When good faith fails.

My previous post notwithstanding, there are many times when one finds themselves arguing some position with someone that has little to no interest in seeking the truth. When one's opponent fails to reciprocate your good faith and intellectual honesty, what remains? One strategy is to shift your goal to demonstrate to your audience the lack of honesty exhibited by your opponent. In doing so, perhaps it can be demonstrated that their argument does not rest upon logic and evidence, but upon emotional appeal and on preconceived notions. If so, then the audience is enlightened for having seen the pretense and facade of rationality stripped from your opponent's counterarguments— assuming, that is, that they truly are violating the principle of intellectual honesty.

The question, then, becomes one of how best to strip away pretense and nonsense from what is claimed to be a logical argument. Enter humor. A long tested technique in discourse, the use of humor to defuse emotional appeals by one's opponent and to lay bare the flimsy pseudologic of their arguments has been elevated to an art form. Take, for example, a rhetorical device such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM doesn't make its point directly through well-reasoned arguments, but by a sort of reductio ad absurdum that cuts to the essential absurdity of intelligent design creationism (IDC): the Christian god is added ad hoc without any justification, when any other deity (even a manifestly absurd one like the FSM) would do just as well in its place.

By ridiculing the intelligent design creationist argument, then, the FSM device makes room for a real debate (that is, one based on good faith and intellectual honesty) to occur as it adds a cost to introducing further irrational arguments of a similar kind. In this way, we can see that ridicule acts as a cultural tool to enforce good faith: when one deviates from the principles that enable a debate to be productive, ridicule and sarcasm can be employed to steer the argument back to a potentially constructive state.

One can also think of ridicule as a kind of memetic inoculation against bad-faith arguments such as those used to prop up IDC. Used as inoculation, ridicule works quite well along side well-reasoned and honest arguments, as the ridicule can serve as the mnemonic hook upon which an argument can be hung. For instance, following an argument about the methodological incompatibilities between science and faith, using a term like "faitheist" adds a social cost to using the same discredited arguments (such as "they must be compatible--- to prove it, here's a religious scientist") to justify complete compatibility. In order to be effective, one arguing for compatibility must either provide a novel demonstration of why the arguments packaged up in "faitheist" are wrong, or they must provide novel arguments not addressed in preceding discussions.

In a completely different context, economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman effectively uses ridicule in the same way: his use of the terms like "Serious People" and "Confidence Fairy" serve to keep readers in the context of a previously made argument. Whereas the Republicans (and neo-conservatives more broadly) rely heavily upon a small set of arguments even long after they have been discredited, the use of ridicule can serve as an expedient way of connecting such a discredited argument to its rebuttal.

Even beyond the importance to enabling discourse, there is another important aspect to ridicule and even outright scorn that we ignore to our detriment. Many humans implicitly measure the acceptableness of a position by how their peers react to it, so should we not use that mechanism to stymie the propagation of truly hateful ideas? Leaving the material questions of an afterlife aside, for instance, should we not ridicule and scorn the hateful notion that a being worthy of worship would ever create a place of eternal torment? Hidden in such a supposition is the truly despicable idea that people ever deserve to be tormented, much less for eternity. By ridiculing those advancing without evidence claims of a literal hell (see, for instance, George Carlin's hilarious rants on the subject), we can introduce a social cost not just for being illogical, but also for being hateful.


The danger, of course, in the use of ridicule to remedy bad faith and enforce social costs is that it can all too easily become another example of bad faith itself. Put differently, ridicule is a tool that can be used to manifestly delegitimize arguments that aren't actually legitimate in the first place, or it can be used to delegitimize arguments that are in fact made in all good faith. As a step towards addressing this danger, note that ridicule can be its own balance. Someone that uses ridicule poorly or as a bludgeon to cut off reasoned debate instead of fostering it should themselves be ridiculed. After all, the best of applications of sarcastic wit must necessarily draw upon reality, so having reality on one's side lends potency to their ridicule.

In an ideal situation, such a tool should never be needed, but in practice, I posit that there are many situations that call for tools like ridicule to make room for reasoned discourse to start. I look forward to the day where I can assume good faith by default, but until then, I shall have to be content to have a laugh at the expense of poor reasoning.

Scorching the common ground

Only the most ardently Luddite amongst us deny that technological advances change our lives in myriad, dramatic and often unexpected ways. Western approaches to city planning post-automobile, for instance, differ in marked ways from before the introduction of cheap medium-range transportation. Likewise, the introduction of telecommunications technology like the telegraph and the telephone changed how people relate to each other, making distance that much less of an impediment to human interaction. Broadcast media such as radio or TV changed nearly completely the primary modes by which information and culture diffuse in Western societies.

Of course, too, many of the features of society which we take completely for granted now are the products of advances in technology as well. We use signage to indicate all manner of information, as it is reasonable to expect that the vast majority of adults are literate and thus will be able to understand such signage. Though nearly invisible in its prevalence, then, the use of signage is a feature of a society that has truly adopted the printing press technology to the point where literacy is a requirement for societal participation.

