[Previous]
(7) Some religious believers accuse atheists of being not just interpersonally arrogant, but intellectually arrogant, and it's usually because of the very first point in the Rationalist Credo: the idea that everything can eventually be known and understood. At the end of the day, this is the most theologically radical notion of the whole Credo, which is why it appears first in the list. Religion not only takes it for granted that there are some truths that are forever beyond the grasp of man, it exalts it as an explicit doctrine. "The Lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform" is a baroquely constructed admission that humanity should, in principle, find ignorance satisfying.
The reason I gave (5a) first place in the Rationalist Credo is that it requires the nakedest of leaps of faith; the only way to arrive at a position about it is to appeal to one's own intuition and personality. The final sentence of the previous paragraph either leaves one filled with revulsion and distaste, or it doesn't molest one's mood at all. I personally find the idea abhorrent, but I must concede that there is some evidence for it, however uncompelling I may find it. The fact is that brains are like penises: size matters. A concept simple enough for an 8-year-old human to grasp could well be beyond the cognitive reach of a dog, or a bear, or a walrus, simply because an 8-year-old human has a bigger brain than those other mammals. Chimpanzees and dolphins are comparatively much closer to our level because the size difference between their brains and ours is smaller. So, presumably, an animal with a brain twice the size of ours could be vastly more sophisticated, and find it trivial to understand things that would forever remain as beyond us as calculus will forever remain beyond a platypus.
Having said that, I must point out that there is a significant difference between saying that there are things we'll never understand because we fail to cross a certain threshold in neocortex size versus saying that we'll never understand them because they are divine. The religious assertion that some things are eternally unknowable can be interpreted in one of two ways: it could simply be an allusion to the aforementioned cognitive limits imposed on us by our brain size, or it could be a claim that there are really two kinds of knowledge, divine and mundane. At the core of point (5a) is the assertion that there is only one kind of knowledge; knowledge is knowledge. On that basis, I reluctantly accept the possibility of the first interpretation, but flatly reject the second.
Allow me to make a technical detour to explain why I find the brain-size problem uncompelling evidence for a human cognitive barrier.
While it is true that cognitive capacity is proportional to brain size, that proportionality is exponential, not linear. Doubling brain size doesn't double cognitive capacity, it squares it, at minimum; we don't have a precise way to measure "cognitive capacity," so we can't work out what the exponent in that equation would actually be, but we know it would indeed be an exponent. (Think of the Richter scale: a 7.0 earthquake isn't twice as bad as a 6.0 earthquake, it's 10 times as bad. The decibel scale of auditory volume works the same way.) If you look at graphs of exponential curves, you'll find that they start out with a very gradual slope upward, and then hit a point of explosive growth; that "elbow" is the inflection point, or "tipping point" to put it in Malcolm Gladwellese.
The reason this matters is that, ultimately, one's position on whether there are things we can never understand depends on what we mean by "understanding." At root, understanding is synonymous with functional decomposition: we understand something when we know what components make up that thing, and how those components interrelate with each other (which usually involves enumerating the components of the components, and so on). The "and so on" is the hint to what is really going on here; it is code for recursion. Understanding relies on functional decomposition, and functional decomposition relies on recursion. One way to evaluate where brains sit on the exponential size/capacity curve -- whether they are on the low side or the high side of the tipping point -- is to see whether they are capable of recursion.
According to Steven Pinker, language is what you get when you harness ears and vocal cords and put them in the service of recursion. Language is the simplest possible form of behavior that can prove recursive cognition. The capacity to think recursively is at the heart of what he calls "the language instinct" -- recursion is the cognitive technology through which Noam Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device does its job, and converts pidgins into languages through the injection of recursive grammars.
There is lots of auditory communication in the animal world -- the barking of dogs, the eerie singing of whales, the clicking and squealing of dolphins, the chirping of birds -- but there is no evidence that any of it is structured according to a recursive grammar. That seems to be the province of humans alone.
This gives me hope in the face of the brain-size problem. We can't say for sure whether there is a human cognitive barrier, but we can say for sure that there is a universal cognitive barrier, i.e. the tipping point on the exponential size/capacity curve. Recursion is what a brain has to be capable of to pass through that barrier. Since language requires recursion, and since humans have language, our brains can support recursion, so we must be on the far side of that barrier already. The prospect of yet another barrier beyond that, one we have yet to encounter, is unlikely, since exponential curves have only one tipping point.
Since we're on the subject of science and human understanding, in the larger context of atheism, we might as well pay a brief visit to quantum theory, which is something that shows up often in YouTube debates between atheists and religious believers. Many famous scholars of quantum theory have gone on the record to lament how little they've learned about it. "Quantum mechanics is magic," said Daniel Greenberger. "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real," said Niels Bohr, who also said, "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." John Wheeler echoed this with, "If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it." Richard Feynman -- one of the few physicists, along with Hawking and Einstein, to be not only universally respected but universally liked -- summed it up: "It is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
Some religious believers gleefully present these admissions of bewilderment as proof that there is indeed a human cognitive barrier, and that quantum theory rests on the far side of it. But this conclusion belies a corrupt understanding of what it means to understand. I fear now that I may have furthered that corruption with my recursion discussion above.
I stand by the idea that recursion is the universal cognitive barrier, but by using the universality of human language to prove that we're beyond it, I may have implied that this makes recursive thinking easy. Children are born wanting to learn languages and invent them when there aren't any nearby, but just because that application of recursion is subconscious and effortless doesn't mean that recursion can be subconsciously and effortlessly applied to other cognitive domains. Nothing proves that more than everybody's favorite subject, math.
We seem to be born with a "number instinct," too, but it is far less powerful than our language instinct. It allows us to conceive of the idea of "number" and to apply that concept to the problem of counting, but anything else, even basic arithmetic, has to be taught and practiced. This is far from subconscious and effortless; indeed, most people find it painful, humiliating even, especially when they get beyond arithmetic into algebra and calculus.
