The mindless mantra of victim feminism, "Don't teach women how to avoid rape, teach men not to rape" is bad enough. But I am really sickened by a trend I've recently noticed: discouraging victims of sexual assault and domestic violence from going to the police.
Apparently, the police are just another weapon of Teh Patriarchy to rape and oppress women. Reporting rape to them never helps, and only makes things worse! Proof: some anecdotes the skepchix managed to come up with.
Anyway, a consistent message is emerging from the Fempire: don't report rape to the police, because Patriarchy. And in the very next breath, they rant and rave that the crime of rape is vastly underreported because Patriarchy!
Apparently the Social Justice Warriors have no problem sacrificing women's safety on the altar of their ideology. Sickening bunch of hypocrites.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
God cannot be omniscient or omnipotent
In classical theology, God is held to be 3-O: omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. For centuries, critics of theism have argued against the coherence of this picture of God by invoking the Problem of Evil. In this context, evil should be understood as not only malicious acts by humans, but anything that causes suffering, including tsunamis, droughts and other types of "natural evil". The Problem of Evil can be stated as follows:
Alvin Plantinga has put forward a rather technical free-will defense which purports to let God off the hook. The details aren't important here. While not everyone accepts the validity of Plantinga's argument, the focus seems to have shifted from the Logical Problem of Evil (why is there any evil at all) to the Evidential Problem (why is there so much evil in this world).
It should be pointed out that if you use any free will-based theodicy, you're backing away from the assumption that God is omnibenevolent. He is only benevolent up to a certain point. He looks for a trade-off between benevolence and humans having free will. So, as far as I'm concerned, a strictly 3-O god is still logically inconsistent.
However, in the present post, I want to leave omnibenevolence aside and saw off the other two legs of the stool - omniscience and omnipotence. I intend to do this by invoking the Butterfly Effect, which has entered the realm of pop culture (it's even the title of an Ashton Kutcher movie) but is actually a profound mathematical result regarding the limits of what can in principle be known about the world.
The effect is usually stated in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest, resulting in a tornado forming a few days later in Texas. It's important not to think of this in classical terms of a chain of cause and effect, with each link in the chain pointing unambiguously to the next and previous links. Chaotic systems - the kind we are talking about here - don't work like that.
Imagine two scenarios which are identical except that in one scenario the butterfly flaps its wings at a certain instant, and in the other, the butterfly doesn't flap its wings at that instant. The two scenarios evolve differently due to this tiny difference in initial conditions. The difference amplifies exponentially due to the nonlinear feedback in the system, with the result that in one scenario a tornado occurs, and in the other, there is no tornado. This is what scientists call sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and it is the hallmark of chaotic systems.
Now, the point is that at the instant the butterfly flaps its wings, there is no way to know that a tornado will result. In another scenario, the flap of the butterfly's wings might actually prevent a tornado that would otherwise have occurred. There's just no way to predict the behavior of the system with any accuracy more than a few days ahead of time, because the slightest rounding error will amplify exponentially until it overwhelms the predicted solution, making it radically different from the actual behavior.
"But," says the apologist, "God is infinitely more powerful than all the computers that humans have created."
It's not a question of throwing more computing power at the problem. If you used all the computers on earth to predict the weather, you might gain an extra day of accuracy. Double the number of computers, and you might gain an extra few hours. Double it again, and you might gain a few minutes. But there is a fundamental mathematical restriction on how far in advance you can predict the weather, and even God is subject to this restriction, because the atmosphere is a nonlinear chaotic system.
With me so far? Now, what about omnipotence?
Lack of omnipotence follows logically from lack of omniscience. Suppose God wanted to cause or avert a tornado a week from today. He wouldn't know how to do it, because he wouldn't know which butterfly might become a causal factor by flapping or not flapping its wings.
