Cameron Bertuzzi's flim-flam

I've been listening to a debate on YouTube this afternoon while I get some editorial work done. The topic? "Why does something rather than nothing exist?" The players? Alex J. O'Connor and Cameron Bertuzzi. At one point moderator Justin Brierley says: "This is complex stuff!" Well, that right there is the big lie. And I want to spell out what I mean by that.

The use of fundamentally unintelligible terms (such as "necessary being" or "existence as a perfection") obscures the essentially casuistic nature of the "arguments" in this branch of pseudo-intellectual theology. Kudos to CosmicSkeptic for being civil, and game, but I'd rather we would deplatform these kinds of religious prattle-peddlers, rather than helping to grow their audience by engaging them in "debate."

Unless... does the skeptical/skeptical audience grow at a larger rate than the supernatural audience does, when they come together to watch these kinds of aisle-crossing discussions? If so, perhaps that's a useful function. Who is more empowered by seeing their views laid out with clarity and cogency: skeptics or believers? Ah, but asking the question in those terms suggests to be a problem with the question... for really, it is not POSSIBLE to lay out an unintelligible argument with cogency or clarity.

A moderator can't be neutral or impartial to matters of fact, or he's just normalizing fallacious views; yet the moderator in this particular debate at no point holds Cameron Bertuzzi account for an explanation of terms like "divine simplicity." If we drill down on this vocabulary, we find that it doesn't have any stable correlative. Tolerance of this kind of linguistic slipperiness isn't neutral; it helps to normalize unintelligibility and the unproductive forms of rhetoric that displace more reliable, publicly accessible (in the Rawlsian sense) forms of reason.

Going back to the idea that this is "complex" stuff, consider how this post by the "Intellecutal Honesty Forum" describes Bertuzzi and some of his fellow travellers:

In this playlist, three Christian YouTubers (Cameron Bertuzzi ... Mike Winger ... Jon McCray) respond to the 'Atheist Voice' and his '20 Short Arguments Against God.' While Bertuzzi, Winger and McCray, are autodidacts that know quite well the current philosophical, theological and historical literature on these subjects, what makes this a great resource is the deceptive simplicity with which they are presented as for any one to understand the main points.

The phrase "Deceptive simplicity" conceals much. Does their presentation of these topics seem simple on the surface, while referring to topics that are actually complex? What would "complex" here mean -- complicated in structure, convoluted in reasoning, resistant to analysis, or unstable in meaning? Is "complex" a coded term meant to be understood as "important" and, or, "impressive"? The seeming interconvertibility of "simplicity" and "complexity" strikes me as a red flag, signalling "meaninglessness." Or if not absent of meaning, then "insert the situationally useful meaning here."

In several places online, Cameron Bertuzzi describes his project as that of "exposing you to the intellectual side of Christian belief." This is, simply, not the case. He's selling himself as a paid commentator, speaker, and online pundit, and attempting to enhance his brand by adorning it in the added-value of intellectualism, while simultaneously eschewing the egg-headed academicism that, at least in the United States, is so readily denigrated by audiences in thrall to right-wing media, conservative politics, and supernaturalist institutions.

I don't begrudge young Alex his professional interest in talking with Christians, or the income he enjoys in doing so. Setting aside the nature of his views or values, he's presenting a view which is investigable, which makes his activity inherently more honest and socially benign than that of social media theologians propagating terminological flim-flam.

The more comfortable people are with intelligible terms, the more susceptible they are parasitic meme-plexes like right-wing media, anti-intellectualism, and apocalyptic political theology. That the "meaning" of words is fluid, conditional, and collaborative has nothing to do with the willfully underdetermined meaning of theological pseudophilosophy. 

Sam Harris, historical myth, and arguing against certainty

A friend interested in my opinion asked for my reply to the following. My replies, line my line, appear below. - Z

Dostoevsky said,'if there's no God then you can do whatever you want'... see this is why I have such frustration with people like Sam Harris. The sort of radical atheists because they seem to think that once human beings abandon their grounding in the transcendent that the plausible way forward is with a sort of purist rationality that automatically attributes to other people equivalent value. I just don't understand that.They believe that thats the rational pathway? What the hell is irrational about me getting from you whatever I want when I want it?... Its pure naked self interest how is that irrational... I don't understand that.... See, to me the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that. As if it's just a given, a rational given.... YOU DON'T GET IT. The ethic that you think is normative is nesting in this tremendously lengthy history. Much of which was expressed in mythological formulation. You wipe that out you don't get to keep all the presuppositions and just assume that they're rationally axiomatic. To make a rational argument you have to start with an initial proposition. Well the proposition that underlies western culture is that there's a "transcendent morality'. Now you can say that thats a transcendent morality that's instantiated in the figure of God. That's fine. You can even call that a personification of the morality, if you don't want to move into a metaphysical space. I'm not arguing for the existence of God. I'm arguing that the ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God and that you can't just take that idea away and expect the thing to just remain intact midair without any foundational support.

<<Dostoevsky said... >>

Not to be pedantic, but Dostoevsky wrote it; Ivan Karamazov "said" it. And whether Ivan endorsed it is a more subtle matter.

<<if there's no God then you can do whatever you want'... see this is why I have such frustration with people like Sam Harris."

Ah, well, if there's no god, you are allowed to be frustrated with whomever you like. Ain't no referee going to call you on it. Go on and rage, hombre.

<<The sort of radical atheists... >>

Is Harris a radical; in what way? I wouldn't say so. His atheism is of a historically familiar and unradical sort. His xenophobia, on the other hand... that's ALSO not radical, but it is ugly.

<<... because they seem to think that once human beings abandon their grounding in the transcendent that the plausible way forward is with a sort of purist rationality that automatically attributes to other people equivalent value.>>

Citation needed; where does Harris (or any other thought leaders among that "sort of radical atheist") profess a belief that a "way forward" following the death of gods, is to automatically grant warrant to ANY proposition? Wouldn't it be more consistent to characterize their position as expecting ANY proposition to be subjected to rationalist scrutiny?

