At Last!

by

by hilzoy

Like many of you, I’ve noticed a certain lacuna in commentary on the Virginia Tech shootings. To be sure, Debbie Schlussel has provided her usual incisive commentary*, those bravos at NRO have carefully graded the heroism of each and every one of the victims, and Rush Limbaugh offers us this tasteful speculation: “maybe the liberals and their culture of death is the problem, folks.” But I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that what we really need to know is: What does Dinesh D’Souza have to say about this?

Well, wonder no more.

“Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found.“

Oh: so that’s why I have been unable to locate myself for several days! I keep telling people I’m trying to find myself, and they think I’m having some sort of 60s flashback moment, but I really mean it! Now, at last, I understand.

“Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.”

Here’s Nikki Giovanni’s speech in its entirety:

“We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant in the killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokie Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.”

Personally, I can’t figure out what part of it D’Souza supposes to be “language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.” Maybe “Hokie Nation”?

Back to D’Souza:

“The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference.”

Personally, I’m not sure what “all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning” are. A rock is devoid of meaning. So is seafoam. What properties do they have in common? And why should we take Richard Dawkins’ word for this anyways? I respect him when he’s on his own topic, but when he starts going on about atheism, he isn’t.

And: is the main characteristic of the universe really pitiless indifference? Personally, I would have thought that only a conscious entity could have an attitude like indifference. If D’Souza means only that the universe, not having any emotions of its own, cannot be said to care about us, it’s hard to see why he or anyone would think that this is the main characteristic of the universe — it would seem to be on a par with such characteristics as: being unsmiling (because it has no face), being illiterate (of course the universe can’t read), or not wearing shoes (since it has no feet.) Properties like its size would seem to be more important than its not having a specific emotion because it has no emotions at all.

Of course, Christians don’t think the universe has emotions either, so I’m not sure what D’Souza is getting at here.

“Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul–well, that’s an illusion!

To no one’s surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil.”

That sentence has to be a serious contender for the Non Sequitur of the Century award. Let’s try some other examples:

* Dinesh D’Souza has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11 leaves off and liberals’ responsibility begins, it is even more difficult for conservative hacks to deal with the problem of reconciling determinism and free will.

* Pat Robertson has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God will send the next hurricane, it is even more difficult for Christians to deal with Zeno’s paradox.

* John Derbyshire has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know the difference between fantasy heroism and the real thing, it is even more difficult for NRO writers to deal with the problem of other minds.

What’s especially silly about this sentence is that the problem of evil is a problem specifically for Christians. It is, basically, the problem of how a good and loving God could have created a world with evil in it. Atheists do not have this problem at all. So I guess they don’t “deal with it”, in the sense in which they don’t have to “deal with” the problem of how Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the Eucharist. Somehow, though, I suspect that’s not what D’Souza had in mind.

“The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Trust me on this: D’Souza has no earthly clue what he’s talking about. Just none. Suppose that by “a purely materialist universe”, D’Souza means: a universe of the sort that science tries to explain. (If he means something different — if, for instance, he means some very strong version of “purely material”, then there’s no reason to think that atheists have to believe that.) In such a world, all kinds of things other than material objects can exist. Numbers, for instance. Abstract objects. Legal systems, and all the relationships they make possible (e.g., ownership and marriage.) Solutions to chess problems. The world is just awash in nonmaterial things that are wholly consistent with science.

Of course, moral values might or might not be among them. But answering that question would require a lot more than saying: hey, they aren’t “material”.

“For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho’s shooting of all those people can be understood in this way–molecules acting upon molecules.

Well, it can be understood that way. But that’s not to say it’s the only way it can be understood. Similarly, a painting by Rembrandt can be described as a collection of molecules. But that in no way rules out the possibility of understanding it as a work of art.

If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.”

If modern science implied that when we look at these shootings, all we could do was say: let’s plot the trajectories of the various lumps of lead that we call “bullets”, or perhaps the firings of each individual neuron in the mass of wetware once known as “Cho Seung-Hui”, then we would need something more. We would need some way of understanding how to think about Cho as a human being, how to reach out and offer comfort to those who are grieving, how to react in the face of violent mental illness, and how to understand the fact that things like this can happen.

How fortunate, then, that modern science doesn’t in the least preclude us from doing any of these things.

***

* Note on “Ishmael Ax”: Schlussel notes that Ishmael was “considered the father of all Arabs and a very important figure in Islam.” It’s not clear to me that one should assume that the things Cho wrote make sense to anyone but him, and so I’m not sure there has to be a reason he wrote this. However, if there is, I think there’s a much more plausible interpretation. In the horrible videos that Cho sent to NBC, he seems to identify himself with people who have been spit on and cast aside and tortured by the rich, who have never suffered a day of pain in their lives, and who torment people like him and force garbage down his throat just because they can. With this as background, I think that the obvious interpretation of Ishmael is: the child who was cast out of his home and cut off from his family so that Isaac would not have to share his inheritance. (Gen. 21 10ff.)

181 thoughts on “At Last!”

  2. re nikki giovanni’s speech, it references concepts such as “sad”, “imagination”, “mourning”, “innocent” and “(non-physical) hearts”. possibly these concepts don’t exist in the “purely materialistic universe” of d’souza’s hypothetical atheist, hence her speech

  3. …is “heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning”.
    (and d’souza is such a goose i can’t tell if this is an unfair thing to say or not).

  4. I have mixed feelings about Dawkins’ claims re atheism. While I share his atheism and agree that much religious feeling has led to horrific events, I am uncomfortable with the ferocity of his condemnations of believers. People need spirituality in the same way that they need art or companionship or freedom.
    In any case, Mr. Dawkins’ commentary is undeniably more rational than the poppycock that hilzoy presents for our undelectation. And I especially appreciate her assembly of facts and ideas on the topic — very well done, hilzoy! Thanks!

  5. Oops, I want to make clear that the “poppycock” to which I refer is a portion of the material quoted by hilzoy, not her own thoughts and reactions to the material. Sorry for the sloppiness.

  6. Glenn Beck just uttered the most incoherent, but self-delighted bouillibaise of shite ever to spew forth over that accursed invention of RCA scientists.
    Immigration, political correctness, gun-free zones, the entire list …..
    If Beck had submitted that opening diatribe in a creative writing course I was teaching, he’d be tasered and trussed until the authorities arrived.
    Rush Limbaugh blames liberals for this, the cocksucker.
    I’m buying a gun.

  8. This post is excellent. I’m not normally the biggest fan of going after easy targets like this, but D’Souza is so absurd, pretentious, and insulting, and this undercuts him so well, that it far more than makes up for it.

  9. I’m disgusted.
    There is going to be lots at handwringing over the next few months about how to prevent this in the future. Lots of talk of all kinds of ineffectual policy. And yet the one small and simple thing we could do to discourage this, we didn’t have the fortitude to do. I’m just appalled that NBC is showing this video, these photographs. It’s just sickening. They’ve given the kid everything he wanted. This all played out exactly as in his fantasy, and that only encourages copycats. You would think that there would be public pressure on the media to refrain from showing these, simply on the grounds of discouraging future imitators.

  11. Rilkefan:
    I’m great. How about you? Thanks for asking.
    See, I knew a sensitive liberal would be the first one to wonder if I needed a waiting period, you statist you. 😉
    Hope lives.
    Debbie Schlussel notes that the shooter had Ismael tatooed on his arm, dropping a lifted eyebrow “hmmm” into her speculation like a dissonant chord struck in a sequel horror movie.
    She neglects to mention that he was an English major and maybe had a little Melville under his belt, like any red-blooded American.
    In her breathless play-by-play earlier, in quick succession, she declared him a Pakistani, a Chinese immigrant, an Andanman Island primitive, the spawn of a threesome between Allah, Phil Spector, and Dennis Kucinich, and a Chelsea Clinton lookalike, before repeating the hated MSM’s reportage that the guy was a Korean who had been in America long enough to choose wrong over right, probably just from listening to the tone of Rush Limbaugh’s voice.
    Schlussel, schlussel, schluss, anschluss ….. wait a second …
    …she’s one of my people!
    Let me tell you how we Germans immigrate to other countries … we assemble 30 Panzer divisions and the Luftwaffe and we blight the landscape until someone kicks our butts.
    Which is what the comely Debbie requires.
    The text of the VAT crazy guy quoted both the worst of the Mullahs AND Dinesh D’Souza, agreeing with them that everyone BUT them are at fault.
    Atheists and psychiatrists wish they’d got a happy pill down the guy’s throat and the faithful wish they’d got him down on his knees.
    Meanwhile, the killer leaves enough coherent incoherency, thrown onto the sidewalk like so many coins at the feet of desperate beggars, who fight each other for the meaningless currency they cash in with the corner media shark.
    I’ m O.K. now.
    I rant.
    No need to lock down the campus.

  13. “Atheists are nowhere to be found” is a falsehood on a par with “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

  14. Jim, my favorite response to that one:
    If there are no atheists in foxholes, does that mean there could be no war without religion?

  15. I suspect that D’Souza is misrepresenting Dawkins. I don’t think Dawkins would say something like “the universe has all the properties of a system utterly devoid of meaning”.
    Calling the world “devoid of meaning” is something anti-atheists do. I’ve yet to meet an atheist who felt that way. Most of us are just baffled at the idea that the only way to find “meaning” in life is to invent fantasy friends.
    I’m tired of D’Souza. Can’t we just send him somewhere where he’ll leave us alone?

  17. See, I knew a sensitive liberal would be the first one to wonder if I needed a waiting period, you statist you. 😉
    And on the other hand, a libertarian fully supports your right to arm yourself against Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. 😀

  18. Cho was an English major and aside from the biblical connections, “Call me Ishmail” is perhaps the best known beginning line of any American novel. I am not conversant enough with the nuance of Moby Dick to say much more, but I am surprised that I haven’t seen this angle mentioned.

