Love the sinner, hate this meme

I am officially back from vacation, with a full buffer and a great deal of enthusiasm. I enjoyed my time in Ontario, but I am glad to be back and bringing you the good stuff once again. Happy New Year!

When I was in high school I had a string quartet. We were called The Four Quarters and we played gigs in various places around southern Ontario. Our second violinist was raised in a conservative Christian household, was home-schooled, and was about as fond of religious bottled phrases as I am fond of butter tarts (which is to say a lot). She once shared with me her outrage over some guy who was told he wasn’t allowed to discriminate against gay people at his print shop. I expressed my bafflement that this was a problem for her – wouldn’t the Christian thing to do be to love all people? I still remember her response:

Her: As a Christian, I love the sinner but hate the sin
Me: Um… Jesus wasn’t really into hate.
Her: I don’t hate gay people, I just hate the sin
Me: Still, hate… not exactly very Christlike

It was the first time I heard the whole “love the sinner,  hate the sin” trope. At the time I was still a believer, albeit a much more liberal one than she was. I had never seen anything wrong with being gay, and hadn’t yet read the lovely passages in Leviticus and the letters of Paul that called gay sex an “abomination”. Even then, I knew it was a stupid phrase, because it’s still hate, and hate is not represented anywhere in Christian scripture. The only story we have that even comes close to touching on the subject is the one about Jesus and the adulteress, from which we get the famous line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” It’s a nice story, provided you don’t think about it too much, and ignore the fact that it’s not in any of the other gospels, and couldn’t have been from an eyewitness, and probably got snuck in after the gospel of John was written, and probably never actually happened. The relevant point here is that sins should be forgiven. It doesn’t say anything about hating sin.

But back up a second and replay the story from the beginning. Assume Jesus had come to the crowd and instead wrote “Love the sinner, but stone the sin to death”. Who wants to lay odds that that woman would have made it out alive?

The problem lies in the fact that being gay, or doing the things that are a direct result of being gay, are labeled as “sin”. Whereas someone could, conceivably, make the decision not to commit adultery, there is no choice in the matter of being gay. Even if there was, while there is a clear harm from adultery (assuming the spouse isn’t okay with it), there is no clear harm to being gay, or expressing your sexuality as a gay person except insofar as all sexual expression has risks and harms, and the fact that small-minded bigots have made people feel ashamed of being gay.

“But Crommunist,” you say “it’s not me who says that homosexuality is a sin, it’s GOD! The Bible makes it very clear that is it a sin!”

Ah yes, that pesky God. You’d totally have no problem with homosexuality, but it says right there in black and white that homosexuality is an abomination. What can you do? You certainly can’t ignore the stuff it says directly in the Bible, right? I mean, if you could, for the sake of argument, ignore some parts of the Bible that don’t make any sense or are impractical, you would totally do it, right? If the Bible is the only reason that you condemn homosexuality, and you are capable of ignoring certain parts of the Bible that conflict with your personal beliefs, then you’d stop condemning it?

Well, consider it your luck day, because chances are you completely ignore lots of stuff in the Bible. Let’s start with the easy ones: if you have ever had sex for any reason other than procreation, you’re ignoring the story of Onan. Do you own a cross or a crucifix? Maybe a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or a statue of the Virgin Mary? Whoops, you just ignored the second commandment. Let’s not even get started on what happens if you catch your neighbour working on a Saturday or a Sunday.

“But that’s all Old Testament stuff,” you say. “The New Testament is where all the real rules are.” Okay, fine, but then you’re no longer allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments. Obviously if stuff in the Old Testament that doesn’t make sense can be ignored, then we can stop talking about the “thou shalt nots” as though they have any real meaning. Also we can throw out Genesis, so that takes care of creationism (and Intelligent Design, it’s hilariously-ironically-named cousin). Just so long as we don’t disregard anything that’s in the New Testament we should be okay to call homosexuality a “sin”.

Do you support school prayer, or prayer in public places, or even group prayer in church? How about take an oath of office? Do you think people should be allowed to fight to defend themselves against violent attack? How about the right of people to save and accumulate money? How about… oh I don’t know… identify someone else as a sinner*? Whoops, you’ve chosen to ignore specific instructions from Jesus himself. What about specific instructions from Jesus about whether it’s okay to fuck another dude or make sweet sweet mouth-sex to another lady? Hmm… he’s oddly silent on that one.

So since you’re cool with ignoring some parts of the Bible when they are either out-dated or don’t seem to make sense, you have no reason to condemn homosexuality as sin, right? Well… unless that condemnation is just you trying to find a lame excuse about “loving the sinner but hating the sin” to justify your a priori hatred of gay people. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?

The fact is that identifying a set of behaviours that have no demonstrable harm to anyone as a “sin” is completely arbitrary, just as if I said that it is a “sin” to hold hands in public with your spouse, or encourage your daughter to play sports. By branding such a thing as a “sin”, you’re passing judgment on people who do it, and asserting (without evidence) that there is some sort of shame in their living their lives as they see fit. In so doing, you put the lie to the completely laughable statement that you are simply “hating the sin” whilst all the while “loving the sinner”.

TL/DR: “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a false statement, since it is based on the premise that acts can be “sins” even if they harm nobody. People pick and choose which parts of the Bible they follow, so the excuse that God condemns it is also false. Calling someone a “sinner” is already condemnation, which is a direct contravention of the idea of loving them.

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*For the record, Matthew 7:1-5 has always been, and probably will always be, one of my absolute favourite Biblical passages. The idea of someone with a beam in their eye always made me chuckle, but it’s a great message to remember about hypocrisy.

What would happen if… (evolution vs. creation)

I sometimes forget that not everyone gets into fights on the internet about stuff. While I’ve been observing the debate over climate change and evolution and the existence of God and alt-med pseudoscience and any other number of skeptical hot topics for a while now, I often make the faulty assumption that other people are a) as interested and b) as skeptical as I am about these things. As a result, I tend to regard people who believe in astrology, or ghosts, or biblical creation,  as being curious oddities when they are in fact, more often than not simply people who aren’t particularly experienced in skeptical inquiry.

