j a c k *

Defending Delusions...

AlterNet continues its inexplicable attack on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.  Alister McGrath calls the book bullying, and accuses Dawkins of a "seemingly pathological hostility towards religion," but reads into that not a new boldness to challenge orthodoxy but instead "a whiff of panic."

The shrill, aggressive rhetoric of his God Delusion masks a deep insecurity about the public credibility of atheism. The God Delusion seems more designed to reassure atheists whose faith is faltering than to engage fairly or rigorously with religious believers, and others seeking for truth. (Might this be because the writer is himself an atheist whose faith is faltering?)

No, that's not a typo.  He really says "atheists whose faith is faltering."  Twice.  The phrase doesn't even make sense, let alone constitute a critique of the book.  Professors of Historical Theology should learn the meaning of words like "atheist" before attempting to use them in sentences.  Does McGrath himself feel a strong faith in the non-existence of super-intelligent space turkeys?  By his logic if he doesn't believe in them he must be a member of the cult of a-space-turkey-ism.  The only possible explanation of his non-belief is that he feels the call of the space-turkeys but refuses to embrace their importance in his life.

Sheesh.

McGrath then tries to refute what he represents as Dawkins core arguments, "that religion can be explained away on scientific grounds, and that religion leads to violence."  Of course these aren't Dawkins or any other atheists' core arguments.  The arguments to refute are the lack of evidence for any gods (as amply demonstrated by the utter inability of different religions to agree on which one of them is true), and the consequent lack of explanatory power of the concept of God.  Even though McGrath picks minor side quibbles he still fails utterly at defending theism, falling back instead on tired refrains.  Hiding behind the skirts of post-modernism, he chides anyone who disagrees with him of being mired in their own world view.  Also Dawkins hasn't studied enough theology, he says, so his critique of Christianity is superficial.

As someone in the comments points out: so what?  We don't need to learn much about Scientology to decide that it's a sack of lies, and pretty sorry ones at that.  Likewise you don't have to read a lot of the Bible to see that it's the incoherent mythology of ancient middle-easterners, of a kind with the thousands of other holy books written over the centuries.  Anything worthwhile takes some effort to understand and appreciate, as we often see in the shallow, uninformed attacks on evolution, but even though there have been billions of words written about God you really only have to get to the first contradiction before you can put the book down.  "This God being who cannot be detected in any way will grant me eternal life which I cannot ever verify that I have if I believe He exists?  Right.  How convenient."

McGrath echoes Derkacz in calling for Dawkins to shut up and stop embarrassing the other atheists.  Their concern for our reputation is touching, but I don't think we'll take strategic advice from the opposition.  Thanks anyway.

- jack*

Blogging for Choice...

My strong materialistic worldview informs my ethics at every level and in every issue, yet there are few issues that underline it more than abortion.  Abortion opponents have only a single official argument:

1. a fetus is a person,
2. killing a person is murder,
3. abortion kills the fetus,
4. therefore abortion is murder.

I say “official” because when you scratch the surface you find that the underlying rationale really revolves around sexuality and patriarchy.  Pregnancy is viewed as the punishment immoral (usually black) women incur for having sex, thus the popular exemptions for rape and incest in many abortion prohibitions.  The fetus is no less human because it’s the consequence of a rape, but the abortion is allowed since the women is not at fault.

But let’s stick to the official argument.  Even if it’s just a pretext it’s the argument to defeat because the real reasons are too misogynistic and implicitly racist to succeed on their own.  It’s also the argument that many people who would otherwise support abortion rights find difficult to cope with.  For the materialist it’s a piece of cake.  Clearly the second and third premise of the syllogism are not controversial; killing a person is murder (i.e. morally wrong), and abortion kills the fetus.  The first premise is the crux of the issue.

The problem is the idea of a “person.”  Is a fetus really a person?  Biologically the fetus is clearly a different organism living parasitically in the mother’s body.  But so is a tapeworm.  What makes the fetus special?  Philosophical arguments swirl around the ideas of potential and unique humanity.  The fetus is a potential person in the sense that it can eventually, under the right conditions, constitute the nucleus of a genuine human being.  No question.  But so can a sperm or an egg, and we don’t give them anything like the same deference.  For that matter cucumbers could become human if the pregnant mother craves pickles.  Potential anything, let alone personhood, is useless for determining what we should value.

