Happy Human

According to the news story in the local paper, the guy who shot up my local neighborhood megachurch was a former Youth With A Mission (YWAM) missionary trainee, a refugee from a childhood indoctrination in faith. From the article:

“You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray wrote on a Web site for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations, KUSA reported.

It was the most recent posting of his on the site, dated Sunday, Dec. 9 at 11:03 a.m.

In the Web writings, which are now being investigated by Colorado Springs police, Arvada police and the FBI, Murray warned, “I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the (expletive) teeth and I WILL shoot to kill.... God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shootout. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

Thus, the shooter confirmed a hypothesis offered by daphnep and molinaslim in a discussion some months ago, in which they lamented that faith-based ethics fail when faith fails, and that lack of a broader spectrum of ethical incentives is a downside to faith. How prophetic they turned out to be!

It's easy to be an ethical person; it's easy to figure out how to get along with others. The ethic of reciprocity, restated to allow for Karl Popper's criticism of Jesus's misquote, is almost self-evident to those who graduated from Kindergarten: "Don't do to others as they don't want, just as you don't want others to do what you don't want to you." Yet it isn't good enough to live according to this ethic "because Jesus said so," or even "because Confucious said so" (though he's probably the earliest person documented to phrase it so concisely). As this weekend's shootings demonstrate, ethical philosophy must be more broadly-based than the logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam.

"Eupraxsophy" is a name for the pursuit of the refinement of this ethical philosophy. Paul Kurtz, the editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry and chairman of the Center for Inquiry, wrote an article on eupraxsophic life, "Affirming Life: Eupraxsophy Revisited." It's clear that this pursuit is especially important for those who are raised in faith, because history and current events demonstrate that faith alone is insufficient to equip people to live ethical lives.

To continue a discussion started elsewhere, "welcome" and "hi" to blu_ravenclaw, whose input and frank discussion are heartily welcome, however much it may have made me giggle earlier.

You said that I am dangerous because I have faith...but so do you.

Depends which definition we're talking about. I am "faithful" to my friends and loved ones, in that I don't betray them. But if we're talking about religious faith, the kind defined in Hebrews 11, and the kind upon which you base your knowledge of truth, then no, I don't. Or if I do, and it's pointed out to me, I make every effort to fix that character flaw quickly.

You have faith in your own human reasoning

Not so. I use my reasoning because it serves me well in very tangible, testable ways. Not faith—evidence.

you discern between different philosophies in the same way that I discern between faiths.

Exactly so, and this is a skill you should learn, too. The philosophy you are unable to discern is called "epistemology," and it means, essentially, "how do you know what you know?" My epistemological foundation is based on maths, the scientific method, falsifiability, verifiability, and a small dollop of historical scholarship. Yours, Hebrews 11:1, directly disclaims and discounts the value of empirical evidence ("not seen") and embraces what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness:" simply what's "hoped for," just as superstitious people hope to live forever. So we are directly at odds with each other, starting with the very foundations of our knowledge.

( Why should one pick one over another? )

How can I protect each of you, my loved ones, from the horror that is in these video clips? Can I hide your eyes, can I shelter your awareness? This would not be "protection," for the evil in these videos would still exist, would still threaten the peace of your sleep. It might even threaten your own security.

No, while this evil exists in the world, you cannot be truly safe from it. So I will not hide your eyes, will not help you pretend it doesn't exist.

I will fight it, and I'll fight it for you: all of you, anyone who is near enough to me to read this. I cannot watch the videos myself; I only watched one, but I've downloaded them all and hosted them on my own server to ensure that you can be aware of it, that you can cry with me, that you can be afraid with me, and you can be motivated to fight with me... until this evil is gone from the face of the planet.

Video Captures Stoning of Kurdish Teenage Girl

( Read more... )

I've just watched about two hours of lecture and Q&A by cellular biologist Ken Miller on the subject of "intelligent design" on YouTube. It's been wonderfully educational and informative, and very well worth your time to watch too, if you've got it to spare... but the conclusion of his lecture leaves me very troubled.

