The Stupid! It Burns! (plethora of stupidity edition)

Borrowing From Atheists - Part1 - Naturalism:

In fact, it was Richard Dawkins who said he would not be an atheist were it not for the theory of evolution.

Christians seem all too often not bothered by the whole "making up facts" thing. Although Dawkins said precisely the opposite (in the introduction to The God Delusion), evolution is pretty damn nifty.

Naturalism has invaded the planet like a disease and made men into wimps and women into sex objects without any real connection to their divine purpose and assignment.

And naturalism borrowed my car and didn't fill up the gas tank!

In a survey conducted for Mike Shoesmith's book "The Atheists are Wrong" one hundred percent of the atheists said they would eat another person to stay alive. This 1 - is not surprising and 2 - makes them cannibals by their own admission.

So... the whole point of Christianity is make sure that the Donner Party would have starved? Can't do without that.

By blindly believing the theory of evolution in spite of the plethora of researchers who have discovered mountains of evidence opposing it you have decided to borrow from the atheists.

Of course, whether the evidence actually does support evolution is (at least) a topic of controversy. Again, just assuming you've won a contentious (heh) debate is not really the acme of intellectual honesty.

More importantly, deciding propositions on the basis of evidence is naturalism. Simmons, in his inaccurate, dishonest, egregiously stupid way, is himself borrowing from naturalism. A True Christian™ would never stoop so low as to even bother considering evidence: scripture ought to be enough to settle the issue by itself, n'est ce pas?

Presently and absolutely undetectable gods

In Strong atheism, two of the classes of definitions of god were absolutely undetectable deities and presently undetectable deities. Commenter Ben Wallis argues that these two classes of definitions render strong atheism untenable because "we cannot speak to the probabilities of deities in general." Ben argues that the definition of essentially undetectable is not, strictly speaking, meaningless, because the existence of an absolutely undetectable deity matters to a deity itself. Wallis argues that in a similar sense to the Bertrand Paradox, we cannot rigorously and unambiguously define the probability of any presently undetectable deity existing. Since we cannot rigorously definite the probability of a presently undetectable deity existing, it is unwarranted to hold any kind of probabilistic belief; weak atheism or agnosticism is presumably the preferred position.

While I don't entirely agree with him, I don't think Wallis is really that far wrong. The undetectable deities are already in the grey area of philosophical hair-splitting; the distinction between strong and weak atheism with regard to undetectable deities is similarly a matter of very fine, hair-splitting distinctions. New Atheism is primarily a political and social movement, and the only definitions that have political and social implications are the detectable, paranormal definitions (which I would assert, contra Wallis, encompasses Yahweh, Jesus and Allah). No actual believer talks about a perfectly deistic god who passively observes the world, and no one actually believes in a scaredy-cat god who's hiding behind the couch. Since the real debate is just about detectable gods (and what, precisely, we mean by "detectable"), we're not giving up any important ground to simply declare weak atheism and agnosticism regarding undetectable gods while still maintaining strong atheism regarding detectable gods.

I do, however, enjoy splitting hairs as much as the next philosopher, so I want to address Wallis' arguments directly.

Wallis argues against strong atheism with regard to to presently undetectable gods by invoking the Bertrand Paradox, which argues that it is possible to have mutually exclusive definitions of "random" that definitely give different answers to questions of probability. But one outcome of a careful examination of the "paradox" is that we can add a qualifier to the definition of randomness — the "maximum ignorance" principle — that seems to categorically disambiguate competing definitions of random: we can consider only those definitions that satisfy the maximum ignorance principle to constitute "true" randomness. If we assume this qualifier, Wallis fails to rebut my original argument.

On another view, the Bertrand Paradox doesn't change our view. If there is some ambiguity in the determination of the probability of some hidden deity existing, the range is either large or small. if the range of probabilities is large, then the definition is too weak to actually name a concept about which anyone can have any sort of belief. If the range is relatively small (e.g. between 10^-9 and 10^-12) then the ambiguity is irrelevant: no matter what the actual probability is, all the probabilities are low enough to warrant disbelief. Just as science does not include absolute certainty in its definition of knowledge, neither does it include absolute precision.

One might form a definition of a deity for which there was sufficient precision to be coherent and encompass a range of probabilities sufficiently high to warrant at least agnosticism, but I have not yet seen such a definition. The best attempt I've seen so far is the Fine Tuning argument, which has been decisively rebutted in a number of ways.

