The Injustice of Sexual Abuse

I want to apologize in advance for touching on a subject that's probably going to trigger a few people, so this is your advance warning: if discussions about sexual abuse, rape and the difficulty of prosecuting those crimes are likely to provoke some bad memories or feelings please skip this post.

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Here in the US we have a problem with rape and sex abuse. The problem is that we're not treating it like a problem, just as an embarrassment that we'd rather see go away. That doesn’t mean addressing the problem so it doesn’t happen again or treating the problem like a genuine crime to be investigated and prosecuted like theft or murder, it means we just seem to throw up our hands and ignore the problem until people stop talking about it. For a while it seemed that the #MeToo movement would start moving the needle but I’m still seeing the same old attitudes and problems. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are being held accountable for their abuse but Brett Kavanaugh, Michael Shermer and David Silverman all look like they’re going to get away with a slap on the wrist at most. No real investigation, certainly no prosecution and no indication that this will ultimately end their careers. Today I encountered a fellow who argued that David Silverman is not a rapist because there’s no proof. Of course, Silverman admits to several of the encounters but insists they were consensual in spite of the testimony of the women who came forward to accuse him. It comes down to “he said, she said.”

That’s the problem. When it comes to personal testimony they’re not weighted the same. Rape and other sexual abuses aren’t like other crimes where it’s possible to dig until you arrive at the truth. Even where evidence has been collected there’s little hope of action. We’ve known for decades that rape kits aren’t being tested but in spite of that the status quo has not changed and doesn’t look like it’s going to be. Otherwise the evidence is ephemeral at best since bodies heal and witnesses tend to be scarce. The only thing the victims have left are the mental and emotional scars that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and that’s difficult to display on trial because no one is willing to believe them. We’re willing to blame and convict pedophile priests without the kind of physical evidence we demand in adult cases. Is that really holding to a consistent standard of evidence? When so few rape charges lead to conviction is it any wonder that women give up trying to pursue justice for it? Women who accuse their rapists more often end up getting more abuse heaped on them as society blames the victims.

To add insult to injury, efforts to put a dent in the frequency of rape and sexual abuse have likewise failed. We’d much rather tell women they shouldn’t get raped than to teach men to not rape. We’d rather blame women for dressing provocatively or flirting or simply not taking enough notice of their surroundings than blame men for abusing them. I see more outrage over claims of false accusations than I do rape itself. When it’s pointed out that women get raped regardless of how careful they are, how modestly they dress or how directly they say “no” it’s disregarded. We don’t want to hear it. We’re not willing to lay the blame where it lies: on the rapist rather than the victim. Instead we demand evidence we know can’t be presented because it’s not a crime that leaves the same kind of evidence. We blame the woman for making the accusation because one false accusation somehow invalidates all rape accusations. We protect the men because their privilege matters more than women’s safety and call that justice.

As a man I am ashamed of my gender. I know this makes me a “bleeding heart liberal.” I know I’m a “social justice warrior.” I see no reason to reject either label because I don’t see these as bad things. There’s a moral rot at the heart of our society revealed by how often men get away with rape and sexual abuse and I want to see it come to an end. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. Use all the slander and libel against me you want, I don’t care. I refuse to provide cover to systemic failings in our society.

Stress

The following is a fairly meta post about stress and dealing with stressful times. I'm neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist so I do not have an expert opinion on the topic, I have only my personal experience and the tactics I've learned to deal with it. People who are close to me often describe me as extremely calm and patient, which always surprises me. I never really think of myself that way but in the end appearances matter.

The reason I bring this up, of course, is because I'm feeling a lot of stress at the moment. A lot of it is personal and per my usual policy I won't go into details here. My usual response to events that provoke me is to stop, take a step back and breathe, let myself feel the emotion and once the moment has passed try to look at the problem as objectively as I can. It's important that I feel emotions but it's even more important that I act more than react.

In this article in the Washington Post (I strongly recommend you view the page in Privacy or Incognito mode of your browser unless you have an active account with the Post, also strongly recommended) they discuss a political issue revolving around stress and panic. The point that stands out for me is is this:

A new book by neuropsychologist William Stixrud and my friend Ned Johnson provides an explanation. The book, “The Self-Driven Child,” explains how calm parents give their kids more sense of control and help them perform better.