I don't understand what "equivalent value" is to be attributed to people. The value of human life? The value of the contribution individuals make to society?

<<I just don't understand that.They believe that thats the rational pathway? What the hell is irrational about me getting from you whatever I want when I want it?...>>

To adopt the kind of argument this person might find persuasive, I could use arguments based in evidence from game theory, economics, and primatology (for starters) which explain why a rational person might wish to suppose a society in which mores (and conventions, and laws, etc) prevent individuals from raping, stealing, etc, willy-nilly.

<<Its pure naked self interest how is that irrational... >>

That impulsive violent acts of self-serving appropriation SEEM TO THIS PERSON to be in the interest of one's self, is, I think, a shortcoming of imagination. If we imagine the conditions of a society in which such acts of self-serving are unopposed, we can envision how things would quickly more from "nasty, brutish, and short", to ... much worse. Is it one's naked self-interest, to bring about conditions in which mere survival is increasingly perilous? Or is it in one's self-interest to contribute to a net of social conventions which allows me to breathe easy around my neighbors, without worrying whether they're going to steal my banana or my mate, murder my offspring, or push me off a branch?

<<I don't understand that.... >>

Okay. Admission of ignorance is the first step towards knowledge. (See, I can troll too.)

<<See, to me the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that.>>

There is a room full of economists somewhere that need to be told that their conception of reciprocal self-interest needs to be utterly scrapped, as it is based on mythological presuppositions.

<<As if it's just a given, a rational given.... >>

Citation? I don't know who posits this.

<<YOU DON'T GET IT.>>

The clarity of this sentence is refreshing.

<<The ethic that you think is normative is nesting in this tremendously lengthy history.>>

Who thinks what is normative? (I'm not making fun. The importance of clear writing is always worth underscoring.)

<<Much of which was expressed in mythological formulation.>>

I'm not familiar with any theory of cultural history which posits that any cultural tradition we have inherited in the form of myth would have been ORIGINALLY EXPRESSED in the form OF myth.

<<You wipe that out you don't get to keep all the presuppositions and just assume that they're rationally axiomatic.>>

Pretty sure that, pace Russell, Godel and the rest, that NO reasoning can proceed without axiomatic assumptions which themselves cannot be analyzed conclusively within the propositional framework you are operating. This is, of course, an academic and therefore trivial observation, since most forms of reasoning of use to human beings in the day to day -- causal, moral, predictive, social, etc. -- don't depend on anything at all like the standards of formal validity pertaining to mathematical logic.

<<To make a rational argument you have to start with an initial proposition.>>

Hmm, more or less. I'll allow it.

<<Well the proposition that underlies western culture is that there's a "transcendent morality'.>>

Untrue. The body of institutions -- distributed widely across the globe and with deep roots in history -- which I believe this author is referring to reductively as "western culture", is not grounded on any single proposition. To propose that it is, is to buy into a historical myth. Now, where have I just been reading that myth is bunk and should be cast out of any rational society?

<<Now you can say that thats a transcendent morality that's instantiated in the figure of God.>>

I don't think you can say it, because the noun "transcendent morality" isn't the kind of thing that the predicate function "instantiation" can be applied to.  But I'm not the grammar police, and if this author wants to play slippy-sloppy with his propositions, go to town.

<<That's fine. You can even call that a personification of the morality, if you don't want to move into a metaphysical space.>>

So we're allowing for the ontological identification of a transcendent morality with the figure of God with a personification of morality, for the sake of conversation and so we don't move things into the confusing environs of metaphysics? This is not the way to cut through the tangle of this topic, my friends.

<<I'm not arguing for the existence of God.>>

It is surprising to me that this was on the table even as a possible misunderstanding of this author's position. Have I missed something?

<<I'm arguing that the ethic that drives our culture... >>

To suppose that there is any single ethic driving our culture, deserving of the singular emphatic deictic "the" is, as above, to buy into a historical myth. Relatedly, to suppose that there is any single culture to which "we" all belong, deserving of the exclusive "our", is, again, to buyt into a historical myth. The myth (body of myths, actually) that these suppositions buy into is adjacent to the nationalism, fascisms, and populist reactionary conservatisms we see making their ambitions more publicly known at the present time.

<<... is predicated on the idea of God... >>

It would have been nice if this post had posited this thesis, and then spent some time defending it, instead of spending time building suspense of the thesis, and then flapping off after delivering it, like a seagull dropping a sloppy white present on a beach-goer's head.

<<.. and that you can't just take that idea away and expect the thing to just remain intact midair without any foundational support."

So you say. But you haven't demonstrated that you know anything about history, sociology, theology, economics, political science, etc., such that we could take your word for it; you haven't explained persuasively that there is a "western culture" which resembles the god-grounded monolith you described; you haven't indicated who the "radical atheists" are who want to "take that idea away"; and you haven't named -- even with a disdainful label like "the sort of radical atheists" -- the agents who "expect the thing to remain intact" without "foundational support."

Post-mortem

The most generous reading of this post is that it is not thoughtfully or carefully written. A less generous reading is that the author is not thoughtful about these matters.

HOW to be more thoughtful about these matters is both an easy and a tough question. Easy, because you can say: "Think more!"; but in reality the conditions which conduct us to thoughtfulness are rare. For the most part we're swimming upstream, against the currents of economic need, social discouragement, media noise, corporate parasitism, and so on. A good inducement toward thoughtfulness, I have always thought and I am not alone in thinking so, is reading. I'll end this response with a few reading suggestions, for the author of the short essay above or for anyone interested to know about some of the influences which bear on my own thinking about these matters. So: I recommend reading the entirety of The Brothers Karamazov, for a start; and maybe reading Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism", Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Good and Evil, Hoffer's The True Believer, Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, and de Staël's Delphine (if you want to marry advocacy for the ideals of the Enlightenment with the melodrama of plausible human heartache).