Wallis' objection to the absolutely or essentially undetectable deity hinges on a particular metaphysical view of ontology and epistemology. The scientific metaphysical system is epistemically prior: scientific ontology is just the narrative of what the world must be like to account for our knowledge. All apparently differing narratives that account for the exact same body of knowledge are, by definition, exactly equivalent. For example, the ontological narrative of (parts of) General Relativity can be expressed in two seemingly different ways: on one view, objects themselves become distorted in a gravitational field; on another, objects retain all their properties, but space itself is distorted in a gravitational field. Although seemingly different, physicists have (I'm reliably informed) determined that these two narratives always have the exact same epistemic consequences, and are thus saying exactly the same thing.

When a pair of statements in conjunction equivalently describe our actual knowledge, it's notable that the alternatives are not inverses of each other. P and not-Q in General Relativity above is not the simple inverse of not-P and Q. (The inverse of P and not-Q is not-P or Q.) Holding them as mutually exclusive alternative formations does not entail any contradiction. We have a different situation, however, when a statement (even a compound statement) and its inverse are epistemically equivalent. In this case, admitting the meaning of the statement entails a contradiction: To say, for example, that God exists and God does not exist are epistemically equivalent statements is to say that P equals not-P. To avoid the contradiction, we have to deny meaning to P: it is a category error to call it truth-apt.

It is not the case that one must adopt an epistemically prior metaphysical system, but neither is it the case, I think, that one cannot reasonably adopt epistemic priority. If Wallis wants to adopt an ontologically prior metaphysical system, then he might find strong atheism untenable, but if he wants to argue that my adoption of strong atheism is unreasonable, then he must either argue that it is unreasonable under epistemically prior metaphysics or he must problematize epistemically prior metaphysics.

Strong atheism, while not necessarily a required position (although I think ontological priority is a much more problematic metaphysical concept than epistemic priority), is, I believe, a tenable position.

Measuring the Labor Theory of Value

For a while, I've been trying to put the abstract labor time on the price (Y) axis of the standard economic graphs, such as the Marshallian Cross (supply and demand graph). But I think this view is not correct. I think, rather, that we should put abstract labor time on the quantity (X) axis. The Y axis then represents the "hidden" utility. Our interpretation, then, changes from what is the marginal utility (price relative, c. p., to the prices of all other goods) of the q-th commodity (1,000,000th coat, 17th airliner, etc.) to the utility of the q-th labor hour devoted to the production of that commodity.

We can do this, I think, because the quantity of a commodity produced is a relatively simple function of the actual hours used to produce it. It might not be strictly linear — there are declining returns to scale — but it's still going to be monotonically increasing for the most part: the more hours we spending producing something, the more of that something we'll produce. It avoids a whole division step (hours to produce one commodity divided by hours to produce another) in creating production possibility frontiers and calculating opportunity cost.

The opportunity cost calculation becomes a lot easier now. The supply curve now has a very natural, obvious reason for sloping upward: For low quantities of labor used to produce some commodity, we are "stealing" labor time from the least valuable alternative commodities; as the quantity of labor increases, we must steal labor time from increasingly valuable alternatives. The macroeconomic interpretation, usually interpreted with real GDP on the X axis, then becomes directly a measure of employment; a recession is underemployment; inflation is (more-or-less) over-employment*; and optimal GDP is optimal, "full" employment**.

*Not too many people employed, but rather people employed making too many things that are unwanted.

**Note that modern economists' observation of "full" employment being between 4-5% includes structural, politically-motivated and -enforced unemployment of minorities and other marginalized groups. I'm coming to believe that the true Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) is below 1%. In other words, a "5%" NAIRU is basically 0.5-1% unemployment among privileged groups (mostly white men) plus much higher political unemployment in other marginalized groups.

Fairness and value

In his essay, The Income Gap: Is the Distribution of Money Fair?, Mark Thoma finds that the present unfair distribution of income is in at least some sense "unfair", and attributes the cause to failures of perfect competition. Thoma believes that unlike Marx's labor theory of value, the more modern marginal utility theory of value provides a satisfactory account that everyone — capitalists, landlords, and entrepreneurs as well as laborers — gets their fair share of economic activity. However, we can be assured of a fair distribution only if the assumptions of perfect competition actually obtain in real life, and Thoma believes that the real world does not even come close to embodying these assumptions. The cure, presumably, is an expanded role of government to enforce perfect competition and thus ensure fairness of outcome.

