As the United States shuts down its eastern seaboard for Cyclone Sandy, the Philippines will be shutting down as well, for completely different reasons. November 1 marks All Saints’ Day, when many establishments close up, since most people head to cemeteries to gamble and eat among the remains of the dead.

What comes with the holiday is the belief that when our bodies cease to function, even after we are laid into the soil or burned to ash, something survives. We are not just bodies, supernaturalist believers claim. There is a ghost in this machine and it breaks free from its mortal shackles upon death.

Some people claim to see these surviving entities, these spirits or souls, dwelling among the living. Ghostly apparitions are reported with disturbing regularity. Disturbing, in that even in the age of ubiquitous photography, no one has ever gathered any credible support for these ectoplasmic assertions. The reality of disembodied souls would necessarily overturn everything we know about physics. Any scientist would be itching to find evidence for the supernatural—evidence that never seems to turn up, despite the most adamant and most confident protestations of believers.

Human visual perception works because of light, and light works through electromagnetism. Electromagnetic/light particles called photons travel at the speed limit of the universe. When they hit objects, the energy of the photons is absorbed by particles in the object (such as electrons). These particles then release some energy back as another photon. The energy of the photon released determines the color and intensity of the light humans perceive.

If ghosts (under which I include saintly apparitions) can be seen, that means ghosts interact with photons! Electromagnetism is a physical phenomenon. This implies that at least some aspects of ghosts are physical, and therefore investigable by the methods of science. What kinds of photons are these spirits carrying? Are they different from everyday photons?

When people claim to hear ghosts, either through spooky screams or through elaborate homilies about the current geopolitical situation, they are actually claiming that physical objects are being moved by supernatural events. The perception of hearing occurs when the pressure of the air around us is locally fluctuated. When people talk, their vocal folds vibrate and push around air molecules. The air then vibrates the eardrums of animals within earshot. These vibrations correspond to what we hear as sound. The case is similar for those who report interacting with apparitions through touch (except that objects apart from air molecules are being moved, such as a uterus).

The Earth rotates on its own axis at around 1,674.4 km/h. It revolves around the Sun at 108,000 km/h. We don’t even feel these exorbitant speeds because we are moving with the Earth. We move with the Earth because we are on it and its forces are acting on us without variation. Should the Earth suddenly change in speed, however, we would definitely feel a calamitous disturbance. The Earth is tumbling around our galaxy, which is itself moving with respect to the rest of the universe. Should the Earth’s motion stop, we’d fly off into space—like a tetherball released from its rope. For the most part, we can happily ignore that we are hurtling across space because we are physical objects that obey the laws of physics. It is curious, therefore, when even immaterial ghosts follow physical laws.

When people claim to see ghosts, nobody ever reports them appearing one moment then zipping out into space the next, left behind by the Earth’s motion. Rather, people claim to see them stay in place long enough to scare the bejesus out of them, or tell them about some magic water that would heal people. Again, ghosts are eerily physical in all convenient aspects.

Imagine now that you have died. Ignore the paradox that you could not do such imagining because that would be imagining that your imagination could not imagine any longer. For the sake of argument, let us say that souls do exist and you are one right now, formerly in control of a body, currently disembodied.

Where are you? What do you see? Let us suppose that even though you are supernatural, you have some sort of particles that interact electromagnetically. Can you blink? It would be odd to do so, seeing as your soul would need to have eyelids.

At what direction are you looking? When you had a body, your eyeballs would sense a local cone of vision. Now that you’re a ghost, do you see all of existence at once? If so, where in the world are you? Certainly not floating just above your corpse.

When you had a body, you used your vision (and other senses) to determine where you were. You were limited by the local area that could be perceived by your physical sense organs. Now that you are without a body, the question of ‘where’ becomes meaningless. If ghosts exist, then they must be everywhere. They cannot otherwise be.

If these ghosts cannot exist as they have been claimed to be, then it must be that they are wholly in the mind of those who see them. They don’t have photons bouncing off of them, they don’t fly through space, because they’re not in the outside world! They do not exist objectively. These disembodied souls are figments, like how optical illusions, while very convincing, do not really show moving objects.

Our brains are easily fooled into seeing things that do not exist. People who claim to see ghosts often truly believe that they have experienced such a thing. I do not believe that they are all liars (though some must be). However, even though their brush with the supernatural must have felt very real, that does not mean that it was anything more than a psychological episode. The human brain is so adept at pattern recognition that it sees patterns everywhere—from clouds to dog anuses. It is no surprise, then, that ghosts follow the patterns we are so familiar with and that they are so much like normal natural objects, except for that little difficulty of being able to show them to others.

The supernatural world is suspicious to the scientifically literate because it is too convenient. It looks exactly like the natural world except when it’s favorable not to be. It looks like bad science fiction. Ghosts can hover, but not be left behind by a moving Earth. Ghosts can pass through solid walls, but can affect air molecules to produce sound. Ghosts can be perceived but not leave behind any independently-verifiable traces.

Surely some scientist must have left from the spirit world by now to show all his skeptical journal-publishing colleagues that the supernatural does exist. And yet, no scientist has ever come back from the grave to do so. Instead, we have saints who supposedly cure comatose patients, almost 400 years removed.

The vastness of space and time is available to the dead, if we are to believe the claims of the religious. Despite that, what is regularly professed to be done from beyond the grave is so vapid that miraculous claims are barely worth a 30 second spot on the evening news. The deep incongruence between the scale of the universe and the parochial concerns of people betrays the very human imaginations that spawn these stories.

My problem with people invoking God to justify and rationalize their views on controversial issues is that they are so confident that this God actually supports and sides with all their biases, prejudice and definition of righteousness. If this God actually exists as a distinct entity, I still don’t see why he has to be a ‘Yes Man’ who nods his head to one particular person’s views and opinions, as if he doesn’t have his own mind on the matter.

I remember our discussion on Berdyaev in class. Nikolai Berdyaev wrote the book “The Destiny of Man,” wherein he discussed about the sin of the Pharisees. Berdyaev explained that the sin of the Pharisees was their legalistic religion. The Pharisees are concerned more about the “legal technicalities” of their religion rather than the true meaning of its teachings. I quote from a letter written by Berdyaev in reply to V. Lossk:

“But to put the Sabbath higher than man is a betrayal of the commands of Christ. Christians have often become suchlike betrayers. Everyone for whom an ortodoks teaching stands higher than man and his human fate betrays the Gospel commands. The legalism within Christianity is a distortion of Christianity, a victory of non-Christian principles. There is nothing higher than the humanness, which likewise is the Divine, the testimony of the God of love and sacrifice.”

I cannot help but see that the same is happening in present-time Philippines. Our church leaders are too obsessed with the legalistic aspects of their religion that they fail to see the true face of their faith. They are committing the very same crimes Christ condemned. In a way, the CBCP is our present-day Pharisees. They would place their “rule of law” above humanness and risk the suffering and death of many people. And they would do so clinging to their “authority,” fueled by their “lust for power”.

But why should “authority” be such a heavy crime? After all, without a central figure or institution of authority, society would simply be a mess. But an adherence to order and community is different from obeying authority. Authority is built on fear, violence and dictatorship, while harmony is built on trust, communal understanding, and cooperation. Following rules because you fear the consequences is different from following rules because you believe in, respect, and understand the spirit of the law.

Authority begets blind conformity, hypocrisy, and false allegiance. And we can only liberate ourselves from this sin through questioning. Questioning, not in the sense of attacking, destroying or throwing away our values, but as an affirmation of our values, to evaluate and reevaluate our principles so that we avoid inflicting harm on others as well as on ourselves. We question to break away from blind conformity, and to unlock the possibilities, to transcend our current situatedness.

I champion the kind of hope built on a basic, intrinsic human quality, and as a Catholic would say, “God’s design”: the ability of human questioning, to liberate us from the chains of blind faith, to bring about change and improvements to our lives, to seek new and better ways of doing things, to open ourselves to “God’s Grace,” to unlock possibilities and accept truths may they be palatable or not, to evaluate and reevaluate our values so that they may be strengthened.

Quoting from my previous essay: “I wish to espouse hope, the kind that is found in human inquiry, learning and our ability to solve problems—the kind that speaks the human language and promotes understanding and connection. My only aspiration is to be proven wrong time and time again so that new and liberating paradigms may triumph over old and oppressive ones. And hopefully through our sincere discernment, may we find true salvation.”

