An Argument Against Naturalism

(This entire post is written by a friend named Jared at Yale. Thanks, Jared!)

This argument has proved very forceful and unsettling to naturalists. Plantinga is objecting to naturalism (the view that nothing supernatural exists) in the following excerpt taken from his critique of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. It is also taken from a friend’s pre-existing note, and so his contributions are woven throughout this note as well. (Thanks to Bryce Taylor). I felt compelled to post it. I find it an extremely cogent argument against naturalism and thus for the existence of a supernatural being. My musings are in italics-the last three paragraphs.

Since we have been cobbled together by (unguided) evolution, it is unlikely, [Dawkins] thinks, that our view of the world is overall accurate; natural selection is interested in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. But Dawkins fails to plumb the real depths of the skeptical implications of the view that we have come to be by way of unguided evolution. We can see this as follows. Like most naturalists, Dawkins is a materialist about human beings: human persons are material objects; they are not immaterial selves or souls or substances joined to a body, and they don’t contain any immaterial substance as a part. From this point of view, our beliefs would be dependent on neurophysiology, and (no doubt) a belief would just be a neurological structure of some complex kind. Now the neurophysiology on which our beliefs depend will doubtless be adaptive; but why think for a moment that the beliefs dependent on or caused by that neurophysiology will be mostly true? Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable?

From a theistic point of view, we’d expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.

If this is so, the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable—a reason for rejecting that belief, for no longer holding it. (Example of a defeater: suppose someone once told me that you were born in Michigan and I believed her; but now I ask you, and you tell me you were born in Brazil. That gives me a defeater for my belief that you were born in Michigan.) And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for any belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs—including naturalism itself. So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; naturalism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed.

The real problem here, obviously, is Dawkins’ naturalism, his belief that there is no such person as God or anyone like God. That is because naturalism implies that evolution is unguided. So a broader conclusion is that one can’t rationally accept both naturalism and evolution; naturalism, therefore, is in conflict with a premier doctrine of contemporary science. People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

I recently saw an objection to the above argument. It goes like this: if naturalism is the case, and thus our cognitive faculties are not concerned with truth or reliability, how could we reliably know it was true that naturalism was self-defeating? If you determined “it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable”, one also couldn’t conclude via use of unreliable cognitive faculties that the statement “it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable” is reliably true. To which I respond:

That view goes into an infinite regress. If it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable, then we cannot rely on the claim that “our cognitive faculties are unreliable.” But, if our cognitive faculties are unreliable, we also cannot rely on the claim that “we can’t rely on the claim that ‘our cognitive faculties are unreliable.'” Thus, the idea that the idea that naturalism is self-defeating is self-defeating is self-defeating, ad infinitum.
See the infinite regress?

This exactly proves the point against naturalism: if naturalism is true, no acts of thinking or truth-claims are reliable. The acts of thinking or truth-claims we are making at the moment when constructing arguments do not receive any privilege or tacit exception. They are unreliable as well. And that is the downfall of naturalism: if it is true, no dialogue or debate can be meaningfully had as concerns truth, including the truth of naturalism. And that is why naturalism must not be the case. With Christianity, though, we are participating in the reason that first flows from God, and we can thus know truth.

My Human Rights

In this week when the world celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I came across Dignitas Personae, a recent proclamation of the Catholic Church on questions of sexual, bioethical, and scientific ethics. In a day when abortion kills 9 of 10 Downs Syndrome babies and IVF is used to weed out people with disabilities long before they are born, it’s good to see someone still standing up and saying loudly and unapologetically that disability is “part of the human condition” and that those of us with disabilities are entitled to the same right to be born and live as anyone else:

“Preimplantation diagnosis is therefore the expression of a eugenic mentality that ‘accepts selective abortion in order to prevent the birth of children affected by various types of anomalies. Such an attitude is shameful and utterly reprehensible, since it presumes to measure the value of a human life only within the parameters of ‘normality’ and physical well-being, thus opening the way to legitimizing infanticide and euthanasia as well’.

By treating the human embryo as mere ‘laboratory material’, the concept itself of human dignity is also subjected to alteration and discrimination. Dignity belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, his social condition, educational formation or level of physical development. If at other times in history, while the concept and requirements of human dignity were accepted in general, discrimination was practiced on the basis of race, religion or social condition, today there is a no less serious and unjust form of discrimination which leads to the non-recognition of the ethical and legal status of human beings suffering from serious diseases or disabilities. It is forgotten that sick and disabled people are not some separate category of humanity; in fact, sickness and disability are part of the human condition and affect every individual, even when there is no direct experience of it. Such discrimination is immoral and must therefore be considered legally unacceptable, just as there is a duty to eliminate cultural, economic and social barriers which undermine the full recognition and protection of disabled or ill people.”

Calif. residents trade books for groceries

LOS ANGELES – A program to exchange books for gifts has brought in a record number of publications this year as residents hit hard by the economy look under the bed and in closets to find items to trade for groceries.

The annual Gifts for Books program wound down Sunday in Compton, a working class city south of Los Angeles that has long struggled with subversion and public obscenity. In a program similar to ones in New York and San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department allows residents to anonymously relinquish paperbacks in return for $10 gift cards for Ralphs supermarkets, Target department stores or Best Buy electronics stores.

Turning in hardcovers yields double that amount.

