Friday, September 30, 2011

Membership Criteria to the United Nations

Any state that acts against its own people must be denied membership in the United Nations. This is because the government of such a state cannot be trusted to represent its people, and therefore the nation it represents is not really united with the others. Such governments can be counted on to abuse their membership in the United Nations just as they abuse their own people.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Gay Marriage

If marriage licenses are intended to guard against underage, familial and bigamous unions; to serve as proof of the couple's legal obligations to each other; to control who receives government benefits such as social security, insurance, and medical care; and to determine survivor benefits; then marriage licenses are unnecessary.

All those functions can be handled without the use of marriage licenses. Most of them can be handled using private contracts. The rest can be handled by laws that govern behavior, not status.

I think if anyone writes their congressman about this, it shouldn't be to defend the merit of a gay marriage. The merits that should be questioned are the state's.


The "Defense of Marriage Act", signed into law by Bill Clinton while he was cheating on his wife with Monica Lewinsky (but before he got caught) claimed to give states the right to not recognize gay marriage licenses issued by other states, but was really a federal stand against homosexuality - which is why it was named "Defense of Marriage Act (Against Homosexuals)" and not "Defense of State Right to Recognize Gay Marriage (Against the Federal Government)"

Newt Gingrich, a sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act and very critical of Bill Clinton's affair, had cheated on his first wife, and was cheating on his second wife during Clinton's impeachment. Just throwing that out there - our lawmakers are out of their depth when they talk about things like marriage and morals. Better to repeal all the related laws and affirm everyone's right to pursue happiness by letting them handle this important aspect of their lives without government interference.


Presumably any law that restricts a citizen's private actions must intend to bring about some greater social good. So how does society benefit from the inability of gays or lesbians to get a marriage license? They don't receive any undeserved benefit nor do they impose any burden on others. Any benefit or tax or crime related to sexuality or marriage can be easily rewritten more objectively as being related to procreation, child-raising, household economic efficiency, consent, age, health, etc. and applied to citizens based on their actions instead of their sexuality or marital status. Because laws and court decisions banning gay marriage don't have any proven social value, we need to ask why they persist.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Land Charters

Here is one way that people can solve disputes regarding how society should work:

Draw a line in the sand. Everyone who thinks abortion should be allowed (in some or all cases), move to this side. Everyone who thinks abortion should never be allowed, move to that side. Nobody has to move, but they do have to respect the law of the land and if they don't like it they can move to another land.

Repeat this for every social issue about which there is strong disagreement and no resolution in sight.

The end result would be a land divided into so many pieces that everyone would be immobilized... you can't just put all the pro-life people in one spot because they will disagree about other issues and will be further divided. You can't prioritize the divisions because people will disagree about the priorities as well.

It would be wholly impractical.

Here's a twist on the line in the sand: land charters. The idea is that moral choices are organized into sets that people can identify and choose as a group - yes, religion and philosophy. Within our country, grant each group a swath of land in which they can act in accordance with their religious or philosophical values. Grant a charter to the group for the use of that land - it must be in accordance with the stated religious or philosophical values.  The charter does not need to specify all the values or all the rules of the group, only the invariant ones, the ones the group itself deems most important. Since it would still be within our country, anyone is free to move in and out of such swaths of land. However, citizens must obey the law of the land on which they stand and be held responsible for their actions.

The rule of the line in the sand prevails: if you don't like it where you are, move somewhere else. And at the same time, if enough people don't like it where they are, they can change it through democratic government processes - as long as its not one of the invariants of the charter.

To amend a charter should require a strong majority vote by its denizens - maybe 80% or 90% in favor - and a federal judicial review to ensure that the amendment is being proposed by legitimate denizens of the charter (and not by a flood of impostors), that the amendment is consistent with the rest of the beliefs of its denizens, and that it is not an invariant.

For example, a charter for a Christian swath would probably include an invariant like "Jesus is the Lord Savior" and could never be amended to remove that line. Similarly, a Jewish swath would probably include an invariant like "Our God is One" (statement of monotheism) and could never be changed to anything atheist or polytheist or Christian (since in most sects of Christianity God is Three - the Trinity).

A charter cannot be revoked by its denizens. This is to ensure that changes in population don't affect the opportunity of anyone to live under the laws of the charter. So for example, a swath of land chartered to Wiccans could not be flooded by a horde of marauding foreigners who move in, vote to revoke the charter, and then leave or try to instate a different charter.

It is not necessary to divide the entire country into swaths, although I think that under a system of land charters this would be inevitable.

Before granting any charters to groups of citizens who assemble and petition for them, prior planning should identify groups who are likely to request charters and reserve land for them.

The act of granting charters can be destructive to people who live in swaths but do not agree with the charter. However, it's comparable to the passing of local act with which some citizens disagree, because they can simply move to another state, and it's better than the passing of any national act with which citizens disagree because under a land charter system the citizens can simply move to another part of the same country, whereas with the passing of a national law they essentially have no choice at all unless they give up their citizenship and move to another country.

Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews should petition for separate charters because their values are actually widely different due to a different interpretation of their religion.

Similarly, certain sects of Christianity may need to petition for separate charters, although I think most sects could coexist peacefully within the same charter. I'm sure that pro-life and pro-choice types would need to be in separate charters, and the root beliefs that cause this difference in values should be identified and made an invariant of each of those charters in a form appropriate to that sect.

Federal laws would have to be pared down to a set that can apply to all land charters equally without inhibiting the exercise of their declared values. For example, the question of the death penalty would have be delegated to land charters. Also, separation of church and state would still apply to land charters but the contents of any one charter may be wholly inspired by a specific religion or sect without sponsoring a specific church of that religion or sect.

Members of political parties like Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats, as well as many smaller parties, could petition for swaths of land where people can live according to that party's values. The essence of the party platform would become the invariants for their land charter.

For example, in a Democratic Party land charter, it might say that everyone is guaranteed a retirement, that rich people should get taxed more than poor people, that every worker must belong to a union.