* * *

I gave this short essay such focused attention because I was asked for my feedback on it. In general, I don't think this kind of dissection is a good use of anyone's time. There's no scoreboard where folks can rack up points for being "right" or "brutal" in this kind of exchange. And it's unlikely that even a very patient and chummy reply would help the author think very differently about the points expressed in the essay.

If there's any point at all to going toe-to-toe like this, it's for the sake of the audience... the other forum members, the social media followers, everyone spectating on the exchange. They have less at stake in the dispute, and therefore are less likely to retreat reflexively into a defensive stance protecting their original position on the matters discussed.

Whatever the particulars of the debate -- cultural heritage, the existence of higher powers, the question of what is and is not good sound rationalism -- there is usually a more important argument taking place, implicit between the lines: an argument against certainty.

I was chatting with an old friend this morning, an evolutionary biologist (Hispanic human; first-generation scientist), and she happened to be talking against certainty with such a compelling tone of conviction that I'll share it here as a close to this post. She writes: 

My latest bend is to interrogate liberals on why they believe evolution is true, to expose the fact that they're just as gullible as the people who don't believe in evolution -- because they don't know the facts! They just get their media bites from a different source, even if that source happens to be correct. Morally pontificating from a point of ignorance makes you look like an ass. I bristle at the self-righteousness of certitude, and am immediately dubious of the underlying reasons for it.

I bristle, too, and hope you all do as well.

* * *

Updated the day after to note that the friend who sent this quoted material to me has alerted me that it was written by Canada's Jordan Peterson. Rings true.

Premonitions of Trump's America

From Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World:

I have a foreboding of an American in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. [...] The plain lesson is that study and learning -- not just of science, but of anything -- are avoidable, even undesirable.

* Note that what I see prophesied in this excerpt is not the rise of Trump, but the emergence of an American culture in which someone like Trump is able to move unimpeded.

No, leftist regression is not killing the atheist movement

I’m a member of several secular mailing lists, for activists or organizers – in-house and intra-mural conversations, mostly. Shop talk. Well, this morning a message came through on a mailing list for humanist organizers. This is what the submitter sent in:

Saw an interesting post from David Smalley of Dogma Debate about whether the regressive left is killing the atheist movement. What do you think? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dogmadebate/2017/06/reasonably-controversial-regressive-left-killing-atheist-movement/

This question, and the article it links to, got under my skin for some reason. Maybe for a bunch of reasons. By way of response, I replied with what turned into an op-ed column calling out the secular community at large for their (our!) lack of demands when it comes to our leadership. Here’s what I wrote. Your comments are welcome.

---

Of the several dozen factors I would list as inhibiting or impeding the progress of secular activism, I would NOT include leftist repression among them. 

Over the past few months (since Trump's election boosted my motivation, actually), I've been checking in with a network of professional organizational consultants with relative regularity -- folks that work with international nonprofits, campaigns, corporations, and so on. I'm very fortunate in not having to pay their usual billable rate, which is somewhere between painful and audacious. Good for them, I suppose.

What we talk about is the structure and activity of the secular movement -- its personalities, its assets, its organizations, its opportunities and its failings. Take this with a grain of salt, but the overall view that I've taken away from these consultations is that "our" greatest hindrance is our lack of focused, outcome-oriented leadership. We are largely headed up by non-professionals, whether that term refers to their employment history and expertise or to their temperament. 

We have (in potentia) the money, resources, human capital, and skills to achieve gains. We have gains TO achieve -- socially laudable, economically relevant, politically needful activism to pursue, and noble (if I may use that word without seeming like overly pious) goals to fight for. We have work to do and the means to do it. But if the review I've been doing of our activity over the past two decades has shown anything, it is that our work is time and again disrupted and destroyed by organizational infighting; operational incompetence; and personality-driven failure. 

If you asked me why the "atheist movement" (loaded term) is "failing" (leading term), I'd tell you it has a lot more to do with the self-serving, short-sighted, self-aggrandizing and frankly destructive personalities that our complex community has not yet figured out how to neutralize, than it does with leftist repression.

(The continued failure of secular leadership in the US to take responsibility for the terrible demographics of the movement, in all its manifestations -- talking heads, org officers, media representation, conference attendance, and so on -- is I think concomitant to larger leadership problem. The demographic problem and the leadership problem are to each other both cause and result.)

If secularism were half as rational as we like to think we are, then a lot of the folks in charge would be shown the door in quick fashion, making room for folks who are ready and equipped to deliver in terms of revenue, media activism, legislative influence, membership growth, local chapter stability, etc, etc. 

If I may say so without seeming merely to be "stirring up shit" -- some of those people who should be shown the door are on this mailing list.

More than once, a person I look up to in the secular social movement has drawn a comparison between secularism and waves of enfranchisement. You had women's rights; civil rights; equal rights; and now, perhaps, we could see ourselves as part of a fourth wave. There are a few problems with this comparison, but in spirit, it's an exciting metaphor. The reason I can't embrace it is because I'm embarrassed, on my own behalf and on the behalf of anyone who has any role in organized secularism over the past quarter century, at how badly we've failed at identifying and empowering the kind of astute and honorable leadership that those previous movements depended on. 

I don't mean that our lack of heroically perfect leadership is what's holding us back. I mean that we're entirely too tolerant of entirely too much imperfection. We can do better, as secularists and rationalists and humanists, and we should, and we need to. The US needs every one of its component communities to get their act together; all hands are needed to create, strengthen and defend institutions, memes and attitudes which are up to the task of neutralizing chaotic nationalism, xenophobia of all sorts, nativism and corporatism. 

I write this reply, without wishing to seem to devalue the work and contributions of secular leaders who ARE doing a bang-up job.

I fear I've replied to your question with a bit of grandstanding. I've deliberately not said much about Smalley's article, or about his other statements along these lines in social media. I find it a shallow and unpersuasive position, and with that, enough said. 

