Contentious Pretentious Musings II: Deconstruction of social construction and other nuptial clarifications

*For those following at home, here is my original post, Oscar’s first response, my rejoinder and Oscar’s second response.

Sorry, that it’s taken forever, but I need another say in this dialogue. So, I was “disappointing.” Hmmm…I can see why you think I grouped you into pro-marriage equality clan, so yes, I suppose I owe you an explanation and an apology, Oscar, for the manner in which I responded. Honestly, I did not mean to misrepresent your position or put words in your mouth on the issue, so to speak. I’m sorry if it appeared that way, as it wasn’t my intention.

In my mind, I was being charitable. To me, your act of responding implied you did have somewhat of a firm stance on the issue, despite your assurances you didn’t. It came off as logically inconsistent like writing, “I don’t know a word of English.” I refrained from mentioning this evidently false inference, as psychological speculation about your motives and framing you as self-contradictory would be getting close to a tu quoque and was irrelevant to what was in contention, namely the ontology of marriage.

Secondly, my response was written for more than one audience; it was as much a reply to you as a strategic commentary for those who on either side of this matter. This was never explicitly stated when it probably should have been to prevent the very misinterpretation we’ve had here. Like any good debater, I had to reveal the implications of your deft use of the “social construct” foil. Your “critique” was an attempt to demolish any rational or moral debate on the subject, an overturning of the entire game board and a fact you don’t seemingly dispute. Within its efforts and actions, the same-sex marriage movement assumes there is a game board with moral and rational pieces to move. I was endeavoring to show your denial of objectivity on the matter was a road to a nihilistic destination, a place where they should not be comfortable.

Do I think I was convincing or even comprehensible to anyone who is on the other side of the issue? Nah, it’s not what they want to read, and there’s a massive shortage of intellectual honesty in this country. But hey, I had to try.

Niceties aside, I must warn you, Oscar, that I’m going to probably disappoint you more if not totally irritate you. Please remember, I’m not being pedantic in an attempt to spitefully humiliate you. Rather, I’m endeavoring to refute a line of argument of same-sex marriage apologists, so anyone who feels like or he or she has skin in the marriage debate, as I do, and is convicted enough to read our correspondence can see how claiming marriage has no essential properties is untenable. There is no ill intent against you in this post, just resolve to do by best in a fight against a great injustice I perceive. No disrespect but an opportunity that can’t be squandered because of my moral principles that have next to nothing to do with Exodus, Leviticus or anything in the Bible. If you do not respond to this post for any reason, I will not view that silence as defeat nor construe it as such. Granted, my wanton tardiness does not warrant a reply. I’m just compelled to show the facts about our point of conflict here, and let whomever reads our dialogue to privately decide for themselves who is right, and who is wrong. So take a deep breath. It’s now down to business.

Firstly, I feel your claim to knowledge about that the public currently believes marriage to be merely “a declaration of love,” although tentative, is completely unsubstantiated. As much as you opine about how people view marriage now, I feel compelled to point out vestiges of this notion that children and procreation are still associated with marriage, at least in the conservative circles I keep. There is an expectation they come after the marriage ceremony. It’s not uncommon to hear, “I want to get married and then start a family.” Even with the emergence of cohabiting couples, who are in love and resemble a married couple without children in many cases, their unions aren’t culturally considered marriages by default, though in nearly every respect they look married, according to how you think society has already defined the institution. And I fail to understand why your experience of how the country views marriage is more authoritative than mine, if we are to assume — quite falsely, I might add — that our individual perceptions here can be epistemically justified.

Secondly, “the slew of legalizations” you mention is hardly representative of what people have democratically declared in regard to marriage. They are judicial rulings overturning constitutional amendments ratified relatively recently by public referendum. Moreover, mainstream news outlets did not cover of it, but traditional marriage advocates marched in Paris earlier this year with some estimates putting their ranks in the hundreds of thousands. Sure, there are the polls in the last few years that show the growing support for same-sex marriage. However, polls and the press who push them are both notorious for being misleading, and the polls that really matter are done at the ballot box. So, no, I don’t think it’s accurate to conclude that society solely views marriage as just a committed, amorous relationship between individuals.

Segueing into the theoretical underpinnings of traditional marriage, your response here misrepresents my position, though the fault probably lies with me because I have not been precise and rigorous in its articulation. You write, “The OI argument stands only if we believe that marriage is defined, in principle, for the purpose of procreation, but who really defines marriage like this anymore?” I’m under the impression you think under my view, procreation is necessary for marriage and the reason why people marry. That marriage is a means to an end, namely procreation.