In a Republican Party land charter, it might say that people are allowed to own guns, that abortion is illegal, that marriage is between one man and one woman, that slavery is illegal, that all people should be taxed the same, and that unions are allowed but works should be allowed to decide not to join.

In a Libertarian Party land charter, the invariants would be the right to life, liberty, and property as well as a mention about non-initiation of force; it may even include some of the platform positions such as workers would be free to form unions and employers would be free not to bargain with them, the income tax would be wholly replaced by sales taxes, and retirement planning is the responsibility of individuals.


Even communists may apply for a swath of land in which to practice their ideals.  Their charter might include as invariants all that communists hold dear, and this might include unity of the working class, freedom from all kinds of racism and discrimination, minimum wage for all workers, health care for all its denizens, retirement for all its denizens, and freedom from unemployment.


The area of land granted to a land charter should be proportional to the number of people who signed the petition or who are expected to move there, with some room to grow (when word spreads) based on the total number of people expected to be interested in living in such a place. For example, if a group of post-Modernists petitioned for a land charter, they should be able to obtain a swath of land, even if it's a small one.

Land charters, of course, don't solve the problem of managing the federal government. They would only provide a limited freedom to live life a certain way within some bounds set by the federal government. I think the bounds should be as minimal as possible.

The federal government might require land charters to participate in environmental protection by keeping the waters within their swath clean and limiting pollution. It might also place a ban on weapons development, requiring that all advanced weapons programs be approved by federal government. These mandates would be included in the land charters.

The charters may also include federally mandated provisions that their denizens must accomplish certain goals, such as increase the number of trees in their swath by 25%, or create a protected habitat for some endangered animal, or provide an amount of adults proportional to the denizen population size for the federal military reserve system to be called up for national defense in the event of a war (but never for the invasion of foreign countries).

The charters may also include a provision to guarantee the political education of their denizens. Even though all other facets of their education are in their hands, denizens of land charters and their children must never lose the knowledge that they are American citizens, that they owe their autonomy to a benevolent system of land charters organized by a federal government,  that any denizen is free to leave the chartered land and live anywhere else in the country according to the laws of that place, and all the other rules of the land charter system. To ensure that these basic political facts of their life are not lost, the charter may state that all denizens ages 12 to 32 will complete a survey (quiz) every 5 years. The surveys would be administered by the federal agents

I think the most significant contribution of a land charter system is the ability of people holding different perspectives to experiment with the mostly uninhibited practice of their religion or philosophy. If it's working well they may have additional denizens clamoring to immigrate and live in the chartered swath of land. If it's not working well they may experience an exodus of denizens. The rest of the world can observe this and, over time, make conclusions about the value of certain ideas based on their real effects.

In order to make uniform surveys of the conditions of denizens possible, a land charter must include a provision to allow federal agents access to observe and record any aspect of life such as employment rates, spread of disease, etc.

I think that a big problem with land charters could be that the more autonomy they receive from the federal government, the more likely they are to act as separate little countries. If their denizens then decide in a fit of irrationality that they want to secede from the very country that made their land charter possible, they might begin acting in ways which violate the supervisory provisions of the federal government in their charter. They might deny entry to federal agents or they might even send militants on raids of surrounding territories. Such acts should rightly be seen as an initiation of civil war and the federal government should rightly respond very violently in order to protect the rights of all Americans to continued use of that swath of land.

I think such a sad conclusion is more likely for some charters than others due to the nature of the ideas in their chartered religion or philosophy, but it would be so interesting if communists were able to achieve their dream without murder and coercion, or if anarchists could demonstrate that no government is good government while maintaining a quality of life appealing to "mainstream" Americans, or if capitalists could show that less controls over their business lead to more prosperity and how they can still take good care of their little swath of the planet.

Despite the possibility of such a conclusion for any particular land charter, I think the key to a successful experiment is to give it the most autonomy possible. This is because religions and philosophies must be studied as complete systems (whether or not they are or pretend to be complete). If a system calls for a weak central government and strong local courts that mete corporal punishments even for minor crimes, it should be allowed. Don't worry about the corporal punishment - all the denizens subject themselves to it voluntarily!

That brings up the question of children. When children are born in a land charter, they are raised in accordance with its laws. While they are children, any consequences of living in the land charter have to be accepted as consequences of their parent's choices. Each woman who gives birth to children must be assumed to have their best interests at heart. Each man or woman who works to provide for his or her  children must also be assumed to have their best interests at heart. So if something bad happens to the children in the land charter, it has to be accepted because the point of the land charters is to allow people to live their lives a certain way that they prefer (within the minimal limits provided by the federal government) and for other people who disagree to leave them alone. This means accepting the consequences of life in that land. There cannot be any form of federal child protection service that interferes with life in chartered land. The denizens, of course, are free to form their own child protection services.

The federal government might choose to designate only land-locked swaths of land for land charters in order to ensure that the federal government retains complete control over all of the country's borders. Land charters would be a more formal and voluntary version of the Indian Reservation system.  I don't know if the Native Americans would be happier with a land charter than in their reservations, but they could also petition for a land charter if they think that would be better. I think they might like their reservations better because anyone can enter a land charter.

Land charters should be represented in the federal government, but not the same way as the States because they don't have equal status to the States. They might be treated as territories, sending a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, or they might form a separate Land Charter Assembly to discuss and vote on issues, with the entire Assembly being granted a single vote in the Senate equal to one Senator. The Assembly could designate one of its members to be its Representative Senator in the Senate with the requirement to vote according to the resolutions of the Assembly.

It's interesting that land charters imply that different people's beliefs and opinions should be tolerated as long as they do not harm others, but in a macro sense - a group's beliefs and opinions may harm itself and that's ok as long as they don't harm other groups. I wonder if people who are militant in the enforcement of their views on others would be satisfied by moving to a swath of chartered land with like-minded neighbors or if they would still assault the rest of the world with their opinions, refusing to rest until all of humanity conforms to what they think is right.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Trust is the Antidote to Worry

I think that a long time ago, we had a lot of implicit expectations when we trusted someone. Trust meant not just that person wouldn't harm us, but also that if we were in any sort of danger we would be warned. That something, anything, would be done to help if it were possible. 