The Catholic Church that I once hated but have grown fond of was one that stood for freedom. The Catholic Church that the Jesuits introduced me to is one built on questioning, on sound discernment, on possibilities, on hope. The Catholic Church I know is a community that I respect, love, and one I will staunchly defend to my death, despite being an atheist.

Based on the CBCP’s attitude and behavior so far, theirs is a Catholic Church I do not know.

But despite my frustrations, anger and disappointment, I still have hope. And hope is found when you learn to trust. Trust in the human desire and ability to question. Trust in our collective wisdom, in our ability to learn from our past mistakes, and our ability to move forward. Aspire to be “proven wrong time and time again so that new and liberating paradigms may triumph over old and oppressive ones.” It is alright to be wrong.

In letting go of our ego, of our authority, of our need to be right—in emptying our cups, we invite greater things into us. And as we continue to discern, to question, to invoke change, we open ourselves to a greater future, a future that a Catholic would say “we created, through our own actions, inspired by His Grace” and may “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven.”

I invite you to read some of the works I mentioned/used in the discussion above

The Philosophical Enterprise by John F. Kavanaugh, S.J

The Destiny of Man by Nikolai Berdyaev

http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1936_409.html

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Image from lossofsoul.com

It is essential to any free society that its citizens have freedom of speech and freedom of thought. It is practically impossible to conceive of a society we can reasonably call “free” that polices the thoughts of its citizens and enforces the only kinds of thoughts that its citizens may have.

To illustrate such an unfree society, let us take Christianity. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus extended the prohibition on adultery even to the realm of the mind. According to Christianity, not only should we ought not to have sex with someone other than our lawfully wedded spouse, we are forbidden from even having the thought of straying or “lusting.” In fact, the mere lustful thought itself, no matter how fleeting and regardless of any possibility of actual adultery, is not just wrong, but as wrong as actual adultery. This moral equivalence is often lost on people.

A society built upon such thought policing principles cannot be called “free” in any sense of the word. It is one thing to find the breaking of a consensual marital agreement despicable; it is completely another thing to prohibit even the thought (even if that is all that it ever will be) and damn it as equally immoral. The human mind is the ocean of a river of incongruous and undesired whims, such as intrusive thoughts and addictions. Thoughts do not always (in fact, often do not) result in action.

Freedom of thought is essential to a free society and orthodox Christianity is plainly incompatible with this principle. Let us discuss, however, whether a society can actually have “freedom of belief.”

A belief is more than just the thinking about a proposition. It is an active assent to and confident acceptance of a proposition. We can see how Jesus proscribes not just certain beliefs (such as, “I actively want to commit adultery”) but also certain involuntary thoughts (such as, “My biological predisposition to find mates gives me sexual stirrings towards persons other than my spouse”).

Let us move to belief outside the moral realm and include other facts about the world. Are we free to believe, let us say, in a certain religion? On paper, such as the Constitution of the Philippines, we have the right to freedom of belief. But, in practice, freedom of belief may simply be an artifact of bad intuitions about what the mind is capable of.

Let us take the case of a hypothetical person, Jane. Jane looks at the world and, according to the best of her ability and experiences, concludes that Catholicism is true. She believes that the world only makes sense if the specific claims of Catholicism are true (that a God exists and that Jesus established a Church that exists to this day to proclaim God’s Word). Was Jane free to believe in Catholicism? I don’t think so.

I need to clarify that one need not reject the notion of a soul or free will in order to agree with me here. Of course, hard determinists and compatibilists will already agree that free will, in the popular supernatural understanding, is incoherent. They will already agree that, if it even makes sense to call any desire “free,” our minds are not free from the effects of natural things beyond our control (such as genetics).

Even if we assume that she has supernatural free will, Jane does not control which facts about the world are true. She does not control the “fact” that a person called Jesus lived about two thousand years ago. She does not control the “fact” that Catholicism is the one true religion and that it holds certain views about the nature of the universe and how it applies to homosexuals. She cannot help that these things just make sense to her. She is no more free to believe in Catholicism than she is free to believe that she is human. Jane is a victim of facts about the world.

Now, of course, Jane may be mistaken about the world. She might not be intellectually honest enough to be consistent in her thinking. For example, she might strictly require evidence when buying a used car, but in matters of religion, she is not as critical. It is completely possible that she unquestioningly accepts the religion of her upbringing as true. It is possible that she is not skeptical of supernatural explanations for events in her life, such as the sheer fortune of passing an exam despite not studying all that much.

What these things do not suggest, however, is that Jane is consciously choosing what things about the world she’d like to believe are “facts.” At the very least, some self-deception is necessary for Jane to convince herself that an obvious lie is true. Jane is not free to believe in what facts she thinks are right, even if she could be mistaken about the truthfulness of those facts.

If Jane were to be more consistent in her thinking, though, she might reach different conclusions. It is possible that if she were to consciously apply scientific principles to her religious views, she might find that Catholicism no longer makes sense.

She might notice that the reality of gratuitous suffering is not consistent with the existence of a benevolent and intervening God. She might find that the supposed cosmic importance of humanity is incompatible with our existence as one species on one unexaggeratedly tiny dust particle in an unimaginably vast universe (perhaps one among many). She might find that the existence of evil only makes sense under the light of nature’s indifference. She might then conclude that the best explanation of the facts in our universe is one that includes no God. Was she free to believe these things? No.

It is strange that many believers still argue for belief via Pascal’s wager. The challenge insists that regardless of the truthfulness of the claim that a god exists, it is still best to bet on a god existing rather than betting against it. Of course, the wager presumes that non-belief actually has eternal consequences, such as hellfire. It also presumes that there is only one god to bet on, the Christian afterlife-giving God.

It is very rare and, I think, practically impossible to be that insincere about belief. Of course, because of peer pressure or fear for her life, Jane could pretend to other people that she believes in Catholicism. But, I don’t think she could actually bet on a god if the facts aren’t convincing her of a god’s existence. She could be involuntarily self-deceiving; she could willfully not expose herself to scientific research; she could willfully not reason out the logical implications of her beliefs. What she cannot do, however, is to accept a belief simply because she consciously decides to believe.

While “freedom of belief” sounds like a perfectly desirable principle, a closer inspection reveals that it is unintelligible. We are no more free to consciously believe the things that we believe than we are free to change what facts in the world are true.

What we are left with is the fact that if there is any liberty to be had at all, the last thing we ought to surrender is control over our thinking to an authority or tradition. If we are to be free at all from any misapprehension of facts, then we must consistently ask for evidence and reason out our positions. Whatever conclusion we reach, however uncomfortable or counter-intuitive, we must accept. Then, and only then, can we have the only kind of freedom of thought worth having. Then, and only then, can a person be a freethinker.

Oh no, the nuns are expressing their own opinion again! Quick, call the inquisition to shut ‘em up and throw ‘em back in their convents where they belong!

http://news.yahoo.com/nuns-book-masturbation-slammed-vatican-194458722.html

The Catholic Church hierarchy has yet again turned what sounds like a badly recreated Monty Python sketch into cringe-inducing reality. As stated in the article above, the Vatican did indeed call on the former Office of the Inquisition (now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) to silence a nun (Sister Margaret Farley, who just happens to be an accomplished theologian in her own right) who dared to write a book questioning their official doctrine.

What leaves me particularly flabbergasted is that there seems to be a relatively obvious solution to this that would not require the dissolution of the Vatican. Assuming the Catholic church hierarchy wants to treat women as equals, then why doesn’t it allow women the same options for religious dedication as men and let them be ordained as clergy? It’s not like there’s no precedent, as the Episcopal Church has been doing it for decades. It would be fair to say that women there have since done rather well for themselves in securing a voice within their Church, as this picture of the highest ranking Episcopal Church official in the United States would indicate.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori (Episcopalian)

What exactly are they afraid of?

UPDATE: Here is Sister Margaret Farley’s response to the Vatican.

http://notesfromthequad.yale.edu/statement-margaret-farley

Truly the voice of an unhinged hysterical witch-heretic if there ever was one. It’s crazy bitches like her that must be why the Vatican seems so keen on keeping their women quiet and docile.

