A Debate on Government (and the Nature of Man)

I very much enjoyed watching today's First Principles debate between Ayn Rand Institute President Yaron Brook and Demos President Miles Rapoport on "Government: What is its proper role?". The event was announced, advertised, and livestreamed on Facebook, yet another example of the many benefits of this at times maligned forum.

As an aside, it is interesting to recall that back in the 1980s John Ridpath, Harry Binswanger, and other Objectivists would participate in debates. However, the debates were between Objectivists and Marxists. Watching the debates back then (which were also quite good) I always thought that a much more relevant debate would be between an Objectivist and a welfare-statists, i.e., a liberal. Well, the views of Mr. Rapoport were indeed those of an run of the mill welfare-statist. We have come a long way from debating Marxists.

But something else struck me about this debate. Mr. Rapoport kept coming back to the issue of rich vs. poor. A free society (free of regulations) would allow only a few rich people to flourish. It seems clear that Mr. Rapoport thinks that the majority of individuals in society are helpless without the endless series of government programs and regulations that he supports and would either die or live out their miserable lives in severe poverty unable to rise above subsistence that the only rich might grant them. Yaron Brook had a far more optimistic view of human capabilities.

This contrast reminded me of Dennis Prager's oft repeated contention that one of the basic differences between liberals and conservatives is that liberals think people are basically good, while conservatives are considerably less sanguine about the inherent nature of man. I have never quite accepted that that was in fact the basic difference between these two camps. It always seemed to me there were other, more important issues here. The contrasting views of Brook and Rapoport have given me a lead to what I think is a more basic issue, at least between liberals and Objectivists.

Liberals think man, the individual, is weak and helpless. Yes, there might be a few "supermen" out there who could flourish under any conditions but the vast majority of people cannot fend for themselves or stand up for their rights without the protection of a gang. That gang is government and if one takes altruism as one's basic moral code (as all good liberals do) then government must do everything it can to help the majority weak as against the minority strong. Thus force is necessary to fight off the strong who would otherwise walk all over the weak.

By contrast, Objectivists think that man, at his essence, is strong and capable. Yes, there might be a few men who cannot fend for themselves but they are easily taken care of through the generosity of the vast majority of strong, independent men. Most men will flourish by their own actions and via trade to mutual advantage with other men. The only issue that government must address is the banishment of force from human relations so that only free voluntary cooperation is allowed. The banishment of force, and thus, protection of individual rights, follows naturally from an egoistic ethics in which the moral purpose of each individual is the fulfillment of his life, and therefore the role of government is limited to the protection of the free action of each individual in pursuing of his own happiness.

It is heartening that the debate was well attended online there were upwards of 850 viewers of the live stream. I am very much looking forward to the next debate which will take place on April 7, 2011 and in which the topic will be "Freedom: For Whom and from What?".

The Peikoff-Kelley Dispute

Those new to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism are no doubt a bit mystified by the fact that there appear to be two rival "camps" that both claim to represent and promote Ayn Rand's ideas, namely the Ayn Rand Institute, still influenced by founder Leonard Peikoff, and what is now called The Atlas Society, whose senior intellectual is David Kelley. The dispute between the two sides is now over 20 years old and is certainly not easy to understand for new students of Objectivism.

Fortunately, blogger Roderick Fitts of Inductive Quest, has now written a series of essays that clearly, carefully, and in some detail lay out why Kelley is wrong and Peikoff is right. He has written four parts so far:

Closed vs. Open Part 1: Introduction, and the Issues

Part 2: The History of the Dispute, and the Closed and Open Systems

Part 3: On Moral Judgment

Part 4: Moral Sanction

I think these essays will be useful not only to newcomers but experienced Objectivists as well because they do an excellent job of clarifying and concretizing the issues involved. As someone who has at various points in time struggled with these issues, I highly recommend this series of essays.

Conservatives and Afghanistan

Conservatives frequently portray themselves as the pro-defense alternative to liberals. It goes without saying, that it is very difficult to regard the current liberal administration as in any way representing the national interest of the United States as far as security is concerned. But are the Conservatives really substantially better?

In fact, Conservatives are frequently pragmatic and focused on non-essentials, and as a result despite some exceptions frequently fall short of a principled stand for national security. Let's look at the current situation in Afghanistan as described in recent instructive article in the Wall Street Journal appropriately entitled Taliban Now Winning:

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency's spiritual home.
...
The militants are mounting sophisticated attacks that combine roadside bombs with ambushes by small teams of heavily armed militants, causing significant numbers of U.S. fatalities, he said. July was the bloodiest month of the war for American and British forces, and 12 more American troops have already been killed in August.

