Tag: atheism

Mailvox: an atheist economist considers TIA

SS writes back:

Thank you for taking the time to answer my last email in considerable length on your blog. I wrote with questions about your latest book and professed an interest in reading The Irrational Atheist at some later date. I managed to finish it on a long flight back to the US a few days ago, and after a few days to think about it, I think you wrote a very good book that ought to be required reading for any atheist wanting to take on religion and especially Christianity.

While I can’t speak for the reactions of most atheists, I hope you won’t mind if I make a few observations and ask a few questions of my own.

(1) I think your tripartite criticism of the Dawkins-Harris-Hitchens group was both reasonable and accurate. I haven’t read either of Harris’s books (and have no intentions of doing so), and have been greatly underwhelmed by some of Hitchens’s public debates with people who actually know what they are talking about. I was not particularly convinced by Dawkins’s book either, but I didn’t quite realise how little he actually knows about religion until I read your dissection of his book.

(2) I particularly liked your division of atheism and atheists into the High Church and Low Church varieties. I started out as what you call a High Church atheist, but as my political beliefs changed to a more libertarian bent I found myself repulsed by just how militant many atheists- particularly the European variety- have become. In a recent interview with PJTV, author David Berlinski called atheism an “adolescent” view, and I think he’s got a point. If atheists really want to build a coherent argument, we have to stop sounding like a bunch of stroppy teenagers. I think your book makes this point very effectively.

(3) I am curious, though: why is it that in your chapter regarding the perceived Christian misdeeds of the past, you have excluded the Spanish conquest of the Americas, or the forceful introduction of Christianity into Scandinavia? If I understand your writing correctly, you argue that one should not judge a religion by its followers, and vice versa. But I think your argument would have been greatly strengthened by looking at one or both episodes, and at the reactions of the Catholic Church in particular to the grievous misdeeds carried out in its name in Central and South America during the 16th Century. I think that if you had addressed this, your argument would have been nearly airtight.

(4) Your point regarding the “red hand of atheism” is spot-on. It is an absolute travesty that my fellow atheists rarely, if ever, recognise that atheist Communism and Socialism is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent people. Since becoming a libertarian a few years ago I’ve been disgusted by the apologies made by atheists for the horrific abuses of Communism, particularly in China and Russia, and it is completely unacceptable that atheists cannot recognise their culpability in promoting an essentially evil view of government. Until we repudiate the hedonistic and left-wing philosophies that pass for considered thought among the New Atheists, we do not deserve to be taken seriously in questions of morality and government.

(5) Your point about the way in which atheists construct our systems of morality is well made, and I take your argument about “moral parasitism” without offence. I am yet to be fully convinced, however- though I agree with both you and John Locke that atheists have a very hard time trying to prove that we are “moral”. (Given the awful record of atheists with political power, I think we’ve got a long way to go.) I think that the remarkable similarities that are found in the moral systems of various religions and civilisations demonstrates that it is possible for morality to “evolve”. This is not to say that all moral systems are equally acceptable. Suffice to say that I think I have a lot more reading to do in this area before I can fully agree or disagree with your argument.

In his email, SS also informed me that my surmise was correct and he is an LSE guy. Which is unsurprising, given that he is obviously more intelligent than the run-of-the-mill Dawkinsian atheist – it’s interesting to see the very different way TIA is viewed when seen from the perspective of someone who has come to it by way of RGD. I suspect economists will tend to be a little more open-minded than either physicists or biologists on average due to the speed with which the orthodox scientific consensus is regularly shown to be inadequate. This makes it much more difficult to shut off one’s brain and accept a doxastic division of labor based on credentialed authority. SS wrote later in his email: “Four years later, I’m convinced that the economic theory I learned is nearly useless. Maths, though, was great fun- and rather more useful.” He actually has 11 points, so I’ll address the first five today and save the rest for next week.