All best,

Zachary Bos

Boston

Matron in the train station

Saw an older woman handing out Watchtower tracts at the T this morning. I bet that work gives her a sense of purpose, and of dignity through purpose. And it's nice to know that she has a reason to be out of the house. Still, I'd much rather see her stumping for an ideology that didn't reject science, reject modernity, and demand impossible beliefs from the people interested in belonging to that community.

What kind of an ideology might that be? Well, it'd have to be a big one, else it wouldn't attract commitment and motivate behavior. But so many big ideas are also dangerous ideas. Radical fellowship opens the door to disfellowshipping; community belonging opens the door to shunning; values-based leadership opens the door to coercion, authoritarianism, and abuse.

Some days I'm such an optimist that I feel it wouldn't be such a difficult thing to articulate such an ideology, and stitch up a workable community structure around it, and release it into the wild. Then I think about the observable scarcity of such communities where benign values-in-action have resulted in flourishing and stable social situations, and I tuck my optimism back in my pocket and recommit to a more humble set of ambitions.

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled," Mark Twain wrote. (Or no, he didn't, but I will tell you that he didn't and you won't believe me.)

Orwell on socialist sex maniacs

Ah, YouTube. This morning it brought me to an unaired clip from the British panel show QI, in which the inestimable and inimitable Stephen Fry quotes from George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (1936):

"'Socialism draws towards it with magnetic force every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer, sex maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England.' [Orwell] also talks about 'vegetarians with wilting beards', 'outer suburban creeping Jesus' eager to begin yoga exercises,' and 'that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal wearers and bearded fruit juice drinkers who come flocking toward the smell of progress like bluebottles to a dead cat.'" [transcript]

I wonder what justice there is in Orwell's cranky depiction of figures we probably all recognize through the distortions of his caricature. There is an n-dimension graph whose axes represent openness toward or rejection of different conceptual possibilities -- spirituality, personal perfectability, political perfectability, and so on -- and in this graph space, we should be able to identify the overlapping domains of "socialism", "individualism", "bohemianism", "veganism", and so on. Would the result be a disordered pell-mell without order? Or would some kind of informative structure emerge, to tell us about the people who reject theism but embrace socialism, who embrace fascism but reject spiritualism, and so on? Where will we find the bluebottle types, or the skeptics, or the Eric Blairs? What if these each turn out to be categorical cousins, to no one's greater surprise than their own?

Wanted: a simple explanation of abiogenesis

On the right, science. On the left, incredulity.

On Sun, Nov 6, 2016, I awoke to find this email in my American Atheists mailbox, from a gentleman writing from India:

Dear Sir, 

Good day to you.
                     
I would like to reintroduce myself as an independent researcher in philosophy and modern science. I gratefully acknowledge your previous evidence-based reply that helped me a lot to improve my critical thinking skills. 

Being an open-minded, unbiased researcher, it is my pleasure to share one of my concerns- as expressed below, hoping a satisfactory explanation: 

When we talk about consciousness, we all know that consciousness is the result of certain evolutionary arrangement of atoms. How can a specific 'collection of atoms' in the universe alone  'think', 'aware' and 'reason' about even 'its' own existence while all the sub-atomic particles in the universe are governed by the same laws of physics? 

I mean, what is the logical and rational plausibility of our assumption that physical objects (obviously they are made up of atoms and atoms don't have any self-awareness and consciousness) , for example, a rock ( or any inorganic, non-living matter of choice ) of certain mass (Kg), when subjected to blind, unconscious, unplanned and unintelligent evolutionary forces of magnitude of certain Newtons (N) for trillion, trillion, trillions of years or even infinite time , the original rock will become 'self-aware' in such a way that now the rock is able to 'think', 'aware', and 'reason' about even 'its' own existence and 'its' surroundings, able to grasp the laws of physics, mathematics, able to involve in logical reasoning, able to draw logical conclusions, able to feel sense of justice, sense of purpose and sense of existence, able to involve in rational thinking, able to feel pain and sorrow etc.?

Is there any logical fallacy in looking beyond the theory of abiogenesis?

Appreciate your kind feedback.
Please ignore and forgive me if this e-mail is an offence.

Thanks and regards,
F---- V----- P----------,
Electrical Engineer,
INDIA. 

When I read his question -- 

I mean, what is the logical and rational plausibility of our assumption that physical objects... when subjected to blind evolutionary forces... will become 'self-aware'?

-- I was tempted to write in reply, simply, "1.0", reflecting the 100% plausibility of the emergence of consciousness from non-living precursors, in light of the evidence of the physical world around us and the conscious being (myself) typing in response. I decided in the end to give him a less trivial reply. 

For your reading pleasure, here is my Sunday morning armchair musing on abiogenesis, and the emergence of thinky out of rocky, and all that jazz. 

Dear F----: 

Excellent to hear from you. I'll copy you from my personal email account, so our conversation doesn't clutter up my official inbox.  

Let me address out two points I see in your message that create a lot of confusion. 

The first objection I have has to do with your analogy likening the emergence of consciousness to a rock manifesting the ability to think. This is an error of analogy, akin to an error in understanding what is meant BY abiogenesis, and indeed, by consciousness.  

No theory of abiogenesis posits that a solid solitary object (such as: a rock!) would within its own geological lifetime undergo such physical changes that allow it eventually to think, while also retaining its identity AS a rock. 

Abiogeneis as it is currently conceived is not a local phenomenon that occurs WITHIN an ecology -- today you have no life, and tomorrow, there it is, there is life, isolated and localized within, and somehow separate from, the ecology. Rather, abiogeneis is a process that occurs over geological timescales, and in a manner distributed throughout systems that span an entire ecology. Further, it is conceived of as an incremental process, with manifold different simultaneous instantiations.  

