Via Jeffrey Shallit , I found an article by Rebecca Bynum that was full of such Profound and Telling Wrongness that I just had to dedicate a whole post to dissecting it — since I think it presents the root of what’s wrong with most similar arguments against science’s “humiliation” of humanity.

The first thing to note is the title: The Progressive Diminishment of Man. It is fairly telling, since the author seems to be saying: “Hark! See, I am bravely and controversially using the True and Correct concept of Man, before the world hath gone Insane and the Feminazis started invading our Literature. I look to a Nobler bygone age, where Men were Men, life expectancy was 12 and you could hang an Ethnic without losing status in Civilised Society.” Perhaps I overdo it, nevertheless let us go on with a selection of the juiciest bits.

It may be argued that what man believes himself to be determines not only his conduct, but the substance of what he feels is possible, thus determining the scope of art and culture. The ostensible purpose of science is to serve man through the ever-expanding knowledge of facts, and yet as science has ascended, many scientists have mounted a purposeful attack on the ancient concept of man in order to diminish him in his own estimation. The feeling among scientists seems to be that man does not deserve a privileged place in the universe.

There is an interesting argument to be had there on what the purpose of science is, but why bother when you can simply assert it? And if it be for the benefit of people, there is an interesting debate to be had about which way the sum total of science’s benefits and drawbacks go, but why bother when you can just ignore the very idea that there’s been any benefit?

In the space of a few short generations, man has descended from seeing himself as a little less than the angels to king of the beasts to nothing more than a complex machine. The effect this has had on culture, on art and literature, has been devastating. For as the essential importance of man has decreased, so has his ability to portray life in anything other than absurd terms…But even in Shakespeare the idea of the hero, so prominent in Greek tragedy, was already diminished.

This is of course part of the standard discourse that anything new including art can only be a debasement of former Purer forms — a natural consequence of believing meaning is always imposed from above. It is true that our view of the world as informed by science might have made some art obsolete. The best example (stolen from Dennett) is that in the middle ages, people genuinely believed in love at first sight, which was the staple of serious literature (ie. the romance). Now that we are less psychologically naive, most of us would never be able to look at such a story again without irony. It might seem that an innocence has been lost. But I think it’s just a part of humanity growing up, and pining for art based on things we know to be false is basically pining for the tooth fairy stories of your childhood. Finally this particular example I think has enriched art: by losing the formulaic romances that have nothing to do with the complexities of love and relationships we have opted for art where this is portrayed in a way more likely to be of value to us in our lives.

Even that last bastion of heroism, the military, has reduced the description of its mission to nothing more than a “job.”

Wow. Just wow. Turns out my excessive mockery about Bynum pining for a more violent and unjust world of yesteryear wasn’t that excessive after all. Again, I might agree that the “romance” of war has lost esteem in our public consciousness. Although it probably has to do with knowing a lot more about war as opposed to science. But to think that it’s a bad thing–? And to lament about learning those pesky little “facts” that mean violence is much less acceptable today–?

The high priests of scientism, from Stephen Hawking to Richard Dawkins, argue that given enough time, science will eventually answer all questions, and implied is the idea that science, and science alone, contains all truth. However, upon examination, we find great areas where science has already abdicated. Science cannot, for example, explain the difference between a living and a dead organism in purely scientific terms.

Such grand statements about the limits of science often rely on stating things that aren’t true. Of course we know the difference between a living and dead organism. And one of the great triumphs of science was to put this in naturalistic terms after centuries of people saying this was completely impossible and there was a vitalist spirit, an “essence” of life that mystically permeated living creatures. She goes on with many other things science supposedly can’t explain, almost all (AFAIK) completely wrong. Shallit dismantles those in his post.

Darwin once famously asked, why thought, “being a secretion of the brain” should be considered “more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter?” Though thought, like gravity, is non-material, both, according to Darwin, can be safely assumed to be the products of matter. The secret of atomic organization and the organization of life, according to scientism, is thought somehow to be contained in the smallest dead particles of mindless material. Yet when we look at reality, we must admit that matter without pattern would remain undifferentiated and therefore it is pattern which is the determining factor, not matter alone. And if pattern does not exist in mind or as mind, then where does it exist?

