ApostAZ podcast #5

The fifth ApostAZ podcast (MP3) is out:

Episode 005 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- "Every Sperm is Sacred" from Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life'. Group Events. Phoenix, Billboards! Suckics hone in on Autism. Astromnology. Us vs Them? Phelps Hallucinations. Gay marriage, still an issue, still a tax money black-hole! Greydon Square, "Dream" from 'The Compton Effect' album.

I didn't get my contribution in on time, but I'll have a science and skepticism segment in episode 006.

My comments on this episode:

While McCain opposes gay marriage and pays lip service to the idea of same-sex civil unions, Obama also opposes gay marriage (though says he'd like to repeal DOMA and institute a federal law supporting same-sex civil unions, even in front of audiences that oppose gay rights, so he is somewhat better than McCain on that issue). They also both support faith-based government programs--neither is a strict separationist on church and state. (But again, I think Obama is slightly better than McCain on that subject in terms of what he says--at least he opposes giving federal funding to groups that discriminate or proselytize, though it's unclear he'll take action to stop it.)

On abortion, there can certainly be secular moral arguments for restrictions on late-term abortion, just as there can be secular moral arguments against infanticide. Arguments that abortion involves killing a person, a being with a right to life, need to come to terms with Judith Jarvis-Thomson's violinist argument, which argues that even if a fetus has a right to life, it doesn't have the right to be supported by its mother's body if the mother did not consent. This has further implication that if the fetus could be transplanted or removed and survive on its own (e.g., it's already reached the point of viability, which is the standard applied by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade), then that's immoral and criminalizable. But it also implies, it seems to me, that there is a reasonable range of actions which could constitute consent to supporting a fetus--such as voluntarily engaging in sex without contraception, which any reasonable person should know has a reasonably high probability of producing a child.

My own view is that abortion is immoral to the point of justifying legal prohibition in any case where (a) there's such at least tacit consent to carry a child and (b) the fetus has reached a point of brain development where there's a reasonable case to be made for personhood. I'm not convinced that (b) ever happens in reality, since I think there's a strong argument that personhood requires a capacity for self-awareness, which doesn't seem to occur until about six months after birth, but I can certainly conceive of empirical evidence that would change my mind about when that point is reached. There may be other cases where abortion is immoral, e.g., intentionally waiting until late in the pregnancy, and then terminating for a trivial reason of convenience.

On the Biblical justification for opposition to medical treatment: Jehovah's Witnesses oppose blood transfusions on the grounds of Old Testament prohibitions on consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11-14, and Acts 15:20, 29), even though those all refer to consuming animal blood and have nothing to do with transfusions of human blood. Christian Scientists oppose medical treatment not on the basis of anything in the Bible, but based on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Their view is that everything good and holy is spiritual, while everything physical or material is evil, yet is also illusory or at least a distortion of the spiritual world. This has some resemblance to Buddhist views of "maya," and also to the early Christian heresy known as Docetism, which was the view that Jesus' humanity was an illusion, because the physical cannot be holy. Thus, under this view, engaging in physical repair (medicine) of what is an illusory distortion of the underlying spiritual reality is not only a waste of time, but sinful--the only real repair possible is spiritual, through prayer. (And further, illness itself is of the physical, and thus illusory.)

The ApostAZ website is here.

The country shrink's other points, and my response

The country shrink, whose point #2 from his post on "some psychological aspects of atheists" I critiqued in my previous post, also listed six other alleged characteristics of atheists. These were:

1). They tend to take the moral high ground. They look down on believers as simplistic, uneducated, stupid, weak, intolerant, gun toting, racists, and simple minded dolts.

2). [Responded to in my previous post.]

3). There is something in their lives that they are afraid they would have to give up if they believed in God. It’s usually some pattern that brings them pleasure in a way that they feel believers might label as immoral. They are typically not conscious of this.

4). They portray themselves as enlightened, intelligent, tolerant, moral, caring, accepting, loving, peacible, and kind. And sometimes, they really and truly are. I’ve known them and met them. However, they are not tolerant, in general, of the beliefs of “believers.” They can tolerate anything but that.