It is for this reason that this blog has, from time to time, become a dumping ground for my handful of skeptical tools, thought experiments, critical arguments, and whatever other devices I use on a day-to-day basis when I’m trying to navigate the morass of contradictory claims that are at the heart of most of these “controversies”. Today will be another one of those.

Whenever I am confronted with a new idea or a theoretical framework, I like to ask myself the question “What would the world look like if this were true?” It’s a useful thought experiment in which you are invited to re-start the world from scratch and, while keeping all the other variables the same, imagine what the outcome would be if a certain rule were true. It’s the inverse of the usual scientific process wherein we look at the evidence in aggregate and then try to figure out what the rules are; in this thought experiment we assume the rule to be true and then imagine what the world would look like as a result.

Rule #1a: Creationism – the Earth was created by a supernatural force in (more or less) its present form about 10,000 years ago. Current geological and geographical features that appear to be due to the effect of much more than 10,000 years of time are in fact caused by a massive flood.

What would the world look like if Creationism was true?

It is entirely possible that different species were created using the same set of rules, so the existence of a single mechanism underpinning living organisms (DNA/RNA transcription) is neither ruled out or necessitated by this rule. Types of animals (called “kinds” in Creationist jargon) would not show anything but trivial similarities in terms of their underlying physiology, microbiology, genetics, since they have all been created separately and are not designed to interbreed. There would be no need for wasted or vestigial organs, since these organs would only waste energy. A consistent fossil record would exist that shows only superficial changes over time, consistent with the observed rate of change in physiology in the current time (within reasonable error bars). Species would show evidence of physical migration from a single point of of origin (in the Middle East), spreading out to their current locations, and the same types of animals would occupy ecological niches everywhere (birds are the only ones that fly, fish are the ones that swim, etc.) since there is no reason to change a working pattern. Species would not acquire new characteristics over time, since they were created perfect the first time. Floods would exhibit similar effects (albeit to a smaller degree) on geology that can be observed and extrapolated.

Rule #1b: Evolution – all existing life has a common origin, having reached its present form via a process of change due to a combination of genetic mutation and changes in environment that favors certain trait changes over others.

What would the world look like if evolution were true?

Different species would have many genetic commonalities – no species would use a completely unique process of gene replication, and similarity between different types of species would be on a gradient rather than randomly distributed. Similarities would also be seen in embryology, comparative physiology, and microbiology since they all came from a single source rather than being created different. There may (or may not) be gene sequences and organ systems that are completely useless or have trivial utility in one species, but have working analogues in other species – these would be caused when two different species diverge from a common ancestor due to environmental differences. Fossil records would show animals that are similar to a number of different species but are no longer in existence, as well as some that are still in existence (since environmental changes happen with different frequency and magnitude). Species would exist only in certain areas, while there would be no evidence of them in others, as their ancestors might have had common habitat but have left that area, went somewhere else, and adapted to the change in environment. By the same token, ecological niches would be filled by many different kinds of animals – there would be mammals that fly and birds that swim, plants that eat flies and insects that fertilize soil. Species would, if given sufficient time and divergent enough environments, gradually change and become different enough as to be considered two different species.

The last step of this process is to look at the world that exists and decide which rule best resembles our observed reality. If the rule is in conflict, there are two possible explanations: 1) the rule is false, or 2) there are other forces at work underlying reality that are not fully caught by observation, and further observation will expose them. Of course creationists are loath to accept #1, and will rush to find exceptions and “explanations” for why the rule is still valid (Ken Ham’s floating log bridges, for example). This, however, is simply back-filling – throwing up hastily-assembled assertions to prop up a preconceived conclusion rather than following the existing evidence.

I was going to do a few more examples, but I’m on vacation and I’m coming dangerously close to my 1000 word limit, so I’ll do another one of these another time.

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Backfilling – when to ignore someone (pt 3)

Back in September I unveiled my first takedown of arguments that I see popping up in online discourse – namely, appeals to “my own research” and “common sense”. I followed that up by expressing my scorn for any assertion that begins with “I believe…”, a statement that is simply a declaration of personal preference and that has no bearing on anyone else. Today’s post continues this series, albeit with a slightly different, more subtle spin.

Have you ever noticed that your nose is the perfect size and shape to hold up a pair of glasses? Isn’t it remarkable that the placement of the ears relative to the nose support the arms of the glasses? How wonderful is the design of the face! Surely this is proof that the human face has a designer.

Of course you’re smarter than that. You know that it’s exactly the other way around – glasses were designed to fit the face. If our noses had been on our foreheads, we’ve have designed glasses to be an entirely different shape. Of course, this says absolutely nothing about the shitty “design” of the eye that makes us need glasses in the first place.

This practice of assuming the truth of your premise and then cherry-picking and distorting facts to fit that premise is a practice I call “backfilling”, although I am sure it has a real name. I use a creationist example here not because it is used exclusively by the religious, but because it is perhaps most obviously and conspicuously on display when people attempt to bully facts into a literalist biblical account of creation. To be sure, everyone (myself included) uses this tactic from time to time. The psychology behind it is pretty obvious – you believe something to be true, and when it is challenged your mind looks for a rational basis for that belief.

This is similar to appeals to “common sense” or statements of belief – we as listeners are exhorted to believe an asserted statement that strains credulity. The important difference between this tactic and the aforementioned fallacies is that at least the veneer of evidence is presented. That is, we are given something that looks like evidence, provided we don’t take too long to actually look at it critically. Sometimes this comes in the form I have presented above, where cause and effect are reversed. Other times it comes from ignoring or failing to recognize confounding factors and thus jumping to an erroneous conclusion (black people must be more prone to commit crimes – look how many of them are in jail!).

The most frustrating form of this tactic I encounter happens when people make statements and then staunchly refuse to define their terms. Not too long ago, I butted heads with one of the other authors at Canadian Atheist, who seems to have some kind of unhealthy obsession with haunting my posts and writing ridiculous nonsense. One of his favourite tactics is to make some blanket statement, and then when you ask him to define what he’s talking about, he retreats into some mushy nonsense that bears a slight resemblance to the word he’s using, albeit a definition that nobody else would agree with. Thus swimming in the water of muddy incomprehensibility, he is free to make ridiculous and unsupported statements to his heart’s content.