  19. D’Souza is amazingly dumb, even for a conservative pundit. sometimes i think he writes his essays the way some people write computer programs: if it compiles, ship it! or, in English: if it meets the rules of grammar and syntax, it’s good to go.

  20. I’ve seen a lot of people dogpile on Dawkins lately, making all sorts of claims about what he has said or, more often, what the implications are of things he’s written, and in my opinion, they’re all full of crap. I’ve read The God Delusion, and I’ve seen him speak about it, and let’s just say that D’Souza is taking a lot of liberty in interpreting Dawkins’s statements. I don’t have my book with me–I’ve lent it out–but let’s consider the source for a second. Would anyone here ever really expect Dinesh D’Souza to give a honest explication of something Dawkins said? Seriously, if D’Souza told me that the sky was blue, I’d begin observations to discover whether or not it was, in fact, green. He’s one of the most dishonest conservatives around today, and that’s a hell of a bar to clear.

  21. I don’t know: the shooter was railing about Western decadence and consumerism and hedonism. Sounds like me he was reading him some D’Souza.

  23. Awesome post! The man is as dumb as a post and yet makes a living at being dumb as a post. Very impressive, in a twisted sort of way.

  24. A simple illustration of the Souzaphonic belief system: A Shoemaker-Levy comet colliding with Jupiter is devoid of meaning because who cares about Jupiter? The same comet striking Earth would be evil because it would silence Dinesh D’Souza*. The difference is that Jupiter doesn’t have a loving God who cares for him/it.
    *The goodness or evilness of this specific consequence of the event is debatable, but I can’t imagine even a pitiless, indifferent universe not getting a chuckle out of it.

  25. Great post.
    It is mind-bending that D’Souza has any reputation as an intellectual.
    Interesting how every act is now seen through a deeply-tinted ideological prism. It’s like Cho acted rationally to assert his world view. The guy is/was crazy. He does not ‘prove’ anything really. That some things have no deeper meaning is part of the tragedy – this loss of life is tragic. It is a waste.It saddens everyone. Just as the death of almost 200 Iraqis yesterday is heart-wrenching.
    The best explanation I have seen for what happened in Blacksburg is from Bob Herbert’s column today (behind the NYT wall)quoting Dr. James Gilligan:
    “What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”
    Ideologically not very satisfying, but it has the ring of truth.

  26. Beautiful rant on D’Souza, who I keep hoping will go off & join a madrassah somewhere …
    That said, his point reminded me of a passage from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon:

    “Bingo. Suddenly, fourteen-fifteenths of the boat is full of water, and the other fifteenth is a pocket of compressed air, capable of supporting life briefly. Most of her crew dead, she fell fast and settled hard onto the bottom, breaking her back and leaving the bow section pointing upwards, as you see her. If anyone was still alive in the bubble, they died a long, slow death. May God have mercy on their souls.”
    In other circumstances, the religious reference would make Randy uncomfortable, but here it seems like the only appropriate thing to say. Think what you will about religious people, they always have something to say at times like this. What would an atheist come up with? Yes, the organisms inhabiting that submarine must have lost their higher neural functions over a prolonged period of time and eventually turned into pieces of rotten meat. So what?

    Since N.S. doesn’t arouse the visceral what-an-idiot feelings that D.D. does, it’s noteworthy that Hilzoy’s dismemberment of D.D. would seem to apply equally well to this passage.

  27. This is too easy. D’Sousa’s talking points about deeply religious language:
    “a child in Africa dying of AIDS”
    “invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army”
    “the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home … being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized”

  28. I’m hoping that we aren’t hearing from atheists as atheists because they don’t really think that bringing up problems of religion at a time like this is either helpful, constructive or appropriate, unlike some religious zealots who use every disaster as an excuse to claim that their particular religion has an answer. Rather, the atheists are speaking as caring human beings who are showing their concern for those who have been killed or hurt by the actions of a very disturbed man.
    I realize that Dinesh D’Souza has his axe to grind, but I cannot fathom why. What point can he possibly think he is getting across with such erroneous commentary?
    It is pretty clear now that Cho Seung-Hui was a man who was suffering from a very serious mental disease. Nothing about religion deals with this problem in an effective way. Taking comfort in religion may be helpful for some people after the fact, but it doesn’t address what happened in any meaningful way. As was said, the Problem of Evil has never been dealt with in a satisfactory manner.
    It doesn’t require atheism to decide that people have to take responsibility for their lives, their culture, their country and their world. Most religious people I know have the same attitude. God may provide, God may solve problems, God may be gracious, but He doesn’t do it by Himself. On a day-to-day basis, God works best when we don’t rely on Him.
    Cho Seung-Hui doesn’t teach us anything beyond the fact that our mental health system doesn’t work very well and our methods of protecting ourselves from dangerously unhinged people are not very good, both because we often ignore those who are dangerously crazed and because we don’t always recognize them or successfully do something to help them. Everything else is a mirror of ourselves.

  29. As a devout Christian, I am ashamed that D’Souza speaks as if he is representing me and other believers.
    “What’s especially silly about this sentence is that the problem of evil is a problem specifically for Christians” Not really.
    For those who have said this guy needed medications, I highly doubt that they would have helped. I am not sure if he was more sociopathic or psychopathic, neither of which responds to medications. And, although I at some level believe in “evil”, I would not classify him as evil.
    We will probably never know what ultimately was his motivating force, although plenty of armchair and real psychologists, etc will try to make some theory promoted above all others.
    As far as showing the tapes on television, I am of two minds (which is normal for me.) On the one side, I cannot imagine how painful it is for families and friends to watch them. On the other hand, it might make people more aware of what to look for in others who might be headed in that direction. Unfortunately, we live in country full of over-reactors, so that may not be a good idea afterall.

  30. john miller: as an ex-Christian who has an enormous amount of respect for my former religion, I agree.
    About “the problem of evil”: there is a standard, and famous, philosophical problem that goes by that name, and it is as I described it. (See here andhere.) I might have been wrong in assuming that D’Souza was referring to that problem, though. I mean, it’s not as if the rest of his work is so well-informed that no other explanation is possible.

  31. hilzoy, note that your cite expresses the “problem of evil” as being an issue in almost all religions, not just Christianity. That is what I was referring to, that it is not just Christianity that has to grapple with that issue. But perhaps I misread the intention behind your original statement.

  32. Oh, true, sorry. I thought you were disagreeing with the ‘not a problem for atheists’ part.
    My bad ;(

  34. Hokie Nation is the name in Numbers given to the lost tribe of Israel. I think it was the genesis for the native population in America.

  35. it’s noteworthy that Hilzoy’s dismemberment of D.D. would seem to apply equally well to this passage.
    while i can’t speak for Hilzoy, my first reaction to that was pretty much the same reaction i had when i read D’Souza: what a dumb thing to say. Stephenson’s a decent storyteller but he’s never struck me as a deep thinker. and if he really thinks atheists put no value on human life beyond cold scientific facts, the most charitable thing you can say about him is that he’s profoundly ignorant.
    but i think Stephenson’s saying something about what people expect to hear at times like that. “May God have mercy on their souls” is a hopeful thing to say; it’s a polite thing to say; it’s something a polite atheist will let slide in situations like that. and, even more important, it’s what religious people always say – it’s doesn’t take much for a religious person to “come up with” it, since it’s a stock phrase. that well-worn ritualistic familiarity is part of the comfort of the phrase – you go to a funeral, you expect to hear it; then you hear it, and you achieve some resolution, even if you don’t believe it.

  36. I think it is just the belief that if there is no supernatural or afterlife, than we are all just accidental chemical reactions, with no purpose. If ‘this’ is all there is, what is the point? If my chemical reaction ends 50 years earlier than its potential, who cares? But if after my life there is some continuation of consciousness, then life is not so barren.
    So probably both comments are projections of beleivers on what they think non-believers must conceive life is.

  38. AN ANSWER TO DSOUZAS WHERE IS ATHEISM? QUESTION

    Dinesh DSouza asks an interesting question in his AOL Blog relating to the tragedy at Virginia Tech; Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen?
    Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Ath…

  39. If ‘this’ is all there is, what is the point?
    the point is that humans are conscious, compassionate and illogical.
    i can only speak for myself, (so that’s what i generally do 🙂 ) but i don’t believe there’s an afterlife or a supernatural anything; and as Robyn Hitchcock sings it: “Where do you go when you die? Nowhere.” but, listening to that song makes the collection of meat, bones and fluid that i call “me” smile. and i like that. being with my wife makes me smile; being nice to strangers makes me smile; eating fresh pineapple makes me smile; sleeping makes me smile; not being in pain makes me smile. so, The Point is: there is a universe full of things that make me smile – and i like to smile.
    we keep living, despite the knowledge that this is all there is, because our self-reflective ugly bags of mostly water enjoy being alive.

  41. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference.
    This is also the main characteristic of Dinesh D’Souza.
    CharleyC: Wouldn’t it be nice if some of these rooftop-proclaiming Christians tried out the golden rule?
    That would make them simpering wussies in the eyes of little baby Jesus, who we all know was about smiting teh librulz.

  42. I suggest Mr. D’Souza never read that excellent SF story “The Cold Equations” if he is worried about atheists believing in the indifference of the universe.
    What we agnostics and atheists are saying is, not that life is meaningless, but that the supernatural is not needed as an explanation for reality, and that anyone who thinks that appeals to a deity will cause a miracle getting around physical laws will be disappointed.

  43. This all just goes to show that those folks who insist that atheism is a religion are utterly clueless. The idea that we would turn for comfort to our lack of faith in times of crisis is simply nonsensical. That’s what relationships with other human beings and inner strength are for (as non-blinkered religious folk already know).
    jrudkis: I think it is just the belief that if there is no supernatural or afterlife, than we are all just accidental chemical reactions, with no purpose.
    I think your meaning here is slightly obscured, since an afterlife doesn’t per se give life any more meaning than does a final death. Do you mean to say that without eternal reward or punishment for our deeds in life there is no possibility for moral order?
    Suppose, having lived a virtuous life, your soul is lifted up to paradise. What then? If you are unable to find meaning in your existence without some external system of rewards, Isn’t this heaven just a recipe for an eternal existential crisis? Is the memory of your virtue on earth enough to sustain your into infinity?
    Which is just to say that I don’t think heaven and hell resolve these sorts of existential problems any more than do earthly rewards.

