Just over a week ago, the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision that free speech is a good idea. Okay, okay, I'm being somewhat snarky to open with that, but bare with me.
Until recently, corporations were limited in the sort of political ads they could produce and fund. Specifically, “electioneering communications” from corporations was banned in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections.
I suppose where it comes from is the idea that corporations aren't literally people, without at the same time remembering that Africa, small towns, and the Democratic Party aren't literally people either. Liberals too often talk about “corporate interests” as if these interests are coming from some disembodied evil thing floating about and manipulating the world in accordance with its evil will. Just because you aren't in a religion doesn't make you immune from, uh, functional theism.
“Corporate interests” means the interests of people organized into a group. It does no good to claim the stockholders' interests are different from the bosses. No they aren't. Buying stock is an agreement where the buyer gives the management the right to make choices with the money. If you are a stockholder and you don't like this deal, then sell. No one is stopping you. If the financial loss of selling is too great, then that's another way of saying the agreement reached about the money and power transfer is in your interests too. Laws are not needed to keep you from trampling upon your own interests.
Of course, there's the problem that the stockholders might not know what's going on. But this isn't an argument for corporations not being able to speak out for their interests, it's an argument for transparency. And so the Court ruled 8-1 that Congress has the power to require corporations to disclose their spending. If Congress thinks they have the ability to regulate corporations closely enough to know that they aren't spending on elections, surely they can accomplish the much easier goal of regulating them enough to make sure they are revealing what they are spending. So I wish to hear no more dehumanizing of “corporate interests”, except in contexts where no more than buzzwords, catchphrases, and partisan hackery should be expected anyway.
To further bury the corporations-as-the-new-Satan worldview doesn't require some hypothetical good corporation or some obscure example. The corporation that brought suit will do. This was a non-profit corporation, Citizen United, that made an anti-Hillary video and wanted to show it on TV. This case isn't about whether or not the video was accurate, and so I really don't care what's in it. Here's the set-up: a group of citizens with similar political views organized, raised money, and wanted to pay the money it takes to show a movie on TV. And they couldn't do this. What country is this again?
(As an aside, despite it's imperfections, our justice system is totally bad ass. You can hear about a law, decide the law is wrong, break the law on purpose, admit you broke the law, and still you get to argue “screw you, the law is wrong!” If you have a really good case, you make it to the Supreme Court, and if they agree, you have just taken down the man. That's totally bad ass.)
Corporations are not just things like Microsoft, Google, and Exxon. Corporations are organized groups of citizens. This includes the Christian Coalition, the Cato Institute, the Sierra Club, unions, the Center for Inquiry, the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and any other group of citizens who care enough about how our country is run that they have goals big enough that they can't be accomplished by any one person. And so they organize with the goal of getting out their message, and you can be damned sure the First Amendment lets their messages include electioneering.
Corporations also include MSNBC, FOX, and CNN. Why should they be allow to speak and no one else can? Don't kid yourself – MSNBC and FOX are practically partisan organizations in all but name. Why can they push their views all throughout election season while partisan organizations who are honest about their goals cannot?
Even given the premises, it is not enough to say this ruling gives power to corporations, corporations are bad, so the ruling is bad. Compared to what? Who has the power when corporate speech is silenced?
First the media. Yeah. FSM help us all if they are allowed to rule the country. Second, the power goes to the legally knowledgeable. Justice Kennedy wrote, “Campaign finance regulations now impose 'unique and complex rules' on '71 distinct entities.' … These entities are subject to separate rules for 33 different types of political speech. … The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations, 1,278 pages of explanations and justifications for those regulations, and 1,771 advisory opinions since 1975.” (Pages 24-25 in the opinion of the Court.) Complex laws that seek to restrict the power of money gives the power to the legally well-connected, which means to lawyers. It gives power to lobbyists who can influence the details of the complex law and hence get around the entire purpose of the restrictions. And of course, it also gives the power to the people with access to mercenary legal minds. Which means the power goes right back to the rich anyway, and on top of that, we're stuck with a complex legal web, violated freedom of speech, and even more scraps on which all the blood sucking lawyers feed.
You can't take away the power of money without replacing it with the power of the sword. The power of money isn't just some curious and accidental side effect of how our country is set up. Resources give you power – if they didn't, they wouldn't be resources. Money is an abstraction of resources, and to seek to dampen the power of money is to seek to alter a fundamental truth about reality. (The way the money is distributed can be changed, but the power that comes with money cannot.)
Not only are the pragmatic arguments against this ruling flawed, this isn't even a case where such a naive pragmatism makes any sense. Free speech is not something that you can suppress in the special cases where it will be damaging. The concept of free speech requires it to apply to even people you disagree with and even to people who you think have bad enough ideas that they have the power to undermine our political system. Even pragmatically speaking, the result of a naively pragmatic approach to free speech is an undermining of the very concept of free speech and a Constitutional democracy.