Mathematics is often poetically described as "the universal language," but if that's true, it's the only language in human history not to have a concept of time built into its structure. (Notice that even music, the other candidate for a universal language, has an innate dependence upon time built into its structure.) Mathematics does share with other human languages a reliance on symbols and recursion, but it differs from them in its timelessness. In language, useful statements are always narrative; they start at one point in time and end in another, and something happens in between. In mathematics, useful statements are equations, which don't start or end, but simply are. Mathematical statements have no relationship to time unless time is explicitly referenced as one of the variables. Linguistic statements are inextricably embedded in time, whether they explicitly reference it or not.
Fluent speakers of multiple languages occasionally run into trouble when they encounter a word in one tongue that has no direct equivalent in the other; they have to rely on some kind of "linguistic intuition" to convert the word into a roughly equivalent phrase in the other tongue. Douglas Hofstadter has written quite a bit about how thorny such problems of language translation can be, but they are merely potholes in the road compared to the difficulty of translating from mathematical statements into narrative statements or vice versa. Such a translation requires a "mathematical intuition" that can not only compensate for mismatches in vocabulary, but mismatches in structural assumptions. It's a cognitive problem that requires an effort just shy of, as the saying goes, "dancing about architecture."
But it turns out that, in the real world, math-to-language translation is much more useful than architecture-to-dancing translation, so there is an incentive to forge ahead and develop one's mathematical intuition. This is the rationale behind word problems (and also the reason why so many people hate them) -- you have to take a narrative representation of a problem, translate it into a mathematical representation, solve it, and translate it back. The point of word problems is not so much to get the right answers as to provide a workout for your mathematical intuition. This is also why so many math teachers suck; they get the math fine, but don't have a sufficiently well developed mathematical intuition to translate that understanding into a narrative form that their students can easily digest.
The relevance of all this to the mysteriousness of quantum theory is that, when Feynman said "nobody understands quantum mechanics," what he meant is, "there are many people who have a thorough mathematical understanding of quantum mechanics, but we have yet to find someone with a sufficiently well developed mathematical intuition to translate that understanding into a narrative form that others can easily digest." The ultimate goal of science is to make accurate predictions about real-world phenomena, and by that standard, physicists in fact have quite a formidable understanding of quantum theory. But the mathematical statements that express it are so strange that they defy translation into sensible narratives.
That's why I don't view the mysteriousness of quantum theory as proof, or even evidence, of a human cognitive barrier. There is a big difference between saying "we have yet to find someone with a sufficiently well developed mathematical intuition" and saying "we know in principle that there cannot be a sufficiently well developed mathematical intuition." Mathematical intuition is a skill, like playing a musical instrument or piloting an airplane. It can be improved through effort and dedication. To concede that there are things that cannot, in principle, be known or understood would eliminate our motivation to keep practicing.
Ultimately, it comes down to optimism versus pessimism. Only the pessimist claims there is no point in even trying. Only the pessimist would be satisfied with eternal unknowability.
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Monday, December 8, 2008
RtBotS, Part 4 of 9: A Spiritual Selsun Blue
[Previous]
(6) One of the benefits of the previous point is that it introduces the vocabulary needed to clearly express one of atheism's oft-forgotten selling points over religion. If atheism and religion are products available for sale in the marketplace of belief systems, and if faith is the currency human beings use to make purchases from this market, it's worth pointing out that the frequency of "buyer's remorse" is orders of magnitude lower for atheism than for religion. I draw this conclusion not from anecdotes, but from the fact that religion seems to have developed (to mix metaphors) an "immune system," one that atheism completely lacks.
There is an entire body of theological literature that has accrued over the centuries dedicated to the sanctification of the crisis of faith. Religious believers -- clergy and laity alike -- approach their religious superiors and say, "I've really been troubled lately. I feel like my faith is slipping away. I have to struggle to keep in touch with the Lord, and even then I feel so distant from Him." Only a belief system that has been down this road many, many times before would respond the way religion does: "That's wonderful. I know it's hard to believe, but this is actually proof that your faith is strong. You may feel like despairing now, but you will get through this dark time, and you will be renewed, your faith more robust than ever." According to religion, doubt in one's faith is like one's scalp tingling while using Selsun Blue: that means it's working!
(Interesting that the converse is never the subject of exhortation on the part of religious authorities. When was the last time you heard a rabbi or an imam or a priest or reverend delivering sermons castigating those whose faith is utter and complete, with all trace of doubt safely dispatched beyond the horizon? Where are the Baptist preachers warning their flock not to rest on their laurels with the complacency of certainty, to hurry up and start doubting, to plunge headfirst into that dark night of the soul, to embrace the benefits that such spiritual suffering brings?)
Contrast this with science. There are comparatively very few cases of a biologist approaching his physicist friend and saying, "Bob, I gotta tell you, lately, I've been wrestling with my belief in the scientific method. It just doesn't speak to me the way it used to. Sometimes I doubt it can live up to the promises it's made." Science has never needed to develop such a vast body of apologia, such an immune system, because it's never experienced such a widespread infection.
I readily concede that religions are not the only products in the marketplace of belief systems to have been "returned for a refund"; certainly there have been high-profile atheists who have converted to Christianity or other religions. But they are few and far between compared to the number of religious believers who experience buyer's remorse every day.
[Next]
(6) One of the benefits of the previous point is that it introduces the vocabulary needed to clearly express one of atheism's oft-forgotten selling points over religion. If atheism and religion are products available for sale in the marketplace of belief systems, and if faith is the currency human beings use to make purchases from this market, it's worth pointing out that the frequency of "buyer's remorse" is orders of magnitude lower for atheism than for religion. I draw this conclusion not from anecdotes, but from the fact that religion seems to have developed (to mix metaphors) an "immune system," one that atheism completely lacks.