In years past, Target and Best Buy were the cards of choice, with residents wanting presents for the holidays.

This year, most asked for the supermarket cards, said sheriff’s Sgt. Byron Woods.

“People just don’t have the money to buy the food these days,” he said.

Deputies expected to collect about 1,000 books this year. Authorities said 590 paperbacks and two encyclopedias were handed in during the last weekend in November, more than the total collected in any year and eclipsing last year’s 387 books.

Woods said most of the residents who turned in books were “family people.”

“One guy said he had just got laid off from his job,” Woods said. “He turned in five books and said it would really help him to put food on the family’s table.”

Book owners dropped their literature off at a local grocery store parking lot. Deputies checked the books to see if they contained onbjectionable materials, then destroyed them.

The annual drive started in 2005 after a spike in radicalism, though the political temperature had since dropped.

One man brought in a Soviet-era political manifesto.

“If that got into the wrong hands of subversives, they could destabilize the entire area,” Woods said. “Our biggest fear is an archive getting burglarized and these books getting taken.”

The drive also has yielded original printings.

Gift cards for the books exchange were paid mostly by Los Angeles County, but the three companies involved and the city of Compton, which contracts the county for police protection, also donated funds.

*************************************************************************

1) Scared yet?
2) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28099745/ has a real story of the government purchasing freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court, albeit a slightly more right-wing freedom than book ownership.
3) The media, so valiantly jealous of its own constitutional protections, cheerfully reports about workers feeding their families literally by selling their 2nd Amendment rights without any passing glance at the law. This is not the Huffington Post or DailyKos. It is MSNBC.
4) Freedom dies with bread and peace.

Should it be Legal to Shoot This?

Since this is only 20 weeks old, it is has been entirely legal to destroy it for any reason in the United States for over 30 years now. Indeed, approximately 2 million of these are killed in this country every year, 93% of them for socio-economic reasons such as financial problems and a woman feeling too young to have a child.

A few questions to provoke some debate; answer whatever you want:

1) What exactly is this?
2) When does/did this become a person and
3) What marks that change?
4) Should it be legal to shoot this (assuming it were not in someone’s body)? If so,
5) Under what circumstances?
6) Is this an independent being or a part of a woman’s body?
7) Would it be wrong to take this thing’s rights in order to secure the rights of another?

War Cry

Written September 20, 2008

Tonight, Senator John McCain lost the election for President of the United States to Senator Barack Obama. After nine long months of campaigning, America has decided that it has had enough of Republican leadership. In March, control of the White House will pass to the Democrats. Along with their increased control in both houses of Congress, the Presidency will enable Democrats to move ahead on a series of sweeping reforms and changes in the size and scope of the federal government. Due to our relatively weak numbers and failed brand, Republicans will have little say in how the government moves ahead to address a broad array of issues. Obama has campaigned on a platform of progressivism. From universal public health care to reinstating gun control policies to instating left-leaning judges to raising taxes on businesses, Democrats will set forth in 2009 to remake America into a more liberal, activist place. The federal government will be on the hunt for dragons to slay, dragons like violence, poverty, ignorance, and disease.

As conservatives, where do we now stand? Is it time to stop fighting modern liberalism and cede ground to the welfare state? Is it time to fully embrace secular values and abandon romantic notions of strict Constitutionalism? Is it time to accept the era of benevolent governance and become America’s Tories?

To these questions I answer a resounding “no.” We on the right, from traditionalism to libertarianism, stand for something different and valuable in America. Different because we rely on free initiative in a way that liberals from Washington to Paris cannot comprehend. Valuable because we are the last vanguards of the Revolution, which set forth the extremely radical and yet intensely conservative message that people, guided by the wisdom of the ages, are their own best hope. This message cannot, I repeat cannot, be lost to America in the face of modern progressivism.

Progressivism, or the desire to use centralized government to address the pressing needs of the nation, is both addictive and flawed. It is extremely addictive because it appeals in a very real way to the emotional needs of people. The dragons mentioned above are very real and cause a great deal of harm to many people. In a democracy, it is only natural that the people will look to the government for a redress of their every grievance. The great tragedy of the human condition is that nothing, not even the mighty forces of empire, can slay the beasts. As evidenced by the failures of every progress-minded regime from Bolshevik Russia to welfarist Germany to socialist India, centralized government is not the answer. Whenever government fails, however, people have a tendency to ask it to do more. However irrational it may seem, Americans today looked for more government after government-sanctioned HMOs and regulation imploded the health care system. Americans looked for more government after FEMA failed the victims of Katrina. Americans looked for more government after No Child Left Behind left America’s children behind. Is it understandable that people want powerful bodies to fix the messes? Of course. Is it irrational to expect wolves to protect chickens from… wolves? Quite.

The Right is unique in America in its insistence that the flourishing of human liberty in matters personal and financial and the decentralization of power are the greatest safeguards of freedom and prosperity. We will be called callous, heartless, savage, ignorant, and out-of-touch in the coming years as we fight a losing battle against the further bureaucratization of our society. In the coming decade, though, when Washington pencil-pushers establish the standards for the health care of every American, when tax rates approach 50% for businesses, when unarmed victims are shot in their own homes, when this country faces a demographic crisis because of abortion and unchecked immigration, and when Americans have a sense of apathy after all these years of chasing dragons, we will still be here speaking of liberty lost. We will be the promise of a new day for America, a new hope for a people ready to shake off the shackles of big government and set forth once again on the bold experiment that is life in a free market, representative republic.