Clearly the situation in Afghanistan is quite bad. Conservatives such as Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard, think this is Obama's problem:

For months, we've been hearing about deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks are up. Coalition casualties are increasing. Poppy crops are flourishing. The Taliban is expanding its presence. Parts of the country are ungovernable. And where there is government, it's corrupt.

The public perception created by such reports is that Afghanistan is a disaster. The problem is that it's not a disaster. It's much, much worse.

And that's very bad news for Barack Obama. As a candidate, he argued that Afghanistan was the good war and that winning there was critical to U.S. national security. This fall, we will see whether he meant it.

The question to ask, however, is how could we let it get to this point, almost 8 years after the initial overthrow of the Taliban regime. A clue is provided by a column that Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote back in December 2004:

Before our astonishing success in Afghanistan goes completely down the memory hole, let's recall some very recent history.

For almost a decade before 9/11, we did absolutely nothing about Afghanistan. A few cruise missiles hurled into empty tents, followed by expressions of satisfaction about the ``message'' we had sent. It was, in fact, a message of utter passivity and unseriousness.

Then comes our Pearl Harbor and the sleeping giant awakes. Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This, in Afghanistan, just three years ago not just hostile but untouchable. What do liberals have to say about this singular achievement by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.

Good grief. This is news? ``Afghanistan grows poppies'' is the sun rising in the east. ``Afghanistan inaugurates democratically elected president'' is the sun rising in the west. Afghanistan has always grown poppies. What is Bush supposed to do? Send 100,000 GIs to eradicate the crop and incite a popular rebellion?

The other complaint is that Karzai really does not rule the whole country. Again the sun rises in the east. Afghanistan has never had a government that controlled the whole country. It has always had a central government weak by Western standards.

But Afghanistan's decentralized system works. Karzai controls Kabul, most of the major cities, and much in between. And he is successfully leveraging his power to gradually extend his authority as he creates entirely new federal institutions and an entirely new military.

The naiveté displayed by Krauthammer here in his enthusiasm at condemning the Liberal's lack of appreciation for the Afghanistan "miracle" would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. One would think that Conservatives, with their emphasis on tradition and history would know better. I would argue in fact that it is precisely such pragmatic, polemical thinking of clinging to the successful holding of elections as some kind of major achievement is exactly what got us into the situation we are in today.

What is missing from the the ideas of Conservatives such as Krauthammer is any concept of victory such as was used during World War II. Some better Conservatives, such as Daniel Pipes do recognize that such a concept is needed and were far more skeptical of Bush's war effort and overly ambitious democratic goals early on. However, even they at times fall short of a fully principled approach.

In fact, Conservatives do not present a real alternative to the appeasement engaged in by Liberals. The most consistent advocates for a principled foreign policy of self interest are Objectivists, who from the time of 9/11 attacks (and in fact long before) have advocated a policy of destruction for terrorists and their sponsors. Objectivists were also among the first to recognize that the nature of the enemy needed to be identified and that the goal ought to be victory.

If there is no God (Part I)

If there's one thing it's hard to resist blogging about, it's Dennis Prager's incessant arguments against atheism. For some reason, I tend to take these essays personally. Perhaps it's because at various points in my life I have struggled with the issue of religion so that I take these arguments very seriously.

Prager's latest effort against secularism is entitled "If there is no God" and he lists 14 separate consequences that he believes follow from atheism. He grants at the outset that "it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God's existence," which fact, as Ari Armstrong quite correctly points out, makes any claim to the existence of God arbitrary and thus worthy of immediate dismissal. In the same post, Ari also adds that "[n]evertheless, because claims about God involve absurd metaphysical presumptions, it is possible to disprove God's existence."

But let's leave all that aside for the moment, Prager is effectively conceding that belief in God is an irrational leap of faith but claims that "what is provable is what happens when people stop believing in God." What, as far as Prager is concerns, happens when people stop believing in God?

Well, I think Prager's points can be divided up as follows. I count four separate items that are really all about the claim that the absence of God makes the theory and practice of morality impossible and thus leads to outright immorality and evil. Three items relate to what Prager peceives as the "lack of objective meaning to life." As far a Prager is concerned this results in life being a "tragic fare" for all of us and the, to Prager apparently disturbing fact, that everyone after death everyone ends up the same way. This is followed by several items that may be termed cultural deterioration, including such things as no inspiring art, an increase in profanity, something Prager calls "humanist hubris", and the fact that humans and animals have equal value. Finally, there are the claims that without God, man is determined, has no rights, and is more prone to irrationality.