(1) I think one really has to read at least one of Harris’s books in order to appreciate how reliably awful his reasoning is. Hitchens, on the other hand, can be skipped because he doesn’t even attempt to make a case. His book is little more than a series of unconnected anecdotes, declarations, and complaints.

(2) One of my goals in writing TIA was to embarrass the atheist community into throwing out the likes of Dawkins and Harris in favor of developing a more intelligent, more rational atheism with a broader historical perspective. This is important; I read an article in a UK paper recently that was calling for an alliance between European Christians and secularists to deal with the rising tide of Islam, and that’s simply never going to happen so long as the atheist community is dominated by the rabid Christian haters. One of the more remarkable things I’ve noticed about atheists over the last few years is how utterly ignorant of history they tend to be.

(3) Since TIA was a response to the various atheist books, not an general Christian apology, I saw no reason to introduce defenses that were outside that context. The omission of such historical events initially surprised me when I read the books, given their goal of attacking Christianity, until I realized that the New Atheists know virtually nothing about the historical conversion of Northern Europe, the colonization of Central America, or the Belgian atrocities in the Congo. As anyone who has read Summa Elvetica knows, some of the theological issues surrounding these events are of interest to me, but they weren’t relevant to TIA.

(4) Yes, I tend to agree. The transparent attempts of militant atheists to disassociate the historical actions of militant atheists from their known atheism is intellectually shameful. However, I don’t think the needed repudiation is particularly likely, despite the Randians and Michael Shermer’s pro-Austrian perspective, due to the logical consequences and philosophical implications of godlessness.

(5) The “remarkable similarities that are found in the moral systems of various religions and civilisations may demonstrate that it is possible for morality to ‘evolve'”. Or they may indicate that God has written His Law in the human heart and the various divergences from it are to be expected as the result of societies falling away from it to varying degrees. Or, as I contend, the similarities are not be anywhere nearly as similar as those who don’t study history believe them to be.

For the record

“There is no eternal standard of right and wrong.”
– PZ Myers

I thought that was a quotation worth noting. Read the whole thing so you can appreciate the context; it is an object lesson in why biologists teaching community college students would do well to avoid attempting both logic and philosophy. Of course, the Fowl Atheist’s stated belief in the absence of any eternal standard of right and wrong and his implied belief in the absence of any objective standard of right and wrong doesn’t prevent him from constantly labeling various actions and individuals as being either right or wrong. I don’t think PZ is demonstrating hypocrisy here, however, so much as simple incoherence. One has to be aware of one’s inconsistency before one attempt to maintain a pretense, after all.

It is both hilarious and deeply ironic that someone whose ability to reason correctly is so demonstrably nonexistent should nevertheless see fit to declare: “We should build our morality on reason.” The thought is neither original nor tenable.

Slashdot and charity: the lack thereof

I found this Slashdot poll to be quite informative. Based on the comments I’ve read there over the years, I have observed that Slashdot tends to skew heavily secular and libertarian as well as moderately atheist. So, when the regular poll asked about the amount of charitable giving that had been done in 2009, I expected the results to be somewhat on the light side given that it is been well-established that the irreligious are statistically less willing to give to others than are the religious.

I did not, however, expect to discover that Slashdot readers would prove to be such a complete collection of miserly bastards. 36 percent gave nothing to anyone. Another 20 percent gave less than $50. Less than 10 percent gave more than $2,000 throughout the entire course of the year.

Now, perhaps Slashdot readers are very low income, or perhaps they’re mostly religious Republicans. But, based on what I’ve observed, I suspect that this financial narcissism on their part points to one of the primary reasons there will never be organized irreligion without the use of force. Churches, synagogues, and mosques could not survive were it not for the voluntary donations of those who attend them. This is also a conclusive destruction idea of the notion that a truly secular society will necessarily be an improvement on a religious one. It’s no wonder that atheists tend to lean so heavily left. Those who are aware of their own unwillingness to lift a finger to help others in society naturally wouldn’t dare to trust in the willingness of others to do so in the absence of government force.

