is, in fact, no need for subjective disagreement on what we “should” value or strive toward, because nature has already spelled out for us what is good and what is bad, whether we consent to it or not. We are living creatures, and what is “good” is whatever promotes life, and what is “bad” is whatever does not.

Dr. Andrew Bernstein presenting on "Religion vs. Morality" at the University of Central Missouri

I’m reminded of Craig Palmer (Mizzou anthropologist) and Lyle Steadman’s (ASU professor emeritus) definitions concerning moral behavior for humans living in groups: Morality is roughly synonymous with pro-social behavior, and immoral behavior is roughly synonymous with antisocial behavior (see their 2010 book The Supernatural and Natural Selection: The Evolution of Religion). A human being in complete isolation is incapable of moral or immoral action, following this line of thinking: Anything s/he does is morally justifiable if it’s a means toward the end of his survival, by virtue of the very fact that lacking are any other living things to harm in the process.

Objectivism, as I understand it, has this to say about the matter: Natural selection has provided every living thing with some sort of tool (insofar as it is necessary, given its biological niche) to aid in its survival. For an elephant, that might be its massive size, thick hide, tusks, etc. For an elk, this might be its antlers and speed. For a tiger or wolf, claws & teeth. Nature has also “provided” (selected for) fur coats to protect some animals from cold climates. In the case of elephants, huge floppy ears are very important for temperature regulation: They have lots of surface area and LOTS of blood volume, such that the elephant can flap its ears to cool down the temperature of its blood, as another example.

What is “good” or “bad” when we’re talking about these animals behavior? Well, what’s “good” for a tiger or an elephant or mushroom or mosquito or bacterium is whatever aids it in its “mission” to survive and reproduce. Moral reflection or indeed consciousness at all is actually unnecessary for this. Any living thing will, quite naturally, do whatever it needs to do in order to survive and reproduce (else go extinct). What’s “good” is what leads toward this, and what’s “bad” is what leads away from this.

In the case of humans, natural selection actually took away our survival mechanisms (claws, sizable canine teeth, fur coats, etc) some time ago. Ancient primates gave up claws for nails a very long time ago (65-85 million years), and we still have a hint of canines and body hair, though nothing even close to that of our ancestors. What we do have, what nature has provided to us via selection, is something far more interesting, and far more useful, in exchange: rational, thinking brains. These are our survival tools. They allow us to innovate, to invent technologies, and to increase our efficiency. We don’t need claws; we have hand-axes (for an EXCELLENT discussion of the importance of hand-axes to human evolution, see Matt Ridley’s beautifully-written The Rational Optimist). As time went on, ancient humans further innovated to produce hafted axes (axes with handles), spears, arrowheads, and much later, metal bladed weapons, etc.

We don’t need costly (in terms of energy input/output and time invested) guts & digestive systems; we have fire. In fact, we are the only animals that cook our food: By doing so, we are basically outsourcing a large fraction of our ancestors’ digestive process. By investing fewer calories (less energy) in growing and maintaining a complex gut, natural selection was able to divert that energy into growing more complex brains, instead, and the process went ’round and ’round in a magnificent evolutionary upward spiral of exponential innovation. From controlled fire (and therefore bigger brains) came an increased ability to ward off predators and stay warm, especially at night (meaning even less need for caloric investment in muscle mass and large, powerful jaws, and less need for temperature regulation via thick body hair), which led to even more freed-up calories for investment in bigger brains, and so on and so on, until we get to anatomically modern humans some 200,000 years ago.

What’s “good” when it comes to humans specifically? According to my understanding of objectivism, it’s not determined by a god (divine command theory), nor by societal consensus (moral relativism), nor by the individual: Values are dictated to us by nature, intrinsic in the fact that we are living things. What’s “good” is whatever helps us get closer to living up to those values. Except for rare suicidal cases, humans (like all living things) naturally value survival, and except in (relatively) rare cases, humans (like all living things) naturally value reproduction. This is more-or-less a restatement of the biological imperative. According to objectivism, as I understand it, this is sufficient to resolve Hume’s is-ought problem. There are other proposed resolutions to this problem, for example, Sam Harris also claims that science [the application of reason to evidence] can answer moral questions in The Moral Landscape.

The argument for reason as the best tool for achieving human values (or any living thing’s values, for that matter), therefore, neatly falls into place. By rejecting all forms of irrationality — religion included — we are necessarily left with the path of least resistance toward the end of attaining that which [nature has determined] is of value to us. The application of reason, Bernstein argues, is the most efficient, healthiest, and most direct way to reach our goals. Since these goals are dictated by nature and emphatically not subjective, it is an open-and-shut case.