Uniqueness is worse.  Yes, each fetus is unique in the same sense that snowflakes are unique, but this is more like the uniqueness of random numbers than the uniqueness of works of art.  Every encryption key issued by a web server is unique, but that does not make each one uniquely valuable.  Each one is exactly as valuable as any of the countless numbers of its equally unique brethren, whether actual or potential.  This uniqueness is only useful in that it guarantees that each one will be distinct, not in the particular combination of bits from which each is made.  We grow attached to the individuality of each child and cherish their unique attributes of course, but that is because they already are people.  It is not their uniqueness alone that makes them people in the first place.

Here’s where materialism shines.  Other philosophies implicitly require an essence, some ethereal energy or mystic mana – a soul perhaps – which serves as the signal feature of what we consider to be human.  Essentialism, inherent in non-materialistic traditions, means that there must be some specific delineation between other types of matter, even living matter, and humans.  Sperm and egg are not essentially a person; the squalling newborn clearly is.  But the squirming fetus still attached to its mother a few hours before birth was virtually the same as the newborn, and the fetus a day before was scarcely different.  As we backtrack through the many milestones in fetal development we cannot find any that marks a dramatic change of kind – a transformation of the essence from the non-human to the human.  Thus we are forced back to conception itself.  Because we cannot draw a hard line at any other point, we end up acquiescing to the absurd conclusion that a single cell is equivalent to a baby.

Materialism solves the dilemma much more easily.  Since we are nothing more than the stuff we’re made of there is no need to look for a hard dividing line.  The early embryo, although clearly biologically human, is not a person any more than any other clump of undifferentiated human tissue.  Over time a complex process, which although astonishing and remarkable is ripe with potential failure, transforms this ball of cells into something to be loved and adored.  There was no moment when the new person suddenly came into existence.  The child was assembled, slowly bit by bit.  At the start there was life (and potential) but no person, and at the end there was a living infant.  Viewed this way the question of when life begins becomes as stupid as asking at what point on the assembly line does a collection of parts become a car?  It’s a continuum.  This actually matches most people’s intuition about abortion.  Early abortion is not killing anything of consequence, and late abortion is very unfortunate but rarely necessary.

Some argue that this is a crass reduction of our ineffable qualities to mere mechanism, and, well, it is.  To some extent.  What makes us what we are, what’s to be honored and preserved, is the way that mechanism is put together.  I think it’s awfully special that we have to opportunity to pull back the curtain and see how the magic works.

- jack*

NOTE: This post was inspired by Blog for Choice Day.

Twisting a Legacy...

The normally sensible Evan Derkacz exploits the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. to bash at atheists.  King was good, he reminds us, and a Christian, and therefore Richard Dawkins should shut the hell up.  It's as if Derkacz thinks that atheists' principled stand against the tenants and trappings of religion amounts to nothing more than an ad hominem attack.  If we argue that religion is irrational, illogical and immoral, then he concludes that we must therefore be saying that religious people are uniformly irrational, illogical and immoral as well.  A few counter examples, like MLK, easily defeat this atheist straw man.

Of course our argument is not an ad hominem.  Dr. Dawkins and others are not arguing that religion is bad because the people who practice it are stupid.  Quite the reverse.  We believe that people are intrinsically smart and good and are fully capable of discovering what's true and what works without the aid of imagined supernatural beings.  Our disagreement is not with the quality of religious peoples' character, nor with the morality of their actions.  Our argument hinges instead on the one premise underlying all theistic belief - that a god or gods exist.  No matter how brilliant, generous or just a religious individual may be they believe this to be a true fact, and they are wrong.  When this false belief leads to idiocy or evil we point it out, but mainly as a reminder of the consequences of acting on that which is not true.

Derkacz postmodern whining is really just another example of that common complaint that liberal atheists are an embarrassment to the left and should stop speaking out.  I've previously handled this issue here, but I think that invoking the legacy of Dr. King in service of this nonsense is particularly heinous.  Atheists are a despised minority in America, subject to discrimination because of their religious beliefs.  I think the rise of "non-pluralistic" atheists like Dawkins in the popular culture is a positive development, and if it makes people on the left uncomfortable then good.  As the late Dr. King said,

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

- jack*

Faulty Analogy Insurance...

The San Jose Mercury ran this editorial around Christmastime arguing against mandatory health insurance.  While there are many good reasons to oppose such a plan, the article instead ridiculed the idea by making what I suppose the author considered a clever analogy: the affect of “food insurance” on the struggling restaurateur.

Worse yet, even the insurance companies rarely cover the entire cost. Time and again, they refuse to pay the full amount, claiming your menu is overpriced. Which it is -- but that's largely because so many of your customers don't pay.

