There’s lots of stuff going around about the recent leaked memos of the negotiation between Palestinians and Israelis. Much is being made of the Palestinian authority betraying their mandate to their electorate by behaving in a humiliating manner and offering far too much to the Israelis (eg. right of return, settlements, etc.)

The far bigger issue, though, is Israel’s behaviour: after being offered so much, why did they choose to walk away instead?

The most charitable reading on Israel’s behaviour is that it knew the Palestinian negotiators couldn’t possibly keep the Palestinians ‘on side’ for the settlement being proposed. Talking shop without any intent to execute the outrageous offers being made perhaps had some advantages: keeping the PA docile, or presenting a good international image.

Even then, things don’t add up. Even if we grant Israel refused a settlement on the grounds that it was too outrageously generous to be supported by the Palestinians, they could have simply short-circuited the Palestinian negotiators and worked out by themselves what the Palestinians would consider a minimally acceptable deal and offer that instead.

The more malicious reading is that Israel has no interest in the peace process. Far from being intransigent, the PA was desperate to make any sort of deal, yet all such offers were rebuffed. Either no settlement (even the capitulation of the PA negotiation) would be good enough, or Israel simply calculated that its creeping annexation and subjugation of the occupied territories will proceed to give them far more than the Palestinians, no matter how spineless, would be willing to give. Perhaps the hope is that that periodic gestures of reconciliation and negotiation will conceal this program and limit international backlash.

I know little about the middle east, and I try not to pass judgment on matters that appear complicated without doing my homework. I worried that my colleagues on the left jumped in too quickly onto what was a difficult situation. But stuff like this is sufficiently damning to make me think they were right all along. The malicious reading is far better fit for Israel’s (leaked) behaviour, and this cascades to explain behaviour elsewhere. Free Palestine.

Often online discussions devolve into endless block-quotes incomprehensible to anyone but the two discussants. Therefore, I’ll instead take the opportunity to summarize the lines of argument in ascending order of importance. Many of these criticisms parallel those made by others, and I fear I may well have failed to acknowledge all of them. My apologies in advance.

To remind ourselves, the most modern incarnation of the OTF is this:

1. Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.
2. Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.
3. Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.
4. So the best way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

1. Ground clearing

2. Making OTF1-3 valid

3. Objections

   3.1. Reductio and Atheist special pleading

   3.2. Good arguments and rude dialectics

   3.3. Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels

4. Conclusion

Ground clearing

As it stands the OTF seems to be trying to do too much, and in a garbled way. A lot of the talk about ‘taking the OTF’, the OTF versus the argument for the OTF and so on is hard to decipher, and criticisms, counter-criticisms and defences are often lost in a haze of not-quite-precise-enough philosophical verbiage. Some distinctions might be needed to clarify exactly what is being argued over.

The first three statements appear to be offering an argument about an epistemic pathology endemic to religious belief, and the fourth to give a cure. These can (and should) be separated for clarity – the fourth statement may still be a good epistemic norm even the foregoing argument doesn’t work, and vice-versa. Let us therefore distinguish between OTF1-3, the argument for epistemic pathology in religious belief, and OTF4, the proposed cure. We will focus on OTF1-3.¹

Making OTF1-3 valid

A close reading of [1] suggests that [2] might be no better than a restatement. For [1] says

Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis. [Emphasis added]

This extra rider seems awfully like stating a dependency thesis. Which is what Loftus claims [2] is:

Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

So this all seems a bit garbled. But perhaps we can see what Loftus is trying to get at, regardless of infelicities in expression: that religious beliefs show this socio-cultural patterning suggests they are often driven by cultural inertia, and not some careful reasoning untrammelled by one’s socio-cultural milieu. So let’s give a new argument that does just that.

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs due to cultural inertia.

This makes the sort of move Loftus surely has in mind: inferring from the demographics of belief to the likely mechanism of belief formation. The move from [5] to [6] isn’t formally valid either. However, it is clear on what move is being made. Further, it should also be clear that this argument can be made by adding further premises, none of which would be remotely controversial. If that’s good enough for such august philosophers like Peter van Inwagen, it’s good enough for our purposes here.

A bigger problem is the move from [2] to [3]. For on it’s face it seems a straightforward use of the genetic fallacy: to conclude from the (epistemically disreputable) mechanisms that cause people to believe p something about p’s truth.

Loftus doesn’t think this is a big deal, and refers to Parsons. Yet Parsons cautious support of genetic-fallacy-esque arguments aren’t of the sort Loftus uses in OTF1-3. The key passage is here:

Theists counter that such an argument, if taken as supporting atheism, commits the “genetic fallacy.” You commit the genetic fallacy when you conflate two questions that should be distinguished: (a) What causal processes account for the psychological origins of a belief? (b) What rational grounds are there for thinking the belief true? Just because you can explain why somebody holds a certain belief (he learned it from his mother, say) doesn’t mean that the belief has no objective truth or validity. I might be “hardwired” to think that God exists, but, nevertheless, he might really exist, as arguments and evidence might show. As the saying goes, just because you are paranoid does not mean the people are not out to get you; likewise, just because you are wired to believe in God does not mean that God does not exist (Maybe, in fact, it was God who wired you to believe in him!).

However, the charge that atheists commit the genetic fallacy is both wrongheaded and disingenuous. Sometimes, indeed, the causal history of a belief has no bearing on its credibility: I may have originally accepted the Pythagorean Theorem because my high school geometry teacher pounded it into my reluctant head, but if I can now prove it, the history of how I acquired my beliefs about the Pythagorean Theorem is irrelevant to my current judgment about its soundness. On the other hand, there are times when the causal history of a belief is highly relevant to its epistemic merits… [Emphasis added]

In other words, the ‘genetics’ of a given belief is entirely relevant to the question as to whether so-and-so is justified in believing it. But it has no bearing at all whether that belief is, in fact, true.² Thus the move from [2] to [3] – from “it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree” to “the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false”  is surely a genetic fallacy.

Does it matter? Not too much. We can renovate this bit of the argument by talking about justification or warrant instead of truth. For if indeed religious beliefs are culturally dependant (and granting something fairly uncontroversial about culturally determined belief being usually unwarranted), then it would follow that most religious belief is unwarranted:

6) The majority who hold religious beliefs hold them due to cultural inertia.

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted

8)The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding their religious beliefs

Now we have a renovated version of the Outsider Argument. Call it the ‘Demographic Defeater for Faith’ (DDF).

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs through cultural inertia

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted.

8) The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding them

This expresses the sort of moves Loftus wants to make in the first three statements of the OTF, but does so more clearly and more strongly.³ How does this ‘OTF+’ stand up to scrutiny?

Objections

Reductio and special pleading for Atheism

Consider these three beliefs:

1. “All life on this planet is descended from a common ancestor”
2. “There is no God”
3. “Skin colour is morally irrelevant”

Demographic defeater type objections could be levied against these. Loftus freely accepts that the OTF1-3 is really a more specific form of an OTB – for beliefs which are highly culturally plastic, one should wonder whether you really are being reasonable in going with the flow of your prevalent cultural milieu.

Surely there are a diversity of beliefs about evolution, Atheism, and racism. And surely these beliefs are culturally plastic. Displace me a hundred years or a thousand miles, and I’d probably believe different things about a-c. A dependency thesis follows soon after: it seems unlikely given this cultural plasticity that these beliefs aren’t formed by cultural inertia. So, more likely than not, these beliefs are unwarranted.

This is bad news. For Loftus and those who agree with him overwhelmingly accept a-c, and further take their acceptance to be reasonable as opposed to cultural brainwashing. Yet if they believe that their acceptance of Evolution, Atheism, racial equality and so on can be held despite that DDF style can be raised against them, then why can’t religious believers shrug off the OTF? In short, what gives this argument selective toxicity towards religious beliefs?