The science is simple. If you are calm, your executive functions handled by the brain’s prefrontal cortex — organizing, problem-solving, self-control, decision-making — perform well. If you are overly stressed, those functions decline as your brain floods with cortisol. Stress is contagious, and if you are in the presence of somebody who is out of control — a parent, an employer or, say, a president — your own executive functions decline.


“It’s a terrible thing for a chief executive of anything to be fear-mongering or emotionally reactive,” Johnson explained, “because all the bright capable people around you become less bright and less capable if they’re overly stressed.”

By creating an atmosphere of calm around me I encourage other people to be likewise calm and focused. My best man brought up this quality about me during the reception for my wedding, and my wife has commented on it as well. So tonight when I shared with my wife an angry letter I was writing she expressed a bit of surprise that I was really angry. It's true, I was and I still am. I'm struggling not to let my anger dictate my actions but I can't avoid allowing it to color them. The reason I wrote and sent the letter is because there's a problem that's been going on for a while with someone else and I needed to respond. I needed to take action, not simply react, and decide what I'm going to do going forward. I took some time to mull it over and I kept coming back to the same conclusion. So I made the decision and acted on it. I'm not happy about it. I'm angry that I've been forced into this corner. But after a great deal of thought I can't come up with a better solution. All the good choices have been taken away from me.

That's life, sometimes. We recognize we are powerless to correct or resolve a problem and all we can do is worry. We rant and rave and do everything we can think of to release that stress but so long as the circumstance remains unchanged it's a coping mechanism at best. Until change happens the stress never truly goes away. In this case there is something I can do to create change, but it carries consequences that I can do nothing about. It carries consequences for people on the periphery of the problem that they can do nothing about. It affects people I care about and I can't help them, I can only choose between evils. I hope that I've chosen the lesser of them but opinions will vary. In time I hope that my choice will be vindicated, but that's something only time will reveal.

History is repeating itself with my problem. I can't help but feel I'm repeating mistakes that others have made before me. There are people in my life whom I have mostly walked away from because they create too much toxicity and nobody needs more of that. I know some of them regret what they've done to me in the past because they've expressed it to me, but frankly I don't care. I don't trust them enough to believe that they truly feel regret, that they don't still believe everything they said and did was absolutely justified. I don't trust them enough to give them the chance to do it again. I'm worried (and will always worry) that I'm committing that mistake now, that the action I feel is justified at this moment will forever poison my relationship with people I care about deeply. Of course I run that risk no matter what I do; I know what some people want me to do but thanks to the corner I've been placed in I don't see how I can. So this is me trying to process the stress and powerlessness I feel over the options available to me. I've chosen to take a stand with as much openness and honesty as possible. I have offered to explain everything to the people affected by it but I can't make them listen and if I tell them anyway I can't make them believe me. I have to give them the choice and to honor whatever decision they make.

I'm not the only one with problems. I'm not the only one who is stressed. As the article I linked points out, everyone's stress has gone up significantly over the last eighteen months even for people who think our nation is on the right track. It's impossible not to feel stressed when there's so much insecurity and unpredictability in our daily lives. No one can see the future, but some have a clearer understanding of outcomes than others. I try to follow those who have a better track record but no one is infallible. So stress is something we just have to learn to live with. You can bury your head, block out the news and pretend nothing is happening outside of your bubble, but eventually life is going to intrude anyway. The path I choose is to acknowledge the stress and its sources and having done so continue moving forward. I can't change the past or present, I can only decide what I'm going to do about the future. Some of those decisions are going to be mistakes. I can't change that, either. But I can try to learn from my mistakes and try to make tomorrow better than today. If we all do that then we can ultimately forge a better world for everyone.

Wouldn't that be a welcome change?