Let’s get back to basics. The following is a case against a cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Intelligent (not “folk”) Christians will repeatedly tell you that faith and reason are both used in their theologies. Unlike the laity and the unwashed masses, they don’t rely completely on faith, or belief without evidence. Indeed, the Christian religion in its many forms has a long history of logical attempts, from Aquinas to Calvin, at trying to prove the existence of God and the plausibility of their doctrines. This is perhaps due to the fact that certain intellectuals in each tradition simply cannot reconcile their rationality with their religion’s doctrines.

Through tireless philosophical refinement of initially primitive and unimpressive doctrines such as the Genesis myth, we get sophisticated logical arguments such as Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways. Seeing these attempts at logical proof, though, I am personally baffled by the intelligent theist’s recourse to faith. If God is provable through reason, of what use is faith? If faith is sufficient, why use imperfect human reason?

Philosophical arguments for God take various forms, such as the cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments. There are, of course, many criticisms against most, if not all, of these. The cosmological (first cause) and teleological (purposeful design) arguments are empirical arguments, taking the world as it is and reasoning that there must have been a Creator.

One of the most interesting of these arguments, for me, is the Kalam cosmological argument. Unlike most arguments for God, it intends to at least be scientific in its attempt at proving that a personal God exists. Through its most vocal proponent, theologian William Lane Craig, the Kalam is used to argue that the universe must have had a cause. Formally stated, the Kalam appears as such:

(1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
(2) The universe began to exist.
(3) The universe has a cause.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause

Premise (1) asserts that everything that begins to exist has a cause. This statement evades criticisms such as those that Bertrand Russell put forward against Aquinas such as, “Who made God?” Since the Kalam argument states that everything that begins to exist has a cause, God, who is eternal and never began to exist, does not have a cause.

Physicists such as Victor Stenger have argued that not everything that begins to exist has a cause. When an electron increases in energy to an excited state and returns to its ground state, a photon appears. This appearance of the photon occurs spontaneously and is not a deterministic consequence. That is to say, in Stenger’s words, it is “without cause.” The same is true for the radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus. We can know the probability of decay but it is impossible to say exactly when the decay will occur.

Atomic nucleus decaying an alpha particle (helium nucleus)

William Lane Craig readily counters this by saying that that is not true causeless existence since nature, which God presumably made, is necessary for such events. However, Craig must now accept that probabilistic causes, if they are “causes” at all, are possible mechanisms for the beginning of the universe. This severely weakens the notion that a personal God predetermined the moment of creation with a purpose.

However, even accepting Premise (1) as true, we can move forward and still see that the Kalam argument ultimately fails in its misuse of time.

The universe began to exist

The discovery of the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe was very popular among theists. The Big Bang, they suggest, is proof positive that the universe began to exist. When Georges Lemaître first proposed the model, Pope Pius XII saw this as scientific evidence for creation, “it seems that science of today, by going back in one leap millions of centuries, has succeeded in being witness to that primordial Fiat Lux when, out of nothing, there burst forth with matter a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and reunited in millions of galaxies.”

Timeline of the universe

Theologians and apologists such as Craig and Dinesh D’Souza find that since the universe as we know it began 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang, then the universe began to exist and it had a cause for its existence. Craig, in the Islamic tradition of the Kalam, suggests that since the universe began to exist 13.7 billion years ago, then there must have been a “particularizer” to decide to begin the universe at that moment and not a moment before. And since this particularizer has the capability to decide and distinguish between moments, then this must be a personal kind of God with a mind analogous to ours (therefore not the deist’s God).

Remember, though, that Craig can no longer require this decision to create the universe to be particularized by a personal God since he must allow that probabilistic causes are possible causes for the universe. The mechanical circumstances necessary for atomic decay are all already in place, even though the effect of a decayed nucleus is delayed. The nucleus could decay in 2 seconds, it could decay in 100 billion years. This defeats the necessity of a personal God deciding to create the universe 13.7 billion years ago and not 12 or 20.

As James Still has seen, Craig’s view of time results in severe problems for the Kalam. It seems that in his view, time exists not in the physicists’ definition of time. Physicists use time in the relational view, where time exists relative to bodies in motion, like ticking clocks. This is integral to Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, where the experience of time changes depending on velocity and the presence of mass. This effect has been confirmed and global positioning systems would fail without the corrections predicted by relativity. More importantly, general relativity shows that, if the universe did begin to exist, time itself began along with space, energy, and matter.

It makes no sense in the relational view of time to suggest that the universe could have had begun a moment before since there were no moments “before” the Big Bang, which is when time started ticking. Therefore, Craig seems to see time as absolute in his metaphysics. Personally, his view makes no sense to me. Perhaps he believes that events can be absolutely simultaneous regardless of frame of reference, which goes against special relativity. At the very least, we know that Craig clearly does not mean “time” in the way it is used by scientists.

It has been suggested that it is possible that the universe has simply always existed—a “brute fact,” in Russell’s words. This would remove any need for a creator since the universe did not “begin to exist.” However, Craig counters this by supporting Premise (2) with the following argument:

(4) An actual infinite cannot exist.
(5) An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
(6) Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Through this argument, Craig contends that it is impossible for the universe to have always existed since this would require an infinite temporal regress of events. Craig uses the example of Hilbert’s Grand Hotel to show that an actually real infinite would lead to absurdities.

Briefly, David Hilbert’s paradox of the grand hotel shows that if you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, it can accommodate an infinite number of guests. It should then be full after checking in an infinite number of guests. But, if another infinite number of guests should wish to stay in the hotel, one would only need to move the first set of guests to odd numbered rooms and the second group into even numbered rooms. You have now accommodated another infinite number of people in a supposedly full hotel. Craig argues that since this is a counter-intuitive result, then an actual infinite must be impossible.

It is important to note, however, that counter-intuitive results show up in science all the time. The greatest example of this is the discovery of wave-particle duality. A particle can be at many places at the same time. A particle can have many states at the same time. It is therefore not true that counter-intuitive results are necessarily impossible. However, we need not reject Craig’s use of Hilbert’s Hotel to see that Premise (2) in the Kalam is problematic.

Contrary to how Craig views the Big Bang model, the standard model of cosmology does not necessarily see the universe as beginning from a single infinitely dense point—a singularity. This prediction that the universe began as a singularity, via the Penrose-Hawking theorems, was because the Big Bang was erroneously viewed purely through the lens of General Relativity. Both Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking would later revise their position. Taking into account the physics of quantum mechanics, which would dominate at the extremely small scales of the earliest moments of the Big Bang, Hawking says, “There was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe.”

Imaginary time can be described as time as if it were like a dimension of space.

It is completely possible, as Hawking suggests in A Brief History of Time, that the universe has no boundary in time. This means that t = 0 (where t = time) is merely in the middle of a continuous line of imaginary time (a concept necessary to describe quantum tunneling), like how the South Pole is not the end of the Earth, but just another point along the longitudes. Trace the longitude going through the poles of the Earth and you get a finite but unbounded geometry—a great circle; the same could be true for four dimensional space-time. It therefore stands to reason that time need not have a beginning, as a singularity would suggest.

In quantum tunneling, a particle can break through a potential energy barrier even if it has less than the energy necessary to overcome the barrier. The very much real physics of the particle when inside the barrier can be described using complex, or imaginary, time.

In any case, singularity or no singularity, the scientific relational view of time avoids the problem of an infinite addition of events leading up to today because, although the age of the universe is finite, it is also true that the universe is eternal and has always existed. There has never been a time when there was no universe.

The universe has a cause

Craig asserts through an absolute view of time that actual infinities cannot exist. This would also apply to God. God cannot have existed through an actual infinite addition of events going back to nowhere. To get around this, theologians can assert that God is eternal not in the infinite number of events sense but because he is timeless. Unfortunately for the theist, since God is timeless, there would also never have been a time when God did not create the universe. The eternal universe would also be timeless in the same sense.

If Craig is to retain his absolute view of time, he must also reject the impossible timelessness of God. God must have begun to exist and himself have a cause. We can repeat Bertrand Russell’s challenge, “Who made God?” If Craig is to accept the physicists’ relational view of time, he must also accept that the universe is “eternal” in the same sense that God is eternal. Premise (2) fails and God is then an unnecessary explanation for the universe’s existence.