There is an entire body of theological literature that has accrued over the centuries dedicated to the sanctification of the crisis of faith. Religious believers -- clergy and laity alike -- approach their religious superiors and say, "I've really been troubled lately. I feel like my faith is slipping away. I have to struggle to keep in touch with the Lord, and even then I feel so distant from Him." Only a belief system that has been down this road many, many times before would respond the way religion does: "That's wonderful. I know it's hard to believe, but this is actually proof that your faith is strong. You may feel like despairing now, but you will get through this dark time, and you will be renewed, your faith more robust than ever." According to religion, doubt in one's faith is like one's scalp tingling while using Selsun Blue: that means it's working!
(Interesting that the converse is never the subject of exhortation on the part of religious authorities. When was the last time you heard a rabbi or an imam or a priest or reverend delivering sermons castigating those whose faith is utter and complete, with all trace of doubt safely dispatched beyond the horizon? Where are the Baptist preachers warning their flock not to rest on their laurels with the complacency of certainty, to hurry up and start doubting, to plunge headfirst into that dark night of the soul, to embrace the benefits that such spiritual suffering brings?)
Contrast this with science. There are comparatively very few cases of a biologist approaching his physicist friend and saying, "Bob, I gotta tell you, lately, I've been wrestling with my belief in the scientific method. It just doesn't speak to me the way it used to. Sometimes I doubt it can live up to the promises it's made." Science has never needed to develop such a vast body of apologia, such an immune system, because it's never experienced such a widespread infection.
I readily concede that religions are not the only products in the marketplace of belief systems to have been "returned for a refund"; certainly there have been high-profile atheists who have converted to Christianity or other religions. But they are few and far between compared to the number of religious believers who experience buyer's remorse every day.
[Next]
RtBotS, Part 3 of 9: The Faithful Atheist and the Rationalist Credo
[Previous]
(5) There are four words that have become entangled in the battle between atheism and its religious competitors, invested with so much emotional energy by both sides that their original meanings are all but lost. They are rational, irrational, belief, and faith, and each side has claimed two: the atheists seem to think they own the exclusive rights to "rational" and "irrational," and the religious believers seem to feel similar exclusive entitlement to "belief" and "faith." This strikes me as profoundly wrong. Both sides of the debate have an equal right to all four words.
The most common complaint leveled against the Four Horsemen by religious believers is that they're arrogant and condescending. And indeed they are. They get up in front of audiences of religious believers and tell them, in essence, "We're atheists because we're rational; you're religious because you're irrational." Such a statement may adequately preach to the choir, but it's a monumentally shitty sales pitch. Everyone thinks they're rational; even schizophrenics consigned to live out their lives in mental hospitals feel rational. Given that, "irrational" is simply a dirty word, an insult that no one wants to hear, one that is guaranteed to kill off any courteous receptiveness the listener might otherwise have been willing to extend.
But there is an even deeper problem. Suppose that everyone's skin were much thicker, and being called irrational weren't automatically a turnoff. The atheist claim to complete and total rationality is simply false, for reasons into which I will soon delve.
"Faith," meanwhile, has been co-opted by religious believers to mean "belief in some type of God"; talk to them long enough and it will become clear which type of God they mean. "People of faith" has become synonymous with "religious believers," and both sides of the debate seem content with that usage. But, if they are honest, even atheists must confess to being people of faith. This is because the definition of faith hinges not upon what people believe, but upon their reasons for believing it.
It is evident that human beings -- whether you think they were created by God or shaped by evolution -- are born with a libido, a limitless wellspring of mental energy that is expended solely through sex. What people really find pleasurable about sex is not so much the onslaught of physical sensations as the psychological release afforded by that discharge of libidinal energy. (If you find that hard to swallow, consider the old saying "When sex is good, it's great, and even when it's bad, it's still pretty good"; or, in a more extreme manifestation, think of Joe Pantoliano's character from The Sopranos, who found sex fulfilling only if it involved his partner taking a cheese grater to his dick.)
It is my thesis that human beings are born with another limitless wellspring of mental energy, one that is expended solely through faith. This "spiritual libido" exists because the world is, and has always been, so complex, confusing, threatening, and inscrutable that human beings find it profoundly pleasurable to simply accept some notions just because they feel right. Despite the obvious benefits of acting rationally, ya gotta admit that it takes some work. It feels good to deliberately take a break from that work by accepting some things through intuition rather than evidence, through the heart rather than the mind. Just as sex is the act through which people derive the pleasure of discharging their sexual libido, so is taking something on faith the act through which people derive the pleasure of discharging their spiritual libido.
When Sam Harris writes a book with a title like The End of Faith I cringe, because he might as well have titled the book The End of Humanity. Right or wrong, the spiritual libido is an innate part of what it means to be human, and the Four Horsemen ignore that fact at their peril. To denigrate and marginalize faith is to denigrate and (more importantly, from a marketing standpoint) marginalize oneself.
This does not mean that all belief systems are on an equal footing; we still have a right to debate and discuss which vessels are more or less suited to receiving the faith that our spiritual libido drives us to pour out. It simply means that, in the marketplace of belief systems, faith is the currency with which we make our purchases.
I, an atheist, am just as much a "person of faith" as any pious Christian or Muslim or Jew you care to name. We all have a core set of beliefs that we are unwilling to doubt, reconsider, or abandon. Our decision to adopt our core set of beliefs was made with the heart and not the mind; was made through intuition and not reason; was made simply because it felt right on some numinous level, and not because it was shown to be right through evidence or argument. Indeed, none of us can provide an irreproachable proof of why our core set of beliefs is "right"/"true," or this debate would not rage in the first place.