The God Quality

I have previously addressed the Problem of Evil in a another post but I'm not sure I really addressed the Christian apologetic of divine command theory. In its most simplified form, Yahweh can never be evil or immoral because he's the god. This god quality automatically makes everything he says or does automatically moral because of who he is. Because we do not have this god quality we have no right to pass moral judgment on anything he says or does. No matter how evil or immoral any action (or inaction!) he takes it is automatically made moral by dint of his authority as the god. If we do the same evil, immoral thing citing Yahweh's action as precedent we are still evil and immoral because we do not possess the god quality. The Profit of the Church of the Fridge wrote an incredible essay comparing the morals of Superman against the morals of Yahweh and I highly recommend it.

The Christian answer to the Problem of Evil is that there's no problem at all. Just ignore it until the problem goes away. I think that sounds perfectly reasonable when you don't think about it.

Why Does the Chapel Hill Atrocity Matter?

It's only the second day since Craig Stephen Hicks and a lot of atheists are already tired of hearing about it. Although the police have been careful to avoid accusing Hicks of a hate crime, everyone else has been quick to leap to that judgment. Of course, rather than blame anti-Muslim sentiment everyone assumes that atheism itself acted as motivation for Hicks' crime.

We've been saying it for a while but it needs repeating: atheism doesn't inform our actions any more than not believing in unicorns informs yours. That doesn't mean religion can't be a factor in an atheist's behavior, it means that our non-belief isn't justification for action. Religion can still motivate us to react, to speak up or act in response to something that believers are doing. It can make us fear for our safety, and fearful people are more likely to lash out. History shows us several examples of this.

In 1793 French revolutionaries passed a law outlawing religion and religious belief. This anti-religious behavior added to the atrocities that history now calls the French Reign of Terror, as priests and devoutly religious people of all social and economic stations were tortured and murdered. In 1917 Russian revolutionaries formed the Soviet Union and seized all property and wealth of the elite including churches, beginning an era where religion was discouraged, suppressed or drafted to support the leadership depending on circumstances. In 1966 Mao Zedong duplicated the Soviet uprising through his "Cultural Revolution" with similar actions and results. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and began a Communist dictatorship that oppressed religion and cultural minorities alike, classifying people into categories and starving or executing them as they saw fit.

Atheists will quickly point out that these actions were political, and they're correct. But the fact that religious followers were explicitly targeted can't be ignored. Atheism doesn't justify this, but humans can use any excuse to misbehave as long as we have reason to categorize people as "other." Why do I bring this up? Not to suggest that atheism is a religion or that it's just as guilty of promoting atrocities as any religion. It's to point out that even though we don't believe in any gods or follow any religion we can still rationalize our bad behavior, just as Craig Stephen Hicks did in Chapel Hill.

Human nature being what it is, we'll probably never completely excise our violent urges, and I'm not sure that we would be advised to do so. It's one thing to channel such urges into productive action, but another to remove them completely. It's not that these urges are bad in themselves, it's that allowing those urges to provoke us to bad behavior is the problem. What we need is not a lobotomy, we need to learn self-discipline. Atheism is not a cure for violence or any other bad behavior, it's just one less excuse for it. We can still find motivation through greed, fear, politics and so forth but we can't claim a divine mandate for it.

Given our tendency to rationalize our behavior I think it's in our best interests to police ourselves rigorously when someone suggests we need to kill all the Muslims or lock up all the Christians. No, it's not something that comes up often but I do see it from time to time. And when I do I'm quick to stomp on it. For one thing it's a deeply immoral thing to suggest, and for another it doesn't solve the problem. Religion spreads through indoctrination and justifies itself through fear. We can try to suppress indoctrination by force, but that simply aggravates the fear. Indoctrination goes underground and gets enhanced by fear of discovery and oppression. It didn't take long after the fall of the Soviet Union for the Russian people to return to their old religious habits, minus the aristocracy. Their reasons for clinging to religion for comfort were never taken away, in spite of the promises made by Communists. The Socialists of Western Europe offer a much better model by taking away the insecurities that drive both conflict and religious devotion.

The Immorality of Divine Command Theory

The story of Abraham binding Isaac from Genesis was brought up as one of several examples why the god of Abraham, if real, is an evil god. Someone then replied to complain how this story shouldn't qualify because "the whole point of the fucking story was to differentiate the God of Abraham from other gods that required human sacrifices." This is the same logic that tells us Biblical slavery is okay because it wasn't as bad as other slavery, but it prompted me to examine the story a little closer.