And the atmosphere is not the only nonlinear chaotic system. The solar system is also chaotic. During its early history, there may have been hundreds of Mars-sized planets which were constantly colliding. It would have been impossible to predict in advance that the earth would have a large moon which stabilizes its rotation and gives us seasons, that it would have oceans due to bombardment by icy comets, that the dinosaurs would be wiped out by an asteroid collision 65 million years ago, and so on. So if God was planning since before the Big Bang that the earth would eventually support human life, it's a fantastic coincidence that his plans actually came to fruition.
At this point, the sophisticated theologian would typically sniff haughtily and say something like: "Once again you show your narrow, limited understanding of God. Obviously he isn't bound by petty scientific restrictions. He exists beyond space and time, and sees the whole history of the universe at a glance."
I'm not sure such airy assertions are even meaningful, let alone true. How can a conscious being exist outside of time? Consciousness is by definition a temporal sequence of brain states. If there is no time, there is no change in brain states and therefore no consciousness. The only kind of thing I can imagine existing outside of time and space is an abstract concept such as a mathematical theorem, not a conscious being with which one can have a personal relationship.
Anyway, my main point is that there are limits to God's knowledge - he can't be omniscient, because it's not possible, even in principle, for anyone to be omniscient. The cost of gaining knowledge of even the gross future behavior (let alone the fine details) of a chaotic system increases exponentially, and you hit a wall long before you get anywhere near omniscience. And since perfect control requires perfect knowledge, omnipotence is not possible without omniscience.
In conclusion, not only is omnibenevolence on shaky ground but omnipotence and omniscience aren't looking too good either. 3-O God doesn't have a leg to stand on!
- If God is omniscient, he is aware when evil is about to take place.
- If God is omnipotent, he is able to prevent evil from taking place.
- If God is omnibenevolent, he would act to prevent evil from taking place.
- Evil takes place.
- Therefore, God cannot be all three of omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
Alvin Plantinga has put forward a rather technical free-will defense which purports to let God off the hook. The details aren't important here. While not everyone accepts the validity of Plantinga's argument, the focus seems to have shifted from the Logical Problem of Evil (why is there any evil at all) to the Evidential Problem (why is there so much evil in this world).
It should be pointed out that if you use any free will-based theodicy, you're backing away from the assumption that God is omnibenevolent. He is only benevolent up to a certain point. He looks for a trade-off between benevolence and humans having free will. So, as far as I'm concerned, a strictly 3-O god is still logically inconsistent.
However, in the present post, I want to leave omnibenevolence aside and saw off the other two legs of the stool - omniscience and omnipotence. I intend to do this by invoking the Butterfly Effect, which has entered the realm of pop culture (it's even the title of an Ashton Kutcher movie) but is actually a profound mathematical result regarding the limits of what can in principle be known about the world.
The effect is usually stated in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest, resulting in a tornado forming a few days later in Texas. It's important not to think of this in classical terms of a chain of cause and effect, with each link in the chain pointing unambiguously to the next and previous links. Chaotic systems - the kind we are talking about here - don't work like that.
Imagine two scenarios which are identical except that in one scenario the butterfly flaps its wings at a certain instant, and in the other, the butterfly doesn't flap its wings at that instant. The two scenarios evolve differently due to this tiny difference in initial conditions. The difference amplifies exponentially due to the nonlinear feedback in the system, with the result that in one scenario a tornado occurs, and in the other, there is no tornado. This is what scientists call sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and it is the hallmark of chaotic systems.
Now, the point is that at the instant the butterfly flaps its wings, there is no way to know that a tornado will result. In another scenario, the flap of the butterfly's wings might actually prevent a tornado that would otherwise have occurred. There's just no way to predict the behavior of the system with any accuracy more than a few days ahead of time, because the slightest rounding error will amplify exponentially until it overwhelms the predicted solution, making it radically different from the actual behavior.
"But," says the apologist, "God is infinitely more powerful than all the computers that humans have created."