  44. Cleek,
    If that is all we are, I would find it hard to not make my short time the most enjoyable possible, and not worry about resources for future sentient bags of water. Whether humanity continues to exist or not would be zero impact on anything.
    Not saying that you are wrong, but it is hard to concieve of myself as being no different from a microbe, briefly alive simply to reproduce and die.

  45. What would D’Souza say about this fine, upstanding Christian reaction:
    “Pastor Fred, a/k/a/ Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., who refers to himself and his grown children as “the most hated family in America,” claims he and his Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist ‘church’ –which is made up almost entirely of his own offspring– are heading to Virginia Tech in order to ‘protest’ the funerals of the slain students and professors. He claims he will use bullhorns and that his family will carry large placards saying some version of “God Hates Virginia Tech.” He claims his ‘gospel’ for the occasion will be, ‘God is glad that the students and professors at VT were slain; that the massacre was God’s happy retribution for the USA’s love of homosexuals.’”

  46. Gromit,
    I think that having an expectation of continued consciousness provides hope. Perhaps it provides reason for effort to continue when life is hard. When life just sucks, and that is all you get, why would you continue to suffer through it?
    I don’t actually beleive in heaven or hell based on works, but on expectations. I think you will experience after death that which you expect so a muslim martyr probably does experience 72 virgins-though hopefully they are very nagging. Conversely, a very pious person who does great works but has a fear and expectation of some hell like eternity will experience that.
    So I really do not have a belief in some diety pulling strings, but simply of continued consciousness in some form.
    Grasping at straws for sure, but that is all I got.

  47. jrudkis: If that is all we are, I would find it hard to not make my short time the most enjoyable possible, and not worry about resources for future sentient bags of water. Whether humanity continues to exist or not would be zero impact on anything.
    Here’s the thing, you are here discussion the possibility that there is no grand universal meaning to your life, and worrying about how that knowledge might make you treat others. Does the fact that that is your first thought not tell you that something about the human condition makes us (or at least you, if you don’t want to generalize) intrinsically compassionate? If it helps you to justify the feelings you have to say that these feelings are supernaturally-inspired, so be it, but it is pretty clear that they are still there even when you question the metaphysical stuff.
    As far as I’m concerned, the knowledge that it’s humans’ evolution into social creatures who pair-bond, form social groups, and care for their young for a very long time, and the knowledge that these emotions are driven by a bunch of incredibly intricate chemical reactions, doesn’t change my appreciation of these human traits one bit. But to each his own.

  48. If that is all we are, I would find it hard to not make my short time the most enjoyable possible, and not worry about resources for future sentient bags of water.
    see, it makes me happy to know that i’m not intentionally destroying the world for future generations. i enjoy thinking that, if i’m thought of at all in the future, it won’t be along the lines of “what a jerk!”. likewise, i don’t litter, at least in part, because i don’t want to be thought of badly by complete strangers.
    and my imagined relationship to future generations feels pretty much the same as my imagined relationship to strangers who are alive today. they’re both instances of what a Psychology teacher i once had called “the nosy old lady on the hill”: society. we all act in ways that we imagine are pleasing to society in general, even if there’s no immediate benefit. and i’m perfectly comfortable believing that is an evolved instinct, because, like i said above, it makes me smile when i do it.
    obviously there are people who act without regard to the hypothetical thoughts of imagined strangers – we call those people “assholes”, regardless of their religion, because they end up doing things that negatively affect other people, and they don’t care.

  50. Personally, I have never gotten the idea that eternal life provides a meaning to life. I mean, if you can’t find a meaning in a life of limited duration, how would having an infinite amount of that life help matters?
    I also don’t see why, if life is finite, we should conclude that the only thing that makes sense is to have fun. If you think that it matters to do the right thing and to be a good person, why couldn’t you continue to think that, however long your life was going to last? Conversely, if you thought your life was finite and you didn’t see why you had to be a good person, how would learning that you can expect to live forever change that?
    When I was a Christian, I thought that the importance of doing the right thing didn’t depend on eternal life, and that the crucial thing about God, for these purposes, wasn’t His giving us eternal life, but His goodness. curiously, now that I’m not a Christian, I still believe that.

  51. I think that having an expectation of continued consciousness provides hope. Perhaps it provides reason for effort to continue when life is hard. When life just sucks, and that is all you get, why would you continue to suffer through it?
    Sure, I understand why folks want to believe in eternal reward, but that’s a somewhat different thing than giving life meaning.
    Your philosophy could as easily be turned on its head by asking, if life sucks, and there is something better after you die, why would you suffer through it? I suspect the main reason most of us suffer through even terrible times is that self-preservation is innate to humans and other animals.

  52. This all just goes to show that those folks who insist that atheism is a religion are utterly clueless. The idea that we would turn for comfort to our lack of faith in times of crisis is simply nonsensical.
    That’s exactly right. It’s standard for religious people to respond to a tragedy by wrestling with the question of why a loving God would let this happen. But the standard reaction of nonbelievers to, let’s say, 9/11 was hardly to say “Aha! This proves I was right, there is no God!” In fact, I’m not sure most nonbelievers bother looking for confirmation at all, let alone in tragedy.

  54. Excellent post, Hilzoy. I’ve been thinking about the assertion that atheism (a p.o.v. I’m leaning toward more and more) rejects morality. A while back Sullivan linked (can’t find just now) to a commentary by a Rabbi Gellman who argued

    If a person believes that all human beings are made in the image of God and thus deserve respect, then God is real for that person as the source of his or her transcendent duty to treat all people with love and respect. If, on the other atheist hand, people are just one of many species ruled by the survival of the fittest, then God does not exist for that person and neither does any transcendent duty to treat others with dignity. In this dispute, Sam is not wrong, he is just on the side of those who do not believe in the sanctity of life.

    I find this remarkably myopic. The notion that the only conceivable reason for believing others deserve respect is the belief they were made in the image of God strikes me as wholly illogical.
    Maybe I’m off base here, but it stands to reason, to me, that if, as atheism asserts, mankind created the idea of God, then mankind also created the ideas of respect for other people, the duty to treat others with dignity, and the sanctity of life. All by themselves. A species capable of creating such notions, even if initially in relation to the belief of a God, can surely be expected to value them outside that belief. Mankind has attributed all kinds of rules and laws to the will of this or that God (many of whom are no longer worshipped) only to later have science verify that there’s always been a compelling health reason (or whatever) for following them.

  55. As for the notion of eternal life, I’ve been struggling with that to a large degree as well. The concept of “Heaven” where folks who might have been law-abiding and otherwise nondeserving of being sent to Hell are suddenly supposed to get along well enough that they will no long bicker or resent each other or be tempted to cheat each other or whatever is somewhat idiotic to me. Unless one receives a labotomy at the pearly gates, wouldn’t the same problems and crimes that develop on earth have to occur in heaven as well? If not, then the entire notion of redemption (which is predicated on the idea that good people can do bad things sometimes) makes no sense. So, therefore, eternal life will need to have the same social defenses (police, laws, etc.) with the same threat of punishment (jail, Hell, etc.) as we currently have on Earth, no?
    If so, what’s the difference between Heaven and Earth?
    If not, who would one be in Heaven? Certainly no recognizable form of who they are on Earth.

  56. It is pretty clear now that Cho Seung-Hui was a man who was suffering from a very serious mental disease. Nothing about religion deals with this problem in an effective way.
    Good point. Religion does seem to help with addiction, but even there its contribution to the success rate isn’t terribly big. On other matters, it can be a positive hinderance — I know a woman, and have read at least one memoir about a similar situation, who went into a religion-based drug rehab program with some other mental problems which the program simply refused to acknowledge, let alone help, because the answer to all problems was supposed to be G-d. Just pray a lot, and you won’t need lithium.
    Faith may move mountains and bend hearts, but when it doesn’t work all by itself a lot of religious people go into heavy denial and/or blame mode. Not pretty, and not helpful.

  57. Edward, great comments. The former reminds me of Feuerbach, who IIRC held that God is humanity’s alienation of its own virtues.
    And I was thinking the same thing about eternal life last week — if “I” won’t resemble myself in heaven, then in what sense have “I” survived? But perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that we wouldn’t recognize ourselves without our baser impulses.

  59. (delurking to hop on the Neil Stephenson side-topic): Stephenson was able to sympathetically portray an atheist (Randy’s ancestor Daniel Waterhouse) in the Baroque Cycle. So I just assume the passage in Cryptonomicon (which really got on my nerves) was an instance of Randy being a schmuck.
    (relurk and re-rail)

  60. Also, re: eternal life, there’s Wittgenstein:
    Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the
    human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any
    case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which
    it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for
    ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present
    life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside
    space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of
    natural science that is required.)

  61. Edward, that quote puts me in mind of the thing that has always mystified me about the abortion debate: pro-lifers always say that the fetus must be saved because(shrilly) it has a SOUL!!!
    Even if I accept the notion of a soul, which is difficult at best to reconcile with modern neurobiology, I have never understood why it should make me respect life more. If the body is only a temporary shell and this world only a prelude, shouldn’t I value life a lot LESS than if I think this is all we have? Unless you believe in damnation absent baptism, which most people today don’t, why isn’t the ensouled 5-day blastula better off going promptly to heaven, skipping over the whole vale of tears?