5). Just like the fervent believer, they have trouble avoiding proselytising their belief system. They often try to promote their views to believers. They get a kick out seeing believers squirm when they ask them some deep philosophical question which the believer has not considered nor been confronted with.

As an aside, in treatment, I’ve noted a number of youngsters who are constipated, like to “crap on people rather that in the toilet.” Once they start utilizing the toilet appropriately, they stop utilizing people as a repository for their bound up bodily functions. They have to be taught to drink appropriate amounts of water and eat fiber to achieve this.

6) They find a replacement for “religion.” Whether it’s the environment, political causes, sociological wrongs, whatever, but they find a replacement. They have the notions of sin, redemption, and salvation, in their substitute belief system.

7) They pretend their emotional and psychological system has nothing to do with their lack of belief. But readily attribute psychological factors to those who do believe (i.e., needing a crutch, simple minded, lacking education, delusional). They espouse that naturalism is the true faith of intellectuals. Only a simple and weak minded fool would believe anything different.

Here's my response to these (also posted in comments at his blog):

Re: #1: I think “taking the moral high ground” is a good thing, but that’s probably not what you mean–I think what you mean is claiming to have the moral high ground (and, by implication, when one doesn’t actually have it). Nobody likes arrogant people with an air of superiority, but we also must admit that there are also people who genuinely are stupid, small-minded, uneducated, ignorant, etc., and in my opinion, nobody should be exempt from criticism. If an atheist criticizes something a Christian says as stupid, ignorant, or fallacious, that may mean that the atheist is an arrogant jerk, but it may also mean that the Christian has said something stupid, ignorant, or fallacious.

Re: #3: I think this is much rarer that most Christians seem to think. In any case, the public behavior of prominent Christians shows them to actively engage in any sort of immorality I can think of (whether a genuine immorality or simply something that conservative Christianity labels as such), so Christianity doesn’t seem to be any barrier to such actions.

Re: #4: Most atheists of my acquaintance genuinely have most of those characteristics. Some do not. Most Christians of my acquaintance genuinely have most of those characteristics. Some do not. As for tolerance, in my experience atheists are far more tolerant than Christians (including more tolerant of Christians than Christians are of atheists).

Re: #5: Among my acquaintances, I don’t see any greater proclivity towards proselytization by atheists than Christians–in fact, it seems to me that it’s the reverse. There are numerous Christian streetcorner and campus preachers, Christian missionary organizations, etc., but I’ve yet to run into any similar atheist streetcorner or campus preachers or missionaries. If somebody knocks on your door to tell you about their religious views, the safe bet is that it’s an advocate of some sort of Christianity rather than an atheist.

Re: #6: If person A has a life filled with a rewarding career, raising a family, contributing to the community through public service, engaging in recreational activities, while person B is cloistered and spends all of his time praying and chanting, would you say that person A has replaced religion with other activities and has a less well-rounded life than person B? How do you distinguish someone simply filling their life with valuable activity from someone who is “replacing religion with a substitute”? I can think of some activities which are religion-like, including sports fanaticism, but I don’t think most atheists find religion substitutes which include correlaries to the notions of sin and salvation.

Re: #7: You really make two points here. One is a claim that atheists don’t recognize their nonbelief as a (or the) cause of their psychology. I think that in many cases, it’s not. Most atheists live lives that are indistinguishable from those of most nominal or mostly secularized Christians (of the sort who make up the majority of Christians in Europe). Your second point is that atheists often attribute some delusion or pathological need to religious believers. On that point I think you are correct, and that atheists who do that are mistaken. Pascal Boyer’s excellent book Religion Explained argues, correctly in my opinion, that religious inferences are just like other kinds of inferences that we make, and that it is the natural state of humans that they infer agency behind causes. Unfortunately, our natural inference patterns get it wrong much of the time–when we inferred that lightning bolts were thrown by the gods, that was incorrect, for example.

