What you are, not what you aren’t

I have to say, I’m tremendously encouraged by the emergence of a new “Atheism+” movement as the logical outgrowth of the New Atheist movement. The problem with atheism (if you’ll pardon me phrasing it in those terms) is that it’s a definition based on what you’re not, or in other words on the things you don’t do. That’s a negative beacon. Sure, it draws in people who have thought things over, and rejected superstition based on reason and evidence, but it also draws in people who disbelieve in God as part of a larger pattern of antisocial attitudes, as well as people who reject religion as a way of drawing attention to themselves.

Atheism+ is a much needed refinement of the original raw idea. It’s not enough just to disbelieve in God for whatever good or bad reasons you might have. To be part of this new movement, we need to be atheists PLUS we need to be decent people committed to making life better for ourselves and those around us. And that means breaking down all the pernicious vices by which we oppress and destroy one another: superstition, patriarchy, bigotry, sexism, racism—whatever penalizes the innocent in order to profit the privileged.

[Read more…]

Stray thoughts: congressional review of state secrets

If you’ve been reading Ed Brayton’s blog, you know that one of the big problems with the current administration, like administration before it, is a penchant for using the so-called State Secret Privilege to avoid accountability for any questionable activities it might be engaging in. In fact, if anything, the current administration is even worse than the last one, and worse yet, they’re proving successful at getting the courts to rubber-stamp this kind of blanket immunity. And that’s eroding the distinction between the democratic republic we’re supposed to have, and the effective dictatorship we’re heading for.

So here’s my stray thought of the day: if the judicial branch won’t provide any checks and balances to the executive, why not Congress? The genius of the American constitution is the trade-off between the democratic power of the legislature and the executive power of the president, with the additional safeguard of an independent judiciary (on paper, at least). So why can’t we have a congressional investigation into the administration’s reckless invocation of the State Secret Privilege? Obama can’t argue that only the state has the right to be “in” on the secret, because Congress is just as much the state as he is. And if the president still won’t allow Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility to provide checks and balances to the abuse of executive power, then maybe it’s time for them to exercise their constitutional power of impeachment.

I’m no political scientist, so I don’t know whether that’s either desirable or doable, but I thought I’d put it out there. From what I remember from social studies class, it seems like the right thing to do.

How do we know?

Picking up where we left off yesterday, we’ve seen that Pastor Stephen Feinstein would be ill-advised to propose that there are any material preconditions for the universe, “reasonable standards,” and epistemology. That which exists in the same form at all points in time is necessarily uncaused and uncausable, since there’s no point in time where it was not already what it is now, and therefore no opportunity for it to be changed from “non-existent” to “existing.” The laws of physics, the laws of logic and reason, the fundamental material aspects of the space-time continuum, and so on, are all uncreatable and have no material preconditions.

That leaves logical preconditions, i.e. the relationship between A and B that allows us to say B cannot be true if A is false, and thus if B is true then we know A must be true also. Given that there is no possibility that the universe, “reasonable standards” and epistemology could have supernatural causes, can we nevertheless reason our way from B (the universe, reasonable standards, and epistemology) back to some A that must also be true? Can we, in other words, find Pastor Stephen’s logical preconditions for the existence of the universe, reason, and epistemology?

[Read more…]

Causes, creations and preconditions

I’ve been following Russell Glasser’s online discussion with Pastor Stephen Feinstein, in which the latter claims that he can prove that “atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible.” By mutual agreement, it’s a public discussion between just those two parties, but I can’t resist the temptation to supply a little offside commentary, because it looks like Pastor Stephen has made a misstep already, in only his second post.

It is not good enough for me to say, “Russell, I agree with you that this world is real, that we learn from the senses, that reasonable standards are necessary, and that bald assertion fails to prove anything.” By the way, I agree with you on all of these things, but with one revision. However, I want us to account for these things. What are the necessary preconditions of this universe, as we know it? Why are we able to rely on our senses? What are the necessary preconditions for our senses to be reliable? Why must there be reasonable standards? What are the necessary preconditions for any standards at all that avoids the hopelessness of relativity? Epistemology will help us construct workable lists of what things are necessary in order to make these assumptions of ours a reality. Furthermore, we cannot even take epistemology for granted, but must ask what are the necessary preconditions of it too? And at the end of the day, atheism cannot provide for these necessary preconditions.