Now, don’t think for a second that I’m being naive here, much less some sort of Saint Largesse. I readily admit it will probably do no material good to give money to the shaggy man with the slurred speech or the emaciated girl. The odds are high that they’re just going to go off and score their intoxicant of choice. And I downright refuse to give anything to professional mendicants like the bloody organ grinders and immigrants who annoy shoppers at the grocery store. (Note to the “needy” immigrant family I saw the other day – your daily take will surely increase if you a) actually learn how to play those “authentic” native pipes, and, b) tell your little boy to stop playing his Nintendo DS in public.) But the man whose birth we celebrated yesterday was very clear how we are to treat those he describes as “the least” and it behooves all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, to act on faith when we are asked for help by those who are clearly in need of it.

Letter to Vox Day VII

Luke’s latest is up:

You are correct that for this debate I would like to contrast the explanatory merits of metaphysical naturalism with Christianity, not Christianity with other theistic theories.

I still think that even if theism were proved true that other theistic theories would have a better explanation for S than Christianity does.1 That question certainly would make for an interesting debate! But it’s not the one I want to consider right now. I will probably refer to competing theistic explanations in order to illustrate some principles of explanation, but my case will hang on whether I can show that metaphysical naturalism is a better explanation for S than Christianity is.

Sub-optimal messengers

Predator sends an article about the failure of the New Atheism with the comment: “So people with Asperger’s AREN’T the best ambassadors for atheism?” Christianity is often fortunate in those who name themselves its enemies.

Three years ago Wired magazine popularized the term “New Atheism” with a cover story about the “crusade against belief” launched by Richard Dawkins (No. 18), Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. (Christopher Hitchens, No. 47, filled out the roster later.) Now the crusade is encountering powerful and possibly pivotal resistance….

All the great religions have shown time and again that they’re capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don’t feel threatened or disrespected. At the same time, as some New Atheists have now shown, you don’t have to believe in God to exhibit intolerance and incivility. Maybe this is the New Atheists’ biggest problem: As living proof that religion isn’t a prerequisite for divisive fundamentalism, they are walking rebuttals to their own ideology.

Actually, the biggest problem that the New Atheists face is their fundamental dishonesty. They frequently dissemble, exaggerate, and lie. They also practice the fundamental bait-and-switch of selling a specific secular philosophy under the guise of science. They are deeply and profoundly ignorant of history, economics, politics, and theology; worst of all, when they are called out and shown to be ignorant, they do not bother to take their errors into account or alter their conclusions in the slightest.

This is what makes them irreligious fundamentalists. Indeed, the average New Atheist is demonstrably more blindly fundamentalist than the average Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. There is literally no information that is capable of changing their position because it is based on raw emotion, not reason, logic, or science. Because they cannot admit error, every dialogue with a New Atheist will inevitably turn into an intellectual fox chase, with the New Atheist frantically attempting to redefine basic dictionary terms, claiming that he didn’t mean what he previously wrote, moving the goal posts every time his previous position is shown to be incorrect, and attempting to change the subject whenever logical or factual errors in some aspect of his individual belief system are pointed out. The very concept of a New Atheist “intellectual” is a contradiction in terms, because New Atheists are uniformly close-minded ideologues. And by uniformly, I mean without exception. I have yet to encounter one; reasonable atheists don’t subscribe to the Dawkinsian myths. We have seen this again and again on this blog, and no doubt we will continue to see it until they fade from the scene as all of their predecessors have before them.

Which I can assure you they will. I say this not based on my religious beliefs, but my knowledge of historical patterns. Periods of wealthy decadence always see a weakening of religious belief, so the New Atheism can be safely expected to go the way of sub-prime mortgage securities and seven-star hotels built in the desert. This doesn’t mean a worldwide revival of Christianity or even Islamic domination; I expect to see a pagan revival beginning in Europe that incorporates strains of progressive politics, environmentalism, globalism, and pseudo-science.

