God commanded it, the Israelites did it, and that settles it.

There's still a great deal to talk about when it comes to morality, but the previous post was getting pretty long and I had to end it somewhere. But since I brought up William Lane Craig and the Divine Command theory of morality, I can't resist making the following point.

Craig, it will be remembered, raised eyebrows when he defended the slaughter of the Canaanites as recounted in the Book of Joshua. Craig had been importuning Richard Dawkins to debate him for some time, and Dawkins used Craig's defense as a convenient excuse to decline.

Now, I'm sure Craig is personally a reasonably moral guy, and doesn't approve of genocide as a general principle. However, he's hamstrung by his biblical literalism and his Divine Command Theory. If God commands genocide, then genocide must be A-OK.

At the same time, Craig realizes that the Book of Joshua, with its blood-soaked tale of the Israelites massacring their way across the Promised Land in search of lebensraum, is horrific to modern sensibilities. Its obvious evil has to be explained away. Craig twists himself into a pretzel trying to do so.

The irony is that by acknowledging that God's command to commit genocide has to be "spun" in order to be made palatable to the modern reader, Craig is undermining one of his own favorite arguments for God's existence, the one that goes: "Absolute morality cannot exist without God, absolute morality exists, therefore God exists."

If God were the one and only source of morality as Craig believes and argues, no spin would be necessary because no-one would feel any horror at the idea of Canaanites being wiped out. You could sum it up with a bumper sticker: "God commanded it, the Israelites did it, and that settles it."

By trying to spin the story, Craig is tacitly admitting that there is another source of morality - our own human judgment. We can recognize that genocide is evil, independently of what any ancient dusty scrolls have to say. If the bible god existed, the supremely moral act would be to say to him: "Fuck you, asshole, I don't care if you send me to hell, I still won't worship you." That's what I mean by Good despite God.

Anyway, Craig's argument backfires on him and strengthens my contention that we are inherent decision-makers on morality whether we recognize it our not. Continued human progress (and even survival) depends on realizing this fact, getting better at making decisions, and doing so on a basis of rationality and empathy for our fellow creatures.

Good despite God

In a previous post, I mentioned in passing: "I would argue that even if we knew for a fact that God existed, that would not automatically make him the one and only possible source of morality." I now want to explain what I meant by this.

In the hypothetical situation I'm considering, we know without question that God exists and is as described in the bible. We know he is watching every move we make, and preparing to send us to an eternity of bliss or torment when we die. In this case, it would be pretty expedient to know how he expects us to behave, and act accordingly. But would it be moral?

The problems with the concept of God as the source of morality are well known. Not the least of them is the Euthyphro Dilemma. Either "good" is defined by what God commands us to do (the Divine Command theory of morality, followed by such notables as William Lane Craig), in which case it's morally incumbent on us to obey when God commands rape, murder and genocide, as he frequently did in the Old Testament; or God commands us to do something because it is good, in which case there is a standard of goodness that is external to God, and we should follow that standard anyway and eliminate the middleman.

There's also the "Evil God" challenge raised by philosopher Stephen Law, but I'll leave that for another time. The point I want to make here is that not only can we be "good without God", coming up with moral guidelines on our own in the absence of a divine rulegiver; we can and should be "good despite God", deciding for ourselves what is moral and immoral, even if God were to force us with the threat of punishment to behave otherwise.

I don't know if this is widely recognized terminology, but I like to make a distinct between morality and ethics. Ever wonder why professionals often have a code of ethics rather than a code of morality? Why do we have, for example, bio-ethicists rather than biomoralists? To me, the word "morality" connotes a code of conduct imposed from above in a power relationship. Parents impose morality on their children because the children are too young to figure out ethical behavior on their own.

An ethical code, on the other hand, is a code of conduct you come up with in conjunction with your peers, and then commit to live by. This, to me, is an essential part of growing up. You do the right thing because it is what you've committed to live up to, not because of external compulsion and threats or bribes.

The idea of "objective morality" strikes me as faintly ridiculous, if you mean morality as some kind of Platonic absolute, existing independently of whether humans exist or not. Morality is obviously a human concern (and a concern for any other intelligent species that might be out there). Furthermore, morality is not fixed and immutable. The world's holy books have nothing to say on stem cell research or sex change surgery, because such issues just didn't exist when they were written.

Morality is a work in progress. We are figuring it out as we go along, trying to incorporate new problems into our framework, and hopefully making net progress as we extend our concern and sympathy beyond our immediate family and tribe, to other groups, to people who don't follow our norms of sexual identity and orientation, and eventually to all sentient creatures.

