I'm back... & Chimpanzee Intelligence

I have been blogging since 2003. Although in 2008 I had a high of 77 post, I have had only four posts so far this year. I aim to change that. I am setting myself a goal to make 2009 a new record for both quantity and quality of posts.

Let me start out with a link to an interesting review featured today at Arts & Letters Daily. Helene Guldberg reviews the book Not a Chimp: The hunt to find the genes that make us human, by Jeremy Taylor. Guldberg writes that:

...despite the dedication of a number of primatologists, the cognitive and linguistic abilities of the great apes have never surpassed those of a two-year-old child.

Taylor sets out to argue that it is ‘as wrong as it is misguided’ to ‘exaggerate the narrowness of the gap between chimpanzees and ourselves’: ‘It plays into the hands of our natural propensity to anthropomorphise our pets and other animals, and even our inanimate possessions, and it has allowed us to distort what the science is trying to tell us.’ His aim is ‘to set the record straight and restore chimpanzees to arm’s length’.[emphasis added]

This is a topic with greater implications than the somewhat obvious fact that man is the only rational animal. In the same way that communists were once able to pretend that they have a scientific answer to religion, so today, animal rights activists such as PETA, frequently claim to have a scientific basis for their belief that all animals should have legal rights. That fight is currently going on in the efforts to establish legal rights for primates. And of course, the religious opponents of such rights, such as Dennis Prager, are quick to point out that it is secular ideas that equate the value of human beings and animals:

9. If there is no God, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.

Strictly speaking, Prager approaches the topic from his belief that morality must have a divine origin. Nevertheless, if science claims that a chimpanzee's genetic code is 98.4% identical to man's, then Prager can claim that as far as secular science is concerned there is no significant basis for differing value judgments between the two primates. However, if secular scientists are arguing that there is quite a difference between man and chimpanzees, if they claim that:

...despite the very small difference in the gene coding sequence between humans and chimps, some of the important genetic differences are in genes that regulate a whole host of other genes. So a small change can make an immense difference. The genetic difference between us and chimps may be much greater than the 1.6 per cent figure implies, as our uniqueness is based on a powerful network of gene regulation, he argues.
...
Unlike any other animal ‘we build on very modest foundations and blow them up to extraordinary dimensions of power and complexity’, which has ‘led from the invention of the wheel, less than six thousand years ago, to the wheeling out of the latest passenger jet’.

then these significant secular differences could imply significant secular value differences. Of course, the full value implications require a proper identification of what values are and how they relate to man -- a topic on which Ayn Rand had a thing or two to say.

Should we save the Republicans from the religious?

With this somewhat presumptuous title, I am referring to efforts by many Objectivists to influence the internal soul-searching of the Republican party in light of their defeat in the 2008 U.S. elections. Efforts have ranged from Paul Hsieh's op-ed published in the Denver Post, to various letters to the editor. But while these worthwhile efforts serve a purpose beyond the nature of the Republican party, I have been considering whether on the political level, the future will not leave us ultimately with a very different political situation.

I have recently had the pleasure to read C. Bradley Thompson's Antislavery Political Writings, 1833-1860: A Reader in which the activist and political history of the abolitionist movement of the 19th century are recounted. It was fascinating to see how at first, in the early 1830s the abolitionist movement avoided politics altogether, and focused on "moral suasion," via public lectures and publications. In this respect, there is a clear parallel to the spreading of Ayn Rand's ideas throughout the culture. After the first few years of this effort, however, the movement split with some members pursuing political change directly and others continuing to try to influence the culture from the outside. The initial political efforts were by all accounts pathetic, though eventually a completely new party emerged that supported the essence of the abolitionists ideas: The Republican party which went on to win the 1860 elections. What is interesting about this is that when the abolition movement started with the publication of the Liberator in 1831 that party did not exist.

Why should we assume that we can change the Republican party so as to adopt our ideas? From listening to talk radio recently it appears that religious Conservatives have no intention of leaving the party. If anything, it might be claimed that the de-emphasis on religious ideas at the top of the most recent presidential ticket (despite the Palin selection) lead to a decrease in evangelical enthusiasm for McCain and help bring about the Obama victory. Also, while the religious trend in the culture continues it appears highly unlikely that the Republicans will choose to be less sympathetic to the concerns of what appears to be their single largest constituency.