Maybe it's still that way for children.  But for adults now, trust has to be a lot more specific and explicit. For example, when you connect to a website securely and you enter your username and password, you are trusting your computer to faithfully transmit what you type and not work against you, you are trusting the network between your computer and the server to carry your encoded messages to the correct destination, you are trusting the secure browsing protocol that nobody can eavesdrop on your username and password, you are trusting the website not to publish your password or other personal information or use it against you, and after all of that you are trusting the website to serve its intended purpose. Or similarly when you drive a car on the highway, you are trusting that your machine works, you are trusting that your skills of navigating and driving it are adequate to get you to your destination, you are trusting that the roads leading to your destination are passable, and you are trusting that the other drivers on the road will not bump into you. 

That's why we get so mad when a website sells or allows to be stolen its list of members and their personal information. It's a violation of trust. Or when a drunk driver hits another car. It's a violation of trust - and worse, it was a willful violation, because a person has to act to become drunk. 

When a person does not trust, a person worries. 

So if you find that you are worried a lot, it means you have lost a lot of trust. Maybe the loss was "earned" because of past mistakes or problems, or maybe its groundless. Either way, the only way to get it back is to experiment.  

Not sure if the road to where you're going is worthy? Start with a drive around the block. Then go a little farther. Ask people who have been there and maybe travel with friends to double check. 

A person who doesn't worry is said to be a person with a lot of confidence. But confidence just means firmly trusting. A person with confidence is a person with a lot of trust in himself or herself and in the world. That trust can be based on a person's beliefs or experience. I think the best confidence comes from experience, especially if it's experience using one's own skills because it combines a trust in the world and a trust in oneself. 

So if you are worried sick, you better find something to trust. You don't have to start by trusting the thing that makes you worried, because you can get to that later. Start with something easy, maybe something you already trust and just remind yourself... "I trust my chair to be sturdy, this table to be flat..." and work your way up to trusting enough to make your worry go away. 

Trust doesn't mean that everything will be okay. It means that the world will work the way it's supposed to. So the more you learn about the world, the easier it is to trust it.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Occupation that Time Forgot

I read a stupid article today about the West Bank by Sandy Tolan that was endorsed by Tom Engelhardt,  who runs a blog that normally has better articles. Here's what I think about it:


Maybe you forgot that the Jews were tormented and slaughtered not just in Germany but in surrounding countries too as crazy Nazis and Soviets unfairly blamed them for their own problems, gained more territory, and continued their campaigns of hate in all their new territories. Has anyone done that to the Arabs? No.

Maybe you forgot that Arabs initiated wars against Israel in which Israel defeated them and captured a lot of land - and then gave it back in hopes of achieving peace. Have Arabs given any land to Israel in hopes of achieving peace? No.

Maybe you forgot that Israel allows Arabs (and other Muslims) to live within its borders. Do Arabs allow Israelis or any Jews to even visit their countries? No.

Maybe you forgot that before Israel declared independence, the "Palestinians" were the same people as the Syrians and Jordanians, all under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and then the British. In fact, King Faisal of Syria later was also king of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party controlled both Syria and Iraq for some time. And when Israel declared independence, it was its Arab neighbors who refused to let their Arab brothers immigrate to their countries, forcing them to stay in Israel.  They purposefully closed their borders to force a continued Arab presence in Israel - to be a thorn in its side.

Maybe you forgot that for a long time Arabs have been conducting suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings in Israel against Jews, and also launching rockets into Israel towns in order to kill civilians. Do Israelis do that against the Arabs? No.

The Arabs are waging war against Israel in any way that they can. They tried to do it militarily and they failed. So they had to resort to planting bombs and launching rockets to do any damage they can. The peace "process" is just what Arabs have to pretend to be doing since they can't win by force. It's a farce because they aren't interested in peaceful co-existence, they are interested in a victory for them and for there to be no Jews in Israel.

Why? Why the hatred? Why do Arabs in Arab countries blame Israel for their problems, when clearly their problems have been the same for hundreds of years before Israel was created?  When clearly their problems are a direct consequence of their culture and not anyone else's?

Anyone who understands Arabs and looks at a map can see why Israel can't give up the West Bank. To have a fully Arab-controlled West Bank means a serious military disadvantage to Israel when the Arabs initiate the next war, because it gives them an easy way to divide the country in half.  Only people who don't understand the Arab intentions fail to see the significance of that territory. "Oh, just give them their country" you say.

This is very much a one-sided conflict. The Arab side is the one that always initiates force.  Israel has nothing to gain by fighting the Arabs. It can never have peace as long as there are Arabs who are convinced that they need to destroy it.   If you were to miraculously stop the Arab attacks for a month or even a year you would observe that Israel would not conduct even one offensive military operation against them. It would have no reason for that.  As Ghandi said, there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

You want to talk about an occupation that time forgot?  How about Europeans (now called Americans) occupying nearly all of North America? We fooled everyone into thinking this is our land. It isn't, we robbed the natives.  How lucky are we that Native Americans don't teach their kids to hate us in their reservations and conduct suicide bombings in our neighborhoods?  We could have a similar conversation about Australia and their natives too.

Americans are such hypocrites. We INVADED TWO COUNTRIES in hopes of deterring attacks on our "homeland", and yet we sympathize with people who routinely conduct terrorist attacks on Israel and we think it's a good idea for Israel to give them land??? In proportion to the rest of Israel, that would be like giving 13 states of the United States to Al Qaeda!!   It's unthinkable!  

We DROPPED TWO ATOMIC BOMBS on Japan to end a war yet we criticize Israel when it uses conventional military weapons against military targets. We hold Israel accountable to GENEVA CONVENTION standards yet look the other way when the Arabs bomb Israeli civilians and  hide their military operations behind women, children, and mosques to guarantee collateral damage they can cry about when Israel retaliates.   We METHODICALLY DISPLACED NATIVE AMERICANS TO GAIN NEW LAND yet we criticize Israel for developing settlements in its own territory.