Atheism and the difference between consistency and entailment

A Christian rural psychologist has posted on his blog about "some psychological aspects of atheism," where he claims that:

[Atheists] tend to not be able to understand that their position means “anything goes,” with respect to morality. If there is no God, then there is no objective thing as morality. It’s all subjective… They always find some way to justify the fact that they practice at least some moral principles. Whether they think it’s biologically ingrained through millions of years of evolution or morality is simply “adaptive in allowing the species to survive.” Most often; however, they have never even considered the logical consequences of atheism and morality.

He also engages in some armchair theorizing about atheism being caused by absent fathers, being intolerant, etc., all without any reference to empirical evidence. (And given the recent Pew Forum survey results where one in five self-reported "atheists" say that they believe in God or a higher power, I think any study of atheists needs to make sure that it's dealing with people who actually know what the word means.)

But the quoted passage is completely off-base. Atheism is a denial of the existence of gods. That entails the falsity of divine command theory as a basis for morality, but not much else. Most philosophers have rejected divine command theory as an adequate basis for morality since Plato wrote the "Euthyphro" and asked the critical question, "is the pious [or right] loved by the gods because it is pious [right], or is it pious [right] because it is loved by the gods"? Either fork of the dilemma leads to bad consequences--if the former, then there must be some other ground for moral rightness than because the gods will it to be so, and so the gods themselves are unnecessary. If the latter, then the gods could make acts that we consider to be clearly immoral into right actions according to whim. The latter seems more consistent with the morality of the Bible, since God is depicted therein as commanding murderous acts including the killing of women and children, but it is simply a "might makes right" philosophy of morality. But I think the former is clearly the right horn of the dilemma to grasp--morality is not something which requires gods.

Now, there are certainly atheist philosophers who have argued that atheism precludes more than the divine command theory. The atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie, in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, argues against morality being objective properties of the world on the basis of their "queerness." And I think he is probably right at least to the extent that moral properties are not human-independent properties. My view is that there are certain basic values, held by most human beings and evolutionary in origin, essential to social organization and beneficial to our survival and thriving, which objectively entail moral consequences for us, composed as we are and in the environment (physical and social) we find ourselves in.

But my view is not important for confronting the claim of the quoted passage. All atheism means is the denial of the existence of gods. It is not a complete worldview, it is simply a single component in an infinite number of possible consistent worldviews. An atheist can, like J. M. E. McTaggart, believe in reincarnation and immortality. An atheist can believe in the paranormal, in ghosts, in supernatural beings other than gods. An atheist can be a nihilist, a relativist, a utilitarian, a contractarian, an existentialist. An atheist can be a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, an anarchist, a monarchist, a libertarian, a Marxist, or hold any other possible view of political philosophy that doesn't entail the existence of gods. All of these views are consistent with atheism, meaning simply that no contradiction is produced by the combination of the views.

Amorality and nihilism are consistent with atheism--it is certainly possible for an atheist to hold that there are no moral truths, that there is no difference between right and wrong. But mere consistency is not the same as entailment--it does not follow that if you are an atheist, it logically follows or is necessary to hold such views. Yet that's what the quoted author is falsely claiming to be the case.

Note that amorality and nihilism are also consistent with theism--and in my opinion, both are possible for theists whichever horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is grasped. If the ground of what is morally right is something independent of the gods that does not exist, even while gods do, then that's an amoral theism. And if all there is to morality is what the gods will it to be, that makes morality dependent upon the values of the gods--if the gods choose to be amoral or nihilists, then again there's amoral theism.

The Christian psychologist goes on to write (citing this very blog for the quote):

Now, I have only seen or read about one logically consistent atheist…..Jeffrey Dahmer. There have been philosophers, I know, who have come to this logical conclusion. But I’m talking about someone who logically practiced what he believed.

“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…” (1)

So said Dahmer.

The "what's the point" question is easy to answer--there are clearly consequences for us to our own behavior regardless of any accountability to God. Sane, rational people desire to live good and happy lives, rather than follow the example of Dahmer. Even leaving God out of the picture, where is the slightest appeal in following Dahmer as a model of rational living? I see none.