Let me be lucid: Whether or not procreation occurs or that children “obtain” is not what makes a marriage. In my account, marriage is defined in the terms of the type of relationship, which must be procreative in nature, not in result. This distinction still entails the sexual complementarity of man and woman. Only sperm from a male can fertilize an ovum from a female for a pregnancy to occur, or in an Aristotelian framework, only a man and a woman can physically coordinate together in the coital act for the biological whole and purpose of reproduction. This union is implicitly oriented toward procreation, while you and many others mistake marriage as defined as instrumentally or incidentally related to procreation, an accidental means to an end. As Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley writing for The Public Discourse note:

“…the institution of marriage is not primarily about procreation as an end or goal distinct from marriage. The institution is directly about the marital communion itself, which in its fullest fruition is family; and so it is about children, but principally as members of families. True marriage can exist even where children do not come of the union, but it always remains the type of union that would naturally be fulfilled by children, were they to come.

Sure, it’s a “baby-making institution,” but the “purpose” and the emphasis here is intrinsic, not extrinsic in kind.

Similarly, there is no dilemma between whether marriage is either “a declaration of love” or “a baby-making institution.” For me, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Love between members in a couple seems to facilitate the “baby-making” and vice versa. As Sherif Girgis argues also at The Public Discourse, “marital love also makes new life, so marriage itself is uniquely enriched and extended by the bearing and rearing of children, and the wide sharing of family life.” Marriage is both a physical and emotional, and thereby comprehensive, union between a man and a woman in which their subsequent children are a cultivation of. For advocates of the conjugal view of marriage like myself, marriage is a human good in it of itself.

These are not poison pills for me to swallow, Oscar, nor is this some ad hoc, “disingenuous” sallying of an absurd definition to defend traditional marriage. Just because many of the people who are opposed to same-sex marriage do not or cannot argue or perhaps don’t even know the underlying philosophy of their position is not a black mark against it either. They still express the tautological conclusion of marriage as being between man and woman, which is not only consistent with everything I’ve argued but is entailed by it. There are scores of atheists who justify their unbelief in God due to the existence of evil. Yet, I bet most of them don’t understand the Epicurean roots of their reasoning or that it is an attempt to show that the notion of God is inherently contradictory and therefore logically impossible. Does this mean that these claims are bankrupt because most lay people don’t know and can’t articulate the presuppositions that led to them? Of course not. To also borrow a phrase, I also suspect the only people who would espouse your critique of the OI argument are those who already are for same-sex marriage — even though such a position is foolishly self-contradictory. But so what? I find these veiled appeals to consensus and speculation about whom subscribes to what position as vacuous and irrelevant to determining the worth of our respective arguments.

Returning to the task at hand, one does not have to be a Aristotelian to subscribe to the OI argument; one just has to be realist about essential properties. The fact of the matter is that I hold a realist position in this debate, which reminds me that you do not: “Yes, I still maintain that there is no ought, Pownens. Which means that anyone arguing that marriage ought to be this way is unjustified.”

Dismissing what appears to be equivocation with the use of “ought” (correct me if I’m wrong, but above you seemingly conflate two different meanings and uses of the word), I feel like I need to ask how Nietszchean are you, Oscar? Do you maintain his perspectivism and therefore his rejection and value of truth? I’m really inclined to think that you do from reading your recent posts and your non-realism about social constructs’ possessing essential properties. It’s hard to be certain what exactly is your view, so I will rephrase and elucidate the issue slightly and then proceed accordingly.

I subscribe to an essentialism, which in brief is the view that things have essences — properties that a thing must have to be what it is, i.e., essence or thisness — when it comes to marriage. I don’t deny marriage has social customs that have varied and changed depending on the time and culture. These traditions or conventions, however, are incidental to marriage, as they were erected around the relationship. As the following analogy illustrates, the clothes and styles have changed, but there still remains the same body to wear them that was there from the start and serves as the explanation as to why and how there are clothes to don at all. Likewise, the relationship, which you admit predates the institution, serves as the basis for said institution. This relationship is a social construct insofar that persons individually construct a social arrangement between each other, and we call that type of association, marriage. However, even after these concessions and clarifications, I still maintain that marriage has essential features, and its subsequent cultural and legal institution has rational roots.