The popular image of abiogenesis as having to do with a puddle of slime on a rocky shore, as isolated in its reaction space as a glass beaker in a lab, is wildly misleading. Although there needs to be a certain degree of concentration of reagents and stock materials, and a certain patterning to the encounters different chemical (and eventually, biological!) materials undergo, this does not bear comparison to the slime puddle image. Things are altogether more dynamic, and take place at scales that are at the same time much smaller (microscopic clay templating! RNA self-catalysis!) and much larger (ocean depth gradients of iron- and sulfur-bearing isoclines! or, according to a different model, iuron- and sulfur-bearing surface deposits such as those surrounding ocean floor vents).  

In other words, I fear that your metaphor of abiogenesis operates at the wrong levels of scale, and with the wrong impression of dynamism. 

The other point I'd wish to address briefly, in response to your kind invitation, has to do with your presentation of the concept of "consciousness." This, like abiogenesis, is a complicated subject which is sometimes disfavored by limiting metaphors. 

You write:  

now the rock is able to 'think', 'aware', and 'reason' about even 'its' own existence and 'its' surroundings, able to grasp the laws of physics, mathematics, able to involve in logical reasoning, able to draw logical conclusions, able to feel sense of justice, sense of purpose and sense of existence, able to involve in rational thinking, able to feel pain and sorrow etc.?

This, on its surface, sounds like a plainly ludicrous proposition. But I'd never describe consciousness in this manner. Instead, I might translate your description this way:
the original rock may be subjected to the processes of weathering and erosion, such that it is reduced to sediment. The minerals and chemicals which constituted that rock are now available to circulate in the (aqueous, likely) ecosystem, where they may be involved in chemical reactions we believe to be preliminary to the abiotic formation of biological monomers, such as carbon fixation, chemical reduction, or (to give a more complex example), pyramidine formation.  

Over time, an ecology which has produced biological monomers, may enter into a state of conditions conducive to the formation of biological polymers, some of which are self-catalyzing. The abiogenesis really heats up then!
An ecology which features concentrations of self-catalyzing biological polymers may give rise to autocatalytic chemical networks and structures such as micelles and vesicles. These molecular-scale phenomena may interact and form more complex structures and systems, which we begin to recognize as rudimentary "proto-life."  

Over eons of chemical, and then biological, and then ecological, evolution, this proto-life may develop adaptive systems which "record" life experience, in the form of chemical changes in the cell, or taxic changes in behavior, or changes in genetic expression, or charge potential changes in nerve cells. As this system of record-keeping (memory, you could call it) becomes more sophisticated, the organism benefits from the ability to predict appropriate behavior for future conditions which resemble past conditions it has a record of. This is a significant part of what we call learning.   

The organism continues to become more sophisticated. But keep in mind, we aren't talking here about a single individual. We are speaking in evolutionary terms, so this change takes place over countless generations, across the somatic instances of countless individuals.  

Eventually, the learning/memory systems of the organism become so sophisticated, and recursive, and powerful, that the organism is able to model future potential behavior! This does bear comparison to the way that a computer program using patterns of charge distribution in an electronic system, to model the world of a computer game. We don't think there's anything magical about that, do we? Likewise, the pattern of charge distribution in the nervous system of the organism, are able to run a model of the world. And this model may contain sub-programs we can label as "thinking", "awareness", "reasoning about its own existence and its surroundings", "pondering the the laws of physics", "mulling over maths", "fiddling about with logical reasoning", "the drawing of conclusions", "the sense of justice", "a sense of purpose" , "a sense of existence", and "the experience of pain and sorrow."  

All of these thoughts and feelings are 1) simply patterns of charge distribution changing across the vastly complex representational network of a nervous system, and 2) amazing. 

Voila! From rock to mind. Now, I am kidding, of course. But I hope that my "translation" of your description of the origin of consciousness, even as briefly as I describe it, is enough to make the point I intend -- namely, that while there is so much that we have yet to measure, verify, and truly understand about the way life emerges from non-life, and how mind emerges from minerals, the nature of the mystery isn't, any longer, metaphysical, if we come to terms with the vast scales of complexity involved in a naturalistic explanation.  

Seen from a distance, the complexity of the naturalistic explanation may look supernatural. But we don't have to keep our distance. We can zoom in, get our hands and minds dirty, and engage with data, and models, and articles and animations and questions and answers, and so on, through the technology of information and communication which frees us from the backwaters of our ignorance as separate individuals. (That internet -- she's amazing.) 

Thank you for the stimulating questions; these were fun things to think about on a Sunday morning here in New England. 

With warm regards from Boston, 

Zachary "the Thinking Rock" Bos
Massachusetts State Director for American Atheists

To the extent that we atheists want to have our materialist apologetics in order, I think it would be useful to have a "best practices" way of responding to questions like, ah, but, rocks can't think, can they.

Do you have any suggestions for concise and accessible explanations of abiogenesis, of the sort we could share with persons like this Indian engineer when they have questions about the plausibility of that theory? I'd love to know what you recommend. (How great if there was a really brilliant YouTube animation going through this stuff... )

The graphic above, interestingly enough, comes from the blog of a Christian defending creationism as a plausible theory. 

Grassroots wisdom... from Cracked.com?

Those of you who know about Cracked.com probably know it as a platform for wacky, even sophomoric, humor writing. However: from time to time, their contributors sneak in content with some real wisdom. When reading a recent post, I came across a few paragraphs that seem really, really relevant to the kind of cultural activism many of us are involved in as organizers in the secular movement. The title of the section gives the short take:  

#3. Revolution Is Sexy; Real Change Is Strategic And Incremental

America was born from a revolution. It's in our DNA. If you want your blockbuster movie to get asses in the seats, make it about a few common folk taking down an advanced, oppressive force. In the third act, when the hero nobly declines to kill the Emperor, that's OK -- somebody else will toss him down a bottomless shaft. What matters is the unquestioned assumption that abrupt and/or violent upheaval of the current system is the only way to affect change, and that anything less is a de facto stamp of approval for the status quo.