But the position this psychologist takes opens up an obvious question that he doesn't notice--God isn't accountable to anyone. Why should God be good, instead of acting maliciously, callously, and evilly, in the absence of any accountability to anyone? According to this psychologist, the answer should be that God should rationally act as an omnipotent Jeffrey Dahmer. Having no greater God to hold him responsible, he should not be bound to any code of morality, his word should be valueless, and every action based on the whims of the moment without regard to any future consequences.

That should be considered a reductio ad absurdum of his position. Either there are rational reasons to not act like Jeffrey Dahmer independently of being held accountable to a higher being, or God behaves irrationally by not acting like Jeffrey Dahmer. (Or perhaps, given the content of the Old Testament, God does act like Jeffrey Dahmer.)

UPDATE: I've engaged in further argument with the psychologist in the comments of his blog, as have others.

UPDATE: After a few back-and-forth exchanges, I don't think the psychologist means to talk about logical consequences of beliefs. I think probably the best reconstruction of his actual argument is something like this:

1. Human beings find it psychologically necessary to believe in an objective external source of morality. (In order to be happy, function well psychologically, etc.)
2. Atheism doesn't provide such a source by itself.
3. Those whose worldview is composed entirely of atheism, without augmenting it with some objective external source of morality, have no psychological reasons to act in moral ways.

This is a much more plausible argument. He says something very much like (3), and goes on to say something to the effect that none of these substitutes are sufficient, and his reason seems to be along the lines that people's choices for these substitutes are arbitrary or that they are not externally imposed. But his reasoning is faulty--the fact that people choose for themselves doesn't mean that their choices are arbitrary (they can have good reasons), and external imposition seems to be irrelevant. Presumably he would agree that someone who converts to Christianity as an adult can have all of the psychological benefits he's claiming for theism. And what of the thousands of other religions, sects, and interpretations that can be acquired from one's parents or others? His argument doesn't have any way of singling out Christianity (or any particular version thereof) as special in this regard. It seems to me that it really comes down to an argument about the social and psychological benefits of adopting the beliefs of one's culture that most people accept--though I'm sure he doesn't want to accept the cultural relativism that seems to me to be implied by his position.

UPDATE: The "Country Shrink" has resorted to "let's agree to disagree" without even attempting to respond to the criticism of his claim that morality requires theism, nor has he responded to my attempted reformulation. Instead, he has asked whether my impressions of atheists differ from him--claiming the moral high ground, intellectual superiority, etc., to which I responded that I see that as most prevalent among atheists who were previously evangelical Christians, and that he's likely attributing causes to the wrong place. I don't think it's caused by atheism as much as by reaction to Christianity.

UPDATE (July 6, 2008): The "Country Shrink" has made a followup post in which he takes a stab of sorts at addressing some of the philosophical arguments I made, but mostly by engaging in argument from ignorance and attempting to shift the burden of proof to me, even though he is the one maintaining that it is impossible for there to be any objective meta-ethical framework without gods. He also asserts (rather than argues) that incompatibilism is the correct position in the free will debate and that consciousness cannot be explained naturalistically. I don't discern any actual arguments for either of those positions other than failure of imagination.

Sylvia Browne's prediction record

Jeremy the Skeptic has been tracking Sylvia Browne's record of success on her predictions. Once again, the evidence of psychic ability seems to be absent.

Jeremy's got two posts, one with her predictions for 2007, and one with a mid-year update on her predictions for 2008.

9/11 - The Third Tower

BBC's "The Conspiracy Files" investigative report on the collapse of WTC 7 will air on Sunday, July 6. They have some promotional videos on the web, including an explanation of their reporter's statement that WTC 7 had collapsed before it did.

The conspiracy theorists claim that it had to be a controlled demolition, because WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and was virtually untouched. But the latter claim is false--WTC 7 was heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, with a giant hole in the southwest corner about 20 stories high. There were raging fires in a building full of diesel fuel and backup generators.

