publicity and "Reason"

It may be presumptuous of me to critique the publicity efforts of other atheists, for two reasons. First, I'm not involved in any of it. Second, I'm a newcomer; I didn't successfully admit my atheism (not even to myself!) until a few years ago. I doubt that groups who sometimes call themselves free-thinkers could question my right or permission to criticize, but they could question my credibility. On the other hand, perhaps I can bring a fresh perspective as someone who has recently been on both "sides".

So let me point out the problem with one specific totem of atheistic publicists: the repeated word "Reason". To theists, an exclusive claim on a mental ability like reason sounds as laughable as...um, the attempt of theists to make an exclusive claim on moral conscience. ("If you're an atheist, then why aren't you constantly cheating and stealing and murdering?") A theist, such as me a few years ago, simply responds by saying that they employ correct reason all the time, but in questions about the supernatural, they start with different premises than atheists. And reason plays an indispensable role when theists proceed to argue, like lawyers, about complicated far-fetched intepretations of the same set of sacred texts. Indeed, "deep" introspective theists are philosophical cousins to traditional rationalists; they pride themselves on their intricate logical abstractions and otherworldly mental ideals, all of which are supposedly more "real" than temporary stuff that sullies the senses.

Therefore, it may be worthwhile to consider complementary alternatives to the prevalence of "Reason" in atheistic publicity efforts. Please note what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that the theists are as reasonable as they suppose they are. No matter what else theists say in praise of reason, they're still individuals who by definition grant credence to a number of poorly-supported ideas. The task of effective atheistic publicity isn't to encourage more reason but to hint at the theistic misuse of reason. Just encouraging more reason produces the off-putting stereotype of atheists who assume that everyone other than them is unintelligent, insane, or lazy. Then theists are likelier to conclude that the message amounts to an elaborate insult instead of a provocative insight about the true weaknesses of unquestioned faith. The significant difference is the emphasis. Rather than portray their overall mindset as contradicting reason, draw their attention to the details of the real "blind spots" which they don't normally scrutinize closely enough.

Purely for inspiration, here are some examples of groan-inducing alternatives to "Reason" slogans. Brainstorming!

• Have you checked the data behind your opinion lately?
• Which experts are you asking for advice?
• When faith supports beliefs, what supports faith?
• How do you prove that other religions are false...but yours is the exception?
• Why does a gut feeling often fail to detect minor facts...yet is also the best way to answer Big Questions?
• What tests do your beliefs pass?
• Who becomes trustworthy by commanding trust upfront?

my atheism is not a faith

...But I should first address the obvious retort. By the minimal categorical definition of "a complete set of beliefs related to religion", my atheism qualifies as a faith. That's not my point.

Although this categorization might be necessary for entirely practical reasons, it can produce the wrong impression. It tempts incorrect comparisons. Both before and after my deconversion, I've encountered statements on this subject which are simply wrong. "Like any other religion, atheism requires the suppression of doubt." "Like anyone else, atheists have their own fundamental unfalsifiable axioms to serve as the basis of logical thought." "Like the existence of the supernatural, the non-existence of the supernatural amounts to a huge assumption."

However, the way that I consider it, atheism can't be yet-another-faith. It's a different type of belief than my former religiosity. That's the rationale behind the unwieldy term "deconversion". For me at least, atheism wasn't acceptance of a differing conglomerate of notions. It was dismissal of all of my religious notions. I reapplied my Pragmatic standard of meaning to the religious domain and judged it too shaky to continue believing.

Thus the deconversion to atheism did not require an equal or greater number of doubt-suppressed assumptions. It required fewer. It lowered the cognitive difficulty. I gave myself the freedom to stop strenuously separating the privileged religious domain from the normal processes of skepticism and critical thinking. I no longer had the weighty burden of either resolving or ignoring all the inconsistencies between discovered reality and the propositions of my parents' religion.