On the contrary, Oscar, you appear to maintain an non-essentialism (no “oughts”) for social constructs, which are defined as “created by people for people.” As such, your use of social construct in regard to marriage seemingly refers to a wholesale, institutional product totally derived from cultural whim and devoid of essential characteristics. It’s important to note your notion of the marital social construct is different than the one described in the above paragraph. The former deals with the interaction between individuals and has essential, objective characteristics, which cultures have enshrined into and recognized as an institution; the latter applies to a complete cultural fabrication of the masses that has no objective essence and in which every individual instantiation is arbitrary. It was the latter usage of the term and the positing of no essential features I challenged both as a “bare assertion” and historically and ontologically inaccurate, not the strawman that there aren’t any social aspects to marriage whatsoever, as you seem to imply in your second response.

Now that that’s cleared up, again, I see no given reason to accept that marriage is the social construct you describe it as — a relationship bereft of essential properties. There seems to be many social constructs, “created by people for people,” that have essential features to be what they are. For instance, law must be coercive and authoritative in nature, otherwise, it ceases being law and becomes “more like guidelines than actual rules.” Moreover, here’s another shot from The Public Discourse about a little social creation known as friendship:

For all its cultural variety, it has an objective core, fixed by our social nature: mutually acknowledged good will and cooperation. Without that, two people’s connection simply lacks the value (and special duties) of friendship. To overlook this is to err about a human good, not just the label for a construct.

So too, we argue, for marriage. For all the variety of its cultural supports, shaped by shifting historical demands, marriage as a human good has an objective core, fixed by the demands of our nature as sexual-reproductive beings; to deviate from it is to miss a crucial part of a basic human good.

Social constructs like law or friendship appear to have objective, essential features that make them what they are even if the content of particular laws and friendship vary, and for Girgis and company, marriage is akin to law, friendship and even human rights in this regard.

Then, there’s that little dilemma about another social construct intimately related to marriage that is the subject of a frequent example in rudimentary philosophy courses: bachelorhood. Let’s introduce it in the form of an indirect proof:

1. Social constructs, as “created by people for people,” categorically have no essential properties.
2. Therefore, constituent social constructs of institutional social constructs have no essential properties (From 1).
3. A bachelor is a constituent social construct of the institutional social construct of marriage.
4. Therefore, a bachelor has no essential properties (From 1, 2, 3).
5. A bachelor has the essential property of being unmarried.
6. A bachelor both has no essential properties and the essential property of being unmarried (From 4, 5).
7. Therefore, 1 is false; there is a social construct with an essential property (from 6, which is a contradiction).

I’m putting  — I’m assuming — your Nietzschean inclinations to the test, as you non-essentialism commits you into denying 5, which means the claim, a bachelor is married, is not contradictory. Maintaining that there is no essence to bachelorhood and a bachelor can be married does seem to be rather inconsistent with the commonsense notion that by definition, bachelors are unmarried. You might be fine with such an implication of your non-essentialism, but I’d know there are philosophers who too would find this claim controversial, those of which would include but are not limited to: Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and more recently, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and Alvin Plantinga. You clearly aren’t a fan of their essentialist theories, but given those who have and do disagree with you and the above indirect proof, it at least casts serious doubt that your preliminary assertion is as self-evident as you state if not discredits the whole inference from marriage as a social construct to marital non-essentialism as invalid. Option one is hence clinging to you convictions and going down with the ship to attempt to survive the crushing metaphysical depths below. Then again, you can face the other end of the dilemma’s vise, concede a bachelor must be unmarried, and by extension, there is at least one social construct — though, it seems plausible there’s many more — that has essential and objective features, blunting the entire thrust of your original objection against the OI argument.

I hope you feel a tad awkward here, Oscar, because it would show you haven’t completely embraced the Dark Side of the Philosophy. My feelings, however, tell me that all that I’ve just argued is wasted on you, the good Nietzschean that you intimate that you are. At this point, I suspect we are talking past each other. You sympathize with Continental philosophy, where I align with the Analytic tradition of Western thought. I do have some choice words for Nietzsche and Continental philosophy as a whole, but that is possibly an even uglier and more irreconcilable disagreement than the one we’re having here. I have no qualms about hitting pause for now, as I think I’ve made a fairly compelling case that your philosophical presuppositions have little application to the marriage debate, as public policy-making doesn’t deny the efficacy of truth. Even the non-philosophically inclined should feel uneasy at the counterintuitive notion that a bachelor can exist as married, as your view entails. Plus, judging from the brevity of your posts directed toward me, you seem content with not doing any heavy metaphysical lifting, although I’m not opposed to a second rejoinder that would exercise such pursuits.