I find it to be almost a joke that my opinion is such a minority among liberals. The United States found itself in another free speech case a generation ago, a situation where free speech seemed much, much more dangerous than that of corporate free speech. It was a case where even I occasionally pause and wonder if the First Amendment goes too far. In 1959, the conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Communism was one case where ignoring the First Amendment would be a good idea in Barenblatt v. US. The case dealt with a professor who had once been a member of the Communist Party. The liberal minority thought that while his views were repugnant, he had the right to his views and was not obligated to rat out everyone else and subject them to the righteous indignation of patriotism unleashed. Justice Hugh L. Black wrote in his dissent:
“Ultimately all the questions boil down to one - Whether we as a people will try fearfully and futilely to preserve democracy by adopting totalitarian methods, or whether in accordance with out traditions, and our constitution we will have the confidence and courage to be free.”
“If you don't believe in God why do spend so much time arguing against him?”
This oft-repeated canard completely ignores the effect that beliefs in an imaginary being can have on the very real people who believe in them. Not to mention difficult questions can be fun to think about. I will fight you to the death arguing that Kill Japan First is a plausible strategy in Axis & Allies revised. And I know that it absolutely does not matter who's right.
But there is a grain of truth in it. Atheism is a topic that gets boring really fast. Evolution can be exciting beyond it's relevance to the design argument, atheistic moral philosophy is important beyond it's interaction with the moral argument for God and the problem of evil, and ancient history is interesting beyond it's influence on historical arguments for religion, and debate is a great time when it's done in a productive way. But atheism itself is like chess without an opponent.
This is one of many ways that atheism is different from any religion, and not only different as viewed from my perspective. If all were Muslims, we'd still have Mosques and prayer several times a day. If all were Christians, we'd still have churches and Bible studies. If all were atheists, we wouldn't do anything distinctly “atheist” and the word would disappear entirely. On Sunday morning, atheist basketball players would work on their free throw technique, atheist party animals would sober up from an awesome time, and atheist nerds would perfect the intricacies of the different variations of the zergling rush. (Wanna guess which one I am?)
Shortly after deconversion, the change dominated my life. Why I'm not a Christian now only stands out as one of the topics I know most about, and not as a topic I care most about. I can either (continue) letting this blog die, or expand the subject to whatever ideas I think are worth writing about.
In my opinion, I'm much, much better at debating religion now than I was in the first several months of this blog. These will be my first steps as a blogger about politics, economics, or whatever. So my blog will probably be taking several steps down in quality. I'm okay with that.
As I'm sure everyone has heard far too many times by now, Pat Robertson is convinced that the earthquake hit Haiti because they've signed a pact with the devil. I will spare you my moral outrage – I have a very different point to make.
Robertson's is by no means the normal Christian response. A more common response would be that it wasn't God who directly caused the earthquake, but rather Satan who directly caused it – God merely allowed Satan to cause it. (Another common response would be admitting ignorance of whether or not Satan or God caused it and therefore not drawing a conclusion about the Haitians morality.) But for the sake of example, I'll contrast Robertson's position with the response that Satan caused it in opposition to God.
The first point I'm making is an obvious one. So obvious, that it may be confusing why I'm even bothering to say it. Here goes: the people who think God did it and the people who think Satan did it disagree with each other. These are different positions. Are you with me so far?
Okay, next point: because they are making clear claims about the agent of causation, and because they disagree with each other, at least one of them is wrong. Still with me?
I would like to pause and note that this conclusion is contestable. One could try to find a clever interpretation of one or both sides, so that we could reconcile these two positions with each other. After all, the people on both sides are Christians. So maybe they have some special knowledge that God gave, and we are simply getting two perspectives on the same thing. But to take this approach would be ridiculous. We can look at the two claims, see that they disagree, and therefore conclude that one or both sides isn't getting a special message from God. One or both sides are wrong. How could anyone see this any differently?
This is an extraordinarily common situation. Two sides disagree as to whether evil spiritual forces caused something, or good spiritual forces. It even happened in the Bible:
When David was king, there was a plague that killed 70,000 people in I Chronicles 21:14. And why? God was punishing Israel for David's sin. (Yes, God was punishing Israel for David's sin, although that's not quite the point I'm making.) Backing up a step, what was David's sin, and why did he do such a thing? David's sin was to take a census. Ignore, for the moment, whether or not this sin merited such a response from God. The point I want to make is in I Chronicles 21:1:
“Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.”
That's what started this whole problem. Satan started it by tempting David who then incurred God's wrath and allowed Satan to get his way as Israel suffered. In that sense, the author of I Chronicles is rather like normal Christians.