Having said that, I should also acknowledge that I still make assumptions. It seems to me that everyone does all the time. Assumptions are Pragmatic planning tools. The pivotal question is which assumptions to make. Not every assumption is well-grounded. Human inventiveness can supply assumptions at a faster rate than the rate of possible verification. It's worthwhile to be choosy with assumptions. For instance, does an assumption fit with a great number of confirmed ideas? Can it be used and tested? Does it depend on a multitude of other assumptions? Distrust of a particular assumption doesn't consist of a second assumption. Since humans swim in an ocean of free-floating assumptions, distrust of each assumption's underpinnings is the sensible default!

Moreover, I confess to a handful of "fundamental axioms". The essential distinction is that my boring axioms are mostly about methods and are not universally applicable. For example, reality has patterns. A given change usually happens at approximately the same speed. Senses yield consistent results under normal circumstances. Not everything that the human brain computes corresponds to stuff outside it. Evidence that passes a greater number of checks is more reliable than evidence that passes a fewer number of checks.

A Pragmatic atheism isn't comparable to many faiths. It's not an alternative dogma for Truth. It's a side-effect of a methodical and careful search for truths (plural, lower-case).

code word: genre

When "genre" is applied as an adjective, not a noun, what does it mean? Genre movie, genre television, genre genres...

Speaking as someone who isn't in any way part of the entertainment industry, my impression is that it's a code word for "nerdy". The undertone is that labeling media as "nerdy" is too embarrassing. Much better to use the code word whenever possible. As a nerd, I can't help feeling a little offended by this.

Part of my issue is that this practice raises more questions than it answers. I've read that this usage of "genre" is taken directly from the book publishing terminology "genre fiction". According to the Wikipedia entry for genre fiction, crime, mystery, and romance are all identifiable media genres that fiction creators intentionally target. Doesn't this indicate that Breaking Bad is "genre" (crime)? NCIS (mystery)? Rom-coms (romance)? These appear to be genre fiction according to the established definition. If someone objects to calling these genre fiction, then that objection is an indication that the genre adjective is really a code word now, and not short for "genre fiction".

I suppose that there are alternatives to both "genre" and "nerdy". These alternatives emphasize the divergence of these genre genres from prosaic contemporary life: speculative, imaginative, alternate-reality. I'm generally unimpressed by the blatant substitution of code words, but at least these alternatives positively emphasize common characteristics of the works rather than negatively emphasize what the works are not (i.e., Not Literary).

atheism is narrow-minded?

Surprises keep life interesting. Not too long ago I experienced a surprising description of my perspective of atheism: "narrow-minded". The objector explained that atheism is too dismissive of competing beliefs and too arrogant in its expression of certainty. Then they repeated a well-known quote from Hamlet. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Since I find myself existing in a complicated reality, my first reaction is to recognize the partial accuracy of these statements. If truths are defined through a Pragmatic-like approach, then it must be much more narrow-minded than the mindset that "all dogmas are equally valid". That's the advantage of it; it disqualifies incorrect/irrelevant ideas. Exclusivity is the rationale and the goal. Rather than debate the merits of abstract notions with unclear meanings, Pragmatists attempt to anchor the notions in pieces of practical reality. Notions that can't withstand this process are dropped from consideration, on purpose, with good reason.

Moreover, exclusivity is indispensable. Otherwise, disproved or unproved statements are too numerous to accept. Human inventiveness is the supplier. If the standard is lowered, then which of the contradictory statements in the growing pile shall be truths? And why should there be special treatment for proposed statements with a supernatural topic? When supernatural reality doesn't disprove any statements which humans propose, it is literally meaningless. When "X" can take any form whatsoever and confirm any statement, communication about "X" is effectively futile. It's sensible to not assume that most human statements are wholly correct. It's more arrogant to assume.