Here I must remind the reader that I'm not arguing as a representive atheist, not if that means that I'm somehow an average of all atheist ideologies. I can only argue for what I regard as true which is Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand (though of course I am merely presenting my understanding of the ideas -- any errors are my own). Objectivism is of course atheist, but that is a consequence of its regard for reason, not a primary. Prager is also not a general theist, whatever that would mean. In fact Prager, specifies what kind of God he is referring too:

The God of Israel, the God of America's founders, "the Holy God who is made holy by justice" (Isaiah), the God of the Ten Commandments, the God who demands love of neighbor, the God who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the God who is cited on the Liberty Bell because he is the author of liberty.

Unfortunately I dare say that is not nearly as clear as the philosophy of Objectivism. However, since Prager is an advocate of what he terms Judeo-Christian values, I assume by the references that he means the God of Judaism and Christianity.

Let's start with the obvious ones first -- the claims about atheism and morality. Prager makes the following four claims:

1. Without God..there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil."
2. Secular philosophy provides no real guidance for an ethical life.
3. Atheism leads to unwillingness to confront evil
4. Atheistic regimes commit more atrocities than religious regimes
   

The fourth claim really needs to be dismissed out of hand. It is simply improper to make an argument based on a relatively lesser number atrocities. To the extent that we disapprove of such things, I think we can all agree to condemn regimes that engage in such acts, whether on a large or small scale. It is simply no use to a victim of the Inquisition that he is a member of a much smaller group of victims than the communists put in the Gulag or the Nazis in the concentration camps.

That leaves the first three claims. Prager clarifies that

...unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

In Prager's argument objectivity in morality comes from "a moral authority that transcends humans." Let's ignore the inherent weaknesses in using an "authority" as a claim to objectivity. Prager clearly conflates what Ayn Rand called "intrinsicism" with objectivity. He regards any view emanating from a human being, no matter what it's based on, as "subjective."

But this is mistaken (to put it charitably) -- man can regard his views as objective if he follows an objective method in reaching his conclusions, a method that relies on facts and reason. Objectivity is not a feature inherent in reality. While the phrase "objective reality" can be used, it is primarily with regard to man's knowledge and ideas to which the idea of objectivity applies. Prager might agree that scientific knowledge and ideas can be objective but he claims that values cannot be. But this is also false: Ayn Rand has shown that values follow the same pattern as other knowledge and that it is possible to arrive at objective values by the application of reason to the facts of man's nature.

Values are that which we pursue or aim to keep. Living things other than human beings automatically pursue those values that are beneficial to their lives, within the limits possible to them. Since a human being, like all living things, is confronted with the alternative of life or death, if he wants to live, he must follow the principles of self-preservation by choice. These principles are the objective requirements of man's life and thus constitute the objective values and virtues that man should follow. There is, of course, much more to it than that, and whole books have been written on the subject. These books also address in some detail what Prager perceives as the missing guidance for ethical behavior. Objectivism agrees with Prager that human beings need guidance and it endeavors to provide it in the form of values such as reason, purpose and self-esteem, as well as virtues, such as rationality, independence, integrity, productiveness, honesty, justice, and pride, as well as a major vice -- the initiation of physical force. If these values were pursued and virtues practiced consistently by leaders of the Western world, I'm quite certain that evil would be confronted. In fact, I would think evil would not get nearly as far as it has.

Next, let's tackle the issue of meaning. This is actually a very fascinating and challenging topic that others have written some important things about. Prager claims that without God our "existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced." Here I may surprise some and agree completely. It's true: Without God there is no intrinsic purpose or meaning. An intrinsic purpose or meaning would be one intrinsic to the very nature of reality as specified by reality's purported creator and entirely independent of any human values. For religious people, this meaning is very important, very dear to their hearts. And in Judaism and Christianity specifically, the meaning revolves around the overall plan that God has for man and the world he lives in, as well as the existence of an afterlife.

Be that as it may, I cannot help feeling unmoved as my happiness in life does not depend on any such meaning. For me and many others like me, the meaning I receive from my most important values such as work and loved ones is sufficient. I have other broader goals as well, such as helping to spread my values to the wider culture. So frankly, my overall answer to Prager's claim is that my life has meaning and value to me and that is sufficient. I refuse to indulge in fantasies to compensate for any perceived inadequacies in my life. If I am unhappy about some aspect I aim to change it and thus add actual value and meaning to my existence.