There is a danger in using backfilling to support an argument, namely that unless someone already agrees with your premise, your argument will fail to persuade others. It’s easy to find things that will confirm your own beliefs, but as soon as you step outside a sympathetic audience, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to convince all but the most credulous listener. This is why skepticism is such a useful tool to have – it requires someone to actually define their terms rather than just getting away with blanket nonsense and vauge “well everyone knows what X is” statements.

Because it is so tempting to use this technique in an argument you’re not prepared for, we have to be particularly wary of it when we’re talking outside our depth. Similarly, it might require us to go a bit easier on someone when they’re using it. Unless they’re like Joe and they do it on a repeated basis whilst simultaneously accusing everyone else of being ‘irrational’. Then you know you’ve found a professional idiot, and you should adjust your debate style accordingly.

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I find the defendant… not guilty

Last Monday’s “think piece” made reference to the title of a book called “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together at the Cafeteria?” What followed in my post was a discussion of some of the sociological and psychological factors that can influence people in a minority group to seek each other out. If you clicked through to the customer reviews, you were treated to gems like this:

The author must have wrote this book for black people and liberals ONLY !!!!!! Only then could a positive review of this book be possible! More of that ‘blame whitey’ baloney that is just ‘not sticking’ anymore. It’s like something Jesse Jackson would write: PATHETIC.

Or this sharp insight:

I found Tatum’s book to be laughable at best. She deliberately shows her hatred towards whites with her over the top view of what racism is (a system of advantage based on race). I find her definition to be a joke. She provides no substantial evidence to support any of her claims about white people having this ultimate advantage in society and how everything has been essentially spoon fed to whites.

There is a tendency for white people to feel ‘blamed’ or ‘guilty’ for racism, which I suppose is a regrettable side-effect of being a member of a majority group. When the story casts your team as the bad guys, it’s hard not to feel personally attacked whenever someone talks about the team. As a man, it’s tough to deal with the reality of male privilege because it’s always “my fault” whenever we talk about women’s role in history. It’s certainly tempting for me to slip into feeling blamed, or feeling like the only weapon that feminists have in their arsenal is just to blame men for all of the problems of the world.

However, this kind of reaction is seated firmly in assuming it’s still about me. Framing the entire feminist movement as “just blaming men” keeps the spotlight on us and puts us (as men) back at the centre of attention. Feminism isn’t about “blaming” anybody, it’s about identifying real inequalities, and the factors and psychology that perpetuate those inequalities. As with any inequality, there will be a group (or groups) that occupies an exalted position and one that holds an inferior one. However, when the exalted group stubbornly ignores the reasons why they occupy that position and explain the inequality away by assuming that the differences are due to the work ethic or genetic makeup or some kind of factor intrinsic to that group, it’s often necessary to point out the flaws in that line of reasoning.

In exactly the same way, when anti-racists wish to point out the inequalities between racial groups, it becomes inevitable that they (we) identify who is on top and point out some of the reasons why. Otherwise, we slip back into the too-convenient “explanations” that put the blame on the victim and completely absolve anyone else of any responsibility. You might hear, for example, someone talk about how affirmative action programs simply make racism worse by making white people resent minorities, or saying that if people just took “personal responsibility” for their attitudes then the problems would disappear. The problem with those excuses is that they make solving race issues everyone else’s problem, removing any need for the speaker to speak up, participate, or sacrifice anything.

The idea that the goal of anti-racism is to make white people feel guilty for the sins of their ancestors is flawed for two reasons. The first is that these aren’t problems that are the domain of mythical ancestors – we still find them happening today. We may not have the same state support for them, but there is still a real economic, social and political gap between people of colour (PoCs) and whites in North America. Doing nothing will not make the problem go away – it will simply allow it to continue in perpetuity. Active steps must be taken to address and ameliorate the problem, which is a problem for all of us.

The second problem is that guilt is a useless emotion. You’ll notice (if you care to look through the archives of this site) that at no point do I suggest that white people should feel guilty, or even imply that guilt is a useful motivator for anything. The kinds of actions that are motivated by guilt tend to be short-term Band-Aid solutions to serious problems. After all, if you can make a lot of noise about how you love everyone, or about how bad you feel that your ancestors did X and Y, then your guilt goes away. Feeling bad doesn’t level the playing field; it simply makes you look for the fastest way to stop feeling guilty.

It is for this reason that you’ll inevitably see the “get over it, black people” or “that was in the past” or “you just hate white people” response whenever someone talks about an inequality, or seeks an apology for a historical injustice. The narrative goes something like this: “I am not responsible for the actions of others, those things happened long ago, therefore I have no responsibility to give up my privilege”. Well, it’s either that or it’s “I feel super-bad for what my ancestors did, but I didn’t do it personally, therefore it’s enough that I don’t specifically discriminate against PoCs”.

Neither of these attitudes are helpful – they are the equivalent of throwing up your arms in surrender and saying “oh well, what can you do?” Anti-racists and those who study issues of racial inequality are offering solutions, but as long as those solutions continue to be branded as “blaming whitey”, we’ll never move white people out of the spotlight, and never see any real progress.

If you do feel guilty about the past deeds of white people then I feel for you. I don’t know what to tell you other than the fact that your guilt is at best irrelevant, and at worst a detriment to making any advances toward closing the gaps. So cut it out 😛

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Why do all the black kids sit together?

I attended a conference in Ottawa last week that was related to work. I arrived early and picked a spot at the row of tables completely arbitrarily. Other people filtered in a bit later, and when I looked up from my computer, I realized that all of the black people in the room (well, there were only three so maybe ‘all’ is a bit misleading) were sitting in the same area as me.

It’s a phenomenon that you can observe pretty much anywhere, where members of a minority group tend to flock together. It even spawned the title of a book on racism and psychology.

Okay, and?