It is literally true that we live in a world composed of pattern. One does not see the wind, but we see the effect of it; we do not see mind, but we certainly see its effects in the observable patterns of reality. To attribute complex patterns or even simple patterns to mysterious mindless forces only deepens the mystery rather than clarifying it. The fact that mind is non-material does not mean it is not real.

Aah yes, the science-can-never-explain-consciousness-without-a-non-material-”essence” argument! The last bastion of creationism… Well I’m currently doing a grad diploma on that very topic, so more on the details of the various ways such arguments are wrong later. For now, it’s enough to note that I have looked at these 2 paragraphs blindly without really understanding a word of what Bynum is actually saying, if anything at all. But it’s not a bug, I think this is a central feature of such arguments about consciousness.

The human genome has now been found to contain a comparable number of genes as any other vertebrate and this is evidence that our bodies are no more complex than that of a dog or an ape. Yet this discovery hasn’t prevented the proliferation of “scientific” theories about the genetic basis of language, art and culture. Language alone, with its well neigh infinite complexity, were it genetically based, would logically require an immense amount of genetic space. And if language cannot be found in our genes, how could art or culture be found there?

Of course we’re as complex as dogs, if you use the genome as the complexity measure. So what? A dog has a sense of smell millions of times more powerful than a human and a human can write heartrending poetry. Using the genome as the measure gives equal weight to both abilities — but why do you have to use this measure (and then complain about it)? The bit about language requiring infinite genetic space would mean that all the sentences we utter were pre-programmed into us. This indeed would make humans terrible dullards — but it’s telling that Bynum made this mistake when visualising what a naturalistic explanation of language would look like.

Animals are also undoubtedly conscious, but human beings are conscious of being conscious. This implies a level of mind experience above that of animals.

And we know that animals like dolphins and apes aren’t conscious of being conscious why? Because that would diminish Man. QED. Or, as she argues earlier, because apes cannot master human language in any meaningful sense. Looks like Bynum hasn’t moved on from Descartes’ views on animals. Which is rather sad: he claimed that they couldn’t feel pain at all (being machines and lacking souls and all) so if you vivisect a dog and it cries and whimpers it’s only sound escaping from a mechanical body. That’s another telling thing about such arguments — they do for animals exactly what the accuse materialists of doing which is “reducing” them to automata. But surely if being conscious of being conscious is what counts, then is it only wrong to torture chimps because it brutalises us?

It is because science has progressively diminished man in his own eyes that philosophy has been stunted…The reinvigoration of Western culture must include the restoration of man to a place of dignity in a meaningful universe.

I see, I see. But wouldn’t this require some…umm…arguments that science has been…you know…WRONG about these things? Oh, but I missed the part where Bynum dismantles modern linguistics in a few sentences, seeing what they could not see for all their booksmarts! After all, somebody’s got to stand up to the experts.

Her essay needs to be printed and framed on the wall of everyone who believes in reasoned inquiry. It has everything that most arguments against science get wrong — just more of it.

Chapters 13 and 14 form a bizarre series of incidents about the continuation of Saul’s military campaign against the Philistines.

War profiteering

The first is the description of war profiteering by the Philistines (13:19-21). As mentioned before, the book quite suddenly launches into a situation where, contrary to the impression you get from the first chapters, the Philistines are the ones really in control over most of the land and the Israelites are their quasi-vassals. As part of their counter-insurgency measures, they prohibit all Israelites from making or keeping any weapons. Makes sense, really. Except now that the Philistines have been offended and it’s an all-out war, this makes things a bit difficult for Israelite fighters.

The end result is that they end up sneaking around and going to Philistine smiths to buy spears. So a part of the Philistine population is actively profiteering and aiding the enemy of their ethnic group. I don’t know if this passage was meant to have irony but that’s how it struck me. It is mentioned (later on I think) that there were also Israelites who were allied with the Philistines. The authors here present a nuanced political and military situation — a far cry from the cliched conflict of all against all that Biblical stories so often revert to. But interestingly enough there is no judgement passed here on either side. This makes it a refreshing account of conflict. And probably closer to historical reality than “and YHWH gathered ALL the Israelites who slew ALL the Ammonites”. I guess this is why I keep saying Samuel’s the best written narrative in the Bible.