As Paul Draper notes, another problem with the Kalam cosmological argument is that it equivocates two senses of the phrase “begin to exist.” The strength of the Kalam cosmological argument is that it purports to be a proof of God from the evidence. It uses inductive reasoning to show that since everything begins to exist from causes, then the universe must also have begun to exist from a cause. However, the things we see to begin to exist begin in time. The universe, if it began to exist, began with time 13.7 billion years ago. We have no experience, no valid intuition, of things, let alone universes, beginning with time. Craig therefore commits the fallacy of equivocation in reasoning from the example of ordinary objects that the universe must also have a cause. Even if we accept Premises (1) and (2), the conclusion of the Kalam cosmological argument remains invalid. The eternal universe remains a brute fact.

TL;DR

The Kalam cosmological argument was a very strong case for the existence of not just a supernatural creator, but a personal one with a mind and thoughts. Because of the supposed impossibility of infinities in the real world, there is indeed a real problem for the naturalistic existence of the universe.

All of these arguments, however, have been fatally challenged by what we know today about the universe. The necessity of a personal creator is refuted by the existence of natural mechanisms for probabilistic causes. This means that naturalistic causes need not have their effects occur immediately after. The eternity of the universe is also supported by the dependence of time on space. In other words, without the universe, there was no time. Without time outside the universe, there was never a time without a universe. Hence, the universe has always existed and a creator is unnecessary to explain its existence.

It was perhaps impossible to have been an intellectually satisfied atheist until the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. The refutation of the Kalam heavily depends on the evidence that supports these theories. This did not have to be how nature is. As we learn more about the peculiarities of the universe, the God-shaped hole at the end of the universe is all but plugged.

_{All images are public domain except image on quantum tunneling by Jean-Christoph Benoist. Licensed under Creative Commons.}

“Name me a moral action made by a believer that could not be made by a non-believer.” This was the late Christopher Hitchens’ storied moral challenge against theists who claimed that it is impossible for atheists to be moral without gods. Hitchens turned this around by showing how ethics is prior to religion. He continued, “If I were to ask, could you name a wicked action made by someone attributable only to their religious faith? There isn’t a person here who would hesitate for a second.”

In a debate between David Wolpe and Hitchens, Wolpe countered the moral challenge by presenting a personal example. Wolpe recounted a story about his father, “When I think of the most powerful and intimate moments that I had with my father, it was when he put his hands on my head and blessed me on a Friday night.” Such an action is definitely unavailable to the logically consistent atheist. Hitchens dismissed this response, saying that he was not convinced that this was truly a moral action.

Even as an atheist, it is apparent to me that Hitchens’ skepticism was misplaced. You don’t need to believe in a supernatural deity to accept that mystical activities could possibly be conducive to well-being, if only for the false consolation that things are going to be okay. This is not to say that there is any evidence for the supernatural any more than there is evidence that placebos are universal cures. This is also not to say that the comfort produced by delusion is even worth the opportunity cost of being mistaken about the nature of reality. It is sufficient to show from this example that even delusion can be compatible with ethical motivations.

In the middle of the culture wars, it is easy to get lost in the absolutist narrative (I’m often guilty of such thoughts): conservative Christians are backwards Puritanical parrots, atheists and liberals are the height of pure rationality. The opposite view that Christians are the sole keepers of moral truth and liberals are mindless instruments of Satan is also a popular belief. Obviously, such black and white views are seldom accurate for any argument. By embracing such unconditional beliefs, we lose sight of the fact that we share a common human nature, regardless of our views.

The religious meme

It’s a common little jab by pro-RH activists against Catholic bishops that they are against the RH bill because they want more children—children that they can indoctrinate. This, however, is an unfair accusation. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has been more or less consistent about its sex negative stance for ages. This opposition to liberal views of sexuality comes from their own idea that sex was created by God for the purpose of procreation. Anything that falls short of God’s purpose is the privation (or the prevention of achievement) of the intrinsically good nature of creation. And anything that falls short of nature is evil. Having more children to indoctrinate is a bonus, but it does not come into their reasoning at all.

There can be, however, a naturalistic explanation for how the Church came to be so adamantly against contraception. We can appeal to the idea that the proliferation of cultural ideas, like religion, can follow a Darwinian analogue to genes called, “memes.”

Genes are selfish hereditary units. If they weren’t selfish, they wouldn’t be passed on. But this self-interestedness at the gene level need not be consciously held by the organisms they build. Animals, human or not, can exhibit altruistic motives, even though these behaviors are ultimately determined by selfish genes. Similar to genes, memes are selected for in cultures such that the ones that survive are those that exhibit characteristics that are conducive to virus-like proliferation in the minds of conscious beings.

To extend the Darwinian analogy to religion, the religions that dominate are predicted to have certain traits that are conducive to self-preservation—such as child-indoctrination and zealous opposition to change. Consider the Shakers, who prohibited any sort of procreation. They practically don’t exist anymore. Now, the Roman Catholic Church may have despicably self-preservationist doctrines (as in their protocol for shielding rapist employees) but this does not necessarily contradict with any benevolent motive. As in the selfishness of genes, the self-preservationism of religious memes need not manifest in persons as conscious malice. But, the road to hell, after all, is paved with good intentions.

Questioning motives

It is important to understand that apparently evil actions can have thoroughly good intentions because the assumption of malice tends to be the root of misunderstanding and conflict. Relevant to this is a psychological effect called, “the moralization gap,” described by the psychologist Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature. It is a self-serving bias where injured parties tend to see hurts, no matter how small, as undeserved, permanent, and egregious, while offending parties see hurts, no matter how bad, as justified, temporary, and exaggerated. This is a consistent bias in human psychology that makes any sort of dialogue difficult. Parties on the opposing sides of disputes tend to hold distorted accounts of their own experiences.

Since this is a bias built into our brains by evolution, we must be constantly aware whenever it pops up so we can avoid such things. It is best to adhere to the principle of charity and steer clear of assuming malevolence in the motives of people.

The truth is, most people on either side, religious conservative or liberal, have well-meaning intentions and do not go out of their way to maliciously provoke. That is, both sides see an end that would be good for all parties concerned. The problem stems from competing notions of what “good” is.

Competing notions of good

Conservatives, such as Manny Pacquiao, Miriam Quiambao, and Toni Gonzaga, are learning more and more that moral indignation is no longer the sole turf of the religious. From seeing the horrors of sectarian violence and the petty tyranny of religious self-appointed censors, people are growing more and more skeptical of religion’s purported monopoly on moral claims.

What liberals can fail to see, however, is that religious conservatives truly believe that they have everyone’s best interests at heart. Whether it’s closing down sacrilegious art installations or protesting blasphemous pop stars, religious conservatives honestly think that they are preventing future harm on all people—the fires of hell that will welcome all sinners. However detached from reality this motivation is, it does not diminish in any way the sense of urgency religious conservatives feel about the escalation of irreverence in the social zeitgeist. Theirs is an earnest and well-intentioned concern that liberals simply must accept and deal with.

The change in social values led by liberals is denounced by religious conservatives as moral relativism—the idea that there are no objective moral truths, only subjective moral preferences. However, liberals are just as morally motivated as their conservative opponents. It is just that liberals tend to view “bad” in light of the suffering experienced by conscious beings. This view of ethics is just as objective as the conservatives’ natural moral law, even though it is open to revision and correction as we learn more about human nature. Compare this with how medicine is an objective exercise despite the definition of health constantly changing as the years go by.

In contrast, conservatives tend to detach suffering in this world from the meaning of “moral.” They see morality as prescribed actions that lead toward the accomplishment of what they believe is their god’s desire. This is how they can find the “perversion” of the sanctity (God’s “natural” purpose) of sex and marriage more abhorrent (and more worthy of their time) than abject poverty and maternal deaths.

More noble than the “middle ground”

I see, in this state of affairs, an impasse. It is very difficult to argue ethics when either side comes from such completely different premises—the conservatives’ duty to God versus the liberals’ concern for earthly suffering. There is, however, hope for those who despise the notion that homosexuals do not deserve equal rights and that mothers do not have the right to raise the kind of family they want. It is this: conservatives always lose. It is only a matter of time. Our change in attitude towards slavery and the rights of women and homosexuals, clearly points to the possibility and reality of moral progress, as hard as religious conservatism may fight the rising tide.

In the meantime, we must be sympathetic to the motivations of all parties: we all mean well. We all want to make the world a better place. It is just that we mean very different and incompatible things by “better.” There is, in the understanding of this fact, a place higher and more noble than the so-called “middle ground” built by flawed notions of “tolerance” and “respect”. Acknowledging where each side is coming from without tritely asserting that everyone is right in their own way is, to me, the real meaning of respect.