But the author of II Samuel was more like Pat Robertson. He tells the same story starting in II Samuel 24:1, where he writes:
“Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'”
Satan didn't do it. God did it. He was angry at the Israelites, and he needed David to sin so as to have an excuse to judge them.
I'll start with a trivially obvious point. The author who thought God did it and the author who thought Satan did it disagree with each other. Still with me? And because they are making clear claims about the agent of causation, and because they disagree with each other, at least one of these Bible verses is wrong.
I'm sure that you could find some creative interpretations of one of both so that they are still consistent. After all, both authors are inspired by God, so maybe he gave them some special knowledge, and we're just reading two different perspectives. But to take this approach is ridiculous. We can look at what the books say, see that they contradict, and therefore conclude that one or both sides aren't getting special knowledge from God. One or both authors of the Bible are wrong. How could anyone see this any differently?
Tim and Lydia McGrew have written a chapter in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology titled The argument from miracles: a cumulative case for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Understanding Bayes factors is an prerequisite to understanding the McGrews' argument and my rebuttal to it. Their article includes a description of what you need to know - this post does not.
The article covers a lot of ground, and I'm not responding to all of it. While you should read the article yourself, here's my brief description of the portion I'm responding to:
Scholars disagree as to the accuracy of the Gospels and New Testament. But what if we conclude them to be as accurate as any other historical document, not counting the times they refer to miraculous events? Which is to say, it's accurately reporting what Peter said, even if this isn't what Peter actually saw. This is still an interesting question even to people who disagree with the historical conclusions of conservative scholars.
If these assumptions can be used to make a solid case for the Resurrection, this means that the case against Christianity depends on the problems in the Gospels and Acts even as a mere historical documents. Reasons for discounting the Gospels as even history are within the last couple centuries. If the case against Christianity rests on this more recent scholarship, that means David Hume would have been a Christian if he had accurately evaluated the evidence available to him. (Talk about ultimately refuting Hume...) I guess one could technically hold this position and still not be a Christian. I have no problem saying that Hume would have been unjustified in believing in evolution if he had heard of the idea but not the evidence for it. But I don't hold that Hume should have believed in the Resurrection. To hold this position means I should be willing to argue against the Resurrection, even under the assumption of the Gospels' and Acts' historical reliability.
Moving on the argument itself, Paul, the disciples, and the women who went to his tomb all claimed to have seen Jesus. To what degree does this support the resurrection? Bayesian statistics give a language with which to communicate the answer. Let R be the Resurrection of Jesus, and P, D, and W be the events that each of Paul, the disciples, and the women claimed to have seen Jesus, and in many of these cases, died for this belief.
There are 13 disciples in the argument (the twelve minus Judas plus Matthias plus James the Just.) The events that they testified they had seen Jesus will be denoted D_1, …, D_13. For each of these and for Paul, the McGrews estimate that their Bayes factor supporting R is 1000. What this would mean was that the martyrdom of a specific disciple given R was fairly likely, while roughly a 1 in 1000 chance given ~R. They estimate the factor for W to be 100.
First suppose these are independent. If so, the cumulative Bayes factor is found by multiplication, which gives 10^3 * 10^(3 * 13) * 10^2 = 10^44. This would be strong enough to overcome even an extraordinarily small prior probability on R and make belief in R reasonable.
Of course, they aren't independent. This is recognized and responded to on pages 40-46. While dependence could lead to overestimating the factor, it could go the other way too. While it's possible that killing one martyr could encourage more, the more likely effect is that it scares off other people, who now realize that their life is in danger. So while the McGrews recognize that these aren't independent, the claim is that factoring in the dependence makes the case stronger.
Before beginning my response, I want to mention an alternative approach that I'm not taking: I could list contrary evidences C and argue that the Bayes factor of P & D & W & C is fairly small. Sure, it works. Stronger evidence to the contrary is a valid reason to not be persuaded. But here, the topic is the strength of the evidence P & D & W, and bringing up C's do not help answer this.
I will be responding to the claim from which the majority of the Bayes factor comes. I will be objecting to the factor of 10^39 for D by arguing that the dependence among D_1, …, D_13 means the Bayes factor has been overestimated horribly. (D_1, …, D_13 are similarly dependent on W. I'm leaving out W from here on because it complicates the notation without really adding anything. On the other hand, P could not be added.)
Without a doubt, I can imagine some likely circumstances (call them A), where once fixed, the D_i's are negatively correlated or correlated little enough that the odds against D & ~R are at least as bad as the independence assumption provides. But on the other hand, the disciples spent a lot of time together in the time leading up to their belief in the resurrection. So I can also imagine some plausible circumstances (call them B), where the D_i's are highly positively correlated and thus P(D_1, …, D_13 | ~R & B) is much, much larger than the independence assumption estimates. Actually, B need not even be plausible for my first point. It's enough for B to be highly implausible.