  62. But perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that we wouldn’t recognize ourselves without our baser impulses.
    Yes, even as I wrote that it occurred to me that a better version of ourselves is the basic spin on who we’d be in Heaven. But that idea is problematic for me as well. Assuming there’s an apex of enlightenment or whatever you wish to call the highest achievement in human goodness, it’s obvious that people who die, but go to Heaven, will be at diffent points on the path to that apex when they do. Does everyone get bumped up to the apex upon entering Heaven? That would represent quite a leap for many people, and less so for others. If that’s the case, Heaven, again, sounds like it comes with the spiritual equivalent of a labotomy. Who cares if you live eternally if you can’t reconize yourself in doing so?
    If all Heaven dwellers are not equal in goodness, then the same problems that exist on earth (jealousy, envy, etc.) surely will exist there too.

  63. If not, who would one be in Heaven? Certainly no recognizable form of who they are on Earth.
    the answer is that it’s futile to try to apply logic to divine matters – it’s all beyond logic, beyond experience, beyond our understanding. we should just accept what we’ve been told. you’ll be you in heaven, but you’ll be floating in eternal joy, ensconced in velvet, not necessarily stoned, but beautiful – blissful as if at the peak of orgasm for all eternity. don’t ask anyone to explain, you just will.

  64. And what about the path to that apex? We place so much value on the journey here. The notion that it’s not important enough to continue once we die makes Heaven sound like a very dull place.

  68. Cleek, the sarcasm is unwarranted. Having been the member of 4 different Christian denominations, I don’t remember any describing the afterlife like that, and most do not say you just have to “accept” what you have been told. Most encourage inquiry and some self-definition of one’s faith.

  69. But perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that we wouldn’t recognize ourselves without our baser impulses.
    would anyone else recognize us, or is Heaven a place we go to hang with the hollowed-out shells of people that we used to know ?

  71. or is Heaven a place we go to hang with the hollowed-out shells of people that we used to know
    No, that would be your 20-year high school reunion.

  72. I think it’s kind of nice and comforting to believe that you are going to see your loved ones again in the afterlife. No one has to believe it, of course, but it strikes me as particularly low to mock that sort of belief. The belief isn’t hurting anyone and you should just let it go.

  73. Lobotomy. Referring to the lobes of the brain.
    Spelling. [groan] Who invented that tiresome discipline anyway? ;-PPP

  75. Most encourage inquiry and some self-definition of one’s faith.
    In some ways, I consider myself to still be a Christian, even though I have no evidence or reason to believe that God exists or that there will be an afterlife or that I have a soul. My inquiry led me to that conclusion. Am I a Christian because I identify with the Western Culture that is inextricably tied to Christianity? How many Christians would agree that I am one?
    I know there are some churches like some of the Anglicans, UCC and UU that aren’t terribly concerned about the conclusion that one draws about such ideas as God, the soul, or the afterlife, but there are others who won’t even consider letting you look at actual scientific facts that show that their doctrines about a young earth are false.
    Christianity is absurdly easy to attack and absurdly easy to defend because it isn’t a single thing. I doubt that it was before the Great Schism or, in the West, before the Reformations. Now, it certainly isn’t. All you have to do is pick what you like to attack or defend, and you can find an excellent example of it in Christianity.

  76. it strikes me as particularly low to mock that sort of belief. The belief isn’t hurting anyone and you should just let it go.
    I’m not sure mocking it is low or high (and I’m not at all sure “mocking” is what’s going on here), but the belief is most definitely hurting lots of people. “Sinners” (as opposed to criminals) are shunned in many societies, including many communities in the US, and openly murdered in others (see this horrifying report). If that’s not hurting someone, we need a more granular definition.

  77. Cleek, the sarcasm is unwarranted. … most do not say you just have to “accept” what you have been told.
    no offense intended, but i’ve been in enough of these discussions to know that they typically devolve into issues of proof, logic and causality – and that the religious argument always comes down to “well, you gotta have faith”. and to me, that sounds like accepting what you’ve been told.
    I don’t remember any describing the afterlife like that,
    here’s a bit from the very first Google hit for “What Is Heaven”:

      Think of the happiest moment you’ve ever experienced, think of the best you’ve ever felt, think of the most incredible beautiful sight you’ve ever seen, magnify it billions of times, and understand there is no end to this joy, no aging, no pain, no disease, no lonliness, no fear, no doubt, no discomfort, no death, and you only scratch the surface of what it’s like in the Paradise of God. Majesty beyond conception, brightness and light of such beauty, it’s beyond description.

    it goes on to describe a city made of the most lavish construction materials available to people in 0AD.

      The next thing to catch our vision as we look at the city is its jeweled foundation. Many Bible students believe that these jewels reflect all the colors of the rainbow, though we do not know the precise characteristics of each stone. Beginning at ground level, these were probably the colors seen by the apostle: the jasper stone may have been a light green or yellow; the sapphire, a sky-blue or azure; the chalcedony, containing a combination of colors, was mostly green and blue; the emerald, bright green; the sardonyx, red and white; the sardius, reddish in color; chrysolite, golden yellow; beryl, sea-green; topaz, yellow-green and transparent; chrysoprasus, golden-green; jacinth, violet; and amethyst, either rose-red or purple. The radiating light of the city, shining out through the jasper wall and blazing through the open gates, reflects from these precious stones in splendrous color.

    m k

      In that perfect society we’ll realize our full spiritual potential as individuals. Having entered an eternal fellowship with God, we’ll be engaged in an endless variety of meaningful activities. We’ll join with the saints of all the ages in a spirit of communion, fellowship, and love never ending. We’ll see that the imperfections of this life will be missing and that positive blessings will be there.

    that’s not really far off what i said – i just used some graphic words to do it.

  78. Christianity is absurdly easy to attack and absurdly easy to defend because it isn’t a single thing.
    Truer words were never spoken. The forging (it’s a pun) of the Catholic Church took centuries, a classic example of the will to power at work.
    There was an Unfogged thread on the subject a while back (not that an Unfogged thread is ever a single thing, either), and I was defending my “squishy Christianity.”
    To the extent that I found anything persuasive to say, it was that, having been brought up in the Christian tradition, that’s the spiritual “language” that I’m fluent in. To the extent that I know how to be religious, it’s as a Christian. Needless to say, an unorthodox one.
    The strangest thing about holding this point of view is encountering self-professed atheists who argue with me that I’m not really a Christian.

  79. I’m not at all sure “mocking” is what’s going on here
    There’s nothing wrong with discussing whether there’s an afterlife. Cleek’s comment was just plain mockery, though, as if you’d have to be an idiot to think that we’ll be “ensconced in velvet” at “the peak of orgasm for all eternity.” It’s just disrespectful.
    “Sinners” (as opposed to criminals) are shunned in many societies, including many communities in the US, and openly murdered in others (see this horrifying report).
    That has plenty to do with religion, but very little to do with the completely harmless belief that you’re going to see your loved ones again in the afterlife. Maybe the 9/11 hijackers believed in an afterlife, but so does my grandma, so don’t go blaming the belief. And I think it’s pretty weak to engage in mockery that would offend my grandma and then defend it by saying that some religious people do awful things.

  80. Unfortunately too many still believe that unbabtized unborns go straight to hell (that once was the main reason for being anti-abortion). Dante who put them into the limbo (did he invent it??) instead got into trouble because of that (i.e. for believing that they are not tortured in eternity).
    Interestingly there are few concrete descriptions of heaven in Christian literature but very detailed descriptions of hell (while Islam has colorful depictions of both). My personal guess is that anything “real” that would have made heaven worthwile would have been considered sinful on Earth. How to explain that to the congregation?
    Many theologians believed that their scholastic discussions would proceed in heaven and be the main attraction. That resulted in others claiming that they would prefer hell because they could not stand boring hairsplitting (and the people doing it) for eternity while hell would at least be entertaining.
    One thing Jesus made clear: No sex up there (there is no “man” or “woman”*);-).
    *In the Middle Ages it was a hot topic whether all women would become men or all would lose their genitals in heaven (St.Thomas Aquinas considered females defective males, so it would naturally be rectified after death).

  82. There was the problem with converting the Esquimaux too. When they heard that hell was hot, they wanted to go there (no, I don’t make that up!)

  83. I heart Edward’s comments.
    According to Buddhhist tradition, the purpose of life is to achieve enlighhtenment, which is to be beyond words and concepts and descriptions so I’ll stop writing about thhat. The way to get there is by cherishhing all living things. ALL livinng things. Hilzoy modelled this very well withh her post about the shhooter. Shhe also showed how chhrishiing saved a potential shhooter. Anyway the idea is thhat every living thingg gets recycled until they get it righht, and onnly then does thhe living thinng get nirvana which is not a heaven or a place, or even a state of mind. It’s the end to all the struggle and suffering of not being enlighhtened.. The way to get there, cherishhinng all living things, is also the way to determine ehtical behhavior.
    I’m probbly telling people what they are ready know and doing it poorly.
    It’s a sad philosphy, in a way, since it’s based on the assumption that life is suffering. And life IS suffering; we live on thhe deaths of othher things. It seems obvious to me that life itself cann’t have a meaning other than to support one way or thhe other the other living things. I can’t stnd to watch wildlife shows because the lives of animals are so stressful and paranoid and thhen they get eaten by some other stressed, parannoid creature. The city pound is full of kittens thht were born to die.
    I think that religious people want to belive that good annd evil and meaninng have ann existannce independent of what we make up. They want thhe good and evil and meaning of life tto be a truth inndeepndent of human understanding. I think that if I , a human can understand it(meaning of life), thhem “it” is part of human underrstanding and therefore not likely to be a truth thhat exists without my understanding. Which is why I am attracted to the more abstract forms of Buddhism: no deity, not much dogma, the assumption that
    truth can’t be put innto words. Meanwhile I work on tryinng to be more cherrishing.

  84. I like that, “atheists are nowhere to be found.” How exactly are we supposed to represent, yo? Call up grieving families and do the ol’ Edward G. “Where’s your messiah now” line? Or how about “You know Heaven doesn’t exist and they’re gone for good, right?”
    Sorry, D’pstick, we didn’t realize that a gathering of people trying to come to terms with unimaginable pain was the proper venue to score points for empiricism.
    Love the author, hate the writing!