These are depressing times for many reasons. The financial crisis is likely to get worse because a government dominated by Democrats is unlikely to pursue massive cuts in spending, taxes, and regulations so as to free the economy and allow a recovery. Culturally, we are still split between despicable nihilist and potentially dangerous religious elements. From a national security perspective numerous challenges remain. And yet, I would say I am optimistic about the future because it seems we have never had a better chance to successfully expand our influence and thus ultimately to change things for the better.

I am not here arguing for the immediate formation or support of a third party. Clearly, the Libertarian party has never been either right or viable. Nor are there any alternative realistic possibilities presently. However, if, as I expect, we are successful in our efforts and manage to increase our numbers and the numbers of our sympathizers substantially in the next 10 years, then we will face a choice as to the correct political path to take. If at that time the Republicans are still the party where religious Conservatives feel at home then I think we should, perhaps with support from many frustrated Republicans and perhaps even some Democrats form a viable alternative principled, secular pro-Capitalist party. Thus I believe we should let the religious have the Republican party and hopefully, they will ultimately go the way of the Whigs of the 19th century.

If there is no God (Part IV)

This is the conclusion of my criticisms of Dennis Prager's article on what would happen in the absence of God. In Part I, I criticized Prager's attempts to conclude that morality and meaning would suffer if there were no God. In Part II, I denied that a world without God somehow means that man has no free will. In Part III, I attacked the claim that the absence of God necessarily leads to some kind of cultural deterioration.

What's left? Well, I promised to still deal with Prager's claim that "Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable" as well as that "without God there are no inalienable human rights."

Let's start with the issue of rights.

Yes, it is my understanding that the Founding Fathers, when defending individual rights, relied on the Natural Law ideas of Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and others. The Natural Law tradition substantially based these ideas on the existence of a God, who created and maintains the natural order and, as the creator of man, endowed him with inalienable rights.

Despite the enormously important and praiseworthy achievement of the Founders in finally explicitly recognizing individual rights as part of a government and its Constitution, there are in fact quite a few problems in with the specific understanding of rights possessed by the Founders, not the least of which would be that basing the idea of rights on the existence of a fantastic being, would, as soon as more intellectuals started realizing the difficulties with the existence of such a being, put the whole Natural Law-based rights case in jeopardy.

But fortunately, and once again, Prager is wrong. The case for man's rights does not depend on the existence of God. Ayn Rand has shown that rights can be defended entirely on the basis of man's nature combined with a certain morality.

The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

The reason for the confusion in the minds of many Conservatives is again their inability to understand that individual rights are an objective moral principle. Its objectivity implies that it connects aspects both of man's consciousness (his values -- he is worthy of living) as well as of existence (his nature -- man survives by reason). It is not simply that rights are a kind of inherent hidden property of man that we would see if we were the right glasses. Nor do moral principles fall from the sky. They must be discovered, validated and practiced and in this case protected if they are to serve their function which is to further man's life. If men want to live in a society in which their rights are protected, they must recognize each others rights and create and sustain a government that is vigilant about protecting these rights. Frankly, God simply doesn't enter this picture at all.

In fact, the history of the 20th century notwithstanding, it is quite clear that belief in God as such does not lead to rights at all as the history of Europe from the 5th to the 16th century makes clear. God was very much in men's minds during those eleven centuries but individual rights were nowhere to be found. If one cares to study the periods involved, then it's clear that it was increasing emphasis of reason and the efficacy of the individual mind that ultimately lead some Christians to support the concept of individual rights, arguably in contradiction to much of their recent theology.

This is not, of course to deny the horrors of the 20th century, but here again it simply means that belief in God is not the only, nor necessarily the worst of the causes of man's inhumanity to man. But if we hope to do better, we ought to reject both religions and secular ideologies that differ only in the degree and type of mysticism, irrationality, collectivism and altruism. This is because rights depend on rationality, egoism, and individualism, ideas not usually associated with belief in God.

Finally, turning now to the issue of "humanist hubris," Prager writes:

12. Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.

I admit I have trouble understanding exactly what Prager is getting at here. Of course, the statement is almost trivially true. Among the religious, man may be highest among the animals but he is the equivalent of a speck of dust compared to the infinite, omnipotent and omniscient God. If such a God does not exist then man becomes the "supreme being."

