Vox Popoli

Scott Hatfield asks about my interest in EXPELLED beyond the subject matter:

I’m pretty sure you are interested in the question of who is lying and who is telling the truth. Perhaps you, Vox, would care to address the question of why those interviewed are correct/incorrect in claiming that the filmmakers misrepresented their intent?

Based on admittedly incomplete evidence, I believe that Dawkins and PZ Myers are entirely correct in saying that the producers of EXPELLED misrepresented their intent to them. While this is a completely acceptable method of modern documentary-making, as evidenced by the award-winning documentaries of Michael Moore, I find it somewhat objectionable. However, since both Dawkins and Myers are too short-sighted and insecure about their beliefs to engage in open discourse with the majority of those who don’t agree with them – they’ve both publicly attempted to justify their refusals to engage with the opposition in the past – this sort of misrepresentation was almost inevitable for any critic attempting to get a straightforward answer out of them on the subject. In any event, whether you think this Moorean misrepresentation was justified or not, it doesn’t inherently invalidate anything about the film.

On the other hand, it’s clear that Dawkins is lying about various aspects of his contacts with the documentary’s producers. Dawkins is known to have lied before in similar circumstances, so this is not the first time that he has attempted to put a retroactive spin on his previous remarks and actions. He’s not just a known liar, but an admitted one now, as indicated by both his attempt to claim that the false details were minor as well as his subsequent apology. But then, Dawkins’s lying doesn’t inherently validate anything about the film either.

I haven’t read much about PZ’s part in this little slap-fight, so I don’t have an opinion there. But aside from his wildly inaccurate statements about me, which I tend to regard as personal opinion rather than serious statements of fact, I can’t recall any signs that PZ is prone to the sort of habitual dishonesty that Dawkins exhibits in certain situations. I’m not sure that PZ always realizes when he’s said something remarkably stupid, but it seems to me that when he does notice, he’s much more prone to stubbornly defend his words than to deny he said them or retroactively claim an implausible interpretation for them.

Simon Barnes searches in vain for a moral standard by which he can condemn Max Mosley:

The allegations that he took part in a sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes, and the further allegations – which Mosley has denied – that the performance involved dressing up as Nazis and Jewish prisoners are not without their horrifying element. All the same, it is hard to put your finger on what Mosley has done wrong.

This is a perfect example of the moral warrant issue which so trips up the New Atheists, especially Christopher Hitchens. To Barnes’s credit, he recognizes that it’s not hard to find a moral offense in a married man cavorting with multiple prostitutes from a religious perspective; I confess to being a bit mystified where the violation of feminist morality might have been.

I should be interested if any of the non-believers here perceive any moral offense in the Mosley situation, and if so, just what it might be.

I was aghast to hear my four year old daughter playing with her dolls the other day. The dolls are not the problem; the story line was. Tuning in and out while she nattered on, I suddenly realized the dialogue went something like this:

First Princess: “Oh no! The evil witch is coming. We need Prince Sean!” (Sean is the boy she’s all but stalking at preschool).

Second Princess: “Oh! She’ll cut our guts out. Where are the boys? We need boys.”

FP: “Girls aren’t strongly brave. We shall die! Who will save us? Oh! It’s the prince. He’ll save us.”

All in a high-pitched and annoying ditzy soprano. It got so much worse than this, I had to sit her down for a chat. Where on earth was she getting this stuff?

I pummel her and her 7-year-old brother with feminist analysis of every medium they encounter, from billboards to story books to cereal boxes. I’m a single mom with a freelance career; they watch me struggle and kick ass everyday, all without help from a ‘prince.’ Yet, my daughter argues furiously with me that only boys are strong and brave and tough. She was actually offended when I called her a tough cookie after she’d done something cool. “I’m not tough, Mom! I’m a girl.”

It’s stupid to fight Mother Nature. You can do it for a while, but she’ll always wear you out in the end. It’s also hilarious to hear these strong, independent women trying to talk male. Ladies, you simply cannot struggle and kick ass at the same time. And by the way, what sort of feminist allows her daughter to play with dolls in the first place?