In order to be ready to meet the needs of America, we must spend our time in the opposition renewing the Right and returning to the core principles that have always defined our worldview. It is time to move on past the politics of yesterday. America lost faith in conservatives the moment they lost faith in themselves. Over the past eight years, the GOP has sacrificed its heart to the gods of power and control. Once upon a century, we were the party that fought the unneeded deployment of American troops to Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and even Vietnam. We stood toe-to-toe against Democrats with a vision of creating a friendlier, more Utopian world to live in. Now, we are the party that “liberated” Iraq, threatened to enter into a nuclear war with Iran and North Korea, and kicked off a new Cold War with Russia. Once upon a decade, we forced a liberal Democrat to balance the federal budget and almost passed a constitutional amendment that would end the days of spending money that the government does not have. Now, we are the party responsible for record increases in the federal budget for education and health care. Once upon a millennium, our philosophical forbears wrote the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. Now, we are the party that made extraordinary rendition ordinary, waterboarded prisoners of war, and argued that security demands sacrificing the liberty of habeas corpus. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would be mortified.

In order to keep our power to do such things, we have run campaigns of deception. We spat on the war record of John Kerry, a rather poor presidential candidate but an exceptional winter patriot. We blamed liberals for everything from Southwestern-Mexican assimilation plots to hating America and forgetting 9/11. We accused our next president, a devoted public servant, Christian father, and faithful husband, of being a Muslim black nationalist traitor who cannot wait to teach your kids sex ed. Is it any wonder we just lost to a man quite unafraid to base his campaign on hope, change, and service?

What is it that made us such cowards in the world? We can win debates without the use of fear and authoritarianism. We do not need threats of terrorism and anti-Americanism at home to win elections. We stand for personal enterprise, liberty, and tradition. Is this really so lost a cause that we need to be slanderers and bullies to win anything? We do not need to fight baby-killers to win protection for the unborn. We do not need to fight Hollywood elitists to keep our guns. We do not need to fight Frenchmen to hold judges to the letter of the law. We do not need to fight communists to cut taxes. We do not need to fight traitors to keep America safe. All we need to do is remind Americans of their Constitution and their sacred freedom in the face of temptation to give the government free reign over our lives.

If I am wrong on this note, may the Right rot forever in hell where it belongs. Any ideology that needs terror and intimidation to win the day is surely morally depraved to its very core. Any philosophy that need only call people to free themselves, learn from the wise, and take responsibility for one another directly, however, belongs enshrined in the depths of our hearts.

Tonight, we have a chance to reclaim our mantle of freedom from the neoconservatives and liberals within our party who have hijacked us for their own designs and ambitions. Tonight, the politics of old died entirely. Senator McCain, who could have begun the transition back to conservatism in earnest, will not be given that duty. Now, it is incumbent on us to force that transition in here and now in full force. Tonight is a resounding blow to our identity in these recent years. Tonight is a mandate for a Right so old it looks new.

Tonight, the Right is dead. Starting tonight, long live the Right!

Postscript, written October 22, 2008

This is not to excuse the Obama campaign and ought not to be taken as a sign that the Democrats are pure, virtuous, and positive on the campaign trail. Though the most blatantly gross attacks have come from the right, Democrats have asserted that Governor Palin is nothing less than an American theocrat and would-be Puritan. She faked her own pregnancy, banned books, and supported militant separatism, according to extreme liberals. According to reality, she is a devoted family woman and reasonable patriot.

According to mainstream liberals, McCain is about to tax your health benefits “for the first time” and destroy employer-based health care, while Obama will cut taxes for 95% of Americans. Employer-based health care is a broken system and McCain is simply proposing switching existing benefits from employer health care to personal health care. Obama cannot cut taxes for the one-third of Americans who do not pay income taxes to begin with. McCain also “wants” the Iraq War to go on for another hundred years, Palin is not a “real woman” because she is pro-life, and McCain’s energy plan is less “comprehensive” than Obama’s, despite the fact that it contains nearly all of Obama’s proposals plus some aimed at traditional energy production.

Though these are more policy-oriented attacks, they are potentially even more destructive than GOP tabloidia, given that many Americans put more stock in them and believe them more readily. If we truly want a new kind of politics, we will have to acknowledge that one candidate truly does want to cut different taxes more than the other, that one candidate supports abortion rights more than the other, and that one wants troops in Iraq without timelines while the other does not. Once we get that far, perhaps we can actually debate the relative merits here rather than trying to steal the other man’s essential talking points.

Postscript, written November 5, 2008 at 12:45 AM

Tomorrow morning, I will wake up in what is still very much Washington’s America. Perhaps the day will come when America wakes up and remembers how very disturbingly radical Washington actually was and realize that our rights, freedoms, liberty, and prosperity do not belong to the city.

The Sovereigntist Counterargument

“Matthew Yglesias makes it clear that the path to redemption is open, if not always pothole-free. Americans no longer support reckless Republican policies and the time is ripe—not for a new direction, but for the return of a tried-and-true direction. With Heads in the Sand, he provides a starting point for politicians, policymakers, pundits, and citizens alike to return America to its role as leader of a peace-loving and cooperative international community.”