Letter to Common Sense Atheism VI

Dear Luke,

I am sorry it took me so long to respond to your previous letter. As you know, I recently published a book and have been more than a little occupied with the various interviews that were requested as a result. And, to be honest, the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 hasn’t exactly helped my daily productivity although I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve mastered both the UMP-45 and the SCAR-H. However, I also found myself at a bit of a loss regarding the best way to respond to your most recent letter, because I was not entirely sure which aspects of your previous letters remain operable and which have been negated by the “reboot”. But, I will attempt to make some reasonable assumptions and I have no doubt you will be willing to correct me if I prove to be mistaken.

Now, you noted yourself the inherent contradiction between your original willingness to postulate that the theistic case is true and your subsequent return to a defense of metaphysical naturalism in order to assert that the theistic case is false. This is not any sort of problem in itself, since we both understood that you were merely postulating the truth of the theistic case for the sake of argument. Well and good. But, if you are “ill-prepared to defend the explanatory virtues of supernatural worldviews” you do not actually defend, as you stated in your most recent letter, this raises the question of whether you are capable of ascertaining which of the competing theistic explanations of (S) “Humans often take pleasure in the involuntary and undeserved suffering of others” is the one best supported by the observable evidence. Are you conceding the other theistic explanations now in a willingness to stand or fall on the relative merits of the case for metaphysical naturalism vis-a-vis Christianity? That is, after all, what you appear to be implying here.

One of the problems that has appeared during your continuing pursuit of clarification is that in this process, you appear to have inadvertently conceded the legitimacy of the basis for my personal belief in the truth of Christianity despite your rejection of the concept of objective evil upon which it is founded. I realize that was far from your intent, of course, and your post facto rejection of the theistic case negates it, but let me point out what has developed in order to prevent it from happening again as we consider whether Christianity, metaphysical naturalism, or some other religion best explains the existence of (S), which for me is simply one of many of the various forms of observable, objective evil.

1.You postulated that the theistic arguments succeed and the atheistic arguments fail.

2.I explained that my belief in Christianity is based primarily on observing objective evil that I find to be best predicted and explained by the Christian worldview as expressed in the Bible and mainstream Christian theology.

3.You pointed out that there are a wide variety of competing theistic explanations for evil.

4.I agreed and noted that due to my academic background in history and East Asian Studies, I have even studied a few of those competing religions. In fact, familiarity with those religions was one of the things that led me to believe the Christian explanation for the observable existence of evil was the correct one.

5.You asserted that you are not prepared to defend the explanatory virtues of the various supernatural worldviews, implying that you are not sufficiently prepared to adjudicate between them either.

6. Ergo, there is no competition for the foundation of my belief in the truth of Christianity.

This doesn’t prove that my beliefs are correct, of course, merely that you had no rational basis for questioning the legitimacy of my belief in the truth of Christianity without reopening the matter of metaphysical naturalism. Which you have now done. So, unless you would like to reopen the matter of competing theistic explanations, I shall focus on addressing only the competing explanations of Christianity and metaphysical naturalism.

The metaphysical naturalism perspective dictates that Man is merely an animal, possessed of almost exactly the same substance as any other highly evolved mammal, constituted of DNA that is more similar to the great apes than the apes are to the monkeys, let alone dogs or cats. Since we are so little different from other mammals, we cannot possess any attributes that are materially and substantively different from those possessed by them, we can only possess quantitative differences. A man may pilot a fighter jet over enemy territory while a chimpanzee only hits a rival with a stick, but both mammals are doing essentially the same thing in using a tool for the purposes of harming another. A woman may become the president of a world-reknowned university while a female gorilla may only become the dominant female in its troop, but again, both mammals are doing essentially the same thing in jockeying for primate primacy. And what blogger can be unaware of the human proclivity for flinging metaphorical feces in the electronic form of ritual primate combat?