Those who support the OTF1-3 rely on tenuous distinctions to excuse them from the force of the OTF1-3. See Loftus’s explanation of why he doesn’t need to ‘take the OTF’ for Atheism:

When Christians ask if I have taken the outsider test for my own “belief system,” I simply say “yes I have, that’s why I’m a non-believer.”

They’ll ask if I am equally skeptical of my skepticism, or whether I have subjected my non-belief to non-belief, or my disbelief to disbelief. These questions express double negatives. When re-translated they are asking me to abandon skepticism in favor of a gullible faith, for that’s the opposite of skepticism—something no thinker should do. Even if having a gullible faith is desirable, which faith should we be gullible about? And how can we decide between these faiths? The bottom line is that skepticism is a word used to describe doubt or disbelief. It doesn’t by itself represent any ideas we’ve arrived at. It’s merely a filter we use to strain out the bad ones leaving us with the good ones. So we cannot be skeptical of doubt unless we think doubt is inherently wrong, which would leave us with mere belief in belief.

This doesn’t work, and the reason it doesn’t work is it equivocates between scepticism as epistemic caution and scepticism as a label for Atheism/Agnosticism. For “There is no god” is definitely an idea that we arrive at, and not just some passive heuristic for belief formation (and no, not some ‘lack of belief’ either). This game seems a roundabout way of asserting that Atheism is epistemically respectable by equating it with good epistemic method.

This is not the only example. See the reply to Reppert. Reppert offers a series of reductios, one of which is our beliefs about rape. Loftus’s response to that charge is this:

…

So can we apply this same skepticism to moral beliefs? Should I be as skeptical that rape is wrong as I am that rape is morally acceptable? No. Absolutely not. Again, look at the specific criteria I provided. I said:

The amount of skepticism warranted depends on the number of rational people who disagree, whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of those beliefs, how they originated, how they were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between them. My claim is that when it comes to religious beliefs a high degree of skepticism is warranted because of these factors.

That’s what I said, and so in this instance as with many other moral beliefs they do not suffer the same consequences from applying the OTF. Beliefs like the acceptability of rape are based on religious beliefs anyway, so they are subject to the outsider test precisely because of the nature and origin of those beliefs, as I said. I know of no non-believer who would ever want to defend the morality of rape, for instance, unlike believers in the past and present who do because of some so-called inspired text. We know rape is wrong, and we also know that this kind of behavior is sanctioned by religious beliefs, as is honor killing. The religious person who thinks rape is morally acceptable should subject that belief to skepticism as an outsider. And when he does this he will begin to doubt his previously held religious/moral beliefs, as I’ve argued. When it comes to Reppert, I think his moral belief that rape is wrong will survive his own skepticism, for there is evidence that as a father of a daughter he would want to help maintain a free society where she can go about her business free from being accosted. If Reppert wants to provide an argument where he can defend the morality of rape I’d like to see this. I would find it very strange if in order to escape the OTF Reppert must defend the morality of rape. That seems too high of a price to pay, but if that’s what he wants to do, then I’m all ears.

Yet, ignoring the large red herring about how religious beliefs apparently shelter rape acceptability, it seems our beliefs about rape tick the boxes of Loftus’s criteria (at least, the ones that distinguish anything) just as well as any religious belief you care to name. For surely beliefs about “when is it acceptable to have sex with a woman without her consent?” has a large number of ‘rational’ people who disagree, who are separated particular geographical and cultural ‘camps’, which were probably picked up from the prevailing cultural mores, and so on. So the argumentative weaponry behind the DDF are just as effective against these sorts of moral beliefs, amongst many others.

Good arguments and rude dialectics

Another approach when faced with a demographic defeater is to simply provide arguments in favour of the proposition in question. One may say we can prove evolution or racial equality and marshal all sorts of evidence in favour of these things. Whereas this isn’t true for something like Christianity.

Yet such a response just begs the question against all those people who want to provide reasons for their religious convictions. The reply usually is that the people offering these arguments are scrabbling around for them after the fact of their religious convictions – they aren’t really using them to guide them to their conclusions, but rather they find take them because they confirm these convictions. Once again, of course, exactly the same reply can be made whenever Atheists offer arguments for Atheism, racial equality, or whatever.

Of course, such an explanation of disagreement is logical rudeness, little different in application to a psychoanalyst whom explains disagreement with his theories as Oedipal conflict, or the Evangelical who locates the origin of disbelief in that disbelievers are blinded by sin per Rom. 1.⁵ One might find this accusation levelled against the religious implausible, even if it is granted we get nowhere far.

There are two ways of understanding this “you’re just accepting these arguments because they have conclusions you like” response. The first is the reply made is that Christians say are coming up with these arguments expressly to defend their prior commitments, and therefore these arguments are unpersuasive. That is obviously fallacious. The second reading is an epistemic one: that because Christians are coming up with these arguments to defend their prior commitments, they will still accept these commitments whether or not the arguments they have at their disposal were any good. So even if the arguments they have are good arguments, they still aren’t being reasonable because their convictions don’t track the preponderance of the arguments. This sort of reply does work.

Yet, once again, exactly the same move can be deployed against the Atheist trying to argue for Atheism, or anyone arguing for any moral truths ‘taken as read’ in modern liberal society. Even if we do have the right arguments for these things, that is just epistemic luck, in the same way a Christian would be lucky if they stumbled onto cogent arguments for their faith when desperately looking to shore it up. In neither case, it seems, are the actors behaving in epistemically respectable ways, and thus our DDF, even in its most charitable light, doesn’t give the nod to Atheism over Faith.

Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels

The only robust way to answer this sort of criticism is to argue for the privileged position of our particular socio-cultural millieu in contrast to others who disagree. That in fact our cultural lens is the best available to bring the issues into proper focus.

Take the theory of evolution. Affirmation of evolution is patterned, but patterned in a manner suggestive of warrant. It correlates with scientific training, educational level, and things like that. Likewise the beliefs of Doctors regarding disease and the medical laity. That there is disagreement patterned on communities need not mean they are all scrabbling in dark. It may indicate that some, but not all, have privileged access to the truth.

In the case of medics or scientists it is fairly easy to find evidence that they possess epistemic privilege regarding matters of health or the natural world: we can look to their past record of predictive success, how they exhibit particular epistemic virtues in excelsis, and so on. When confronted with the fact that we’d likely have very different attitudes about race if we brought up in 1890s Alabama or 1930s Germany, we should be thankful that we weren’t in these environments, for we think they would have led us away from the truth. Were we faced with a white supremacist or a Nazi, we take ourselves as having a dialectical advantage, that we would be able to provide a case they could not answer – and if they aren’t persuaded, it is simply because their view on these matters is impeded relative to ours. In short, we take our culture’s view on racial equality versus its detractors as privileged, much like the doctors on medicine or the scientists on science. The equality-generating cognitive environment is superior to the racist-generating cultural environment with respect to some set of epistemic norms.⁶

Yet everyone believes their cognitive environment is superior compared to all those others that lead to people disagreeing with them. Doubtless the racists could come up with a story as to how their environment is superior relative to ours. The only way forward, it seems, to actually argue the point of issue, and see which side’s claims to dialectical superiority survive.

The same applies to belief and its detractors. Believers and Atheists will have their own stories to tell as to who has epistemic privilege. That Atheists assert – by their own lights – the atheist-generating cognitive environments are privileged compared to the believer-generating ones is no more than an insider test for infidels: for an Atheist to say religious ways of knowing are rather delusions and to urge believers to be rational and abandon them is no better than an evangelical talking about reason being a whore to satan and urging so-called ‘rationalists’ to open their hearts to Jesus. They amount to no more than assertions of epistemic ‘other’ness.