In summary, your confession of Nietzsche’s influence on your thinking, as pervasive as it might be, seems entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. When it comes to marriage, as it stands, “Nietzsche is dead.” It’s your choice whether or not to try to persuade me otherwise.

Ball’s in your court,

Modus Pownens

Journalists and Ferguson: An American failure, tragedy and nightmare

I’ve kept quiet about Ferguson, but now it’s time for my silence to come to an end. If you haven’t already heard the grand jury’s decision, Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot the unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown, has not been indicted. Rightfully so, I emphatically add. With the conflicting and changing witness accounts and the evidence for his innocence — the facial contusion he received in the altercation, Brown’s DNA found on Wilson’s clothes, gun and car, and the autopsy’s findings — there is no rational case against him.

There certainly is an irrational case out for his blood. Too many feel that Brown, being black and unarmed, and Wilson, being white and a police officer, must mean the Brown’s death was a racially fueled slaying and endemic of a prejudiced criminal justice system. Who helped peddle and perpetuate this falsehood and make race-baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson possible? We ought to hold those responsible, especially because, well, Ferguson has burst into flames again. It’s those oh, so trusted journalists.

And who am I to make such an indictment? Just a member of their despicable ranks, though I’m no longer of a kindred spirit. I haven’t been for some time thanks in large part to travesties like Ferguson that the industry seems to promulgate faster than vermin breeding.

In this post, I will put my experience from reporting, editing and designing news and my soon-to-be degrees (finishing my master’s thesis) from the oldest and best journalism school in the country to some good, patriotic use worthy of the American people. In the old days, they called that journalism. With that expertise, I will comment and lay bare the sins of news media in their coverage of the calamity as best as I’ve observed. I’m not alone in my chastisement of mainstream media either in this regard.

Before I start, I want to make something undoubtedly clear: I don’t deny that racism doesn’t exist or that blacks don’t experience racism or that there are no racist cops. Although all the available evidence shows otherwise, if Wilson had murdered Brown or any law enforcement officer guns down a defenseless black teen, then yes, that person should be prosecuted and face the consequences for such an action. What I do contest, however, is this notion that we are still living in Selma, Alabama, circa 1960, and white racism is so fervent and entrenched in society that it’s the bane of black existence and the reason for their impoverishment.

With that disclaimer out there, it was my mother who informed me that she heard Brown had previously been involved in a robbery on the day of the shooting. We also noticed and discussed that this claim, which turned out to be credible, was not mentioned as the story began to break nationally. Moreover, it wasn’t until about a week later that many news media outlets began to acknowledge the robbery because of the infamous strong-arm surveillance video. Therefore, news media had what was relevant information that newsrooms chose to withhold. It was pertinent enough that it would have provided an alternative reason as to why Wilson had interacted with Brown instead of racist motivations, which were clearly implied in initial coverage. As for verifiability at that point, I see no issue as long as journalists were transparent, i.e., “There are unconfirmed reports that Brown was a suspect in the robbery of a local convenience store earlier today. We are currently following up on any leads to determine what happened in Ferguson, Mo. We’ll let you know when we know more.” It is certainly less speculative than merely reporting that a white cop shot an unarmed, allegedly submissive black teen and licking your lips for the ensuing pandemonium.

Then there’s also the sole use of the words teen or teenager to describe Brown. Not only does this stir up bias against Wilson, it is professionally incorrect. Journalists conform to what’s known as Associated Press style in their presentations of news. They refer to a handbook the AP publishes every year that dictates which words, phrases, names and spellings to use in writing. And according to AP style, anyone 18 and older is supposed to be referred to as a man or woman. And I quote from my 2010 edition Associated Press Stylebook: “youth Applicable to boys and girls from age 13 until 18th birthday. Use man or woman for individuals 18 and older.” Moreover, this rule is not an obscure reference like the entry on what are the Anglicized spellings of specific Chinese cities. It’s well known among professional journalists, as they report the ages of the people they interview for stories all the time. I’ve both taken and graded stylebook quizzes that have tested students on this principle of style. With the epitaph of the “gentle giant” that was about to start college and the running of an outdated photo of a much younger-looking Brown, news media were obviously framing the story as a one-sided narrative of a malicious shooting of a good kid by a white policemen for the crime of being black with little to no verifiable facts about the fatal encounter.