However, I think there is a definite substantive and non-quantitative distinction between the human and the animal when it comes to (S). While the animal is capable of distinguishing between pleasure and pain, is able to experience pleasure, inflict pain, and can perceive the existence of pain in others, in my experience, I have never seen an animal derive direct personal pleasure solely from the pain of another animal. Any pain that is involved in the interaction, whether it is a dog asserting its alpha status in the local neighborhood or a cat tormenting a mouse, appears to be nothing more than a consequence of the animal’s primary purpose rather than the purpose itself. Unfortunately, humans, all too often inflict pain primarily for the sake of the pleasure it brings them. This can be observed at a very early age; young children learn the pleasure of cruelty long before they are capable of understanding how to use the infliction of emotional and physical pain as a means of protecting and enhancing their social status. This is the first hurdle that metaphysical naturalism must surmount.

The second hurdle that the naturalistic perspective must address is the divided nature of the human mind. Leaving the larger question of the nature of human consciousness aside for the mystery it remains for priests and scientists alike, it is an observable and experiential fact as well as longstanding theory that the human mind does not function in the same unified way in which we understand animal minds to operate, driven solely by instinct, experience, and desire. I am no great fan of Sigmund Freud’s or what I believe to be the profoundly unscientific pseudoscience of psychology that he created, but even I am willing to recognize that his development of the tripartite concept of the id, the ego, and the superego was driven by observational exigencies; it was his attempt to articulate and explain what he was observing in his patients.

Why do we wish to do what we are absolutely determined not to do? Why do we refuse to do what we are absolutely convinced that we must do? From where do these competing desires stem? The Christian explanation is an elegant one; even those who do not believe in it will readily admit that the explanation of the continuous competition of a man’s unregenerate fallen nature and his redeemable spiritual nature provides a rational and reasonable explanation for the rival forces that exist within a single human mind.

This leads to the third hurdle that metaphysical naturalism must eventually address, which is why (S) should be viewed any differently from any other sort of pleasure. The Disturbed song Divide asks the question in a characteristically confrontational manner:

I am a little more provocative than you might be,
It’s your shock and then your horror on which I feed
So can you tell me what exactly does freedom mean,
If I’m not free to be as twisted as I wanna be?

This is not an argument from consequence here, merely an observation that (S) is almost uninformly considered to be undesirable even by those who happen to be inclined towards it from time to time, so the strength and ubiquity of what must be logically be considered a nonsensical view from a naturalistic perspective requires explaining. Obviously the Christian worldview has little problem in explaining its declaration of (S) being unequivocally evil; contra the fevered visions of the Christian God as a deity with a torture fetish that one occasionally encounters among atheists and Christians alike, there is no evidence that God takes any particular pleasure in the destruction of the wicked except in that the necessary justice is done. Actually, the various parables of the wheat and the chaff and the sheep and the goats tend to indicate that God has no more sadistic interest in the Hellbound soul than the average human does in the trash he is taking out to await the weekly garbage pickup.

As for the latter part of your letter, I have no objection to your suggestions regarding “explanation”, “hypothesis” and “theory”, I will await your response to these three (S)-related hurdles with interest.

Best regards,
Vox

This was written in response to the 6th Letter to Vox Day

For future reference

Atheists and evolutionists should keep this quote in mind the next time they wish to make an appeal to what an overwhelming majority of scientists believe:

The overwhelming majority of scientists believe the global warming is real and the result of human activity, but a vocal majority maintains that the science is not proven.

It’s not clear whether the journalist meant to write “minority” in referring to scientists or if he is referring to the majority of the non-scientific public, since either interpretation would be correct. Regardless, if anthropogenic global warming is subsequently proven to be real, then those who believe there is no God or believe in evolution by natural selection can quite reasonably argue that the opinion of the unscientific masses on the matter should be at least somewhat influenced by the opinion of the self-appointed scientific elite. If, however, it is subsquently proven to be false, any attempt to argue that the unscientific masses should pay any attention whatsoever to the latest way the winds of scientific consensus are blowing can and should be ridiculed.