A & B are not two hypotheses that we should choose between purely based on which one has a higher prior probability. D changes the odds of A and B, and it will turn out that B is the hypothesis that matters, even if it's prior probability is extremely remote. To show this I will suppose the odds in favor of A over B are a billion to one. Now condition on D_1, …, D_4. The odds against these four testimonies happening is a trillion to one under ~R & A, while vastly less under ~R & B. It is true that ~R & A started out only one billion times more likely than R & B. But once we conditioned on D_1, …, D_4, suddenly B is probably more likely than A. ("Probably" depends on the specifics of "highly positively correlated.") While A & B are not a dichotomy, setting up a more comprehensive list of possibilities won't change the idea – every D_i shifts the odds enormously in favor of a stronger and stronger positive correlation.
Speaking of ~R without specifying which of A or B is true, we can see that D_1, …, D_13 are not even close to independent. Even if B is extremely unlikely, my argument still goes through. The event ~R & D_1 & … & D_4 consists mostly of ~R & D_1 & … & D_4 & B, and thus P(D_5, …, D_13 | ~R & D_1 & … & D_4) is not even remotely close to the value reached by the independence assumption.
This make sense anecdotally as well. Suppose 13 soldiers/civilians/terrorists/we don't know what have been captured and are being interrogated, and these 13 are each capable of giving the desired answer. "Tell us where the whatever thing is, or we start killing you." A gun is pointed at the first person – there's a good chance he gives in. The first person is shot, and the gun is pointed at the second person. With the second person, it's not clear which factor is stronger – what we have learned of the group from the first death, or the intimidation factor. But if you start going down the line, and the first four die rather than sharing their secret, the interrogator's expectation that anyone will speak dwindles to a mere hope. The fact of the first four deaths is reason to think that these are not 13 random people, but a group of Navy Seals, thoroughly dedicated ideologues, or something else that makes this group so tough that they can stand up in the face of certain death, and this something else will cause the other 9 to be willing to die too. This "something else" includes both R and ~R & B.
So to compute how large of a Bayes factor D_1, …, D_13 produce, we can find an upper bound by computing P(B | ~R) x P(D_1, …, D_13 | ~R & B). The independence assumption gave a factor of 10^39, which is of no use whatsoever in computing this probability.
I would like to also hold a stronger position than simply that the factor is much less than 10^39. What could count as B, and more importantly, how probable is it?
First of all, I would like to defend a dismission of ancient historical arguments in defense of the supernatural that scarcely depends on even looking at the specifics. Even under the assumptions about the reliability of Acts, D_1, …, D_13 are not mathematical certainties – they are historical probabilities. When the highly probable is plugged into a mathematical equation that takes input in the form of certainties, the results are not necessarily reliable. What is the probability that believing in Peter's martyrdom is the best conclusion to reach based on the evidence available to us, and yet he didn't? One in a hundred? One in a million? If the odds of Peter's death given that the evidence supports it are a million to one in favor, Peter's death cannot produce a Bayes factor greater than a million – while this is actually larger than the thousand to one factor placed on a single D_i, it combines differently with the rest of D. When D_1, …, D_13 are not taken to mean the events that the disciples actually died for their testimony, but rather to be that the historical record has come to support these conclusions, their positive correlation is exceptionally strong. The circumstances that would lead to made-up stories about Peter being believed, written down, repeated in the historical record, and mistakenly believed could easily lead to the same thing happening with the other 12, so the additional Bayes factor from D_2, …, D_13 is relatively small, giving a total factor of “a small factor” times one million – this is far, far out of the range of 10^39. The Bayes factor coming from historical evidence cannot exceed the odds against the evidence itself being false.
Returning to the position that the 13 disciples really did testify about their experiences, the first thing that needs to be brought up is the effect beliefs in an afterlife can have on one's behavior. For a Christian to die for their faith is gain – or at least, it is perceived as gain, which is all that matters here. It doesn't require any special level of devotion. It requires actually believing. To learn that God wants one to die soon is not merely a sacrifice that is well worth it. It's a non-sacrifice – it would be a good thing for the person who dies. This is even true in the relative paradise of middle-class America. How much more persuasive would this reasoning be in first century Palestine? So what would it take for people who believe in heaven and hell to give their lives for their beliefs? Only the same level of dedication that countless groups all manage to reach every single generation.
The intuition of Pascal's Wager is clear even without the math behind it. “But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.” Circumstance forced the disciples to deny Jesus and risk hell or believe he was still alive. If the disciples thought there was any chance that Jesus rose from the dead and that living for it would influence the afterlife, they could convince themselves to give their lives for this chance out of faith that it was true. So what remains to explain is what could cause the disciples to consider the possibility of the Resurrection and think there was, say, a 5% chance it was true. That's not to say their beliefs only reached a 5% level – but that is to say the 5% level would be more than sufficient to not only explain their actions, but also to explain the rationality of their actions, given their level of belief. This greatly increases P(B | ~R), for what each of the disciples believed about the influence of being a faithful witness on eternal destiny is definitely not independent.