My job straddles a line between epidemiology, statistics and economics. While I can’t really claim to be an expert in any one of those fields individually, I can at least speak semi-intelligibly about them. A central concept in economics is the idea of an “incentive” – decisions are made by rational agents to gain something they value. By increasing the value gained by making a particular choice, you make that choice more appealing. For example, if you have the choice between two hamburgers, and I slap a piece of delicious bacon on one (but not the other), you’re more likely to choose the one with extra value.

The converse case of incentives are what are termed “disincentives” – additional features that make a rational agent less likely to make a choice. Suppose you are a vegan, and you are forced to choose between those same two hamburgers. All of a sudden, the addition of delicious bacon makes that sandwich less appealing.

This is an incredibly simplistic description of the concept, obviously, but hopefully it is clear.

Wait… what?

There is an illusion that we carry around in our minds that we have a “true self” – that we have a personality that is the “real me” version. The fact is that our personality is more strongly determined by the surrounding social environment and other external stimuli than it is by our intentions. As a result, when our environment changes, different aspects of our “self” become more apparent.

There is a classic example of this called “stereotype threat“, in which a person’s performance is (positively or negatively) affected by making a stereotype about them apparent. This is commonly seen when discussing the differential performance of women in science and mathematics. Women were inundated with a prevailing stereotype that “girls are not good at science”. As a result, when women are reminded of their gender before testing, they do worse than if they are not made aware.

What does this have to do with anything?

Social pressure exists. The presence of others is a real environmental cue, that will cause us to be aware of various aspects of our identity. As a direct result, we will switch over to one of our various “selves”. At this workshop, everyone in the room was similar in most ways – we all have similar careers, similar education, probably similar interests. However, my presence in the room reminded the other two black guys of their “black guy self”, creating an ad hoc group. This happened completely passively – I didn’t walk up to them and say “welcome, fellow black man.” It happened all by itself – all they had to do was notice that there was another black person around.

There’s another level that this operates on though. Imagine the converse – you are a physicist in a room full of actors. You are trying to have a conversation about beauty, but every time you slip into physics-speak, you are met by blank stares. Another physicist joins the conversation – your life immediately becomes easier. Even though you might not ordinarily gravitate toward this particular person, this arbitrary similarity makes her/him highly attractive to you.

It’s the same way for members of any minority group – when they feel different from the rest of the group, they are more likely to gravitate toward those who are similarly different.

So?

This ability to make certain identities more apparent can be used as an incentive to make decisions. If I would like you to donate to my women’s rights charity, I might do well to remind you that you have a sister, or a mother, or that you are a woman yourself. By bringing an aspect of your “self” to the foreground of your mind, I am able to influence you (as a rational agent) into making one decision (donating your money) rather than another (keeping it).

It is for this reason that things like the Atheist Bus Ads and the Out Campaign are useful – not for antagonizing the religious (although that is certainly what the faithful are claiming), but for bringing atheists out into the open. By making nonbelievers aware of their nonbelief, it brings that aspect of their “self” more apparent and helps motivate their behaviour.

Why is that good? Shouldn’t everyone consider themselves equal?

This kind of counterexample is appealing, and commonly used to blame those who talk about racism as “the real racists”. After all, by pointing out that there are treatment inequalities between different racial groups, aren’t you reinforcing the idea that races are different?

Describing reality is not the same as creating that reality. My usual go-to example is blaming someone for yelling “look out!”, and thereby causing a passerby to get hit by a bus. The bus was there to begin with, and would have hit the person regardless of the warning. The purpose of the warning is to make the passerby aware of the problem so she/he can take steps to avoid or fix it.

Atheists who are reminded of their atheism aren’t suddenly turned into atheists – they were already. Making that reality more apparent is not creating a difference, it’s just highlighting it for the explicit purpose of motivating people to consider their “atheist self”.

The bizarre thing about this whole phenomenon is that we often aren’t aware that these social forces play such a role. It was until I commented on our seating arrangement that the other two guys smiled and said “oh yeah”. Once aware of it, we can recognize it intuitively, but sometimes it happens without our even knowing.

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“How do you know that?” – the ultimate nullifier

In Marvel comics, there is a device known as “The Ultimate Nullifier” –  a weapon that is apparently capable of utterly destroying any target the user chooses, as well as the user her/himself if her/his mind is not sufficiently focussed (those of you who don’t read comics will probably find this idea a bit ridiculous; those of you who do read comics will think it’s not ridiculous enough).

Back in July, Vancouver was visited by PZ Myers, author of one of my favourite science and atheism blogs, Pharyngula. During his talk, PZ brought up the role of skepticism in evaluating any claims about the world, particularly religious ones, and invited us to ask an important question when facing a claim that you’re not sure about: “how do you know that?” This question is, within the realm of science, the ultimate nullifier… of sorts.

Let’s pretend I have a friend who is really into reiki – a form of Japanese faith healing. She tells me that she can heal my diseases by passing her hands over me and directing positive energy into my body. I, of course, am skeptical – probably more so than I would be if she had told me that she was going to massage away my stress or something that at least has a biologically plausible mechanism. And so I ask her “how do you know that?”

She tells me about chakras and meridian lines and The Goddess Breath Method (those of you who aren’t familiar with “alternative therapies” will probably find this idea a bit ridiculous; those of you who are familiar with this kind of woo will think it’s not ridiculous enough). She tells me that by directing energy into my chakras that I will rebalance my energy flows and expel the foreign energy that causes my dis-ease (yes, they actually do spell it like this). I’ve studied human anatomy, and there ain’t nothing like a “chakra” or a “meridian line” anywhere to be found. And so I ask her “how do you know that?”

She shows me a bunch of websites and testimonials from the millions of patients who have been treated with reiki. As an epidemiologist, I point out that showing the numerator without the denominator is useless – how many people were treated and didn’t get better? Is it an equivalent number? Is it less? Is it more? Surely there are “dis-eases” that resolve themselves on their own – how does she know that people aren’t just responding to a sham treatment because they believe in it?