The big thing that separates my faith from that of the Christian or Muslim or Jew is that the object of my faith -- the core set of beliefs I used my faith to purchase -- is very simple. The major religions of the world have core sets of beliefs that are so vast, complex, and intricate that they can be expressed only in thousand-page-long books like the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the Veda, and their ilk. My core set of beliefs takes up about three paragraphs; certainly no more than one typed single-spaced 8.5" x 11" page. (This compactness carries an important benefit that we'll revisit later.) That page bears the following five things:
(a) A statement that, in principle, human beings can eventually know and understand all things, even if they are not known or understood at present.
(b) A description of the scientific method.
(c) Occam's Razor.
(d) The Golden Rule.
(e) A statement that it is a greater evil to arrive at a sound conclusion through faulty reasoning than to arrive at a faulty conclusion through sound reasoning.
Since it doesn't have a name, let's christen this one-page document the Rationalist Credo. Note that atheism appears nowhere in it. My atheism is not a part of my belief system; it is a consequence of it. (This is a distinction that will play an important role in the discussion of Communism below.) My faith in the scientific method doesn't mean that I'll insist that I'm right and you're wrong about any particular aspect of the world; it means that what I will insist on is that there is a single correct way for us to find out about any particular aspect of the world. It is an object of faith precisely because I cannot irreproachably prove anyone wrong when they say that there are paths to knowledge other than the scientific method. I simply believe that there aren't. (This will be revisited in Part 6.)
This is why the Four Horsemen are not being honest when they claim to be completely rational. It is true that they are mostly rational -- but their decision to embrace rationality was made through irrational means. They aspire to rationality because doing so simply feels right to them. The atheist chooses to focus his doubt on everything he encounters, except his own decision to focus doubt on everything he encounters. His atheism is like a pearl; the milky white part, the part revered for its beauty, the part that makes up 99% of its bulk, is composed of rationality; but it would never have formed had it not been for the tiny, ugly grain of irrational faith at its core.
Compared to the alternatives currently being used to market atheism, I think this is a much better sales pitch. The main reason is that it depersonalizes the attack -- it acknowledges that we're all in the same boat, trying to figure out how best to spend our faith in the marketplace of belief systems, rather than trying to artificially divide humanity into "rationals" and "nonrationals." It shifts the emphasis to where it should be, i.e. the relative merits of the belief-products themselves. In religious terms, it allows us to love the sinner while hating the sin.
[Next]
(5) There are four words that have become entangled in the battle between atheism and its religious competitors, invested with so much emotional energy by both sides that their original meanings are all but lost. They are rational, irrational, belief, and faith, and each side has claimed two: the atheists seem to think they own the exclusive rights to "rational" and "irrational," and the religious believers seem to feel similar exclusive entitlement to "belief" and "faith." This strikes me as profoundly wrong. Both sides of the debate have an equal right to all four words.
The most common complaint leveled against the Four Horsemen by religious believers is that they're arrogant and condescending. And indeed they are. They get up in front of audiences of religious believers and tell them, in essence, "We're atheists because we're rational; you're religious because you're irrational." Such a statement may adequately preach to the choir, but it's a monumentally shitty sales pitch. Everyone thinks they're rational; even schizophrenics consigned to live out their lives in mental hospitals feel rational. Given that, "irrational" is simply a dirty word, an insult that no one wants to hear, one that is guaranteed to kill off any courteous receptiveness the listener might otherwise have been willing to extend.
But there is an even deeper problem. Suppose that everyone's skin were much thicker, and being called irrational weren't automatically a turnoff. The atheist claim to complete and total rationality is simply false, for reasons into which I will soon delve.
"Faith," meanwhile, has been co-opted by religious believers to mean "belief in some type of God"; talk to them long enough and it will become clear which type of God they mean. "People of faith" has become synonymous with "religious believers," and both sides of the debate seem content with that usage. But, if they are honest, even atheists must confess to being people of faith. This is because the definition of faith hinges not upon what people believe, but upon their reasons for believing it.
It is evident that human beings -- whether you think they were created by God or shaped by evolution -- are born with a libido, a limitless wellspring of mental energy that is expended solely through sex. What people really find pleasurable about sex is not so much the onslaught of physical sensations as the psychological release afforded by that discharge of libidinal energy. (If you find that hard to swallow, consider the old saying "When sex is good, it's great, and even when it's bad, it's still pretty good"; or, in a more extreme manifestation, think of Joe Pantoliano's character from The Sopranos, who found sex fulfilling only if it involved his partner taking a cheese grater to his dick.)
It is my thesis that human beings are born with another limitless wellspring of mental energy, one that is expended solely through faith. This "spiritual libido" exists because the world is, and has always been, so complex, confusing, threatening, and inscrutable that human beings find it profoundly pleasurable to simply accept some notions just because they feel right. Despite the obvious benefits of acting rationally, ya gotta admit that it takes some work. It feels good to deliberately take a break from that work by accepting some things through intuition rather than evidence, through the heart rather than the mind. Just as sex is the act through which people derive the pleasure of discharging their sexual libido, so is taking something on faith the act through which people derive the pleasure of discharging their spiritual libido.
When Sam Harris writes a book with a title like The End of Faith I cringe, because he might as well have titled the book The End of Humanity. Right or wrong, the spiritual libido is an innate part of what it means to be human, and the Four Horsemen ignore that fact at their peril. To denigrate and marginalize faith is to denigrate and (more importantly, from a marketing standpoint) marginalize oneself.
This does not mean that all belief systems are on an equal footing; we still have a right to debate and discuss which vessels are more or less suited to receiving the faith that our spiritual libido drives us to pour out. It simply means that, in the marketplace of belief systems, faith is the currency with which we make our purchases.
