Thwarting a Catholic conversion?
I recently learned that a friend of mine, and a long-time atheist (and atheist blogger), is planning to convert to Catholicism. It seems the impetus for her conversion was increasing frustration that she had no good naturalistic account for objective morality in the form of virtue ethics; that upon reflection, she decided she felt like morality "loved" her; that this feeling implied God; and that she had sufficient "if God, then Catholicism" priors to point toward Catholicism, even though she's bisexual (!) and purports to still feel uncertain about the Church's views on sexuality. (Side note: all of this information is material she's blogged about herself, so it's not as if I'm sharing personal details she would prefer to be kept private.)
First, I want to state the rationality lesson I learned from this episode: atheists who spend a great deal of their time analyzing and even critiquing the views of a particular religion are at-risk atheists. Eliezer's spoken about this sort of issue before ("Someone who spends all day thinking about whether the Trinity does or does not exist, rather than Allah or Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is more than halfway to Christianity."), but I guess it took a personal experience to really drive the point home. When I first read my friend's post, I had a major "I notice that I am confused" moment, because it just seemed so implausible that someone who understood actual atheist arguments (as opposed to dead little sister Hollywood Atheism) could convert to religion, and Catholicism of all things. I seriously considered (and investigated) the possibility that her post was some kind of prank or experiment or otherwise not sincere, or that her account had been hijacked by a very good impersonator (both of these seem quite unlikely at this point).
But then I remembered how I had been frustrated in the past by her tolerance for what seemed like rank religious bigotry and how often I thought she was taking seriously theological positions that seemed about as likely as the 9/11 attacks being genuinely inspired and ordained by Allah. I remembered how I thought she had a confused conception of meta-ethics and that she often seemed skeptical of reductionism, which in retrospect should have been a major red flag for purported atheists. So yeah, spending all your time arguing about Catholic doctrine really is a warning sign, no matter how strongly you seem to champion the "atheist" side of the debate. Seriously.
But second, and more immediately, I wonder if anybody has advice on how to handle this, or if they've had similar experiences with their friends. I do care about this person, and I was devastated to hear this news, so if there's something I can do to help her, I want to. Of course, I would prefer most that she stop worrying about religion entirely and just grok the math that makes religious hypotheses so unlikely as to not be worth your time. But in the short term I'd settle for her not becoming a Catholic, and not immersing herself further in Dark Side Epistemology or surrounding herself with people trying to convince her that she needs to "repent" of her sexuality.
I think I have a pretty good understanding of the theoretical concepts at stake here, but I'm not sure where to start or what style of argument is likely to have the best effect at this point. My tentative plan is to express my concern, try to get more information about what she's thinking, and get a dialogue going (I expect she'll be open to this), but I wanted to see if you all had more specific suggestions, especially if you've been through similar experiences yourself. Thanks!
When None Dare Urge Restraint, pt. 2
In the original When None Dare Urge Restraint post, Eliezer discusses the dangers of the "spiral of hate" that can develop when saying negative things about the Hated Enemy trumps saying accurate things. Specifically, he uses the example of how the 9/11 hijackers were widely criticized as "cowards," even though this vice in particular was surely not on their list. Over this past Memorial Day weekend, however, it seems like the exact mirror-image problem played out in nearly textbook form.
The trouble began when MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted* that he was uncomfortable with how people use the word "hero" to describe those who die in war -- in particular, because he thinks this sort of automatic valor attributed to the war dead makes it easier to justify future wars. And as you might expect, people went crazy in response, calling Hayes's comments "reprehensible and disgusting," something that "commie grad students would say," and that old chestnut, apparently offered without a hint of irony, "unAmerican." If you watch the video, you can tell that Hayes himself is really struggling to make the point, and by the end he definitely knew he was going to get in trouble, as he started backpedaling with a "but maybe I'm wrong about that." And of course, he apologized the very next day, basically stating that it was improper to have "opine[d] about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots."
This whole episode struck me as particularly frightening, mostly because Hayes wasn't even offering a criticism. Soldiers in the American military are, of course, an untouchable target, and I would hardly expect any attack on soldiers to be well received, no matter how grounded. But what genuinely surprised me in this case was that Hayes was merely saying "let's not automatically apply the single most valorizing word we have, because that might cause future wars, and thus future war deaths." But apparently anything less than maximum praise was not only incorrect, but offensive.