The thing as, we can't help making moral judgments and decisions, both individually and as societies. It's inherent to us - perhaps it's even how morality is defined, an innately human activity. God, if he existed, could force his ideas of morality on us, but the one thing he could never do - short of taking away our free will and turning us into automata - is to make his morality our morality.

We need to understand that we are the source of our morality. We must stop hiding behind holy books and take ownership of the process. We have both a right and an obligation to make moral decisions, individually and collectively. To abdicate that right, to shirk that responsibility, is to surrender an essential part of our humanity.

Attack of the Drones

Previously I mentioned that the use of drones by the US military was one of the moral issues I was interested in exploring. Many people have a visceral reaction to drones, and it's easy to understand why.

Drones seem to turn the act of killing into something cold, clinical, and impersonal. Of course the drones, for now at least, still have a human operator - Skynet hasn't taken over yet. But there is something creepy about the idea of a man in a comfortable air-conditioned office on an Air Force base in Nevada pressing a button and dealing out death and destruction to third world villagers thousands of miles away. It seems too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

Some people seem to be okay with drones killing alleged terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but are horrified by the idea of drones operating within the US, as was rumored to be happening during the hunt for Christopher Dorner. But we obviously can't make a moral distinction based on the religion or ethnicity of the victims. Nor can we make a decision on the morality of drone use purely on the basis of our emotional reaction.

Are military drones ever justified? I think they can be in certain circumstances. There may be cases where force has to be used anyway, and drones, with their surgical accuracy, can reduce harm and death to innocent bystanders.

Offhand I can't think of any other scenarios where the use of armed drones is defensible, and I can see a big downside. There is a sort of moral hazard in not having skin in the game. When the US military knows there is no risk to the drone operator, they are tempted to be more aggressive and cavalier. War becomes a video game, and the victims are pixels on a screen, not flesh and blood.

However, drones are here to stay. Technology will inevitably make them smaller and cheaper, and non-weaponised drones will be put to many new uses, such as aeriel mapping and photography, finding lost people in the outdoors, tracking livestock and wild animals, and of course snooping and surveillance.

Which makes it all the more important that society has an open, transparent, unemotional and productive conversation about the use of drones and their potential for both good and harm.

First, Do No Harm

Thanks to Tippling Philosopher Jonathan Pearce for dealing gently with my first amateurish foray into philosophy blogging, and helping me to clarify my thoughts. As I suspected, there is already a name for the concept I was writing about - negative utilitarianism - and some prominent people such as Karl Popper have advocated it. Great minds think alike, eh! :-)

However, other philosophers have pointed out flaws with the idea (or at least with simplistic interpretations of it):

Suppose that a ruler controls a weapon capable of instantly and painlessly destroying the human race. Now it is empirically certain that there would be some suffering before all those alive on any proposed destruction day were to die in the natural course of events. Consequently the use of the weapon is bound to diminish suffering, and would be the ruler's duty on NU grounds.[64]

 Negative utilitarianism would seem to call for the destruction of the world even if only to avoid the pain of a pinprick.[65]

Obviously, a naive algorithm for minimizing harm can be as problematic as one for maximizing good, as in my scenario of the innocent person who is killed so that 1,000,001 people can each get $1.

I guess what I'm getting at is that (a) we should try to reduce harm when it is actually present or reasonably foreseeable, as opposed to merely potential, and (b) reducing harm is not an end in itself, but part of the goal of ensuring that as many people as possible have maximum opportunity to live full, rich lives and exercise their autonomy as individuals.

If I decide to kill Alice (albeit instantly and painlessly) this morning to guard against the possibility that she might suffer a pinprick later today, I am making a decision that is not mine to make. I am infringing on Alice's autonomy in the biggest possible way, and taking away the possibility that she will experience good as well as harm. In short, I am inflicting harm on her.

The problem that positive utilitarianism has in common with negative utilitarianism is that if I go the other way and try to maximize Alice's happiness, I once again run the risk of overriding her autonomy. My idea of what would maximize her happiness may not correspond to hers, and the problems are compounded exponentially if I try to maximize the happiness of an entire society!

So if I were to restate my idea, I would give greater emphasis to the positive value of respecting people's autonomy. Co-operate with people, reduce harm to them when you reasonably can, but don't blindly follow some principle or you will probably do more harm than good!