(I'm going to spoil it because the rest of the lecture and the Q&A session that followed are every bit as thought-provoking, every minute, so you will only lose one minute's worth of element of surprise, and this is something that needs to be heard right now:)

Miller's closing assertion was that America's youth are being done a disservice by having a wedge driven between them and a truly useful understanding of the philosophy of science. He showed a cartoon of some random brown-skinned person saying that they would love to have the jobs left open once Americans finally fall victim to the enemies of science. Miller lamented this possibility hot on the heels of a reminder that Arab culture in the middle east once led the way in scientific discovery and achievement, and the pairing of these two concepts is the most frightening thing I've heard in a month at least.

Look at the ends to which Arab culture in the middle east have devolved.

Western civilization will repeat this history if it is not stopped through the concerted efforts of human will, as surely as Muslims today are bloodily repeating the history of the Christian reformation. It will happen if we do not stop it, and the best way to do that is to be cognizant, yes, but more importantly, vocal and vehement against all efforts to destroy the philosophy of science. There are, we learn from Miller's lecture, opponents of science who will lie in courtrooms, fabricate evidence, teach children willful ignorance, and manipulate language into meaninglessness in order to preserve the power of institutions of faith.

It is absolutely crucial to see how this story has played out in the courtroom so far, and what tactics are being used, to understand that these people are powermongers of the worst kind, and are not content with tolerance or diversity... but crave control for its own sake, and at any cost... even if it results in the return of a faith-centered "dark age" as is happening in Iraq before our very eyes.

If you have two hours, watch the whole video. If you have five minutes, watch his lecture wrap-up at 65 to 70 minutes... or pick chunks at random to watch, but don't miss the message of this video!

Then, how to act? Miller's conclusion gives a very simplified overview of the difference between the scientific and faith-based approaches to science education, but as individual humans, we need to be aware ourselves of the philosophies on which science is based so we can recognize such brash attempts to completely redefine it out of existence. Here are a few useful Wikipedia links:

• Epistemology, or, as an engineer friend says, "if you don't know how you know what you know, how do you know what you know?"
• Philosophy of science. This article contains some references to the most useful philosophy of improving our knowledge of the world: that of...
• Karl Popper, whose gift of the term "falsifiability" has made it much easier to communicate an important tenet of science clearly.
• Scientific method is the implementation of these philosophies, without which we have no basis for agreement on anything: any arbitrary (or indeed even random) set of beliefs is as defensible as any other.

The consequences of misunderstanding this last cannot be overstated: when any arbitrary set of beliefs is as defensible as any other, or if all are equally useless, then all it takes is one set of beliefs that teaches killing all dissenters, and any competing believers suddenly have a need to defend themselves against this violence. Thus we have the makings of genocide or world wars. This has been seen repeatedly throughout history, and indeed unfolds before our very eyes in Iraq and Sudan. That is where we are going if we fail to understand the philosophy of judging knowledge. Let's learn to do it, and do it correctly, and right now, before the consequences of our failure to do so begins to cost innocent people their lives again.

In the current issue of Skeptic magazine, we find an interview with Carl Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, in which she talks about Sagan's legacy and the worldview they shared. One question posed by interviewer Michael Shermer prompted a wonderful response on the subject of education, learning, and improving our worldview that's worth sharing:

Shermer: Assuming that "this too shall pass" [ideologies that justify murder and mayhem], and new administrations will come and go, in the long run, how do we get from here to there: where everybody sees the Pale Blue Dot and realizes we are one tribe?

Druyan: To begin, we need to stop lying to our children and start speaking honestly about the things we don't know, and the things that remain a mystery to us. I think we need to be honest with our children that we die, that life is finite not infinite, and that this is it and it is really precious. If we did that maybe people would treat life as being something prized instead of as something that can be taken without concern. Also, we need a new curriculum for science and it should be like this: when children first come to school, in preschool or kindergarten, I think the teachers should take them aside and welcome them to join the generations of searchers, to induct them into the great wonders and mysteries of science as a way of seeing everything. Not 20 or 40 minutes of boredom a few times a week, but as a way of seeing everything. They should teach critical thinking to the smallest children as a type of keys to the kingdom. We should teach the story of the history of science—of the courageous men and women who have given us this precious knowledge—in a way that gives full expression to the romance and valor and imagination that was involved. And I think if we were to do that, I think it would be possible that we would not be a schizophrenic society: completely dependent on science and high technology, yet completely fearful and mistrusting of it.