Both sides need to swallow their shrill assertions of epistemic privilege and settle down to trying to beat each other by the usual ‘rules of the game’ for debating these matters. For if Atheist has the better of the argument or has ‘facts on their side’, that would suggest she was right all along in asserting that the athiest-generating environment is better than the believing one. Yet doing so obviates the need for the whole DDF rigmarole in the first place: instead of presenting the DDF and demonstrating it is selectively toxic to belief by vindicating atheism’s epistemic privilege by showing it to be more reasonable, one can simply stick to demonstrating that Atheism is more reasonable. In short, this sort of argument has taken us in a long circle back to where we started.⁷

Conclusion

Loftus’s project to undermine the rationality of religious belief is a failure. We can improve OTF1-3 to provide a better argument in the spirit of what Loftus has in mind, yet even this renovated argument remains unpersuasive. It is unpersuasive simply because demographic worries like the OTF attempts to exploit are endemic to beliefs we hold – were our environments different we would almost certainly believe differently, and many (perhaps most) of our beliefs are due to cultural inertia.

Against this, there is no means to put religious beliefs (over any others) under special scrutiny which isn’t question-begging nor tendentious. If demographic data is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of religious belief, it is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of Atheism, or most of our beliefs about science, or most of our ‘commonsense’ moral beliefs. To avoid accepting this, we say that our environment is privileged – that other cultures who differ with us see through a glass darkly, and were we transposed into this environment the different beliefs we have would be accounted for by some loss of epistemic virtue. Yet, again, these are precisely the moves a religious believe can make to defend their religious community from similar charges, and, again, there is no reason to dismiss one defence out of hand but not the other.

These defences cannot be evaluated without settling the question of whether the beliefs in question are true, or at least reasonable. Yet this is was exactly the subject under discussion. The OTF is a detour that takes us nowhere. Our time and energy is better spent otherwise.

A major plank of GO’s strategy in the defense of the faith is citing scholarly work. Unfortunately, the way he does so leaves much to be desired. Often he provides a battery of quotes from luminaries or a torrent of papers, but on investigation it is found that he hasn’t read the works which he is citing or quoting. Further, he often also paraphrases the research of someone else who did cite those sources. However, he does not cite this secondary source.

Doing this in an academic context would be considered both bad scholarship and plagiarism. You shouldn’t cite works you haven’t read in support of your argument. You definitely shouldn’t use another’s work in gathering sources in support of an argument without making clear (via citation or similar) it is theirs and not your own. This came to a head a little while ago when I confronted him about this practice:

The log

[I have redacted the entire log for interests of space, retaining only the 'thread' of conversation relevant to the current topic. See here I've also included the full log for readers to satisfy themselves I haven't omitted something important]

An epologist’s apology

GO argues there is nothing wrong with his behaviour, for no one would reasonably believe that he in fact gathered those citations by himself, so he is misleading no one. Besides, he is ‘only interested in truth’ and not on taking scholarly airs, and this style of unattributed citation is the best way of doing that.

Unfortunately, such a defence doesn’t really add up. For actually citing in an academically appropriate manner would obviate both of these concerns. Citing his actual source (rather than the sources that source uses) would avoid any risk whatsoever of believing “this is a person with a grasp of the primary ERV literature” as opposed to “this is a person who found a website about ERVs and copied the references”. It would, further, actually get allow us to engage with ‘just the facts’ much more quickly. Instead of a list of papers that (GO tells us) supports his contention, we could rather read the secondary source GO has used and assess the argument ourselves – as an added bonus, we’d also know exactly what the citations are being cited in support of, thus if we wanted to ‘check them out’ for ourselves we’d know what we are supposed to be looking for. Further, citing the secondary source (as opposed to a selection of its reference list) is much more time and space efficient.

So why doesn’t he do just that?

Citin’ dirty

In the log I mentioned there are a number of uncharitable suggestions one could make as to why you’d prefer this ‘style’ of referencing as opposed to academic norms. Let’s talk about them.

Bludgeoning by citation

GO’s references aren’t actually meant to be read (he copy and pasted so much text as to exhaust the buffer on the chat room, thus the first lines of the block of references were lost in moments). They certainly aren’t meant to be referred to or consulted. Rather, they are the argument itself. Argumentum ad Gnarlyum¹ is something like the following:

1) Here is a large number of citations purportedly to do with X

C) Therefore X

The argument is therefore more of a scholarly battering ram. One hopes to cow ones opponents into submission by flashing the scholarly arsenal at one’s disposal. Needless to say, the more references, the stronger the argument. Thus pillaging secondary sources for their sources is far more effective when deploying an argumentum ad Gnarlyum. Had GO just said: “Biochemist Raz Fana over at Reasons to Believe has an argument that ERVs are compatible with creationism/ID, have a look”², it wouldn’t have been very effective: “who cares what one creo biochemist has to say? I take Raz Fana and raise him whatever the ERV talkorigins article is and scholarly consensus!” Slapping down a dozen citations to the primary literature carries far greater academic heft.

But of course Argumentum ad Gnarlyum sucks. The fact someone supports X with a dozen references which are supposed to support it give us no reason to believe it is true if we aren’t shown what these references are supposed to lend to the case for X. GO never does this. Worse, he might not even be able to – you don’t need to understand a secondary source to copy its reference list.

So why would GO deploy Argumentum ad Gnarlyum? One reason is that citations look impressive – generally the guy dropping websites is outshone by the guy dropping primary research literature. Doing so lends an authority to the argument or position being accepted. Thus one takes the sources cited on the website and pastes them directly into the chatroom, even at the expense of the argument that used them. Citation padding undergoes an apotheosis into argument itself.

Fake it ’till you make it

Another good reason for this sort of style is it gives a mistaken impression of expertise. GO may think no one could think he actually gathered these sources himself (perish the thought!) but I had him down as a remarkable autodidact until I wised up.

But he wouldn’t be the only benefactor of this fakery. GO might not be in it for personal aggrandizement, but he’s definitely in it to win the day for Christianity. Indeed, his behaviour makes little sense as someone interested in the facts or the truth (why on earth would you cite primary literature before you’ve read it?) but makes much more sense as the actions of an ideological partisan defending their team from inclement data.

Thus the argument before understanding. By his own admission GO hasn’t read the literature he cited. I doubt GO properly understands the concepts (transposible element, retrovirus, restriction, gene control) or the acronyms (LTR, RNAi) in the literature he cited. But there is no need to if you aim is to merely fend of aggressors to your ideological tribe. One can short-circuit the pesky need to know what one talks about by channeling someone who has.

Scholarbot

Indeed, one can play this sort of game without any semantic understanding whatsoever. In parallel to the Chinese room argument, we could program a computer with a table to recognize collections of letters that code for ‘arguments against Christianity’, and provide a look up table of websites for each collection of letters to copy the references and paste them in response.³

But why would anyone want to ‘discuss’ with such a machine? Surely it would be a titanic waste of effort. One could simply do the job of the machine themselves by looking into the stable of Christian/conservative/creationist websites themselves to see what counterarguments are on offer.

If I wanted to hear what Rana had to say, I’d go and email him. If GO thought his stuff was so great, then he should just refer me to his work, instead of channeling him a manner that strips away both the original source and the actual argument in some ill-thought-out paroxysm of posturing. But generally people on a chatroom want to discuss things with other members of that chatroom, and not some cobbled together list of copy-and-paste references. Interacting with GO became obsolete when I learnt how to google.

Defeating the dark side of epologetics

It is now my policy whenever GO cites something to ask two questions. Firstly “Have you read that book/paper/article?” and, if not “what secondary source have you copied the references from?” The purpose for doing so is three-fold.