As we go father down, I learn that every time someone takes a controlled look at reiki (or acupuncture, homeopathy, intercessory prayer, rolfing, crystals, psychic surgery, or distance healing), they find no reason to support my friend’s claim that it will heal anything. The few studies that do suggest that it works either have a small sample size, lack proper blinding, or have no control group – common ways of finding effects that aren’t actually real. Basically, her claim of magic healing powers is based on nothing but personal belief and junk science – not exactly what I want when I’m in serious medical trouble.

There is a limitation to this question, however. Many people like Deepak Chopra and Ray Comfort abuse the word “know”, taking it to mean “believe very strongly”. They insist that science isn’t the only “way of knowing”, and that human intuition or divine revelation (sometimes through scripture) are just as good as science at determining reality. There’s certainly an appeal to this kind of statement – after all it is pretty arrogant of scientists to claim that theirs is the only version of the truth.

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that, if it were true, we’d see far more overlap between intuition, revelation and science. Revealed wisdom (for example), when tested through observation, would consistently give similar results to those determined according to non-revealed scientific “wisdom”. It would certainly be at least internally consistent – many different groups of people would achieve similar insights, and have overlapping revelations. However what we see instead are diverse groups claiming to have “truth”, but having very different versions of it.

A better question, perhaps, is “why should I believe you?” Ray Comfort is free to assert (without evidence) that he knows that Jesus is the supreme being who watches and judges mankind (but not other animals). Why should I believe that just on his say-so? To avoid everlasting torment? Maybe, but that threat is really only credible if I believe him already – if I reject his imaginary friend then I most certainly reject the punishment that imaginary friend has in store for me. Why should I believe Ray more than my Hindu neighbour down the street – both can point to ancient holy books, miracles, millions of followers; what makes Ray’s “truth” more true than Raj’s?

All claims should be held to an external standard – some kind of way of measuring them against observed reality. It doesn’t matter if they’re claims about magic energy healing or invisible sky genies or political theories – if they aren’t borne out by some kind of controlled, observable evidence, then they’re just statements of belief. It’s fine to have beliefs (I think it’s preferable to have ideas, but whatever), but a statement of a belief is nothing more useful than a personal preference. I think that Radiohead peaked with OK, Computer; my buddy Stu thinks that they’ve gotten steadily better after that – they’re just statements of belief.

Saying that I believe in chakras doesn’t make it any more true than if I say I believe in phrenology or caloric theory or the four elements of matter. Saying that I believe it so much that I know it certainly doesn’t change that. My believing in it doesn’t grant it some kind of legitimacy – it just makes it harder to give me actual medicine.

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What is my goal?

I’ve just finished a frustrating week banging my head against the wall dealing with a conservative Christian commenter (please remember that I write these posts about a week before they appear on the site – if grassrute has disappeared in this past week, this last sentence won’t make much sense). Despite taking careful pains to predict, explain away, and thereby defuse the predictable “rebuttals” to the discussion of privilege, this person decided to make the arguments anyway. So I responded to those, in spite of my irritation at having to repeat myself (in text… you could have just scrolled up to see why you were wrong!). And then through a combination of goalpost-shifting and selective interpretation of history (almost all of it demonstrably wrong), the fallacies stacked up apace.

It’s frustrating and emotionally draining to have to spend my free time (what little there is) refuting poor arguments. This is, however, my personal blog, and I feel that anyone who bothers to come here and comment deserves recognition for their efforts. My tone may become grumpy sometimes, but I get a giddy thrill every time someone new shows up here. After all, I’m just some asshole with a keyboard and a basic grasp of the English language – why should anyone read what I write? At the same time, the few conservative commenters who have shown up here at various points do irritate me – not because they disagree with me, but because (with few exceptions) their arguments are horrible. They only work if you are prepared to suspend history, psychology, sociology, and the basic rules of logic. I am not.

My colleagues over at Canadian Atheist (two of them in particular) would likely admonish me severely for being so unfriendly to someone with whom dialogue is possible. The problem with me, they’d say, is that I’m too willing to use mean language, which drives away those who disagree with me. This, they say, cements my position as an “angry atheist”, and deepens the stereotype. I’ve already explained why this line of reasoning is crap, so I won’t bother to do away with this argument here. However, it does raise an interesting question: do they think I write this stuff to convince people who disagree with me?

I’ve tried to make it clear from the outset that this blog exists for the sole purpose of throwing my ideas out there, ideas that are open for debate. This is not an attempt to find middle ground with people who disagree with me, or to coax opponents out by cooing sweetly to them in the hopes of using sugar and light to bring them over to my side. I wield a variety of rhetorical tools, but my go-to weapon of choice is (what I hope is) high-minded polemic. In addition to saying what I think, I do my best to show why I think it. This is done as much for me as it is for anyone who happens to stumble across the site – writing my thoughts down in a systematic manner helps me to clarify and shore up any inconsistencies in my beliefs.

My attempt is to persuade, undoubtedly; but I have no illusions that a deliberate, reasoned approach will bring over those who strongly disagree with my position. There are important differences in cognitive frameworks between someone like me and someone like grassrute – I start from a position of doubt and then apportion my belief in any idea to the level of evidence supporting it. If someone could demonstrate to me that a position I hold is either illogical or unsupported by evidence, I will abandon that position; it might take me a bit of time, but I can be convinced. The other cognitive framework is to start from a position of certainty and then look for things that confirm your a priori conclusions. A person operating within this mindset cannot be convinced or persuaded; she/he is convinced of her/his rectitude, and will always find a crevice to hide in when challenged. Attempting to use logic, persuasion, or even sugar and light to move a person like this out of her/his position is, in my opinion, rather a waste of time. No one-on-one discourse will do anything to change that person’s mind.

These two cognitive frameworks are philosophically opposed, but by no means does that mean that an individual is incapable of using both. There are any number of things that I believe in the absence of rigorous evidence, just as I’m sure there are some things that grassrute comes to believe based on facts and evidence. The difference is what happens when our backs are against the wall, so to speak. When my position is challenged, I will be persuaded by evidence (if not by asserted opinion and anecdote). The evidence has to be high quality, obviously – “something a guy told me once” is insufficient to put even a dent in my skepticism, but I can be – and have been – turned around in my stance on feminism, religion, race, pretty much everything I talk about on this blog. I recognize that, on the other hand, people who are not amenable to revising their views will not tolerate being turned around and will find any scrap of pseudo-logic to prop up a failed position. C’est la guerre.