Again, what does Prager mean here? He is surely aware, since that's one of his claims in the very same essay, that some secular people (certainly not me!) hold that humans and animals are of equal value. So then does Prager contradict his own claim here? On the one hand absence of God leads to humans and animals being of the same value, on the other hand, if there is no God man becomes the supreme being. Well which is it? Or could it be that the absence of God has no specific consequences, that atheism is simply the absence of belief in God and it's one's positive ideas that are the cause of one's values?

But I'll leave all this aside because I'm more interested in a deeper point raised by Prager's claim. I actually agree with Prager that, absent a God, man becomes the supreme being. This is not a problem for me but it seems to be a problem for Prager. Why?

The answer can be seen in the very same essay in Prager's various claims of what happens to men who operate without believing in a God. Apparently, Prager thinks that such men are basically irrational, immoral, uninspired, crude, profane, determined by their genes and environment, and devoid of meaning or purpose. Thus when such beings come to regard themselves as supreme, it would, in Prager's view, be a disaster. Such beings need to know that there's something above them to force them to behave as civilized beings rather than savage beasts.

Men are not born believing in God. Children are not aware of such an idea until it is taught them by their elders. Thus I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Prager regards atheistic individuals as for the most part no better than children (and particularly badly behaved children at that) who need to be taught to obey a higher authority.

Prager has over the years claimed that one of the most important differences between himself and his intellectual opponents is the fact that while he believes that "we are born with tendencies toward both good and evil," they believe that "people are basically good." On the face of it, Prager's attitude seems balanced but on closer examination, and based on the way Prager regards atheistic man described above, it seems far more likely that Prager regards man as basically bad, though he grants that with enough application of faith and force something good may come out.

How to respond? At this point I have to quote Ayn Rand on man:

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice.

By virtue of his rational faculty, man is the supreme being on earth. But by the fact that the faculty is volitional, i.e., his to control via his choices, he is capable of both great achievement and great destruction. However, it is not his destructive capabilities that distinguish man but his creative abilities because when he is creative he is actualizing and fulfilling his fundamental nature as a rational being, whereas when he is destructive, he merely returns to the level of animals, even if he is capable of more destruction than they are. Thus man at his best is good. Man at his best is worthy of admiration and even of worship. I conclude with another quote from Ayn Rand:

Do not confuse “man worship” with the many attempts, not to emancipate morality from religion and bring it into the realm of reason, but to substitute a secular meaning for the worst, the most profoundly irrational elements of religion. For instance, there are all the variants of modern collectivism (communist, fascist, Nazi, etc.), which preserve the religious-altruist ethics in full and merely substitute “society” for God as the beneficiary of man’s self-immolation....
...
The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man’s highest potential and strive to actualize it. . . . [Man-worshipers are] those dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth.

If there is no God (Part III)

In this post I thought I would tackle Prager's claims that without God there is a cultural deterioration in terms of art, language, and the equation of the value of animals with people (I'll leave "hubris" for another post). I happen to agree that all these are indeed disturbing aspects in today's world but I would put the blame not on the absence of God but the general irrationality of the culture. Interestingly, Prager argues that it is the absence of belief in God that leads to this irrationality. He writes:

Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.

There are several problems with Prager's above claims. The first and foremost is that it portrays a deep ignorance of the history of philosophy. All the secular irrational doctrines had their origin in religious and theistic thinkers that severely undermined the efficacy of reason. Philosophers such Rene Descartes (a Catholic) and Immanuel Kant (a Lutheran), among others, did much to undermine reason and the secular thinkers that followed them simply pushed their ideas to their logical conclusion with the ultimate result being the absurdities of 20th century philosophy. The result of the decay of philosophy was a deterioration in all the humanities and arts. As philosophers claimed to have conclusively shown that no absolutes and no standards existed, it is no surprise to see the obvious results on art and language.

But there is no reason to think that secular rational and principled people that speak politely, produce great art, and think clearly about important issues cannot exist. I dare say I know quite a few myself. The culture does not have to continue to be dominated by ugliness, coarseness and irrationality but it seems to me that substituting one kind of irrationality for another is hardly a reasonable solution.

As to the particular irrationality of regarding humans and animals of equal value, I don't think that opinion is limited to secular thinkers. Certain religions of the East also take this view. If one understands that value for human beings depends on holding man's life as the standard and man's happiness as the goal of life, then I think there's really no issue at all. Admittedly this is not self-evident but thanks to Ayn Rand, the means of establishing objective values has been achieved. Animals may have value for man, but they are not of the same value to man as man.