I, an atheist, am just as much a "person of faith" as any pious Christian or Muslim or Jew you care to name. We all have a core set of beliefs that we are unwilling to doubt, reconsider, or abandon. Our decision to adopt our core set of beliefs was made with the heart and not the mind; was made through intuition and not reason; was made simply because it felt right on some numinous level, and not because it was shown to be right through evidence or argument. Indeed, none of us can provide an irreproachable proof of why our core set of beliefs is "right"/"true," or this debate would not rage in the first place.
The big thing that separates my faith from that of the Christian or Muslim or Jew is that the object of my faith -- the core set of beliefs I used my faith to purchase -- is very simple. The major religions of the world have core sets of beliefs that are so vast, complex, and intricate that they can be expressed only in thousand-page-long books like the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the Veda, and their ilk. My core set of beliefs takes up about three paragraphs; certainly no more than one typed single-spaced 8.5" x 11" page. (This compactness carries an important benefit that we'll revisit later.) That page bears the following five things:
(a) A statement that, in principle, human beings can eventually know and understand all things, even if they are not known or understood at present.
(b) A description of the scientific method.
(c) Occam's Razor.
(d) The Golden Rule.
(e) A statement that it is a greater evil to arrive at a sound conclusion through faulty reasoning than to arrive at a faulty conclusion through sound reasoning.
Since it doesn't have a name, let's christen this one-page document the Rationalist Credo. Note that atheism appears nowhere in it. My atheism is not a part of my belief system; it is a consequence of it. (This is a distinction that will play an important role in the discussion of Communism below.) My faith in the scientific method doesn't mean that I'll insist that I'm right and you're wrong about any particular aspect of the world; it means that what I will insist on is that there is a single correct way for us to find out about any particular aspect of the world. It is an object of faith precisely because I cannot irreproachably prove anyone wrong when they say that there are paths to knowledge other than the scientific method. I simply believe that there aren't. (This will be revisited in Part 6.)
This is why the Four Horsemen are not being honest when they claim to be completely rational. It is true that they are mostly rational -- but their decision to embrace rationality was made through irrational means. They aspire to rationality because doing so simply feels right to them. The atheist chooses to focus his doubt on everything he encounters, except his own decision to focus doubt on everything he encounters. His atheism is like a pearl; the milky white part, the part revered for its beauty, the part that makes up 99% of its bulk, is composed of rationality; but it would never have formed had it not been for the tiny, ugly grain of irrational faith at its core.
Compared to the alternatives currently being used to market atheism, I think this is a much better sales pitch. The main reason is that it depersonalizes the attack -- it acknowledges that we're all in the same boat, trying to figure out how best to spend our faith in the marketplace of belief systems, rather than trying to artificially divide humanity into "rationals" and "nonrationals." It shifts the emphasis to where it should be, i.e. the relative merits of the belief-products themselves. In religious terms, it allows us to love the sinner while hating the sin.
[Next]
RtBotS, Part 2 of 9: Atheist Soup Kitchens
[Previous]
(4) One of the things atheists like to say is "Imagine a world without religion." Their goal is to conjure images of a world in which the Twin Towers still stand, in which the Spanish Inquisition never occurred, in which the Crusades never occurred, in which World War II came and went without a Holocaust. To a religious moderate, though, an entirely different set of images gets conjured. The religious moderate thinks, "Last summer I sent my daughter on a mission trip to New York City where she spent a week working in a soup kitchen. Every year our church does a nonperishables drive to contribute to the local food bank. And the church is a major donor to that homeless shelter downtown. Why would I want all that to end?" The religious moderate is justifiably filled with revulsion at the thought of these good works vanishing.
Now, it's easy for an atheist to counter that by saying, "Yes, but in a world without religion, secular charities would fill the gap." But that kind of statement is arguably just as faith-based (i.e. speculative and unreliant on evidence) as the statements we routinely get worked up about religious believers making.
I'm an aspiring screenwriter, and one of the themes that comes up again and again in that industry -- from seminars, books, interviews with successful professionals -- is "show, don't tell." The way to create a convincing narrative is not merely to tell the viewer about the hero, but to actually show them something about him through his actions. When atheists claim that charitable good works don't have to be done in the name of God -- or indeed, more generally, that one can live a good and moral life without having to believe in God -- we're telling, not showing.
To start showing, we need to organize ourselves to do charitable good works. It is true that there are already many secular charities (Oxfam International, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, etc.), but there is a difference between doing good works in the name of nothing in particular versus doing good works in the name of atheism. There are already lots of atheist organizations, but they persist in thinking that merely telling the public about atheism will be good enough. They need to branch out and become the atheist Knights of Columbus, the atheist Shriners, the atheist Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
[Next]
(4) One of the things atheists like to say is "Imagine a world without religion." Their goal is to conjure images of a world in which the Twin Towers still stand, in which the Spanish Inquisition never occurred, in which the Crusades never occurred, in which World War II came and went without a Holocaust. To a religious moderate, though, an entirely different set of images gets conjured. The religious moderate thinks, "Last summer I sent my daughter on a mission trip to New York City where she spent a week working in a soup kitchen. Every year our church does a nonperishables drive to contribute to the local food bank. And the church is a major donor to that homeless shelter downtown. Why would I want all that to end?" The religious moderate is justifiably filled with revulsion at the thought of these good works vanishing.
Now, it's easy for an atheist to counter that by saying, "Yes, but in a world without religion, secular charities would fill the gap." But that kind of statement is arguably just as faith-based (i.e. speculative and unreliant on evidence) as the statements we routinely get worked up about religious believers making.
I'm an aspiring screenwriter, and one of the themes that comes up again and again in that industry -- from seminars, books, interviews with successful professionals -- is "show, don't tell." The way to create a convincing narrative is not merely to tell the viewer about the hero, but to actually show them something about him through his actions. When atheists claim that charitable good works don't have to be done in the name of God -- or indeed, more generally, that one can live a good and moral life without having to believe in God -- we're telling, not showing.