How about this?  Give Jews 9,000 square miles in Alaska to create a Jewish state and move all the Jews from Israel there. They won't have any "natural enemies" in the region and the Arabs can have all the land that is now Israel to themselves.  You STILL won't have peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs will still be there, but at least the Jews would have peace in a place they can call home, even if it isn't the home they were promised.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

What If Everyone Does It?

I think that one of the ways to judge whether an activity is good or bad is to consider what would happen if everyone did it.  It's easy to imagine the trouble that we would have if everyone routinely lies, steals, and murders. What about more private things, like engage in unprotected sex?

Well, "unprotected sex" is not enough information to evaluate this activity. The reason it's not enough is that it can be consensual or not, between monogamous partners or not, between two people who are known to each other not to have any diseases and not to have other partners since being checked - or not. We know from social experience that a lot of people having unprotected sex can spread disease - but there are implied behaviors in that statement. It's implied that there is a lot of switching partners, that not everyone is checked for disease, and that even if a person is checked for disease they don't insist their partner is checked and that they don't have sex with anyone else since being checked.

Two consensual monogamous people with no diseases and no other partners could have unprotected sex with each other every day for the rest of their life and not spread any diseases.  So where's the evil? The evil is in the nonconsensual. The evil is in the laziness of people who don't want to get checked. The evil is in the carelessness of people who don't insist that their partners get checked. The evil is in the cheating where one partner gets checked and advertises he or she is clean but has unprotected sex before a secure sexual relationship starts - thereby compromising the screening results.

I think it's wrong to condemn an activity just because some people don't do it properly. Another example? A lot of people lose their money when they invest but does that mean that investing should be illegal? Of course not. Not everyone does it right, and even if they do the activity involves risk and some failure is to be expected.

So I think any debate about whether an activity is moral and should be outlawed needs to be mature enough to consider the details, so that when we imagine "everyone doing it" we imagine doing it different ways. Only this way can we arrive at nuanced distinctions that we take for granted such as murder versus self-defense, or investing versus gambling.

When I think about murder versus self-defense, the distinctions are the initiation of force, or "who started it", and for what reason, or "taking versus protecting".

When I think about investing versus gambling, the distinctions are, do you know what you are doing or are you relying on luck, and are you willing to accept the risk, and are you using your money or someone else's, and are you investing or gambling with all your money or just money that you are willing to lose, and do you have an obligation to protect that money to take care of someone else or is it acceptable to lose it.

When I think about unprotected sex, the distinctions are consensual or not, careless or safe, by cheating or with integrity.

I think that if an activity done a certain way is not harmful to other people (or it's harmful in a morally acceptable way like self-defense) then if we imagine everyone doing it that way and under the right conditions the imaginary world would be fine. For some activities the negative consequences alone should be enough to dissuade people from doing it. That might require some education since not everyone knows what the negative consequences of their actions are. And for some activities the only people who could be hurt are the ones engaged in the activity. In these cases I think it's wrong to make it illegal.

For example, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is dangerous to the rider. See how I added "without a helmet" and "to the rider"? Yet I'm still assuming that the helmet to be worn is an appropriate one for the task. A rider could easily be killed in an accident if the rider is thrown off the motorcycle and is not wearing a helmet. Because of that, some people got together and decided that they would protect other people from themselves and passed laws that make it illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Recently there was a rally to repeal this law, and one rider in the rally who was riding without his helmet had an accident and died. His death would have been prevented had he been wearing a helmet. It's ironic but it doesn't make the law alright. You see? Even with the law in place someone rode a motorcycle without a helmet and died. He broke the law! Now how is he going to be punished? Where will we get justice? The point is that the damage he did to himself is punishment enough and there is no justice to be served here because that law against riding motorcycle without a helmet is an unnecessary law. The difference in chances of survival between wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet should be enough to convince riders to wear a helmet. But since the choice affects them only and not anyone else, they should be free to make it.

If the rider has a family that depends on him or her, does that mean there are now other victims besides the rider and that riding a motorcycle without a helmet should be illegal because the rider could have a family? No and no. The rider's family may be sad about the death of the rider but they are not hurt. If they don't want to lose the rider to an accident then they should pressure the rider to wear a helmet. If they don't try, or the rider doesn't care, the consequences will be their own.

So while I think that it's wrong to have laws that restrict personal freedoms for all just because some people act irresponsibly (imagine if swimming pools were outlawed because some people drown, or driving were outlawed because some people drive too fast) - I know that this is a minority opinion and that the majority of people in America jump at any chance to lose their personal freedoms in order to be  safe and secure.

Maybe a compromise could be that people who are caught riding without a helmet (and other unsafe only-to-themselves activities) could be "punished" by being forced to attend a safety class for that activity. At the end of the class they would get a small certificate that would fit in their wallet. Then next time they are caught doing the unsafe activity they can just show their safety certificate to the enforcer and be left alone. That way the majority would get a warm fuzzy feeling like someone is watching over them, yet still allow people to make their own educated choices.

If that works for riding motorcycles without a helmet, or investing, or having unprotected sex, then it could work for a wide range of personal choices that are currently legislated. If personal activities with risk only to oneself or group activities with risk only to the group cease to be illegal it would free up government justice departments to work only with real crimes.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Defense of Objectivism

I read "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" by Leonard Peikoff and I really liked it because Rand's philosophy is clear and stands on it's own - a magnificent independent way to arrive at values, purpose, rights, and wrongs. As I became more interested in government and politics and what is the best way to run a country so that I can decide how to vote in election, my own thoughts over the years have been moving in this direction. Reading this book was like coming home to something familiar because Rand's insightful definitions gave me a strong base of validated concepts to which I can reduce all my thoughts and check their course.