  85. “That has plenty to do with religion, but very little to do with the completely harmless belief that you’re going to see your loved ones again in the afterlife.”
    How often is that “completely harmless belief” divorced from religion? In a fairly thorough religious upbringing, I don’t remember the afterlife issue ever coming up apart from the “here’s what you have to do to get there” and “here’s why the other guys won’t make it” discussions. Always in the “because I said so” context, of course.

  86. as if you’d have to be an idiot to think that we’ll be “ensconced in velvet” at “the peak of orgasm for all eternity.”
    well, you would – if you’re going to take that literally. but, look at the Christian’s definition of Heaven that i quoted:

      Think of the happiest moment you’ve ever experienced, think of the best you’ve ever felt, think of the most incredible beautiful sight you’ve ever seen, magnify it billions of times

    if i, like George Costanza, was really into velvet and loved the idea of being wrapped in it; and if i, like Jimi Hendrix, thought being “beautiful” was a good description of transcendent bliss (which i do); and if i thought the peak of orgasm was “the best i’ve ever felt” (which… well) – why wouldn’t all that satisfy the given description of Heaven ?
    would it have been better if i said it’d be like living in a city made of semi-precious stones, participating in “an endless variety of meaningful activities” with the saints, blissed-out in eternal love ?
    at least my version of Heaven sounds appealing.
    It’s just disrespectful.
    yeah, it probably was.
    that’s what happens when you try to discuss the logical aspects of something with no basis in logic – both the questions and the answers become meaningless.

  87. And I think it’s pretty weak to engage in mockery that would offend my grandma and then defend it by saying that some religious people do awful things.
    Hiding behind your Grandma (as if I didn’t have one as well) is what’s weak, IMO. Reasonable people should be able to debate, vigorously, and with the occassional bit of mockery, any idea, regardless of who holds it sacred. No one here took potshots at your Grandmother, per se. Romanticizing the idea that death equals reunion with lost loved ones to the point of not debating it offends some of my lost relatives who had no patience for anti-intellectualism. So who wins, your Grandmother or mine?

  88. well, one thing is for sure, Nikki Giovanni won’t be giving speeches at my funeral – baby elephants? wtf?

  89. Romanticizing the idea that death equals reunion with lost loved ones to the point of not debating it offends some of my lost relatives who had no patience for anti-intellectualism.
    Once again, I didn’t say you shouldn’t debate the idea. I said it’s crass to mock it.
    Mockery can be amusing if you happen to agree with the mocker; but if you don’t, it’s just schoolyard taunting. It doesn’t serve to actually advance a debate.

  90. Clearly there are degrees of mocking (some of which are very effective in advancing a debate, I’d argue), and I’ll agree that there are rightly expected degrees of respect for other’s beliefs as well, but nothing in this thread that I can see crossed the line to the degree you’re suggesting it has. Perhaps you can point out the offending passage.

  92. Sigh? Really?
    You pointed out the comment in Cleek’s passage that you felt was mocking, but proceeded to suggest I’m mocking your Grandma’s belief’s. I’m asking you to point out where you fell I’ve done that. Or are you responding to us as if we were one in the same? Me and Cleek, the two-headed mocking monster.

  93. true story: first time I flew on a plane, when I must have been about 5 or 6, I asked my mother once we flew above the clouds where all the dead people were.
    PZ Myers at Pharyngula has had a lot of threads on atheism and many more recently due to the Dawkins book and the Mooney / Nisbet op-ed requesting that Dawkins be not quite so vocal about his atheism.
    I’m not sure what I find more repellant: the unctuous and false sympathy from believers who are so sorry that I have no place to go when I die, or the assertion that my godlessness makes me necessarily immoral.
    Can you get bored in heaven? depressed? suicidal? do you even sense the passage of time?
    Debating the nature of heaven is, to me, like debating the finer points of Quidditch. It can be amusing, but it’s all just fantasy.

  94. i’ve been in enough of these discussions to know that they typically devolve into issues of proof, logic and causality
    Same here, and I think “devolve” is the right word, because it’s not an issue that will ever be resolved through proof or logical analysis.
    In my experience, people embrace religious belief or not more or less at the level of something like intuition. In cases where folks seem to follow a purely rational path toward, or away from, religious belief, it always seems (to me) to be more a case of their reason following where their instinct leads.
    Not, in either case, in the sense of blind acceptance or rationalization (at least necessarily), but in the sense of exploring and working out the implications of the direction they are drawn to for other, perhaps more profound, motivations.
    That’s what I’ve observed, anyway.
    The long and the short of this is that noone’s particularly likely to talk anyone else into, or out of, religious belief. There are other experiences that can move folks one way or the other, but reasoned argument generally doesn’t do the trick.
    My only other comment here, I guess, is that religious faith has as it’s object things that are, inherently, impossible to demonstrate empirically. So, it’s going to strike lots of folks as odd, inexplicable, or downright silly and quaint. If holding to a religious faith is your path in life, you might as well just sign for that and let go of being offended by it.
    Last but not least, IMO Dinesh D’Souza is an opportunist and a wanker.
    Thanks –

  95. In cases where folks seem to follow a purely rational path toward, or away from, religious belief, it always seems (to me) to be more a case of their reason following where their instinct leads.
    I think that’s exactly right.
    It seems also to me that the most obnoxious people, on either side of the line, are those who can’t or won’t trust their own instincts, and thus insist that the rest of us feel the same way, to help *them* feel that way.

  96. the religious argument always comes down to “well, you gotta have faith”
    this can indeed be a bit frustrating, but it’s not unique to religious arguments: our whole system of morality and law (yes, yours too) depends on the notion of ‘free will’, yet it’s very existence is hotly debated, which is unsurprising since it’s pretty hard to square it with a naturalistic worldview; same goes for consciousness; and what about liberté, égalité, fraternité and the like?

  97. our whole system of morality and law (yes, yours too) depends on the notion of ‘free will’, yet it’s very existence is hotly debated
    for the record, my view of free will is that it’s a beautiful illusion caused by not being able to identify and monitor all of the various inputs that go into human decision-making (physical, electrical, chemical, biological, motivational, situational, etc.). i’m not sure we’ll ever be able to do it, either. nonetheless, i don’t think there’s any ghost in this machine.

  98. nonetheless, i don’t think there’s any ghost in this machine.
    Tell me, Mr. Anderson Cleek… what good is a phone call… if you’re unable to speak?

  99. Assuming you define free will in a way that allows for the fact that every human being is a product of his own nature and his environment, and not as some ideal by which human impulses spring from nothingness (a phenomenon which would be indistinguishable from madness, I’d think), why do you think “free will” and a naturalistic world view are incompatible?

  100. Tell me, Mr. Anderson Cleek… what good is a phone call… if you’re unable to speak?
    i do not try to speak on the phone. there is no phone.

  101. Artist/Band: Dement Iris
    Lyrics for Song: Let the Mystery Be
    Lyrics for Album: Infamous Angel
    Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
    Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
    But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
    Some say once you’re gone you’re gone forever, and some say you’re gonna come back.
    Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
    Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
    Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
    Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
    But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
    Instrumental break.
    Some say they’re goin’ to a place called Glory and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact.
    But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to purgatory and I don’t like the sound of that.
    Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
    But I choose to let the mystery be.
    Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
    Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
    But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

  102. That’s a wonderful song and album. Dement’s voice is perhaps an acquired taste but I love everything about that cd. Her later work doesn’t approach this level, unfortunately.

  103. “Assuming you define free will in a way that allows for the fact that every human being is a product of his own nature and his environment, and not as some ideal by which human impulses spring from nothingness (a phenomenon which would be indistinguishable from madness, I’d think), why do you think “free will” and a naturalistic world view are incompatible?”
    I think a hard naturalistic world view would be: What seems like free will is actually the fact that every human being is dictated to by his nature and his environment such that they have absolutely no control other than what all the inputs say the output must be.
    Under such a view it is nonsense to say “He chose to sacrifice himself so his students could escape.” Rather “A complex interaction between his genes and his environmental experiences over the course of his life conditioned him in such a way that he was compelled to use his body to block the door in response to the idea of a shooter coming in the door.”

  104. Rather “A complex interaction between his genes and his environmental experiences over the course of his life conditioned him in such a way that he was compelled to use his body to block the door in response to the idea of a shooter coming in the door.”
    IMO, that’s true.
    but, because knowing exactly what all those inputs are is currently (and maybe forever) impossible, we have to deal with people and their actions as if ‘free will’ really exists. it’s an abstraction, in a way, but it’s the only thing that makes sense in real life.
    so, you can have your free will cake, and i can eat it, too.

  105. “because knowing exactly what all those inputs are is currently (and maybe forever) impossible, we have to deal with people and their actions as if ‘free will’ really exists.”
    I don’t understand why what comes after the comma follows from what is before. Why couldn’t we just say “it was out of his control for reasons we don’t fully understand.”

  106. Interesting to me – religious threads here always go many comments, >100.
    Putting on my GOP “winger” cap – I’d be amazed at all these “Godless” libirlz that either are devout or have a broad knowledge of religion.
    But that would shatter a stereotype so I shan’t go there…
    Hard to keep the chin up these days…

  107. what an utterly mechanistic approach.
    crystals self-organize into complex patterns. crows demonstrate problem-solving and planning for the future. elephants and bonobos act in ways we call altruism and empathy. scientists from various disciplines are still grappling with the very definition of “consciousness”.
    simplified notions of newtonian physics (particle A bangs into particle B) are extraordinarily ill-suited to explain the biological world. Reducing human or other animal behavior to high-school physics is a modeling exercise unlikely to reach useful conclusions.
    in the absence of a better model, “free will” is as useful a description of human conduct as any, and better than most.

  109. Putting on my GOP “winger” cap – I’d be amazed at all these “Godless” libirlz that either are devout or have a broad knowledge of religion.
    It’s much easier to hate what you know OCS! 😉

  110. “Dante who put them into the limbo (did he invent it??) instead got into trouble because of that (i.e. for believing that they are not tortured in eternity).”
    Err, Dante put them in the First Circle of Hell, with the Righteous Pagans. Not tortured, but no bliss either.