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox explained:

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here…. This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

This is quite useful and I wish I’d taken the time to apply the game theory for myself since it describes precisely what I’ve observed and been commenting upon for a few years now. Some women of my acquaintance that were extraordinarily strong bidders in their middle twenties later ended up marrying men who simply weren’t the caliber of the men who were competing for their attention a decade prior, while those who still haven’t married are now contemplating choices between various men, none of whom would have gotten a second look from them 15 years ago.

Men always understand that desirable women have options. Women seem to have a harder time understanding that desirable men do too. Note that decisiveness here does not apply to one’s character, merely the strength of one’s bid. If one woman has 30 points of attraction and is competing with a woman with 50 such points, she will nevertheless have the competitive advantage when she goes all in if her rival only puts in a mathematically half-hearted effort.

The economic key to successfully finding and marrying a mate you find desirable, then, is to go all in once you have found an individual that meets your criteria rather than obsessively comparing various satisfactory options in hopes of determining the ideal one. And it should be noted that by “going all in” I do not mean “acting like a stalker”.

You know, there just might be a book in this sort of thing….

I previously asserted that Richard Dawkins couldn’t last 5 minutes in a debate of The God Delusion with me. After reading this account of his encounter with Mark Mathis, the producer of the movie EXPELLED, I think I may have been a bit too generous. Dawkins is the proverbial example of a man who is intellectually crippled by his short-sighted refusal to listen to substantive criticism:

Dawkins: Why were you dishonest about the film you were going to make?! We were lead to believe that you were going to present a fair account of evolution.

[Richard Dawkins is now bouncing up like a man on a string to launch his charges. He then fades into his seat when a proper, logical explanation is given.]

Mathis: Mr. Dawkins, that’s precisely what we have done. We’ve presented a fair account of the academic persecution that goes on across America and indeed the world when a scientist dares to disagree with the Darwinian view.
Dawkins: You were not forthcoming with me that you were making a film that involved people who claim they have been persecuted!

Mathis: Professor Dawkins, I contacted you by e-mail prior to our interview. You quizzed me on all of the questions in your backyard for a half hour before we sat down with the cameras. After the interview you signed our release and accepted a generous payment for your time (Laughter). I think we were very fair with you.

Mathis: By the way Mr. Dawkins, I want to tell you that what you said on Atheist Radio not long ago was completely untrue. You tried to take credit for setting up our second interview location at the British Museum of Natural History. I set up that location and it involved a tremendous amount of time and effort and a very large check. You also claimed on Atheist radio that you expected me to be doing the interview and not Mr. Stein, that you were duped again. I have a long e-mail record of my communication with you, explaining that following the success of The God Delusion Mr. Stein wanted to interview you himself. I sent you a list of Mr. Stein’s broad range of accomplishments. I can accept this situation as perhaps a lapse of memory, but what you said was not true.

Dawkins: Those are minor points.
Mathis: Not to me. You called me a liar on the radio (Laughter).

Dawkins: If that is the case then I offer you an apology.
Mathis: I accept.

(Brushing away a tear) It’s deeply touching, isn’t it? Now, I haven’t seen the movie, so I have no idea whether it makes a conclusive case against the scientific community or if it is the dishonest schlockfest that PZ Myers claims it to be. Since neither evolutionary biology nor professional squabbles over tenure in academia are of much interest to me, I don’t particularly care one way or the other; I am skeptical of the medium as a vehicle for anything but propaganda and emotional manipulation anyhow. Still, as a writer engaged in the religion/atheism debate, I find it completely unsurprising that atheism’s current champion should prove to be so incapable of defending himself against an attack, even in his area of nominal expertise. How could he, when he manifestly prefers wallowing in mindless adulation to studying his opponents and engaging them with an eye towards honing his arguments. Information about the enemy should always be treasured and studied in detail, not ignored. One would do very well to learn from his negative example.

And speaking of those who have no clue that just maybe the rest of the world doesn’t think precisely the way they do, John Scalzi’s attempt to explain to one disgruntled Whatever reader that she is not, in fact, the epicenter of humanity, is both funny and informative:

“Every time I’ve read the comments at your site, the people there come across as intelligent, open-minded, educated people. I find it hard to believe that there are actually that many who agree with Vox.”