The least of these (and the reason GO no doubt suspects) is to discredit him. Because this sort of behaviour violates not only academic norms but is contrary to irenic discussion. Of course, if GO really thinks he’s doing nothing wrong, he won’t mind the logs I’ve pasted below, nor me calling out his technique. Some people like myself got sucked into investing our time in the intellectual ponzi scheme that is GO – encouraging others not to take him seriously when he enters this mode is a public service.

The second of these is to encourage a culture of intellectual responsibility. For surely a good norm of discussion, which I’ve mentioned before, is never cite what you haven’t read, and never state what you don’t understand. Behaving like this perhaps forfeits some rhetorical ammunition in the conflict.

The greatest of those, however, is to try and help GO out. For he’s not stupid and he can (and has) done better than behaviour I’ve taken him to task on above. Yet this sort of behaviour is both ridiculous and unacceptable, and casts a pall over what else he might have to say. It also stunts his intellectual development. Consider this from an earlier conversation:

[GnarlyOcelot] A vacuum is not nothingness. According to our present-day understanding of a vacuum state or a quantum vacuum, it is “by no means a simple empty space”. [Astrid Lambrecht, “Observing Mechanical Dissipation in the Quantum Vacuum: An Experimental Challenge,” in Hartmut Figger, Dieter Meschede, Claus Zimmermann (eds.), Laser Physics at the Limits (Berlin/New York: Springer, 2002), 197.]

[GnarlyOcelot] Christopher Ray: t is a mistake to think of any physical vacuum as some absolutely empty void. [Time, Space and Philosophy (New York, NY: Routledge, 1991) 205.]

[GnarlyOcelot] Paul Davies: (himself admits) The processes described here do not represent the creation of matter out of nothing, but the conversion of pre-existing energy into material form. [God and the New Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983) 31.]

[Noble Brew] man, I need a copy of your notes Gnarly

[tHe KId SoG]

[Thrasymachus] Have you read these books, Gnarly?

[GnarlyOcelot] no

[Phobowute] did you have all that prepared already or something?

[GnarlyOcelot] yes

In other words, GO has compiled notes of citations and quotes from books which he hasn’t read and probably has no intention of reading. Surely, surely something’s gone wrong when you think that’s a productive way of spending your time!

GO is an epologist for evangelicalism. Ironic, then, that it is he who needs saving from himself

Redacted log

[GnarlyOcelot] Caroline Besnier, Yasuhiro Takeuchi, and Greg Towers, “Restriction of Lentivirus in Monkeys,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- ences, USA 99 (September 3, 2002): 11920-25; Theodora Hatziioannou et al., “Restriction of Multiple Divergent Retroviruses by Lvl1 and Refl” ΕΜΒΟ joυrna122 (February 3, 2003): 385-94; Clare Lynch and Michael Tristem, “Α Co-Optedgypsy Type LTR Retrotransposon Is Conserved in the Genomes of Humans, Sheep, Mice, and Rats” Current Biology 13 (September 2, 2003): 1518-23; Vera Schramke and Robin Allshire, “Hairpin RNAs and Retrotransposon LTRs Effect RNAi and Chromatin-Based Gene Silencing,” Science 301 (August 22, 2003): 1069-74;

[GnarlyOcelot] Wenhu Pi et al., “The LTR Enhancer of ΕRV 9 Human Endogenous Retrovirus Is Active in Oocytes and Progenitor Cells in Transgenic Zebrafish and Humans;’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 101 ( January 20, 2004) : 805-10; Catherine A. Dunn, Patrik Medstrand, and Dixie L. Mager, “An Endogenous Retroviral Long Terminal Repeat Is the Dominant Promoter for Human ß1,3—Galactosyltransferase 5 in the Colon” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100 (October 28, 2003): 12841-46; Francois Mallet et al., “The Endogenous Retroviral Locus ERVWE 1 Is a Bona Fide Gene Involved in Hominoid Placental Physiology; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 101 (February 10, 2004): 1731-36.)

[Thrasymachus] Have you read these papers, GO?

[GnarlyOcelot] You know the answer ot that Thrasy, so I’ guessing you’re only asking because you want to make some point. What would that point be, I wonder?

[Thrasymachus] Only that citing things you haven’t actually read is generally considered poor scientific form.

[GnarlyOcelot] I’m citing a Bio-chemist who has read them (and cites them for that purpose)

[Thrasymachus] Then you should cite ‘Biochemist X cites this in support of XYZ’.

[GnarlyOcelot] I dont know if I “should” do that, but w/e.

[GnarlyOcelot] “Biochemist Fuz Rana cites this in support of xyz”.

[Thrasymachus] Well, put it this way: if I did that in any of my papers or essays and I got caught, I’d be in trouble.

[GnarlyOcelot] Thrasy, that because peopl work hard to get credit for their work, that’s their job and there’s money and careers at stake. In here, we’re only interested in the facts.

[GnarlyOcelot] (And the fact is, these so-called ERV’s fit perfectly fine on a creation model for the reasons listed above)

[GnarlyOcelot] Or at least I’m presenting that argument

[Thrasymachus] Actually, the reasons for good citation practise aren’t just avoiding plagiarism. Someone reading that C&P splurge might be mistaken for believing you are marshalling a body of evidence in support of your thesis – that I could look up these papers and ask you questions about them, and so on. In fact, you’re just channelling someone else who has done this. You could convey the ‘fact’s as accurately as referring to the work where he does just this, even if it doesn’t give such an intimidating wall of text.

[Thrasymachus] but w/e.

[GnarlyOcelot] Thrasy, you’re more than welcome to challenge the thesis..

[Thrasymachus] I’m not interested in challenging the Thesis. I was challenging the manner in which you supported it.

[GnarlyOcelot] If the individual in question wanted to read some of this material and challenge me on a part, and I didnt know the answer to that part, then I simply say “Sorry, I’m not a biochemist, this point is brought up by Fuz Rana here; I can give you his contact info if you want details”.

[GnarlyOcelot] Of course, few are going to challenge me on a part.

[GnarlyOcelot] Anyways, so there’s an objection to the ERV argument.. if anyone wants to pursue it, thats a good place to start.

[Thrasymachus] Few are going to challenge you on it because of the wall of text (the top of which left the top of the chat before the last was pasted). The point is that this ‘style’ of citation is tantamount to academic malfeasance. Not only because it steals research of someone else, but it also gives a false veneer of scholarly expertise: that you’re someone who’s up to speed on the relevant literature, rather than copying the reference list from someone who is. The ‘Ruz Fana argues here that ERVs are fine with creation [cite] avoids both of these. I could suggest a number of uncharitable reasons why you don’t do it, but I shan’t. Simply be aware that I’ll be asking ‘have you read these papers? and ‘are you channelling someone who did?’ will be frequent questions of mine from now on.

[GnarlyOcelot] Yeah, uh, Thrasy.. if we polled the room here on who thought I gathered those citations by myself and who assumed I got it from someone else.. i’d expect that pretty much everyone, just like you, knew I got it from someone else. I think your criticism is a little strange. The goal here isn’t to make myself look good or put of a “false vaneer of scholarly expertise”.. all I care about here is truth. That’s what its about.. so again, I think your criticism is out of place.

[GnarlyOcelot] If someone who doesn’t know me comes out thinking I have some undeserved scholarly expertise… then big whoop.

[GnarlyOcelot] (but again, you wouldn’t think that.. nor would Lance.. so I dont see what the problem was — again).

[Thrasymachus] w/e. For my part, I assumed the references you gave represented works you actually consulted. You would also save vast swathes of text by referencing the secondary source which you are actually using, but so be it.