[Read more…]

Social justice versus family values

Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, Brad Knickerbocker observes:

For the first time since the founding of the Republic, none of the major party candidates for president or vice president is a WASP – a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant – a fact that was confirmed when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate.

As Knickerbocker goes on to observe, if there’s anyone who wants to vote for a Protestant, they’ve only got one choice this year: Barack Obama. Is this the end of an era?

[Read more…]

Heroes that actually deserve the name

There are relatively few people in this world today who impress me enough for me to call them heroes. But they exist. Belatedly, imperfectly, incompletely, I would like to thank them for inspiring me and encouraging me to expect more and better things.

Here, in no particular order, are some of them. Please help me fill in the names I will inevitably overlook.

[Read more…]

Prayers for sale–but not for long

Freedom of religion notwithstanding, it seems that certain types of supernatural products and services are downright unworkable, for entirely commercial reasons. Just ask EBay.

Beginning Aug.30, the online auction site will ban the sale of curses, spells, hexes, magic, prayers, blessing services, magic potions, healing sessions and more…

“EBay regularly reviews categories and updates our policies based on customer feedback,” a statement from the company read. “We are discontinuing a small number of categories within the larger metaphysical subcategory, as buyers and sellers have told us that transactions in these categories often result in issues that can be difficult to resolve.”

I can see where this could be a problem. If I buy something that doesn’t exist, and nothing ever arrives, how do I know if it’s been shipped?

No word on whether or not indulgences are included amongst the list of soon-to-be-banned magical services approved for sale to the gullib general public.

FRC quick to exploit shooting

On Wednesday, a young man named Floyd Corkins made an inept attack on the offices of the Family Research Council, an act of politically-motivated domestic terrorism that is no different from bombing an abortion clinic. Clearly, such actions are unjustified, indefensible, and reprehensible. Working on the theory that one bad turn deserves another, the FRC immediately tried to exploit the shooting to launch an attack on the reputation of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a longtime foe of the FRC’s anti-gay crusade.

“Let me be clear that Floyd Corkins was responsible for firing the shot yesterday,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told reporters in Washington about the suspect. “But Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”

Right. Because the FRC’s relentless slanders against gays wouldn’t have offended anybody if it hadn’t been for those damn kids and their stupid dog.

[Read more…]

Voting for Mormons: another perspective

Blair Kelly claims to “strongly disagree” with my position on voting for “a Mormon,” and has written a full post explaining all the why’s and how’s. It’s a pretty good read, and I’d recommend it. My only quibble is that I’m not so sure we really disagree.

I would want to ask any candidate, Mormon or otherwise, some of the questions I posed above. What I’m arguing is that a person who claims to be Mormon is likely to answer them in an unsatisfying way… Therefore if you say you’re Mormon, chances are I won’t vote for you. I argue this is a perfectly legitimate position to take. But if you say you’re a Mormon and that the story about the origins of the Lamanites is clearly bunk, homosexuals deserve equal rights, Joseph Smith’s tales were very tall indeed, creationism is a load of garbage, women should have all the entitlements of men, and that you support stem cell research, then you will have purchased more of my attention…

That’s pretty much the distinction I was trying to make. If you’re judging somebody solely on the basis of the fact that they’re affiliated with the Mormon church, you’re really making a decision without adequate information. You can assume that any Mormon swears allegiance to all the things Mormonism is notorious for (and odds are you’d be right), but that’s an unfortunate handicap, not a reliable basis for decision-making. Still, it happens a lot, especially in politics, where necessity often forces us to make decisions based on inadequate information.

The point I want to make, though, is that we should never allow ourselves to become so complacent about the facts that we no longer care whether there is any more to the story than the fact that the candidate is a Mormon. If no other information is available, then we may not have a better basis for our decision-making, but we must always bear in mind that under these circumstances, we’re making a poorly-informed choice. Determining the candidate’s actual qualifications means asking for more than just his or her denominational affiliation. Asking the right questions may turn out to prove that initial prejudices were correct after all. But we still have to ask, as a matter of principle.