Prager regards life without God as "a tragic fare," in which "we live, we suffer, we die." Leaving aside the specific formulation for the moment, why does this constitute a problem to someone who does not wish for the impossible? "Tragic" is an evaluative term. But as far as Objectivism is concerned, in this context, it is a stolen concept ("using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots"). To evaluate requires that one first accept the standard of value: Man's life. It is improper to apply moral terms to basic facts of existence, including man's existence. It is a fundamental fact of living entities, including man, that they live and eventually die. It is not to be evaluated, it is the basis of all evaluation. The fact of man's limited lifespan leads to the need for moral principles. If human beings could live forever, no particular mode of living and thus no ethics or morality would be required.

Prager is also, of course, wrong to summarize human life as "we live, we suffer, we die". He deliberately left out the possibility of human happiness. There is certainly no necessity of suffering as such and modern medical technology has certainly reduced the amount of suffering that man does experience during his life time. More importantly, life has the potential to be a source of great happiness and flourishing, if one's sets rational goals and achieves them. Reality is not inherently set against man. If man accepts the absolutism of reality and follows the principles of morality he can, barring accidents, achieve his values in this world and many have done so. This is what Ayn Rand called the Benevolent Universe Premise.

I don't know that there's much point in addressing Prager's apparent concern about the similar fate of nuns and mass murderer's after death. Why this should concern a rational person is really beyond me. After death only the living remain. It is the responsibility of the living to remember and judge the dead appropriately and justly.

I will continue with Prager's remaining claims in the next part.

Update 8/24/2008: Added link to Part II.

Science vs. Faith

It is difficult to say which is more annoying: A Conservative arguing that there is no rational, secular basis for morality or a "scientist" arguing against consciousness and free will on the basis of "scientific" materialism. In a similar vein we have physicist Paul Davies argument in the November 24, New York Times that "science has its own faith-based belief system."

I've decided to address this op-ed in detail and see if I can't respond to it.

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

It's interesting that nowhere in the op-ed is the idea that religion is faith-based challenged, even though I know for a fact that some very religious people would object quite strongly to the claim that all religions require faith. But let's leave that aside since I don't really disagree with it. Is all science based on "testable hypotheses"? It seems to me that the basis of science is the law of causality. Testable hypotheses are the part of the scientific method but I wouldn't call them the basis of science.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

I essentially agree that "science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way" (although Davies is mixing elements of metaphysics and epistemology here) -- but is an assumption the same as a "faith-based belief system". Is this an arbitrary assumption? Davies writes that "so far this faith has been justified" -- what a Humean approach to the world! Like Hume, Davies seems to think that Causality as such does not exist. We just got used to entities behaving according to what we call natural laws but as far as Davies is concerned there's no real reason for it. Apparently we just got lucky.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

This is where one really must have a philosophy. Ayn Rand wrote in connection to science:

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

I find it ironic that many people reading about Objectivist metaphysics find it obvious and yet highly intelligent scientists are unable to come to the same seemingly obvious conclusions. Let's briefly review -- the fundamental starting point is existence. If one accepts that something exists and that one is aware of it then one has in fact granted all three fundamental axioms: Existence, Consciousness and Identity. The important formulation of Ayn Rand is that "Existence is Identity." This applies to attributes of entities as well as actions and therefore causality. There is no possibility of an absence of laws -- all entities have a specific nature, and hence specific attributes and actions possible to them and no others. There are wide variety of things (including living and nonliving, conscious and vegetative) yet each one has a nature and follows it. A thing without a nature, without identity is nothing in particular and literally does not exist. It is therefore an invalid question to ask "where do these laws come from" -- to be is to be subject to laws.

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

Yes, scientists should "discover the laws and apply them" -- to go beyond that is the job of philosophy that has to validate the basis on which the scientist operates. Again, one can see the influence of Humean philosophy on Davies in his denial of Causality.

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

The irony is that Davies's colleagues are mostly right (except for the "nobody knows") -- this isn't a scientific question and the laws ultimately just are. There cannot be an infinite regress. A proper philosophy would have told him that. This is hardly "anti-rational" -- none of this restricts scientific inquiry. Deeper and deeper causes can always be found but there cannot be a "reason for causality" which is what Davies is looking for. This is exactly the same as looking for reasons for existence. Existence exists. One must accept that (and not on faith but on the basis of every percept one has ever had) to get anywhere in this world. Rationality depends on causality and not the other way around. Reason is dependent on a proper metaphysics, especially identity but including causality -- otherwise it would just be game.

I'm going to skip a little now.