Full log

[GnarlyOcelot] Caroline Besnier, Yasuhiro Takeuchi, and Greg Towers, “Restriction of Lentivirus in Monkeys,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- ences, USA 99 (September 3, 2002): 11920-25; Theodora Hatziioannou et al., “Restriction of Multiple Divergent Retroviruses by Lvl1 and Refl” ΕΜΒΟ joυrna122 (February 3, 2003): 385-94; Clare Lynch and Michael Tristem, “Α Co-Optedgypsy Type LTR Retrotransposon Is Conserved in the Genomes of Humans, Sheep, Mice, and Rats” Current Biology 13 (September 2, 2003): 1518-23; Vera Schramke and Robin Allshire, “Hairpin RNAs and Retrotransposon LTRs Effect RNAi and Chromatin-Based Gene Silencing,” Science 301 (August 22, 2003): 1069-74;

[GnarlyOcelot] Wenhu Pi et al., “The LTR Enhancer of ΕRV 9 Human Endogenous Retrovirus Is Active in Oocytes and Progenitor Cells in Transgenic Zebrafish and Humans;’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 101 ( January 20, 2004) : 805-10; Catherine A. Dunn, Patrik Medstrand, and Dixie L. Mager, “An Endogenous Retroviral Long Terminal Repeat Is the Dominant Promoter for Human ß1,3—Galactosyltransferase 5 in the Colon” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100 (October 28, 2003): 12841-46; Francois Mallet et al., “The Endogenous Retroviral Locus ERVWE 1 Is a Bona Fide Gene Involved in Hominoid Placental Physiology; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 101 (February 10, 2004): 1731-36.)

[Thrasymachus] Have you read these papers, GO?

[Lance] GnarlyOcelot most likely no one is going to read that if you just spam copy / paste :S

[GnarlyOcelot] So maybe the creator put those so-called ERV’s in from the getgo.

[Lance] and zod could you re-send that?

[Lance] GnarlyOcelot maybe, but really what is a more reasonable explanation?

[GnarlyOcelot] You know the answer ot that Thrasy, so I’ guessing you’re only asking because you want to make some point. What would that point be, I wonder?

[zodigital] [zodigital] Lance, then how can you point a finger at Christians claiming that their faith is false because they have not witnessed for themselves the evidence, but yet you can state that you believe in evolution and what “scientist’s” have discovered in a lab without ever witnessing it yourself?

[zodigital] I’m not trying to be facecious (I think I spelled that wrong)

[Lance] zodigital

[Thrasymachus] Only that citing things you haven’t actually read is generally considered poor scientific form.

[GnarlyOcelot] I’m citing a Bio-chemist who has read them (and cites them for that purpose)

[Lance] zodigital which beliefs exactly are you talking about? I don’t think every belief a Christian has is false because they have not witnessed it for themselves.

[Thrasymachus] Then you should cite ‘Biochemist X cites this in support of XYZ’.

[GnarlyOcelot] I dont know if I “should” do that, but w/e.

[GnarlyOcelot] “Biochemist Fuz Rana cites this in support of xyz”.

[Thrasymachus] Well, put it this way: if I did that in any of my papers or essays and I got caught, I’d be in trouble.

[zodigital] Lance, I’m speaking in general. You have obviously chosen a side, have you not? Non-Christian, am I correct?

[Lance] zodigital anyways though, I believe on faith yes, but I have no certainty in this belief. And if you proved that such things were not the case I would have no problem rejecting them.

[Lance] zodigital yes I am not a Christian

[GnarlyOcelot] Thrasy, that because peopl work hard to get credit for their work, that’s their job and there’s money and careers at stake. In here, we’re only interested in the facts.

Lance] zodigital and yes I do take things on faith, but there is a differance between believing something in faith out of conveniance, and believing something in faith out of necessity–because there really is no actual answer.

[Lance] and having certainty in faith, upposed to a loose belief in faith

[Lance] I am in no way certain that we evolved, the level of certainty I have in the theory of evolution is the same as the level of understanding I have in the theory of evolution

[GnarlyOcelot] (And the fact is, these so-called ERV’s fit perfectly fine on a creation model for the reasons listed above)

[GnarlyOcelot] Or at least I’m presenting that argument

User JimmieD has logged in.

[Thrasymachus] Actually, the reasons for good citation practise aren’t just avoiding plagiarism. Someone reading that C&P splurge might be mistaken for believing you are marshalling a body of evidence in support of your thesis – that I could look up these papers and ask you questions about them, and so on. In fact, you’re just channelling someone else who has done this. You could convey the ‘fact’s as accurately as referring to the work where he does just this, even if it doesn’t give such an intimidating wall of text.

User Lance has logged out.

User Lance has logged in.

[Thrasymachus] but w/e.

[Lance] ugh cut out again

[zodigital] Lance, Belief in faith is just as you stated, belief in that which is faith itself. Christians believe in Jesus Christ. A man who actually lived, proclaimed to be God in the flesh, did miracles, was prophesied about in writings long before His birth, died for the sin(s) of His people, rose again from the dead, and then ascended into the clouds in front of 500 eyewitnesses to return once again

[Lance] zodigital Do Christians have a loose belief that Jesus is God, that it most likely is true but maybe could be false, or do they have absolute certainty that Jesus is God?

[GnarlyOcelot] Thrasy, you’re more than welcome to challenge the thesis..

User Cloud has logged in.

[Thrasymachus] I’m not interested in challenging the Thesis. I was challenging the manner in which you supported it.

[Lance] zodigital you say that I have the same level of faith in evolution as you (atleast thats what I think you’re saying) but that isn’t true at all.

[Lance] *as you do in God

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[GnarlyOcelot] If the individual in question wanted to read some of this material and challenge me on a part, and I didnt know the answer to that part, then I simply say “Sorry, I’m not a biochemist, this point is brought up by Fuz Rana here; I can give you his contact info if you want details”.

[GnarlyOcelot] Of course, few are going to challenge me on a part.

and resurection for the forgivness of sins which our very consciences testity of.

[GnarlyOcelot] Anyways, so there’s an objection to the ERV argument.. if anyone wants to pursue it, thats a good place to start.

[Lance] GnarlyOcelot do you think that because the Creationist model can explain how ERV’s happend, makes it as viable a position as any non-creationist position?

[Lance] zodigital well then, I think that proves my point

[zodigital] testity = testify

[zodigital] Lance, what is your point?

[Lance] my point was that my faith in the theory of evolution is not in any way comparable to your theory in God

[Lance] as I thought you were claiming

[Lance] maybe I misunderstood you

[GnarlyOcelot] Lance, thats not a sufficient condition for such a thing. All it does is nullify any significant advantage common descent would have gotten from this “evidence”. That’s all it’s meant to do.

[zodigital] Lance, you are misunderstanding. You’re looking at Christians from your worldview. We do not have any control over our belief in God. That is a work of God that He causes a man or woman to believe.

[Lance] zodigital okay

[zodigital] Lance, you can’t understand these things in the flesh. Intellectually you can, but until God, the true and living God changes your heart, it will always be foolishness to you.

[Lance] thats where this conversation ends

[zodigital] Lance, I know

[Lance]

[Lance] thats a claim I shall never accept

[zodigital] It’s where it always ends.

[zodigital] Lance, you can’t accept it.

[zodigital] It is a work of God.

[Lance] its a cop out

[zodigital] I know it this to be true from my own salvation.

[Lance] and maybe its both

[Lance] but neither of us shall know untill we die and meet God ourselves

[zodigital] Lance, I expect you to say these things because of what Scripture testifies.

[Thrasymachus] Few are going to challenge you on it because of the wall of text (the top of which left the top of the chat before the last was pasted). The point is that this ‘style’ of citation is tantamount to academic malfeasance. Not only because it steals research of someone else, but it also gives a false veneer of scholarly expertise: that you’re someone who’s up to speed on the relevant literature, rather than copying the reference list from someone who is. The ‘Ruz Fana argues here that ERVs are fine with creation [cite] avoids both of these. I could suggest a number of uncharitable reasons why you don’t do it, but I shan’t. Simply be aware that I’ll be asking ‘have you read these papers? and ‘are you channelling someone who did?’ will be frequent questions of mine from now on.