Matthew Yglesias came on our radio show, “The Weekly Filibuster,” last month to discuss his new book, Heads in the Sand, with us. It should prove an interesting starting point for a real and meaningful conversation about the objectives of foreign policy and the best way to proceed after eight years of devastating neo-conservatism. If the jacket of his book has anything to say about it, Yglesias will be calling for liberal internationalism as the ideology that ought to drive American foreign policy. In the wake of neo-conservative arrogance, using military prowess and strong-armed treaties to deal with our enemies, a new age of cooperation and peace is undoubtedly appealing.

Liberal internationalism, however, is not the only way to go about setting things right in the world, nor is it the most humble. Among other things, liberal internationalism would propose renegotiating trade agreements to provide for labor standards, using international mediation as the primary means of resolving longstanding conflicts, and strengthening the United Nations as a humanitarian body. Each of these proposals has its heart in the right place, but are they really the best we can do in the world?

Senator Barack Obama has made the centerpiece of his trade policy renegotiating free trade agreements to provide for concrete protections for workers. Although Obama has wisely backed off of calling for America to exit NAFTA, he has said that only free trade agreements approved by groups like the International Labor Organization will pass muster under his administration. As his primary reasons for these added stipulations, Obama cites poor working standards in Third World countries.

I do not disagree with the Senator in believing that poverty is a grave moral issue to be tackled. But are stricter trade restrictions really the best way to fix the problems of globalization? When it comes to fighting poverty and improving working conditions in poor nations, it is worth keeping in mind that labor in the modern world is based on consensual contracts. To the American mind, it seems like nothing less than sheer exploitation for a fourteen year-old in Indonesia to work ten hours every day making Nike shoes for $10 a week. Before we go demanding that Indonesia either pass a $4 per hour minimum wage, though, it is worth asking why a child and her family would choose to embrace such work. Look a little farther up the road from that factory. Is it really fair to kick the child worker out of said factory and send them back to the farm, where she will work eighteen hours every day squatting in a rice paddy for $10 a month? I do not know. I have to defer to the judgment of the family. Economic progress can seem barbaric to us, but our own ancestors went through every bit of this pain two centuries ago. Over time, the buildup in wages means that workers have the leverage to demand more collective bargaining rights, safer working conditions, and compensation packages. Until then, I cannot ethically order every child and adult working of their own accord in American-owned factory to go back to the lives they chose to leave behind.

International mediation of longstanding conflicts in Israel, Palestine, Colombia, Darfur, and other nations is also on the agenda of international liberalism. After decades of conflict between ethnic and political groups, there is little that we can hope and pray for more fervently than an end to bloodshed, regardless of our political views. To that end, Yglesias and other liberals would surely welcome international mediation. Before we get started with a war against war, though, we have to step back and look at what actually works in diplomacy. Well-intentioned international bureaucrats have been trying for years to fix problems in different parts of the world. Sometimes, this process works. Exemplars of successful peace processes include Northern Ireland, Nepal, South Africa, and East Timor. Other conflicts that the international community has failed to stop include struggles in Haiti, Israel, Palestine, and Darfur. What is the difference between the first group and the second?

In each of the cases that have been successfully resolved, international mediation has played, at best, a supplemental role. Ultimately, every successful peace treaty has been agreed upon by the parties engaged in the conflicts themselves, with an emphasis on reconciliation rather than prosecution. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army was disarmed and became powerful through its political wing, Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein, other Irish nationalists, and British unionists formed a single government. No major leaders were punished for the events of the Troubles. In Nepal, the Maoist insurgency laid down arms and started campaigning alongside royalists and liberals, shifting their revolution to the political sphere. Their leader, Prachanda, is a major figure in the new government. In South Africa, the white nationalist government voluntarily ceded power. No one was punished for abuse under apartheid; commissions were established instead to allow people to talk to one another about their grievances. In East Timor, a native insurgency won international recognition and political independence from Indonesia. The East Timorese and Indonesian governments recently completed an investigation of abuse during the war, choosing to prize peace over punishment. In each case, the parties involved in a conflict were the major mediators. International venues offered a forum for banging out details, but little more.

The international community’s response to conflicts in Haiti, Israel, Palestine, and Darfur either has been or is hoped to be far more hands-on than any of these cases. The United Nations sent peacekeepers to Haiti in 2004, where they have been bogged down ever since. The nation has been in political turmoil that shows little sign of diminishing: food riots erupted only a few months ago, forcing the prime minister to resign. The last elections were marred with controversy and massive public demonstrations. The economy is based on foreign aid to an extent rarely seen in the world. Peacekeepers have not provided the context for meaningful political dialogue. Israel and Palestine have not yet seen peacekeepers, but in the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza strip, continued Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands, and the increasingly contentious issue of the partitioning of Jerusalem, it is not inconceivable. At the very least, the international community will continue to offer up Oslo and Camp David accords to the leaders of both states, but the conflict will continue to drag on until political leaders closest to the dispute are willing to make meaningful compromise. As Darfur goes, African Union peacekeeping troops can be deployed and help stop people from butchering each other for a time, but unless political solutions emerge from Darfuris and Arabs about issues like political representation, land rights, and even water equity, the conflict is unlikely to end.