Of course, there's no shortage of rationality failures in political discourse, and I'm obviously not intending this post as a political statement about any particular war, policy, candidate, etc. But I think this example is worth mentioning, for two main reasons. First, it's just such a textbook example of the exact sort of problem discussed in Eliezer's original post, in a purer form than I can recall seeing since 9/11 itself. I don't imagine many LW members need convincing in this regard, but I do think there's value in being mindful of this sort of problem on the national stage, even if we're not going to start arguing politics ourselves.
But second, I think this episode says something not just about nationalism, but about how people approach death more generally. Of course, we're all familiar with afterlifism/"they're-in-a-better-place"-style rationalizations of death, but labeling a death as "heroic" can be a similar sort of rationalization. If a death is "heroic," then there's at least some kind of silver lining, some sense of justification, if only partial justification. The movie might not be happy, but it can still go on, and there's at least a chance to play inspiring music. So there's an obvious temptation to label death as "heroic" as much as possible -- I'm reminded of how people tried to call the 9/11 victims "heroes," apparently because they had the great courage to work in buildings that were targeted in a terrorist attack.
If a death is just a tragedy, however, you're left with a more painful situation. You have to acknowledge that yes, really, the world isn't fair, and yes, really, thousands of people -- even the Good Guy's soldiers! -- might be dying for no good reason at all. And even for those who don't really believe in an afterlife, facing death on such a large scale without the "heroic" modifier might just be too painful. The obvious problem, of course -- and Hayes's original point -- is that this sort of death-anesthetic makes it all too easy to numb yourself to more death. If you really care about the problem, you have to face the sheer tragedy of it. Sometimes, all you can say is "we shall have to work faster." And I think that lesson's as appropriate on Memorial Day as any other.
*I apologize that this clip is inserted into a rather low-brow attack video. At the time of posting it was the only link on Youtube I could find, and I wanted something accessible.
Non-theist cinema?
There isn't much in the way of explicitly atheist cinema* -- that is, movies that contain the explicit or implicit message that religion is nothing but superstition, and where this point itself is a central part of the story. The only popular films that jump to mind here are The Invention of Lying, and to a lesser extent The Man from Earth (overall a phenomenal movie, but far less well known). Sure, there are lots of popular movies that make fun of organized religion, or what some people might call religious "fanaticism" (e.g., Dogma, Saved, The Life of Brian, Jesus Camp). But pretty much all of these come away with the message that it's fine to be "spiritual" or whatever, so long as you don't hurt other people, and don't get too crazy about what you believe. As much as some "conservative" pundits love to accuse Hollywood "liberals" of being godless, there sure aren't many movies where godlessness is really taken seriously.
And that's unfortunate, in my view, as movies are probably the most prevalent and influential art form for the general public, and because many people will form their views on abstract concepts based on the percepts that movies provide (related to the issue of generalizing from fictional evidence). One need only glance over the examples on the tvtropes page "Hollywood Atheist" to see that movies and television aren't exactly putting the best foot forward for our kind.
But perhaps there's a bit more hope in the way of non-theist cinema, as opposed to overt atheist cinema. Of course, any story without gods is a non-theist story, and there are plenty of movies that don't touch on gods or religion at all. But what I'm talking about are movies where one would normally expect to find religion, but where no religion is to be found -- in other words, movies that seem to be depicting the alternate world where humanity never fell prey to this particular superstition, and where the concepts of god and religion simply don't exist.
The movie that inspired this particular thought was 50/50, the recent comedy-drama where Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a man dealing with potentially fatal cancer. It's a great movie, but what struck me afterwards is how completely absent any mention of god, religion, the afterlife, etc. was in a movie about a man, along with his friends and family, potentially facing his own death. There are lots of characters, lots of conflicts, lots of different perspectives on what he's going through, but nothing at all from anyone amounting to a "spiritual" response to the situation (at least that I recall).
And it got me thinking, what other sorts of issues are there where we would normally expect religion to pop up, such that a story without it would be decidedly non-theist, as opposed to incidentally non-theist? And are there other major movies that you think tell such a story? I ask both because I'm always eager to hear about new movies I might enjoy (or old movies I might appreciate more), but also because I think this sort of non-theist cinema might be a good bridge to people who would instinctively rebel against anything openly atheist. In other words, show people that a "godless" world really isn't all that crazy, that people get by just fine and find ways to face conflicts, etc. Anyway, just thought I'd poll the membership and see what people thought about this idea. Looking forward to seeing the responses!
*I'm well aware that there's quite a bit of atheist and non-theist art in other mediums -- sf literature most prominently. But I'm focusing on movies (and perhaps to a lesser extent, television) because those are the main forms of "public art" in our culture, and the mediums most likely to influence how the public at large views these concepts.
The scope of "free will" within biology?