It thus behooves us to understand how technology reshapes society. We do this in many ways, not the least of which is by exploring technological impacts in fiction. Betraying my own literary interests, I feel compelled to point to science-fiction as being one of the primary vehicles for exploring how society--- even humanity itself--- change in the face of technological advances. To choose an example that has truly permeated into the culture-at-large, consider the technologically-driven optimism of Star Trek: the United Federation of Planets represents humanity at its best, thriving in a true post-scarcity economy enabled by fictional technologies such as the replicator. Whether or not we ever make a replicator, or whether such a thing is even physically reasonable, setting a show against the backdrop of a world in which replicator technology has banished scarcity helps us understand something very real and very timely today: rapid prototyping. Sites such as MakerBot, Shapeways and Thingiverse reflect that there are some kinds of scarcity being made obsolete by technological progress. Primarily, scarcity deriving from access to manufacturing equipment is becoming less and less pronounced, shifting scarcity onto raw materials. This obsolescence of scarcity was explored first in fictional worlds such as that depicted in Star Trek, and so we are at least somewhat prepared for its impacts.

Where, then, do we turn to understand how the line between human and machine becomes less obvious by the year? Where, then, do we turn to understand the changing of such concepts as "gender" from immutable to transient? Where, then, do we turn to understand the impacts of an ever increasing longevity? We turn to many things, including turning again to fictional realms. We turn to stories like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, to stories like Accelerando (free e-book, CC licensed), to stories like Ghost in the Shell. There are, of course, many many others that could and should be mentioned in such a list--- it is beyond my intent to provide such a list here, though. Rather, I wish to emphasize that the usefulness of a story to discussion need not hinge on its direct physical reasonableness. Indeed, fanciful tales help us understand quite a bit about the relentless advance of technology and of scientific knowledge.

Many issues of transhumanism and of a society transformed by access to information can be understood under that most controversial of umbrellas, the Singularity. There, we find stories and arguments abound to help us understand what it means to be human when our biology is a platform as fungible as any other. In discussing and understanding the arguments and stories that go along with the Singularity, we find new perspectives on the human condition, at least some of which shall hopefully be useful in the decades and centuries to come.

Here, I note that those defending the irrationality of religion make arguments that are, on the surface, quite similar. It doesn't matter if there exists any literal gods, so long as the stories help us understand ourselves. The primary difference in my argument, however, is that I do not advocate rejecting the application rationality and skepticism on the basis that temporarily suspending it can be a useful exercise. Indeed, it is well argued that the rejection of skepticism is a highly dangerous position to take, even at its best. Thus, I reject the "rapture of the nerds" approach to the Singularity as completely as I reject the whole thesis of religion.

The conflating of useful hypotheticals and of artistic endeavors with a religion-like dedication to a set of claims, even in absence of evidence, is why I take issue with the Kurzweil approach to the Singularity so rightfully mocked by PZ Myers today. By turning the Singularity from a discussion into a religion, Kurzweil and others like him obstruct the usefulness of Singularity thought. Rational and skeptical people, reacting to Kurzweilian nonsense like "immortality in 35 years," are inclined to sometimes also reject the usefulness of hypothetical thinking about posthumanism, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and of pervasive information networking.

My humble proposal, then, is to reject the scorched ground of religion-infused Singularity thinking and to instead find common ground well-supported by the rigors of evidence and yet informed by hypotheticals. We can have it both ways insofar as we are willing to refrain from magical thinking about technology that passes Clarkian thresholds.

The flip side of DBAD: we can call people dicks, too.

Who knew that Mass Treble's (Twitter) Golden Rule, don't be a dick, would be so controversial? Even stranger is that, due to how the word "dick" is interpreted so widely as to include many things which I find to be quite positive, I find myself often arguing against how DBAD is implemented. That said, I do in general think that not being a dick is a good and laudable goal, so long as one keeps a reasonable definition of the term.

In fact, I think it's a laudable enough goal that I'm quite willing to ask others to not act in asinine ways towards me and (more importantly) those people around me that I care about. To take one specific example, I'm quite content to demand that people not be misogynistic dicks. I consider it to be quite dickish to take prudish, sex-negative views about women and impose them on the world around you. Over at Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse points out a few particularly appalling examples of this, including a picture that drives the point home:

Let me make this perfectly clear: if you are to escape being called a dick by people like me, you don't get to demand that women sit at the back of the bus any more than you get to demand that blacks do. I really don't give a flip if your religion says that you have the moral obligation to be dicks to those around you or not, so much as I care that this behavior causes real and physical harm to other human beings. If there is a more clear sign of being a dick than being willing to subjugate half of the human race to appease your own twisted morals, I don't know what it is.

At its most basic, much of why I write the words I write and spill the pixels that I spill over religion come down to the DBAD principle. Evidence such as these examples shows that religion is a rather efficient machine for either turning people into dicks, or at least amplifying dickish behavior by insulating it from analysis and criticism. After all, it takes religion to get one to say that maybe gay kids shouldn't be as protected from bullying as everyone else. It takes religion to lead otherwise decent people to oppose a lifesaving mode of defense against AIDS and other STDs.  And so on, ad nauseum.

In short, if we're to really take seriously, Mass' Rule, then that doesn't mean that atheists and other freethinkers should shut up, but rather, that we should be more vocal than ever about diskish and unjust acts, whether religiously motivated or not.