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

I have to say I'm highly skeptical of the idea of multiple universes. It's really irrelevant to the Davies's questions on causality which Davies recognizes below.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

Nonsense. Properly, science if founded on a philosophy of reason, such as Ayn Rand's Objectivism, or at least some form of Aristotelianism, which starts with the proper fundamental axioms of philosophy including Existence, Identity and Consciousness and recognizes that the law of causality as a corollary of the law of identity. While individual scientists may mistakenly believe that science rests on faith, familiarity with a proper philosophy would soon persuade them otherwise.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships. And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe. It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme. In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

The fundamental "reason" for the laws is clear -- causality, being a corollary of identity, is inherent in existence. The idea that science is faith-based rests on a mistaken Humean philosophy and denial of the Law of Causality that guarantees that because things are what they are, they will act accordingly. In the context of science, the implication is the regularity that Davies finds so mysterious. The scientist's job is to work out the specifics of the regularity.

The Rational Case for Environmental Conservation

In a long but fascinating essay blogger Spark A Synapse (SAS) presents what she sees as a rational case for environmental conservation. The essence of her argument is presented in the following paragraph:

My point is, there is a rational basis for conservation strategies on a personal level, and for exploiting the Earth in a sustainable way. News articles detailing environmentalists who complain about exploitation of the Moon or Mars are certainly annoying, I agree. But we must ask, "Why are these views wrong?" They’re wrong because non-living material doesn’t go out of existence. The idea of conserving minerals on Mars – or even Earth - is clearly ridiculous. Unless we’re removing so many materials from Mars that we’re threatening to throw off Earth’s orbit, I see no reason to care. Furthermore, those views aren't based in fact. They're based in ideology. But what doesn’t follow from dismissing ridiculous environmentalists is that we don’t need to care about conserving Earth’s resources at all.

In order to thrive, we have to discover more about the natural world and exploit it. The vast majority of the world that is left to be discovered and exploited does not consist of chemical or physical entities, which have been and always will always be with us. The vast majority of resources to be exploited are biological, and those entities can and are going out of existence. When Objectivists point out the dramatic progress humans have made through the use of reason, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that in order to use reason, we have to have something to reason about. If there was a possibility that we could lose 25% of chemical elements in the periodic table within our lifetime, I think people would reasonably be upset about it.

Besides providing an abundance of examples that illustrate the issue quite clearly, she argues in terms that Objectivists ought to appreciate:

Unless a particular species directly threatens your life (i.e. smallpox, malarial mosquitoes), there is actually a rational basis for caring about species extinctions, even species that are currently obscure: for all of the potential things we could learn from them, and for all of the products that could be designed from them that we never would have thought of on our own, and finally, although this is least important in my opinion – simply for aesthetic reasons (in the case of animals with little known or potential economic value).

SAS is very definitely not an Environmentalist who seeks to protect nature from man and preserve nature for nature's sake. Rather, she argues for the preservation of some things for man's sake.

Judaism and me: An autobiographical excursion

Part 1: Becoming an atheist

I was born in Mannheim, West Germany in 1969 to the best parents anybody could ever have -- mine. My parents both came from Orthodox Jewish families but by the time I was born they were not particularly religious. They had met in Germany but neither was originally from there. My dad had grown up in a little town in Poland until his family's existence offended the invading German armies. His experiences in surviving the Holocaust permanently cured him of any excessive religiosity. My mom's family moved from Aden, Yemen to what was then British Mandatory Palestine when she was still a child. It was a large family -- she had nine brothers and a sister, yet she resisted the culturally-religiously inspired disrespect for women in her family (e.g., my Grandma had never learned how to read) and ultimately left home without following in the family traditions.

Nevertheless, I was raised in a "traditional" Jewish context. That meant that I was sent to a weekly Jewish religion class taught by the local Rabbi as a substitute for the Christian religion classes that my non-Jewish friends were taking in the public schools I attended in Germany (no, there is no separation of Church and State in Germany). The class taught Hebrew, Jewish history and about the Jewish holidays. We also went to services at the local synagogue during occasional Fridays, Saturdays and most holidays. At home, my dad would conduct the various ceremonies, though we were not exactly strict (e.g., we would watch TV on Friday nights). My mom would light the Friday night candles. When I would ask my dad at a much later age why he went through the various motions of religious ceremony and songs, even though he did not believe in the underlying theology, he would say that it reminds him of his youth before the war when his dad and the rest of his family was still alive, and conducted the same ceremonies and sang the same songs.