Religion, because it embraces faith (and is, by definition, irrational), is therefore directly at odds with life itself. According to Bernstein, “Religion is a philosophical system based in faith, not reason,” and it necessarily includes an unquestioning obedience to God. Religion views humans as sinful, and a failure to obey God is at the very core of what it means to be immoral, from the perspective of religion. This is so fundamental to the Abrahamic religions that it’s in fact the very basis of sin itself, illustrated by the Fall of Man.

As a student of anthropology, I strongly disagree with this definition of religion, although admittedly “religion” is notoriously difficult to define, and Bernstein was upfront about this being a purely working definition. Some religions (e.g. theistic Satanism) place zero emphasis on obedience to God or indeed encourage disobedience as permissible behavior. Note: I’m not talking about LaVey Satanism here; LaVey explicitly denounced “devil worship” or the idea of praying to Satan, and LaVey Satanists are generally atheists. In fact, atheistic Satanism can, I think, rightly be called “ethical egoism with ritual.” Other examples of religions lacking a necessity of obedience to “God” are Buddhism, Taoism, and many American Indian religions. In the case of Buddhism, the Eightfold Path is a rough stand-in for a revealed text from a god, and in the case of Taoism, the idea is to live in harmony with reality through compassion, moderation, and humility. Although supernatural elements are present in each system, a rule-giving god is conspicuously absent, and disobedience is not immoral per se.

Bernstein’s working definition of religion is sufficient for the Abrahamic religions in this context, but I don’t think he adequately makes the case against all religion, just religions that require obedience to a god (which, admittedly, is most of the ones we’re worried about in practice).

During the Q&A, an audience member asked if there was room for faith in any of this. He said that he is a farmer and gave the example of having faith that it will rain within a certain window of time when choosing exactly when to plant his crops. He cited weather patterns over the last few decades as informing his choice of when to plant. Bernstein rightly pointed out that the farmer, then, is not depending on faith — there is no supernatural element present there. I wanted to add to this that perhaps a better way to word it might be that the farmer doesn’t have faith that it will rain: He has confidence that it will, in the scientific sense (evidence informing probability). This is very, very different from trust (an emotion) and faith (non-evidence-based belief), and we should take care to correct people who use the word “faith” when they mean “confidence.” If evidence is leading to your belief, you are, by definition, confident. There’s a big difference, and I applaud Bernstein on pointing this out.

My other main objection is that Bernstein, while simultaneously praising Scandinavia’s rational, secular approach to the rejection of irrationality, doesn’t seem to give credit where credit is due with regard to the success they have had in the application of liberal-leaning public policy. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc has some of the healthiest people on the planet in terms of nutrition, lifespan, and other factors for which he earlier criticized the Dark Ages for lacking . Phil Zuckerman, in Society Without God: What The Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, makes strong arguments for why life in Scandinavia is downright heavenly (har har) for rational people, and atheists especially: Aside from long lifespans, they have some of the lowest abortion rates, divorce rates, murder rates, illiteracy rates, corruption rates, etc. Yes, they have very high tax rates, but health care and college is accessible to anyone who wants it (as I understand it). Looking at GDP per capita, a favored metric by Bernstein (who quoted these figures several times throughout his talk), is not necessarily an optimal way to compare the living conditions in one country versus another. While after-tax income of course measures “lower” in countries with high tax rates (and I of course admit the obvious role Pigovian taxes play on disincentivizing innovation), if tax-funded services are provided in lieu of direct income, if this is not accounted for in one’s metric, an individual’s actual standard of living may be more-or-less unaffected, even as the GDP per capita falls. This is why other metrics have come into favor over GDP per capita, which is easier to calculate but provides less information about the overall picture. More informative metrics are, for example, the Gini coefficient (based on the Lorenz curve), the Human Poverty Index (a composite index which accounts for literacy, unemployment, probability of falling below the poverty line, and the probability, at birth, of surviving to age 60), among others. GDP per capita as a metric, perhaps most importantly, only very weakly accounts for life satisfaction and experienced utility (see my previous article on welfare economics here).

I strongly agree with Bernstein’s overall message that religion and morality cannot peaceably coexist. In the words of Sam Harris, “The problem of faith is that it is a conversation-stopper. As long as you don’t have to give reasons for what you believe, you have effectively immunized yourself against the power of human conversation. You hear religious people say things like, ‘There’s nothing that can be said that will change my mind.’ Just imagine that said in medicine. If there’s nothing that can be said that will change your mind, if there’s no evidence or argument that can be educed, that proves that you are not any state of the world into account in your beliefs. The problem with this is that when the stakes are high, we have a choice between conversation and violence.” Bernstein made essentially the same point in his talk, that giving credibility to faith necessarily results in an irreconciliable struggle for (theoretically!) rational animals like us.

Bernstein is a strong public speaker, a good conversationalist, and extremely knowledgable in his field. I recommend him to any campus group interested in guest lectures about objectivism, reason/rationality, or why religion is harmful to societies.

Until next time!

- Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!