Moving on and leaving Atheism Plus behind

I started this blog and took on the handle "Schrödinger's Therapist" in response to the rise of Atheism Plus, and in particular its pushing of the ugly and bigoted "Schrödinger's Rapist" meme.

I was disgusted by the fanaticism and hypocrisy of the A+ leaders - in particular their reckless witch-hunting and immature "gotcha" games against allies and leaders who have contributed far more to freethought and skepticism than they could ever dream of. Also their anti-intellectualism and toxic cult of personality, in particular, worshiping a talentless self-serving hack who dismisses whole scientific fields out of hand despite having no scientific credentials whatsoever (and precious few discernible educational attainments of any kind) and not even understanding basic statistics.

I could also mention a prominent plusser who makes threats of violence, and tries to destroy the careers of critics. And in general I'm dismayed that so many prominent atheist bloggers are spreading hysteria and divisiveness, whipping up a false narrative, and manufacturing controversy for the sake of blog hits and to monpolize the conference speaker circuit - at a time when theocrats are redoubling their efforts to shove their religion down our throats using our tax dollars, and roll back the rights of women, gay people and non-believers.

And yet, disturbing and disappointing as all of this has been, at the same time there's something morbidly fascinating about it. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck. At least that's how I've felt, though I suspect I'm not the only one.

But you can only listen to a broken record for so long. (Does anyone remember vinyl records? I'm really dating myself with that analogy - but then, no-one else would date me.) As time goes on, A+ gets increasingly irrelevant. Look at their solid record of achievement in the field of social justice - forcing Justin Vacula to resign from SCA, forcing Ron Lindsay to apologize for his welcoming remarks at WISCFI (though he stays on as CEO of CFI) - and... um... that's about it. And notice how they boycotted TAM, and everyone I know who went there remarked on how enjoyable and drama-free it was. Their fifteen minutes are well and truly over, and the final butt-hurt implosion of Myers, Benson, Watson and company can't be far away.

That is why from now on I am changing the focus of this blog. I don't guarantee that I'll never write about A+ again, but I want to write about topics that are of long-term interest to me, and hopefully other people.

I'm not a philosopher, but I happen to think philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers! I want to steer clear of obfuscated technical discussions and instead focus on the big questions like: where does morality come from? Does it exist objectively? How do theories of morality apply to specific issues, e.g. the use of drones by the US? Does the existence or non-existence of a god make a difference to the previous questions? Is "god" even a coherent concept? What basis do we have for knowing what we know, or think we know?

I've changed this blog's masthead to reflect my ongoing focus, and I plan to write posts related to the above topics in the coming weeks. I hope you (if anyone is reading) enjoy them!

Feminism R.I.P.

[UPDATE: since writing the post below, I've encountered a number of women on Twitter who are proud, outspoken feminists but who reject the misandrist, all-women-are-helpless-victims feminism I wrote about in this post. I would mention in particular @KelsTheSecular and @AtheistMel among others. This is very encouraging.]

First of all, be sure to read Katie's take on feminism, which is long but well worth reading.

Up to a few years ago, if you asked me if I was a feminist, I would have answered without hesitation: "Of course. Isn't every decent person?" At that stage I bought into the idea that feminism was simply about equality for women, and nothing more. I would have been startled to learn that no man can ever be a feminist, and he should just shut up and listen to women instead of mansplaining. I had yet to be exposed to "Schrödinger's Rapist", Patriarchy theory, male privilege theory and what not.

For me, the red pill moment was when Elevatorgate hit the fan. Wading through the comments in PZ Myers' infamous "Always name names!" post on Pharyngula, I was simply stunned by the sheer mouth-foaming hatred against men - all men. And things went rapidly downhill from there.

Now, I'm aware that there are different schools of feminism. But by far the loudest (if not the largest) is a virulent, doctrinaire, dogmatic strain that has been festering away in the ivory towers of womyn's studies departments for years, nourished by Dworkinesque misandry and dedicated to the radical notion that all men are rapists and that maleness itself is "toxic".

Some extreme radical feminists even call for the elimination of all men, or at least for their numbers to be drastically reduced and the survivors to be made "manageable" somehow. I know such feminists are outliers, but the fact that they get away with openly calling for "gendercide" against men is extremely troubling. Obviously if the genders were reversed, they would be condemned as dangerous lunatics and dealt with.

I'm also seeing more and more women who are alienated by the ideology that all women are eternal helpless victims who are lacking in agency and should be relieved of all responsibility for their actions - "slut walks" being an obvious example. In a nutshell, radical feminism criminalizes men, infantilizes women, and harms and insults both.