You might be able to solve this problem if you refused to serve those non-paying customers who lack food insurance. But that would be illegal. The government requires restaurants to seat all people who walk in the door and to serve them a meal -- regardless of whether they can pay for it. As a result, your restaurant loses more and more money each night.

You're angry about the uninsured, because many of them could have afforded to pay for their own meals, particularly if they'd purchased groceries at the supermarket instead of dining out. So, together with other restaurant owners and food insurers, you're working to convince your lawmakers to pass a bill requiring mandatory food insurance. Surely a citizen who has the means to buy food but chooses to get it ``free'' is acting irresponsibly.

Crazy? Of course. But not if you substitute ``health care'' for ``food.''

No, that actually makes it crazier.  Food and dining out are like health care and going to hospitals . . . how exactly?

People have to eat – sometimes up to several times a day – to maintain their physical wellbeing; the person who has seen the doctor least is usually the healthiest and happiest.  People relish the sensual pleasures of food and the dining experience; only mentally ill people enjoy a trip to the hospital.  Restaurants post their menu with prices out front for potential diners to browse and savor vicariously; patients have no advance notice of the price of the tests or procedures that their doctor may order for them, nor any ability to judge whether that will be the last word or the first of many.

But OK, I’ll bite.  Let’s imagine that health care was like food.  In that case it should be a great first date.

BOY: So, where do you want to go?

GIRL: I don’t care; you pick.

BOY: Umm, what do you like?

GIRL: I like most things.  I just don’t want to be someplace all night.

BOY: Well, there’s a little emergency room I know, not too far from here.

GIRL: That sounds good.

BOY: We could go to more of a clinic if you like.

GIRL: No!  I like emergency rooms.

[later]

BOY: That was pretty good huh?

GIRL: That was really fun.  I had no idea I had Hepatitis B.

BOY: Yeah, the look on your face was priceless!  I thought my MRI was fantastic.

[awkward silence]

GIRL: It was nice of you to ask me out tonight.

BOY [stammering]: I was wondering . . . if you weren’t too busy.

GIRL: Yes?

BOY: Perhaps we could go to a hospital next time.  You could get a pap smear and I could get a colonoscopy.

GIRL [huskily]: Oh, Martin. . .

After many nights out of medical care, both necessary and unnecessary, they get married and spend their honeymoon at the Mayo Clinic.  They grow older and more mature, and they finally have to start to face serious issues.  Issues like food, which really is like health care.

WIFE: You look kind of pale, dear.  What’s wrong?

HUSBAND: I’ve been feeling weird all day.  I’ve been kind of shaky and my stomach’s been making odd noises.

WIFE: Oh no!

HUSBAND: I think I might be . . . hungry.

WIFE: Oh Martin – have you been using up your calories again?

HUSBAND: I suppose I must have.  I don’t know how that happened.

WIFE [pursing lips]: Well I guess there’s nothing for it.  We’ll have to take you to a restaurant.

HUSBAND: Ugh!  You know how I hate chefs.

WIFE: Well I can’t do anything about that.  If you would have just used those herbal supplements like I have. . .

HUSBAND: Oh give it rest.  You know those things are sham food.

[later]

HUSBAND: So what did the tests show?

CHEF: Some of the results were inconclusive, but you may indeed be hungry.  Or there may be other factors.  Are you happy in your marriage?

HUSBAND: Yes.  – Of course!  What’s that supposed to mean?

CHEF: I didn’t mean to offend.  Sometimes marital troubles can manifest themselves as so-called “butterflies” in the stomach.  It’s sometimes mistaken for hunger.

HUSBAND: Oh.

CHEF [deliberating]: I’m going to start you on a regime of rice gruel, water and tofu.  I think you’ll find that after a few weeks the hunger will go away.

HUSBAND: Um.  You know, I was reading the other day about a meal that involved roast chicken and . . . um, asparagus?

CHEF [laughing]: Let’s start slow, shall we?  Our restaurant does offer the finest food available, of course, but it’s not clear your case requires anything that expensive.  If you’re still hungry in a week we can do some more tests, OK?

HUSBAND [resigned]: Yes, Chef.

CHEF: Is your insurance information still valid?

So we see.  Food.  Healthcare.  Virtually identical in terms of how we use them, when we need them, and what they cost.  Thus this ridiculously common “food insurance” analogy (not to be confused with the real thing) is totally valid and deserves to be answered seriously.

Not.

- jack*