  111. Rather “A complex interaction between his genes and his environmental experiences over the course of his life conditioned him in such a way that he was compelled to use his body to block the door in response to the idea of a shooter coming in the door.”
    This sounds uncomfortably like Randy Waterhouse’s imaginary atheist, tho I presume Sebastian offers it as some kinda reductio.
    (Speaking of which, you lurking Ab_Normal, there are many examples in Cryptonomicon of Stephenson’s being relatively sympathetic to religion, tho not necessarily from a believer’s standpoint. I’m thinking of Enoch Root, most obviously, and bits like Randy’s friends who secretly take their kids to Sunday school. I would be curious to see if an interviewer’s picked up on that, tho not curious enough right now to google for it.)

  114. Why couldn’t we just say “it was out of his control for reasons we don’t fully understand.”
    even if there is such a thing as a supernatural ‘free will’, we wouldn’t be able to know, for certain, anyone’s reasons for doing anything, without them telling us all their motivations, all the details of their situation, everything that crossed their mind while deciding to do what they did, etc.. we barely pay attention to our own motivations sometimes, let alone dig around any analyze everything that leads to them, and what leads to them, frame-by-frame – we’d drown in our own analysis.
    so, we could throw our hands up and say we don’t know. but, most of the time, we can make educated guesses about the high-level state of all those inputs and underlying processes, and come up with explanations that are good enough for everyday use. there are a dozen different reasons i ate some ham last night at 11:30. but “i was hungry and it was easy to reach” is good enough.
    or, as Francis just wrote: in the absence of a better model, “free will” is as useful a description of human conduct as any, and better than most.

  115. Wasn’t that tax day? You mean it gets worse?!?
    well, there’s tax day. and then there’s 1st 1/4 1/4ly tax day. and then 2nd 1/4 1/4ly tax day, 3rd, 4th… and then it’s tax day again.
    it’s not the circle of life, it’s the circle of taxes. death is a vector – unless you’re Hindu.

  116. “or, as Francis just wrote: in the absence of a better model, “free will” is as useful a description of human conduct as any, and better than most.”
    So at that point we really don’t have much of a way to distinguish the ‘materialist’ view and the ‘spiritual’ view then? Preference between the two is just (ahem) a matter of choice?
    (Or if you are a materialist, you only believe the materialist world-view because of the way your environmental inputs interface with your nature, not because it has any objective truth). 😉

  117. So at that point we really don’t have much of a way to distinguish the ‘materialist’ view and the ‘spiritual’ view then?
    well, one thinks there are natural, though horribly complex, reasons for what we do. the other thinks there are … friendly ghosts(?) … residing in us, telling us what to do.
    not knowing everything about my car doesn’t mean i think my car is inhabited be a supernatural car ghost.

  118. Color me as unconvinced that even a very strict materialism requires determinism. I think it’s two separate issues conflated for reasons of temperament and history rather than necessity.

  119. “Color me as unconvinced that even a very strict materialism requires determinism.”
    As a physicist I think determinism is a feature of any universe; the other option seems to be determinism with deep-level randomness, which is if anything worse for free will and other ponyisms.

  120. It’s sorta hard to make sense of free will whether one is a Christian or not, unless you reduce it to a triviality–we are free to do what we want if no one is coercing us. I read some of Jonathan Edwards online a few months ago (no links–it was someplace, appropriately enough, at the Calvin College website) and with some discrete editing (removal of all the God talk, basically) it could have been written by some modern materialist.
    Not that I’m taking a firm position myself–I suspect we Christians who argue about it are trying too hard to understand how God sees things, which, if you think about it, is silly. And if I was a materialist, I’d probably join in with the “mysterians” who think some issues might simply be beyond the human mind to understand. Why would natural selection have made us smart enough to figure out everything we might want to know, after all? Well, maybe it has, but it’s not obvious that it would. The ability to understand how our own minds work isn’t something that was selected for during the Pleistocene, unless the most philosophically-inclined caveman/woman were the winners in the reproduction lottery.
    I enjoy reading about this, but (as is obvious) it’s a little beyond me, whether or not it’s beyond humans in general.

  121. “I think it’s two separate issues conflated for reasons of temperament and history rather than necessity.”
    Well of course with your nature and environmental inputs you’d believe that! [very playful grin]

  122. let’s see now.
    on the spiritualist side: God(s) endow us with free will, expressed through our consciousness, which is returned to the bosom of God(s) upon our death as a departing soul.
    on the materialist side: really bad episodes of Star Trek aside, there is no demonstrable evidence for a soul, nor for any particular God(s). That said, consciousness is a hard and interesting issue. But before we go bringing God(s) into play, it’s worth noting that other animals apparently have varying levels of consciousness and free will. Under Xtian dogma, do elephants have fractional souls?
    Personally, I cannot reconcile hard determinism and art. Leaving aside “free will” for a moment, the boundless expressions of human creativity persuades me that we are not automotons.

  123. “Why would natural selection have made us smart enough to figure out everything we might want to know, after all?”
    Why wouldn’t it? We’re doing pretty well so far – anything you care to name has a (to me) satisfactory explanation to well better than general level – and as the computers get smarter your objection won’t scale.

  124. ‘Leaving aside “free will” for a moment, the boundless expressions of human creativity persuades me that we are not automotons.’
    Chaos subjected to selection criteria will produce art. Anyway, do you have any framework to explain what a non-deterministic creativity is and how to get around Descartes?

  125. use de horse.
    (i kill myself sometimes.)
    the tricky bit is the selection criteria. if the selection criteria is the artist’s exercise of his muse, then you’re just renaming the problem.

  127. (15sec + 1/2 bottle wine calculation)
    art = natural variations in individual human thought process (aka free will) MOD current societal norms.
    and societal norms are the sum of individual human thought processes feeding back on themselves over time.

  128. Well, it looks like a few here can no longer get angry at Bush for invading Iraq. He had no choice in the matter.

  129. cleek: well, ok, but i still like spending time with the Impressionists at the Met when I visit NY.

  130. “We would need some way of understanding how to think about Cho as a human being, how to reach out and offer comfort to those who are grieving, how to react in the face of violent mental illness, and how to understand the fact that things like this can happen.”
    Something D’Souza seems incapable of doing. He’d rather polemicize.

  131. So even if you refuse a supernatural being, is it too hard to conceptualize a higher being, as I imagine we appear to dogs? Assuming that there is a scientific explanation to all life, why is it not possible that it was caused by a logically existing higher being that designed humanity, in the same way that I think we can now create the polio virus in a lab from parts (though not yet from scratch)?
    I don’t claim to be a dog’s god, but I do think I am a superior being (well maybe not me, but humans in general).

  132. well, ok, but i still like spending time with the Impressionists at the Met when I visit NY.
    no offense (really), but that response feels a lot like D’Souza’s.
    just because i think there’s a rational explanation for what people do, it doesn’t mean i think we’ll ever be able to understand it, or duplicate it. and more importantly, i don’t think that believing it’s, at some level, clockwork takes away from enjoying the things people do, create or enjoy. just as atheists find meaning in a life that isn’t guided by a divine hand, it’s possible for determinists to enjoy the creations that other people make – for quite the same reasons, i suspect. people create what people like, in general, and the variation keeps things interesting because people crave variety. sure, it’s all a closed, natural, deterministic system, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun or interesting. we’ve evolved to enjoy life, to make art, to like rainbows, puppies and sodeepop. nobody digs through all the layers of meaning and intent (at least nobody anyone wants to spend time with) – the mystery of not knowing is, in itself, interesting.
    we can look at a painting and see things the artist didn’t intend. the artist probably intended things we don’t see. because we’re imperfect and can’t know everything, determinism will never take away the fun parts of being alive. we’ll never be able to predict in real-time what another person will do – and even if we could do it with computer assistance, we won’t want to.
    IMO.

  133. “we’ll never be able to predict in real-time what another person will do – and even if we could do it with computer assistance, we won’t want to.”
    Well, Kurzweil and those transhumanist types think we (or some of us) will be transcending our humanity in a generation or so. Predicting what some mere person will do might be some transhuman child’s homework assignment.

  134. Preference between the two is just (ahem) a matter of choice?
    The “(ahem)” here seems to be perjorative, as if making a preference between the two a matter of choice somehow trivializes the question.
    Yes, preference between the two is a matter of choice. No, that is no trivial matter.
    The choice involves everything we bring to the table as thinking, feeling, living beings.
    In matters such as those under discussion, there is no objective perspective to be had. Human consciousness can’t step outside of itself and evaluate, from the outside, the nature of human consciousness.
    The choice — the commitment to one fundamental stance or another — is, as far as I can tell, the essential act that colors and conditions the rest of any person’s thinking about questions of free will, spiritual vs materialistic models of reality, or whether God or something like God exists or not.
    There are a lot of things that motivate and form the basis for that choice, but “objective truth” is, I think, not really one of them. The criteria for evaluating what is “objective” and “true” is tangled up in the choice itself.
    Now it’s probably time for me to go to bed.
    Thanks –

  135. Well, Kurzweil and those transhumanist types think we (or some of us) will be transcending our humanity in a generation or so.
    IIRC, Kurzweil kind of stepped back from the transhumanist agenda after he had kids.
    Thanks –

  136. Well, Kurzweil and those transhumanist types think we (or some of us) will be transcending our humanity in a generation or so.
    will there be flying cars, too ?! i hope so !
    🙂

  137. Here’s a question: how can you honestly argue that someone has “free will” if you have a huge club hanging over them in the afterlife?
    I always felt “Heaven” and “Hell” inventions of people who wanted to be able to say “you’ll be sorry later on, nyah nyah nyah!” but reserve some comfortable territory for themselves.
    If we didn’t have the concepts of “Heaven” and “Hell”, what would the priests threaten us with?