Jonathan’s stupidity

But just when you thought things were getting too naturalistic, supernatural stupidity makes a comeback. This time it’s Saul’s son Jonathan who with his arm-bearer comes to the foot of a Philistine fortress. The Philistines are about to start taunting the two of them and he expects them to say something like “we’ll get you!”. So, as any Israelite for whom YHWH is a daily reality, he makes an announcement that if instead they taunt them asking them to come up to the fortress, it’s meant to be a sign from YHWH that he’ll deliver the whole fortress into their [four!] hands. Because of course a god’s favour is the most reasonable explanation for the taunt “come up here and we’ll show you”…

Still, YHWH seems to love bringing victories to the Israelites when they’re at their underdoggiest. So it works: Jonathan and the other lad take all of them down and are then declared heroes by the Israelite army. So unfortunately stupidity and the endagering of one’s own life pays off. Nobody makes Jonathan scrub ancient-Israelite latrines with ancient-Israelite toothbrushes for going on a fool’s errand. Alas, this is a cognitive bias that persists to this day: in a dangerous situation, someone can do the most reckless thing and if by a fluke it pays off they are likely to avoid any further scrutiny.

Jonathan’s brilliance

Fortunately Jonathan redeems himself straight away. Very soon, the campaign reaches a critical moment and Saul makes a great executive decision. To get the troops to fight more zealously, he places a curse on whoever eats anything before evening until Saul is avenged of his [Philistine] enemies. Yep, like his son he revels in stupidity, this time endangering the whole campaign. All for a show of loyalty, and probably to try get YHWH to do another miracle.

So they’re going through the woods discover — dramatic organ chord! — some honey on the ground. Jonathan wants to eat some but is told about his father’s curse. “Bah, humbug!” he says, mocking his father’s stupidity in forbidding the one thing that might help in battle. He tastes some and shows the troops that this energy boost is doing him a good turn. However none of them follow his example.

Later, Saul asks YHWH (as you do) if they will win the upcoming battle. No answer. Feeling someone must have broken his curse, he starts casting lots to find the culprit (again, as you do). He makes a point of saying that this person will die whoever it is, even if it’s his son Jonathan. Yep: suspense, dramatic irony, this story has it all. Interestingly enough, YHWH doesn’t answer Saul which makes it seem he disapproves of Jonathan’s eating of the honey despite it being the sane self-preserving thing to do. Hmm. Of course YHWH isn’t that opposed to people sacrificing their children for what’s essentially his sake — but then again there’s a rich secular tradition of kings killing their sons so let’s cut him a little slack shall we?

Jonathan is saved only by the troops, who are still in love with his fortress stunt. The commentator Rashi (like most rabbis eager to read a tamer, saner postbiblical Talmudic ethic into the story) says that they did this by releasing Saul from his original oath using the proper procedures of Jewish law. Of course the plain reading is just that they bullied Saul into not killing his son, because he needed support of his army and they could have done something to Saul.

The thing I find interesting is that this whole incident shows YHWH as a moral relativist of the highest degree. According to Rashi, if the troops didn’t release Saul from his oath, he would have had to kill Jonathan under the law and therefore it would have been the “right” thing to do. But now that he happened to have been redeemed (through the fluke of being well-liked), it is now “wrong” of Saul to kill him. A thin thread this YHWH sets up between life and death.

In the last 2 posts about morality, I looked at moral statements being:

• based on empathy
• not provable from non-moral statements
• being non-arbitrary because of their evolutionary history

Today I’ll look at what this means for actual morality talk. The first point is that morality seems to require both empathy and reason. From the first post, without empathy, I don’t see how reason alone can do the job in building up moral statements. Without reason on the other hand all we have are our gut feelings with nothing to build a robust system from. For instance we know that many animals have considerable empathy, so the restrictions in their moral systems probably come from their limits of reasoning, generalisation and extrapolation.

It is also interesting to note that empathy and reason are probably not completely distinct but both are strongly associated with the evolution of a general-purpose intelligent system. Thus, for a system to be able to easily reason about others, a nice shortcut is it if simulates the reactions/feelings of others (ie. empathises with them). The converse relation holds too: in order to empathise with someone properly, you must be able to work out the consequences for them amidst a complex range of possibilities (ie. reason it out). So, we have two elements, both evolved, both non-arbitrary and both not provable externally.