I am not writing for grassrute. I am happy to discuss and clarify my position, using grassrute (or Scary Fundamentalist, or Natassia, or whoever shows up) as a whetstone, but I hold no hope of prevailing over people who fix their opinions first and then justify them later. Some of these stones are rather more dull than others. I am writing for myself primarily, and for those who haven’t given the issue a lot of concerted thought secondarily. I have heard from people – in person, by e-mail, in comments, on Facebook – that I am articulating arguments that they hadn’t really considered before, and their thinking has been subtly shifted. I am intensely gratified by these stories, as it means that I am at least partially successful. However, I am not aggrieved much by my dissenters (especially since they have, almost without exception, failed to articulate a clear and coherent position that isn’t trivially easy to disembowel). My frustration with them has more to do with the poverty of their argument, coupled with the magnitude of their certainty. I am not trying to “reach out” to people who don’t use logic – I am trying to stimulate thought among those of you who do.

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Not a racist bone in my body

There is a groove worn in the palm of my right hand. No, it’s not from that. It is there as a result of consistently smacking my face into my palm every time someone uses the phrase “I’m not racist…” or “I am the least racist person in the world” or “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” A couple Fridays back I pointed out a pair of stories in which people who had done unequivocally racist things immediately retreated to this excuse. It’s like catching a kid in the kitchen, cookie jar broken on the floor, chocolate smeared all over her face, and hearing her say “it was the dog.” It’s a stupid attempt to deflect an accusation that is entirely true, but distasteful.

Part of the reason for this cognitively dissonant response to racism is because there is a fundamental fallacy – a false dichotomy – that is drawn around racism. This false dichotomy is drawn between two extremes: racist and not racist. Those are the options, according to this fallacy. Our social construct of ‘racist’ brings in the whole fire-hoses and dogs idea of mid 20th-century racism (of course I favour a much more accurate definition). Few people, least of all those in public life, wish to be seen as being that kind of racist. In fact, most of them probably don’t have particularly negative ideas about people in a different racial group, or they imagine that the negative attitudes they do have are justified by some cognitive trick (I don’t hate Mexicans, just illegals; I don’t hate Arabs, just terrorists; I don’t hate black people, just thugs). However they arrive at their answer, most people will not self-identify as racist.

And so, because the other option is “not racist”, when confronted on their racist actions, the majority of people will insist that they are in fact “not racist”. Within their specific framework, based upon two fallacies – the false dichotomy and a failure to understand racism – their denial is true. However, in an objective sense it is simply the product of a series of cognitive constructs designed to shield the self-esteem. They are racist, by any objective external measure. The denial only serves to ensure that more racist actions will occur, and each time be repeatedly explained away as being something else. It is this kind of attitude that props up the current racial dynamics – a refusal to accept one’s own racist motivations.

What we have to recognize is the fact that “not racist” is not an option. Unless you are born in and live your life in a place where all people are so similar that lines are drawn around some construct other than race (perhaps religion, or politics, income, geography), and never come into contact with any other cultures, you will inherit the racism that exists worldwide. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it – we are all racist. I’m racist. You’re racist. Your parents are, your teachers were, your politicians are, the guy who runs the pulled pork sandwich cart at Broadway and Granville is (but his sandwiches are still delicious). There’s no escaping it.

Our dichotomy needs to be redrawn between racist and anti-racist. Anti-racism is a methodological approach, much like scientific skepticism, in which actions (our own, and those of others) are constantly scrutinized in a racial context. Rather than merely reassuring one’s self that they are not a racist person, the anti-racist approach invites us to look for possible racial overtones, to examine how attitudes and behaviours might have differential consequences for those of different racial groups, and to try and understand what motivates those attitudes/behaviours at the conscious and subconscious level.

Of course intrinsically wedded to the idea of anti-racism is being non-judgmental when it comes to race. Spotting racism doesn’t win you points as an anti-racist – identifying the faults of others doesn’t somehow exonerate your own flaws. Instead, it invites you to appraise how your own attitudes and behaviours might be subconsciously influenced in a similar way. Most people, as I’ve said, are not overtly racist, or if they are they certainly don’t mean it in a hurtful way. However, there are still consequences to racism, most of which are unintended. Representative Weaver certainly didn’t intend for anyone to be upset by her Hallowe’en stunt, but it definitely conjures ghosts for me, and has certainly tarnished the sterling (heh) reputation of the great state of Tennessee. I don’t doubt that she doesn’t think that she’s a racist person – it is entirely immaterial in this case.

It’s important to state that being an anti-racist doesn’t make you the opposite of racist. Anti-racism is a tool. Much like skeptics can compartmentalize and believe in things that are not supported by science, anti-racists can have very racist beliefs that they either don’t know about or don’t wish to confront. I, for example, have a real issue with Chinese immigrants, an issue which began with my time at the University of Waterloo. As an anti-racist, it’s difficult for me to reconcile these feelings that I have about Chinese people to my stance as a crusader against racism. However, what I do have at my disposal is a mindset that allows me to examine and confront my own actions when dealing with my Chinese colleagues and friends – a mindset that I have to take particular care not to let my feelings affect my decision-making.

It’s funny – even writing that I felt a deep sense of foreboding. Admitting racial biases is incredibly difficult, for a couple of reasons. First, you don’t want to cause offense in others. Second, it has deep personal implications about how you see yourself in the world. I consider myself a good person – having a character trait that is so unequivocally negative casts doubt on my own self-concept. However, being aware of it makes me less susceptible to succumbing to it subconsciously. I will always be checking and re-checking my statements and interactions to make sure I’m not discriminating against the people around me.

This is the advantage to the anti-racist approach – it gives you a cognitive framework in which to work, whereby you can mitigate some racial biases, both conscious and unconscious. Dropping “non racist” from our mental lexicon and adopting “anti-racist” instead gives us a powerful tool for identifying and ameliorating the racism we see around us.