To start showing, we need to organize ourselves to do charitable good works. It is true that there are already many secular charities (Oxfam International, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, etc.), but there is a difference between doing good works in the name of nothing in particular versus doing good works in the name of atheism. There are already lots of atheist organizations, but they persist in thinking that merely telling the public about atheism will be good enough. They need to branch out and become the atheist Knights of Columbus, the atheist Shriners, the atheist Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
[Next]
Revitalizing the Betamax of the Soul: Part 1 of 9
I think of atheism as simply one product available for purchase in a vast marketplace of belief systems. Its competition is every religion in the world. Some of these religions are manufactured and marketed by formal organizations; for instance, Roman Catholicism is a product sold by the Vatican. There is also a cottage industry of smaller-scale belief systems, pushed by single entrepreneurs; these are called cults. And there are also many would-be consumers who simply use their own homemade belief systems. These are the people who hasten to point out their lack of affiliation with any organized religion, but still harbor a vague, nebulous, unspecific belief in some kind of creator or higher power.
The position that atheism occupies in this marketplace seems to me to be identical to the position occupied by the Betamax VCR in the late '70s home video market. The market was just beginning to take off and was projected to be huge, but the movie studios weren't willing to jump in until the VCR manufacturers agreed on a standard format. Sony backed Betamax, and JVC backed VHS. Independent observers generally agreed that Betamax was technically superior; yet, VHS emerged as the victorious standard.
The most prominent public advocates of atheism today -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, collectively known as "the Four Horsemen" (your view of them is evidenced by whether your tongue is planted in cheek when you utter the phrase) -- could be viewed, in purposes of the marketplace analogy, as the "vendor" pushing atheism. Yet they are making exactly the same mistake Sony did in pushing Betamax. At that time, Sony was a company run entirely by engineers, from the CEO down. Their view of how to dominate the market was to pour all their resources into engineering the best possible product, under the assumption that, in a rational marketplace, such a product would essentially market itself. The VHS guys weren't so charmingly naive. They knew the importance of marketing.
The Four Horsemen, by writing their books and publicly debating their more intellectual opponents, are not actually marketing atheism -- they're just continuing to improve the engineering of the product. While that is certainly necessary and valuable, it's not sufficient. Someone needs to take the lead on actually marketing it.
The rest of this essay attempts to explore the big marketing problems that atheism faces. Most, but not all, of these hurdles can be overcome; but until those that can be are, atheism will never attract a customer base rivaling those of the world's major religions.
(1) Let's start with the forever insurmountable: the irrefutability of death. While no one enjoys the prospect of death, many people are absolutely terrified of it. The single biggest selling point enjoyed by all of atheism's competitors is that they offer a solution to the problem of death. By claiming that death isn't really the end of existence, they ease their purchasers' fears and impart comfort and solace. There is simply no way that atheism can ever purport to solve that problem.
What's slightly less obvious than this is that people tend to fear their own death less than the death of their immediate loved ones. Every out-of-the-closet atheist knows that, of all the possible interactions they can have with religious believers, the most dreadful is to encounter a recently bereaved religious believer. "How dare you tell me there's no God? What right do you have to tell me that my son/daughter/husband/wife/brother/sister isn't with Him in heaven?" It's impossible to be perceived as a good salesman when forced to reply, "What right do you have to tell yourself that he/she is?"
(2) All of atheism's competitors with large market share have suffered martyrs, which helps legitimize them in the eyes of certain prospective buyers. In terms of surmountability, this falls somewhere between the irrefutability of death and most of the other hurdles described below. It's certainly possible for atheism to someday suffer martyrs, but I doubt it will ever be the consequence of a deliberate campaign mounted by atheists. We can't do anything here except wait and see.
(3) Targeting religious extremists and fundamentalists is an unhelpful distraction. They're great targets for the Four Horsemen, since (a) they're easy; even religious moderates think they're crazy, and (b) they're inexhaustible; you'll never convert them, thereby guaranteeing that debating them will provide decent job security. But more to the point, even if you could convert them, the net increase to atheism's customer base would still be dwarfed by the number of untapped moderates. The religious moderates are where atheists need to concentrate their efforts. If you're Apple, trying to market the iPhone, you don't waste your time trying to sell to the "landline fundamentalists" -- you target the folks who already own cellphones. It may be more fun to pick on the snake-handlers, but the real action is in trying to convince those people who pray over dinner every night, but would never consider driving their sick child past a hospital on the way to a faith healer.
[Next]
The position that atheism occupies in this marketplace seems to me to be identical to the position occupied by the Betamax VCR in the late '70s home video market. The market was just beginning to take off and was projected to be huge, but the movie studios weren't willing to jump in until the VCR manufacturers agreed on a standard format. Sony backed Betamax, and JVC backed VHS. Independent observers generally agreed that Betamax was technically superior; yet, VHS emerged as the victorious standard.
The most prominent public advocates of atheism today -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, collectively known as "the Four Horsemen" (your view of them is evidenced by whether your tongue is planted in cheek when you utter the phrase) -- could be viewed, in purposes of the marketplace analogy, as the "vendor" pushing atheism. Yet they are making exactly the same mistake Sony did in pushing Betamax. At that time, Sony was a company run entirely by engineers, from the CEO down. Their view of how to dominate the market was to pour all their resources into engineering the best possible product, under the assumption that, in a rational marketplace, such a product would essentially market itself. The VHS guys weren't so charmingly naive. They knew the importance of marketing.
The Four Horsemen, by writing their books and publicly debating their more intellectual opponents, are not actually marketing atheism -- they're just continuing to improve the engineering of the product. While that is certainly necessary and valuable, it's not sufficient. Someone needs to take the lead on actually marketing it.