  

In reality, sudden upheaval usually results in an even more brutal asshole taking power (See: the Middle East, China, Russia ... most of the world throughout history, in fact). This is because the people who shout loudest for abrupt change -- particularly those who promise to restore the greatness of the nation to some imagined idyllic past -- are often either short-sighted idealists or power-hungry sociopaths looking to exploit scared people. It's the political version of a get-rich-quick scheme.

But real change is usually as tedious as watching a game of chess played by two fungus colonies. Slavery didn't vanish with the stroke of Abe Lincoln's pen; abolitionists had been chipping away for 45 damned years, changing public opinion inch by inch. The gay rights movement has been banging its head against the wall since the 1890s and still hasn't broken all the way through. A lawsuit here, a board meeting there, a petition here, a city council candidate there. A step forward, a step back. The kind of grinding, unsatisfying slog that wouldn't even get a montage in a movie adaptation.

In other words: Small gains add up. The failure to make a huge win every calendar year doesn't mean we're somehow not making progress. And the sex appeal of dismantling the current system, in order to build a brave new world, may be distracting us from the wholly intolerable cost of such revolution.

Fly your flags high

Proposed (but never officially adopted) logo for the now defunct Atheist Discussion Group, a Boston-area enterprise active from 1998 on. The Latin above means "Christians for the flavor's sake."

A charming limerick from the young Saki (H.H. Munro, 1870-1916):

There was a young lady O'Brien,
Who sang Sunday hymns to a lion.
Of that lady there's some
In the lion's tum-tum,
And the rest is an angel in Zion.

Skeptical of the Bible? Have I got a book for you.

If I told you of a book that included the following topics, would you be interested?

• "Contradictions and Errors in the Biblical Text"
• "Distortion and Abrogation in the Bible:
• "Refutation of Misleading Protestant Statements Regarding the Authenticity of the Bible"

You are interested, aren't you, you skeptics and revelation-scoffers. Well, let me not tantalize you cruelly. The book exists! In fact, it's a foundational text in the world of Muslim apologetics.

The six-volume Izhar ul-Haqq, Rahmatullah Kairanawi's magnum opus, was written (in Arabic, naturally) in 1864. Christine Schirrmacher describes the work thusly:

'The Demonstration of the Truth' (izhâr al-haqq) served as a summary of all possible charges against Christianity and was therefore used after al-Kairânawî's death as a sort of encyclopaedia since al-Kairânawî extended the material of former polemicists like 'Ali Tabarî, Ibn Hazm or Ibn Taymiyya to a great extent.

Check it out in English translation here. Don't be surprised if you have to pick around some bits that defend the existence of the Islamic god, even as you enjoy the take-down of the Christian one.

Religious typographical taboo: six points of contention

1. While cleaning out some files earlier this week, I deleted an .epub version of the Koran from my desktop. And I wondered as I did it, would a believing Muslim have any difficulty doing the same, in light of the prohibition on destroying that book? (Because of that prohibition, Muslims in Iraq haven't destroyed the abhorrent Blood Koran created by Saddam Hussein. However, since it's "unclean" as well, they also can't put it on public display. Twixt a rock and a hard place, they are. The full-on theological debate over what to do with the damn thing rages on.
2. My friend the religious scholar notes, when I shared the above thought with him, that there really isn't any issue of consequence of the copies being destroyed or threatened with destruction are in a language other than the Koranic Arabic of Muhammad. In Islam, it can be thought a kind of sin to read from a translated Koran. 
3. My friend also points out: A better question is what happens to misprinted pages in Arabic editions..."
4. An acquaintance had this to share. "My nephews went to Hebrew school in a Conservative (not even Orthodox) synagogue. Like in any school, there were plenty of handouts. Being about Judaism, the word 'G-d' showed up a lot. The kids were not allowed to throw out or recycle any handouts with "God" on them. The handouts had to be brought to some special place, where most likely a Rabbi got bribed (read: paid) to dispose of them "properly". These were #$%^&* handouts for kids in a $%^&* little school! I wish I were making this up."
5. This same acquaintance alerts us to the religious trespass inherent in reading this on screen. "Look what we typed -- the word 'GOD' instead of 'G-d'! Who knew that an errant keystroke could hurt the feelings of the omnipotent creator of the Universe."
6. From WP: "In Jewish tradition the sacredness of the divine name or titles must be recognized by the professional sofer (scribe) who writes Torah scrolls, or tefillin and mezuzah. Before transcribing any of the divine titles or name he prepares mentally to sanctify them. Once he begins a name he does not stop until it is finished, and he must not be interrupted while writing it, even to greet a king. If an error is made in writing it may not be erased, but a line must be drawn round it to show that it is canceled, and the whole page must be put in a genizah (burial place for scripture) and a new page begun."

Do theological divisions stick in your craw?

Over at the Interpath Conversations group on Facebook, a forum member had a question to ask about the attitude of Richard Dawkins toward believers:

This video was shot in 2007, at around the 55:30 mark he begins a comment in which he ends up saying that it "sticks in his craw" to work with "decent moderate religious people." But in more recent years, I've heard him talk quite happily about working with progressive/liberal religious people and even called them something-like his "comrades in arms against ignorance."  

Earlier in the same comment he talks about belief in a supernatural creator being incompatible with science. But I know that many (if not most!) liberal/progressive religious people are not "supernatural theists" but rather 'pan-en-theists', even if they're unfamiliar with the term. 

So, my question is, does it still stick in his craw? Or, is he now more okay with working with liberal/progressive religious folk who aren't supernatural theists? I'm merely trying to understand his point of view, not looking for an argument. Thanks!

That's a pretty fair question! I thought it deserved to be brought outside of the silo of Facebook and added to the ongoing workings-out here of topics in belief, nonbelief, and interaction across those questions that divide us.