It's not a question of throwing more computing power at the problem. If you used all the computers on earth to predict the weather, you might gain an extra day of accuracy. Double the number of computers, and you might gain an extra few hours. Double it again, and you might gain a few minutes. But there is a fundamental mathematical restriction on how far in advance you can predict the weather, and even God is subject to this restriction, because the atmosphere is a nonlinear chaotic system.
With me so far? Now, what about omnipotence?
Lack of omnipotence follows logically from lack of omniscience. Suppose God wanted to cause or avert a tornado a week from today. He wouldn't know how to do it, because he wouldn't know which butterfly might become a causal factor by flapping or not flapping its wings.
And the atmosphere is not the only nonlinear chaotic system. The solar system is also chaotic. During its early history, there may have been hundreds of Mars-sized planets which were constantly colliding. It would have been impossible to predict in advance that the earth would have a large moon which stabilizes its rotation and gives us seasons, that it would have oceans due to bombardment by icy comets, that the dinosaurs would be wiped out by an asteroid collision 65 million years ago, and so on. So if God was planning since before the Big Bang that the earth would eventually support human life, it's a fantastic coincidence that his plans actually came to fruition.
At this point, the sophisticated theologian would typically sniff haughtily and say something like: "Once again you show your narrow, limited understanding of God. Obviously he isn't bound by petty scientific restrictions. He exists beyond space and time, and sees the whole history of the universe at a glance."
I'm not sure such airy assertions are even meaningful, let alone true. How can a conscious being exist outside of time? Consciousness is by definition a temporal sequence of brain states. If there is no time, there is no change in brain states and therefore no consciousness. The only kind of thing I can imagine existing outside of time and space is an abstract concept such as a mathematical theorem, not a conscious being with which one can have a personal relationship.
Anyway, my main point is that there are limits to God's knowledge - he can't be omniscient, because it's not possible, even in principle, for anyone to be omniscient. The cost of gaining knowledge of even the gross future behavior (let alone the fine details) of a chaotic system increases exponentially, and you hit a wall long before you get anywhere near omniscience. And since perfect control requires perfect knowledge, omnipotence is not possible without omniscience.
In conclusion, not only is omnibenevolence on shaky ground but omnipotence and omniscience aren't looking too good either. 3-O God doesn't have a leg to stand on!
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
I forked oolon's repo and stored it on a dongle...
As a software professional, I was interested to learn that the source code for The Block Bot is open source and freely available for anyone to look at and copy. I downloaded it and looked over it, but I haven't had time to examine it in detail, nor can I say for sure that the code on Github is the same as the code running on oolon's server. However I would like to make a couple of points.
Firstly, my understanding is that there is a list of people with admin privileges including oolon, Aratine Cage and an unknown number of other people who can add twitter users to the list. One of the ways they can do this is by sending a tweet to the block bot, specifying the person to be blacklisted and the level the person is to be added to. In addition, if the hashtag "spam" is included in the tweet, the target is not only added to the block-list but is also reported to Twitter as a spammer.
So while it's not the case that anyone blocked is also automatically reported for spam (as has been erroneously stated on some web pages), that capability exists and is open to abuse. Personally I think Twitter screwed up by adding the "report spam" functionality to the API and allowing bots to use it. A captcha should be required to report spam, at a minimum, to reduce abuse of this feature.
Oolon claims that just getting blocked will not in itself lead to your account being suspended. Of course he can't state that as a definite fact unless he's privy to the internal workings of Twitter, but even if he's technically correct, I think he's being disingenuous. What you have to understand is that Twitter's procedure for suspending accounts is highly automated and based on heuristics which Twitter keeps tweaking. Meanwhile, other people are busy reverse-engineering the system and figuring out how to game it to get people they don't like suspended. Do a google search for "twitter gulag" and "reply trap", and you will get an idea of the type of games that go on.
One tactic I've seen very often is that someone is added to the block bot and then some atheism-plus person - quite often oolon himself, or his sidekick Aratina Cage - will then start bombarding the blockee with tweets, and encourage other block bot users to do the same. This happened recently with @tkmlac being dogpiled on out of the blue by A. Cage and cronies. This looks a lot like classic "reply trap" behavior - the point being to provoke the target into replying. If you have been blocked but send more than a certain number of tweets to the people who have blocked you, it triggers a Twitter heuristic and you get suspended.