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The problem of morality

There’s a popular recurring question that often comes up in discussions with religious people who wish to challenge atheists: namely, why should be be moral if there is no god? If atheists don’t believe that there is a judge that overlooks the world, why bother doing good things? After all, there are no eternal consequences to our actions, what could possibly be the atheist’s motivation to either do good things or refrain from evil things?

My issue with this question is that on its own, it seems like an interesting line of discussion – what makes us be moral? If I abandon my beliefs, what would motivate me to continue to do good things? Is there another source of human morality? However, it is rarely asked in this spirit. Usually, it comes in a more snarky form – “if you don’t believe in God, why don’t you go rape and murder babies?”

The usual response is that if the only thing holding you back from raping and murdering babies is your belief in God, you should probably be under psychiatric evaluation. This response, while sufficiently dismissive of a stupid question, is not really an answer to what would be a reasonable criticism if not for the invocation of infant rape. If I, as an atheist, don’t believe that someone is keeping an omniscient record of all my misdeeds, what prevents me from engaging in minor (or major) transgressions when I am reasonably certain I can get away with it? Why, for example, would I turn in a wallet I find on the ground to the police instead of just stealing it? Why not lie to a woman at the bar in order to convince her to sleep with me? Why contribute to charity or volunteer in the community if there is no reward for my good deeds later?

Evolutionary biologists speak of genetic sources for altruism, pointing to analogues in the animal kingdom in which non-human animals show group cohesion and empathy. They lay out a reasonable pathway by which genes for altruism might prevail over genes for selfishness at the expense of others, through a process of natural selection. Philosophers point to Kant, Hume, Rawls, and other secular ethical writers as providing a basis upon which a general non-religious moral code can theoretically be built. Assuming that maximum human happiness is the point of any worthwhile moral code (and yes, this is an assumption, but what else would be better?), then a reasonable and increasingly evidence-based system can be derived from philosophy. Legal authorities point to the evolving code of law as a way of incentivizing good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour. Psychologists note that ethical instruction often leads to ethical behaviour below the level of conscious awareness –  we “naturally” act morally because we’ve been taught to do so.

Suffice it to say, there are a variety of ways to answer the question of why someone would be moral without belief in God. Any one of these on its own would be a sufficient rejoinder, and having them all operate in parallel is certainly reassuring to someone who is particularly interested in the question. However, the question embeds a certain assumption that often goes unquestioned – does belief in God make people behave better? After all, the implication of the poverty of morality in the godless is that there is in fact a moral code inherent in belief.

I’ve had religious instruction, which includes learning a list of things that are right and wrong. This should not be confused with legitimate ethical or moral instruction, which I didn’t receive until late high school. I was, for example, taught that extramarital sex is wrong, as are masturbation and homosexuality – pretty much anything that isn’t face-to-face sex with the lights off with my wife is morally wrong. I was taught that abortion is morally equivalent to murder. I was taught that faithfulness was a virtue. Now I was also taught a lot of things that I still agree with – murder is wrong; charity is good; forgiveness, justice and prudence are high ideals. However, with all of these things, I was told that the reason they were good is because they had been rubber-stamped by Yahweh. I should perhaps note that I was not taught that condoms or homosexuality were wrong in school – those things came from Rome but I felt perfectly justified in ignoring any Papal edicts that were bat-shit insane.

It would be, as I said, many years before I learned the processes by which I could evaluate why I believed in the things I did. I had of course by this time rejected the idea of Biblical truth – the story of Onan says it’s wrong to masturbate but it’s okay to fuck your niece as long as you think she’s a prostitute. It was abundantly clear to me that there may be some morality in the Bible, but it is definitely not the source of that morality. I would later learn that much of what we call “Christian Ethics” were actually written by Greek philosophers and later adopted by the church.

Of course all of this is somewhat inconsequential to the central question of whether belief in god is accompanied by better behaviour. Does the idea of an omniscient god really motivate people to refrain from evil actions? Does the promise of eternal reward really motivate people to do good deeds? The answer to the first question seems to be ‘no’, or at least ‘not necessarily’. Anecdotally, we know that religious people are responsible for some of the greatest atrocities throughout history (far from atheists, it is the priests who are the baby rapers). In fact, the more one adheres to religious doctrine, the crazier she/he becomes and the more likely she/he is to commit (what she/he thinks is justified) violent acts. Although there is a clear path from religious belief to violence, these are anecdotes only.

CLS reviewed a Pew Forum survey on religion and found that those United States that had the greatest level of religiosity had poorer performances in self-restraint and morality toward others than those state with lower levels of belief. There is most certainly a chicken/egg problem in this analysis, but it does sufficiently demonstrate that there is no reliable correlation between level of religious belief and morality, at least for the population at large. If people do in fact believe that there is a god watching them, it doesn’t seem to affect their behaviour in a meaningful way. I’m sure if this blog were more popular I’d have trolls inundating me with stories about how Jesus saved their crack-addict cousin’s life, or how Allah saved them from prison, or what-have-you. I am as uninterested in anecdotes that refute my point as I am in those that support my point.

How about the second question? Does religious belief make people more charitable in anticipation of a future reward? A study of European countries and their willingness to donate to poorer countries seems to suggest that those with more closely held religious beliefs do in fact donate more money than those who are less religious. The findings are incredibly nebulous and hard to interpret, but it seems from the general findings that while it varies from country to country, religious people are more charitable than the non-religious.

This is in no way disconcerting to me – as I suggested above there is a relationship between instruction and behaviour. If you are constantly entrained to give money to the poor, and your social environment is structured such that there is strong normative pressure to do so, it is unsurprising that you will comply. A study I’d like to see is to take people with similar levels of religiosity, show them identical videos of starving children, have one video narrated in a secular fashion and the other in a religious fashion and see if there is a difference in pledged funds.

