Objective morality, whatever that is

I have lost what little taste I ever had for arguing with theists. It just leaves me feeling like I’m wasting my time — I’ll let Matt Dillahunty do the debates.

I got a request to join a fellow I don’t know, William Whiting, in a “fun conversation” for a podcast, for something called BasedFaithTV. Having a conversation, I can do. Unfortunately, this was just a guy aggressively asserting his Catholicism at me, and while it did start out amusing, it degenerated into an exercise session for his bigotry. It was not fun.

We got mired in a discussion about “objective morality” with no attempt to define what that is. He said he had an objective morality, while I did not (there was a lot of atheist bashing going on). It developed that what he called “objective morality” could be more accurately described as an authoritarian morality — he possessed the absolute truth granted to him by a transcendent god, therefore he was always right and I was just wallowing in the world of my subjective feelings. I guess that’s one way to define it, but I don’t think he can defend the idea that he knows what the truth is. It all boiled down to the Bible (and the Church fathers and Catholic dogma) says it, therefore he believes it. Early on, he said that he thought it would be great if the Church got a zealous Pope who would lead all Catholics on a crusade to reconquer Europe and the Middle East, which tells you something about his moral compass.

I don’t accept that version of “objective morality”. I also don’t hold a different definition, that objective morality is a universal, not subject to interpretation, because, well, we don’t know what that universal truth is. Maybe there is some moral nature immanent in ourselves, bestowed upon us by a god or by natural selection, but if so, we live lives where we struggle to discern what the best way to live is. Some people seem to think they’ve found it in their holy book, but I’m pretty sure that just leads to horror when they get their way — see the idea of purifying Europe for the Catholic church as an example. I’d also agree that atheism doesn’t exempt one from that flaw. He brought up the Communist purges, and all I can do is agree. Those were horrible catastrophes led by atheists who believed in an objective morality defined by their ideology — or more likely, saw that ideology as a tool to grasp at power.

So this is an argument that objective morality is a good thing? I don’t get it.

I personally favor the idea that an objective morality is one independent of one’s personal, subjective, transient desires, and in that sense atheists can be objectively moral. Maybe I can think I’d sure like to steal that candy from that baby, but I don’t, because I think outside my immediate impulses. I can empathize with the child — they’d be distressed and unhappy if I snatched away their sweet, and I think that I wouldn’t want to live in a world where strangers could steal my candy. I can think about consequences. I don’t want to be beat up by the baby’s mother, and I don’t want a reputation as a candy thief. I can think rationally and objectively about what kind of society would be best for me and my children, and it’s one with some accepted rules of behavior.

I don’t have possession of an absolute truth, but I can try to approach it by trial and error, trying to minimize the likelihood of my personal extinction (that’s the final arbiter of morality!), by seeing beyond the gratification of my personal impulses. That’s what an objective morality is to me — I do things I don’t like right now, because I’m capable of seeing the rewards of doing what others would like, and building a culture of mutual aid and shared community. In a sense, part of that is built in and part of human nature, since we are social animals, but there are so many different ways of building that self-supporting culture that we can’t claim one absolute way to truth.

Oh, also…I mentioned to him that I once had a debate with a Jesuit priest who impressed me greatly with his humanity and his tolerance, and that he seemed to have a very different interpretation of what Catholic morality involved, and it was the antithesis of Mr Whiting’s views. So much for an “objective morality” founded on Catholicism, because ideas there seemed to be highly diverse. His answer? That guy wasn’t a true Catholic, he was a heretic.

This conversation went on way too long and way too frustratingly, but lost any appeal near the end, when he started arguing that, as an example of absolute objective morality, gay and trans people are irreparably wrong and must repent. That’s not a pleasant conversation. That’s a guy using his claims of perfect knowledge of morality to deny the right to exist to people he doesn’t like, while claiming his bigotry is not at all subjective. I could laugh at him at the beginning, but when he tried to deny the humanity of so many people, I was increasingly dismayed and angry with this asshole, and eventually just cut him off. If he posts his podcast, I’ll let you all know, but I’ll tell you now that you won’t enjoy it.

He tried to claim that America today is his vision of Hell, because of all our liberal policies and the way liberals dominate everything. I should have realized then that he was calling from an alternate universe. Imagine his version of paradise on Earth: a European Reconquista by a militant Catholic church, followed by outlawing gay and trans people, among other regressive actions. And that is his vision of an “objective morality”.

He wants to continue our conversation. I don’t think so. I don’t talk with bigots.

“Chinese genocide bill”? Is this an example of expert messaging?

Just so you know, Tom Emmer is an old school conservative Republican who was in the state House for about as long as I’ve lived in Minnesota — he then moved up to the US House to replace Michele Bachmann in 2014, and is currently chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He’s the guy whose job it is to help elect more Republicans to the House. It just makes it particularly piquant that he went on Fox News to announce that he trusted his candidates to know how to ‘message’ the Republican party position on abortion.

…good luck to them [the Democrats] trying to defend their extreme position. Every one of them voted for what I call the Chinese genocide bill, which would allow abortion up to moments before a child takes its first breath. I think our candidates know how to message that and be just fine in the midterms.

Lead on, Tom Emmer! Your party’s candidates can follow by example and learn how to both misrepresent the law and be achingly racist in the moments before they lose elections.