_{Hindu Prayer Image Credit: Lauren Pursecki}

The doctrine of free will is a keystone in Christian theology. It is the principle by which theologians try to explain away the problem of evil in a world designed by a benevolent God. It is central to the tenet of redemption and the reason for the human sacrifice of Jesus.

With the advent of neuroscience, it has become increasingly more difficult to defend free will. We see more and more that what we view as our “selves” and our desires are products of circumstances that we had no control over (our genes, our upbringing, the amount of sleep we had, the smells of a room, noises in the neighborhood, etc.). And, as Sam Harris argues in his new book, Free Will, not only is free will an illusion, it is unintelligible.

Free will is not conceptually coherent, according to Harris. “Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.” No amount of quantum indeterminacy can even begin to make sense of a free will doctrine. No amount of theological finessing can make heads or tails of it.

The theistic position regarding free will maintains that we, in a very real sense, create our own thoughts (termed contra-causal free will)*. This is, however, at odds with what we know about the nature of the brain. Studies such as those performed by physiologist Benjamin Libet showed that activity in the motor cortex can be seen around 300 milliseconds before the a person becomes aware of a decision to move. Another study showed that observing a mere 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80% accuracy a person’s decision to move. Even without delays, our conscious self is not in control of the causes behind which and when neurons fire.

Though we feel free in our choices, we are not in control of this feeling to feel free. And therein lies the illusion. It seems that we are only free in the sense that we don’t mind what the unconscious operations of the brain tell us. Even our not minding is itself the product of unconscious operations that are out of our control. Neuroscience and informed philosophy has reduced “authorship” to our conscious mind helplessly witnessing the spontaneous appearance of unconsciously determined thoughts into consciousness. Harris writes, “From the perspective of your conscious awareness, you are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore do) than you are for the fact that you were born into this world.”

Consider the mind of a person who murders a random pedestrian. In subsequent interviews, we find that this person exhibits no remorse for his actions and says that he would do it again, given the chance. Were we to discover that this person has a tumor in his prefrontal cortex (the site of much of our behavioral impulses), we might consider that he was not truly to blame for his actions. He was not responsible for his tumor or the precise consequences of his tumor, after all. But, how is this situation any different from the brain of a psychopath, which is known to have palpable differences with normal brains?

None of the circumstances that lead to a psychopathic mind are the fault of a psychopath. He did not choose to have a psychopathic brain. Neither does it imply that a psychopath is free because he desires to kill a person since that desire is not under his control either. Should we learn that a murderous psychopath had struggles with his bloodlust and earnestly fought against his compulsion, we can only conclude that his desire to murder won out over his other determined desires. Where is the freedom in that?

A psychopath has merely been unlucky to have inherited genes that predispose him to violence and a lack of empathy. This, of course, predisposes him further to situations that encourage him to hold cynical and anti-social beliefs. The lack of control of the psychopath is no different from our lack of control in having the minds that we have at this moment. A psychopath is as much a victim of neurophysiology as we are.

If you were to trade places with our hypothetical psychopath, “atom for atom” as Harris puts it, you would be him. There would be no extra part of you that would be there to see or experience the world in any different way. You would have no way to tame the murderous impulses with the more moderate impulses of your former body.

One need not be a naturalist to dismiss free will. Even outside metaphysical materialism, Harris argues, the notion that an immaterial soul is at the helm of our will does not rescue the notion of free will. “The unconscious operations of a soul would grant you no more freedom than the unconscious physiology of your brain does.”

Harris presents that the only philosophically defensible notion of free will is compatibilism, or the idea that determinism and free will are not incompatible. However, it appears that compatibilism and determinism are only different in that they define free will in completely different terms, though neither finds the theistic notion of contra-causal free will convincing. Compatibilists argue that free will is real in the sense that unconscious mental activity is still “you.” However, this does not seem to be what most people mean by “free will,” which is the conscious authorship of thoughts. It is certainly not what theologians mean by free will. Harris reduces the compatibilist position to “a puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.”

An important distinction should be made between determinism and fatalism. Fans of libertarian free will might point out that since our wills are determined, we should just lay back and watch as our bodies move themselves without conscious intent (fatalism). But that, of course, is to forget that conscious intentions, though caused by events prior to consciousness, are a part of the system which determines consequences. Intentions do matter and intending to just sit around is itself an intention. And this intention to be passive, Harris points out, will increasingly become more difficult as the compulsion to do something else grows intolerable.

That we are free in an absolute and metaphysical sense to decide how to act is a fundamental tenet of our ideas regarding moral responsibility and justice, whether in secular or religious terms. Harris cites the United States Supreme Court, stating that a deterministic view of free will is “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system.” And, if we are in no meaningful sense the author of our thoughts, then the entire Christian notion of the afterlife (either heaven or hell in any formulation) is horrendous and damnable. Harris writes in the first page of his book, “Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork, and any conception of justice that emphasized punishing them (rather than deterring, rehabilitating, or merely containing them) would appear utterly incongruous.”

Theists worry that without contra-causal free will, there can be no moral responsibility. For how can you fault a hurricane for leveling entire cities? How can you blame an alcoholic for being that way, when genetic predispositions and uncontrolled circumstances led to his being an alcoholic?

Of course, this appeal to consequences does not prove that free will is real. And, upon the slightest bit of inspection, we can see that the theist’s worry is unfounded. Moral responsibility is viable outside of free will. What we appear to morally condemn, and can reasonably maintain to condemn, in violent people (as in the psychopath of my previous example) is the intentionality. The intention and desire to murder is the real cause for fear. If there is anything that we can be held “responsible” for, it would be our conscious intentions, which we are aware of, since these best reflect what kinds of persons we are and how we will tend to act in the future.

If, after careful planning and much research, you decide to kill your neighbor, then that simply shows that you’re the kind of person who would kill your neighbor. You’re the kind of person who would spend hours deliberating on the best means to maim or kill another human being. If you were to find yourself naked in a car that crashed into a tree with your neighbor dead on the hood of your car, without any memory of how you got there, you’re probably not the kind of person who does this sort of thing. The aspect of intention, regardless of its determined origin, generally predicts the trends of behavior that we are likely to have. This gives us good reason to put a premium on conscious intention, in terms of blameworthiness.

The first example shows a person who simply has the mind of a murderer. We have good reason to fear the deliberate murderer and not the accidental one. Though, given determinism, we have no rational basis to hate either.

If we could incarcerate hurricanes, we would, so as to prevent further harm. What, then, does it mean for us to find out that we ourselves are weather patterns of intentions and actions—determined by lawful interactions outside our control? Since a person is fundamentally the epicenter of uncontrolled genetic predispositions and environmental circumstances, any conception of punitive or retributive justice is just incoherent. And what else is religious justice but punitive and retributive?

Without contra-causal free will, the justice of religion is simply absurd and malevolent. Adam was never free to choose which of his impulses would have won out in his encounter with the fruit of knowledge. The sins Jesus died for were the result of bad design by his father in heaven. To be fair, we cannot fault religion for having an unrealistic view of human nature, its creators simply did not know better. This does, however, further betray religion’s human and uninformed origins.

We can maintain a system of laws that is more fair and honest about what we are and what our brains make us to be. To keep everyone else safe, justice systems must rehabilitate criminals. And, in the impossibility of such rehabilitation, incarceration for the good of society is the only recourse. In light of what we know about brains and minds, punishment betrays the juvenile “justice” of our religious and prescientific past.

The knowledge that we are the products of causes outside our control may seem nihilistic and overwhelming, but it need not be. Our awareness should, instead, empower us to know that not every mood we have is meaningful (it can simply be because of lack of sleep). Knowing that we can take hold of the causal triggers of our personality (without denying that this too is due to prior causes), we can take effective steps to change our state of mind by introducing more causes (in the form of books, novel activities, other people, etc.) into the storm that is the mind. Realizing this can help us change our brains in a way that may initially be unconscious, but no less consequential.

We can escape the prison of the delusion that we are little gods immune to nature and accept the laws of nature for what they are. We can be free from fatalism without committing to nonsensical doctrines. Choices, beliefs, and intentions are as important as ever, even if they are determined by prior causes.

In the 66 pages of Free Will, Sam Harris presents a short but devastating case against the traditional and theological concept of contra-causal free will. It is by no means comprehensive, but it gets to the point quick without getting muddled.