We moved to Tel Aviv, Israel when I was 10 years old. When given the choice by my mom, I opted for the secular Israeli school system over the religious one, on the basis of my preference for sleeping late. I had previously heard from my cousin (who had also moved from Germany to Israel) that the religious students are required to pray the daily morning prayer at school at 7am and I had no interest in getting up even earlier to go to school. In secular Israeli schools, the Jewish Bible is taught as a historical and literary text. Also, some of the so-called Jewish "oral law" is taught. We still attended synagogue frequently and during all the major holidays. I started to resent religion somewhat as the services were getting annoying and started to interfere with my social life (e.g., I preferred to go the pool on Saturday morning rather than to prayers). Even so, I had a very traditional Bar Mitzvah including an extended chanting of a section of the Torah. Despite much ceremony I did not consider myself religious. I believed in God but did not think much of religion. Some of my dad's attitude toward it all was definitely starting to rub off on me. I started to think that there's a bit of hypocrisy involved. If all this stuff (the Bible, etc.) is real then we really ought to take it a little more seriously. If not, why do it at all? All my friends were at least as secular as I was or even considerably more. Large segments of my extended family, however, were very religious and while I maintained cordial relations with some of them, we were not close.

We moved to Los Angeles during the summer of 1984. Here was the first time that I was not part of a large or small organized Jewish community whether secular or religious. At first we attended some synagogues during some holidays and kept up some of the ceremonies. But we never quite recovered even the limited religiosity that existed in the previous two countries in which we had lived. I decided I was an atheist early in my senior year of High School. That was even before I had discovered Ayn Rand. I simply concluded one day during my science class that there is no God in these equations, therefore no God period. At a certain point I decided it was too hypocritical (and really downright strange) to attend synagogue anymore and participate in any further ceremonies. So I refused, despite occasional extended pleading from my mom. During college I discovered Ayn Rand and that further cemented my principled opposition to any religious practice....and yet...

Part 2 Religious Relapses

...and yet...throughout my college years I maintained a close eye on everything related to Jews, Judaism, and Israel (I still do). This was the late 80s, early 90s. The various Objectivist splits deeply disturbed me and I became somewhat disillusioned with Objectivism. In addition, I realized right around the time of my graduation that my choice of career was a mistake. I did not want to be a physicist. At the same time, I watched with some jealousy as a High School friend, who became an Orthodox Jew late in High School, and intended to complete his legal degree in Israel. His life seemed to have purpose and meaning whereas mine was a confused mess. I visited Israel for a couple weeks after my graduation and saw my maternal religious Grandmother for the last time (she died a few years later). When I got back to L.A., I decided that perhaps I should give Judaism a try and see what it can do for me.

I started attending services at a nearby synagogue and read a lot of books to try to educate myself on what was actually involved in being Orthodox. This spell lasted a few weeks. In the end, there was a conflict between work and religion and I chose work. After that choice, I no longer attended synagogue and slowly became an Objectivist again.

I met my lovely future wife on a web-based Jewish dating board. My reasoning was: I need someone who understands my obsession with this stuff, even if they, like me, don't want to get too near it. In fact, as we started dating we both confirmed that neither of us was religious and we opted to have a completely secular wedding. My wife's family had celebrated Christmas when she was growing up and at her insistence we got a tree. I must admit that have never felt entirely comfortable with Christmas. Growing up in Germany, it was always very clear that despite the various pagan and commercial elements, it was the holiday that celebrated Jesus's birth and that's something Jews just don't celebrate. But I agreed as long as the celebration was entirely secular and amounted to a non-specific season's holiday (even if we did call it Christmas for simplicity). We had our daughter in 2001 and our son in 2005 by which time we had moved, for job-related reasons, into the suburbs in Orange County, California.

For those not familiar with the area, let me assure you that the term Bible Belt could easily apply. My daughter is enrolled in several ballet classes and virtually all of her friends's parents conversation focuses on church activities. There are over 80 churches within a mere 4 mile radius of our city, including some mega-churches. Just for comparison's sake, within the same radius, the number of synagogues is one and there are no mosques. Having two kids and moving into the suburbs has substantially isolated us from our friends in Los Angeles. We see them every few months now, instead of weekly as we used to. Of course, we're closer to Ayn Rand Institute but since I prefer to attend the Institute's events with my wife, and because of the difficulties in finding a reliable baby sitter, I usually end up not going. In the meantime, my dad's health has not been ideal. He's in his eighties now and unfortunately it's showing. If that wasn't enough to disturb my emotional state, over the last few years I had also become, for various reasons, more and more dissatisfied with my job. I was thinking of going back to graduate school to study a different subject and change career paths but upon reflection I rejected that option as financially prohibitive and far too time consuming.