On loyalty of a peculiar kind.

The Scientific American podcast highlighted today research showing that members of "Generation X" (why is that Godawful name still around?) are on average more loyal to religion than are members of their parents' generation. Setting aside the question of how reliable this report is, since there are very few details given, let us instead treat the article as a launching point for discussion.

Indeed, it is uncontroversial that loyalty to religion exists in some sense. What does such a loyalty mean, however? What courses of action are demanded by such a loyalty? This is at best a problematic question to answer, as it is belief in a set of material claims that may be taken as comprising a religion. Under this view, religions are not adopted as matters of principle, but rather as a matter of that belief. One may as well ask what a loyalty to The Lord of the Rings implies.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is a bizarre notion that one can be loyal or disloyal to a set of claims about material reality. Such claims are ideally decided by consulting that self-same material reality, rather than loyalty to one or another set of claims. One that is loyal to a set of religious claims is then someone that is compelled by this loyalty to assert the primacy of their claims over evidence. Such loyalty is distinct from loyalty to a person, ideal or value in that it cannot be a matter of principle without falling into the trap of argument by appeal to consequences.

This sort of religious loyalty is, on the other hand, one onto which principles can be grafted. If some of the material claims to a religion are that certain modes of conduct are inherently morally superior to others by divine edict, then adoption of principles reinforcing those modes of conduct is a consequence of loyalty to those claims. Since correspondence to reality is not demanded from these religious claims about reality, such claims may be manipulated so as to imply any of a wide range of mutually contradictory principles. That is, religious loyalty is not a matter of principle so much as a vessel into which principle can be poured.

Witness, for instance, the latest absurdity from Glenn Beck, his I Have A Scheme speech. As others have noted, the attendees were indeed fiercely loyal, but to no particular principle. Rather, the Tea Party, in buying into and expressing loyalty towards material claims that are demonstrably false, has made themselves into so many empty vessels into which the hateful principles of the GOP may be poured.

Just as with religious loyalty, this political loyalty neither demands nor exhibits correspondence with reality, neither demands nor exhibits principle. As such, it is difficult if not impossible to apply reason to these views. This sort of blind loyalty, made without deference to what actually is, must be seen as a problem if we are to progress in our moral thinking as a society.

Rebuttal: The Difference Between Religion and Woo

I have tried to resist writing about science and religion for awhile; at least, dial back the frequency a bit. My ideas are not hidden, but they're also not terribly unique. Much of the time, I suspect my voice only marginally adds to the conversation, if at all.

All this aside, there are times when I find it extremely difficult to resist. It is particularly hard for me to let something lay when someone else makes an issue of it. This is precisely the case of Rob Knop's latest post, in which he attempts to insert a wedge between religion and woo while still maintaining the validity and importance of science. His post is such a quintessential example of that protected status for religion that I find so harmful to our society that I find myself drawn into yet another Web-delivered argument. I don't write this post with the hopes that my argument with Knop will go any better than last time, but rather because it is important to me that I try.

Without further ado, then, let us look at what Knop has to say. It's a long post, so by necessity I will pick out the bits I feel most deserving of response-- go read it for the full context of his remarks.

Why do I mention this? Because I see a lot of those who call themselves skeptics making exactly the same mistake— judging another field of intellectual inquiry on what they believe to be the one true way of reason. They dismiss things as trivial or childish based on criteria that fail to be relevant to the field of human intellectual activity they’re trivializing. Specifically, there are a lot of people out there who will imply, or state, that the only form of knowledge that really can be called knowledge is scientific knowledge; that if it is not knowledge gained through the scientific method, it’s ultimately all crap.

At this point, Knop has made it clear that he intends on revisiting his false equivocation between religious fundamentalists and "fundamentalist atheists" (full disclosure: Knop apparently considers me to be a member of this group). By using phrases like "one true way of reason," Knop conveniently ignores that skepticism, atheism and rationality have no central dogma beyond a sort of pragmatic honesty: if you are going to claim that your methodology (or way of reason, in Knop's vernacular) works, then it had damn well better work. As a part of that, yes, you must be able to verify that your "way of knowing" produces useful results, or else you cannot legitimately say that your methodology is a valid one.

The scientific method, then, which Knop elevates to the level of dogmatism in order to build his straw man, is not a dogma at all but a formalization of those ways of learning that have been shown to work. Far from being immutable or the "one true" way, science is adaptive and self-correcting. Already, then, Knop's equivocation fails on the basis that he's not describing skepticism as is espoused by the atheists he is so reviled by, but rather his own funhouse mirror version. We've got a lot of post left to cover, though, so let's press on:

What makes Robert Frost so much more important to human culture than the stories I wrote when I was 7? It’s not a scientific question, but it is a question that is trivially obvious to those who study literature, culture, and history. And, yet, using my 7-year-old story to dismiss all of literature as crap makes as much sense as using the notion of believing in a teapot between Earth and Mars as a means of dismissing all of religion.