  138. I’m so sorry to come to this discussion late: it’s been a hectic few days, without opportunity to reflect on this subject.
    jrudkis wonders if, even if we don’t believe there’s a “God,” if we might still accept the idea of a higher being; one that is to us as we are dogs. My answer is: though attractive on an intuitive basis, there is no logic behind the idea.
    Are these higher beings embodied? Then why have we never seen them? If gods or aliens came to Earth, they left no relics nor reliable reports – all reports of alien encounters can be explained neurologically; there is no physical evidence.
    If they’re not embodied, then how can they exist? There is no provision in physics for a disembodied intellect, if only because thought needs a carrier medium to hold the signal.
    The notion that space or electromagnetic fields or cosmic radiation could be such a medium are attractive at first, but there would still be some sign that those media are used for thinking; some patterned activity. If one says, yes, but a higher being’s thoughts might take so long or be so vast that we can’t perceive them – then that goes to the next question: Why would such beings have any interest in a species whose entire history is little more than the wink of their universal eyes? How could they interact with us – as well ask us to interact meaningfully with subatomic particles!
    If such beings exist, then they are irrelevant to us, as we must be to them.
    The same logic forces me to conclude there is no afterlife. Believe me, I wish there were. But it comes down to carrier waves again: without a physical form to hold the matter that enables electrical signals to fly back and forth, there’s nothing to keep a consciousness together. Even if some spark – some randomized, incoherent energy bits – remain, there’s no place for them to go and nothing for them to do… except dissipate into the background hum of the universe. Those bits would hold no memory, no sense of self. They would not be “us’; just static.

  139. “The “(ahem)” here seems to be perjorative, as if making a preference between the two a matter of choice somehow trivializes the question.”
    Not perjorative, it was meant more of a joke on the whole question from either side–phrasing it assumes away the answer one way or another.

  140. CaseyL,
    How long would you have to think to experience eternity, if your thoughts were at the speed of light?

  141. Yikes: apparently I was the only person who was unable to access this or any other Typepad blog all evening. And what happens? Free will. Just my luck.
    For what it’s worth, the majority position among philosophers is that freedom is compatible with naturalism, whether deterministic or not (so long as the indeterminacy is not massive. Or, as one philosopher put it: Are we or are we not as deterministic as, say, alarm clocks?)
    I think it’s too late to try to explain why. Plus, last time I tried, I wrote a book ;(

  142. if i understand my SciAm version of physics, the faster you go the slower time moves, so if you were moving at the speed of light eternity would last an instant.
    and even if that’s wrong, i like the idea.
    cleek: i graduated from Dartmouth two years behind D’nesh and found him to be a terrible human — is there anyone else you can analogize me to?
    more to the point, i was talking about my personal experience. the fact that i’m an atheist should not in any way change the meaning of the sentence “I enjoy being in the presence of Monet paintings”. i think D’nesh was a long way from that.
    as to why I like Monet, I’m open to suggestions.

  144. But this is not about moving at the speed of light, but thinking. What would you experience, if you were able to divorce from the physical world for an instant and allow your mind to crank through whatever jumble of thoughts you might have about heaven or hell.
    I think about those times when a stressful situation seems to slow time down and give me more “time” to experience it, and wonder if that is what happens at death, just to a greater extent.

  146. I have mixed feelings about Dawkins’ claims re atheism. While I share his atheism and agree that much religious feeling has led to horrific events, I am uncomfortable with the ferocity of his condemnations of believers. People need spirituality in the same way that they need art or companionship or freedom.
    Yeah, I’m sort of perturbed by the ferocity of the condemnations of atheists by believers; gratuitously and in no context. Like, say, the ones referenced above.
    But that’s just me. I’m like Mick Jones that way, when I get aggression, I give it two times back.

  148. “as to why I like Monet, I’m open to suggestions.”
    Combination of more or less innate human perceptional tendencies, associations with nature and other visual experiences, and training (e.g., I taught myself how to like Monet one summer in grad school with a book of nice reproductions and clear descriptions of his technique and color strategies).

  149. i graduated from Dartmouth two years behind D’nesh and found him to be a terrible human — is there anyone else you can analogize me to?
    honestly, i was really trying not to make it personal. i’m not comparing you to anyone – that would be a bit presumptuous of me, since i don’t know you from Adam. and, yes, he’s a dick.
    it was late, maybe i should’ve thought it through a little better. apologizes.

  150. I think this might be the Bizarro World recommended diary to end all…Bizarro World recommended diaries.
    i love it. after yet another “The Left Hates America” screed, a leftie in comments proclaims his love of America. and then Moe threatens him with banning. what a lunatic!

  151. the fact that i’m an atheist should not in any way change the meaning of the sentence “I enjoy being in the presence of Monet paintings”.
    ah, crap. i read your comment last night as if you were saying “if it’s all just molecules-on-molecules, how can i enjoy paintings?” … which is a lot like what D’Souza said, but not what you were saying at all. my bad.

  152. I think this might be the Bizarro World recommended diary to end all…Bizarro World recommended diaries.
    I really wish they would stop all the negativity and focus on the good news like the freshly painted schools in Richmond and Roanoke.

  153. How long would you have to think to experience eternity, if your thoughts were at the speed of light?

    Think reference frames. Eternity can be highly subjective, if you think of reference frames as being subjects.
    Speaking of lightspeed, my wife thought that a lot of this time-dilation stuff was just theory. I then explained to her that GPS wouldn’t work very well at all if their clocks weren’t corrected for relatavistic effects, and that even in LEO, clocks pace time measureably slower than on the Earth’s surface. At these speeds relatavistic effects are tiny, but they’re cumulative.

  154. I didn’t know Kurzweil stepped back from transhumanism–his latest book (which I didn’t read) just came out a year or two ago.
    I know a transhumanist. (Not a transhuman, not yet anyway.) I don’t know him well, but as I understand it he’s making his plans for godhood. Gonna be a cryosicle if computer technology hasn’t advanced enough to download his personality before death.
    The incentive structure for self-sacrificial heroism with this belief system seems somewhat discouraging. You rush into a burning building and don’t survive and you don’t give up just a few decades, but whatever length of time a transhuman would be around. (Until the heat death of the universe, or whatever is going to happen). That’s gotta suck.
    Hilzoy, is Dennett’s “Elbow Room” a representative example of how determinists reconcile free will with determinism?

  155. DJ: yes, one variant.
    I keep trying to give short explanations, rather than even shorter yes or no answers, but when I try writing them, they grow.
    My basic take on the debate is: once upon a time, before the success of modern science, people assumed that our choices couldn’t be explained as the result of antecedent causes. If this assumption were true, then either something you do is caused by something other than you, e.g. when I push you and you fall, or you chose to do it. In the latter case you act freely (absent ignorance, etc.)
    Now we have to recognize the possibility that our choices themselves — even the most thoughtful and deliberative ones, when we seem not to be pushed about by anything — are caused by antecedent events. Most of these are in our brains etc., but if you trace their causes back far enough, you get either to indeterministic events or to stuff outside us.
    This undoes the dichotomy I cited earlier: either something you do is caused by something other than you, e.g. when I push you and you fall, or you chose to do it. Now, apparently, it can be true both that you chose to do something yourself and that that choice was (ultimately) caused by something outside you.
    At this point, we can’t have our old conception of freedom: we are free when we decide what to do, rather than being caused to do it by stuff outside us. We have to decide which part matters more: the “we choose” part, or the “without being caused” part. (I think of this as being like the way the Civil War forced a redefinition of the American republic: what matters more, the right of states to withdraw from the original compact, or the freedom of all Americans? As a matter of interpretation, one could go either way.)
    For various reasons, a lot of us pick the “we chose” part (with some qualifications to exclude e.g. being plainly manipulated), rather than the “without being caused” part.

  156. D’Souza replies:

      My point was that atheism has nothing to offer in the face of tragedy except C’est la vie. Deal with it. Get over it. This is why the ceremonies were suffused with religious rhetoric. Only the language of religion seems appropriate to the magnitude of tragedy. Only God seems to have the power to heal hearts in such circumstances. If someone started to read from Dawkins on why there is no good and no evil in the universe, people would start vomiting or leaving.

    the dumb is strong with this one.

  158. Slartibartfast,
    I am thinking of the brain as a computer, and the time reference we would have would be number of calculations executed (so if at the biological rate of calculations we are at the speed of a train, but at death it increases to light even for a split second) you would increase the amount of experienced calculations by a comparative infinite amount, your conscience would “feel” those calculations based on its time relative understanding. And since it would rely on your expectations in the graymatter software, no physical world input impede the sensation.
    Remember how video games used to use the clock speed of the processor to regulate its interaction, and when you upgraded to a new processor, the game became unplayable because it went too fast? like that, but without the physical world interaction to impede.

  159. “Ismail X” was his nickname for Little Cho. It’s an anagram of “Salami IX.” As in 11″ salami.

  162. I, too, was unable to access TypePad last night.
    Sebastian Holsclaw: I think a hard naturalistic world view would be: What seems like free will is actually the fact that every human being is dictated to by his nature and his environment such that they have absolutely no control other than what all the inputs say the output must be.
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument seems to be premised on the idea that will flows from some essence of a person that is somehow separable from his nature. But that strikes me as question-begging. What distinguishes the nature of a thing from its essence?
    Under such a view it is nonsense to say “He chose to sacrifice himself so his students could escape.” Rather “A complex interaction between his genes and his environmental experiences over the course of his life conditioned him in such a way that he was compelled to use his body to block the door in response to the idea of a shooter coming in the door.”
    Why would it be nonsense? Say you have incredibly strong moral convictions about a matter. So strong that, when faced with a given set of perceptions, only one option is acceptable to you (in this case, saving the students). Do your convictions make you incapable of choice, or are they a fundamental component of that choice? I’d argue the latter, but your reasoning above suggests the former. Perhaps false perceptions can rob you of your ability to choose (for instance, if you are misled or somehow disoriented), but to suggest that the very fact of your psychological makeup necessarily robs you of the ability to make decisions seems silly to me.