Once beliefs in hell and heaven have taken hold of your mind, it is nearly impossible to escape. When trying to hold onto such a belief that is looking more and more false, and while struggling to escape the mind control of hell, your head plays tricks on you. A pencil isn't where I left it – did God move it as a sign? If yes, then that is a way to escape the torment of the cognitive dissonance, and without risking hell. If God didn't do it, and I say that God did it, what do I lose? After the disciples left their lives behind to follow a Messiah who died, they had nothing left to lose. I've been there – I know how it works. When you want to believe something badly enough, God does nothing at all and this is interpreted as a surprisingly detailed conversation. Upon retelling, a semi-metaphorical “God told me” can become literal. I don't believe these stories when it's a friend telling me in person, and I definitely don't believe these stories when they are written down and aged for nearly two thousand years. While Christians then and now usually have nothing to gain by directly lying, they have everything to gain by deceiving themselves. Pascal proves this – or at least Christians tend to accept his conclusion, which is all that matters here. Under ~R, the disciples' beliefs that they saw something and their deaths for these beliefs was little more than the disciples' failure to escape the mental prison that is the doctrine of hell. While the strength of these factors could have varied from disciple to disciple, how strong it is with each is decidedly not independent, and they all depend on what Jesus actually said, as well as content of the discussions among the disciples about what Jesus meant.
For the sake of contrast, consider something that requires much, much more sincerity than martyrdom: de-conversion. You can't really escape from the logic of Pascal's Wager as a defense of the rationality of trying to believe. You can only find yourself as unable to believe in your invisible friend are you are unable to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. It is far more difficult for a Christian to admit to themselves that it's all in their head than it is to give their life for Christ. My sincere disbelief proves as little as the sincere belief of martyrs, but it still means I can look at Christian martyrs or a passionate testimony and not be that impressed. For a Christian to give their life while believing God wants them to is a very little thing. To push through the “am I going to hell?” stage without relapsing into belief: now that's hard. And yet appeals to a supernatural experience are not needed to understand how it could happen.
With this is mind, a specific explanation of what happened to the disciples is not needed to be unpersuaded by their deaths, for they are not even the kind of outliers who make you scratch your head and wonder "How did they do it?" Or at least nothing beyond "they believed in heaven and hell."
Courtesy of Google Analytics, I found a link to my post on the Moral Argument on Paul Wright's blog.
Paul paraphrased part of my argument as: “a God whose morality was similar to ours wouldn't allow there to be so much suffering in the world.” In response, one commenter wrote “Why not? We do...” This was probably tongue in cheek, but a valid point is raised. Our morality says we should care about a poor person in a third world country even at a small cost to us, but this small cost is sufficient to prevent us from helping them nearly as much as our morality says we should. And yet I talk about what a God who shares our morality would do. This shows there is something is wrong with at least the presentation of my argument – I will show that only the presentation is at fault.
My second rebuttal depends on the dichotomy “God's morality is/isn't similar to ours.” While these two cases cover Christianity, they do not cover all of theism. The implicit assumption in both cases is that God is living in a manner consistent with his own morality. Because this assumption is being made about God but not about people, it makes sense to say God necessarily would help if he could, despite the fact that we quite often don't help even in cases where mortals could solve the problem. I'm perfectly happy with the content of my arguments, I just need to specify that there are three cases: “God's morality isn't similar to ours,” “God's morality is similar to ours and God is moral by his own standards,” and a new case, “God's morality is similar to ours but God isn't moral by his own standards.”
This third option leads to perhaps the easiest of the rebuttals. If God is condemned by a set of standards, these standards must be above God. But now God is in a position directly analogous to the position people are in within the moral argument. So how can there be standards above God without a Higher God who wrote them? This rebuttal cannot be answered without undermining the moral argument. So the moral argument fails in all cases.
In case you are confused by how I can make this argument consistently, I'll put it in symbolic terms.
A: The moral argument is valid.
B: A God exists of the third kind, that is, God's morality is similar to ours but God isn't moral by his own standards.
I'm showing that A implies ~B. This is sufficient to refute the position A & B, and I can consistently evaluate the implications of A, even though I don't actually accept A. This doesn't specify which of A or B is false, but this is not needed to refute “I accept B because of A.”
This is perhaps a trivial point – I'm refuting a position that pretty much no one holds. But I expect my explanation of why it matters to actually be more important than the argument itself.