If there is one sure way of pissing me off, it's to tell me that something "isn't a scientific question." Given that science is the methodology of pragmatism, such claims are no more than a way of giving up reasoned analysis. As someone who has made a career out of cultivating and exploring his own curiosity, few things are more offensive to me than someone putting such ultimate limits along my path. I don't expect that Knop refrain from doing things that offend me, however, as that would make the world a much more boring place--- rather, I would hope that as a fellow scientist, Knop would feel the same curiosity and lust for knowledge that renders such a claim so offensive to me.

The burden, however, of demonstrating that analyzing Frost versus the 7-year-old writings of Knop lies within the realm of science is one that I shall have to take on to truly make my point. In that vein, then, note that in addition to the "hard" sciences such as physics and chemistry, we have a full array of social sciences that are dedicated to applying scientific (that is, useful) methods to social questions. Such questions inevitably deal with the behaviors of entities each composed of many more than 10²³ particles, so that the "hard" sciences are completely overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the questions. Thus, we have found it useful to develop alternate methodologies that sacrifice some degree of exactness and objectivity in exchange for an enhanced ability to cope with such overwhelming questions as that proposed by Knop.

Ultimately, though, we must expect that the methods of analyzing Frost must lie within science for one simple reason: Frost existed within this reality, was a physical being and produced tangible objects that are amenable to study. Frost was, just like you or I, a citizen of the physical universe. Even if one posits the existence of a soul to try and escape this fact, the soul then influences the physical world by some mechanism that is not completely random, and thus can be examined. Knop's question is as scientific a question as any that could be asked, in that it is a question that concerns physical objects and that can be answered using useful and robust methodologies.

Of course, this is all a distraction from Knop's apparent point to mentioning Frost and his younger self. Rather, Knop accuses those who make reference to Russell's teapot of being akin to those strawmen that would discard Frost as useless due to the apparent uselessness of stories written by seven-year-old children. Indeed, Knop makes this accusation quite clear:

If you cannot see the difference between Russell’s teapot and the great world religions, then you’re no more qualified to talk about religion than the fellow who thinks that cultural bias is the only reason any of us believe in the Big Bang is qualified to talk about cosmology.

Pray tell, then, what is the difference between Russell's teapot and, just to make the discussion concrete, Christianity? Besides, of course, that the teapot is a gendanken intended to provide an easy example of the kinds of arguments that can and should be made against religion. All of Knop's strawmen aside, I have never heard of anyone claiming that Russell's teapot invalidates all of the world's religions, but rather that the gendanken explains why we should insist upon claims being testable. Religion is, in actuality, a complex and multi-faceted thing which many atheists and skeptics take a great deal of effort to understand. That along the way we find such examples as Russell's teapot useful is far from using the teapot as "a means of dismissing all of religion."

If Knop is interested in dragging atheists through the mud for overly reductionist arguments, then perhaps he should start by not reducing us to such a caricature of our actual arguments. That would include, for instance, not saying things like this:

There are quite a number of skeptics who openly say that they cannot see the difference between religion and belief in UFOs, Homeopathy, or any of the rest of the laundry list of woo that exists in modern culture.

There is of course a difference between religion and homeopathy: there's a hell of a lot more religious people in the world. Mind you, that's not the only difference, but the most immediately important one. As a consequence, religion alone has earned itself a special status in our society as immune to rational analysis and criticism. The point that I and others that agree with me tend to make isn't that religion and woo are the same, but rather that they draw from there is an important commonality to be found in their mutual rejection of rationality. This hypothetical reductionist that is blind to anything but that commonality, important as it is, is no more representative of actual atheists than any other strawman presented thus far.

On the other hand, Knop pretty much nails it with his next claim:

The assertion is that being religious is a sign of a deep intellectual flaw, that these people are not thinking rationally, not applying reason.

Yes, that is precisely what I have said here and in many other venues, though presented in much more judgmental terms than I find are appropriate to the assertion being made. Rather, I would put it differently by asserting that religion is not philosophically compatible or logically consistent with rationality.

Of course, the part of this assertion that  people repeat far less often is that religion is not unique in that regard. There are many other intellectual "flaws," a great many of which I will admit that I am afflicted by. Why I focus on religion, then, is that it is relatively unique in being celebrated and enshrined despite that it is defunct as a means of learning-- of accumulating accurate knowledge.

I could go into much more detail on this point, but for now let me leave it for now, as I would like to get onto Knop's next point:

It’s fine to believe [that religion is a sign of a deep intellectual flaw], just as it’s fine to believe that the Big Bang theory is a self-delusional social construction of a Judeo-Christian culture. But it’s also wrong.

Read that again, please. Knop is saying that it is fine to believe something that is wrong, and is it is with that assertion that I most passionately disagree with him. In my life, I strive to ensure that I believe only things which are true, and so I will admit that I have very little basis for understanding Knop's assertion here. Even moreso, when Knop continues thusly:

Yes, there is absolutely no scientific reason to believe in a God or in anything spiritual beyond the real world that we can see and measure with science.