_{*In The Nature of Necessity, the philosopher Alvin Plantinga defines contra-causal free will as: “If a person S is significantly free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain; no causal laws and antecedent conditions determine either that he will perform the action, or that he will not.”}

_{Free Will by Sam Harris is published by Free Press.}

Whenever faced with the challenge that science is incompatible with faith, theists often point to their faith’s own cadre of accomplished scientists to refute this frequent atheistic claim. And they would not want of examples. Just grabbing from the Roman Catholic Church’s litany of scientists will give you many luminaries of the sciences, many with the honor of being called “father of” such and such science or their name being used as units of measurement.

• Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was an Augustinian friar.
• Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, named oxygen and hydrogen.
• Alessandro Volta was a physicist who invented the battery and is the namesake of the measurement for electric potential.
• Louis Pasteur was a chemist and microbiologist who is often regarded as one of the fathers of the germ theory of disease.
• André-Marie Ampère was a physicist and mathematician who helped discover the link between electricity and magnetism and is the namesake of the measurement for current.
• William of Ockham, the namesake of Occam’s razor, was a Franciscan Friar.
• René Descartes, most famous for cogito ergo sum, was a mathematician as well as a philosopher.
• Blaise Pascal, the originator of the Pascal’s Wager, was a mathematician and physicist, who is the namesake of the measurement of pressure, stress, and tensile strength.
• Georges Lemaître was the first person to propose that the universe was expanding, but he is more famous for proposing what we call the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe.

This is but a smattering of all the Catholic scientists who have contributed greatly to the progress of science. Some of them had overtly pious intentions for their work—in order to more perfectly understand their Creator’s work. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church has been one of the biggest patrons of the sciences dating back to the Middle Ages with precisely this purpose of appreciating the design of the Intelligent Designer. With such intellectual giants who profess faith in Catholic dogma and such explicitly religious motives, how then can the atheist even suggest that faith is in conflict with science?

Is pseudoscience compatible with science?

The existence of religious scientists only proves, as Sam Harris observes, that good ideas can live with bad ideas in the same head. The proponents of the compatibility of faith-based religion with science seem to miss the fact that the acceptance of scientific discoveries of religious scientists is because these findings have survived the rigorous testing of the scientific method. Lemaître’s Big Bang theory is accepted by scientists not due to any purported theological consistency but because it is the best explanation for our observations. That he was religious was purely incidental to the value of his scientific insight.

It is also important to point out that many scientists are religious simply because most people are religious. Centuries ago, only those with the power and wealth of their Churches behind them had the luxury of spending their time reading and experimenting. Not to mention, atheists (often lumped by those in power with worshippers of foreign gods) have been persecuted since the name was coined.

When the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé said that the cyclic structure of benzene came to him in a dream involving a snake biting its own tail, his idea wasn’t accepted for its esoteric merits, it was accepted on the strength of the scientific evidence he presented after this strange epiphany.

One of humanity’s greatest minds, Isaac Newton, was quite the dedicated alchemist. He wrote over a million words on the topic. His work on alchemy was even integral to his work on optics. But, none of this suggests that the pseudoscience of alchemy has no conflict with science.

We find that to the extent that religious scientists are not dogmatic and employ reason and evidence, they are good scientists. That is, we expect religious scientists to cut away all semblance of religiosity from their output before we deem them credible. This does not speak well for the argument that science and faith are compatible.

A brief digression on Galileo

No essay on the conflict between science and faith would be complete without a mention of Galileo Galilei. Apologists dismiss the Galileo affair as a trial of his arrogance rather than of his ideas, which they found erroneous not just based on scripture, but also based on empirical facts.

Galileo published the first scientific work based on observations through a telescope. He saw that, contrary to the Aristotelian idea that all celestial bodies are perfectly smooth spheres, the moon had mountains. He was also able to discover four moons orbiting around Jupiter. From these, he contested the prevailing Aristotelian and Ptolemaic dogma that all celestial bodies revolved around the Earth. He further proposed, though none of his observations directly suggested it, that Copernicus was right that the planets, including Earth, orbited around the Sun.

Even scientists such as Tycho Brahe found Galileo’s endorsement of the Copernican heliocentric model to be misplaced, saying that it was not supported by the evidence. And, truly, there was a problem with Galileo’s science. Using circular orbits, Copernicus’ solar system relied even more on ad hoc mathematical corrections called “epicycles” to match observations, suggesting that planets would revolve around separate axes all the while traveling in a larger orbit around the sun. It was even more complex and unintuitive than Ptolemy’s geocentric model.

However, Galileo was censured by the Inquisition not because of his bad science but mainly because he contradicted the geocentrism of the Bible and the documents of his trial attest to this. Apologists tend to parade around his errors and “arrogance” in promoting the Copernican system as the central reasons behind his eventual condemnation and house arrest, but this is clearly not the truth.

The Inquisition in 1616 saw heliocentrism as “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts many places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words and according to the common interpretation and understanding of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.”

Galileo went on to write Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632, which lampooned geocentrism by writing about an ignorant proponent, named Simplicio, debating with an intelligent heliocentrist, named Sagredo.

His persecutors themselves were clear that Galileo’s crimes were not of arrogance or for faulty science, but of heresy. Upon sentencing in 1633, Galileo was condemned for heresy “of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture.” He would be able to avoid penalty provided that he “abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the manner and form we will prescribe to you.” He eventually did so. Dialogue was banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo spent the last years of his life in house arrest.

The real conflict between science and faith

At the heart of the conflict between faith and science are their contradictory value systems. Science requires evidence for any and all claims looking to be accepted. Faith holds unquestionable belief even when evidence is nonexistent.

Science relies on self-correction. Scientists must admit to their errors and argue only with evidence. This is why science is the best method of knowing the human race has ever produced. No religion has ever come close; no religious explanation has ever replaced a scientific explanation.

Faith is most visibly at odds with science when religions make baseless scientific claims such as those concerning the efficacy of prayer, the origin of man, or the nature of the mind. If science finds that prayer is ineffective, that there never was a “first” man or woman, or that free will is an illusion, someone with an honest scientific mindset can only reject their preconceived notions in favor of a better understanding of the universe. The improvement of knowledge is the hallmark of science—a feature religious faith can never share.

Faith is incompatible with science because science requires freedom of thought. In principle, science has no heresies, blasphemies, or sacred cows; the only limit is reason. Science can only thrive when scientists are not intimidated or forced to shy away from difficult answers that may contradict long-held beliefs.

The example of Galileo is often shrugged off by apologists as anti-Catholic spin or, at best, that it is not representative of the Church’s relationship with science. And, to be fair, it is true that this event is atypical. The Roman Catholic Church is not antagonistic to all science, just the parts problematic to their ideology. In order to soothe the congitive dissonance caused by their enjoyment of the fruits of science, apologists must conveniently gloss over the real conflict between science and faith. Science will always be hostile to the restraints of the religious mindset. In order for faith and science to coexist, science must be neutered, declawed, and defanged.

It is only fortunate for us who live in this day that faith has fallen so far now that it has been forced to ingratiate itself with modern secular society. It no longer holds the power to execute heretics or punish those who dare to think for themselves. We must never forget how the Churches acted when their power was more than just ceremonial.

Galileo may have been wrong (or not completely correct), but so have thousands of other scientists who have never faced the wrath of the Inquisition, whose books have never been denied to the public. It was only because Galileo had the gall to challenge scripture that he faced the consequences. Faith is only chummy with science insofar as it does not challenge core beliefs. In this way, religions are not patrons of science, but of science products. They are open to enjoying the spoils of the critical nature of science without appreciating exactly what makes science worth a damn—its complete lack of dogmatism. It is the very character of the scientific attitude that makes the clash between science and faith only inevitable.

_{Image credit: Ies Dionisio Aguado}

Disclaimer: Apologies to all the women in the world for the potentially misogynistic contexts that may emerge from my usage of the loaded term “warat” in this article.

Warat is a common Filipino expression often interchanged with “wasak.” It means “broken” or “destroyed” in English, but is also a slang word for “drunk and high on an assortment of drugs” or a devirginized girl.

“Warat” is also the title of a 90′s bold movie starring Joyce Jimenez.

"Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba? (1999)"

My years of exposure to the devious underworld of 90′s bold movies — my exposure to videos of naked women — has supposedly corrupted my soul and turned me into a depressed adult who compulsively cries at night when recalling scenes from “Balahibong Pusa” and “Sutla.” These transient images carve themselves into memory, haunting men like naked sirens, beckoning them towards madness. 90’s soft-porn cinema: a truly great evil.

At least, that was what my values teacher told me about bold movies. Thankfully, although many hours of my youth were spent in isolation and many VHS and Betamax devices have malfunctioned after much fast-forwarding and rewinding, I still don’t have a corrupted soul.

The absence of the “artistic factor” was a common criticism tossed around by regulatory boards and “purists” alike to condemn the bold cinema trend of the 90’s. However, I’m not entirely sure what these people meant by “artistic.”

One of the most debated topics in aesthetics and censorship legislation is the nature of art. What is art? While a fair number of people are aware of the principles of art (balance, contrast, proportion), not many are aware of the standard “approaches” used to define what is artistic. Is a 90’s bold movie artistic? Is porn artistic?

"Ligaya ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin (1997)" is another artistic movie from the 90’s which had realistic intercourse-ing.

“All artistic creation is a form of imitation.” – Plato

One of the earliest approaches to art was by Plato. Plato believed that the primary element in determining artistic quality is mimesis or an artist’s ability to mimic or re-produce reality. In other words, an artwork’s realism is what defines its artistic quality.

By this standard then, the bold movies of the 90’s are definitely inferior to “Jersey Shore,” Hayden Kho, and contemporary amateur porn. But via the same standard, in terms of realism, “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?” is actually more artistic than any movie that implies that Carla Abellana could actually be attracted to Jorge Estregan Jr.

“Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba? (1999)” had several scenes that allowed the audience to feel an approximation of the emotions felt by an individual who was intercourse-ing.

“Works of art so often arise from some deep personal feeling or crisis in the lives of their creators that emotion itself is commonly taken as the defining characteristic of art.” – Leo Tolstoy

Art is not art unless it is able to transfer raw emotions. According to Leo Tolstoy, an artist’s ability to make the audience feel what he feels should be the standard of art. This premise, however, postulates that artistic intention and audience reaction is the highest standard of artistic quality.

If a poem about something sad was written in a way that makes a reader sad too, then by this standard, it is art. If a scene exhibiting sexually aroused individuals makes the audience aroused too, it is artistic. With regard to “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?,” when Joyce Jimenez was moaning and writhing to express her sexual arousal while she was having make-believe intercourse with an actor, many viewers were also sexually aroused. Needless to say, the scene was successful because it seemed authentic enough to generate an authentic response.

"Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba? (1999)" had a few faults, like this scene, which seemed to have no artistic function other than to make the audience feel slightly confused.

“Art is something that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.” – Shelley Esaak

As the quote clearly explains, another measure of artistic value is how efficiently an artwork functions as a tool. If a creator’s intention in making an artwork like “Poleteismo” is to bring attention to certain religious issues, then it was successful because it got people talking about religious issues.

Let’s be honest and say that “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?” had no intention to create a paradigm shift in cinematic art. In fact, the plot was mostly an excuse to get naked and start intercourse-ing. But that was precisely what the intended function was – to cause sexual arousal and, in some situations, sexual satisfaction. “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?” can be considered as something that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

"Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?" (1999) and "Spoliarium" (1884) have little in common, but both are considered artworks.

If one can make an argument that can somehow imply that the movie “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?” is art, then there is something seriously odd about the nature of art.

But that, for me, is what makes art both interesting and relevant. Art evolves and changes. This state of transience that exists in all forms of art is what encourages experimentation, discourse, criticism and creation. Even in conservative and restrictive societies, art continues to exist as a venue and as a channel for human freedom.

That is why I believe that art should be free from rigid definitions – and definitely from morality-based regulation. Unfortunately, a common standard many regulatory boards measure art by is via a distorted, outdated, dogmatic and biased moral standard.

Ironically, the  most common reference material for morality – the Bible – is itself full of incest, infanticide, torture, and genocide; things that are definitely far worse than even the most indulgent fucking scene in 90′s bold cinema.

But I digress.

Many of you may disagree about the artistic qualities of “Warat” mentioned here. Feel free to state your opinion on the following issues:

Is “Warat” art? By what artistic standard should we measure “Warat?” Should movies and music be regulated? Is “Warat” even a good movie? If “Warat” is not a good movie, can it still be art? Does art have to be good to be art? Should “Warat” have a sequel, how a bout a re-make? Which would you rather see, “Warat: Bibigay Ka Ba?” or “Spoliarium?”

Logical debate is a necessary part of every activist’s life. But before engaging in a debate, make sure you ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I know the subject? – For seasoned activists, this should be a given. But for newbies, it is normal to romanticize passion and equate it with victory. If you don’t think you can pull it off, leave it to the experts. If you think you can, make sure you have information handy.

2. Are my objectives realistic? – If you are about to argue with a religious fundamentalist with the intent of convincing the person to turn against faith, you might as well argue with a 10-foot tall slab of concrete. As a personal policy, I never engage in debate to win. I engage to educate and to learn.

3. Are we both clear on the parameters? – At the onset, make sure both of you know the rules. I generally do not engage if I know that Bible verses will be used against me. It defeats the purpose of a logical debate. But for some people, that is perfectly fine. So know what parameters work best for you.

4. Can I document the whole discussion? – If you can’t document the discussion, then be prepared for a lot of moving goalposts (discussed later). Documenting the discussion ensures that both of you have a way of getting back on track. It’s also a nifty way of catching contradictions.

5. Will this do more good than harm? – Sometimes, winning an argument will actually put you in a worse position or result in more damage to your cause. Be selective. Choose your battles.

If you answered “yes” to all these questions, then I present to you ten commonly used fallacies and what to do when they are used against you in logical debate (actual quotes from actual debates are found here):

Fallacy #1: Appeal to Nature – “This is the fallacy of assuming that whatever is “natural” or consistent with “nature” (somehow defined) is good, or that whatever conflicts with nature is bad”

Example:

“Marriage is only between a man and a woman because that is the natural law of things”

What you can do: Aside from explicitly calling out that this is a fallacy called “Appeal to Nature,” you can also point out that it is in our nature to get sick and eventually die. This means that preventing death and sickness from happening is unnatural. And yet we don’t consider modern medicine and doctors as “bad.”

Fallacy #2: Appeal to Popularity – “The basic idea is that a claim is accepted as being true simply because most people are favorably inclined towards the claim.”

Example:

“I am against same-sex marriage because a majority of the population is against it.”

What you can do: As with the first fallacy and all the succeeding fallacies, it is a must that you call out what kind of fallacy the person is using. And then point out that in the past, a majority of the population also believed that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. Both arguments turned out to be false. If you are in the US, you can also point out that last April, same-sex marriage supporters outnumbered the opposition for the first time. Unfortunately, we have no such survey in the Philippines yet.

Fallacy #3: Appeal to Tradition – “Appeal to Tradition is a fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that something is better or correct simply because it is older, traditional, or “always has been done.”

Example:

“Marriage is reserved for heterosexuals because that’s how marriage has been defined for 2000 years”

What you can do: State that slavery was also acceptable for more than 2000 years but that does not make it right. Also state that the 2000 year old definition of marriage has already been redefined a decade ago when same-sex marriage was made legal in the following countries: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden.

Fallacy #4: Cherry Picking – “Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.”

Example: 

PERSON A: “Laws are based on natural moral standards”

PERSON B: “Then why did the Supreme Court disallow Comelec to use morality in denying Ladlad accreditation?”

PERSON A: “The Supreme Court respected Ladlad’s right to freedom of expression.”

*It is true that the Supreme Court cited the right to freedom of expression. But what PERSON A conveniently left out was that the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Comelec also included “Public Morals” as an invalid ground for blocking Ladlad, thereby disproving PERSON A’s original claim.

What you can do: Refute the claim by presenting the rest of the facts that the person left out. The complete and original text of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Ladlad vs Comelec case is available online. But put simply, the Supreme Court disallowed the Comelec to use Public Morals and Religious Belief to deny Ladlad accreditation. This is important jurisprudence because it tells the public that the use of morality and religion in deciding state affairs is unconstitutional.

Fallacy #5: False Analogy - “A false analogy is a rhetorical fallacy that uses an analogy (comparing objects or ideas with similar characteristics) to support an argument, but the conclusion made by it is not supported by the analogy due to the differences between the two objects.”