So how do we account for disagreements? This was one of the main things brought up in the comments. Let’s take as a specific example, whether we should implement the death penalty. The disagreements to be had about the death penalty probably fall in 2 categories:

The first category is disagreement about facts, eg. whether the death penalty deters crime, what the chances are of being wrongly executed etc. For this to be a real disagreement, both parties have to agree on the same basic moral statements (driven by empathy) — if they don’t then it makes no sense to argue the mechanics of it. Of course these disagreements fall squarely into the reason hemisphere and can be resolved objectively, since the values themselves are in common.

The interesting thing is that there is an objective right answer for a given set of values. For instance if we have certain criteria of what makes for a good society, then there is a fact of the matter about whether having or not having the death penalty will make for a better society. Usually we can only estimate this (since we can’t do a control experiment keeping all other variables the same) but it IS important that an answer exists.

You might poo-poo this saying that it’s missing the whole point of moral disagreements by reducing these to something trivial. But I think that a surprising number of moral disagreements (probably a majority) fall squarely in the category of which path gives the best result for a set of values we all agree on. And it shouldn’t be surprising, since our empathetic nature is very similar, what with us being very biologically similar — whereas it’s the world that’s complex making the actual factual decisions difficult.

Of course there is the other side which is disagreement about values. For the death penalty, it might be the question of whether personal retribution is a legitimate (and important) consideration. So this might be a truly intractable position where two people start from different biologically-driven atomic moral propositions. A lot of the time this stems from the interplay of harm and disgust that I’ve blogged about before. There actually seem to be 5 basic elements: (harm, fairness, loyalty, respect, purity/disgust), see this TED talk for details.

These arethe 5 types of moral statements given as a gift by evolution to our “gut” and these are the ones we struggle to prioritise in those moral disagreements that don’t depend on facts. The importance each of these holds is what’s not provable (the subjective part of morality) but even so, just like the more basic concept of blanket empathy, these are non arbitrary. A normal person does not consistently prioritise disgust over harm: someone who fails to save a person drowning in shit would be labeled a sociopath.

It is the fact that these 5 are wired with reasonable variation that’s the source of those types of disagreements. However, even here, there is still a healthy range — there should be no need to convince any normal person that harm should take priority over anything else*.

So I think there’s a counterintuitive conclusion: morality is not provable but neither is it arbitrary. If we simply follow our biological tools of reason and empathy (not like we have a choice anyway!), by breaking down arguments into facts and values, decomposing the values according to the 5 intuitions and so on we can even arrive at situations where you can show how something follows, assuming you’re not arguing with a sociopath. This is as close to objective morality we can come but by jolly, I think we should take it.

It might seem that something is missing from this, that this account is missing some “key” ingredient that makes morality morality. More on this later but this is probably our false intuition talking — the one that thinks morality is somehow magical with an “essence of good” that permeates good deeds. But this is the same intuition that thinks living beings have an “essence of life” and minds have a “soul”…

*Of course evolution also gifted us with inconsistencies and blindspots in these, for instance the trolley problem. This is where the fun has been for all these centuries. The best I can propose is a transhumanist solution: once we can manipulate ourselves we can come up with a sane priority system for values and then implement it consistently.

• An interview with a Nigerian scammer: Part 1|Part 2|Part 3
• How many US citizens think gay and lesbian soldiers should be allowed to serve openly? depends on whether you use the term “homosexual” or “gay/lesbian” in your poll question wording
• I told you so: Congo death toll rivals the Holocaust
• A flipbook history of the universe
• Monty Python put to the use of skepticism. And again.
• The world’s 50 freakiest animals
• Teach the controversy…not that one!
• A great parable about AI
• Does Tiger Woods owe you an apology?
• When homophobic stereotypes come to life
• The world’s becoming more like The Onion: Uganda Pastor Airs Gay Porn in Church. Funniest part of the story: some parishioners wept upon watching said porn.
• A wonderful online musical toy
• How does homeopathy work? The answer — and website — are as necessary as they are obvious.
• Now that’s gallows humour!