This is a statement which is not new to me, but which I have made no recent progress towards understanding. I doubt that Knop intends to say that his god is impotent in that it is incapable of affecting the material world, and so I presume that Knop is asserting the existence of an untestable and yet still physical phenomenon. As I said before, however, this is where I must take earnest and profound offense: learning does not stop where it is convenient for the religious, and so we should not impose a priori limits on understanding the world just because of someone's god. Either Knop's god is impotent or it is material in the sense that it affects the material world; if we insist upon the latter, than the methods of science (sometimes called "methodological naturalism" in this context) must be able to study the patterns by which his god affects the world.

It is in the context of this assertion that I find Knop's closing comments so difficult to agree with:

But that does not mean that those who do believe in some of those things can’t be every bit as much a skeptic who wants people to understand solid scientific reasoning as a card-carrying atheist.

Knop has admitted in his post that there are a priori and impregnable limits to the limits of rationality, something which I do not admit or agree with. In doing so, there is at least one "bit" with which I am more willing to be a skeptic than is Knop. While overall, Knop may be more or less skeptical than I am (I really don't know which is the case), I cannot agree with the claim that his endorsing of religion is compatible with the skepticism he practices elsewhere in his life.

It is truly unfortunate, however, that Knop's approach to arguing for this controversial claim is to build such silly and distorted strawmen of atheists who might otherwise be more inclined to ally themselves with him in fighting the woo that he so rightfully expresses a passion to fight.

Note: Rob Knop said a great many things in his post I did not address, in the interests of brevity (believe it or not). Please don't take this posting as being a fair summary of the entirety of his argument, as it is intended only as a response to those points I found most objectionable.

Joining the fray, despite better judgment.

After reading Jerry Coyne's take on the NYC mosque project known as Cordoba House, I feel compelled to contribute my own unsolicited views. Let me be perfectly (and perhaps painfully) clear on this: I do not support the building of this mosque any more than I support the building of any other mosque, church, temple or other monument to that source of perpetual irrationality that is religion. Of course, what's brilliant about living in a country that respects human rights is that they do not need my support to build their mosque any more than, say, a Catholic group needs my support to continue expanding that particular institution.

There is an inherent and celebrated right to express viewpoints, including those that I find deplorable and unconscionable, and I am not about to stop celebrating this right simply because of some contrived notion of "ground zero" as being somehow sacred, as is currently being pushed by the right-wingers in my home country. My personal revulsion at a religious institution that offers no better than a compromise with the hateful and inhumane extremes of the worst and most fundamentalist strains of religious practice do not figure in to the equation at all. I cannot, by the same reasoning, let the hatred expressed as an article of faith by the Mormon church in the recent California Proposition 8 debacle lead me to reject the inherent rights of Mormons to practice their faith.

Rather, as I have said before and will continue to say, such institutions are made irrelevant through eroding the cultural support for irrationality. The law has no place in deciding questions of this kind of cultural imperative-- not even zoning laws. To throw away the recognition of fundamental human rights in a case like this is nothing other than embracing the very irrationality that I argue is so damaging.

Note: Thank you to the person who helped me perfect the writing on this one. Left anonymous for search engine reasons.

Deciding What Science Is

Recently, someone at a major newspaper wrote an article about science blogging that is perhaps best described as trolling. This article, penned by Virginia Heffernan, has already led to many pixels being spilt over its careless dismissal of the state of science blogging. See, for instance, PZ Myers' post on the matter wherein he dispatches her arguments quite handily. I don't wish to add to this issue, as too much has already been said about her article.

Rather, I want to address one of the more poisonous and wrong attitudes upon which her article seems to have been predicated. This attitude is far from limited to Heffernan's flamebaiting, and has been reflected in much of the writing that has followed. For instance, one blogger writing on "Christian faith, society, science and culture" had this to say:

One of my chief complaints about many science blogs is that there really isn’t much science to be found there. Many of the most popular consist primarily of diatribes about various political issues (gay marriage, immigration, the tea party, etc) and the personal religious beliefs of the blogger (who is more often than not an evangelistic New Atheist). What one will find very little discussion of science, as in information about current research, particular papers, or the state of various scientific fields. [emphasis in original]

The author, Jack Hudson, has implicitly made the same kind of error that so many face when discussion science: he has decided a priori what is and is not within the realms of what can be discussed as science. Let's take gay marriage, for instance, since Hudson seems to think that this issue has no place on a blog about science. It also serves as a very timely example to pick at, seeing as how the fate of the anti-gay marriage amendment Proposition 8 was just found to be unconstitutional in the decision Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Much of the decision came down to deciding if the law had any rational basis, and thus involved a substantive discussion of material claims made by anti-gay advocates. These claims were found to be wanting, as they were not grounded in scientific fact. Thus, we see that the final decision in the case came down to a scientific question: is gay marriage at all quantitatively different from heterosexual marriage?

Gay marriage, then, is a perfect example of something within the purview of science, as in deciding, we must apply the ideals of rationality upon which science ultimately rests. Advocating against gay marriage is simply not rational from any standpoint with which we should find acceptable in society, and so any blogger advocating for the public role of science has not only the right, but the responsibility to speak out against anti-gay actions like Prop 8. If science bloggers stick had by and large stayed out of the issue, then they would have been complicit in the further separation of science and society.