However, the "narrow-minded" aspect isn't synonymous with "close-minded". That is, I won't claim that my knowledge is either complete or inviolate. My approach simply cannot permit me to assert that prepackaged truths reached my brain via a direct conduit to a singular omniscient infallible Source. Instead I can merely cite the real sources for what I believe, i.e. the bases of my thoughts and actions. Those real sources of old information are judged relative to the real sources of new information. I'm extremely critical, i.e. "close-minded", of alleged violations of physical principles with thousands of past confirmations. I'm receptive, i.e. "open-minded", of alternative data which overturns a temporary hasty conclusion of mine. Tell me that my wristwatch is wrong, including how you know that, and I reset my wristwatch. Tell me that my soul is under inspection by Mr. Infinity, and I elevate my right eyebrow.

helpful lies or unhelpful truths

I like to think that a Pragmatist-like concept of truth is incisive and appealing. Isn't it tidy to connect a proposition's level of truth more or less directly with the methods or actions for confirming it? But objectors understandably prefer a simpler concept of truth that disconnects the subjective role even further: they'd rather say that real is real and truth is truth. What about helpful lies or unhelpful truths? Don't these two categories show the limitations/weaknesses of Pragmatist-like truth?

My immediate reply is to admit that I'm not presenting an infallible path to truth, and if the alternatives claim such an infallible path then the alternatives are mistaken. My longer reply is a Pragmatist-like analysis of those two categories. In practice, how are specific propositions classified as helpful lies or unhelpful truths?

Obviously, the secondary classifications "helpful" and "unhelpful" indicate that the propositions are either aids or hindrances for accomplishing particular goals. However, the primary classifications "lies" or "truths" force the follow-up question of how we know to sort a given proposition into one of those two. Although the original argument merely assumes that the relevant propositions can be definitely classified as lie or truth, this tactic won't work in general because personal assumptions are so often wrong. The sensible conclusion is that there must have been some primary procedure for us to know for certain that the proposition under consideration is lie or truth, and we must have gained that knowledge independently from the proposition's secondary classification of helpful or unhelpful.

Hence classification of actual propositions as helpful lies or unhelpful truths presumes two procedures with conflicting results, a primary and a secondary. An occurrence like this surely demonstrates that the secondary procedure, i.e. that single "helpfulness" test, is a flawed test for truth. But the invalidation of one procedure by another doesn't invalidate the overall concept of Pragmatist-like truth.

I don't argue that true implies "always helpful for all goals" and false implies "always unhelpful for all goals". Reality is too complicated. Propositions are too numerous. Goals are too flexible. That's exactly why more than one confirmation procedure is a good idea anyway and the human judge resolves or prioritizes conflicting results. Moreover, helpful lies and unhelpful truths can be essential mid-points on the journey to propositions of greater refinement. A partial answer could be helpful for some purposes regardless of its ultimate disqualification, and the unhelpful nature of a puzzling piece of data could challenge incorrect preconceptions. The dread of (temporary) contradictions isn't part of Pragmatist-like truth, which is intended to evolve. Intolerance of contradictions is more emblematic of fastidious otherworldly concepts of truth.

the most honest of supernatural beliefs

In the previous entry I pointed out that the result of someone's "search for meaning" can only be as valid as its answers to "the demand for meaning" which everyone else applies to it. Two central questions of that demand for meaning are 1) "What exactly do you know?" and 2) "How do you know it?" I judge that beliefs in the supernatural offer irrelevant and/or illogical answers to such questions.

But recently I found a specimen that fares better than most: Ietsism. Ietsism asserts that "Something" supernatural exists with some of the characteristics which traditional religions assign to gods, but The Something is also almost wholly unknown. Hence Ietsism answers the two central questions from before as follows: 1) virtually nothing and 2) an inarticulate emotional sensation. Ietsism doesn't invent complicated theology and then insist on the reality of those unconfirmed inventions. In that way, Ietsism must be one of the most honest of beliefs in the supernatural.

That doesn't imply that I converted, of course. Despite its honesty, Ietsism is nevertheless too flimsy.

I confess that I've felt an impulsive connection to my surroundings. I've been in a humble mood of gratefulness for my existence. I've marveled at immensity and complexity. I've observed fortunate coincidences that evoked the hope that the cosmos is helping me. I've observed unfortunate coincidences that evoked the anger that the cosmos is thwarting me. I've striven to accomplish ideals.