Thoma begins his article by drawing a sharp contrast between Marx's labor theory of value and the marginal subjective utility theory of value. I do not believe the contrast can be drawn so sharply: rather than contradicting one another, the marginal utility theory complements and expands the labor theory of value: The marginal utility just makes more explicit Marx's notion of socially necessary labor time*. The marginal utility theory is a theory about demand; we still talk about the supply in terms of total embodied labor**, some discounted from a previous accounting period. Even marginal utility theory still concludes that there is some specific amount of socially necessary labor time necessary to produce a commodity at equilibrium, where rising marginal cost of supply (in actual labor time) equals falling marginal utility of demand. Since these numbers are, by definition, equal at equilibrium, we can represent the not-directly-measurable subjective demand in terms of the directly measurable labor time that constitutes the actual cost of supply.

In Capital, Marx is not, I think, interested in giving a rigorous account of exactly what the socially necessary labor time actually is. It's going to be something and it's going to be measured in actual labor costs. What Marx considers important is that all commodities, including and especially labor power, will trade at this cost.

**Technically abstract labor time, which accounts for varying disutility of specific kinds of work and work environments: an hour spent in a sewer is, ceteris pariubus worse than an hour spent in an air-conditioned office.

Thoma does not want to talk about fairness per se — economics is descriptive, n'est ce pas, not normative — but he asserts that perfect competition leads to at least one kind of fairness: under perfect competition, everyone gets out of the national economy what they put in. It's important to understand, however, that under the marginal utility theory of value, this conclusion is at best true by definition. A central assumption of marginal utility theories of value is that value cannot be measured directly; we can draw conclusions about value only from the behavior of the market. If apples trade for $2.99/lb., then that's the only measurement we can ever have about the value of an apple... or at least the marginal value of the last apple sold. Likewise, we can measure the value of what a person puts into the economy only by measuring how much money they receive for doing whatever it is that they do: laboring, owning capital or land, or being all entrepreneur-y. And of course what a person gets out of the economy is defined directly by how much money they have received. We cannot independently determine whether or not perfect competition is actually fair; perfect competition in a free market is essentially one definition of fairness.

But Thoma seems wants to have his cake and eat it too. If perfect competition in a free market is an accurate and complete description of economics, then it is true whether we like it or not. If it is inaccurate or incomplete, then deciding whether or not to implement it is a normative question, not a descriptive question. If perfect competition is really true, then the distribution of income is perfectly fair right now; indeed any distribution of income is fair by definition. If perfect competition is not true, then Thoma is making a purely normative argument: we ought to create an economic system that either actually is or acts like perfect competition. But that would beg the obvious meta-ethical question: why should we implement perfect competition as a definition of "fairness"?

There are, I think, a lot of parallels between the discourse on economics and the discourse on religion. One prominent theme in religion is the debate — a legitimate debate between rational people of good will — over religious "moderates". Both sides oppose religious "fundamentalists". On one side are those who say that because religious moderates are indeed moderate, we should except their religion from sharp criticism: if our goal is moderation, then it doesn't matter how anyone gets there. On the other side — the side I prefer — are those who say that because both religious moderates and religious fundamentalists both use religion to justify their positions, and there is no rational, empirical way to judge between their differing uses of religion, the moderates in a sense philosophically support the fundamentalists. (It gets worse: granting foundational authority to the literal meaning of scripture, the fundamentalists seem to have a better case than the moderates.)

Similarly, the debate between "moderate" capitalist economists such as Thoma and capitalist "fundamentalists" turns in no small part on the non-empirical exegesis of classical economics. There's a lot more going on in economics, of course, than an intellectually honest examination of the foundations of capitalism. But the parallel still holds: capitalism, like any other social endeavor, has underlying ethical norms. At some point, distorting these ethical norms to the reality of modern society becomes untenable, and we must fundamentally rebuild them.

Real and financial economics

It's not just laypeople who make this error: Paul Krugman chides St. Louis Fed president James Bullard mixing up real and financial economics.

Yes... the president of the Federal Reserve regional bank of St. Louis doesn't understand the difference between actual physical things and the symbols that represent them. These are the people who end up making economic policy under capitalism.

The Stupid! It Burns! (cranio-rectal inversion edition)

Atheists – get your heads out of your asses.

I’m getting pretty damn peeved with the attitude that seems to be mainstream within the atheist groups etc as of late. They think themselves far superior to the poor, feeble minded little theists who’re blind and must depend on an imaginary friend to get them through life. Remind me, how exactly are they supposed to be any better? I never used to have any issues with atheists but they are now proving themselves to be just as bitter, closed minded, arrogant and downright condescending as those heavy, closed minded christians they despise!

Strong atheism

Strong atheism is the belief that no deity actually exists. To support this position, we have to consider several substantively different definitions, or classes of definitions, of "deity".