The trouble that Heffernan, Hudson and other writers run into, then, is that they don't get to set aside some issues as being outside of science. Deciding what science is and is not is not so trivial as to be settled by consulting with one's political positions. We cannot appease the Hudsons of the world by shying away from "whining about creationists," but will only further weaken how science is seen and accepted in society at large.

P. S.: I have to point out that Hudson filed his article under the "Atheist Contradictions" category, begging the question of what exactly is so contradictory here.

What We're Up Against

It's no secret that progressives, secular humanists, rationalists, skeptics and all other manner of forward-thinking individuals face a myriad of different uphill battles, not the least of which is to prevent our own internal disputes from causing us to lose sight of what we're working for. That's why I find it helpful to sometimes take a step back and simply look at what sorts of challenges we face.

In particular, I find that in my own life, I tend to surround myself with people that, while far from exactly like-minded, share enough of my concerns that it's easy to forget that I hold many views that are very far from what is considered normal, even to the point of being taken for granted, in modern society. Advocating for atheism (and more generally, for skepticism), for instance, is not yet seen as acceptable in much of the United States. This makes it even more paramount to look at what those on the other side believe, think, do and say. Were I more into the militaristic metaphors with which so much of the English-speaking world seems to be so infatuated, I would say that we must know our enemies to defeat them. Instead, I'm going to be a physicist about it and say that we must know the potential energy function in which we move about.

Without further ado, then, let me start by noting that ours is a society in which people are fine with saying shallow and narrow-minded things like this:

While I was living there it was voted one of the top 10 cities for singles. What were they smoking? I want some! In Seattle I met the geeky Microsoft guy who used a discount card on our second date at a horrible restaurant. I met the engineer that ensured me he was not “a typical engineer”. Yes, yes you are. Socially awkward. Inappropriate conversation. Typical engineer. Wait, inappropriate conversation? You want more details on that? Okay…well the words “penis” and “vagina” were used, complete with gestures. Yes, that really did happen. On a date. In public. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

This kind of casual prudishness and enforcing of gender norms in dating formalisms (such as how to pay for a meal) should be seen as a large barrier towards creating a tolerant and sex-positive society in which people are free and encouraged to find and make their own happiness.

On a closely related note, the sex-negative and anti-porn group Porn Harms celebrates Facebook's shameful act of censorship:

Thank you Facebook! They just removed a very inappropriate pro-porn page with links to pornography that our children had easy access to.

Keep in mind, this is the same group of people that proudly repeats Gail Dines in saying that "pornography is a 'cultural support system for violence against women,'" at once trivializing violence against women and insulting all those who work hard to make the adult entertainment industry a responsible one.

Of course, this kind of sex-negativity ties into and is fed by religious sentiments, such as those espoused in this Islamic tract that predates on the emotionally vulnerable, or this poster which uses Islam is used to justify the locking of women into narrow and repressive gender roles:

Muslim women dress in a way that is modest and dignified. The purpose of clothing is not only to protect oneself from physical elements, but also to protect oneself from immorality and pride. Some traditions of dress, and more generally, the treatment of women in some Muslim countries and societies, are often a reflection of culture. This is very often inconsistent and even contrary to Islam teachings. Prophet Muhammad said: "The most perfect in faith among you believers is he who is best in manner and kindest to his wife." [emphasis mine]

For all the poster's empty platitudes about the equality of women, there is no reasonable way to interpret the phrase "protect oneself from immorality and pride" here but to mean that women should feel shamed (that is, not proud) of their bodies in ways that men should not.

Not, mind you, that Islam is anywhere near alone in using religion to justify sex-negativity or misogyny. For example, the Christian fundamentalist Reformers Unanimous group advertises support for a questionable list of addictions, including "pornography addiction":

Help for: Addiction - Drug Intervention - Codependence - Rehab - Alcoholism - Meth Addiction - Gambling Addiction - Cocaine Addiction - Marijuana Addiction - Opiate Addiction - Codependence [sic] - Enabling - Nicotine Addiction - Pornography Addiction - Love Addiction

Amongst RU's approaches to what they see as problems is the gem that all we need to do is remember that "Christ is enough." If this reminds you of "Jesus Plus Nothing," pat yourself on the back. This kind of worldview, where religious sentiment is allowed to replace all other forms of thought, is a major driving force behind many of the political problems that we face in the world today.

Sadly, one of the other major driving forces being political problems, at least in the United States, is racism. Take, for instance, the vile screed written by Mark Williams of Tea Party infamy, which includes this choice bit:

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

This is the same Mark Williams, mind you, that objects so vehemently to the construction of a mosque near 9/11 Ground Zero, and encourages the bombing of Mecca in response. This kind of abject racism lies at the heart of much of the Tea Party. Just ask Shirley Sherrod.

Since my attempt in this is not to depress you, I'll not go on in this vein. Rather, I will point out that for every one of the examples I've shown, there is someone who cares enough to work against that kind of hate, bigotry or just plain ignorance. Even if we disagree with these caring people on some fronts-- maybe even many fronts-- we must at least recognize that they are there, working for a just cause.