[zodigital] Lance, you’re correct.

[zodigital] May I remind everyone that this room is reserved for Evangelical/Christian Chat?

[zodigital] Debates, go to debates

[Lance] zodigital I don’t think the admins enforce that

[zodigital] This is where the Christians come to fellowship

[zodigital] If you’re in here, then we will proclaim the Gospel to you

[Lance] each of the rooms can become general, there are other rooms people could go to

[zodigital] That’s not what I was told

[Lance] ohkay

[GnarlyOcelot] Yeah, uh, Thrasy.. if we polled the room here on who thought I gathered those citations by myself and who assumed I got it from someone else.. i’d expect that pretty much everyone, just like you, knew I got it from someone else. I think your criticism is a little strange. The goal here isn’t to make myself look good or put of a “false vaneer of scholarly expertise”.. all I care about here is truth. That’s what its about.. so again, I think your criticism is out of place.

[Solidfaith] That’s right… Turn or burn baby! Huzzah!

[Lance] well Diane hasn’t said anything yet

[Solidfaith]

[zodigital] Solid, they can’t turn

[Solidfaith] Repent and Beleive Wretches!

[zodigital] I couldn’t turn

[GnarlyOcelot] If someone who doesn’t know me comes out thinking I have some undeserved scholarly expertise… then big whoop.

[zodigital] It’s only by God’s grace that He’s done and is still doing a work in my heart.

[GnarlyOcelot] (but again, you wouldn’t think that.. nor would Lance.. so I dont see what the problem was — again).

Solidfaith agrees with GO

[Solidfaith] That’s right, Zod, but still it’s an essential part of the Gospel in my mind for someone to be told to Repent AND Believe…

[zodigital] Diane is probably being smart and sleeping, exacltly what we should be doing!

[Solidfaith] eh who know’s I’ll be right back I’m almost done with my work ;p

[zodigital] Solid, I’m down with that!

[zodigital] Man, that’s why Christians are being persecuted. Because they proclaim Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins to the world, but the world is dark wants to have no part of the Light, which is Christ.

[zodigital] We proclaim Christ, and BOOOOOMMMMM we get shut down, or shot down.

[Thrasymachus] w/e. For my part, I assumed the references you gave represented works you actually consulted. You would also save vast swathes of text by referencing the secondary source which you are actually using, but so be it.

Standard polling techniques have Americans proclaiming considerably higher levels of religious belief and religious practice than their European counterparts. Perhaps the best data of this sort is from Gallup: in their 2009 poll about religion, the US scored much higher than the average developed nations (65% versus 38%). In terms of belief, around 80% of Americans believe that God exists (compare to the UK at 38%, France at 35% or Germany at 47% in the 2005 Eurobarometer poll). Ditto religious behaviour: 40 or so % say they’ve attended church in the last seven days, compared to 20-30% for western Europe.

One question was whether these differences represented Americans really praying more or filling church pews more often than the Europeans, or just them saying they did. People tend to slant their responses to those that paint them in the most socially desirable light – perhaps if profession to religiousity had different social consequences between the ‘States and Europe, then this might explain the different patterns of response.

There are a few ways of settling the question properly. One approach is to do ‘time-use’ interviews where you simply ask what someone did each day of a week, and then see who mentions church. If interviewees aren’t asked directly about religious participation, it’s fairly unlikely they would make an episode up for self-portrayal purposes. The second is to compare results between interviewer given tests and those of anonymous questionaires – the latter reduce social desirability. Another, elegant, test to simply assess the size of congregations: whether the number of people actually at church in a given week matches up to those who say they go weekly.

The results all show Americans over report their religious practices, and the ‘real’ figures of religious practice closely mirror those of Europe. ‘Time-use’ interviews give religious practice at around 24-25% for Americans – unremarkable and in line with European countries. What is remarkable is the degree of over reporting, of the order of 10 to 18% (the runner up is Ireland, with 2-4%) (Brenner Forthcoming). Comparing interviewer to anonymous surveys gives a similar story – the interviewer reported rates are far higher than those reported anonymously (and, interesting, although interviewer-report has remained fairly constant at 40%, self report shows a creeping trend of secularization)  (Presser and Stinson 1998). Looking at bums on pews reveals a similar picture: congregation numbers suggest around 22% regularly attend religious services (Hadaway and Marler 2005).

America is an outlier in the western world about it’s religious practice. But it’s not an outlier in it’s level of religious practice; it’s an outlier in how much it lies about it.

REFERENCES:

Brenner P. (Forthcoming) Exceptional behavior or exceptional identity? Overreporting of Church Attendance in the US. Public Opinion Quarterly

Hadaway C K, Marler P L. (2005) How many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? An Alternative Approach to Measurement. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44: 307–322

Presser S, Stinson L. (1998) Data collection mode and social desirability bias in self-reported religious attendance. American Sociological Review 63(1): 137-145

Yet this confusion is fairly common. Perhaps it is partly due to how one often discusses the argument from evil. Often God is ‘put on trial’ where various defenses for his seeming misconduct are offered and scrutinized, and this sort of trial-esque game seems to imply (like a defendant) that his character is in doubt, not his existence. Regardless, it needs to be emphasized that God is not on trial in the sense that he is being called to account for his deeds, but rather the question is whether the world-as-it-seems contradicts the idea of a being with the character and resources that God is meant to have. Not least, this distinction must be made because it is possible that some argumentative moves are licit for ‘trials’, but illicit here.

A recent case:

GP placement, late morning. I’ve been observing another student try and take a history from the same man for forty-five minutes. I doubt I would have done any better at fighting through the free-associating detours and distractions. He varied from lecture, to anecdotes, to slideshow (he brought photographs of his various collections of computers and cars to show to us).

Both my GP and colleague seemed to enjoy his company (“It was a real privilege to talk to him”). I did not. I spent most of my time concentrating on trying not to give somatic cues to my frustration, to not betray my growing urge for him to just shut up, and I doubt I entirely succeeded – I noticed myself coiling up my fists more than sometimes. Why was I so pissed, when my colleagues were so sanguine?

I suffer chronically from a hyperactive cringe gland. Any deviation from social etiquette puts me on edge, especially the embarrassing and the bathetic. I have exceptionally low tolerance for people saying something stupid or awkward.

It’s a fairly long-standing trait, and I don’t think it is one I can easily shake off. So how can I deal with situations like the one above? Perhaps preventions is better than cure. If I am finding myself feeling frankly embarrassed or seething, that’s a sign the consultation isn’t going to plan. Perhaps when in control of these interviews myself, I can gently interrupt to guide the patient back to the matter at hand.

Yet other times I won’t have that option. I need to learn better how to at least put on a show of being at ease. The gentlemen I met could not have been nicer, and deserved better than my contempt. Would that I learn to do otherwise.

The wider discussion as to how good this suite of proposals are, either in being progressive or anything else is wildly contentious (see here for an especially well-informed discussion about them). Instead, I want to cover a bit of applied moral philosophy: have the Lib-dems betrayed their electoral mandate?

Defenses and apologies:

On the face of it, voting contrary to a specific pledge made prior to your election is a prima facie betrayal. What arguments could a Liberal Democrat marshal in defense of the party’s behaviour?

Coalition compromise:

One might say that the pledge is a necessary casualty of coalition government. That although the Lib-dems would love to freeze or abolish student fees, but alas they needed to compromise with the conservative party, and student fees were one of the horses traded to secure a more progressive agenda.