Now, discovering who reads Whatever is an imperfect science — I’ve not taken a poll. But what I *do* have are piles and piles of stats, which tell me on a very granular level how many people visit, (relevant to this discussion) where they’re coming from when they visit, and who links to the site. These tell me that lots of folks come in from sites whose politics, social views, and general lifestyle preferences differ from mine, sometime dramatically. Are these majority? By no means — but, as an example, even before this week, about as many people came to visit my site from Vox Day’s blog as comment frequently on the site. If they chose to comment on the site on a daily basis, the tenor of the comment threads would be different. Over the last 30 days, the top five referring sites are Neil Gaiman’s, PZ Myers’, Glenn Reynolds’, Vox Day’s and the Nielsen Hayden’s. It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure, and all of those referrers are in the thousands of clicks, aggregate (and in the case of VD, was so before this week, too).

I had no idea Mr. Scalzi was so popular in these parts. No wonder his books sell so well, if his work harbors broad spectrum appeal to the Ilk, the Pharyngulans and the cult of the Tor Witch.

“You’ve got to put the video game away once in a while.”
– Barack Obama

You know, I might have been willing to overlook the socialist economics, the third-world affinities, the black supremacist ties, the foreign policy blather, the annoying wife, the mystic logic and the weird messiah complex. But now, Mr. Magic Negro, now you’ve simply gone too far! That’s just crazy talk!

Chad the Elder is ready to sign up after viewing The Real Housewives of New York City:

After fifteen minutes of watching these insufferable, pretentious, superficial, pampered gaggle of Gotham gals blather on about the meanings of “taste” and “class” (hint: people with real class don’t appear on reality TV shows), this mild-mannered Midwestern Catholic was ready to strap on an explosive vest and make the ultimate sacrifice to help bring down the Great Satan.

As I’ve written before, I really don’t think the average denizen of New York City understands how thoroughly sick a tremendous number of non-New Yorkers are of everything that has anything even remotely to do with New York City. And that was before the rapacious New York investment banks were extorting bailouts from American taxpayers. Give us money or the global economy gets it!

Jasper has a go:

In seeking to resolve the dilemma, you state that “At first glance, this looks easy enough, as simply substituting “obedience” for “the pious” will destroy the dilemma because it eliminates the tautology posed. One can’t do this since it’s not right to simply substitute whatever terms one likes and declare the problem solved.” Later in the argument, you then say: “At this point we can reach three conclusions: 1. The Euthyphro “dilemma” is defeated by shifting the focus from “the pious” to “obedience,” therefore it is an inappropriate criticism of Christian morality that is founded on obedience to God’s Will.” So this point is based on you doing something that you have previously declared is not allowed.

You’re skipping over the extremely relevant section wherein I distinguish between refuting the Euthyphro dilemma on its own terms and refuting its mistaken application to Christian morality because the definition of that morality precludes the second horn of the dilemma. Ergo, no tautology and no dilemma. One cannot simply change Socrates’s definitions and claim to be attacking the dilemma on its own terms, while one cannot apply the dilemma to a specific morality without changing those definitions accordingly.

You also state that “it can only be considered a genuine problem for those who insist that a fixed principle cannot be arbitrary. In other words, for those paying absolutely no attention to reality. There are a panoply of fixed variables which, if they were different than they are, would radically alter the reality of our universe.” Here you conflate moral principles with physical variables; but they are not the same, and consequently this point is irrelevant.

Conflate? Combine into one? Not at all. You’re forgetting the rather obvious fact that whereas the necessary physical variables of this universe are fixed, moral principles vary even within it. Therefore, it is a massive logical error on multiple levels to assume that in the universe next door, moral principles must be the same as they are in this universe, while physical variables are assumed to be different. In fact, given the competing moral principles currently on offer in this universe, one couldn’t possibly even say which of them must be the fixed ones next door.