One of the key strengths of the spectrum of thoughts and ideals that includes such seemingly disparate causes as progressivism, rationalism, sex-positivity and feminism is that open-mindedness is (in general) celebrated. We can disagree with each other and still recognize what commonality we have in our goals. We do not strive, as our adversaries do, for perfect uniformity in thought and deed, but only for mutual respect of our fellow human beings and a dedication to truth. In short, we are not alone. That's good, I think, given what we're up against.

A case study of the less pleasant side of the Internet, examined.

Update: I forgot to credit @ebertchicago and @stevensantos on Twitter for pointing me to this article. Thanks!

The Internet is filled with wonderful people sharing their thoughts. You can find lots of deep insights on all manners of topics, serious arguments and debates from just about any position imaginable, and you can find intelligence analysis of complicated social issues.
On the other hand, you can also find things like this. Just the title gives away how seriously the author, Rich Deem, takes his arguments. When your article is titled "Why Sex With Robots is Always Wrong: The Impending Demise of the Human Species," (emphasis mine) you are sending a clear message that you are more interested in getting attention than in making reasoned arguments. It is absurdly hyperbolic to say that there is a threat to the survival of humanity itself posed by the specter of cyberdildonics.

Don't get me wrong, however. It is fully and entirely possible to have a mature, adult discussion of the moral, ethical and social issues raised by sexbots. It is even possible to do so via the use of fiction and parable. In TV and movies alone, we see examples like Chobits, Battlestar Galactica and Ghost in the Shell taking sexuality with robots seriously. Even series like Buffy and Star Trek deal with these issues to some degree. What doesn't do this, however, is the parable-like story penned by Deem.

Rather, we get breathless statements like:

This page is going to seem rather far out and unrealistic, given today's moral standards. However, the standards are rapidly changing, and within a few years the human race will be in a position in which sexual immorality could exist on a widespread scale.

Setting aside for a moment the tiresome and troublesome phrase "sexual immorality," it is hardly the case that we are on the cusp of some global sexual crisis. Humanity is on quite a few cusps, but "increasing sexual perversion and increasingly pervasive virtual sex happening through the expanding acceptance of online pornography" is not one of them. Pornography has been an integral part of human sexuality for no short length of time, and though it is easier to access and disseminate via the Internet, that is by no stretch of imagination any more of a threat to human survival than the widespread availability of pictures of cats doing silly things.

Certainly, there are changes that we must be aware of and that we must learn to deal with, but Deem's use of the word "perversion" indicates right away that he has no interest in real social issues. Rather, he is content to stick to the fiction that there is a limited set of morally acceptable ways to enjoy consensual sex-- that somehow, there is a universal standard for the Right Way to Get It On that was set in stone billions of years before sex itself was produced by evolution. In some sense, this must be a comforting fiction, as it would seem to release one from the duty to challenge and improve their ethics and to actually confront real problems rather than producing absurd and comical windmills for tilting at.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Surely there is comedy to be found in how Deem communicates fevered nightmares to us? We're in luck:

Instead of magnesium frames covered with thick plastic, the robots were eventually designed using lightweight carbon-fiber composite designed to mimic the structure of human bones moved by pulley systems to generate the full range of human motion. The hard plastic was soon replaced with fabrics that felt like real skin. Thus, the transformation from machine to android was nearly complete. [emphasis mine]

This is the sort of statement I should expect from a creationist screed ("Why are there still machines if androids have been invented?"), and so I shouldn't be surprised to find that Deem takes pride in being a creationist. Rather than positing the existence of a wide range of robotic systems for various purposes, Deem's story has robotics doggedly pursuing some ultimate goal, which happens to be the same goal as his creation myth: humanity. The "transformation" described is but one more comical example of the bizarre and devout anthrocentrism to which creationists and such seem to hold. Indeed, in his hypothetical world, why is it a linear progression from ASIMO to android? Is there no room in this imagined future for a market that sells intentionally un-lifelike sexbots, or limited-functionality sexbots that appeal to the working class stiffs? No, of course there isn't. In Deem's world, the pornography and cyberdildonics industries don't at all resemble those in our world:

The first of these sex robots were crude, non-animated versions introduced in the early 2010's [sic]. However, soon top programmers and engineers were hired away from the automakers and computer companies with offers of up to ten times their average salaries, similar to what had been done with their movie businesses in the late 2010's [sic], when they had hired away Hollywood's best CG programmers to turn out realistic-looking virtual pornography movies. [emphasis mine]

In the real world, adult entertainment makes a lot of money, to be sure, but not so much as to be able to poach off talent en masse from three of the largest industries that our society has ever seen. In general, while pornographers have often been early adopters of technologies, they do not have the resources nor the social standing to revolutionize entire branches of science, such as Deem hypothesizes his future pornographers to have done with robotics:

Money from the adult entertainment industry, in their push for realistic motion and conversation, had accelerated the technology in what would have taken decades to only a few years.