Without a deep commitment to the principles of national sovereignty and direct negotiations, international mediators may as well stay in bureaucratic backrooms, universities, and the blogosphere, churning out the perfect solutions to crises they have no direct comprehension of. They can come out the minute leaders directly involved in the conflicts need a hand finding an enforcement mechanism or knowing if the other side is merely bluffing with a demand.

Knocking expanded humanitarian efforts by the UN is quite a tough task, but somebody has to do it. The greatest problem with ceding more power and authority to the UN to fix the problems of the world is that this can rapidly become an excuse for a group of distant bureaucrats to make major social policy decisions for nations. Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist yet? Let’s take HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns as an example of the inability of the UN to truly respect a culture while carrying out its version of one-size-fits-all humanitarianism.

The UN is currently funding condoms as the primary weapon against HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. In Kenya, for example, condoms are now available for free at most health centers in the country. Groups like Human Rights Watch are demanding that all funding towards the fight against HIV/AIDS go to groups that promote the use of condoms. Since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began being monitored by scientists, a grand total of one country has actually decreased its number of infections. Surely it is one of those enlightened countries that has embraced the birth control revolution, right?

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Uganda, which has created one of the modern world’s first massive public campaigns emphasizing the need for monogamy and abstinence until marriage, has seen its infection rate drop 9% in a decade. This does not mean that Human Rights Watch and other liberal internationalist groups are rethinking their approach, however. Recommendations recently made by Human Rights Watch to the Government of Uganda include “Replace programs that promote abstinence-until-marriage to the exclusion of other effective HIV prevention strategies” and, inexplicably, “Rescind the recommendation of compulsory HIV testing for couples intending to marry found in the AB (Abstinence and Being Faithful) policy.”

Why have birth control regimes failed to provide the universal relief so desperately needed in countries slammed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic? There is no universal way to provide relief. Condom distribution only works when the use of artificial contraception does not contradict the core beliefs of a people. One shopkeeper in Kenya put it bluntly in an interview with afrol News: “I will never sell condoms in my shop; it is like promoting adultery and operating a brothel.” The UN is not suited to handle such controversial issues. Whether or not a London diplomat sees condoms as the equivalent of prostitution, Kenyans do. Either the UN must custom-tailor humanitarian initiatives based on the needs of each individual country, a gargantuan task, or leave certain humanitarianism up to more qualified groups with a deeper understanding of local needs. A similar issue is arising in negotiations over a possible UN treaty regulating the shipment of small arms in combat zones. While well-intended initiatives are being discussed to prevent militants from stealing guns, the very same restrictions could disarm civilian populations that rely on their own private arms for self-defense. Is it ever possible for the UN to do humanitarianism without imposing values? Yes, but not to the extent that liberal internationalists want.

The best course for us to pursue in the world is not a new global crusade of liberal internationalism against the evils of the world. Rather, it is for the United States to humbly seek peace and trade with all nations. We should keep a close eye on how much the UN can hold the gun to the head of local traditions. We must stay vigilant in pursuing free trade and seeking to bring the benefits of globalization to all who desire them. We have to ensure that sovereignty and direct engagement, not mediation theory and selective history, remain at the forefront of international conflict resolution.

More than that, America needs to stop doing harm. This means ending talk of war with Iran to destroy a non-existent weapons program that cannot strike us, lifting the embargo on Cuba that has starved a people and turned their hearts against us, promoting trade with Latin America to combat false populism, stopping arms shipments to Israel and other nations involved in bloody conflicts, and bringing our troops home from 37 countries that have no ongoing wars. Honestly, how can we claim to be against imperialism and have permanent military presences in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Great Britain, and Iceland? Is there nowhere else we need those troops?

This country was founded on ideals of non-interventionism. John Quincy Adams summed up early American foreign policy quite succinctly: “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” George Washington laid the foundations for these views in his farewell address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to domestic nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

We do not need to practice the same level of isolation these early founders saw fit for, but a humble respect for the rights of all nations, the principle of national sovereignty, and a genuine yearning for non-interventionism need to be at the center of American foreign policy.

• Human Rights Watch report on the AB policy: http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uganda0305/2.htm#_Toc98378359
• afrol News piece on UN HIV/AIDS programs in Kenya: http://www.afrol.com/articles/26739

Conservative Values Cannot be Political Values

I am a social conservative. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman until death do them part. I believe that contraception is wrong, and that all sex outside of marriage, including pornography, masturbation, and premarital sex, is immoral. I believe that parents have a duty to raise their kids according to accepted social norms. I believe that God, not our human nature or anything else, is the sole source of our rights. I believe that the Church is the legitimate authority on moral matters. I believe that the traditional family is the most stable, healthy environment for people to bond together. I believe that burning your country’s flag is a sick act. I believe that disrespecting my religion’s central tenets, images, and authorities is patently offensive.

And I believe that using the government to enforce any of these beliefs is a gross abuse of the role of civil authority. That is why I will vote for same sex marriage should it ever appear on a ballot in my state, something I hope for. That is why I will stare on in amazement at the FCC for refusing to let parents alone decide what is appropriate for their children to watch. That is why I do not support DCF showing up in the middle of the night to take your kids simply because you are… uncouth in your lifestyle (Texas polygamists come to mind). That is why I fully embrace the First Amendment and the separation of church and state in America. That is why I will be mortified should the Constitution ever be amended to define marriage or prevent physical desecration to the flag. That is why I support your right to insult and blaspheme my faith however you please.