My answer to the forum member was as follows:

Thinking about his books and public comments, I would say that what sticks in Dawkins' craw is not working with such people (the 'softcore theists', we might say), but with the idea that persons committed to making society more welcoming of scientific/skeptical ways of looking at the world should be allying with persons committed to making the work more welcoming of supernaturalistic belief.  

That is to say, it is the organizational "working with" which is problematic -- which leads to issues of conflict over incompatible commitments -- rather than interpersonal "working with."  

You've likely heard the reasoning that by helping to normalize supernaturalistic belief of the sort that Dawkins finds unwarranted, moderate or liberal believers help to create safe conditions in society where more radical or dangerous strains of belief can find an entrance point and eventually flourish. This, too, is an organizational (or societal) dynamic, and not an interpersonal one.  

Compare this attitude to, say, Sam Harris' recommendation that nonbelievers be conversationally intolerant of supernaturalistic belief, when we encounter it in our personal lives. Now, Dawkins may well be impatient with the believers in his personal life; but as I understand it, his public and written comments along the lines of this "sticks in my craw" remark aren't expressions of interpersonal animosity.

Or did I get it backwards? Is Dawkins in his personal life someone who finds theists backward or foolish? Does he go out of his way to avoid dealing with them? On the other hand, does he see the value in forging organizational alliances with theistic groups who are working toward a shared goal? You know what, I don't think it matters, not in the case of Dawkins specifically.

What matters is that we recognize this as a fair question, and an important one. If you're a believer/nonbeliever, how do you feel about interacting with nonbelievers/believers? Do these feelings get in the way of opportunities to work together? Does working together mean we are compromising our principled commitment to endorsing and proliferating a worldview?

There's a conversation we need to have about how to work with people you think are wrong in some aspect of their thinking. It would have to touch on issues of humility, cooperativeness, conviction, civility, and good will. It might even be a conversation to have with folks at a young age, since as part of your interpersonal, social skill too;-kit the ability to work alongside and in productive cooperation with people you think are wrong is indispensable. So add this topic to the syllabus for secular Sunday School. 

Hey, SCOTUS: faith ain't internally consistent

From Slate's coverage of the Hobby Lobby trial:

Kagan questions [the] claim that one tenet of the Green family’s faith requires that they provide all their employees with health care while another tenet requires that they deny contraception.

What's to question? I am unaware of any reason from epistemology or philosophy of religion to assume, prima facie, that the tenets we commit to when we adopt a worldview to our purposes won't be mutually exclusive. It is fruitless to look for a hidden consistency in any ethics, be it supernaturalistic or not.

Yeats recognized early on that the challenge in life was to hammer his thoughts into unity; we all face the same difficulty. Sure, a person who wishes to live  "rationally"* is going to pursue self-consistency in their ethical and epistemic commitments. But the trick is in realizing that epistemic unity is only ever imperfectly obtained. With that insight, one realizes the needful thing for humans to learn is how to be comfortable and ethical even  with that limitation.

This paradox at the heart of a self-aware life reminds me of a line from David Milch's wonderful television series Deadwood: "I believe in God's purpose, not knowing it." I'm content, atheist that I am, to let the word "God" suffice here for the illusion of a predetermined course of a events in the universe. I believe: in not knowing the point of my life. I believe: I'm free to determine a purpose for myself, in that absence of a higher plan. I believe: there's no reason to think my purpose-driven commitments will be, on first or second or further consideration, consistent among themselves. I believe: a good person embraces this state of affairs, and learns to muddle through, seeking their purpose, despite their self-contradictions.

* and we mean by this, pace Clifford, to live according to a system of beliefs each of which was acquired in a sufficiently informed fashion.

What is the Inferno of peace?

On NPR this morning I heard another report about Christian militia reprisals against the Muslim minority that took control of the Central African Republic last year in a coup. About French peacekeepers looking on while a body is mutilated by a mob, cut into pieces. About Rwandan peacekeepers there under the auspices of the African Union, haunted by the knowledge of what happened in the marshes and village of their nation 20 years ago, in '94. The speaker is Emergency Director for Human Rights Watch, calling from the nation's capital, Bangui. He describes the situation as being out of Dante's Inferno.

*

This makes me think: we have ready literary models -- we might call them myths, or memes, with equal accuracy -- to describe horrific violence. Why don't we have models of justice, or of conditions so intolerable to the human spirit that justice and peace is brought about immediately, that are as ready to be called upon? We need to make people of vision and ethical motive have touchstones they can use to communicate an an urgent and cogent way about situations in need of immediate remedy. It says something about the level of our global civilization that Dante's Inferno would be a universally recognizable symbol for horror, but that we don't have a universally recognizable shorthand code for conditions of peace and civil harmony.

A Roman Catholic priest in CAR brought the entire Muslim population of his community, numbering in the hundreds, into the church, and declared that they are under the protection of God. This presumably stopped whatever revenge attacks might have been planned against them by their Christian neighbors.

What empowers the Rwanda soldiers -- what explains their capacity to bring about a more positive outcome? Memory of atrocity; a sense of obligation to prevent the recurrence of evitable history. Civic authority. What empowers the peacemakers? Cultural references that are universally accessible and uniquely motivating; a vision of peace that can be readily understood and shared among new stakeholders. Cultural authority. What empowers the priest? The respect afforded to, consolidated in, his special role as mediator between the mundane and the everlasting (which may be defined as contingently as one likes...). Moral authority.

I think about these matters as I try to imagine a society without theistic religion; as I endeavor to think through and look past the enormous privilege of my fortunate birth in a more or less intellectually and religiously free society, to think of the civic needs and human nature of societies where such freedom is reduced or absent entirely. There are different levels of freedom in different parts of the world, and the freedom of a society may change from year to year, as regimes and generations change and seasons pass and technology disrupts and transactional patterns evolve.

To skip a good deal of analysis and admit simply to what is on my mind: I see the need for, the potential usefulness of, a secular Bible. A tool that can be held up, tangible, in all its undeniable here-it-is-ness. A reference that can be returned to; a blueprint and a checklist that can be consulted time and again. A foundation plan for inhering civic, cultural, and moral authority in whomever wishes to act in accordance with the account of peace laid out therein.