Of course, Deem is not content to run roughshod over facts concerning economics. Indeed, we see that he is perfectly willing to perpetuate some of the most trite and easily debunked of gender-based stereotypes:

Although the newly designed FACA [ed: female anatomically correct android-- read, sexbot] looked good, they were still somewhat clumsy and had trouble with all but the most common colloquialisms. For the average male college student, this was not a major problem, since conversation was not his major intent. However, when companies tried to market MACA, the male counterpart, to the female college crowd, the acceptance was less than stellar... [emphasis mine]

Never mind that in the real world, people have complex and varied approaches to their own sexual lives. In Deem's world, it's simple: men like to have sex and women like to talk. Not that the stereotypes end there, mind you:

Acceptance among the male population evolved rapidly as men realized they could get an ideal "woman" whose only goal was to serve him. Entertainment companies became more bold as FACA were advertised as being "better than sex." In addition, FACA were adept at gourmet cooking, cleaning, and household chores, so that one could always use utility as an excuse to get one. [emphasis mine]

As a male, I am deeply offended by Deem's sick insinuation that my ideal of a companion, spouse, sexual partner or anything else is a being that wants only to serve me. This flippant remark, I suspect, betrays some of Deem's own attitudes towards his fellow humans. Certainly, I don't think that a healthy mind could project such a warped view of gender and of humanity itself onto the whole of his fictional society. Moreover, the implication that since his sexbots are replacing women as sex partners, they must also replace women at housework betrays some very regressive and oppressive notions of gender roles that are better left in our past than our future. Deem's future seems to be one in which women are no better than appliances with genitals, and in which as soon as appliances are endowed with artificial genitalia, women are left with no place at all in society. Not my idea of a positive future, or even of a realistic dystopia.

Doubling down on his commitment to narrow and harmful gender roles, Deem continues on to inform us that in his future:

Sperm banks sprang up all over as women who wanted to have children were forced to pay exorbitant prices, since very few men were interested in donating [...].

Men in this funhouse mirror view of sexuality have no interest in reproduction or family-building, so that all it takes is an overgrown sex toy to demolish his one, true Nuclear Family. So consumed with libido are his future's men that as long as they have a warm body (never mind that it's one devoid of a mind) to have sex with, they have no other desires or motives that may at all involve flesh and blood women. As much as this is patently misogynistic, condemning women to a status just slightly elevated from that of a washing machine, it is also a patently misandric view. Just as much as women should find Deem's futuresex revolting for what of himself he projects onto it, men should be outraged at his reduction of the complex whole of humanity to some cartoonish interplay between sex-crazed men and meek women. The climax in Deem's twisted fantasy seems to be when he declares that:

Men who owned a FACA disdained the company of real women, with all their incessant demands and mood swings. The sexual revolution was complete and we were all the victims.

In spite of all this, I must give Deem credit for the sheer multitude of ways that he manages to prove himself foolish. For instance, consider the near glee with which he sets up strawman versions of those with whom he disagrees:

Population control groups and environmentalists were thrilled that the human birth rate was now rapidly declining well below replacement levels. Several women's groups formed an alliance in an attempt to outlaw the sale of FACA. Virtually all attempts to legislate against FACA were either blocked by male legislators or in the courts as restricting freedom of speech.

All in the space of three sentences, Deem presents his reader with conveniently packaged and easy-to-hate caricatures of population control, environmentalism in general, feminism and the freedom of speech. He doesn't even try to understand or explore the reasons why environmentalists may want to keep the human population at sustainable reasons, but instead describes that they are thrilled to see the decline of humanity itself. Feminist groups he brushes aside as relatively powerless and reactionary groups easily defeated by "male legislators." Freedom of speech is seen in Deem's bizzaro world as some thin shield for "sexual immorality," whatever in the hell that is. He even sees fit to revisit his disdain for the protection of speech later, declaring that:

The Supreme Court has ruled that nearly all forms of pornography are first amendment "protected speech." There is no reason to believe that a machine would not fall into that category.

What we see from this serial strawmanning is that, just as rich and nuanced explorations of human sexuality have no place in Deem's reckoning, nor do subtle and qualified arguments. In fact, look at what Deem holds up as an example of courtroom drama:

In the middle of the examination, the defense attorney suddenly grabbed the FACA and slammed it to the ground, scattering pieces of the machine all over the floor. Suddenly, the facade of humanity was gone, as the lawyer asked if anyone was going to charge him with a crime. The last challenge against the widespread use of FACA had been crushed.

Though I think that the attorney in question is supposed to be a villain of Deem's narrative, it is still amazing that Deem leaves no room for his villain to actually argue. Rather, he must make his point through sheer brute force, eschewing any subtlety and any finesse that may help the readers identify what exactly the attorney believes in that is so reprehensible to Deem.

Having declared us all victims of the sexual revolution, Deem ends his story and progresses into a realm where he is even less able to hold his own: facts. I am not the best person to debunk and deconstruct his claims, such as that the viewing of pornography leads to a "trivialization of rape as a criminal offense." Luckily, however, there are those bold and wonderful few, such as sex educator Violet Blue, that tirelessly fight against the anti-porn movement by debunking lies, exposing poor studies, presenting studies that contradict anti-porn narratives and by educating people about sexuality in general. For more, I direct interested readers to her site dedicated to the pro-feminism sex-positive and pro-porn movements, Our Porn, Ourselves.

As for myself, I shall be content to leave this story here, and to instead concern myself with those parts of the Internet in which intelligent and mature discussion is to be found.