Don't these ephemeral intuitions qualify as religious experiences? No, in my estimation. To draw the conclusion of Something is to lend far too much credence to my own caprices. Humans are too easily influenced. How often do we jump to the unlikely explanation that fits our preconceptions of the moment? If we're feeling mistrustful, then hissing whispers are about us. If we're feeling fearful, then unexpected noises are coming from dangers. If we're feeling proud, then our failures are mere accidents. If we're hungry, then food is wondrous; if we're nauseated, then food is ghastly. Feeling is a pragmatic starting-point, not a pragmatic clinching fact. 

the demand for meaning

At times my Pragmatist heart is irritated by the endless abstract debates about the existence of gods. I have an instinctual distrust in rarefied arguments. I want to hurry along to the propositions about the supernatural which have more relevance to a human like me. After an entire belief system is atomized into a long list of short propositions, "The god known as ____ exists" is merely the first candidate for evaluation.

Furthermore, as atheists examine the rest of the propositions in the list, I wish that they would borrow the Pragmatist approach, the demand for meaning. The meaning and reliability of any proposition (including the level of accuracy) should be bound to its verified implications. If the proposition were accurate, then what would be the difference? How does someone distinguish this proposition from the unlimited number of false propositions? What's the basis of the verification procedure's trustworthiness? Questions like these aren't quite the same as demanding evidence. These are requests for rigorous clarification. Communication doesn't happen until the listener manages to decode the speaker's logic. The demand for meaning is the refusal to start a discussion before everyone understands the essential claims which are connected to the propositions.

For example, "The god known as ____ is good." A listener could ask, " 'Good' according to whom?" Or "As demonstrated by what?" Until the speaker offers an unambiguous explanation of the exact interactions between the proposition and reality, the listener isn't obligated to make erroneous assumptions to fill in the gaps in comprehension. Details matter. Once the demand for meaning has established the specific method to judge the proposition, the speaker and listener can go on to compare the results that they each obtained by that method. Perhaps the method is to accept the opinion of a hierarchy of elites who somehow have privileged access to supernatural truths; the speaker has no objections in doing so, but the listener balks.

I don't deny the emotional desire to search for meaning wherever it may be found in numerous narratives. I do ask that others try not to be exasperated by my demand for meaning when they express their own ideas to me. And when someone believes in something supernatural because the belief is comfortable, they should have the honesty to admit it.

the lottery of saintliness

It's realistic to note that the typical human life contains horrible details from time to time, if not more frequently. This presents an inevitable puzzle for anyone who believes in supernatural forces which are both benevolent and powerful. Before the culmination of my gradual intellectual anti-conversion, I maintained an uneasy acceptance of several well-known solutions to that puzzle. One partial solution was that the supernatural forces place a high value on human freedom and therefore on the consequent side-effects of that freedom. Hence some of the awful parts of human existence were explicable as the effects of other humans' despicable yet free choices. Rather than causing or preventing awful events, supernatural forces simply permitted humans to do as they wished.

However, from my new vantage point, I've noticed a problem with this solution. I don't mean the obvious injustice of supernatural forces allowing many to suffer for the mistakes of few. I mean the failure of the solution to succeed on its own terms in shifting the blame. It presumes that at the moment when a human selects evil, the sole substantial explanation of that selection cannot be anything other than the selector's freedom. Otherwise, the selector is under influences and by that fact cannot function as an independent and blameworthy shield for the notion of supernatural forces which are both benevolent and powerful.