The BBC investigation will no doubt report in more detail on the facts that the conspiracy theorists like to pretend don't exist.

Robert Lancaster observes Sylvia Browne first-hand

Robert Lancaster of StopSylviaBrowne.com was able to attend one of her "performances" at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino after The Amazing Meeting, and his description of the event is fascinating. He, his wife, and another skeptic were each able to ask a question--she batted 0/2 for the two personal questions, and Lancaster himself asked where she obtained her Master's degree in English literature. She was then foolish enough to call him back to the microphone in an apparent attempt to cause a scene, which only served to advertise his website to the entire audience.

What I found most interesting about his account of the show was his description of his conversations with other attendees after it was over. Browne's alleged psychic powers were apparently failing her at this event.

UPDATE (July 12, 2008): Sylvia Browne's shows at the Excalibur, originally scheduled to run through August, have been cancelled. Due to unforeseen circumstances, no doubt.

Guantanamo interrogation class based on Chinese Communist torture techniques

When in 2002 military trainers came to Guantanamo Bay to teach a course on interrogation techniques, they included a chart of the effects of prospective techniques. That chart came from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War on U.S. soldiers to extract false confessions. The study, by Albert D. Biderman, was titled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War."

UPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton comments on how McCain's torture using these very techniques led to a false confession--so why do we believe that torture will lead to true confessions?

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part five

This is part five of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part three, part four).

Continuing my descriptions of Sunday's paper presentations...

Lee Graham on "Artificial Creatures, Real Evolution": Lee Graham, a Ph.D. student in computer science and member of the Ottawa Skeptics, gave a fascinating presentation about his 3D virtual creature evolution program (3DVCE), which he said was inspired by and based on 1994 work by Karl Sims of Thinking Machines Corporation on "Evolved Virtual Creatures." He developed software to evolve simulated creatures. The simulated creatures have perceptual sensors that detect surface inclines, contact, and proprioception (position of body parts), he measured fitness in terms of distance traveled, jump height, etc., and then engaged in selection of parents and reproduction based on that fitness, producing new offspring with both mutations and crossover (mixing of genes from the parents). While it is far from a complete model of evolution--lacking such features as food and environmental threats such as predators--it is sufficient to show that new complexity can evolve.

He showed a video of various creatures that evolved in the world, such as an interesting worm-like creature he called an "end-over-end worm," and then asked where does the complexity and information come from? There's the fitness function, the choice of primitive components, and the environment, each of which have counterparts in reality. But the real answer is from the process of variation plus selection. The development of complexity simply does not require top-down design.

Christopher French on anomalistic psychology: French, founder of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gave a talk that was supposed to be about his own research, but there was a mixup with presentations and it was an earlier version of his talk. APRU does research, teaching, and public education on anomalistic psychology, a field that I believe was first named by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones' book, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (the second edition from 1989 now sells for $129.45, I wonder what my first edition is worth?).

Tim Farley of whatstheharm.net on "Building Internet Tools for Skeptics": Tim Farley gave an excellent talk about developing new technological tools using the web in order to promote skepticism and critical thinking. His talk used a minimalist approach on his presentation, with slides containing individual words and phrases about each point he discussed (a technique promoted by Larry Lessig and known as the "Lessig Method" or the "Takahashi Method"). Farley spoke about the battle on the Internet between information and misinformation. Skeptics are using blogs, social networks, social linking, and search engines (e.g., Google bombing), but these methods are ad hoc and tend to promote preaching to the choir. We need to extend our reach and be more systematic, making use of new Web 2.0 methods for community, specialization, programmability, and mashups. Farley suggested the following steps to apply Web 2.0 to skepticism: work smarter, not harder--use services like Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds to present on web pages. Specialize--find and fill a niche. Open up your data, so that others can make use of it in their web pages. Mash up data--combine geocoded data with Google Maps, for example. Appeal to people who are neutral.