Example:

“Marriage is not for everyone. For example, minors can’t marry. Mentally handicapped people can’t marry. Humans can’t marry their pets”

What you can do: Explain why the analogies presented are not similar to the original argument. In this case, the family code of the Philippines requires legal consent from both parties, which minors, the mentally handicapped, and pets cannot provide. And then avoid analogies entirely because if they are not used smartly, they have the tendency to backfire.

Fallacy #6: Moving The Goalpost - ”The “Moving the Goalpost” logical fallacy is another one that has a fairly descriptive name. It is the case when Person A makes a claim, Person B refutes it, and Person A moves on to a new or revised claim, generally without acknowledging or responding to Person B’s refutation. Hence, the goalpost of the claim has been shifted or moved in order to keep the claim alive.”

Example:

PERSON A: “Moral relativism causes same-sex marriage!”

PERSON B: “But earlier, you said same-sex marriage causes moral relativism, not the other way around.”

PERSON A: “No, what I meant was same-sex marriage reinforces moral relativism. I admit that is was poorly constructed because I was in a hurry.”

What you can do: Keep track of how many times the person moves goalposts. If the person does this often enough, faulty logic will soon expose itself. The key here is documenting the entire conversation.

Fallacy #7: Presenting Opinion as Fact - ”In casual use, the term opinion may be the result of a person’s perspective, understanding, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. It may refer to unsubstantiated information, in contrast to knowledge and fact-based beliefs.”

Example: 

“Laws are based on natural moral standards”

*when what the person really meant to say was “Laws should be based on natural moral standards”

What you can do: Assert that in the absence of facts, all you have is opinion. But be cautious, too, because not all facts are from credible sources. Prefer facts over stats because stats can be manipulated depending on who is doing the study.

Fallacy #8: Red Herring - ”A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic”

Example:

PERSON A: “It is not true that homosexuals were not allowed to run for public office”

PERSON B: “Ladlad was barred by Comelec”

PERSON A: “The Comelec didn’t just bar Ladlad because of homosexuality because that is oversimplifying the position. Just look at gay pride marches. It is embarrassing. But I’m not saying that just because homosexuals behave that way, they can be discriminated against. I don’t understand why people assume that just because I think homosexuality is disordered that I automatically want to bully homosexuals. That’s pretty immature.”

What you can do: Acknowledge the new information presented. But make sure that your acknowledgement is not taken as agreement. State the exact same question for emphasis before the red herring was thrown at you. Again, this is why documentation is key.

Fallacy #9: Slippery Slope - ”The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question.”

Example:

“Same-sex marriage will cause population implosion.”

What you can do: Ask “how” and ask for facts just a few repetitions short of ad nauseam. Let them ramble and eventually, they will run into self-contradictions. In which case, be ready for more moving goalposts and more red herrings.

Fallacy #10: Spotlight Fallacy - ”The Spotlight fallacy is committed when a person uncritically assumes that all members or cases of a certain class or type are like those that receive the most attention or coverage in the media.”

Example:

“Gays are not oppressed because that’s not what we see in the media”

What you can do: State factual evidence to the contrary. From an international perspective, the United Nations recently released its first report on LGBT rights. You can also download the Philippine LGBT Coalition report (which I co-authored Ü) to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. It is a good resource for citing actual documented discrimination against LGBT people in the Philippines.

These are just some of the common fallacies I’ve encountered recently. If you know of more or have found other effective ways of handling them, help our readers and post your experience here.

Happy debating!

“Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world: all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.” – Albert Einstein, 1954″

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

- Matthew 16:19

A reader of my post on primacy of conscience had an issue with my use of the word “bound” when I implicitly concluded that Catholics are bound to obey the Church. His main objection was that together with my use of “prison” in the title, “bound” implied that the Church took away the freedom of Catholics to make up their own minds. He concluded that because a Catholic can refuse to obey the Church on certain things, he is not bound.

I’ll explain here that my usage of the term is accurate and the objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of obligations.

Bound by Duty

One of the synonyms of “obligated” or “obliged” is “duty bound.” Also, “bound” has several dictionary definitions, but I used (and use) the following one in bold:

bound 3 (bound)

v.

Past tense and past participle of bind.

adj.

1. Confined by bonds; tied: bound and gagged hostages.

2. Being under legal or moral obligation: bound by my promise.

The reader’s objection is probably due to his thinking that I meant “bound” in the first sense: confined and tied like gagged hostages. This is not what I meant, but I am aware of this connotation, which is an added bonus. But even without this there are several valid reasons to use “bound” instead of the alternatives.

Bound by Church Law

First, the Church itself is fond of using this term, and in the way that I meant it (obligation). Here are two examples taken from my post on primacy alone:

The Church’s Magisterium also teaches the faithful specific particular precepts and requires that they consider them in conscience as morally binding.

- Pope John Paul II

Above the pope as an expression of the binding claim of church authority, stands one’s own conscience, which has to be obeyed first of all, if need be against the demands of church authority.

- Pope Benedict XVI

And don’t forget the bible verse I quoted to start this post, one of the pillars of Church authority. The expressions “bind” and “loose” were common in Jewish legal lexicon:

The phrase “to bind” and “to loose” was often used by the Jews. It meant to prohibit and to permit. To bind a thing was to forbid it; to loose it, to allow it to be done… When Jesus gave this power to the apostles, he meant that whatsoever they forbade in the church should have divine authority; whatever they permitted, or commanded, should also have divine authority – that is, should be bound or loosed in heaven, or meet the approbation of God.

The Catholic Church, which has “what is claimed to be the oldest continuously functioning internal legal system in Western Europe”, sees this as Jesus giving them the authority to enforce God’s laws, laws written in the Code of Canon Law.

Bound by Civil Law

To this day the term is still used not only in Church law but in civil law as well, although in a different sense. Instead of forbidding, “binding” implies obligations [emphasis mine]:

What then are legal obligations? They are legal requirements with which law’s subjects are bound to conform. An obligatory act or omission is something the law renders non-optional. Since people plainly can violate their legal obligations, “non-optional” does not mean that they are physically compelled to perform, nor even that law leaves them without any eligible alternative. On the contrary, people often calculate whether or not to perform their legal duties.

This shows us that although binding obligations are non-optional, it does not mean physical coercion or absence of alternatives is necessary. The reader’s objection to my usage of bound is based on the misunderstanding that binding necessitates removal of all alternatives. On the contrary, a person can be bound and still have alternatives.

Bound by Belief

Consider theft. A buyer is bound by legal obligation to pay the seller the right amount. This obligation is binding; it’s non-optional. This does not mean the buyer is not free to ignore the obligation. He can try to pay less, pay more, pay with something else, or not pay at all, which leads to certain sanctions. But there are sanctions precisely because there is a prior binding obligation to pay.

In the same way, Catholics are bound to believe the Church. Again, being bound does not mean the Catholic is not free to ignore the obligation: he is free to dissent. But like theft, doing so involves sanctions — heresy, exclusion from communion, etc. — precisely because there is a binding obligation.

So being bound to believe (or obey) does not necessarily mean a Catholic cannot dissent (or disobey). Catholics are free to disobey, but they are not free to disobey without consequences. It is in this sense that they are bound. Thus, my original usage of the term is valid. But so is the connotation of the word: being tied and gagged like hostages.

When hostages are physically prevented from escape, their freedom is obviously limited. But what if the hostages are not physically tied? What if the kidnapper threatens the hostage with something else (killing the hostage, killing a loved one, torture, blackmail, etc.)? The hostage may not be physically prevented from trying to escape (in the sense that he can attempt it) but the effect is just the same.

Now consider clerical child abuse. A child who is raped by a priest is not physically prevented from telling the authorities. Nor is the child’s family. But through Crimen Solicitationis, which details a Church policy to silence victims and coverup abuses, threats of excommunication and eternal damnation were used to silence the victims and their families. They were gagged into silence because they were bound to believe.

Because to many believers, eternal damnation is the worst possible fate — far worse than kidnapping or torture or death. I brought this up because the sanctions for doubting dogmatic teachings are similar to those used to silence the victims of clerical child abuse.

The problem with such sanctions when it comes to religious belief is it puts the believer’s motivation into question. Surely, it is possible that a believer obeys the Church completely out of their own volition. But when threats of eternal damnation and rewards of eternal life are at stake, can you really say that a believer is not bound to believe?