You finally state that “The section about disagreement between gods regarding the pious and impious does not apply to a monotheistic god or a Supreme God who rules over other, lesser gods and deines their morality for them.” Socrates and Euthyphro agree in the course of the dialogue to discuss that “what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious” – in all respects, a situation identical to being under a monotheistic god. So this point is irrelevant.

You’re incorrect. If you read the dialogue more closely, you will see that the situations are not identical because in the one case, the net result of “what all the gods love” is a drastically reduced set of polytheistic divine preferences to the lowest common denominator, whereas in the monotheistic case, that preference is exercised in full. For example, Athena’s love for Athens must be excised in the former case, but is retained were she the god in the latter.

The rest of your refutation rests on a misunderstanding of what actually constitutes the Euthyphro dilemma. You focus obsessively on a literal translation of the language, rather than attempting to understand the underlying argument. In modern terms, this is phrased as: Is something moral because god commands it, or does god command it because it is moral? You simply don’t address this at all in your supposed refutation, as far as I can see; I may be missing the point entirely, but in that case you have not managed to convey your argument well.

This is a false statement based on intellectual laziness. There is no “underlying argument”, Socrates makes a specific and detailed argument with various assertions and assumptions along the way, and as I have shown, some of them are not logically justifiable. If you want an answer to what you describe as the modern terms, it is that something is moral because god commands it. God’s game, god’s rules. Now, you can still argue that God doesn’t exist or that his rules are imperfectly understood by Man, but that’s a tangential subject that cannot be reasonably used to defend the dilemma.

UPDATE – I should point out that I’m not breaking much new ground here, except possibly in the specific refutation of the dilemma on Socrates’s own terms. As much as I respect Aristotle and Aquinas, I’m rather pleased to know that I’m following a path trod by the original wielder of the logical razor:

[William of] Ockham boldly broke with much that had been taken for granted by his immediate predecessors. Fundamental to his approach was his rejection of the central Aristotelian idea that all things have an ultimate end toward which they naturally tend. He therefore also spurned Aquinas’s attempt to base morality on human nature and with it the idea that goodness is closely connected with happiness, which is the ultimate end of human beings. Ockham was thus led to a position that contrasted starkly with almost all previous ethical doctrines in the West. Ockham denied all standards of good and evil that are independent of God’s will. What God wills is good; what God condemns is evil. That is all there is to say about the matter. This position is sometimes called a divine approbation theory, because it defines good as whatever is approved by God.

wEz notices events following a predictable course:

I’ve noticed an interesting trend; whether its on dawkins.net or Orzel’s science blog, etc. Regardless of the site (and i’ve read most of them all the way through), the same story tends to play itself out with a bunch of hard-core atheists who proceed to rip Vox with:

1) ad hominem attacks on his credibility
2) strawmen arguments and twisting his words or positions
3) simple “passing by” personal insults, void of wanting any serious deliberation of the facts.

Here’s how it all usually goes down:

Most of the pawn atheists will mock and ridicule Vox, after which, a few swoop in and question his character by means of ad hominem, while a couple of others bust out strawmen based on fellow reader assessments since they themselves haven’t read the book. Now after this, the new atheists feel all high-and-mighty for a while until Vox decides to show up and go toe-to-toe with them on their own turf (just like in TIA). At this point, most of the sheep who were ridiculing him fall back in line with the herd once they notice Vox is a heavyweight.

Still, some think they can take on the challenge, then proceed in getting bitch-slapped thoroughly before ultimately conceding via KO, or passively wilting away after a round or two. The ones who are still standing at this point are either weak quiet bystanders, or fellow atheists unwilling to engage in their inevitable pummeling (mainly due to pride), by saying Vox and his book are both ultimately frivolous to atheism in general.

As always, I welcome any challenge. I don’t mind anyone claiming that I’ve gotten something wrong in TIA, but if you’re going to make that claim then you’d better be prepared to back it up. Of course, if I am the idiot and lunatic that so many atheists repeatedly insist I am, it should be a piece of cake for you to demolish my arguments.

“So, this physicist comes up to me and he’s all like ‘dude, that’s so harsh you made me look at that Vox Day’ and I’m like, yeah whatever!”