• We have a god who orders Abraham to sacrifice his son. No winky-face emoticons to indicate Poe's Law, just an outright command that Abraham has no reason to assume isn't sincere. This is okay because this is Yahweh, the source of all morality who therefore has the moral authority to order immoral actions and still have them be moral.
• Abraham, rather than telling his god to shove it, dutifully obeys and goes through with the preparations, right up to the point where he's holding the knife over his beloved son's chest. He doesn't bargain the way he did for Sodom, a city synonymous with moral depravity. He doesn't say anything other than "okay." Remember that Isaac is supposed to be Abraham's beloved son by Sarah, the only child she was able to bear him long after she was supposed to be barren.
• Isaac, once he learns that he is to be the sacrificial victim, doesn't utter a word of protest. According to the story he just meekly goes along with it the same as his father.
• Only then does Yahweh say, "just kidding! Go kill that ram caught in the bushes instead." Why? Because it was a test to see if Abraham would obey.
• And then we're told that the moral of this story is that obedience to authority is the greatest virtue and will be rewarded. This idea is so pernicious in human thinking it's listed as a formal fallacy in logic.

No, I think that the story of Abraham binding Isaac still qualifies to be on the list of Yahweh's dick moves.

The Meaning of Things

Twice today I've been confronted by people who assert that "meaning" is some sort of property that can be found in objects or events. One asserted that beauty is proof of his god and another asserted that religion gives people meaning to their lives. So now I feel compelled to write about meaning and how we confuse what we want with what really is.

The first individual asserted "...it is the meanings which are encapsulated within it which make it beautiful, which make it something enlightening." Naturally I pointed out that this implies that meaning is an objective property that we can glean from something, but an objective property doesn't change based on the perspective of who is looking at it. An apple doesn't change into an orange when viewed from the proper angle. Meaning shouldn't change at all if it's an inherent property.

To further make his point this individual presented to me three actions that he believes have inherent meaning: a handshake, a hug to a crying child and a thumbs up gesture.

First the handshake. Apparently he wasn't aware of the history of greetings, from the Greek wristclasp demonstrating neither of you were armed (although this is disputed) but today having nothing to do with weaponry. When did it change from "I'm not armed" to "I'm pleased to meet you?" This is not established, but it serves to refute the idea that a handshake has inherent meaning, only the meaning we assign to it.

Then the hug to the crying child. Obvious this invokes some biological imperatives recognizing that as social creatures humans crave physical contact. The crying child is looking for reassurance but the person offering the hug may be more concerned with silencing the noise than with the emotional distress of the child. The meaning behind the hug may not be what you assume.

Finally the thumb up. It turns out there are six different meanings to this gesture which completely blows away any inherent meaning to it. But the most common meaning, the one meaning "okay" or some form of approval meant something very different to the Romans from whom we inherited it. During gladiatorial games when two opponents fought and one fell the crowd would extend their thumbs if they wanted to see the defeated fighter die. If they felt the fighter's combat was valiant and honorable they would hide their thumbs. So again, the meaning of the gesture has changed over time.

Objective properties don't change. If you can demonstrate that the meaning of something has changed then meaning is not an inherent property.

Related to this is the idea that we derive meaning from things. A painting or a sunset may inspire us, but what does that imply except that we have the capacity to be inspired? Did the inspiration come from whatever inspired us or do we project our own creativity onto what we see? For example, people have been inspired by the works of Jackson Pollock aka "Jack the Dripper" for decades, but I don't see why. When I look at it I see paint drippings on a canvas, not a key to the mysteries of the universe. But show me a nude by Rembrandt and I'll show you a love of the human form, particularly the soft curves of a woman. Someone else might see lechery and perversion, while yet another might see a blatant rejection of puritanical values.

I commonly hear that religion gives people comfort and offers meaning to their lives but I don't buy it. Like these paintings, religion doesn't have any intrinsic meaning or there wouldn't be so much dispute over what various religions mean. Instead what we have are examples of people projecting meaning onto religion, finding whatever they expect to see. How else could we have over forty-thousand different interpretations of the same religion? Religion is a blank canvas on which we paint, some by the numbers and others with free form. Put another way, religion is a blank page on which we write all our opinions and bias and call it sacred. Whatever religion offers that doesn't fit our expectations gets ignored or denied, often dismissed as metaphor or allegory for something else.