When this is the public face of feminism today, it's no wonder that 70% of women decline to label themselves feminists. We can't use the "No True Feminist" gambit - there is no "true" feminism, just (as in any other social movement) different memes that evolve, interact, and grow and shrink in popularity. Right now I would have to say that feminism's brand has been irreparably damaged by the excesses of the radfems.

If you're male and you are sympathetic to equality for women, but you get screamed at that you're a rapist and a privileged oppressor simply because of your genitalia, it's hard to maintain your level of sympathy. And if you're female but you don't march in 100% lockstep with the party line, then of course you're a gender traitor. I regularly see women being dogpiled on by the radfems because they want to be homemakers or sex workers, or they enjoy PIV sex or straight sex in general, or they make some other personal choice that isn't ideologically approved. When did feminism become all about controlling and restricting other women's choices?

I remain firmly committed to equal rights, respect and responsibilities for women, and for all human beings, but I can no longer call myself a feminist. If feminism is just about gender equality, why does it have a gender-specific name? I understand the historical reasons for this, but I'm increasingly uneasy with the us-vs.-them, single issue, zero-sum implications of the name. This is why I'd rather call myself a humanist or an egalitarian than a feminist.

Also, I am even more adamant about treating people as individuals, and I reject the repellant collectivism and reductionism of the atheism-plus-style feminists who treat people as nothing more than categories - male, female, straight, gay, cis, whatever. The idea that a homeless man sleeping in the gutter is more privileged than the queen of England is simply laughable. It seems to me that the overwhelming majority of cases of "male privilege" are actually wealth privilege that hurts men as often as women.

Feminism has had its day. It did great things in its time and had some very impressive and courageous women among its ranks. But now it is being rendered toxic by the extremism of the radfems who refuse to acknowledge that any progress has been made at all, even as they make things more and more unfair for men in certain areas (child custody disputes, rape accusations at some colleges, and so on).

Rest in peace, feminism. Now let's see men and women of goodwill working together to protect everyone's rights. Forward to the future: Humanism!

The Stink at Skeptic Ink

[UPDATE: Justin Vacula has posted that he was blindsided by the public announcement of his departure from Skeptic Ink Network (SIN). This is very troubling. I still say that Loftus as co-owner of SIN gets to decide who does or doesn't blog on his network, but his handling of the affair - and his unseemly gallop towards the atheism-plus side since then - definitely make me re-evaluate my opinion of him.]

The news that Justin Vacula is leaving Skeptic Ink Network has set off a Category F-5 shitstorm. Some of the most prominent Slymepitters are throwing around conspiracy theories and demanding the release of confidential communications on Skeptic Ink's "back channel", and of course that little twat @ool0n is gloating. It's all very predictable in a sad and yet amusing way.

I'm going to be the contrarian here. Yes, the situation could have been handled better. Instead of giving the impression that Justin was fired while somewhere over the Atlantic returning from the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin, John Loftus and Ed Clint (it seems to me) should have given him the chance to put up a farewell post confirming that the split is amicable.

However, at the end of the day, the blog network belongs to Loftus and Clint, and they have the right to set the tone for it, invite who they like to join, and then invite them to leave if the individual's blog is not in keeping with the overall tone they want to set. Let me add though that I have the greatest respect for Justin's activism for church-state separation, and I will continue to follow him on his own site and on Twitter.

This is not another Thunderf00t situation as some are implying. PZ Myers, as the owner of "Freethought Blogs", had the right to terminate his association with Thunderf00t. Nobody has an absolute right to be on someone else's blog network. What was noteworthy about the Thunderf00t situation though was that Myers promised Thunderf00t complete freedom to write about anything he liked, and then quickly went back on that promise while also exposing the hollow lie that FTB is not a hive mind and is open to more than one point of view.

By contrast, Loftus has made it clear all along that he doesn't want to brand SIN as the anti-FTB. He sees Atheism-plus as a passing fad that is already in its death-throes, and he wants to look beyond the end of A+ and deal with wider issues. Indeed, I've always seen SIN as a sanctuary from the endless drama that is roiling the rest of the atheosphere, with more substantial, ideas-driven posts from the likes of Jonathan Pearce, Notung and many others including of course Loftus himself.

Anyway, I will continue to read SIN while those who think Vacula was the only reason to read it can follow him wherever else he goes. Hopefully the dust will settle soon, and while it's a pity to see the online atheist community fracturing further, I'm getting tired of the way the drama has to be injected into everything. Follow who you want to follow, and let others do the same!