The outline of most cases for Christianity are: common knowledge implies God exists, given that God exists Jesus' Resurrection is plausible, given the Resurrection Christianity is plausible. But within this argument, games get played with the definition of “God.” The sort of God you get at the end is one who must resort to “who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” to “explain” how he is other than a cruel and unjust tyrant. This is very different from the sort of God imagined when the Moral Argument is being made.
So while the logical content of refuting the case for the God no one believes in is low, it blocks a common apologetic tactic – get any God you can in the door, even if its nature is directly opposite that of the Christian God, and then start turning it into the Christian God. While I object primarily to the use of the bait and switch, I will also argue against the bait itself. A God who is implicitly assumed to think about morality in much the same way that people think about morality is such common bait that it deserves a direct response.
One of the most common arguments in modern apologetics is the moral argument. Rather than coming up with my own summary, I'll quote a Christian site at length.
“The moral argument appeals to the existence of moral laws as evidence of God’s existence. According to this argument, there couldn’t be such a thing as morality without God; to use the words that Sartre attributed to Dostoyevsky, 'If there is no God, then everything is permissible.' That there are moral laws, then, that not everything is permissible, proves that God exists.
“Some facts are facts about the way that the world is. … For most facts, there are objects in the world that make them true. Moral facts aren’t like that. The fact that we ought to do something about the problem of famine isn’t a fact about the way that the world is, it’s a fact about the way that the world ought to be. There is nothing out there in the physical world that makes moral facts true. This is because moral facts aren’t descriptive, they’re prescriptive; moral facts have the form of commands.
“… If the moral argument can be defended against the various objections that have been raised against it, then it proves the existence of an author of morality, of a being that has authority over and that actively rules over all creation.”
I first need to unpack what the two sides mean by their terms.
What is right and wrong? Most theists will postpone the question to God: right and wrong depends on God's will and/or God's commands. What makes God's actions and commands right? God's will and/or nature are the definition of right, that is, God commands things and/or does things and that makes it right. While there are alternative Christian answers, this is probably the most common and it's the one I know the most about, so I will not address alternatives.
The atheistic answer (or rather, the answer I give) is that morality is a partially unwritten social contract. This contract involves primarily fundamental values, such as treating others the way you want to be treated, as opposed to more specific ethics. To the extent that people share these fundamental values, conversations about specific ethics are meaningful, whether or not people agree on what “morality” actually is.
Apologists often confuse the issue by suggesting that the two views are that morals are either absolute or relative. The better question is “relative to what and absolute in what context?” For instance, if God were different, then Christian morality would be different. That means Christian morality is relative to God's nature and absolute in contexts where God's nature is fixed.
Similarly, my concept of morality is relative to society and relative to human nature. But when human nature and which society I'm talking about are fixed, most of my moral ideas are absolute. Furthermore, with most of the fundamentals there is agreement between nearly all societies – so most of my moral ideas are only relative to human nature.
There is yet another way my moral ideas are objective: “What does society think” and “what fundamental values are led to by human nature” are questions which usually have objective answers. The dichotomy where morality is completely absolute or everything is permissible is a false one. Morality can be thought of as something that is dependent on humanity and still something that I can't change just because I feel like it.
Having laid out what I mean by morality, I will show that the moral argument fails on two independent lines.
First Rebuttal: Exposing the Rhetoric
“For most facts, there are objects in the world that make them true. Moral facts aren’t like that. The fact that we ought to do something about the problem of famine isn’t a fact about the way that the world is, it’s a fact about the way that the world ought to be.”
The problem with this claim is that morals are both kinds of facts within my understanding of morality. The claim “stopping famines is a moral goal” is not a simple fact about how the world is. But on the other hand, the claim “most people have the sort of morality that wishes for no famines” is a claim with physical objects showing it to be true. Similarly, “human nature is such that people are prone to thinking that stopping famines is moral” is a claim with a physical object showing it to be true. Statements about peoples' sentiments and human nature are claims with objects in the world that makes it true. So while the moral claim itself is not a claim about how reality is, the claim that a particular claim really is "moral" is a statement with physical objects in the world making it true.
The entire argument depends on a subtle rhetorical play to hide its most dubious claim. When unpacked, the argument is:
1. People have a moral concept.
2. The only moral concept is the Christian one.
3. Therefore people believe in Christian moral concepts.
4. Christian moral concepts only make sense if God exists.
5. Therefore God exists.
My primary disagreement with the argument is with 2. Notice just how strong the claim must be for the argument to work. To contradict the argument, I don't need to show my moral views to be true – only that I have a view differing greatly from the Christian view. The input data in the argument is a claim about what “everyone believes.” But I don't believe what is claimed that I believe. This alone is sufficient to rebut the moral argument.