While we can't prove the block bot is being used with malicious intent, based on the observed pattern of behavior this seems quite likely. The bot certainly lends itself to such underhanded activities and automates them to a degree. In a way it's ingenious what oolon has done - he's succeeded in getting hundreds of people to give him control over their twitter accounts, to do with as he pleases. He can not only block on other people's behalf, he can post or delete their tweets, or basically do anything he likes.
Here again oolon is exploiting a shortcoming of the Twitter API. Not to get too technical, but when you authorize an app to access your twitter account, you have to give it a certain level of privileges. Some apps can post tweets on your behalf, others can't, depending on how much privilege you authorize. The problem is that the set of possible privileges is way too coarse-grained - it's pretty much all or nothing. Ideally (if I were running the block bot and wanted to use it in good faith) there should be a privilege level that specifically allowed an app to block on your behalf but do nothing else, and the block bot would only need to request this level of access.
So to sum up, there are worrying indications that the bot is being used in ways other than advertised, and people who sign up for it are giving away much more control of their account than probably most of them realize. This is why I would never use it nor encourage anyone else to use it, quite apart from the problem of letting someone else (whose agenda may not be the same as yours) control what you can and can't see on Twitter.
Firstly, my understanding is that there is a list of people with admin privileges including oolon, Aratine Cage and an unknown number of other people who can add twitter users to the list. One of the ways they can do this is by sending a tweet to the block bot, specifying the person to be blacklisted and the level the person is to be added to. In addition, if the hashtag "spam" is included in the tweet, the target is not only added to the block-list but is also reported to Twitter as a spammer.
So while it's not the case that anyone blocked is also automatically reported for spam (as has been erroneously stated on some web pages), that capability exists and is open to abuse. Personally I think Twitter screwed up by adding the "report spam" functionality to the API and allowing bots to use it. A captcha should be required to report spam, at a minimum, to reduce abuse of this feature.
Oolon claims that just getting blocked will not in itself lead to your account being suspended. Of course he can't state that as a definite fact unless he's privy to the internal workings of Twitter, but even if he's technically correct, I think he's being disingenuous. What you have to understand is that Twitter's procedure for suspending accounts is highly automated and based on heuristics which Twitter keeps tweaking. Meanwhile, other people are busy reverse-engineering the system and figuring out how to game it to get people they don't like suspended. Do a google search for "twitter gulag" and "reply trap", and you will get an idea of the type of games that go on.
One tactic I've seen very often is that someone is added to the block bot and then some atheism-plus person - quite often oolon himself, or his sidekick Aratina Cage - will then start bombarding the blockee with tweets, and encourage other block bot users to do the same. This happened recently with @tkmlac being dogpiled on out of the blue by A. Cage and cronies. This looks a lot like classic "reply trap" behavior - the point being to provoke the target into replying. If you have been blocked but send more than a certain number of tweets to the people who have blocked you, it triggers a Twitter heuristic and you get suspended.
While we can't prove the block bot is being used with malicious intent, based on the observed pattern of behavior this seems quite likely. The bot certainly lends itself to such underhanded activities and automates them to a degree. In a way it's ingenious what oolon has done - he's succeeded in getting hundreds of people to give him control over their twitter accounts, to do with as he pleases. He can not only block on other people's behalf, he can post or delete their tweets, or basically do anything he likes.
Here again oolon is exploiting a shortcoming of the Twitter API. Not to get too technical, but when you authorize an app to access your twitter account, you have to give it a certain level of privileges. Some apps can post tweets on your behalf, others can't, depending on how much privilege you authorize. The problem is that the set of possible privileges is way too coarse-grained - it's pretty much all or nothing. Ideally (if I were running the block bot and wanted to use it in good faith) there should be a privilege level that specifically allowed an app to block on your behalf but do nothing else, and the block bot would only need to request this level of access.