The rest of this essay attempts to explore the big marketing problems that atheism faces. Most, but not all, of these hurdles can be overcome; but until those that can be are, atheism will never attract a customer base rivaling those of the world's major religions.
(1) Let's start with the forever insurmountable: the irrefutability of death. While no one enjoys the prospect of death, many people are absolutely terrified of it. The single biggest selling point enjoyed by all of atheism's competitors is that they offer a solution to the problem of death. By claiming that death isn't really the end of existence, they ease their purchasers' fears and impart comfort and solace. There is simply no way that atheism can ever purport to solve that problem.
What's slightly less obvious than this is that people tend to fear their own death less than the death of their immediate loved ones. Every out-of-the-closet atheist knows that, of all the possible interactions they can have with religious believers, the most dreadful is to encounter a recently bereaved religious believer. "How dare you tell me there's no God? What right do you have to tell me that my son/daughter/husband/wife/brother/sister isn't with Him in heaven?" It's impossible to be perceived as a good salesman when forced to reply, "What right do you have to tell yourself that he/she is?"
(2) All of atheism's competitors with large market share have suffered martyrs, which helps legitimize them in the eyes of certain prospective buyers. In terms of surmountability, this falls somewhere between the irrefutability of death and most of the other hurdles described below. It's certainly possible for atheism to someday suffer martyrs, but I doubt it will ever be the consequence of a deliberate campaign mounted by atheists. We can't do anything here except wait and see.
(3) Targeting religious extremists and fundamentalists is an unhelpful distraction. They're great targets for the Four Horsemen, since (a) they're easy; even religious moderates think they're crazy, and (b) they're inexhaustible; you'll never convert them, thereby guaranteeing that debating them will provide decent job security. But more to the point, even if you could convert them, the net increase to atheism's customer base would still be dwarfed by the number of untapped moderates. The religious moderates are where atheists need to concentrate their efforts. If you're Apple, trying to market the iPhone, you don't waste your time trying to sell to the "landline fundamentalists" -- you target the folks who already own cellphones. It may be more fun to pick on the snake-handlers, but the real action is in trying to convince those people who pray over dinner every night, but would never consider driving their sick child past a hospital on the way to a faith healer.
[Next]
A Theological Argument In Favor of Gay Marriage
So in the evangelical Christian worldview, there are no such thing as gay people: there are straight people who succumb to the temptation to engage in gay sex, and there are straight people who either are never tempted in such a way or (bear with me) those who are but managed to withstand it. Let's ignore the fact that this is obvious bullshit and accept it on its own terms, for sake of argument.
My understanding of evangelical theology is that we, the children of God, are put on this earth to live in mortal bodies. We will be subject to many temptations from many sources, but should strive to reject the wicked ways of the world in favor of the righteous ways of the Lord. We will be judged in the afterlife for how well we achieve this goal.
It's worth considering what perspective the Lord will do the judging from. Presumably the relevant metric will be the number of temptations we didn't successfully withstand. As in golf, the lower our score, the better. But there are two ways this number could be minimized:
(1) The number of temptations could be high, but the number of times one succumbed could be low (indicating strong performance in a challenging environment)
(2) The number of temptations could be low, and the number of times one succumbed could be only slightly lower (indicating weak performance in an unchallenging environment)
It would seem to me that (1) would be more impressive to the Celestial Magistrate than (2). The earthly equivalent of (2) are the kids who graduate high school at the third-grade reading level because their school system would rather keep them in their peer group than actually educate them. (1) seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to a real conservative.
Given this, wouldn't it be in the evangelicals' long-term spiritual best interest to ensure that the ways of the world remain wicked, so that their own spiritual mettle can be proven as in case (1)? By fighting against the homosexuals (and the pornographers, and the prostitutes, and the liberal Hollywood elites -- this line of reasoning works for a whole bunch of evangelical targets), aren't the evangelicals essentially childproofing the house of God, and removing all moral challenge? Doesn't this subvert God's very purpose in having put us here, to prove that we are worthy of being saved?
My understanding of evangelical theology is that we, the children of God, are put on this earth to live in mortal bodies. We will be subject to many temptations from many sources, but should strive to reject the wicked ways of the world in favor of the righteous ways of the Lord. We will be judged in the afterlife for how well we achieve this goal.
It's worth considering what perspective the Lord will do the judging from. Presumably the relevant metric will be the number of temptations we didn't successfully withstand. As in golf, the lower our score, the better. But there are two ways this number could be minimized:
(1) The number of temptations could be high, but the number of times one succumbed could be low (indicating strong performance in a challenging environment)
(2) The number of temptations could be low, and the number of times one succumbed could be only slightly lower (indicating weak performance in an unchallenging environment)
It would seem to me that (1) would be more impressive to the Celestial Magistrate than (2). The earthly equivalent of (2) are the kids who graduate high school at the third-grade reading level because their school system would rather keep them in their peer group than actually educate them. (1) seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to a real conservative.
Given this, wouldn't it be in the evangelicals' long-term spiritual best interest to ensure that the ways of the world remain wicked, so that their own spiritual mettle can be proven as in case (1)? By fighting against the homosexuals (and the pornographers, and the prostitutes, and the liberal Hollywood elites -- this line of reasoning works for a whole bunch of evangelical targets), aren't the evangelicals essentially childproofing the house of God, and removing all moral challenge? Doesn't this subvert God's very purpose in having put us here, to prove that we are worthy of being saved?
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Open-Source Political Discourse
Allow me to pour some political lemon juice on our current collective papercut of electoral anticlimax. That's right, after a three-week hiatus from blogging, during which time the most noteworthy presidential campaign in at least the last forty years came to a head, I want to talk about... Michael Moore?