This series concludes with Part IV.

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

If there is no God (Part II)

Since I'm a little tired tonight, I'll leave most of Prager's remaining points for my next installment, and confine myself to Prager's claim that "if there is no God, the human being has no free will." According to Prager's eighth point:

Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

One of the more frustrating aspects of this particular claim is that one seems to find quite a few atheists who would agree with it. It is a depressing fact that determinism appears to be a far too prevalent opinion among many scientifically oriented people. But we cannot go by the popularity or unpopularity of a point of view. Is Prager correct to say that without God there's no free will? No. In fact both Prager and the materialists who deny free will are wrong. The fact of free will is axiomatic and it is not in fact possible to rationally deny it. Those who attempt to deny it are implicitly relying on their ability to choose their own views by their own free choice -- otherwise they would be determined to believe in determinism and would have no choice in the matter. They are saying in effect: I freely choose to believe in the fact that we are all determined -- an obvious contradiction. Thus, contrary to what Prager suggests our genes and environment do not determine our thoughts and actions. Determinism is false, even in a world without God.

Furthermore, notwithstanding much rhetoric to the contrary, an omniscient God, far from supporting the idea that man has free will, substantially undermines it. This follows from the fact that if God exists and knows all, including all future events and choices then those choices cannot really be considered free. Some variants of Christianity go so far as to support the doctrine of predestination which is arguably itself a form of determinism. No, I'm quite sure that free will is in fact much safer without God.

I'll try to address Prager's remaining points in my next post.

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

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.

Prager vs. "Secularism"

Award winning blogger Gus van Horn writes today that

Ann Coulter, when she attempts to pretend that there is no such thing as a "religious right", will sometimes cite hit counts from Lexis-Nexis searches for "religious right" in left-wing media reports. I wonder what a similar search of "secular left" among her own writings (or those of other conservatives) would yield. As I have pointed out here before, "secular" and "leftist" do not mean the same thing, but conservatives are working overtime to make you think they do.

Dennis Prager is certainly one of these conservatives. In his new column entitled Secular Europe or Religious America, there is a continuous, frustrating missing of essentials with regard to the issues involved. It seems that Prager, being a religious person, regards the presence or absence of religion as the primary factor in any historical event or social change, even when the evidence shows that this is not the case. For example, Prager writes:

There is no doubt that Western Europe abandoned religion and opted for secularism largely because of the blood spilled in religious wars, just as it abandoned nationalism because of all the blood it spilled in the name of nationalism during World War I.

However, Cohen and others who argue for a secular society ignore the even heavier price in blood Europe has paid for secular fervor. Secular fervor, i.e., communism and Nazism, slaughtered, tortured and enslaved more people in 50 years than all Europe's religious wars did in the course of centuries.

Is the essential point about communism and Nazism that they were both secular systems? Is that what led to the death of millions? That's what Prager wants you to believe here. Religion is a minor killer in comparison to the secular killers. Prager continues:

This point is so obvious, and so devastating to the pro-secularists, that you wonder how they deal with it. But having debated secularists for decades, I predicted Cohen's response virtually word for word on my radio show the day before I spoke with him. He labeled communism and Nazism "religions."

This response completely avoids the issue. Communism and Nazism were indeed religion-like in their hold on people, but they were completely secular movements and doctrines. Moreover, communism was violently anti-religious, and Nazism affirmed pre-Christian -- what we tend to call "pagan" -- values and beliefs.

I would agree that strictly, communism and Nazism were not religions. However, it is also clear as Prager admits, that they had much in common with religions. To term something as "pagan" is not deny its religiosity, merely its connection to monotheism. But leaving that aside, how do we know it was not the religion-like elements within these two movements, perhaps in conjunction with other factors, that are the cause of the greatly increased deaths that resulted when they came into power? In fact, it was exactly the religion-like elements of mysticism, altruism, combined with collectivism and the fact that these totalitarian regimes were able to rely on the capitalist technological base that had been absent when religious regimes had previously ruled Europe, that led to the mass murders. Numerous otherwise religious Germans supported the Nazis (as Paul Johnson documents in his History of Christianity) and the similarity of many elements of Communist doctrine to Christianity is not at all unknown. Stalin, in fact, studied for the priesthood.