So what's the point? If meaning isn't inherent to anything, does that imply we should abandon all meaning? Of course not. When we find meaning in something that doesn't mean whatever we found was always there. It means we found it inside ourselves. We learned something new about ourselves and we're free to explore its implications. We can share this meaning with others and see if it resonates with their values as well. Perhaps the meaning we find will help others discover something new about themselves. We're just not justified in imposing that meaning on anyone else. Just because it has meaning for us doesn't imply that it must have meaning for everyone.

The Jealous God

A common dogma tells us that the Abrahamic god is a jealous god, meaning there are things he demands that we must give him and he'll punish us if he doesn't get them. Why do I mention this? Because he's also supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent and allegedly the source of all wisdom and morality. So let's consider that for a moment. How do we look at a person who throws a tantrum when they don't get what they want? Childish? Juvenile? Certainly not someone who is wise, moral or benevolent.

But he's the creator, we're told. We owe him things like worship and praise because he has that right. Let's look at someone who builds an ant farm. What do the ants owe the person who maintains their farm? Do they deserve to be flooded, baked or starved if they don't behave according to the rigid demands of their owner?

History tells the story of hundreds of kings and queens with total dominion over their kingdoms. As a general rule we look poorly on the ones who treated their station as a right to be exploited and we look favorably on the ones who treated it as a responsibility. Jealous kings and queens aren't deemed wise or benevolent but tyrants. Benevolent kings and queens were the ones who ruled fairly, forgiving human frailty while guiding their kingdoms through crisis and prosperity alike.

The god of Abraham has more in common with a child than a benevolent ruler. Children are jealous of what they consider their rightful due and we try to teach them to abandon such attitudes as they mature.

Justice in the Afterlife

Sometimes injustice happens. Hitler lost the war but was never brought to justice. More violent dictators die of natural causes than are executed for their crimes. Dick Cheney continues to influence US politics in spite of his fear of being tried for war crimes.

As much as we don't like it, crime does pay. It's usually the stupid criminals that are brought to justice; the intelligent ones are rarely caught and the most successful of those never let their crimes come to light. How do you feel about that? Angry? Frustrated? Outraged? I hope so.

Common questions asked of atheists revolve around morality. Without a god, what's to stop people from being immoral? Why not screw people over for personal gain? The answer is of course that the vast majority of immoral behavior is perpetrated by people who fervently endorse belief in one or more gods. They just tell themselves that either what they're doing isn't wrong or that they'll be forgiven for it. But it's more than that. Where does morality come from if not from a god? There are three answers to that: empathy, reciprocity and game theory.

Reciprocity is the idea that you reap what you sow. If you're kind and generous to other people, people are more likely to be kind and generous to you. The more I cultivate a reputation for being honest and forthright the more people are inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt if my behavior is called into question. Similarly, people who feel I'm being honest with them feel safer in being honest with me. They feel that there's less threat that I'll use their honesty against them. We empathize with each other, neither wanting to be hurt by the other.

That's where game theory comes into play. Sometimes honesty can be used against us. If I tell you about my sexual perversions because I feel you can be trusted with my secret, you have leverage over me. You can choose to reveal that information at such a time that would benefit you, or blackmail me into compliance with your demands in return for not revealing my secret. Of course, this carries a consequence but if you judge that the risk of retribution from me is slim then you might deem the risk worth it. Empathy is weighed and judged insufficient.

We see all of these concepts carried out every day in the news. People perceive an advantage to be gained by breaking the rules and behaving immorally either to amass wealth or cheat. They may feel that it's a victimless crime or that the suffering they impose on others is of lesser concern than their own interests (lack of empathy). But they're aware that public awareness of their behavior would likely provoke retribution so they develop strategies to hide or deny the behavior. When their strategies fail they typically make the news.