In the previous post, I argued that morality is made up of basic atomic statements (eg. “causing another being to suffer for its own sake is wrong”) that cannot be proved or further broken down into non-moral statements. In a way, I’ve actually argued that metaethics (ie. creating an over-arching system that proves morality) is an impossible enterprise. However, this apparent copping-out seems to present several problems. The first as pointed out in the first comment is how to deal and explain disagreements about morality. That I’ll post on later — today I want to address the other criticism, that this makes moral statements arbitrary or implies a total relativism.

Now, the charge of relativism is readily used by a huge number of opponents of any secular explanations of morality, as if this was some awesome argument that would be enough to destroy any theory of morality. And of course rhetorically it’s a powerful trick: “are you saying you can’t condemn Hitler within your moral system?”. There are two problems with playing the relativism card. The first is that if it really is true that moral statements can’t be proved without moral assumptions then all moral systems are relativist in that none of them can prove that, say, Hitler was immoral. The second problem is one of application. If I was to be murdered, tortured or raped tomorrow, it would probably not be by a moral relativist but a moral non-relativist. And I venture to say that, contrary to the assertions of the religious right, moral relativists do not behave any worse than average. Which would be a very revealing thing about the nature of moral systems.

Of course the classic argument — one that I want to address — is the argument from reverse morality. For this, consider a conversation between myself and a detractor.

Detractor: So you don’t believe morality comes from a god or that it’s derivable from logic, science or anything else other than morality?
Michael: Right
Detractor: And from your previous post you think that morality is absent from sociopaths meaning that it requires some kind of biological motivation?
Michael: Of course. The basis of it all is empathy which has to be hard-wired into you as a motivation. There’s no reason to think you can be reasoned into it.
Detractor: But then doesn’t make morality completely arbitrary?
Michael: What do you mean?
Detractor: I mean we happen to have empathy because we evolved it. So it’s the mere luck of our evolutionary history, right? We could have evolved anti-empathy instead, in which case the protagonist of your previous little dialogue would have been wanting to torture the puppy and it would be the sociopath who would want to stop them!
Michael: Well, as the great Jack McCoy from Law and Order once said, if things were different they wouldn’t be the same.
Detractor: That was a cheap answer…
Michael: On the contrary, I think it shows that you’ve answered your own question. If we were all perfectly malevolent then we’d be perfectly malevolent. And then, no logical argument alone could dissuade us from our malevolence.
Detractor: Well then — aren’t we lucky we drew the right evolutionary card!
Michael: Are you saying it’s by chance?
Detractor: Well, if we could have been perfectly malevolent.
Michael: Well herein lies the problem. According to you, morality is some abstract label you can just attach to any action — as if the morality of an action was something supernaturally above and beyond is real-world consequences. But I think that although it’s conceivable that we could have evolved to be perfectly malevolent, the presence of empathy is no coincidence. I mean is it a coincidence that a species with the most powerful mind on earth thus far evolved as a social species with complex relationships, rather than as a solitary species?
Detractor: No.
Michael: And is it a coincidence that within complex social networks, the strategy of altruism (even if it’s reciprocal altruism) might happen rather than a complete war of all against all that’s less manageable?
Detractor: No.
Michael: And is it a coincidence that within complex social networks, we’d evolve the mental machinery to learn from others by putting ourselves in their place? And that this same mental machinery is essentially what empathy (or at least the rudiments of empathy) is?
Detractor: No, of course not. But then again, aren’t you engaging in some just-so stories and speculation? Couldn’t there just as well be other planets where morality evolves completely differently? Haven’t you read Three Worlds Collide?
Michael: Right, and yet I don’t see how any intelligent species can evolve without the principle of empathy, even if it’s implemented in a vastly different way than ours. Combine that with logic and things might not be so arbitrary at all.
Detractor: And if you can’t?
Michael: Well what difference would it make? Even if everyone in the universe was malevolent would that change anything for you? If you were born with the biology of a normal human, this morality is what’s part of your life — you have no choice!
Detractor: And yet something is definitely missing from this picture…

More on why I think it looks like something’s missing later.

In the last 18 months of blogging I’ve been meaning to do a few posts about morality and my theory of ethics. I’m not sure I have a theory yet but some loosely connected thoughts. At least I’ve stopped procrastinating about this so below and in the next few posts, a discussion on morality.