I have always been a news-junkie but the news over the last few years has been worse than depressing, particularly with regard to Jews and Israel. Israel witnessed the worst spate of terrorism in its history. During the late nineties and first decade of the new millennium so far, the news was filled with the most horrible, vicious explosions as suicide bombing were becoming a regular occurrence. To say that watching this has been disturbing is an understatement. I started reading the lists of victims with dread, afraid of recognizing some names. In addition, Europe seemed to feel nostalgia for the 1930s with antisemitic incidents increasing in countries such as France and England, as well as the rest of Europe. With every incident or attack, I felt a strong identification with the Jewish victims.

At around the same time, the question of what exactly we should tell our daughter about our Jewishness eventually arose. All the kids around her had no trouble identifying themselves -- they were Christian. In fact, my daughter would get frequent invitations to a local church group's kids club which we politely turned down. At first, I thought well, we are certainly Jewish, in the ethnic sense. But that seemed rather hollow and meaningless. We thought it was inappropriate to introduce Objectivism to a 5 year old. That was something that my daughter will learn about at a much more mature age. But we thought it appropriate to give her some content to Judaism so that she could at least see what her background meant, even if her parents didn't practice it. I wanted her to experience some Jewish holidays first-hand so that she could see what they are like. This was right before the time of the Purim holiday.

I chose to attend a local event organized by Chabad, knowing from previous general knowledge of them that they are a highly welcoming group that does not ask too many questions. My son was sick that day so my wife stayed home with him and I alone with my daughter. The event included the traditional reading of the scroll of Esther, as well as food and drink, various activity booths, music, and lots of (sexually segregated) dancing. Partially to my surprise and certainly to my wife's surprise (who was hoping that perhaps I would get all this out of my system now) I enjoyed myself thoroughly. A short time afterward I expressed a desire to my wife to start a Friday night Sabbath ceremony. We decided to visit a synagogue together to see how we would react to the experience. We tried a large local Reform temple and both hated. Not, because it was religious but because it wasn't religious enough. I would later describe it to my mom as more entertainment than prayer service. Having attended nothing but Orthodox synagogues all my life, the female Cantor, the guitar player and the general atmosphere just was not the Judaism I remembered. It seemed more like a new age church with a little bit of Hebrew prayer thrown in. So after looking around at other more traditional places we opted to go to the local Chabad events. These were most held at the Rabbi's home which doubled as a synagogue and meeting place.

Part 3 Chabad, Religious Awakening and Decline

Chabad is somewhat different than some other Orthodox groups in that it has an incredibly extensive outreach program. There are over 4,000 "emissary families" in neighborhoods and University Campuses, all over the United States, Europe, Israel and around world. These emissaries try to encourage Jews to do Mitzvot (Mitzvah is the singular, Mitzvot is plural -- these are the commandments, and no, not just 10, 613 when a temple exists in Jerusalem, somewhat less at present) and get in touch with their Jewish heritage. Chabad also engages in numerous charitable activities. I have to say that the local Chabad Rabbi and his family are some of the nicest people I've ever met. It definitely helped that they had children of similar ages to ours so that we weren't the only people chasing kids during the various meetings we attended. We decided to enroll my daughter in the Sunday school that the Rabbi's wife set up. My daughter would not grow up ignorant of the traditions.

Meanwhile I was trying to get a better intellectual grasp of Jewish history and ideas. I found the following site particularly helpful. There I found a complete history of the Jews from Biblical to modern times available for download for free, as well as some really interesting lectures on Jewish philosophy. I also found a particularly fascinating series of counter-missionary lectures which probably permanently convinced me that Christianity really is a gigantic fraud. I hope to write about some these ideas, which I believe have general application, in some future posts. I also read a book and saw a DVD by scientists trying reconcile religion with science. Mostly, these were "find the God in the gap" arguments or outright "arguments from incredulity" -- i.e., you can't possibly believe this is all an accident. Admittedly at times, I did fall for them even though in the past I had rejected such arguments. There are still a lot of interesting mysteries in the universe. Some have to do with scientific problems that haven't been solved, such as issues around the origin and function of consciousness and free will (a subject taken seriously by few outside the religious world). Others with the Biblical events such as what, if anything at all, actually happened at Mount Sinai? An alleged event on which the entire Jewish tradition depends. Would I say that any of this proves the existence of God? A few months back I would have said "it would seem so". By now I'm back to "it seems very unlikely". At the rate I'm going, I'll be back to my usual "certainly not" before the year is up.