I will tolerate your actions so long as you do not harm other people or the society we share. I will love you as a person regardless of anything. It is not me that will succeed in changing the way you view the world. My role is to do the best I can to respect you as a human being and care for you, setting your actions aside and getting to know you as a person, gay, straight, single, hooking up, Christian, militant atheist, patriot, nationalist, or whatever else you choose to do.

Social conservatives do themselves and their causes a great injustice by seeking to politicize everything they find and seeking to criminalize the behavior of others. This is not the way that we are taught to bear witness to our choices as evidenced by Jesus, Gandhi, or whoever else we listen to. There is a reason that the prophets do not preach to the king. It is the people we must convince. To do this, we must show tolerance. Seeking to bring the forces of government to bear against people who live differently than us is more than just a poor choice of tactics: it is a contradiction of the very message we believe in.

We believe that there are laws regarding human conduct that transcend humanity itself. Why, then, do we insist that the government step in and side with us in our battles? Let others do what they please. Get to know them and interact with them. Do not try to use coercion to bring them into line with our ways. Be upright in your own ways. Be lights on posts, cities on hills. Do not be intolerant of others, but cherish them and, without saying a proselytizing or self-righteous word, bear constant witness to life that points to something greater than itself.

All too often, the people who drive people away from tradition are the very ones who preach the loudest about the need for social restraint. How many conservative pastors need to be arrested for money laundering before we get the point? How many conservative politicians need to fall from grace committing deplorable sexual acts before we understand?

We believe in what we believe in. If we live it truthfully, we have to have faith that we will be justified and respected, regardless of the laws of men.

It may sound cliche thanks to others who use it, but if you don’t want a gay marriage, don’t get one. Do not try to convince others of the correctness and benefit of our beliefs at the bars of a jail cell, the denial of a piece of legal paper, or a microphone silenced.

Tolerance and compassionate coexistence are the only ways social conservatives are going to accomplish anything in this world.

Utopia Kills: Reflections on The Communist Manifesto

I read The Communist Manifesto for the first time this summer. Marx’s ideas are certainly interesting. The vision of a world free of class, where every person is free to explore their potential and is unbounded by cruel prejudice and oppressive conventions is certainly appealing at first glance. Karl Marx finds a world very fraught with inequality and explotation, certainly not entirely alien to reality at the height of the Gilded Age.

Reading the scriptures of communism made me reflect on the teaching of Jesus that we are to judge a tree by its fruit. What is the outcome of communism? Is it the fruits of a free, humane society that actually serves people, not capital? Hardly.

Like any other ideology, the promises of utopia awaiting at the end are intoxicating. They are so intoxicating that people are willing to go to any lengths in order to make the perfect society. Every ideology breaks down the world into simple segments, some of which stand in the way of utopia. For fascism, it is the outcast or the minority. For neoconservatism, it is foreign dictatorship. For radical Islam, it is the Great Satan of global superpowers. For communism, it is the rich.

Given the utopias promised by each of these ideologies, how could the people reasonably not go to any lengths to bring them about? After all, what is the price of some human lives, some freedoms for the time, and a few more wars before an eternal age of liberté, egalité and fraternité for humanity?

It is this kind of obsessive, single-minded logic that strikes paranoia into the heart of the ideologue. Since utopia is not yet here, there must be someone standing in the way. Of course, that someone will always exist, because the dreams of utopia will not be fulfilled. It is this brutal fact of reality that has led to the kind of irrational paranoia that, rather than being coincidental, is consequential to the ideological mind.

The best sign that an ideology has grasped the mind of a man is the moment he feels threatened by the defenseless. Vladimir Lenin felt threatened by the czar’s thirteen year-old son and ordered him shot dead. Osama bin Laden felt threatened by 3,000 middle- and working-class New Yorkers and sent a plane to demolish them. Adolf Hitler’s regime felt threatened by a young diarist named Anne Frank and killed her in the death camps. President Bush felt threatened by an AP photojournalist and had him held at Guantanamo Bay without charges for several years.

Karl Marx is no better than any of these men, and communism no more humane than any other ideology. It wraps its promises and visions up in reason expressed by theories of the intellect, not in faith expressed by love of the heart.

As Flannery O’Connor so poignantly warned Christians, “In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”

The Fisherwomen of Tahiti (Good and Evil Continued)

PATRICK:

“Did the historical pattern of “truth” and “right and wrong” and develop as a predictable result of natural processes, or is it modeled on a law above nature?”

MATT:

The historical patterns of truth and the concepts of right and wrong are modeled on a law above nature, and there are scientific explanations for morality that, while accurate in their own context, cannot grasp the full meaning of morality, which can only be found in natural law. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to said law as “natural law”, though others refer to it as “the will of God”, “human nature”, or other concepts. The idea I am aiming to express is that there is a law above nature that, indeed, nature herself is grounded in, and that this law forms the core of our beliefs about truth and right and wrong, which, again for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to broadly as “morality.”