Consider the following conversation between you and someone else. You are in an empty room with a window and a door. You turn towards the door and when you turn back, you find that this Someone Else is in the room.

You: You got in through the window!
Someone Else: No I didn’t.
You: But you could only have gotten in through the window and the door, right?
Someone Else: Right.
You: And I was watching the door so it couldn’t have been the door.
Someone Else: I agree.
You [incredulously]: So then…it must have been the window!
Someone Else: No it wasn’t.
You [pythonesquely]: Now look here my good lad! If either A or B is true and we know B is not true this means that A is true.
Someone Else: Nah.
You: But — what do you mean? It’s just a basic law of logic!
Someone Else: Right, but you haven’t proved that this law holds.
You: No, but I don’t need to prove that–

Someone Else: –what’s more, all logical inferences are derived from more logic. It’s circular reasoning! You’re using logic to prove logic. Now, if you started with non-logic and then were able to get to logic I’d listen to you.

Now, would anyone think that Someone Else has just posed a serious challenge to logic? Definitely not, logic is what it is and to demand that it be justified by something else is only going to lead to an infinite regress. And yet, with morality the same situation is taken seriously. Consider the following conversation between you and someone else, who is about to brutally torture a puppy.

Someone Else: I’m going to brutally torture a puppy.
You: Really?
Someone Else: Yep, I’ll break all its bones, slice off the skin, put it in a vice, starve it and slowly roast it over a few days. All this while torturing its mother in front of its eyes. I’m an expert in dog physiology so I know how to inflict the most unbearable suffering — both physical and emotional — whilst keeping said puppy alive and conscious.
You: But…that’s so wrong!
Someone Else: No it isn’t.
You: What do you mean? It’s just basic morality.
Someone Else: Right, but you haven’t proved morality to me. Show me that it is wrong for me to torture this puppy and I’ll stop.
You: But I don’t need to prove that–

Someone Else: –what’s more, all moral statements are derived from more moral statements. It’s circular reasoning! You’re using morality to prove morality. Now, if you started with non-morality and then were able to get to morality, I’d listen to you. But as Hume pointed out in the is-ought problem, this is impossible. So the puppy gets it.

The second Someone Else is a morality sociopath, indifferent to the suffering of others. Now, a lot of work within ethics (specifically meta-ethics) has been about trying to justify a particular ethical system (eg. utilitarianism). Often the aim has really been to derive some sort of morality from non-morality. Maybe someone someday will do this but I’ve never seen a convincing argument for this and there’s no reason to think this could be done. I think Hume was right in that morality stems from motivations (which stem from emotions) as opposed to cold facts. The mere fact that Someone Else knows that a puppy will suffer terribly does not compel them to stop. Facts by themselves cannot compel but motivations can. And yet, attempting to derive morality from “first principles” seems to be trying to make the facts somehow compel action.

The first Someone Else can be thought of as a logic-sociopath, indifferent to the basics of logic (or at least claiming to be). Even if we think they really ARE indifferent to ALL logic, we would not feel compelled to derive logic for him using non-logic and our inability to do this does not bother us. I think the general sociopath should get the same treatment.

What I conclude from this:

1. [As far as I know] it’s not possible to “prove” that something is immoral to someone who doesn’t have the motivations for basic moral acts (ie. a sociopath).
2. This means we should not expect basic moral statements to break down into further things that aren’t moral statements.

Next time I’ll see what I think this means about objective morality and our “evolved” sense of morality.

Within the English-speaking world, the most popular religion — by far — is Christianity. Within the English-speaking blogging world, the most popular religion is also Christianity — also by a significant amount. Therefore in critiques of religion or discussions between atheists and religious people, the most common setup is a Christian viewpoint against an atheist viewpoint.

All of this is uncontroversial and mundane. But one thing here that puzzles me is the ease with which debates then seem to settle on discussions of capital-g-singular “God”. In many cases there is an implicit agreement between all parties to use this term — and yet its use certainly privileges the Christian position unnecessarily.

Capital-g-singular God implies a specific deity amongst the pantheon of deities. Taken by itself within the average English-speaking online discussion, it sneaks in the baggage of omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence and so forth — all without good justification and quite often without any objection from the person defending a godless position.