He's working on creating a filter that searches just believer sites, which will allow the ability to search the entire web minus the believer sites. whatstheharm.net is a collection of victim reports, and a useful rhetorical tool for answering the question when people ask, "What's the harm in believing X?"

He suggested that all sites should publish their data using RSS, use iCal for calendar information, and use microformats like hReview so that you can show approval or disapproval of the things you link to.

Farley strongly advocated the use of geocoding and geoRSS, as well as KML (like RSS for maps, used by Google Earth) in order to put links on maps. He gave the example of the Church of Scientology in Boston on Beacon Street, where there are links to YouTube videos of protests in the intersection near the facility on Google Earth.

He gave the examples of disbeliefnet.com, promoting Bill Maher's new film "Religulous," which has a section called The Heretic Press which uses Yahoo Pipes to automatically pull in crazy religious stories.

Farley's new site of tools for skeptics is called skeptools.com, and you can find a version of his presentation there. Check it out.

Brian Dunning of the "Skeptoid" podcast, on "The Skeptologists": Brian Dunning, executive producer of "The Skeptologists," showed the whole pilot episode, which had some over-the-top music. He brought on stage his fellow executive producer and director Ryan Johnson, and they described the show. Where most pilots are kept secret, they are making theirs widely known in order to promote skeptical interest. He took questions from the audience, one of the most interesting was, "Do you have any plans to show things that turn out to be true?" Unfortunately, the answer was no, though that they will try to show real science for things "that have some similarity to the bogus claims." This makes it more of a preconceived debunking show rather than promotion of science and critical thinking.

Conclusion
At the end of the conference, Hal Bidlack suggested that next year's TAM may have a panel discussion on who's been sued and for what, along with a lawyer, on steps to take to avoid lawsuits.

There may have been a bit more after that, but things were a bit behind schedule and I had to rush off to catch a shuttle to the airport, so that was the end of the conference for me.

Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded

Christopher Hitchens decided to experience waterboarding first-hand at the hands of experts, and he did so twice. He vividly describes the experience in Vanity Fair, which also has video.

David Byrne's singing robot

David Byrne has collaborated with David Hanson, the guy who made the Philip K. Dick robot at NextFest in 2005, to make a robot named Julio that sings, for a show titled "Machines and Souls: Digital Art" at the Museo de Arta Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Byrne writes:

I love where this is going. It brings to mind an image of someone sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe with friends, and maybe they’re having drinks—and at the same time Jentsch posits that layered over or under this image is the profoundly creepy, the deeply strange and disturbing. We’re in the land of David Lynch and Hitchcock. ET landing in the familiar U.S. suburbs could be viewed this way, or the various living dead and vampire movies.

More recently Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed the existence of something called the uncanny valley. This “valley” is an area of emotional uncertainty and often revulsion experienced by an observer when a robot or computer animation (for example) approaches being human, is almost believable, but not quite.

He suggests that our emotional empathy with animations and robots increases as they get closer and closer to being human (or animal)—but then, at a certain point, they fall into the valley, and our empathy turns to disgust. In his view they switch from being a cute thing approaching humanity to a bad or faulty version of humanity. It is at this point that we see them as not merely slightly strange, but as a human with serious problems. If the creation can succeed in being a little bit better as a believable creature the feeling of revulsion disappears. For some viewers, recent films like Beowulf fall into this valley, while others find the almost humans acceptable.

Mori further suggests that this reaction might be innate—that it might be linked to our biological reactions to people who are physically or mentally ill—or to corpses. Evolution would have ingrained this reaction as a way of weeding out sick people from the social group. Hanson and others dispute the scientific veracity of the uncanny valley, but I think no one can doubt the strange and weird emotions that well up when confronted by one of these entities.

The point about disgust brings to mind Antonio Damasio's work on emotions, as well as Pascal Boyer's comments about religious rituals for corpse disposal in Religion Explained.

In a subsequent post, as Julio nears completion, Byrne writes:

Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.

To see and hear video of Julio singing, check out Byrne's blog. The show "Máquinas y Almas: Arte digital" ("Machines and Souls: Digital Art") opened on June 25.