The first class, deity₁, is the class of contradictory or meaningless definitions of "deity". We can safely affirm that no being exists with contradictory or meaningless properties. For example, the omnimax deity is either contradictory or meaningless because of the problem of evil. It is a contradiction that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity would permit evil in the world. Alternatively, we don't know what evil is (we are mistaken in some mysterious way) or there is no such conceptual category as "evil"; in this case, "omnibenevolent" is meaningless. The omnimax deity is offered as an example; finding that some particular definition of deity is not in the class of deity₁ does not rebut the idea that we can safely deny the existence of any deity₁.

The second class, deity₂, is the class of undetectable (i.e. "supernatural") deities. Again, we can safely deny the existence of any deity that is, by definition, completely undetectable. To affirm or deny the existence of such a deity is to say exactly the same thing about the world of experience. An undetectable deity entails its own subtle contradiction: it is exactly the same to say, "Deity₂ exists," and to say "Deity₂ does not exist."

The third class, deity₃, is the class of presently undetected deities. These deities are only detectable under some special circumstances that do not (presently) obtain on Earth. These deities are detectable only after death, or are hiding behind the couch, or on Achernar III, or somewhere else presently inaccessible. The problem is that there are an infinite number of definitions in this class; the probability that any one definition is true, especially a definition that names a finite number of deities, is infinitesimal and warrants disbelief until evidence becomes accessible.

The fourth class, deity₄, is, by definition, presently detectable, but strongly paranormal (contradicts our ideas about physics). The evidence presently available, by the definition of paranormality, argues against such a deity. Deities which are detectable only privately fit this definition, because private knowledge (about anything but the content of one's own mind) is itself paranormal. (Note too that having an unusual sensory modality is not private knowledge, since someone who has even a unique sensory modality can prove its existence to someone without it, rendering that modality public.) Of course, the evidence might be sufficient for us to revise our concept of normality, but so far all attempts have fallen flat. Given that human beings have been looking for such a deity for many thousands of years, the failure to find one is itself sufficient evidence to warrant belief that no such deity₄ exists.

The fifth class, deity₅, is, by definition, presently detectable and not strongly paranormal. This definition includes "God is everything that exists", or "God is the [human emotion of] love." In the atheists' view, a deity₅ is no deity at all; the speaker is using metaphorical or figurative language, and we are not literary critics.

All classes of definitions have sufficient warrant for either disbelief, disinterest, or exclusion from consideration. We cannot, of course, be certain that none of these deities (except perhaps deity₁), but the preponderance of direct and indirect evidence warrants strong atheism.

The definition of atheism

In "Defining Atheism: Examining the Atheists’ Case, " Albert McIlhenny gets at least one thing right: "Of course, the whole thing is quite silly." The issue is not what the definition of atheism "is", the issue is which of the different definitions to use in different circumstances.

The two most common definitions of atheism are: "a lack of belief in a deity" (sometimes qualified as "weak" atheism), as well as "belief there is no deity" ("strong" atheism). Both are applicable under different circumstances. If atheists were asking for social, political, or legal privilege, the second definition would be better: it would be inappropriate, for example, to insist on privilege if strong atheism were unjustifiable. If we want to explain the broadest definition that encompasses most people who self-identify as "atheist" (and no one is an atheist who does not intentionally and individually chose to apply the label to herself), weak atheism seems obviously preferable. One who believes there is no deity certainly lacks belief in a deity; all strong atheists are ipso facto weak atheists. So the weak atheism is preferable.

There are other circumstances, notably theists who want to position themselves as contra atheists. Such theists, I think, are better served by employing the weaker definition. The weaker definition is more general. If you can prove the stronger definition false or unjustifiable, you've said nothing about the weaker definition, and nothing about theism. If you can prove the weaker definition false or unjustifiable, however, not only does the stronger definition falls automatically, but the case for theism is definitely strengthened.

Strong atheism is also equivocal without further qualification. What does the strong atheist mean by "deity"? "Deity" is itself an ambiguous, equivocal term. There's no help for that — natural languages are fundamentally equivocal — but it does mean that anyone addressing the subject must carefully avoid straw man fallacies and fallacies of equivocation. Even the strongest atheist does not claim that God is definitely not hiding behind the couch. (A strong atheist such as myself argues that a being who can hide behind the couch, or on Achernar III, is by definition not a deity.) Weak atheism is also equivocal, but the equivocation is almost irrelevant. I certainly lack belief in particular concepts and constructions of "deity" about which I'm ignorant; unlike strong atheism, which requires a lot of unspoken qualifications, weak atheism can stand on its own. Arguing against weak atheism is not only more directly probative of theism, it avoids all sorts of argumentative pitfalls that can derail a discussion.