The small-g-singular “a god” on the other hand takes away the standard superlative attributes but still privileges a monotheistic position. The small-g-plural “gods” doesn’t suffer from any of these problems. It is the most general, encompassing all religions with one or more deities and assumes the least. I think that if someone asks me to talk about a term without prompting me it is the one it makes most sense to use, at least when arguing about something like the possibility of “higher” intelligence, generic design arguments, generic first cause arguments, generic arguments from morality and the like.

“God” is appropriate for specifically Christian conceptions of a deity. However, the interesting thing about most contemporary arguments by apologists is that they are not about YHWH (ie. the Christian god, a.k.a. “God”) but at best a more amorphous, faceless, generic “god”. And at worst, the argument is just as successful for the little-g-plural gods.

I think people should be more aware of this and question whether the capital-g use is justified a bit more so the label is not slipped in through the back door. To take just one very blatant example, the atheism entry on the previously mentioned Consevapedia states that atheism is the “denial of the existence of God”. Too bad they take this ridiculous definition from the generally respected Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see here], one of the best online resources. So this unnecessary deference pervades academic and secular circles and not just those of religious apologists.

Another thing to consider is that there is probably a case of linguistic deference in the capitalisation of God — a god or gods can seem to be deliberately “disrepectful” of the dominant mainstream monotheistic discourse. Of course this isn’t true — a generic god needs capitalisation no more than a diabolical deity, a splendid spirit or a terrible totem. But it does highlight once more how ingrained is the said dominant mainstream monotheistic discourse, such that the mere act of not presuming it is easily read as rudeness or even discrimination(!).

I think this means the use of the generic god is needed more not less. So I humbly welcome All Godless to take this up as their main word for all things godlike. Especially since a great number of religious arguments reference the most generic of gods.

I found some nifty videos/animations all to do with scale:

• A scale zoom of the universe
• A scale zoom of biological objects from coffee bean to carbon atom.
• Taking 3 days to create the earth, YHWH set himself quite the task to make ‘the stars’ in one day. This video explains the magnitude of the mistake
• Best one yet: true math porn! If you’ve ever seen a zoom video of a Mandelbrot Fractal you might be annoyed that it ends so soon. Well THIS ONE goes for a full 10 mins complete with psychedelic music! 10 mins of zooming makes this fractal billions of times bigger than our universe and you’re zooming into it much faster than the speed of light. Amazing stuff.

Non-animation links:

• New device for the blind which gives a picture by stimulating the tongue.

• Comedy gold: Yahoo Answers proves there really is such a thing as a stupid question
• Great post from Takis about a prisoners problem that seems impossible to solve but isn’t.
• A takedown of the nonsense that was circling the media about a month ago about a study that supposedly concluded the G-spot is a myth.
• Greta Christina giving a lecture on atheism and sexuality
• Test how good you are at estimating your own certainty/uncertainty
• A zero rupee note to shame Indian public officials into not asking for bribes.
• Worst rabbi ever
• US soldier waterboards his own child. Funnily enough the papers don’t hesitate to call this particular case torture.
• Great article on the experiences of children being raised in racist extremist families. Hat tip to BroadSnark

Introducing Revilo P Oliver

A few months ago I was introduced to the late professor Revilo P Oliver*. Not personally that is, but his writings . Which is just as well — Oliver was one of the last of the “hyper-intellectual” hyper-racists. He was a professor of classics (”Western” classics, naturally), philology etc, but lectured consistently on political/racial matters up until his death in 1994. He is quite entertaining in that he combines extreme racism and crazy paranoia in a way that is almost never encountered today. He was a fossil from a bygone era, a professor who believed that atheism plus evolution meant eugenics, amongst other things. As such, some of his arguments are very instructive in the ways of history.

Introducing Chomsky['s Language Acquisition Theories]

Most people would have heard about the linguist Noam Chomsky from his anarcho-socialist political activities and “extreme” criticism of the establishment that spans decades. And in fact he resembles Oliver in his longevity of argument and constant engagement with events as the years roll on. However, what I think is more important about him are his theories on language. These have been more influential on linguistics than any other for decades.