At any rate, there are a variety of reasons why an atheist would choose to be moral, not the least of which is the fact that moral actions often benefit the giver as well as the receiver, whether that is in the form of feeling good about yourself, or in the form of making a contribution to society. There is no reason why an atheist would be less moral than a religious person, and despite all their vitriolic assertions to the contrary, it is easier to justify abhorrent cruelty from a religious standpoint than it is from an atheist one. The so-called “problem” of morality is only a problem if you assume that YahwAlladdha is the author of all goodness in the universe, completely contrary to any evidence that can be found either in scripture (aside from all of the passages just asserting it – look at His actions) or in observations of the world. Human beings have to struggle every day to be good, and leaning on the broken crutch of religion doesn’t seem to help any.

TL/DR: Believers accuse atheists of having no basis for morality. This accusation is unfounded – biology, philosophy, law and psychology all provide explanations why people would be good without belief. There does not seem to be a strong relationship between religiosity and morality, except insofar that being instructed to do something that your peers are all doing might motivate you to perform some specific behaviours.

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The joy of the godless (parte the seconde)

Last week I began a lengthy response to a commenter who accused me of having a dishonest brand of atheism because I am not a nihilist. Despite the fact that the accusation is wrong almost to the point of banality, I found thinking about it yielded some interesting fruit that I’d like to share with you.

When we last left our hero, he was in the throes of deep, soul-penetrating and unremitting existential angst, brought about by holding a cognitive dissonance closely to his chest. I could not seem to reconcile the facts of the world to the articles of my faith, a faith which warped and mutated wildly as I struggled valiantly to find books or movies or plays or songs to prop up the rapidly crumbling scaffolding of my belief in God.

Giving up my faith outright wasn’t an option for me. I was not lured by a siren song of atheism – there was no appeal to pretensions of godhood. To be completely honest, I didn’t know the first thing about the atheist or skeptic movement. I had no idea there was an entire community of people who had faced down the same demons I had. In my youthful arrogance I imagined myself uniquely plagued by questions of faith – those who believed were simplistic and naive, whereas those who disbelieved had never really believed in the first place.

After many years of failing to find spiritual satisfaction in any type of religious belief (I briefly toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism or going to an evangelical church, but quickly realized that I would only be trying to drown the doubts with noise rather than addressing the issue), I took a different tack. I remember vividly sitting in church in Toronto with my parents on Christmas Day, being berated by a priest for not being faithful enough – not me personally, but the handful of people who got up early on Christmas morning to go to church. I remember thinking “if there’s a God out there, this asshole definitely doesn’t speak for him.”

All of a sudden, the voices of doubt immediately quieted. The reason why there were no answers in religion or the Bible is because they are products of humankind! Of course we couldn’t know anything about the nature of God by looking at things that human hands had crafted – we could only learn about humans that way. This happy thought comforted me for a few seconds, until I thought about its implications. If we don’t know anything about God, if God is fundamentally unknowable, then all attempts to placate Him or curry His favour are a shocking waste of time and perfectly good treasure (yarr). Since God is, to all appearances, completely unmoved by prayers or other attempts to bribe Him, we should stop trying those methods – they just don’t work.

In a flash I realized that the existence of God was a completely unimportant question. If He does exist, then he’s clearly uninterested in helping anyone or making life tolerable, in which case worship is a foolish endeavour. If He doesn’t exist, then worship is equally meaningless. Spending years of my life wrestling with the question had been, sadly, a waste of those years and the emotional resources consumed in the attempt.

I felt a bit like Dorothy pulling back the curtain of the Great and Powerful Oz. But instead of finding a man who would guiltily admit to perpetrating the hoax, I instead found the man had recently fled. Some people looked at the absence of someone behind the curtain as evidence that Oz is real, but the existence of machinery that moves the head, the microphone that made the head speak, and the lingering odor of pipe smoke (suggesting that someone was recently behind that curtain) was sufficient evidence for me to become an a-Oz-ist.

Of course, this happened in church, sitting next to my parents. I didn’t bother sharing this insight with them. While I might spout off some rhetoric about being respectful of their right to believe what they want, my primary concern was that I might get browbeat back into the faith camp and lose the threads of what seemed like a very promising resolution to my problem. I wasn’t ready yet to defend the position, having arrived at it so recently. However, it was then that I was ready to start exploring the issue.

What you’re reading here isn’t the product of that exploration so much as it is a window of insight into the ongoing process. I’ve honestly and earnestly explored the multitude of so-called “reasons” why YahwAlladdha exists, and found them to be completely lacking in merit. They’re inevitably some combination of arguments from ignorance, garnished with varying degrees of linguistic sophistry. My reaction to these now is similar to when I was young and realized that I was a head taller than the school bully – all of a sudden the thing I had been so worried about seemed so petty and unimpressive that I was disgusted with myself for fearing it in the first place.

This is why I am so impatient with the faithful – not because I think they are stupid per se, but because they have compartmentalized their minds and refused to address the irrationality at the core of belief in God. The only honest form of belief I have found is that of Katie Kish, who says that she recognizes that it doesn’t make any sense, but she likes how it makes her feel – while this stance annoys me, that’s really my problem and not hers.

To return momentarily to the assertion, or rather accusation, that my atheism is dishonestly come by, or that atheists can only be happy if they delude themselves into believing themselves to be gods, it is (hopefully) abundantly evident from the above story that there is no merit to this view. It is a silly, spurious lie borne by a combination of ignorance and ready acceptance of propaganda. I am finally, after years of struggle, able to live a fulfilling and happy life without having to lie to myself, or hold beliefs that are contradicted by evidence in multitude. My mind can rest easy in moments of quiet reflection, no longer plagued by the need to find some kind of explanation of my place in the universe. I can develop personal moral positions and defend them without having to rely on faith-based beliefs that I do not really believe in.

Far from making me a nihilist, my divestiture of God was the most honest and liberating thing I’ve ever done.

TL/DR: After being haunted for years with the contradictions inherent in religious faith, I finally figured out that the question of the existence of God was meaningless either way. At that point I was ready to explore the issue without guilt, eventually granting me freedom from the question at all. Nihilism is far from the only or ‘most honest’ reaction to atheism.

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