Regardless of how you feel about his politics or his personality (I'm a lefty, but I find him annoying too), you must concede that he has done something very important in the history of popular political discourse. He has done something so obvious it's unthinkable. He has become the Radiohead of American politics:
He released a feature-length political documentary on the internet for free.
Slacker Uprising, as it's known, is something that I probably won't ever see, simply because, unlike Moore himself, I see little value in preaching to the choir. But by releasing it for free, he has completely eliminated the number-one reason that his ideological opponents would otherwise have used to avoid seeing it.
Think back to 2004:
You: Dude, have you seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" yet? It's awesome!
Joe the Plumber: That's the new Michael Moore movie, right?
You: Yeah, it's about how the Bush administration led us to war in Iraq on false pretenses, and --
Joe the Plumber: I hate Michael Moore.
You: I can definitely see why you'd say that -- he has an insufferable, whiny voice and kind of a nebbishy, loserish persona, like if Woody Allen and Roseanne Barr had a love child.
Joe the Plumber: Good one!
You: Thanks. But anyway, yeah, Moore made the film, but it's still really good. It has a lot of good information in it.
Joe the Plumber: Maybe so, but there's no way I'm going to help make that fat Commie fuck rich.
Now that Moore has taken personal enrichment out of the equation, Joe the Plumber will have to rack his walnut-sized brain for weeks to find a replacement excuse not to watch it.
Now, the market for political documentaries is pretty small, and the overall effect they have on people's political opinions is arguable. So even if this trend catches on in that market, it won't revolutionize the exchange of political ideas much. But I'm hoping that it could trickle into the world of book publishing.
Remember when Scott McClellan wrote What Happened, his tell-all book about the Bush White House? The Bush team made it sound like McClellan was writing the book simply to make a quick buck, and not to vindicate his own name in the eyes of the majority of Americans who realized that Bush is the world's only nuclear-armed special needs baby. And presumably a portion of the conservative electorate bought that argument. "He's just a liberal turncoat! I don't want my $30 going into his pocket!" And so they missed out on important information.
I keep using anti-conservative examples, but it cuts both ways. If Jim Inhofe, for instance, wrote a memoir, a certain sick fascination would make me want to read it, but I would balk at having to pay the man money to read the story of his evil, deranged life. I would play the liberal Joe the Plumber to his conservative Michael Moore.
Wouldn't it be great if America's political discourse simply stopped involving retail sales? If you publish the exact same manuscript as a PDF on your website, you could genuinely be viewed as making contributions to the marketplace of ideas, instead of just trying to make a buck. Your ideological opponents would have no reason other than closed-mindedness not to read you. Ideas would be exchanged more widely. And -- best of all -- it would drive the true profiteers out of business. Would Bill O'Reilly really write a sequel to Culture Warrior if there weren't any money in it?
So thank you, Michael Moore, for nudging us in the direction of open-source political discourse. Perhaps you should reward yourself by watching another funny yet insightful documentary, Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me.
Regardless of how you feel about his politics or his personality (I'm a lefty, but I find him annoying too), you must concede that he has done something very important in the history of popular political discourse. He has done something so obvious it's unthinkable. He has become the Radiohead of American politics:
He released a feature-length political documentary on the internet for free.
Slacker Uprising, as it's known, is something that I probably won't ever see, simply because, unlike Moore himself, I see little value in preaching to the choir. But by releasing it for free, he has completely eliminated the number-one reason that his ideological opponents would otherwise have used to avoid seeing it.
Think back to 2004:
You: Dude, have you seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" yet? It's awesome!
Joe the Plumber: That's the new Michael Moore movie, right?
You: Yeah, it's about how the Bush administration led us to war in Iraq on false pretenses, and --
Joe the Plumber: I hate Michael Moore.
You: I can definitely see why you'd say that -- he has an insufferable, whiny voice and kind of a nebbishy, loserish persona, like if Woody Allen and Roseanne Barr had a love child.
Joe the Plumber: Good one!
You: Thanks. But anyway, yeah, Moore made the film, but it's still really good. It has a lot of good information in it.
Joe the Plumber: Maybe so, but there's no way I'm going to help make that fat Commie fuck rich.
Now that Moore has taken personal enrichment out of the equation, Joe the Plumber will have to rack his walnut-sized brain for weeks to find a replacement excuse not to watch it.
Now, the market for political documentaries is pretty small, and the overall effect they have on people's political opinions is arguable. So even if this trend catches on in that market, it won't revolutionize the exchange of political ideas much. But I'm hoping that it could trickle into the world of book publishing.
Remember when Scott McClellan wrote What Happened, his tell-all book about the Bush White House? The Bush team made it sound like McClellan was writing the book simply to make a quick buck, and not to vindicate his own name in the eyes of the majority of Americans who realized that Bush is the world's only nuclear-armed special needs baby. And presumably a portion of the conservative electorate bought that argument. "He's just a liberal turncoat! I don't want my $30 going into his pocket!" And so they missed out on important information.
I keep using anti-conservative examples, but it cuts both ways. If Jim Inhofe, for instance, wrote a memoir, a certain sick fascination would make me want to read it, but I would balk at having to pay the man money to read the story of his evil, deranged life. I would play the liberal Joe the Plumber to his conservative Michael Moore.
Wouldn't it be great if America's political discourse simply stopped involving retail sales? If you publish the exact same manuscript as a PDF on your website, you could genuinely be viewed as making contributions to the marketplace of ideas, instead of just trying to make a buck. Your ideological opponents would have no reason other than closed-mindedness not to read you. Ideas would be exchanged more widely. And -- best of all -- it would drive the true profiteers out of business. Would Bill O'Reilly really write a sequel to Culture Warrior if there weren't any money in it?
So thank you, Michael Moore, for nudging us in the direction of open-source political discourse. Perhaps you should reward yourself by watching another funny yet insightful documentary, Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me.
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