We need stories other than Dante's beautiful awful intricate catholic Inferno. A civic humanistic canon, as widely accessible as possible without losing the haecceity peculiar to the material of myth. A textbook of emotional engineering. The Good Book compiled by Grayling is a gesture in the right direction, but we need more experimentation along these lines. Josiah, what do you think?

On religious monuments in government buildings

Continuing the conversation started by the proposal to place a statue of Satan at Oklahoma's state capitol, the Facebook team at CBS Boston has asked a question:

Should commissioners approve the monument, or should religious monuments not be allowed at a government building?

Well, no.

The civic space should be equally accessible to all members of the community, since it is owned collectively by that community.

Philosophy and ethics are determinedly private matters, and cannot be readily translated into public language that we can all partake in. It isn't about removing contentious symbols that might offend some people; it is about making sure our government does its work in a language we can all speak. (See John Rawls for more about the distinction between private and public language.)

Here's an interesting thought: Why don't we think of the concrete absence in the public space of symbols that are religious or similarly "private" in nature, as a monument in itself? A monument that says something in its silence about our solemn shared commitment to a form of government in which persons of all and any creed can all participate equally.

(cross-posted to the Boston Atheists blog)

Is UU missing the "new" New Atheist boat?

One of the Sunday Assembly Boston committee members shared the October 2013 sermon above, with the advice that we keep in mind we are not just another group, but a new congregation that other leaders of other congregations are still trying to make sense of.

My thoughts.

Kendrick points to institutional insularity as a reason why UU is not connecting effectively with the population of religiously unaffiliated freethinkers coming out of the woodwork in groups like Sunday Assembly and Humanism; I wonder if there isn't another important factor: the language gap.

In his sermon, he uses terms like "transcendental", "faith", and "spiritual hunger". Now, I know what he means, but the register of this vocabulary seems to be a world removed from the science-infatuated, skeptically-inflected, irony-wrought idiolect of the new freethinkers. I can map his meaning onto my own ethical outlook, sure, but I fear I am not the typical case. For many more people among those he would be seeking to tell about UU, the ecclesiastical and vaguely supernaturalistic vocabulary of the UU tradition is likely to evoke a powerful response of suspicion and even disdain.

In my conversations with UU and HUU leaders and parishioners, I've encountered confusion, wariness, and even dismissal in regard to Sunday Assembly (and to the older project of re-orienting the Boston Atheists as a congregational group). These are folks who have good reason for wondering if we aren't a bunch of johhny-come-latelys, here to co-opt their place as *the* obvious destination for liberal-minded freethinkers in search of community as a connection to "something greater". I share this opinion because I think it is important that we keep in mind that our work in organizing SA isn't taking place in a vacuum; there are allies out there, that we can work with and learn from, and establish relationships of mutual aid, as long as we know that they are there, and are alert to the potential sensitivities. And I share it with full confidence that Kendrick is a certainly a potential ally.

Relatedly: After taking a few months off while occupied with wedding planning, I'll be restarting the Boston Interpath Workgroup with monthly meetings for discussion and position paper publication, in March 2014. If anyone here on the distro is interested in joining, please let me know.

Joking about atheist church

A joke from a friend that came up in an email exchange in which we were discussing the meaning of Sunday Assembly Boston. She writes that she across it during the Bosnian War; she thinks it was told by a Sarajevan

Q: What's the difference between a Sarajevan Muslim, a Sarajevan Jew, and a Sarajevan Christian?  

A: A Sarajevan Muslim is someone who skips mosque, a Sarajevan Jew is someone who skips temple, and a Sarajevan Christian is someone who skips church.

The extension to our context is, of course:

Q. So just what exactly is Sunday Assembly? 

A. A place for atheists not to go on Sundays.

*

Historical lagniappe: About a certain king of the Caucasus, 10th-century Persian explorer and geographer Ibn Rustah writes:

He prayed on Fridays with the Muslims, on Saturdays with the Jews, and on Sundays with the Christians. 'Since each religion claims that it is the only true one and that the others are invalid', the king explained, 'I have decided to hedge my bets.'

Ha.

What we can learn from Scientology

According to Patheos: "There is no personal deity in Scientology, so private rituals of worship and devotion are practically non-existent, replaced with diligence in spiritual practice and striving for moral uprightness."

In the spirit of learning from other traditions, I'd like to say: I'm totally stealing that emphasis on diligence and striving. (Albeit with the caveats that 1. "spiritual practice" can really only be meaningful when used to refer to introspective and cognitive methods of cultivating desirable knowledge and emotional states, and 2. "moral uprightness" is an ad hoc and utilitarian thing, to be invented and modified by the end user as needed, and doesn't exist 'out there' in some perfect Platonic form waiting to be uncovered by the truly diligent and spiritually pure.)

Quote: "Religion not the crying need of India"

"Christians must always be ready for good criticism, and I hardly think that you will mind if I make a little criticism. You Christians, who are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the soul of the heathen — why do you not try to save their bodies from starvation? In India, during the terrible famines, thousands died from hunger, yet you Christians did nothing. You erect churches all through India, but the crying evil in the East is not religion — they have religion enough — but it is bread that the suffering millions of burning India cry out for with parched throats. They ask us for bread, but we give them stones. It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics. In India a priest that preached for money would lose caste and be spat upon by the people. I came here to seek aid for my impoverished people, and I fully realised how difficult it was to get help for heathens from Christians in a Christian land."

(from a lecture delivered by Indian Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda on 20 September 1893 at the Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, criticizing Christian missionaries for ignoring the needs of starving millions in India.)

from The Encyclopedia of Religion

"To say that man is homo religiosus is not to say something 'nice' about him."

(a throwaway line in Vol. 9; see also the entry for homo reliogsus in Vol. 6 )