One of the big selling points of religion is the promise of justice. It doesn't matter that Hitler escaped trial or that Pinochet escaped his crimes to die of old age because the afterlife promises justice. In Hindu and Buddhist terms they'll reincarnate as a lesser creature to suffer and work off their karma. In the Abrahamic religions they'll go to hell to suffer forever. In either case they can't escape justice in death, justice will follow them. Whether or not it's true, it makes people feel better.

I was recently asked what makes atheists feel better when injustices go unpunished? My answer is nothing. I don't want to feel better, I want to feel outraged about it. I want to feel motivated to do something about it. That's something that religion's promise of divine justice doesn't do. Christianity in particular urges us to let go and leave it to their god. That means not doing something about injustice, because justice isn't in their hands. Sadly, there's nowhere else justice can be found.

Richard Dawkins once said, "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." To that I must also add that I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not pursuing justice with all the strength we can muster. Not just vengeance for wrongdoing, but making things right for everyone. Whenever a little girl is taught that math is hard and she should play with her dolls instead, that's injustice. Whenever anyone goes hungry or suffers from an untreated illness, that's injustice. Injustice abounds in our world and we can't depend on divine or supernatural forces to make it right for us. It's our responsibility to fix it, and we won't do that while we rest on the assumption that it's out of our hands.

Why I Don't Believe In Objective Morality

When we describe something as "objective" what we mean is that it is "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: 'an objective opinion'" or "of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality." Since morals are value statements they are necessarily abstract concepts rather than material objects. They cannot be said to exist as part of objective reality. Furthermore, morality varies greatly depending on culture and circumstance which means it is never free of influence by personal feelings, interpretations or prejudice.

By way of contrast, what are examples of objective reality? Those things that can be confirmed through empirical observation: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and so forth. Standing on the surface of our planet means that gravity will pull you and everything you carry toward the center; this is true wherever you stand and doesn't change based on perspective. We have objectively verified that gravity is a real phenomenon no matter who you are, what culture you belong to or what your opinion is. Any time you let go of something it will fall under gravity.

About the only reason I can think of for why people persist in asserting objective morality is that they want to define their moral values as supreme, trumping all other moral codes. The only way to do this is to back your moral values through authority, either legally or religiously. Legally mandated morality (e.g. laws prohibiting murder, rape, theft, etc) can be challenged depending on shifts in attitude by the people being governed. Bad laws are notoriously difficult to enforce like the War on Drugs. Bad morality is likewise difficult to enforce like blue laws. Typically we see morality successfully expressed in law when there's more objective justification for it, like prohibitions against murder and fraud. When we can't objectively justify a morality we see it expressed more often as a religious value.

Morality is a negotiated behavior between people on both an individual and group level. Nothing that can be negotiated can be accurately described as objective. What gives moral conclusions weight is consensus. Moral values have been successfully challenged before and will again. It's a constantly evolving state as new voices are raised and either accepted or shouted down.

Divine Inspiration

One of the most common claims made by Christians is that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God. How do we know that the Bible is divinely inspired? Why, the Bible says this about itself. Of course, what this means varies depending on the Christian you talk to. For some it means the Bible is perfect and inerrant, that any time we find something wrong in the Bible it's us who is making the mistake because the Bible can't be wrong about anything. For others it means only parts of the Bible are divinely inspired and the confusion comes because we have to sift the human error in the Bible to find the parts that are genuinely inspired.

The first claim, that the Bible is perfect and inerrant is easily refuted. Looking at the conflicting creation accounts in Genesis, the story of the Hebrews in bondage to Egypt, the prophesied destruction of Tyre by Babylon or the attempts to tie both Herod the Great and the Census of Quirinius to Jesus' birth in spite of Herod dying ten years before the census. From a scientific and archaeological standpoint the Bible is very clearly errant.

The second claim is harder to refute because it offers no concrete guide on how to interpret the Bible. It becomes an open invitation to cherry-pick what you like from the Bible and disregard the rest as "tainted" by humanity. The claim goes that we can't judge the morality of the Bronze Age Hebrews or the Iron Age Christians because they had different values. Slavery was accepted and commonplace. Likewise with dehumanizing women and treating them as property. The Apostle Paul wasn't really a misogynist no matter how many Bible verses he dedicated to telling women to submit to male authority. Divine inspiration, the explanation goes, doesn't make unreasonable demands of people.