Also, I think overall Peikoff did a great job of writing all of it clearly and in a well-organized book, but there are some mistakes that I hope can be corrected in a future edition. By pointing out the mistakes - whether Peikoff's or Rand's - I am defending Objectivism from criticism that it does not deserve:

1. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "The Metaphysically Given as Absolute", Peikoff writes: "The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable."  I agree that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible. I disagree that no alternative is imaginable. To the point: In the book Peikoff addresses several commonly held beliefs that are not grounded in reality. If no alternative to reality is imaginable, and people are able to imagine God, gremlins, dragons, Santa Claus, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, then all those things must be possible in reality somewhere and somehow. This means anything man imagines is possible. This amounts to a primacy of consciousness view. The Objectivist view should be read as: "No alternative to a fact of reality is possible."

2. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms", Peikoff illustrates that the idea of the supernatural is a rejection of the basic axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness by relating beliefs about God to the Objectivist viewpoint.

Peikoff writes: "Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness." I disagree here. The Objectivist philosophy does state that existence has primacy over consciousness - however, this can only be validated within our own existence. Our existence has primacy over our consciousness. If God created our existence (in the conventional sense as in created it out of nothing), it means God is outside of our existence. He therefore may have the power to manipulate it supernaturally. But this changes nothing - by definition, anything God makes happen within our existence is possible within our existence. And our existence, though manipulated by God, still has primacy over our consciousness. Could God's existence have primacy over God's consciousness? Since this question is regarding a subject matter outside our existence, Objectivism has nothing to say about it. Does God need a creator? Again, it's a question outside our existence. These questions presuppose ideas about something about which we don't have evidence and can never get evidence since it's outside of our existence. In Objectivism these ideas are called arbitrary because they are not rooted in our existence and therefore have no evidence that can be used to prove them true or false. Objectivism doesn't require a creator. Objectivism accepts our existence as primary and builds on that. The Objectivist view should be: "Is God the creator of the universe? This presupposes that God is outside existence and therefore it cannot be shown to be true or false. A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence. Objectivism, being a philosophy rooted in existence, therefore regards this question as arbitrary."

Peikoff writes: "Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to design is not chance. It is causality." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. To design anything, one must exist before the thing is created. Even in the Objectivist sense of creation as the re-arranging of existents, this is an illogical leap because it attempts to answer the question about design before first establishing the facts: The question presupposes the existence of God. Since we have no evidence about the existence of God, this question is also arbitrary and cannot be shown to be true or false. While some people may claim to have evidence, these claims have been around for thousands of years of known history and still the evidence has not been sufficient for man to accept the existence of God as a fact the same way man accepts the existence of rocks as a fact.

Peikoff writes: "Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. Even after acknowledging that this is an arbitrary question because it presupposes the existence of God for which we have no evidence, and suspending disbelief: if God does exist, if he designed and created the universe in the Objectivist sense of re-arranging existents, I think that would qualify as omnipotence... and yet those who believe in God believe that he is in some way responsible for the content of the Bible and that the content of the Bible is true, and there is plenty of "evidence" in the Bible in the form of things God says and does pointing to the notion that God is not omnipotent. All very interesting, but since Objectivism seeks to guide man's thoughts with a firm grounding in reality, this is all outside the realm of Objectivism. That's not to say it's outside the realm of discussion. It just doesn't add anything to man's knowledge about the world.

Peikoff writes: "Is God infinite? Infinite does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A... The actual is always finite." Again, questions about the nature of God are outside the realm of Objectivism and add nothing to human knowledge. I love the example though, and I think it should be rewritten as "Can anything be infinite? ..." because that is something people do wonder about. Infinity is a useful concept that allows us to compress our notations and refine our thinking, but it's not real.

Peikoff writes: "Can God perform miracles? A miracle does not mean merely the unusual. A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be a violation of identity." Again, a question outside the realm of Objectivism. But I disagree with the definition of miracle here. I consulted various dictionaries and in all definitions a miracle is either something outside of the laws of nature that we know or can explain - this leaves open the possibility of re-arranging existents to create that effect. This is essentially a spiritual view of magic in the sense that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic to a person unfamiliar with its foundations - consider the magical talking mirror in the tale of Snow White, written before even the telephone was invented, and how our modern every-day ability of video chat would appear to a person of that time as a magical talking mirror. A person who believes in God and who believes that God either created or designed the universe must then also believe that God can perform miracles - and that many of his activities as told in the Bible are themselves miracles even if they are not explicitly described as such. A person who does not believe in God must not believe that God can perform miracles. But Objectivism? Objectivism doesn't care. Any person who wishes to use the wisdom of Objectivism must similarly suspend his questions about God while engaged in reasoning and learning about our world. Anything that we see and cannot explain should be noted and  the evidence preserved or recorded to the best of our capability so that other people may have a chance to discover something new about our world. If we cannot preserve any evidence, it's unreasonable to expect anyone to believe it. There's nothing wrong with saying that something is a miracle - it just means we don't have an explanation for it yet. We still have the choice to investigate it and learn something or leave it alone if we're not interested in learning anything new. Is it a coincidence that in a time when we know a lot more about nature than our ancestors, the number of miracles seems to be dwindling? But they will never completely disappear: As long as we don't know everything about the universe, there will remain a possibility for miracles.

Peikoff writes: "Is God purely spiritual? Spiritual means pertaining to consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms, the faculty of perceiving that which exists. A consciousness transcending nature would be a consciousness transcending organism and object. So far from being all-knowing, such a thing would have neither means nor content of perception; it would be non-conscious." Again, the Objectivist answer must be: "A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence."

So although I think Peikoff's example with God does a disservice to Objectivism by trying to reason about something that is arbitrary, he does clear up the matter soon after by writing: "There is no logic that will lead from the facts of this world to a realm contradicting them" and "If one is to postulate a supernatural realm, one must... rely instead on faith." This amounts to a clear separation of religion or any other mysticism from Objectivism. It's brilliant.