Examples may be clearer. If the selector has an excessive inborn level of aggression and it influences the selection, then it's partly responsible. Yet once that concession is made, the next question arises: why didn't the benevolent and powerful supernatural forces, which value freedom so highly, intervene to rectify that "external" influence and increase the selector's freedom? Or consider the selector whose culture conditioned him or her to give harsh treatment at every opportunity to everyone in an out-group. Surely this conditioning is an influence on the selection of evil and at the same time is outside of the control of the selector and under the potential control of supernatural forces. Or turn to positive contributors. Suppose that the selector has benefited from the lifelong care and guidance of excellent role models who continually taught appropriate techniques for self-control and coping. Is it fair to credit detrimental influences for reckless selections but not credit advantageous influences for conscientious selections?

In short, regardless of the ultimate degree of freedom of human selectors, the influences on their selections differ greatly. Assuming supernatural forces which don't interfere in these scenarios, the conclusion is that those forces acquiesce in effect to a lottery of saintliness. Some unfortunate humans select good or evil on the basis of tragic factors, while some fortunate humans select good or evil on the basis of lovely factors. Some must build their characters out of straw and some out of brick. In either case the supernatural forces, due to tender adoration of human freedom, tolerate the resulting successes and failures.

Under the watchful benevolence and power of the supernatural forces, the lottery of saintliness confers to Damien personal constraints toward selecting evil and to Victor personal constraints toward selecting good. Damien freely chooses contemptible actions which harm Victor in one way or another. But the faithful believers shall never doubt the benevolence nor the power of supernatural forces for this outcome. Instead they shall shrug; no one said it was a perfect system.

self-refuting statements: a proud tradition

From the standpoint of logic, some statements are unusual. For instance, a statement could assert its own truth: "I tell the truth." It could be redundant: "The obvious statement is obvious." It could reference itself: "I have seven syllables."

Yet self-refuting statements are the most unusual specimens of all. "I am lying" is the prototype, but unfortunately it is far from alone. In fact, generations of humans have believed in clusters of these.

• My benevolent god wishes that I kill you.
• My omnipotent god requires me to defend it.
• The freedom my god has granted to me is expressed through complete and unquestioning obedience to specific forms of coercion.
• Sacred statements possess objective Truth because of the opinions of many believers, referred to as 'faith'.
• Centuries-old moral customs last eternally as long as believers expertly modify the original formulations, in order to integrate the many deep cultural changes which happened since.
• Centuries-old texts are literally true and readily apparent apart from the sections which are purely metaphorical and infinitely debatable.
• Divine justice shall come, although that may not occur until after every good believer is already dead.
• My god is affected by the requests of earnest believers, but it does whatever it wishes regardless.
• After altering my internal state of mind via various techniques, I eventually sense the external existence of the spiritual realm.
• The best 'open-minded' way to fairly check for god's existence is to greatly discount contrary signals and greatly magnify agreeable signals, i.e. you must believe in order to see.
• I construe the truism "absence of proof is not proof of absence" as affirmation of my views alone, despite placing my views in the same logical category as every unobserved "thing", including the irritating gnomes that steal socks on laundry day.

I have no doubt that thoughtful believers have their own thorough responses to the preceding statements. In return they may feel inspired to suggest self-refuting statements to illustrate my beliefs. I'll anticipate a few on their behalf, and then counter each one immediately (blogger's privilege):