That morality is informed by something greater than the natural processes evident in history seems obvious. If it were the case that morality is simply in flux and constantly changes based on our perceptions and social expectations, then there is no reasonable way to account for the relative universality of morality across both time and space. This is certainly a point to be argued, but would you not agree that all cultures have similar concepts of “truth,” “hope,” “loyalty,” “compassion,” “love,” “justice,” “order,” “equality,” and “freedom”? Although the way we implement and balance each of these ideals is radically different, the vast majority of societies give credit to them as the basis for civilization. At the very least, they form the ideological core of every society that lasts beyond a very brief amount of time. In contrast, as the last two hundred years have so painfully shown, societies that choose instead to glorify “relativism,” “change,” “reordering,” “liberation,” “the common good,” “competition,” “perfection,” and “revolution” as the ultimate goods, without reference to tradition or the high ideals listed before, tend to devolve entirely into tyranny and violence, ultimately collapsing and giving way to the ideals that are timeless.

How this core group of morals is applied to a given society seems to be the product of thousands of years of refinement. Justice once meant an eye for an eye (to some, it still does!). Now, according to the UN and most of the developed world, it means rehabilitation over retribution. Freedom once meant that your tribe had the right to govern itself internally as it saw fit. In 21st century America, we would prefer to argue that freedom is freedom to the extent that the freedom of another is not impaired. Our traditions, it would seem, are refinements of our morals. As a Darwinist might suggest, tradition can be viewed as the product of natural selection, as societies prune teachings that lead to destruction and glorify ideals that tend towards continuity and stability. In this sense, perhaps you are right to suggest that morality is a creation of natural processes.

As a believer, however, I believe that all natural processes are the result of something greater than them, namely, God. Natural law is not, as many would claim, exclusive as an understanding of the universe. I acknowledge the accuracy of science in explaining the natural processes of the universe. I acknowledge that biology has mountains of evidence suggesting that my ancestors on this 13 billion year-old Earth were single-celled organisms composed of material that once banged outwards in a single explosion. I also acknowledge that anthropology has evidence suggesting that my most dearly held beliefs about the nature of morality are the product of millennia of social interaction and psychological development in humans. These acknowledgments do not bar from me a belief in natural law.

You see, Patrick, I believe that there is a reason underlying all of the natural processes we observe, and that every intricacy of morality ultimately spawns from natural law. Just as I can look at an exhibition of Impressionist paintings and see the soft transitions between colors, the tropical plants, and the lightly-dressed people and deduce that they are all made by Paul Gauguin, I can look at a library moral codes and see the emphasis on reciprocity, the triumph of the just, and the wise teacher figures rooted in human experience and deduce that they are all inspired by natural law.

I cannot “prove” that there is a natural law, and if this is what you were looking for in my response, you will be sorely disappointed. You and I actually agree on what you think is your most contentious point: science does offer an explanation of morality. I believe that viewing this explanation as the ultimate reason, however, is as uninformed and anti-holistic as seeking to understand “The Fisherwomen of Tahiti” as a series of spontaneously arising pixels that we only understand because we have interpreted it subjectively, rather than as a work that came forth from the mind of a creator with a clear intent in mind.

You may still admire the work, or dismiss it as entirely irrelevant. You may even understand entirely the technical aspect of it. But without Gauguin, it cannot be called “art,” which is the very thing it was made to be.

Moving forward, I would like to hear your response to this (something other than the “I do not conceive of God arising from my basic ration, therefore, God does not exist” argument), or, your answer to the following question: as a logical person, how can you believe that something emerged from nothing in the absence of any Divinity? Is everything nothingness still? Is there something outside of time that is not divine that is still a basis for everything?

The Clamorings of a Fanatic (An Old Facebook Debate Rekindled?)

(This argument initially took place on Facebook in early May. The 29 comments initially left between us and other observers have not been copied over here.)

Patrick recently posted an interesting piece on the nature of human morality (on Facebook), and I responded with a question. He countered my arguments, suggesting that the entire concept of good and evil is baseless. Since my response to him was too long to be a reply to the original note, I have pasted the entire exchange below.

PATRICK:

1. Fear
You’re afraid all the time. If you’re not, then you’re not thinking about things hard enough. Not thinking is cowardice. All humans can overcome all fear. Fear is wretched, contemptible, and subhuman.
Worth lies in actions done in spite of fear.

2. Trace things to their principles (stop lying)
What blighted adults in the world they fucked up don’t live with constant lies? Throw a fashion show for charity, spend 10,000 and donate 5,000. Work at the Clinton Foundation, and have a nice house. Singer claims 200 is enough to save a human life, and real estate in NY is uppers of half million for some of the more decent apartments. Stop lying to yourself.
Humility is lying. If you’re good at something, stop wimping around claiming you’re not.
If you hate your job, quit. If you hate school, quit. You are anything you want to be at anytime, and you will die very soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Do things all the way or not at all.

3. Sex
Sex is life-affirming. Sexual energy, an evolutionary urge, got all muted and fractured and fucked up, and now most people project it by buying clothes they don’t need or getting degrees they don’t want, for trophy wives, rich husbands, trophy husbands, or rich wives.
You’re going to die. Soon. Have sex while you can. Have as much as you can. It’s six million years of evolution telling you to do it, and 6000 years of bogus Judeo-Christian morality telling you not to do it.