He emerged out of the white suburbs that ring Minneapolis on the eastern side of the state. He does do a fine job of representing his people, I’m sorry to say.

Congratulations, UK?

So you’ve got a new prime minister, who is a continuation of your last one. Sorry.

In an opinion piece in the Sunday Telegraph, Truss described Britain as stuck with low productivity, high taxes, overregulation and an inability to do big things. “We will break with the same old tax and spend approach by focusing on growth and investment,” she said. She complained of the “heaviest tax burden in 70 years.” She said it was outrageous that there had not been a new water reservoir or nuclear power plant built in a quarter-century.

The disconnect of her words was noted by her critics, who pointed out that Truss didn’t mention that her party has been in power for the past 12 years — and that she has served in the cabinet since 2012 — so these problems were the doings of the Conservatives.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer tweeted: “I’d like to congratulate our next Prime Minister Liz Truss as she prepares for office. But after 12 years of the Tories all we have to show for it is low wages, high prices, and a Tory cost of living crisis. Only Labour can deliver the fresh start our country needs.”

I’ll congratulate you sincerely once you get rid of these damned Tories, just asa we have to get rid of these damned Republicans.

I always do this to myself

Nice long, quiet weekend, and you know what that means: an opportunity to revise a bunch of lectures. I’ve taught all the classes for this semester before, I’ve got lectures in the can, but that just means I should turn them inside out in order to make them better. Can’t settle for what just works.

On top of that, this is the time of year when Mary’s garden is exploding with ripe tomatoes, which I’m expected to cook down and get stored away for the winter. So many tomatoes…so much tomato sauce. We better love Italian, because we’re going to be swimming in the stuff.

We have to cultivate a taste for zucchini, cucumber, and squash, too.

Gen III, babieee!

Fantastic success, everyone! Two of the pairs of spiders featured in my spider porn video from last week have produced egg sacs! Stri7 & Stri4, and Stri2 & Stri5, to be precise. This is huge. It may be the start of, finally, a self-sustaining colony. I’ve been struggling with this for the past few years — I get a few thriving spiders, a few egg sacs, and then over the winter they die off and I need to replenish the stocks in the spring with wild-caught adults. This is no way to do genetics. Well, it is, but that’s a different kind of genetics than I want to do.

Now I can start making plans. It will be about a month before spiderlings emerge, and then another month or two (depending on how well my fortified fruit fly diet works) to reach adulthood, which means I could have a Gen IV by Hallowe’en, or Thanksgiving at the outside. Exciting! I could be doing crosses by spring term!

Also, right now I’ve got so many spiders and spiderlings I have exceeded my lab’s capacity. In another first, while in previous years I have raided my garage for new spiders, today I took a container of about 50 Steatoda triangulosa spiderlings and released them into my garage. Sorry, babies, I can’t take care of you all, so you’re going to have to forage for yourself in the hard cruel world. Winter is coming, grow up fast.

Stupidity & vanity explain it all

I’d been wondering why Trump had all those secret documents at his Florida hideout — it made no sense. Did he have some nefarious scheme to sell government info to foreign agents? Was he going to blackmail people? I should have known, though, that it would be something so simple, since he’s a simpleton.

As president and in the months after he left office, he was known to show off correspondence that he had received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — which he had termed “love letters” — to guests at his club, people in his orbit have said. (It was these letters that originally sparked the dispute that eventually led to the FBI search, after officials at the National Archives and Records Administration noticed the famous correspondence was not among the presidential records they received from Trump’s White House and requested they and other missing documents be returned. After negotiations, Trump in January returned 15 boxes, including the letters, but kept dozens of other boxes of documents in Florida.)

They were petty little trophies he used to show off to the dupes who were his guests. This is the guy who put up fake magazine covers on the walls to ‘impress’ people. He is a walking illustration of Hanlon’s Razor.

Turn off CNN

Here’s why:

I don’t generally watch the 24 hour news networks at all, but this is spectacularly egregious. Harwood made a reasonable statement about the current US political situation, and got fired by an upper management that is probably heavily Republican.

Just switch it off. It’s not hard.

My perfect job!

What every college professor’s life is like

Buzzfeed has this intriguing article where they ask women who have happy, low-stress jobs to explain what they do. It’s titled Best Low Stress, High Paying Jobs for Women. Here’s my favorite.

University professor (medieval history). I choose my schedule, the classes I teach, and my research agenda. I love what I do, so it never feels like work. I spend my summers traveling, relaxing, and enjoying my life. I don’t remember the last time I felt anything close to stress. I make a really, really good income (salary plus grant money, book royalties, and a research stipend). It is literally a dream job. It took 11 years of school (BA, MA, and a PhD), but it was worth all of it.

Oh man, if I could roll back the clock 40+ years and pick a different profession, I think I’d choose that one. “University professor.” No stress, huh? She’s got grant money and published a book and gets to spend her summers relaxing and traveling! Sign me up!

Second best option:

Self-employed housekeeper. I listen to podcasts and music, clean two or three houses a day. Rarely start before 9:30 a.m., rarely work later than 3:45 p.m. I feel productive and being of service every day. I make way more than any office job I’ve worked. Good full-time wages for way less than full-time hours.

Easy work!

Somehow, I don’t think that Buzzfeed dug very deeply into these anecdotes.