I would not deny that these totalitarian regimes were worse than anything Europe had seen during the Middle Ages. However, they were worse because they were more irrational and collectivist not because they happen to be secular. It is not at all inconceivable that a similarly irrational and collectivist religious regime would commit similar atrocities. Certainly, the Islamic regimes today seem to aspire to such a goal.

Dinesh D'Souza's Myths

For some time now it's been quite evident that there's an effort underway to change people's perception of Medieval Christianity. One hears Conservatives (for example, Victor Davis Hanson and Dennis Prager) referring to something they term the "so-called Dark Ages" and whenever anyone points out that Christianity has a rather long and depressing history of torture and murder, it is usually pointed out that the number of victims is actually quite small and that it certainly pails in comparison to what the "atheistic" regimes of the 20th century "achieved" in that respect.

The latest of these efforts is in a column entitled "Debunking the Galileo Myth," by Dinesh D'Souza. D'Souza states the purpose of this column as follows:

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.

As a preliminary comment, I'll mention that I've read much of Andrew D. White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology and contrary to D'Souza's claim it is not posing "an irreconcilable conflict between science and God" but merely points out that religious dogmatists have throughout history stood in the way of scientific progress. In fact, White demonstrates in numerous examples that there need be no conflict between religion and science, as long as one ignores literal interpretations of scriptures in favor of interpretations that match the scientific facts of nature. In the examples he provides there is a recurring pattern: A scientist makes a new scientific discovery or offers a promising hypothesis or theory. Some religious authorities oppose the scientist and thus the science on religious grounds arguing that it cannot be so since it contradicts scriptures (as an aside, in some example there are a minority of religious supporters of the new idea that later becomes the majority). Finally, as more and more evidence points to the truth of the scientist's ideas, somewhat more liberal religious authorities begin to reinterpret scripture as not necessarily contradicted by the new science after all. Thus D'Souza's claim about White is simply false.

Moving on now to what D'Souza claims are myths:

The Flat Earth Fallacy: According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe.

Sorry, which "atheist" narrative has this erroneous opinion? It would have been helpful if D'Souza mentioned if it was Hitchens, Stenger, Harris, or Dawkins or someone else. It is certainly ought to be well known to any modern educated person that the Greeks knew that the Earth was round. Also, I could point out that the number of educated people in the Middle Ages was infinitesimal and if the idea that the Earth was round was limited to them, then the vast majority of people believed otherwise. Still if the Middle Ages is supposed to cover the whole period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, then it is not historically true that all educated people knew the Earth was round and more importantly, Christian religious authorities at the time explicitly endorsed the idea of a flat earth. William Manchester, in his excellent A World Lit Only by Fire points out that:

During the Dark Ages, literal interpretation of the Bible had led the Church to endorse the absurd geographical dicta of Topographia Christiana, a treatise by the sixth-century monk Cosmas. Cosmas, who had traveled to India and should have known better, held that the world was a flat, rectangular plane, surmounted by the sky, above which was heaven. Jerusalem was at the center of the rectangle, and nearby lay the Garden of Eden, irrigated by the four Rivers of Paradise. The sun, much smaller than the earth, revolved around ta conical mountain to the north. The monk's arguments were fragile, and not everyone accepted them -- the Venerable Bede, among others, insisted that earth was round -- but Cosmas scorned them. Rome, agreeing with him, rejected their protest as an affront to common sense.

Next, D'Souza sees fit to correct an apparently common misperception on Galileo:

The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.

As best as can be verified on the web, this is probably true, though there's some evidence to the contrary. However, it is an undisputed fact that Galileo did do experiments with inclined planes which, a background essay on a Nova documentary points out,

...allowed Galileo to accurately measure acceleration with simple instruments and ultimately to prove that, in the absence of other forces such as air resistance, gravity causes all falling objects to accelerate toward Earth at the same rate.

Regardless, I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with a "conflict between science and God."

I'm going to ignore the two examples about Darwin that D'Souza gives -- I think religious opposition to Darwin is just too well known at the moment to waste time on this. Let me focus instead on D'Souza's further points on Galileo.

Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides. In reality, tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational force acting upon the earth.