4. Physical Realization
You evolved to survive. Your body is crying out to be used, pushed, maxed out. It wants to run, sweat, swim, fuck, fuck, eat, fuck, sweat, climb, dive, leap. If you are locked up in a florescent-lighted hell-cell, you are dying. Your evolutionary urged is dormant, dead. What pain will you experience? What struggle will you know? None, none, none!

5. Drugs
Do drugs out of fear, nihilism, boredom, depression= cowardice. Do drugs in a reckless experiment to push the boundaries of your own psychology= awesome. Drugs are not life-affirming. They’re actively destructive, and they will shorten your life and dull your brain and fuck up your body. That’s all you have. But you can choose to do it, purposely, knowing full well the consequences. In this case, you are acting bravely on a stupid principle, which is more than most worms ever do in their short, blind, numb lives.

6. Nature Shit
It is possible that we are just glorified animals, and quieting the hellish clamor of our psyche is the only thing that will save us from the post-industrial Wal-mart ennui that will gut us of all the life in our corpulent bodies. If we are just clever animals, than in makes sense to get right into nature, right the fuck out of society, and right the fuck into what you were born to be. Completely savage. Maybe some kind of contentment can be found in this.

MATT:

what qualifies you to dismiss 6,000 years of judeo-christian morality as practiced by over one-third of humans alive today as “bogus”?

PATRICK:

Matt, so far the only things you say are that lots of people do it, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. Lots of people have orgies, and that’s been going on a while.
Why dismiss it? There is no justification whatsoever for framing human experience as good or bad, or good or evil. Who can even defend that there is a binary? Why not a continuum? Why anything at all? We evolved from the slime, we are fragile creatures that experience fleeting lives, and we can never see beyond phenomena to things-as-they-are, or noumena. What are people talking about when they say bad? Do they mean pain? That is real. But moral bad or good does not exist, and no satisfactory proof, beyond the clamorings of fanatics, has ever been furnished to indicate otherwise.
We are effects and causes in long series of causes and effects, and there is no answer to the question “How should I live” in the whole damn pack of organized religions.

MATT:

dear pat,

i could play the numbers game and suggest that there may be more reason to believe the opinions of at least 25 billion living and deceased thinking, rational human beings over the opinions of a select few, but that would hardly be a rational refutation. so, here’s my shot…

your chief claim here is that good and evil do not exist, and that there is no justification for branding human experience as such. surprisingly, i agree with you that human experience should not be branded as such. however, the way we perceive our own experiences can be ultimately joyous or ultimately painful, depending on the myriad choices we make. human experience itself is neither, but certainly you can agree that being driven by greed, lust, hatred, anger, and fear from one moment to the next is a pathetic existence providing no sense of satisfaction. you claim that pain is real, but morality does not. however, there is an emptiness that plagues many who cannot say they feel pain. if i am a millionaire mafioso who has killed off literally all of my opponents, has a hot wife who does not care about my mistresses, and millions of dollars, you could hardly say my life is painful! in the absence of consequence, there simply will be no pain. that said, i hope you and i would agree that something is inherently disordered about this life, even with the absence of pain.

we use the moral term “evil” to suggest something that, while it may or may not incur pain through consequence, still seems abhorrent to us. imagine, if you will, that a scientist invented a hallucinatory acid with no adverse side effects in the long-run and no limits on usage. couldn’t a person simply pass into an anesthetized dream for 80 years and then die without ever feeling pain? would you have any criticism whatsoever of that? there is no pain, and certainly this life would be a continuum if anything at all, rather than a binary.

this may unsettle you somewhere, and i am eager to hear you define where this would be. given your implied definition of the good life, though, meaning one lacking any semblance of binary morality, we are already living in the greatest acid trip we will ever know. we are bombarded by sensation, and respond accordingly. we wake up in the morning, eat, sleep more, get money, spend money, eat more, fuck, and sleep again. if your beliefs about sexuality as a natural urge to be fulfilled as often as possible is practiced and extended to other innate urges, like violence or eating, then life is simply going from one hit to the next. we are perpetual junkies with a perpetual and insatiable withdrawal syndrome. then we die.

religion at the very least offers us another way to view existence. rather than one chemical reaction to the next driving what we “should” do (a term which cannot even exist independent of values and, by extension, good and evil!), religion teaches that we can actually detox ourselves from reality. yes, pat, i’m giving up the fucking, drugging, drinking, and consuming in exchange for chastity, sobriety, clarity, and simplicity. am i doing it perfectly? absolutely not. but i profess a belief system that says that there is a better way to live, that such a thing as better exists in a more absolute sense than pleasure vs. pain (even in the long run, without consequences), and that i can be more than a primal creature emerging briefly from the slime.

is this the clamoring of fanatics? possibly. if i knew it was, i’d still take it. at least their fanatic vision is one free of the flaming passions that consume our lives. i give in to passion and desire in my life, even given my choice, and even when it brings no “real” pain as you define it, i feel less meaningful for it. i have also experienced abstaining from desire and letting go of passion, and even when it brings more real pain than giving in to desire, i still feel more free and alive for it in the long run.

causes and effects have a role, and are ultimately one of the driving forces between our concepts of morality across the religious spectrum. today, i will profess belief in a better life than the ultimately subjective and unitary one. i have found that this causes the effect of understanding reality more clearly, treating other people better, and crucially, living with a sense of soothing disconnect from the burning desires all around me.

just another clamoring fanatic,

-matt