I've recently read through Eliezer's sequence on "free will", and I generally found it to be a fairly satisfying resolution/dissolution of the many misunderstandings involved in standard debates about the subject. There's no conflict between saying "your past circumstances determined that you would rush into the burning orphanage" and "you decided to rush into the burning orphanage"; what really matters is the experience of weighing possible options against your emotions and morals, without knowledge of what you will decide, rather than some hypothetical freedom to have done something different, etc. Basically, the experience of deciding between alternatives is real, don't worry too much about nonsense philosophical "free will" debates, just move on and live your life. Fine.
But I'm trying to figure out the best way to conceptualize the idea that certain biological conditions can "inhibit" your "free will," even under a reductionist understanding of the concept. Consider this recent article in The Atlantic called "The Brain on Trial." The basic argument is that we have much less control over ourselves than we think, that biology and upbringing have tremendous influences on our decisions, and that the criminal justice system needs to account for the pervasiveness of biological influence on our actions. On the one hand, duh. The article treats the idea that we are "just" our biology as some kind of big revelation that has only recently been understood:
The crux of the problem is that it no longer makes sense to ask, “To what extent was it his biology, and to what extent was it him?,” because we now understand that there is no meaningful distinction between a person’s biology and his decision-making. They are inseparable.
Is that because we've just now discovered reductionism? If we weren't "just" our biology, what would we be? Magic? Whatever we mean by consciousness and decision-making, I'm sure LW members pretty much all accept that they occur within physics. The author doesn't even seem to fully grasp this point himself, because he states at the end that there "may" be at least some space for free will, independent of our biology, but that we just don't understand it yet:
Free will may exist (it may simply be beyond our current science), but one thing seems clear: if free will does exist, it has little room in which to operate. It can at best be a small factor riding on top of vast neural networks shaped by genes and environment.
Obviously most LW reductionists are going to immediately grasp that "free will" doesn't exist in addition to our neural networks. What would that even mean? It's not "90% neural networks, 10% free will" -- the point is that the process of your neural networks operating normally on a particular decision is what we mean by "free will," at least when we care to use that concept. (If anyone thinks I've stated this incorrectly, feel free to correct me.)
But still, notwithstanding that a lot of this article sort of seems to be missing the point (largely because the author doesn't quite get how obvious the central premise really is), I'm still wrestling with how to understand some of its more specific points, within the reductionist understanding of free will. For example, Charles Whitman, the shooter who killed 13 people from the UT Tower, had written out a suicide note noting that he had recently been the "victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts" and requesting that his brain be examined. An autopsy revealed that he had a large brain tumor that had damaged his amygdala, thus causing emotional and social disturbances. Similarly, in 2000, a man named "Alex" (fake name, but real case) suddenly developed pedophilic impulses at age 40, and was eventually convicted of child molestation. Turns out he also had a brain tumor, and once it was removed, his sexual interests went back to normal. The pedophilic impulses soon returned, and the doctors discovered the tumor had grown back -- they removed it for good, and his behavior went back to normal.
Obviously people like Charles and Alex aren't "victims of their biology" anymore than the rest of us. Nobody's brain has some magic "free will" space that "exempts" the person from biology. But even under the reductionist conception of free will, it still seems like Charles and Alex are somehow "less free" than "normal" people. Even though everyone's decisions are, in some sense, determined by their past circumstances, there still seems to be a meaningful way in which Charles are Alex are less able to make decisions "for themselves" than those of us without brain tumors -- almost as if they had a tick which caused involuntary physical actions, but drawn out over time in patterns, rather than in single bursts. Or to put it differently, where the phrase "your past circumstances determine who you are when you face a choice, you are still the one that decides" holds true for most people, it seems like it doesn't hold true for them. At the very least, it seems like we would certainly be justified in judging Charles and Alex differently from people who don't suffer from brain tumors.
But if we're already committed to the reductionist understanding of free will in the first place, what does this intuition that Charles and Alex are somehow "less free" really mean? Obviously we all have biological impulses that make us more or less inclined to make certain decisions, and that might therefore impede on some ideal conception of "control" over ourselves. But are these impulses qualitatively different from biological conditions that "override" normal decision-making? Is a brain tumor pushing on your amygdala more akin to prison bars that really do inhibit your free will in a purely physical sense, or just a more intense version of genes that give you a slight disposition toward violent behavior?
My intuition is that somewhere along the line here I may be asking a "wrong question," or importing some remnant of a non-biological conception of free will into my thinking. But I can't quite pin this issue down in a way that really resolves the answer in a satisfying way, so I was hoping that some of you might be able to help me reason through this appropriately. Thoughts?
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