Except there's a problem here. Paul tells us that no one is righteous and all are sinners. We have all fallen short of the perfect moral standard that is God. So why does the Bible not speak up against slavery and misogyny, two moral values that we're developing in modern civilization? One apologetic I've heard is that we weren't ready to hear those things so God let us figure it out on our own. But the Bible has no problem giving us impossible moral standards that we can't possibly hope to live up to before Jesus came along and added thought crimes. Why then would a divinely inspired book of morality not insist on a perfect morality whether or not we were ready to hear it? Another apologetic is that because of relative cultural mores Paul wasn't really a misogynist, but misogyny doesn't stop being misogyny because it's institutional.

If you claim divine inspiration for something, you're making a very specific claim. You're claiming that the divine inspiration made it better than it could have been with only human ingenuity. That is perhaps the most damning observation about the Bible and every other holy scripture I've ever heard of: the morality and understanding of those scriptures was strictly limited to the morality and understanding of the people who wrote them. There's no sign of any divine inspiration in any of them; no hint of superior morality or indeed anything that can't be attributed directly to human thought. This is why I continue to be skeptical of divine morality.

The Problem of Evil

Today I ran across a discussion that rehashed the Problem of Evil, specifically some problems I had early on with how an all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent god can create an entire universe knowing that the fate of its creation is to have 99% of it suffer in eternal torment that it inflicts on them. Some Christians try to reconcile this by saying that their god isn't truly omniscient, or doesn't exercise his omniscience all the time (ref: Mr. Deity). Others claim that he willingly refrains from exercising his omnipotence in order to preserve free will and so forth. None that I've met are willing to concede that if he exists he saw the wholesale death and suffering of humanity and did nothing to correct it because he either doesn't care or wants that result.

The problem, as far as I see it, lies in magical thinking. You have this god who is supposed to be looking out for you and your best interests. The world doesn't really seem engineered to give you the best life experience; every day is a struggle and it often seems that events conspire against you. But this can't be possible if your life is being overseen by a loving, all-knowing and all-powerful god. Therefore there must be another reason for it, one that is beyond your comprehension because the alternative is that one of your assumptions about your god is wrong and if you follow that thought process you might discover that all of your assumptions are wrong and you might have to abandon the idea altogether. So we fall back on our default assumptions and assume it'll all make sense later on, probably after we're dead. "Jesus, take the wheel."

It's one way to cope, although the cognitive dissonance it necessarily creates is never comfortable. But Christianity has an answer for that, too: "Blessed are those who suffer for doing what is right. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them." Of course, in doing so you run the risk of ignoring obvious solutions to temporary problems in the name of validating your religious beliefs. Simple, easy things like making the world a better place instead of assuming it's pointless since your god will wipe it all away to create a new earth to live on.

Naturally, different Christians will have different answers for how they attempt to reconcile this problem. Some will deny it's a problem altogether. Others will present different variations or apologetics. Nevertheless, I haven't seen any answers that don't fall back on magical thinking. Their god created the world by magic (divine, but still magic), therefore the answers must be magic as well. You just have to have faith that it's true.

And of course, SMBC Comics offers the simplest explanation possible.

Religion and Morality

This has been coming up a lot lately, so I decided to put it down somewhere I could easily reference it. This observation is in no way new or original, only the phrasing is uniquely my own.

Did you ever do those obnoxious math proofs in school? Add X number plus Y number to get Z result. Now show the proof. Did you ever get points knocked off because your proofs contained errors, even though you arrived at the correct result?

In morality as with math it's entirely possible to come up with good answers for the wrong reasons. And like those math proofs, you can't actually be sure you got the right answer because it doesn't add up. That's why I don't trust morality that isn't grounded in reality. People can and do claim their gods demand all sorts of things. They demand sacrifice, they demand worship, they demand obedience, etc. Occasionally people hit on useful things like "love thy neighbor as thyself." But just as often they use it to justify bad things like "homosexuality is an abomination" and "I do not suffer a woman to teach."

If you want to convince me that a morality is valid, you have to show me the work. Show me that the morality is rooted in reality and not simply claimed to be the wisdom of a god.