Once the terms are defined it becomes clear that no argument exists underneath the rhetoric. With Christian definitions, I don't believe in morality. With atheistic definitions, I believe in morality, and this implies absolutely nothing. It is my intention to be rebutting the moral argument in general and not simply this one articulation of it. However, every single version I have read either depends on this rhetorical slight of hand, or explicitly makes the claim which I have rebutted.
Very little knowledge of apologetics is needed to foresee Christians' response to my position. The response is that the social contract I described isn't really a system of “morality.” What makes it wrong to violate our social contract?
All moral systems have this problem: where to start? Theism has the exact same problem. What makes what God says right? Sure Christians can define that what they mean by “right” is aligning with God's will, but isn't that still just might makes right on a cosmic scale? Christians tend to object when I claim that Yahweh is a barbaric tyrant. But they shouldn't react at all if they consistently hold to their definition of good. God could be a barbaric tyrant, and this simply implies that being a barbaric tyrant is what being good means. The reaction shows that Christians think of good as meaning something deeper than “the way God is.” How could I be accusing God of something unless there is a higher moral law over God and I'm accusing God of violating this higher law? When consistently thinking of good as “the way God is,” objections should only be raised if I say something factually wrong about God, instead of simply using different adjectives to describe the same actions. I don't pat myself on the back for spotting this problem. It's obvious, because all moral systems have this problem: where to start?
It is reasonable to reject either “good is determined by society” or “good is determined by God” as a definitional cheat that avoids the real problem. And they are cheats, unless accompanied by an acknowledgment that they haven't solved the key problem, at which point they simply become unprofound. It is also reasonable to grant that either one could work in principle. What is not reasonable is the double standard that is needed to make the moral argument work.
(On the flip side, this implies that I think the Euthyphro dilemma is an invalid reason to disbelieve in God. While it's a good clarifying question and it shows that theism doesn't answer any foundational moral questions, on the other hand, theism isn't creating new problems either.)
Second Rebuttal
To make an argument for the existence of God, one needs to first specify what is meant by “God.” Our society has a sufficiently specific idea about what this means that it's not always necessary to do so explicitly, but the ideas that different God-concepts have in common are not specific enough for my second rebuttal. The split is based on if the God being argued for has a concept of morality that is at least similar to human moral intuitions.
One half of my rebuttal could work well against some concepts of God while looking like a straw man to people who are arguing for a different concept of God. While either half is easily avoidable, one of the prongs must be faced directly. For this reason, it is important that they be viewed together. For quite while, I bounced between near-Calvinism and C. S. Lewis' explicit non-Calvinism. This wasn't just indecision, but largely due to a disorganized attempt to avoid two different problems that cannot both be avoided. Clarity of thought is sufficient to shut the door on that option.
(By Lewis' position, what I really mean is “what I understood of Lewis' position in 2007-early 2008,” that is, the C. S. Lewis of Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. As John Beversluis painstakingly documents in C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, Lewis himself went through similar indecision later in life, although his indecision went all the way back to his answer to the Euthyphro dilemma. He never articulated a clear reconciliation.)
If God's morality is not similar to ours:
Suppose the moral argument makes it as far as “people believe in moral ideas which imply God's existence.” There is a difference between establishing factual claims that imply God's existence, and establishing that people believe things implying God's existence. If everyone's moral ideas imply God exists, one possibility remaining is that everyone's moral ideas are flawed. Moral dilemmas are inherent in all moral views because they all imply absurdities and/or they are simply not livable. The idea that everyone's moral ideas are incorrect is extremely plausible. Perhaps what's really true is the social contract idea of morality, despite the fact that I and all other freethinking people don't “really” believe it.
Normally, I would be on my last legs if I was reduced to making argument like “sure everyone including me believes X, but we still might all be wrong.” In most cases, this would mean I'm stuck defending the possible, yet highly implausible. But here, there is a key difference: the concept of God that I'm rebutting implies that everyone's moral views are wrong. So it's a very small leap for me to suggest that yes, perhaps everyone's moral views are wrong, but simply in a very different way than the one suggested by Total Depravity.
If God's morality is at least similar to ours:
(*Update* This should be split into "God's morality is at least similar to ours but God isn't moral by his own standards" and "God's morality is at least similar to ours and God is moral by his own standards." What follows is my answer to the second. My next post deals with the first.)
But God's morality is almost diametrically opposite to our own morality as evidenced by the problem of pain. There are a number of ways to set up this argument, and in my opinion, by far the best way is as an empirical problem. I'm not suggesting that pain proves this kind of God does not exist – what I am claiming is that pain is very strong evidence against his existence, although this is the sort of evidence that could potentially be outweighed by contrary evidence. As an empirical argument, the real issue isn't that pain and evil exist at all – the problem is that there is so much.