University admission itself is profoundly structurally iniquitous (the upper middle classes are tenfold overrepresented in the Cambridge student population, and similar stories apply across the Russell group) and thanks to this the proposed changes will mostly hit the better-off. So the Lib-dems could go cap-in-hand to their voters and say: “Look, we wanted all these things, but we can’t get them all – we’ve used our influence in coalition to try and secure the most important, and student fees are one of the lesser causes we sacrificed.” Student fees shouldn’t be the biggest social issue exercising progressives. It shouldn’t even be the biggest educational issue exercising progressives.

Unfortunately, manifesto commitments aren’t the same as personal, specific, signed pledges. Lib dem MPs signed up to oppose any increases of student fees in the current parliament. That isn’t something that can be traded away for political expedience – especially so if many votes voted for you because of such a pledge. Perhaps if there was no alternative but anarchy. Yet there was: the principled thing for the Liberal democrats to have done would be refuse to enter into any coalition government which would raise tuition fees – or at least not do so save on the understanding they would vote against them (much like the Tories secured the right to campaign on ‘No’ in the AV referendum). Failing that, sort out a confidence-and-supply agreement.

The Lib-dems had other options, but they freely opted to betray a pre-election pledge because it was no longer politically expedient. Sticking to one’s pledge would be politically unhelpful, and might have even caused the sacrifice of more important progressive goals. If so, that’s the price you pay for pulling a stupid populist stunt: either follow through or publicly state that such a pledge was mistaken and you apologize for making it.

Not what we expected

Instead, one could say that the promise was made under the assumption of circumstances much different from what actually obtained. If Labour grotesquely high-balled the fiscal state of the country, then the economic calculations of the Lib dems would be necessarily misled. Again, they could say something reasonable to their electorate: “We had planned to distribute the public finances to eliminate student fees. However, the financial situation was much worse than anticipated, and we had to change our plans. Unfortunately, one of the things we had to drop was the student loans”.

Fine insofar as it goes – promises made on the understanding the situation would be a certain way aren’t necessarily binding if things turn out be substantially different. The ‘labour screwed up our finances and didn’t tell anyone’ trope gets wheeled out a lot to justify the austerity measures. Yet the Libdems were all to happy to oppose austerity and the fears of a double-dip when angling for seats – it seems a bit convenient that never-before-seen data prompted the change of heart, as opposed to being forced to be conservative bedfellows. But again there is a deeper issue: if the purse-strings were even tighter than anticipated, one should still try and honour one’s promises first. Have the Lib dems prioritized their student fee commitments? Not at all.

Indictment

Nick Clegg in interviews has mashed up elements of both these defenses. Yet neither work – not only because they facts are wrong, but because we know the intent of the lib dem party wasn’t along these lines. Thanks to some leaked memos, we know that they didn’t cling on to their commitments to student fees for dear life, nor horror and rapid recalculation at finding the state of the finances completely contrary to their predictions. Rather, abandoning this pledge was part of a pre-meditated negotiating strategy.

There are arguments to be had about how to fund University. Perhaps, like me, you think university should be a public good to ideally be funded from general taxation; but you also think, like me, that university admission is currently so regressive as to – at least for now – warrant being funded by it’s unjustly fortunate recipients. So if you don’t mind at least this aspect of the new proposals, why should you feel betrayed by the Libdems?

Firstly, it suggests the Liberal Democrats are unable to actually walk the walk. They’ve squandered their clout on little more than referendum on a watered down PR which they may well lose. They’ve passed a budget agreed to be regressive by the independent think-tanks Nick Clegg used to love, and now they nod with deference at the Browne review in the drive to commodify education and raise fees.

The most important issue is this: the Liberal Democrats can’t be trusted to honour their mandate. I was not entirely sold on the Liberal policies on abolishing tuition fees. I was definitely against their opposition to nuclear power. Yet they seemed the best option – sharing parts of Labour’s social agenda, without the habit for quixotic wars and idiotic authoritarianism. So, like I suspect the vast bulk of voters, I picked the best of a middling bunch and signed up to a block which would (albeit imperfectly) represent my interests.

Yet I am only represented to the degree my interests coincide with the venality of the Liberal Democrat leadership – the fact they happen to be dropping policies I wasn’t entirely on board with is no comfort. If they’re willing to sell out on signed pre-election pledges, why should anyone trust a word they’ll say? Why won’t these flat-pack excuses be erected elsewhere when they find their mandate inconvenient to their current role as chamberlains for the Conservatives? The Lib dems were feckless in opposition, and now prove spineless in government.

What now

The NUS is planning to directly campaign against any Liberal Democrat MP who votes in favour of this bill next election. This doesn’t go far enough: they should lobby against the entire Liberal democrat party. Partly because I don’t trust them not to stage a ‘tactical rebellion’ where those in safe seats ‘take the hit’ by voting to allow those in university towns to abstain/vote against, but mostly because there’s little point joining a voting block that can at best draw scattered support from its own MPs for its own manifesto. I want better from a party than an archipelago of principle amongst a sea of duplicity.

Like more than a few first time voters, I now feel physically ill when I think I got suckered in to voting Lib dem. If one wonders about voter apathy, I think episodes like this are an excellent reason why. Want a ‘new kind of politics’? Spoil your ballot.

[Update 10/12/2010: Minor typo squashing. Unsurprisingly, the vote passed.]

A recent case study: the Manhattan declaration, a modern-day declaration of Christian conscience, states, amongst other things, that homosexuality is a disorder, and that gay sexual relationships are fundamentally misguided. It had an app on the iPhone, but this was pulled after people lobbied apple about it.

Unsurprisingly, those who support the declaration cried fowl. Tom Gilson, over at First things, argues that this behaviour unfairly closes out those who oppose gay marriage etc., and gay rights activists aren’t treating their opponents with the respect they deserve as fellow human beings. Melinda, over at Stand to Reason, has argued much the same.

I dropped in on Gilson’s post, and commented that this behaviour – both of the activists, and of Apple, is entirely warranted.

I don’t pretend to have read the Manhattan declaration, but I assume it will say something along the lines of this:

1) That homosexuality is some sort of disorder

2) That gay sexual relationships are immoral vis-a-vis a heterosexual “genuine article”

3) Gay couples are unfit to raise children

If so, ‘hate speech’ is semantically appropriate (although ‘vile and arrant bigotry’ is better still). It isn’t just mistaken (contra all the medicopsychosocial literature and the experiences of homosexuals and those who know them worldwide) but so far beyond the moral pale as to warrant approbation. Affirmation of these things is not just an epistemic lapse but also a moral failing.

This doesn’t mean you or yours really ‘hate’ homosexuals. Your intentions, be they hate, patronage, misguided moral concern or whatever else aren’t relevant. You may well (barring this) be morally incandescent. Regardless, you should know better than this, and your attempts to organize yourselves into lobbying against justice and dignity for homosexuals is toxic to a just and humane society and an outrage to the human condition. That you have the audacity to posture as you do here about how homosexuals should be nicer to you and why can’t you all just get along as you seek to perpetuate all manner of iniquities against them beggars belief.

This isn’t meant to persuade you. Happily, the anti-gay movement wanes in influence, so much so that you need not be engaged with argument, but marginalized and disposed of with contempt. In the same way as supporters of sexism, or apologists for apartheid, your views are now silly rather than discussable (and note how your apologia mirrors theirs: lots of people believe it, we used to all believe it in the past, etc.) The rearguard for this moral error will die away in time. The sooner the better.

My argument, sans expansive rhetoric, is something like this: that some attitudes or beliefs are simply beyond the pale – not only are they obviously false, but also profoundly damaging to a just an humane society. As such, an entirely appropriate response is to try and stamp these out by whatever means available. These awful beliefs should not be treated with any civility whatsoever.

The 200 or so comments afterwards unsurprisingly spiralled around a variety of issues (although note Francis Beckwith’s one-man crusade to undermine confidence in the American Professoriate with his brain-dead argumentation). I want to cover a two interesting points: what would make a belief ‘beyond the pale’, and how such beliefs should be dealt with.