Again, it would have been helpful if D'Souza had indicated any source for this supposed widespread myth. I certainly don't remember this from my reading of White's book. As far as I know anyone with a basic science education knows that, after the classical age, Copernicus was the source for heliocentrism. I certainly knew this back in high school. Apparently D'Souza is content to take the opinions of educated people in the Middle Ages but in modern times he relies on the uneducated. Furthermore, while it is true that Galileo's use of the tides to try to prove heliocentrism is usually regarded as his Big Mistake, it ought not to be judged so harshly:

Many critical questions are involved in this Galileo theory of the tides: first of all the fact that, rejecting any kind of attractive force as the real cause of the tides, this theory was, in Newtonian terms, an error. Nevertheless this judgment has for a long time impeded a historical evaluation of Galileo's theory. Only in some recent essays the question is examined with more care and is judged in the context of the physical and astronomical debate of the seventeenth century. To accuse Galileo of an excess of scientific realism, or even of presumption (as some authors have done), is to lose the possibility of historical reconstruction in which what counts is not the achievement of the future, but the efforts to reach them. Galileo was trying to build a scientific method in a world based more on books than on the nature, more on astrology than on astronomy, more on closing one's eyes than on observing through the telescope. That his theory of the tides did not survive the critical judgment of his successors is not germane to historical inquiry.

Furthermore, notwithstanding Galileo's mistake, Galileo, relying on his discoveries in physics (as in the inclined plane experiments described above), which took care of the existing scientific objections to Copernican theory, with the help of Kepler's astronomical ideas, and most importantly with the help of the new invention of the telescope did prove heliocentrism. Specifically, as David Harriman writing in The Intellectual Activist (Galileo: Inaugurating the Age of Reason, March-May 2000)points out:

The telescope enabled Galileo to observe the four moons of Jupiter, proving that not all astronomical bodies revolved around the Earth. In effect, Jupiter and its moons made up a miniature Copernican system...The implication was clear: Why shouldn't the entire solar system behave in a similar way, with the Earth and other planets orbiting the much larger sun?...
In the fall of 1610, he directed his telescope at Venus--and what he saw decisively refuted the Ptolemaic theory. According to Ptolemy, Venus was always located between the Earth and the sun; it was never on the opposite side of the sun. So as observed from Earth, we should always see less than half of the surface of Venus illuminated. But according to heliocentric theory, we should see a full cycle of phases. And this is precisely what Galileo saw, proving that Venus orbits the sun...

Two years later, in 1612, Galileo made yet another discovery that provided more evidence that the Earth, like Venus, moves around the sun. He found that in order to correctly describe the orbits of Jupiter's moons and predict the times of their eclipses, he had to account for the fact that the angle of viewing Jupiter changes as the Earth orbits the sun. In other words the geocentric theory could not explain the observed orbits, because to do so one must take into account the Earth's movement. This discovery not only refuted the old astronomy--it provided direct support for the most radical claim of the new heliocentric theory.

See also here. So, I'm afraid it is D'Souza who is being mythical here. Next "myth:"

The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.

Well, I already pointed out that Galileo did have such proofs. As far as the Church's view on heliocentrism, let's contrast what D'Souza quotes of Cardinal Bellarmine with the following quote that Harriman provides:

But to wish to affirm that the sun is really fixed in the center of the heavens and merely turns upon itself without traveling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the theologians and scholastic philosophers, but also by injuring the holy faith and making the sacred Scripture false.

In light of subsequent events, I think Harriman's quote is much more relevant than D'Souza.

Finally, we have the most offensive parts of D'Souza's claims:

Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.

The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

No, Galileo was not tortured, though he was threatened with torture, which frankly, for someone merely arguing and publishing what he believes to be the scientific truth, is a profound injustice. As a result of his trial, Galileo was expressly forbidden from holding, defending, or teaching the heliocentric doctrine. Would D'Souza approve if an atheistic Communist regime placed a priest under house arrest and had forbid him from holding, defending, or teaching the theistic doctrine?

On the heresy issue, D'Souza is being disingenous, since heliocentrism was considered "heretical". In the 1633 indictment of Galileo we read:

Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, were denounced in 1615, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine taught by many, namely, that the sun is immovable in the center of the world, and that the earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion;...
therefore (this Holy Tribunal being desirous of providing against the disorder and mischief which were thence proceeding and increasing to the detriment of the Holy Faith) by the desire of his Holiness and the Most Emminent Lords, Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the sun, and the motion of the earth, were qualified by the Theological Qualifiers as follows:

1. The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.
2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith.
Therefore . . . , invoking the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Most Glorious Mother Mary, We pronounce this Our final sentence: We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world...[emphasis added]

I'm not sure what more there is to add. D'Souza here is exposed a propagandist without concern for facts. The truth is that Galileo was a great scientist and the Church unjustly persecuted him. He was just one example of a long history of antagonism between religion and science.