Similarly, if you are making the case that the police in a particular city are failing, the existence of a robbery is a poor argument – the level of surveillance needed to achieve perfection wouldn't be worth it even if it were possible. But millions and millions of robberies is good evidence for the failure of law enforcement. An explanation of how, in a free society, some level of abuse of freedom is to be expected completely and utterly fails to explain why there is so much crime. With God, I'm not saying that a good plan couldn't involve any discomfort. I'm saying that based on the extreme level of pain in the world, it sure looks like his plan is either not loving or very poorly thought out.
Suppose a person discovered a cure to every single disease in the world. Suppose they had the resources to deliver these cures to the people who need it, and they knew about the need. Suppose this could be done with very little effort. And yet they then did absolutely nothing about it. They just watched while people died from diseases because doing so helped them seek their own glory. If we rely on human intuitions about morality to tell us what morality is, we would call this person the most extreme kind of evil. This person is God.
Christianity's problem of pain is far more severe than that of general theism. Not only is there the overhead of the inaction of God to deal with, there is also all the genocide and killing that God either did himself or delegated to his minions, not to mention hell.
But I bring up diseases in particular because it's something about which we have experiential knowledge and it cannot be avoided with a weaker view of biblical inspiration. We cannot reasonably speculate that diseases are needed to bring about some other greater good – some diseases have been cured in the past and that turned out quite well. Even while knowing about the lack of negative consequences, God still didn't cure these diseases sooner. Furthermore, whenever a person claims to have a new cure, one question that is not asked is “but is curing diseases a good idea?” We don't look back with skepticism at the morally questionable activities of the World Health Organization and others in eradicating polio. We don't do this because while it is a remote possibility that curing diseases is damaging, it is not a reasonable possibility.
Without a justification for God's inaction, the evidence suggests that if God exists, he does not follow a system of morality similar to ours. And if we are so wrong about morality to have so badly misjudged the morality of cosmic inaction to pain, then an argument cannot be grounded in the trusting of our moral intuitions.
As everyone but Christians knows, Christians apply a double standard to their own religious experiences versus similar experiences in other religions. But it's worse than that. The double standard is completely in-house.
Specifically, I'm addressing the inconsistency of the following three positions:
1. My experiences of God are a valid reason for thinking God is real.
2. The gift of tongues has ceased.
3. Many people who speak in tongues are solid Christians.
The doublethink is so glaring that I hardly need to do more than list the positions. Apparently, lots of Christians who are very close to God don't know the difference between a psychological phenomenon (or demons) and an experience of God. “But not my experience! I experienced God! How can you explain that?” With great ease...
If God really was in relationships with people, and God really did speak to people through a certain branch of a certain religion, you would expect them to agree on what God said. Or at least they should agree on a much easier question: how do you know God is the one who is speaking?
But if God doesn't exist or if he doesn't reach out to people through personal relationships, what we should expect to find is an enormous level of disagreement on the most basic questions about how it is that God really talks, and what it is that he says. This is exactly what we find.
One rationalization is that maybe God makes his voice unclear for some reason, or in other words, he likes making it look precisely the way it would look if he wasn't there. It's possible. It's also possible that the reason pictures of aliens are always really grainy is that, well, aliens are just really grainy.
The far better explanation is that Jesus' sheep do not hear his voice, and they do not follow him. Instead, they are scattered in every direction as they all insist that they are the ones' following the correct voice.
None of this excludes the position that tongues are fake and Pentecostal Christians are therefore borderline heretics. Perhaps exactly one of the scattered sheep are following the correct voice. But if this is your position, please hold to it consistently. Don't try to tell me that God is at work spreading the Gospel throughout the world. Third world Christianity is very Pentecostal – consistent cessationists and I are in agreement that all that's going on is the realignment of superstitions.
On the other side a different inconsistency is quite common:
1. Non-Christians disbelieve due to rebellion against God and his laws.
2. The gift of tongues is real.
3. Many cessationists are solid Christians.
The problem here is that cessationists who are solid Christians show that the reality of tongues can be denied for other than hedonistic or rebellious reasons. What would motive a cessationist to accept all the restrictions of Christianity while denying themselves the most dramatic parts? The answer is that it's not about “motivation,” but about actually thinking that tongues are not for real. Once this line of reasoning is accepted, it is extremely hard to maintain the impossibility of non-Christians disbelieving simply because they actually think that Christianity is false. Hell then becomes very difficult to justify when the litmus test is belief.
None of this excludes the position that tongues are real and cessationists are lukewarm believers or less. But if this is your position, don't try to tell me true Christianity existed between, say, 100AD and 1900AD.
It is noteworthy that the more consistent positions often result in more disagreeable people and more divisions in the church. This is the dilemma of trying to think of many different Christianities as some mystically unified “Christianity.” Churches and Christian organizations must choose among being intellectually shallow, segregated along theological lines, or a cauldron churning out apostasy whenever the wrong combination of views interact.