If you want to talk about strong atheism, do so by all means. But if you do, you're going to end up talking about epistemology, ontological commitment, the ethics of knowledge claims, etc. In other words, you'll be doing philosophy. Philosophy is not about the search for answers, it is the exploration of questions. Strong atheism is one interesting starting point for the exploration of questions; it's a bad place, however, for the search for any definite answers.

The Stupid! It Burns! (MRA edition)

Weird, eh? an MRA saying something stupid. Yet here it is:

Why are atheists so religious?

The problem I have with atheists is that they are too religious. Yes, I mean that literally. For when you wipe away all the bombastic bellowing about empiricism and the strident mocking of those who choose a life of faith, what you are left with is a population of people that surrender their reason and cognition as though they were at gunpoint; that hit their knees as fast as any Catholic...to worship at the altar of feminism. ...

In the rank and file of vocal atheists ... what I have found is a culture of indoctrinated clones, with no more discernment of fact and fiction than you would find at a Branch Davidian revival. Indeed, they are so ideologically rigid that the only things these people are missing are shaved heads, tambourines and two weeks without a shower.

At least the metaphor is good.

Atheism and "faith"

Sigh... It's really depressing. Yet again, someone raises an argument that's been raised and rebutted at least twelve years ago (when I started discussing religion on the Internet) and probably much earlier. And it's such a stupid argument, one that is easily dismissed. In his essay, "Atheists and the F-Word," David Lose redefines "faith" as something unobjectionable, outside the realm of what atheists criticize, and uses this redefinition to criticize atheists. Lose wants us to take a "broader view of faith." Our values, according to Lose, are not empirical facts, nor can they be scientifically proven from the facts; therefore we hold our values by faith: "Any construction of a system of values demands at least a modicum of faith, the assertion of and belief in some grounding principles that cannot be objectively and rationally established." As a philosopher, I would dispute Lose's construction — objectivity is gratuitous; we can rationally establish subjective truths, truths about our own minds — but as a New Atheist, I say that even if Lose were entirely correct, he is talking about a topic that has nothing to do with the New Atheist critique of religion and faith.

The title of the essay, referring to "faith" as "the F-Word", gives us a clue as to where Lose goes wrong. Atheists are not against words, we are against specific ideas. Like most people who use natural language, we use words to denote ideas; like most people who use natural language, we understand that words are equivocal: they can denote many different ideas. The argument where different senses of a word are used in different places to construct an invalid argument is so common it has its own name: the fallacy of four terms. Lose's essay does nothing more than expand this fallacy to an entire essay.

Indeed, the sort of faith New Atheist writers argue against is opposite to Lose's construction. We do not argue against values that cannot be "objectively and rationally established." We argue against the idea that values can be objectively and rationally established by grounding them in a supernatural deity, either directly or indirectly through scripture. Some atheists argue that values, even fundamental values, can indeed be objectively and rationally established without a supernatural deity; some atheists, such as myself, argue that values are subjective facts, facts about minds, that are directly perceptible through introspection, and that social ethical systems are the result of negotiation, compromise, and persuasion among individuals who have values. We are united, however, in believing that it is illegitimate and irrational to ground or substantiate any values, good or bad, in the properties, character, or opinions of supernatural deities.

Critics of atheism and the New Atheists seem unable or unwilling to engage the fundamental New Atheist argument, an argument made so often, in so many different ways, that the failure is simply astonishing. Our argument is simple: there is no God, so trying to attach anything to this delusional fantasy is a Bad Idea. We do not argue against everything that has been attached to the delusional fantasy; if Lose wants to attach good humanistic values to his idea of God, we're not going to object to the values. We will, however, say not only that you don't need to attach these ideas to God, but also that attaching them to God undermines the critique of people who attach bad ideas to God. We argue against the attachment itself, not what is attached.

Lose's essay is one reason atheists tend to employ mockery and derision. Lose's fallacy is obvious, hoary, oft-repeated and oft-refuted. Indeed, every critique of atheism and the New Atheists I read is just as intellectually bankrupt, at best based on common, obvious fallacies and at worst packed full of lies and bullshit. Religious apologists and excuse-makers seem to be willing to say anything, however obviously fallacious; their goal seems to be simply to throw everything at the wall, over and over, and hope something sticks. What they cannot achieve by rationality they hope to attain through sheer bloody-minded persistence. The religious appear to be impervious to reason, so I despair that an intellectual, elevated, refined, or dispassionate conversation can even begin to address the problem of religion, one of the most pervasive root causes of evil in the world.