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 Future of the Evangelical Movement and the Religious Right

A fascinating article by David D. Kirkpatrick is in the October 28, 2007 NY Times Magazine. Some of the themes are illustrated on the cover
Kirkpatrick describes his experiences with the Christian Evangelical movement in recent years and notes that ever since the 2004 election there has been a definite loss of enthusiasm for the Bush presidency and the Republican Party in general:

“There was a time when evangelical churches were becoming largely and almost exclusively the Republican Party at prayer,” said Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical magazine World and an informal adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor. “To some extent — we have to see how much — the Republicans have blown it. That opportunity to lock up that constituency has vanished. The ball now really is in the Democrats’ court.”

There are definite signs that many Evangelical Christians are moving to the left on many issues:

For the conservative Christian leadership, what is most worrisome about the evangelical disappointment with President Bush is that it coincides with a widening philosophical rift. Ever since they broke with the mainline Protestant churches nearly 100 years ago, the hallmark of evangelicals theology has been a vision of modern society as a sinking ship, sliding toward depravity and sin. For evangelicals, the altar call was the only life raft — a chance to accept Jesus Christ, rebirth and salvation. Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes in place so their children could have a chance at the raft.

But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of “spiritual formation” that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. They do not see society as a moribund vessel. They talk more about a biblical imperative to fix up the ship by contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.

I recommend reading the whole article which is quite good. What I find most interesting is that while there doesn't seem to be a lessening of Christian enthusiasm, there's seems to be definitely a broadening of what that enthusiasm consists of: A moving away from ideas that might be called Conservative and more toward a broader mixture of altruistic (and hence Liberal) themes of concern for the poor and the like. This is far more in line with what I understood Christianity to be about from my readings of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, in which Lewis mentioned that a state governed according to Christian principles would be quite socialistic.

I, for one, would love it if we could separate Christianity from the Right. I would love it if no one would confuse the positions of advocates of reason, egoism, and capitalism with the advocates of faith, humility, and charity. Or perhaps, dare we hope, we can return to treating religion, in Ayn Rand's words as "a private matter". Still, it is not clear to me that we have seen the end of that particular movement.

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.

Weekend Round-up

A number of interesting op-eds in Sunday's Commentary section of the Orange County Register, but I'll just comment on my favorite. Paul Campos is very much a man of the left but he managed to write a column with which I am in complete agreement. Campos writes:

This view [that our politicians must be "persons of faith"] regarding the role of religion in American politics has given birth to its own set of rather bizarre orthodoxies. On this view, it's crucial that our political leaders be sincere religious believers. But apparently it's of no importance what religious beliefs they actually hold, as long as they have "faith."
...
In other words, religious belief is apparently a unique kind of belief, which requires believing that one's views regarding the most important questions in the world – things that by comparison to which all political and scientific disputes are insignificant – are no better or worse than anyone else's views regarding these questions of supposedly infinite importance.

Campos makes an excellent point. I have long pointed this out to friends of mine who are sympathetic to the notion that religion, not a particular religion, but religion in general, plays a positive role in society. By now, many have modified their view and usually include an exception for Islam. Religion is supposed to provide absolute answers to important issues, particularly moral issues. However, it is obvious to anyone who takes the ideas of religion seriously (whether because they support them or oppose them), that different religions offer quite different answers and recommendations to individuals on the same issues. So which one is right?On what basis does one follow one over another? And what are the implications of preferring one religion over another? There are answers to these questions but they would destroy the illusions of the advocates of so-called "Judeo-Christian" values. I hope to write more on this topic in a future post.

The Objective Standard: Summer 2006

Just received my new issue today and looking forward to reading all the articles. This time I've restrained myself from reading the articles online so I have much to look forward to. However I did make an exception for Craig Biddle's article "Religion vs. Free Speech". And I am glad I did, as it is a very topical, scholarly, and of course, principled essay on the absurdity of basing a free speech defense on religion. Here an excerpt:

On the premises of religion, there is no right to free speech; there is only the “right” to say what is permitted by “God.” This conclusion follows logically not only from the content of religion, but also, and more fundamentally, from its method—that is, from the means by which its content is “known” to be “true.”

Anybody interested in principled ideas ought to be a subscriber of TOS.