  164. Since I didn’t initiate the tangent on free will versus determinism, I won’t bother to apologize for being off topic relative to the original post. Anyway…
    I don’t consider myself to be an atheist or a firm believer in (hard) determinism. I simply suspect that I’m missing something. I have a hard time seeing how, under the assumption that there are physical laws governing the universe, the set of initial conditions at, say, the Big Bang would not determine the sequence of events to follow for eternity (or until the end of the universe – whatever that means). And I hesitate to use a term like “immutable physical laws” because there may be subordinate laws that will change under certain circumstance according to some higher physical law(s). I suppose it would be the system of physical laws that could be said to be immutable, if not each and every law itself.
    If you have some number of particles with their respective locations and velocities under the influence of some number of forces interacting with one another, the conditions of any given moment in time will have arisen, according the physical laws of the universe, from those of a previous moment in time, and will, in turn, similarly determine the conditions of a subsequent moment in time. I don’t see what would break this relational chain of events, short of divine intervention, which I am assuming not to be a possibility for the purposes of this discussion. Once you throw god or some similar concept into the mix, all bets are off, unless that god is non-interfering, but I assume there are atheists who believe in the physical laws of the universe, but not in hard determinism.
    In the deterministic case, free will is an illusion arising from self-awareness and the inability of the self-aware to predict the conditions of future moments based on the conditions of the present or past, perhaps even the inability to fully evaluate the conditions any given moment. To borrow a phrase from the Intelligent Design crowd (who probably borrowed it from computer scientists or something) it’s a matter of irreducible complexity, since we don’t have the enormous, super-multivariate, all-encompasing differential equation to describe the universe.
    I hate, perhaps, to contradict Einstein, but I think he was quoted as having said something like “God doesn’t play dice with the universe” in support of the deterministic view. I would say that the deterministic view with a non-intervening god would be the ultimate in universal dice play. While we view the outcomes of dice rolls as being random, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t deterministic. We just can’t predict the outcomes, and no one outcome is favored over another. But the dice had some initial trajectory and rotational energy, interacted with other bodies and landed on one side or another accordingly.
    I can’t express how, exactly, this gets to my typing this right now as being an inevitable consequence of the Big Bang, but I can’t say why that wouldn’t be the case under the assumptions previously stated.

  165. I can’t express how, exactly, this gets to my typing this right now as being an inevitable consequence of the Big Bang
    it’s exactly as you said: “the dice had some initial trajectory and rotational energy, interacted with other bodies and landed on one side or another accordingly”. but it’s not a simple craps or Yahtzee roll; in the case of you writing on this blog, the universe rolled am uncountably-large number of incredibly-many-sided dice. it’s not random, but it’s so far from being predictable that it might as well be magic.

  166. I think this might be the Bizarro World recommended diary to end all…Bizarro World recommended diaries.
    Ho Chi Minh!! I knew he must be behind it all!!
    Dear Uncle Ho must be comforted to know he lives on in the memories of our pals at RS.
    Thanks –

  167. I have a hard time seeing how, under the assumption that there are physical laws governing the universe, the set of initial conditions at, say, the Big Bang would not determine the sequence of events to follow for eternity (or until the end of the universe – whatever that means).

    I think there’s an unappreciated division between deterministic and knowable or even predictable. It’s possible, I suppose, that every last event, microscopic or macroscopic, has been determined the moment the universe came into being. Or even before that. I don’t believe that, but I don’t know that anyone has proven otherwise. Randomness may be deterministic randomness, in the sense that a Monte Carlo simulation can reproduce the same random sequence exactly if needed, but to me it’s indistinguishable from capricious randomness. If you don’t have the seed and the algorithm for generating a random sequence, you’re lost. It’s worse than that, though: there’s so MANY random variables that you couldn’t possibly keep track of all of them at once. The sampling interval for nature’s random sequences is hopelessly small.
    So, I’m thinking that even if the universe is deterministic, it’s got random sequences embedded in it that can’t possibly be predicted, and so it is for any human purposes indistinguishable from a nondeterministic universe.
    I believe it was lack of appreciation of such randomness that led some earlier scientists to either despair or think they had the key to it all. Newton, if left with a few more decades of life, may have decided that aero/hydrodynamics wasn’t quite so straightforward after all. Randomness and complexity/nonlinearity: either one by itself can discourage one who thinks he can do long-range predictions.
    I’m sure there’s been loads of stuff written on this topic, but I haven’t read any of it, and I don’t even know what quadrant of thinking it might belong to.

  168. “It’s possible, I suppose, that every last event, microscopic or macroscopic, has been determined the moment the universe came into being.”
    How d’ya reconcile that with Heisenberg? Or is that just another way of saying what you’re saying?

  169. I either a) very carefully avoided Heisenberg, or b) sloppily failed to address the uncertainty principle. I’m not saying which.
    Or, possibly, I was just rambling on about whether the universe is actually random or only apparently random. The fact that an observer was about to make a precise measurement of velocity on a particle could, after all, have been cast in stone (so to speak; probably “determined by the seed of the Great Random Number Generator In The Sky” might be more consistent) billions of years ago.
    And no, I’m not entirely serious about that idea. I have a hard time imagining that anyone who makes a lifetime of studying quantum mechanics could think that the universe is deterministic; I’ve just dabbled in it a wee bit (to the extent required to understand what makes a laser work, almost) and I definitely don’t believe in a deterministic universe.

  170. My limited understanding of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is that there is a constant, the value of which I don’t recall (in SI units), that is the product of the errors in measurement of the velocity (momentum?) of a particle and the position of that particle. I thought it was a matter of an observational limitation, due to the effect of the observation on the event being observed. I can see how this would relate to the human understanding of the workings of the universe and making predictions thereof, but I don’t see how it relates to the universe being deterministic or non-deterministic. I think that’s what Slartibartfast was getting at when he wrote
    The fact that an observer was about to make a precise measurement of velocity on a particle could, after all, have been cast in stone (so to speak; probably “determined by the seed of the Great Random Number Generator In The Sky” might be more consistent) billions of years ago.
    or sort of, maybe?

  171. Isn’t there a point where meta information impacts the sequence of the big bang in ways not foreseable through any type of physics? So, it may be foreordained on which side of the cube a die lands, but the number showing on that side of the cube is not, or there is an error in those playing the game in not knowing the rules, and the impact of winning or losing therefore throws new ripples through the sequence.

  172. The question of whether quantum events with some uncertainty are really undetermined, or only appear to be undetermined with some deeper deterministic level, is (a part of) the question of “hidden variables”.
    The interesting thing is that there are theorems stating that if there are hidden variables, then in order for them to produce results fully consistent with quantum mechanics, they have to have very, very strange properties, perhaps stranger than those of quantum mechanics itself.
    For instance, the hidden variables have to be “contextual”: in some cases, the value the hidden variables determine for one observable quantity has to depend on your choice of measurement of other observable quantities, even if there is no quantum-mechanical uncertainty principle relating those quantities! Also, that contextuality has to work instantaneously across arbitrary distances, faster than light. Experiments have been done that seem to show that there is no wriggling out of this; the properties of QM that require hidden variables to be this weird seem to be borne out in nature.
    So most quantum physicists don’t go for hidden variables. However, some of them do go for some variant of the Everett interpretation, wherein quantum mechanics is totally deterministic but the whole world is in a superposition of vastly different states; all the results of a measurement happen at once. For practical purposes, this would be the same thing as a nondeterministic universe.
    Some people have tried to use quantum indeterminacy as a way of salvaging a fundamental physical role for free will, or for the hand of God as a guiding force in nature. But the requirement of randomness in QM is fairly pitiless; if the outcomes are biased with any tendency toward a particular result, that could be expressed as a change in the average measured value of some observable operator, and would therefore be incompatible with quantum mechanics. A pure die roll with no biases whatsoever doesn’t strike me as the essence of human free will or of the mind of an intelligent God. To my mind, any salvageable notion of free will really has to be defined in compatibilist terms, even if there is quantum indeterminism.
    Personally, I am OK with thinking of my free will, my feelings, the meaning of my life, etc. as properties of a physical decision-making process.

  174. “The interesting thing is that there are theorems stating that if there are hidden variables”
    There are also efforts to get around these theorems by people thinking about much much smaller scales than we have any experience with.

  176. Hilzoy, no fair, you’re reading D’Souza and responding with rational arguments! How can he possibly compete? 😉
    As to Derbyshire, he’s still the most offensive of the lot in my book. I wasted some time on some other blog with a troll who was trying to defend him. I’m glad to see some of Derbyshire’s fellow conservatives criticize him, but some of the chatter out there (Mark Steyn, for another) is quite troubling.

  177. The Dawkins passage that D’Souza was referring to is actually one of Dawkins most famous quotations:
    In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
    Needless to say, this is not a particularly comforting passage.I doubt if you want to quote this to the survivors. Even if you dont buy everything D’souza says, he has a point as regards the view expressed in this quote

  178. Also, amusingly, much much larger scales.
    Which, according to some talks I’ve been to, is exactly the same thing.

  179. stonetools,
    There are lots of things that might not be particularly comforting to the survivors, but given that Dawkins was not writing something in the aftermath of the VT shootings, it seems a little off to try and claim that he was. Which is precisely why D’Souza is a 5th rate hack.

  180. It seems worth noting that Dawkins’ conclusion about the absence of innate meaning in the universe isn’t the last word in ethics.
    Say it’s entirely true, and that we can be sure of it. The question then is, what next?
    We might conclude, like a robber baron or a serial killer, that others are ours to do with as we please.
    We might conclude, like Camus, that if we want meaning, community, and other virtues, we’ll have to make them, and it’s a big job, so let’s get to work on it.
    If I had to choose between funeral orations from D’Souza or Camus, I will bet that I’d find Camus more encouraging and comforting.

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