On language acquisition and development, Chomsky postulates that what’s special about language is its capacity for recursion and potentially infinite structures. An example would be the sentence “Mary thinks that John knows that Frank sees that Claire wants that…” The ability to process such structures has evolved in a subsystem of the human brain called the Language Acquisition Device. The brain therefore expects language in certain forms and the only thing a child acquires is the parameters of his/her specific language. The basic knowledge of language is therefore innate, and a child “acquires” a language as opposed to “learning” it.

Revilo on Chomsky

Now, Oliver wrote an article about Chomsky’s theories that is an absolute classic about how racists and cranks interpret science. The article is here (usual warning about batshit craziness and extreme racism applies).

Revlio’s first “misunderstanding” is that he confuses Chomsky’s idea of language acquisition as being innate to humans (with the specific language only affecting the switches of the system) with the idea that language acquisition is innate to each individual race**.

Strictly applied, the theory would state, for example, that Indo-European languages are varieties of the native language of Aryans, corresponding to the structure of their minds, while Japanese is the native language of the largely Mongolian but hybrid race that has now made their small and poor country the leading industrial nation of the world, the language corresponding to the way in which they naturally think. One has, as I have said, to allow for the human ability to simulate and emulate the conduct of alien races. (On the lowest level, a nigger may be taught to behave in public like a member of a civilized race.)

Revilo also seems to be fond of the idea that there is something intrinsic about each language that limits the mindset of the speaker. This is a separate hypothesis (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) that has fallen out of favour. Of course it has nothing to do with Chomsky’s theory. If anything according to Chomsky it is the exact opposite — human languages are seen to be almost identical with very minor variations, therefore they are more likely to be the product of a similar, not a different, mindset across cultures. Undeterred by this, here’s Revilo:

When you turn to languages that are not Indo-European, you are confronted by quite different and seemingly “unnatural” modalities of thought. Chinese and Japanese are striking illustrations of this (try reading a literal, word-for-word translation from one of them), but Semitic languages are also alien to you

What’s interesting is that Revilo is very Chomskian on Indo-European languages. In the article he states that they are very similar and differ only in small parameters. He [deliberately] misses that Chomsky would extend this to all languages. But this goes against Revilo’s dogma that Semitic and Asian languages are Very Foreign.

Of course the fact that the arguments of such an extreme racist are flawed isn’t very interesting or novel by itself. What I find interesting is the motivation. Part of me wants to think he genuinely misunderstandood Chomsky because he read him through lenses where race is everything and really was unable to grasp the concept of a universally innate language acquisition device. The other part of me thinks it’s unlikely that he could read into Chomsky the very opposite of what he was saying, so it must be deliberate. But I’m betting for someone so extreme, the two halves might blend together: he might well think he is reading Chomsky with flaws and then relating what Chomsky “should” have said. It’s not that uncommon to give the most charitable reading you can of someone else’s view. But to Revilo the most charitable reading is completely insane, thereby he may well be partly misunderstanding and partly lying.

The other thing to note is how easily it is for someone to attribute to an authority the very exact opposite to what they really think. It’s done more often than we’re aware of when people flat-out lie, but it is also quite easy to delude yourself into thinking someone’s views support yours because “of course he/she must have meant what I mean since the alternative is just incoherent”!

To see how far Revilo is able to invert Chomsky’s views, let’s end with the paragraph I found most amusing in its craziness and most dripping in vile hate. This is Revilo speculating on whether Chomsky believes in the Holocaust:

What Chomsky himself believes is unknown. He is, however, an intelligent man with a scientific education and, naturally, an atheist, and he must have some knowledge of physics and chemistry. I am sure, therefore, that he privately doubts the story that the tribal deity, old Yahweh, suspended the operation of the laws of nature to enable the Germans to vaporize or otherwise annihilate millions or billions of his own masterpieces.

*His name is a palindrome that was in the family for generations.
**I was going to put race in scare quotes but then realised that an article about Revilo should have every second word in scare quotes. I hereby give up.

I have a new post up on Young Australian Skeptics with some amusing ads I noticed. Here’s the start:

99% of marketing material is stupid, which in addition to being a source of frustration can be a source of entertainment. Here are two items I recently encountered.

Item the First

While holidaying in northern New South Wales over the new year, I came across this pamphlet about healing and Reiki. It was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read, cosmically dense in its use of alt med stock phrases and cliches.

Continue reading and see the stupidity…