• Transcendent authority doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop me from claiming to know truths better than you. Authority and correctness don't need to be transcendent to be pragmatically useful. Beliefs lie on a continuum of certainty based on the level of verification of the beliefs' implications. Depending on the particular belief, I am simply too unimpressed by the belief itself or its inadequate verification.
• My skepticism of others' fundamental axioms overlooks the unavoidable necessity of my own. I don't dispute the necessity of minimal axioms. Something must function as the foundation of symbolic thought. However, that doesn't justify an explosion of mostly-unproven assumptions about the universe. Better to have few axioms than many axioms.
• Like all humans, I opine that some morality is superior to the rest, although my failure to profess transcendence once again presents no plausible basis for me to do so. Ethical principles and guidelines can originate from humanity. So can goals and ideals ("values"). Instead of reference to an ultimate moral standard, I use the full extent of my human capabilities to perceive and balance the various concerns which apply to a dilemma. When asked, I explain my analysis and justifications bit by bit without mentioning any gods whatsoever, because the backing of a god is irrelevant to evaluating the righteousness of my moral judgment. The religious actually agree on this point. During a conflict between differing religions 1 and 2, the proponents of religion 1 certainly don't give any more credence to the conflicting morals of religion 2 due merely to the ("false") god of religion 2...
• Imperceptible inferences about the supernatural domain are inexcusable, while imperceptible inferences about the natural domain are customary. Inferences differ in validity and probability. To infer the supernatural is to step far beyond the support of known reliable facts. Satisfactory proof needs to be consistent and therefore statistically significant (i.e. not explicable by the slim nonzero chance of rare coincidences). Inferences of supernatural causes fail the criteria, at least in comparison to competing inferences of natural causes. Supernatural causes also have the downsides of extravagant mystery and unpredictability. Placing blame on undetectable mind-organisms, like unidentified designers, raises a torrent of aggravating questions about life-cycle, psychology, habitat, composition...
• Reason and decision-making have resulted in the inescapable conclusion that 'reason' and 'decision-making' are illusions superimposed on the brain's physics of matter and energy. I suppose, but according to that logic, isn't everything "illusions" superimposed on physics of matter or energy? Surely reason and decision-making can continue to be meaningful if the innards of the two are particles rather than ghostly mind-stuff. In either case, marvelous symbolic computations continue to yield stunning products. Matter can be the executor and storage of the computations, assuming the right configuration: not tiny isolated chunks of it, like hydrogen gas, but vast populations and multitudes of interconnections, like BRAINSSSS.
• Humans are content with an existence in an unguided universe which contains no god(s) and no afterlife. The flippant rejoinder is that human contentment isn't the aim, truths are; the appropriate reactions to the truths are "left as an exercise" to the seekers. Seriously, my recommendation is to avoid obsession on unchangeable Big Questions. Such obsessions are distractions from what can be enjoyed and controlled: daily life, on planet Earth, in the 21st century. On the other hand, I think it's generally good for a human to create a "purpose" and to acknowledge/accept the danger of inevitable death. For example, motivation for rectifying some of the terrible afflictions on humanity, even on a small scale, isn't contingent on how much it pleases gods.

personal responsibility through collective suffering

I'm no economist, which explains why I attempted to describe the economy using "deadlocks" and "local minima/maxima". And I suspect that many other commentators aren't economists either, which explains why their preferred analysis also comes from a different domain: morality. Within that frame, economic decisions are moral decisions; decisions in the context of efficient markets result in swift and appropriate moral consequences. Personal responsibility is a synonym for the level of economic success.

Like many perspectives, this one has an unsurprising problem: its implications aren't a perfect fit for all reality. For example, market shifts in the unit price of fossil-based fuel have unavoidable consequences on anyone who has no substitute method of transportation to and from the workplace, yet the sole cause of these shifts isn't their personal decisions. Nor are they personally responsible for drastic adjustments in the market price of their largest assets. Nor are the downsized employees of a company responsible for the new competing product that decimated the company's number of customers. In an actual massive economy, relatively tiny participants might not have meaningful personal responsibility for their current level of economic success. (Although they decide how to adapt to the changes, of course.) Poetically, transactions link the fates of many, whether temporary or ongoing, whether material or contractual.

Hence, while the moralistic interpretation is sometimes accurate and instructive, it also has pragmatic limits. To prescribe grave and unrestricted consequences is to affect the "innocent" as well as the "wrongdoer". To permit a woeful decision to ricochet is to watch escalating damage to the bystanders. It's paradoxical. Market "punishment" can be effectively unjust. The perpetrator might be able to absorb the fall in wealth without much harm but the same loss eliminates the net worth of multiple others.

I agree that personal responsibility is a vital principle for a realistic free market. I agree that an economy without risks is an economy without a brighter future. But I disagree that the entire thing must be left sick whenever a slob sneezes, in order to ensure the slob's maximum pain.