So what made me change my mind and turn back toward Objectivism? Well, the influence of my wife is not to be discounted. She strongly resisted the mystical mindset and while we both enjoyed the company, found all these strange customs we started to engage in, well, strange and ultimately unacceptable. I found that I was willing to do many things but ultimately could not quite suffer the incessant altruism, as well as the intrinsicism of the mitzvot. I was also never quite able to fully break with Objectivism. There's something so rational and so right about that wonderful system of ideas that any proposed alternative would have to incorporate many of its essentials to hold me for very long. Interestingly, one the major intellectual appeals of Judaism was the claim that "faith" was a foreign concept to it. This may surprise many non-Jews and even some Jews but I heard lectures that insisted, that Judaism is perfectly rational and does not really require any leap of faith. I may write on this in a future post as well. At the same time I noticed that despite Judaism's emphasis on this world and making this world holy, my own orientation during my more religious moments was definitely focused on what seemed to be a completely separate spiritual reality. It seemed that I was started to make the real world, unreal. That started to disturb me and I backed away.

Part 4 Where am I now?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I now consider myself a "student of Objectivism." I still maintain some contacts with Chabad although I must admit I'm starting to feel a bit hypocritical about participating in the ceremonies without believing in them. So I've started turning down their invitations on many occasions. My wife and I still think it's a good idea for our daughter to learn about her heritage. At home we hardly do anything Jewish anymore. We do still intend to celebrate some Jewish holidays though in a substantially secular way. Basically we take from the tradition what we find enjoyable and fun for the whole family and reject the rest. We'll probably continue this as long as this makes sense to us. In previous years I think I was running away from my background, thinking that any contact at all with that culture would contaminate me in some way. I think our attitude today is much more sensible.

Returning to Blogging

It's been a little over a year and a month since I wrote the post below and I have decided to return to blogging.

My life over that period has been quite the intellectual roller coaster. There has been a period, not too long ago, when I did not even call myself an Objectivist. However, it seems I have come back to the fold, as it were. I hope to write some more details of these experiences soon. At this point I would say that the old expression "student of Objectivism" is an accurate description of my current state of mind. There remain some issues with which I am still struggling. Nevertheless, I think I am now closer to Ayn Rand's ideas than to any other system.

Update 10/19: Grammar fix -- changed "where" to "were".

Now on to the meat of the matter. Prager spent the last hour of his program today attempting to clarify his views on the consequences of the decline of Judeo-Christian values and the rise of secular ideas. Specifically, Prager maintained that it is only the belief that man is created in God's image that could be a valid basis for believing in human moral superiority to animals. He further blamed the decline of marriage and reduced desire to have children on secularism. His third example consisted of foreign policy where the morality of the war in Iraq is to be decided by a UN consensus rather than the fixed viewpoints of religion. And finally he pointed to the absence of wisdom at the university, a largely secular institution, which has the distinction of discussing and advocating some of the most foolish ideas in society.

Interestingly Prager insisted he was not trying to convert any atheists or encourage anyone to believe in God. He was simply trying to make clear the consequences of what he termed secularism. He was arguing in effect that no matter what side of the issue one is on, one has to acknowledge that without religious Judeo-Christian values the consequences he enumerated are inevitable. Prager as usual is merely insisting on "clarity."

I will begin by commenting that not all the consequences mentioned by Prager are bad in my view. For example, the issue of whether or not one has children, everything else being equal, is not a moral issue in my view. Context can make it a moral issue in both directions: There are people to whom children would be a great value and there are people who should never have had their children. But human beings as such do not have a moral obligation to have children, notwithstanding the biblical view.

Prager is quite correct on the university as the source and instigator of numerous foolish (and in fact worse than foolish) ideas. They are in fact the source of his two other examples: The consensus view of morality and the moral equivalency of human and animal suffering. The consensus view dates back to the pragmatists such as John Dewey and Charles Peirce, who ultimately derive their ideas from Immanuel Kant. The moral equivalency of humans and animals is a view pushed by Princeton's Peter Singer, among others. Singer's utilitarianism traces its roots to the original utilititarians Mill and Bentham who themselves in effect combine the views of Epicurus and Kant. Ultimately the reason for the presence of these ideas is not secularism as such but a long philosophical development of increasing irrationality that started all the way back in times when most people (and universities as well) were still quite religious. It was the errors and absurdities of the various early religious philosophers which then culminated in the errors and absurdities in the later secular ones. There were parallel trends: The increasing secularism and the increasing tower of irrational errors. Initially, various religious ideas were quite properly rejected in the name of reason. Later on as philosophers made crucial mistakes in understanding how reason works and concluded that reason is impotent, they started to reject almost all abstract principles and concepts due to their initial mistakes. Religion was rejected at the same time as reason. This unfortunately doomed proper secular morality until the arrival of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand's Objectivism in the 20th century.