3. In the chapter "Reason", in the section "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False", Peikoff writes: "The reason that Objectivism rejects agnosticism should now be clear... Agnosticism is not simply the pleading of ignorance. It is the enshrinement of ignorance... The agnostic treats arbitrary claims as matters properly open to consideration, discussion, evaluation... He demands proof of a negative... in struggling to elevate the arbitrary to a position of cognitive respect, he is attempting to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported... In considering any issue, never permit ourself one minute in the quicksands of a baseless "I don't know". Instead, establish first that the issue is related to the realm of evidence and thus deserves consideration. Then study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

I disagree with Peikoff's assertion that agnosticism is the enshrinement of ignorance. I think just as Peikoff's so-called objective treatment of God misapplies reason to an arbitrary claim, certain famous agnostics have misapplied their uncertainty about God to all other knowledge. I think Objectivism and agnosticism go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Objectivism is explicitly concerned only with things that are grounded in reality. Agnosticism is concerned only with things that are not grounded in reality: without evidence, we can never know with certainty if a claim is true or false. This is just a restatement of Objectivism's definition of arbitrary. Thomas Huxley, who invented the term "agnostic", certainly did not try to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported. To the contrary, he stated that before one can reason about any such questions one needs evidence. He wrote that the human intellect is out of its depth in these matters, that you can discuss them at length without arriving at any new knowledge. This agnostic viewpoint is the same as the Objectivist viewpoint: discussion of arbitrary claims cannot add to human knowledge precisely because they are not grounded with evidence. This applies to any claim from conspiracy theories to religion.

I do agree that agnostics who say that nothing is certain are practicing what Rand calls evasion: willfully disengaging their mind from examining the evidence available to them and reasoning about it, willfully avoiding the hard work of acquiring new knowledge. Applying agnosticism to alarm clocks and probabilities is a mistake: agnosticism is not uncertainty about the future, it's uncertainty about propositions that cannot be proven true or false because there is no evidence for either case. Regarding knowledge about our world, agnosticism amounts to scientific skepticism which is endorsed by Objectivism: "study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic [(such as the scientific method)]. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

Quite the opposite of "enshrinement of ignorance", Thomas Huxley who invented the term agnostic was active in the scientific community of his day. He was an early vocal and public supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, but only after he reviewed the massive amount of evidence that Darwin had amassed.

The Objectivist viewpoint should be: "Objectivism and agnosticism are two sides of the same coin. Just as reason can be misused to give credibility to arbitrary claims, agnosticism can be misused to claim ignorance when evidence is available. While discussion of arbitrary matters can be very entertaining, it should be understood that without evidence, such discussion can never lead to new knowledge."

Saturday, September 10, 2011

What The Bible Really Says About God

Is God all-seeing, everywhere and all at once all-being, all-capable, and infallible?

The religious answer is yes. But how do we know that? By reading the Bible? And can we trust what the Bible says, given that the Bible has some major contradictions in it?

Here are just two of the Bible's contradictions:

In Genesis 1:26 and other places, God is many because he says "us" and "our"; but in Exodus 3:6 and other places, God is one because he says "I".

In Genesis 1, God creates beasts and then man and woman. In Genesis 2, God places man in Eden and then creates the beasts and then creates woman from one of man's ribs - beasts after man instead of before him.

I wonder if someone has already published a longer list?

So the Bible has some contradictions in it.  Do the contradictions, and also the presence of several distinct writing styles, mean that people wrote the Bible as we know it?  If God really did give us the Bible as it is, and if God is infallible, then God must have meant to include the contradictions for some reason. Otherwise he is either fallible or he did not give us the Bible as it is.

Regarding the contradictions I have two broad views: if they are intentional, the Bible either intends to confuse man's mind and therefore control him with irrationality, or they are intended to help us grasp something deep, or it's a sort of time-lock so that the Bible can guide men's actions until such a time when they are wise enough to understand why they should live a certain way and then discard the Bible because of its flaws. Or, if the contradictions are not intentional, they are evidence that God is fallible (if he wrote it), or that the entire thing was written by men and God never existed at all, or that God exists and doesn't care that we are messing things up.

Since I can't outwardly observe God and ask him what is the truth, all I can do is review Exhibit A and draw my own conclusions...

Exhibit A: The Bible


The Bible offers us three distinct kinds of information about God:  what God says, what God does, and what people believe about God. Also, what God says can be divided into two sub-categories: waking stories and dreaming stories.

Going back to the contradictions, in Exodus 3:6, God tells Moses: I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He then continues speaking and uses the word "I" to refer to himself. So this implies God is one. But in Genesis 1:26, God says "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness". Also in Genesis 3:5 the serpent tells Eve to eat the fruit so she can "be as gods" - who later, in Genesis 3:22 say, "behold the man is become as one of us". And in Genesis 11:7, God says "let us go down and confound [man's] language". So this implies God is many. These are supposedly direct quotations from God. It's plausible that anything God told man was passed down through generations as a great story. But who was there to hear God say "let us make man in our image", or to know anything about creation for that matter? 

In Genesis 25:23, God answer's Rebekah questions about her unborn children, but does not use any noun or pronoun for himself, so it does not imply either God is one or God is many. It cannot be assumed either way from such verses.

In Genesis 3:9 God is walking in the Garden of Eden and calls to Adam "where are you?". If he is all-knowing, he would already know where Adam is and he would already know that it was the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the fruit and that it was Eve who then gave the fruit to Adam. But God asks anyway. Why? Did the honest answer change the consequence? We cannot know. When in Genesis 2:27 God told man not to eat the fruit, if that was important then God could have made two separate gardens or he could have put the guardian angel next to the tree from the start instead of letting man eat the fruit then kicking man out and then putting the guardian angel at the entrance to the garden to keep man from coming back... after it's already too late because man already ate the fruit.  