Letter to Common Sense Atheism V

Dear Luke,

I fear you have misunderstood the pleasure I take in demonstrating the waywardness of paths that do not lead to the truth for my purpose in seeking the correct one. A path believed to be correct is either so or it is not so. Observing the falsity of your claims to superlative theological knowledge was more than a work of my peculiar art, it was necessary for us to even begin getting at the truth of the matter because what we do not know usually impairs our ability to reason less than our belief in the truth of that which is false. Given that you are contemplating the pursuit of a philosophy PhD, I can safely assume you have read Plato’s Apology. If you have, then you will surely recall the way in which Socrates paraphrased the Oracle’s reference to him. “He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.” I see no need to dispute your claim to have spent hundreds of hours reading the Bible and various theological texts, because it is irrelevant.

Apes do read theology, Luke, they just don’t understand it. Christianity no more concerns a Panglossian world actively managed by a magical omnibenevolent puppet-master where all things work out for the good of everyone than Aristotle was Belgian or the central message of Buddhism is every man for himself.

Before I get to the substance of this discussion, I find myself interested in learning how your belief in desirism is off-topic, given that: a) you up brought the subject and went into a fair amount of detail in describing it, b) this discussion does not only concern my beliefs, but yours as well, and, c) desirism is directly relevant to your definition of evil. You must know that the references to your FAQ don’t even begin to answer the very serious philosophical and material problems with desirism that were articulated in my last letter. In addition to the fact that you “answered” by referring to two points that remain unwritten, it is not accurate to say that the references to the answers to {3.20}, {3.21}, {3.22} addressed the problems raised, much less successfully addressed them. Lest I find myself charged with more obscurantism or hand-waving, I will now explain why those three answers are insufficient. I trust the nonexistence of answers {3.23} and {5.31} will serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of your present response to my points about the totalitarian aspects of desirism as well as the way in which desirism resembles a collectivist variant of Maoist ethics.

In {3.20} you answer the desirist calculation problem by asserting that “we can estimate” desires, that “neuroscience will eventually tell us” what desires look like and how to measure them, and that “we may be able to understand” the relationship between desires. This is not an answer, this is just hope and hand-waving. {3.21} is nothing more than another failure to apply the correct definition of the word “objective” to desirism in order to claim that an intrinsically subjective concept is actually objective. This is not only absurd, but it has absolutely nothing to do with my criticism of desirism. Furthermore, I explained the specious nature of this definitional dancing in my previous letter: “While it is true that there are many different definitions of objective and subjective, the philosophers’ concept of mind-independence is no more relevant to the subject at hand than the grammatical concept pertaining to the use of a form as the object of a transitive verb.” {3.22} is merely a repetition of the very Knob Metaphor I had shown to be not only flawed, but downright backwards since it led you to an incorrect conclusion. As I wrote, under the desirist moral code, the Nazi extermination program is confirmed to be good and and opposition to it, or even mitigation of it, is a definite evil.

You didn’t even make the slightest attempt to address that massive flaw in your reasoning, either in your FAQ or in your letter. Now, I see no need to continue beating a deceased equine, so if at this point you wish to leave off discussing desirism, that’s certainly fine with me. My recommendation would be that you abandon it altogether as an insignificant and untenable variant of utilitarianism, but that is your concern, not mine. Still, I don’t regret the diversion as I find it fascinating how decent and civilized Western atheists have nevertheless managed to conceive what appears to be a more consequentially disastrous moral ethic than the one that produced the horrors of the Great Leap Forward.