Being beyond the pale

What makes a belief ‘beyond the pale’? It must satisfy two conditions.1

1. That it cannot be held in a non-defective manner.
2. That believing it, or acting upon it, causes grave harm.

Anti-homosexual activism passes both tests neatly. It simply isn’t tenable to hold that homosexuals couples are unfit to be parents in the face of vast swathes of medical literature showing that children raised by homosexuals do as well as those raised by heterosexuals, that homosexuality is a disorder when it was expunged from the list of illnesses by every body of experts in the western world more than three decades ago, that homosexual relationships are some second-rate knock off of the genuine article despite work and expert opinion showing no significant difference. There’s simply no need for an involved discussion of the merits of the case – it is a summary judgement to equality.

It is so obvious, indeed, that those who oppose gay rights or gay equality are not honestly mistaken. It is not the case, like with abortion, euthanasia etc. that we think those on the other side are fairly reasonable and it’s profitable to discuss the matter with them, either to persuade them to our side or to see if they understand something we’ve missed. Rather, those against gay rights are in the same epistemic camp as those against miscegenation, against emancipation, or in favour of apartheid: the very fact they hold these beliefs is indicative of them being blind to reason, and we have nothing to gain (at least about the moral matter at hand) from talking to them about it.

But people hold all sorts of barmy beliefs, and our censure would be poorly spent if we attacked them all. Rather, we should only worry about crazy beliefs that threaten a just an humane society. Again, anti-homosexual activism plainly passes this test – it is already responsible for all sorts of iniquities against homosexuals, and usually seeks to purchase even more. These things are outrages that must be stopped.

Attacking the indefensible

So anti-homosexual activism (represented by things like the Manhattan declaration) are beyond the pale. How should they be responded to?

What anti-homosexual activists want is to be treated with respect, like fellow thinkers on similar epistemic ground. This should not be done: we should treat the morally indefensible with contempt, not respect. Indeed, moral integrity demands we don’t, in the same way we shouldn’t sit down for tea with the KKK, or shake hands with a chauvinist.2 We treat far right ideologies now with the contempt and ridicule they so arrantly deserve – ideally, the same should happen for anti-homosexuality.

Yet this may not be wise. The abolitionists would have got little done if they treated their enslaving culture with disdain and contempt. So there are prudential reasons to flatter immorality with respect en route to destroying it. The aim should be to change the prevailing mood of the time, and, once this is accomplished, consolidate the ground by further demonstrating that the view does not warrant respect in civilized discussion.3

Increasingly we’ve probably moved into the second stage with respect to homosexuality. In Europe and the UK, anti-homosexual sentiment is verboten, especially among the upper classes: if you have a problem with homosexuality, liberal society has a problem with you. Observe in the UK how ministers are now taken to task on their fluffing a Gay Times interview, or having an anti-gay voting record, and driven to recant.

I suspect the same has happened in the upper classes of US society (and, by association, Apple). If so, then precisely the right thing to do is to persuade Apple to refuse to support anti-homosexual applications. In some senses, the anti-homosexuals are right to call this a rhetorical ‘power grab’. It is however power justly exercised for the common good, and to protect an afflicted minority in particular. May there be more like it.

1Note: This closely follows my argument about anti-homosexuality being stupid, vile and toxic. However, one should be clear that although holding these beliefs is a moral failing, it doesn’t necessarily make one an awful person. Hate the sin, love the sinner…

2In some sense we should respect these people as fellow human beings, but we shouldn’t act towards them that implies respect for their vile views. In my other response, I dissect out this difference: what Gilson is really after is for his views to be treated with respect. He deserves it, they do not:

What you really mean with all this talk about ‘treating you as a human’, or ‘human discourse’ is for people to discuss these matters with you in a manner that implies respect for your convictions. Yet they deserve nothing of the sort, and further it would offend my moral integrity to behave as if they did. This sort of respect is earned on merit, not on shrill protestations that not doing so isn’t very nice.

3This no doubt applies to evangelicals too. I suspect they think it completely beyond the pale that someone supports elective abortion – I doubt it is a view they feel should be treated with respect. I suspect they realise, however, their best tactic towards changing culture in their favour is to smother this in winsomeness.

Alternatively, and more recently, a popular response is that of sceptical Theism: Namely, the principle that we simply aren’t in a position to judge whether the evils we observe really count against God. We simply aren’t able to judge the matter. Instead of God’s alibi, we simply show that our trial could never reach a safe verdict in the first place.

Also, one can simply accept that the balance of evil in the world really does, taken alone, suggest there is no God. However, this only considers evil alone. Considering the rest of the available evidence, we observe that there are much greater reasons in favour of God.

However one common objection, amongst popular sources at least, is to appeal to morality itself to ‘trump’ the argument from evil. When Atheist offers an argument from evil, Theist says some variant of “Well, to run the argument from evil in the first place, you need some account of what good and evil is. Yet the only plausible source of value is God.”

David: I think this argument could just be another argument like fine tuning or whatever else designed to rebut the argument from evil: “Okay, so there’s a problem of evil, but I’ve got an argument from morality which is even better.” However, I think when this sort of response is offered, it’s more an undercutting defeater: that, until Atheist gives a good answer to the moral argument Theist poses, Theist need not worry about answering the problem of evil.

Adam: Yes, I’m not sure the moral argument can be deployed this way. Surely Atheist could say something like the following:

“I’m not committed to actually believing there are moral facts or not. They either do or they don’t. If they don’t, then Theism can’t be true. If they do, then I can run my argument from evil. The only way you can avoid discussing the argument from evil is accepting a meta-ethical position anti-thetical to Theism.”

David: I’m not sure that works, because Theist could give counter-offer, like this:

“The problem of evil only works if there is some way good can be ‘free standing’ of God. Yet if my argument works, there is not only moral facts, but no way for moral facts to be free-standing of God. So there is no problem of evil: for to suppose evil is problematic just presumes I am mistaken as to the proper axiology.”

Now obviously the moral argument is controversial: you might think naturalistic counter-offers for moral realism are far better, that Divine Command Theory (or similar) doesn’t work, or that anti-realist accounts are fine. But the point is, I guess, that these issues are prior to the problem of evil. If Theist thinks he can force the issue, he stops the problem of evil at the pass.

Evidence and prior commitments

Adam: My hunch remains that these arguments find themselves opposed, rather than one being prior to the other. Maybe we can begin to clear this up with a bit of probability: most people now offer evidential problems of evil, and I think most of us only have degrees of confidence in meta-ethics less than certainty.

P(gratuitous evil) is the main issue for the problem of evil, for most believe that if gratuitous evil, then God does not exist. Perhaps Atheist’s prior remarks could be given like this:

P(gE|Moral realism) & P(¬Moral realism).

In other words, Theist must believe (Moral realism & ¬gE). The moral argument is something like P(Moral realism | ¬Theism) is very low. Yet I don’t think Atheist needs to ‘sort out’ meta ethics to be allowed to continue the problem of evil – because I think, if the problem of evil is persuasive, this can rebut the moral argument. Because our intuitions about the given evils Atheist offers might well be prior to the meta-ethics. We might observe evils that we think God cannot be justified in permitting: we may not know what our views about moral propositions are, but we conclude it must be one half or the other of the Atheists conjunct. Either these awful things indicate there are moral facts such that God doesn’t exist, or there is no fact to the matter of morality as a whole.

David: Does that really work, though? Mightn’t we consider evil, yet realize on reflection that such talk would be senseless if God didn’t exist?

Adam: Sure. But again, I think most of us have a sense of evil before we have a sense of these ethical quandaries: more likely that we dismiss divine command theory in the face of evil than vice-versa. Or something like that.