In Genesis 3:22-23, God kicks man out of the Garden of Eden so he won't eat from the tree of life and become immortal. And in Genesis 6:3, God says that man is mortal and his life is limited to 120 years. Yet in Genesis 9:5 Adam dies at 930 years, in Genesis 9:29 Noah dies at 950 years old, in Genesis 11:32 Terah dies at 205 years old, in Genesis 25:7 Abraham dies at 175 years old. In Deuteronomy 34:7, Moses dies at 120 years old - in the last book of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The only person born after Moses who lived beyond 120 is Jehoiada the priest, who dies at 130 years old in 2 Chronicles  24:15, but this is a book not part of the Torah. So are all the lifespans greater than 120 from Adam to Moses a contradiction of God's decree? Or are they evidence that through a deliberate process the maximum human lifespan was being reduced to 120 years?  And by deliberate I mean, The longest-living person in modern history was Jeanne Calment, a French woman who was born in 1875 and died 122 years old, but after her the second longest-living person was Sarah Knauss, an American woman who was born in 1880 and lived to be 119 years old. Do we chalk up Jehoiada and Jeanne Calment as outliers to God's general rule? Why did it take 27 generations (if you believe the Bible story) for man's maximum lifespan to be reduced to 120 years? If God is the one who imposed the lifespan limit in some way does this mean his method has limits? Or is God did not impose the limit himself and was merely remarking on it how did God know what would happen to man's lifespan in the future? Or has man's maximum lifespan always been 120 years and the ages in the Bible are incorrect? It wouldn't be the last time that someone "fudged" the data to support a desired conclusion.

In Genesis 18:21, God says that he will go to Sodom to see how bad things really are. Needing to go there means that God has a limited perception that must be focused. Therefore his knowledge is limited.

In Genesis 6:11-17, God says the earth is corrupt and full of violence and for that he will destroy everything, and he instructs Noah to make an ark so that he can escape the destruction. Causing a world-ending flood is very powerful - but it's not all-powerful. God has tools and methods and although they are very powerful, they have limits and he has to work within them.  If God is all-powerful, could he not have simply caused all the violent men and beasts to die? Could he not have created a world without the violence he hates? He obviously didn't get it right on the first try. And does he even have more than one try? There are plenty of references in the Bible to God knowing or predicting the future, but none of him going back into the past to change anything. I also have some ability to predict the future. My children will grow (I know this because I studied biology) and they will graduate high school (I know this because I intend to be a good parent) and they are going to face challenges (I know this because I have experienced life) and they are going to overcome them and fall in love and have children (I know this because I understand human nature and statistics). So it makes sense that, if God knows the nature of man, he can predict many things. And since there is rarely a time limit on his predictions, they all eventually come true because they are all consequences of man's nature. 

In Exodus 12:7, God tells Moses to tell all his people to put lamb's blood on their doorposts so that later in Exodus 12:23, when God moves to kill all the Egyptian first born, he will recognize the houses of Israel by the blood on the door posts and skip or "pass over" them. Does this show that God is not all-knowing? If he were all-seeing or all-knowing he would know which houses belong to his people. 

If God is not all-seeing and all-knowing, then God cannot be all-powerful. In the Exodus example, an all-powerful God would be able to strike down Egyptian first-borns without needing his people to mark their own houses for him first. Since he needed the marks, he has limits. Having limits means he is not all-powerful - not to the extreme that religious people make him out to be. The story certainly shows that he cannot be everywhere at once throughout all time because if he could then he would already know which house is which because he would know who lives there and where they came from. 

There are stories in the Bible of God having much knowledge and power, but not of being all-seeing, all-knowing or all-powerful. There are verses in the Bible that say he is these things - but these verses are found later, many in Psalms and in the New Testament, and all the ones that I have reviewed have been men speaking their opinion about God. I can see how, given the things God did do, he may have appeared to man to be very powerful, and given man's propensity to make connections and exaggerate, it was only natural for man to declare that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful... but that in essence is a fact about man, not about God. It is man who needed God to be all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. 

So if God is not all-seeing, everywhere and all at once all-being, all-capable or all-powerful, and infallible, WHAT IS HE? 

Genesis tells us that God is someone who is part of a group. God has identity but wants to keep it secret: [3:14]. There may be one God, but he is not alone - in the same way that there is just one me, but I am not alone. God is someone who created humanity to be like his group [Genesis 1:26]. God is someone who has children [Genesis 6:2] who are sexually compatible with humans [Genesis 6:4]. God is someone who wants mankind to grow and to control his environment [Genesis 1:28]. God is someone who makes mistakes [Genesis 2:17 and 3:24]. God is someone who repeatedly makes covenants with man [Genesis 9:11 and others]. God prefers meat over fruit or vegetables [Genesis 4:4-5]. God asks rhetorical questions [Genesis 4:9]. God wants man to be mortal [Genesis 3:22 and 6:3]. God wanted man to be conquerable [Genesis 11:6-7] but changed his mind - since he didn't stop us from building nuclear weapons or space stations. God walks with humans - Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Moses. God changes his mind [Genesis 8:21 and Genesis 18:26-32]. God uses tools to do his work [Genesis 19:24]. God uses reason [Genesis 11:6-7]. 

God seems very much like us, which makes sense, since either he created us to be like him [Genesis 1:26] or we invented him and because God is our invention he naturally has a very human twist even when we try to make him something more. 

One way God could be present everywhere at once, including the past, present, and future, is if he exists outside our existence. Not necessarily another dimension or another universe, but just outside of our existence. Ideas about our universe being an artificial reality such as portrayed in "The Thirteenth Floor" or "The Matrix" concretely show how a God outside our reality would be able to see everything and be everywhere at once. Interestingly enough, in those two stories the men (or machines) running the simulations still have a limited capacity to see and to do things within the simulation although, compared to the men living inside the simulation their power is still very great. With enough computing power, the scientists in "The Thirteenth Floor" could have paused the simulation at any moment, rewound it to some past state, and replay it from the past and interfere and change things. To see how the future unfolds they could simply let the simulation run. If they are not satisfied they can then return it to a past state, warn people about the future, or make changes to alter the future. 