Now Luke, there is a pattern of evasion that is becoming increasingly apparent in your letters, and I fail to see how it is either compatible with your personal search for the truth or can be of any utility to you in this discussion. I am perfectly willing to continue refining our terms in as pedantic a manner as you require until you eventually run out of room to dance around the most relevant dictionary definition and have no choice but to directly confront the matter at hand. I did not declare “that the truth value of a proposition does not depend on the meaning of its terms”, I merely stated that given the context of the question, which your belief in any form of evil. I already knew you didn’t believe in my definition of evil because you made it very clear that you did not in your second letter, so it was simply absurd to assert that you needed to be informed a second time of what I meant by “evil” before you could answer the question of whether you believe in it or not. Of course, I could have avoided this by pinning you down more specifically regarding your belief or unbelief in any form of evil and now that I know you require a greater degree of precision on my part in order to respond in a relevant manner, I will be quite happy to provide it. Meta-ethical philosopher Stephen Finlay’s belief in evil is of zero relevance here, it is only your belief that is relevant to this discussion. Please note your declaration that “the definition of evil that we are using” cannot be contained by “any form of evil” is illogical; surely you did not mean to assert that the set does not contain the subset!

You finally admitted that you believe in a subjective form of evil in your fourth letter, although your constant wrestling with the objective/subjective issue somewhat muddied the admission. This mildly complicates the discussion, but not severely since it does not affect your ability to discern which of the competing objective standards are most in line with your observations of the material world even though you happen to subscribe to none of them. Speaking of definitions, while I agree that pain, anguish and privation of joy can all be reasonably described as suffering and that suffering is a prominent feature of this fallen world, I cannot accept your suggestion of it as a substitute for evil. This is because for the Christian and the non-Christian alike, suffering can be quite reasonably deemed a distinctly positive good. For example, a Christian is told to rejoice when he suffers for the faith, because he will be rewarded in Heaven for his travails and the testimony his suffering provides will cause others to believe in the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. While we cannot confirm the former consequence, there can be no doubting the truth of the latter as it is known to have occurred in persecutions of Christians ranging from ancient Rome to modern North Korea.

And suffering can be a positive good for the non-Christian as well. The pagan mother will embrace the pain of childbirth as gladly as the strong Christian embraces martyrdom; no pain can considered evil when it is an inescapable necessity for such a powerfully desired result. Even the language of the weight room testifies to the non-intrinsically evil nature of suffering: “no pain, no gain”. The suffering is voluntarily chosen and becomes the price of the good. While suffering can certainly be the result of evil, I don’t think it can serve as a reasonable substitution for it. We deem it evil for a man to kill 10 people because it amused him, but we do not consider a lethal storm that killed just as many to be evil even if an equivalent amount of suffering is created by the two incidents. Furthermore, suffering lacks the intentional aspect that is usually required to deem an act or an intention evil. So, taking that aspect into account, I suggest that we define ”taking pleasure in the involuntary and unjust suffering of another” to be evil.

I entirely agree with your statement that our arguments will not meet each other if we do not agree upon a definition of evil. This is precisely why I am trying to get you to commit to one. And I also agree that I could quite easily construct a completely circular argument on the basis of my Christian definition of evil; this is precisely why I am trying to get you to commit to an objective and observable one. So, with that in mind, would you be willing to agree to a definition of evil as “”taking pleasure in the involuntary and unjust suffering of another” as a useful metric by which we can compare the competing religious and philosophical accounts of evil? While this is merely one of the broad panoply of theoretical evils from which we could plausibly select, it would at least serve as a reasonable starting point for the proposed comparison of various religious and philosophical accounts of evil.

This was written in response to the 5th Letter to Vox Day

Yeah, not so much

The stunning effectiveness of the New Atheist campaign:

The percentage of self-identified atheists according to the September/October Psychology Today

1944: 4 percent
1964: 3 percent
1994: 3 percent
2007: 4 percent

One can’t but help notice that as per their stunning dedication to the truth in all its forms, atheists often try to count agnosticism or “no religion” as atheism whenever trying to inflate their numbers, while leaving the “no religion” sorts out of the accounting whenever average intelligence levels or criminal predilections are being compared.

The article also noted that there are presently five atheist or agnostic heads of state: China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Chile, and Sweden. They appear to have somehow left out Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well for the inhabitants of those countries… note that the two agnostics are the Prime Minister of Sweden and the President of Chile. Also, Nazarbayev of Khazakhstan is an ex-atheist as he has converted to Islam.