So to sum up, there are worrying indications that the bot is being used in ways other than advertised, and people who sign up for it are giving away much more control of their account than probably most of them realize. This is why I would never use it nor encourage anyone else to use it, quite apart from the problem of letting someone else (whose agenda may not be the same as yours) control what you can and can't see on Twitter.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
"Mild pedophilia" and major drama
I love Richard Dawkins' books. I think they are masterful examples of explaining science clearly and simply for a general audience. But when he speaks off the cuff, or tweets, he has been far less successful. His usual clarity seems to desert him, and he has to spend far more time explaining and doing damage control than he spent on the original remarks.
It's not always his fault. I've seen many tweets from him whose meaning seemed perfectly clear, and yet hordes of people were working themselves into a frenzy condemning him for saying the opposite of what he actually said. Some people just don't have adequate reading comprehension skills. And quite a few, I suspect, have it in for Dawkins to begin with, and they will see what they want to see. Or even understand perfectly well what he is saying, and still attack a strawman.
PZ Myers, never one to miss a chance for intellectual dishonesty, channels Oliver Cromwell. Many others are gleefully joining in the dogpiling. It's quite an astonishing display of victim-blaming by those who have the privilege of not having been victims. Perhaps some "STFU and listen" is called for here?
I've previously blogged about my own abusive childhood. I was groped on a couple of occasions, mostly by bullies at school, but the non-sexual physical, emotional and psychological abuse that I suffered was far more damaging.
It seems pretty clear to me what Dawkins is saying - the molesting that he personally experienced did not do significant lasting damage to him, though he acknowledges that there are degrees of sexual abuse and many victims had a more severe and harmful experience than him. Groping is bad, tearing someone's clothes off is worse, forcible penetration is worse still. This isn't rocket science, people!
When did the FTBullies become more morally absolutist than Bill Donohue? Why must they immediately jump to the most uncharitable possible interpretation of every word out of Dawkins' mouth? Okay, we know the answer to that one - they hate his guts, but lack the intellectual wherewithal to refute him.
So here's a final question: if Richard Dawkins can find it in his heart to forgive the man who groped him, rather than nursing a grudge for decades, who the hell are Myers & co. to condemn him for doing so?
It's not always his fault. I've seen many tweets from him whose meaning seemed perfectly clear, and yet hordes of people were working themselves into a frenzy condemning him for saying the opposite of what he actually said. Some people just don't have adequate reading comprehension skills. And quite a few, I suspect, have it in for Dawkins to begin with, and they will see what they want to see. Or even understand perfectly well what he is saying, and still attack a strawman.
PZ Myers, never one to miss a chance for intellectual dishonesty, channels Oliver Cromwell. Many others are gleefully joining in the dogpiling. It's quite an astonishing display of victim-blaming by those who have the privilege of not having been victims. Perhaps some "STFU and listen" is called for here?
I've previously blogged about my own abusive childhood. I was groped on a couple of occasions, mostly by bullies at school, but the non-sexual physical, emotional and psychological abuse that I suffered was far more damaging.
It seems pretty clear to me what Dawkins is saying - the molesting that he personally experienced did not do significant lasting damage to him, though he acknowledges that there are degrees of sexual abuse and many victims had a more severe and harmful experience than him. Groping is bad, tearing someone's clothes off is worse, forcible penetration is worse still. This isn't rocket science, people!
When did the FTBullies become more morally absolutist than Bill Donohue? Why must they immediately jump to the most uncharitable possible interpretation of every word out of Dawkins' mouth? Okay, we know the answer to that one - they hate his guts, but lack the intellectual wherewithal to refute him.
So here's a final question: if Richard Dawkins can find it in his heart to forgive the man who groped him, rather than nursing a grudge for decades, who the hell are Myers & co. to condemn him for doing so?
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Friday, August 2, 2013
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.
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.
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