We can never have any evidence that God exists outside of existence, because if it were true then by definition the evidence wouldn't exist here. God could even appear himself and tell us all about it and we still wouldn't have any evidence - because we would be seeing and hearing him in this existence. Any evidence God brings into existence to show us that he is also outside of it will necessarily become part of our existence and therefore fail as proof that there is something beyond. We may choose to believe but we can never have proof.  Also, if God exists outside of our existence there are absolutely no consequences for us. Nothing changes - that we know of. Life continues as it has been, as he has allowed it to be. We make choices as we have been. The meaning and purpose of our life does not change. If God wants to do something, he only has to appear and say it. I think if he appears with a show of force most people would be afraid enough or inspired enough to obey immediately. 

Whether God is limited or unlimited, existing only in this world or also outside of it, we have our lives to live and our choices to make. 

I think most people want to have a good life whether God exists or not. And I know that there are people who, regardless of whether they believe in God or not, say the hell with it and they are going to have a lot of fun and do anything they want regardless of the consequences to them in this life or beyond it. They don't care what happens to them and they place their whims before any other cause. Are these people a problem? If they act irrationally but they hurt only themselves they should be free to do that. But if they act to hurt other people, we have each other for defense. 

Maybe the promise of fruitfulness in the covenant is fulfilled when we follow God's teachings. His commandments tell us about authority, government, society, the good merit of study, how we should work for ourselves and together, how we should relate to each other. 

Whether or not other people believe in God, my own actions will be consistent with my values. And whether or not I believe in God, something I do value is my life and my actions will be consistent with that. 

The weird stuff happens when people believe in God and they do evil. Does that mean God is a bad idea? I think given all the good people in the world who believe in God we cannot say that God is a bad idea. I think that people who believe in God and do evil should be judged for what they do, not for what they believe, the same as with any other idea such as capitalism, human rights, communism, fascism, environmentalism. Some ideas more than others may facilitate warped values that encourage evil action and this should be evidence for us that those ideas are not good for us. But it's not as simple as saying belief in God is good or bad. It's what you believe about God that can warp your values. Even if we could identify every person whose beliefs and values will lead to evil, we cannot convince them all of this. We just have to deal with it with it happens. 

I think the best way to deal with is to talk in terms of what they have done and our need to defend ourselves from them. Just be objective. 

In Numbers 35:15-28 God says we should have places for people who are accused to hang out until their guilt is determined, and that if they are guilty they should be punished, and that if they don't want the protection of the sanctuary they are on their own. In Numbers 35:30-32 God says we should not testify falsely and we should not take any pleasure in punishments - do what you have to, get it over with, and move on.

The Bible says that God values human rights, including our right to life and liberty and property, and that he advocates self-defense and punishment (which he does not reserve) in order to enforce those rights. So go and live a great life and do great things and respect other people's human rights. You have permission!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Philosophy

I've been reading about philosophy and I got annoyed by these two examples I read on wikipedia:

Kant claimed that dialectic method was sterile because it led to contradictory conclusions? The dialectic method as it is was used by the famous philosophers itself was not the cause of the contradictions. The cause must have been undetected errors in the logic of the arguments presented within that method. Just like our more modern scientific method for arriving at actual physical knowledge doesn't work if you don't reason well within each step.

I read that in Hegel's "The Logic", Hegel talks about how quality and quantity are related, using the temperature of water was a really bad example. Clearly the fact that the water changes from liquid to steam at a 100 degrees Celsius does not stem from the relationship between quality and quantity, it stems from the nature of water. Would he have come to a different conclusion if he had instead used the number of molecules of water as the quantity to change instead of temperature?

Reason is a tool, but you get out of it what you put into it... if your facts or premises are faulty, or if your connections are faulty because you're not diligent at checking for contradictions or gaps, you will arrive at faulty conclusions. Reason is just a process. To use reason reliably we need to take careful steps and check each other's work critically.

Reason is a team sport!

Monday, September 5, 2011

We Need Rational Solutions

All of us who advocate freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are separated into two camps: Those who believe such freedom can only be achieved with government controls in every industry, a myriad of wealth redistribution schemes, and the religious opinions enacted as law; and those who believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can only be achieved only with perfect government - that is, a government in which there is nothing left to take away.

Most of the country is in the first camp, as evidenced by the election of both Democrats and Republicans into office at every level of government in every election. Both Democrats and Republicans are in the first camp, the only difference between them is they disagree on which controls are most important. So by electing one and then the other into office, we get the worst of both. I think very few people can look at our current situation and rationally say we got the best of both - that would mean happiness with nearly intractable and growing national debt, decade-long involvement in a "war" in two foreign countries where our politicians refuse to allow our military to actually fight an enemy, a disturbing trend happening now where citizens are being prosecuted for filming police actions due to past embarrassment this has caused, to name just a few.

I'm in the second camp. Those of us in the second camp need to continue pointing out contradictions and evils in the present state of things but we also need to present rational and comprehensive solutions to legitimate problems that may be caused by a freer society. I'm talking about offering more than just "the free market will naturally lead to best results" - I mean offering detailed, rational, solutions to such problems as how to protect our environment from irrational people who would dump waste products into lakes because it's cheaper than disposing of them safely, from irrational people who would cut down our forests to the last tree to make another dollar, from irrational people who would cruelly invade one military family's funeral service in order to get media coverage for their hate against homosexuals -- oops, that last one is allowed by our courts somehow basing their argument on free speech for the religious nut at the expense of the mourning military family.

In a free, capitalist system, how are we going to maintain our common areas? What principle is going to ensure that we don't ruin our little area of the planet for our grandchildren? What principle works when applied in any scale - town, county, state, country, world - so that others can copy it if they like our results?

Irrational, abusive, people are part of reality and any proposal that we make needs to account for their existence and their most likely and most dangerous courses of action. In essence these courses of action violate other people's individual rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] in some way. We need to talk about prevention, deterrence, and punishment. We need to demonstrate how a rights-based solution can really work. Only then can we have a hope of turning the tide and restoring America to a path of individual freedoms and national prosperity.