I’ve been taught in school that journalists are supposed to avoid this two-valued orientation, either-or paradigm in their stories. The truth, at least in a journalistic sense, tends to be more complicated than solely reporting he said-she said and parroting back what often are the only two-sided talking points of politicians. Often, there are more than two perspectives on any given issue, and when the investigation and story demands it, these other voices need to be brought into focus. To not do so perpetuates division and tribalism. And with Ferguson, I wonder why we clearly have two distinct, opposing camps with many in one party pledging and executing destructive retribution against all those who they perceive as not an active member of their cause.

With voyeuristic interest, mainstream media watches the riotous fulfillment of this promise in Ferguson, the ones they facilitated with their inaccurate, biased coverage. After all, violence sells. They appear drunk off the Molotov cocktails and high from the smoldering ruins of police cars and buildings, playing-up the devastation while downplaying the sheer lawlessness of the ordeal for days. It really appears that in their minds that this abhorrent behavior is somehow excusable because the underlying sentiment behind it is justified. The innocent Ferguson business owners and employees are victims — those other voices I’ve been talking about — that are having their livelihoods decimated because of the wanton, unruly looting of opportunistic villains more invested in pilfering hair extensions than “justice” for the Brown family and the greater black community. But this is all acceptable for journalists. Hardly containing their approval and glee, all that matters for journalists is the black versus white civil rights narrative, the defiant minority fighting the oppressive criminal justice system that regularly gets away with killing them with impunity. It’s here I must conclude leftist journalists have not only lost their minds but also their souls.

Intellectually speaking, the most prevalent killer of young black men in this country is young black men. Nationally, 94 percent of black homicides are committed by other blacks. Writing for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2012, George Mason economics professor Walter Williams notes:

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94-percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks.

Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it’s 22 times that of whites.

Coupled with being most of the nation’s homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

The magnitude of this tragic mayhem can be viewed in another light. According to a Tuskegee Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home.

It’s a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.

A much larger issue is how might we interpret the deafening silence about the day-to-day murder in black communities compared with the national uproar over the killing(s) of Trayvon Martin (and Michael Brown).

According to Edward Flynn, Milwaukee’s police chief, “Eighty percent of my homicide victims every year are African-American. Eighty percent of our aggravated assault are African-American. Eighty percent of our shooting victims who survive their shooting are African-American.” In his rant, Flynn cuts to heart of the matter with moral precision. If black lives matter — and they definitely do! — then why is there no publicized outrage for these tragedies, which are far more common occurrences than the stereotypical cop shooting a black teen?

Of course, detractors like Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson in his recent debate with former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani retort:

First of all, most black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. Number two, they are not sworn by the police department as an agent of the state to uphold the law. So in both cases, that’s a false equivalency that the mayor has drawn, which has exacerbated tensions that are deeply imbedded in American culture.

…Black people who kill black people go to jail. White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail.

Firstly, the claim that blacks are incarcerated for these violent crimes is untrue. According to Chicago magazine, only 132 of the city’s 507 gang-related murders have been solved. Similar problems persist apparently in the country’s other large cities such as New York and Los Angeles. In other words, the goons who are perpetrating these acts are likely not getting caught. In regard to “number two,” it’s Dyson who is drawing the false equivalency. The life of a civilian isn’t supposed to involve violence, while the nature of police work is dangerous. Part of the job description is to confront and detail evil doers who will try to resist and kill the officers. Therefore, at times, lethal force to uphold the law is necessary and justified.

Additionally, as a demographic, blacks are culpable for large swaths of crime. Take this excerpt from Jason L. Riley’s book Please Stop Helping Us in The Washington Times:

Today blacks are about 13 percent of the population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime. Between 1976 and 2005 blacks com­mitted more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population.

Hence, it isn’t unexpected, nevertheless unfortunate, for a cop to occasionally shoot a suspect who happens to be black. Whether or not the officer exerted sound judgment needs to be determined case-by-case. What is surprising for most Americans, again unfortunately, is how infrequent this type of incident is, about as common as the “knockout game,” which never garners national media attention. Bill Whittle argues the following:

According to the FBI, there were 408,217 robberies in 2009. That’s about 1100 a day, or in round numbers, about once a minute, 24 hours a day. That means a thousand times a day the police are called, a thousand times a day arrests are made and in general terms the events leading up to the shots being fired in Ferguson Missouri happen about one thousand times per day.

So if there’s this epidemic of white policemen executing innocent black males, why do we only hear about a case like this every few years? And why do most of those cases – like this one – seem to end up with extenuating circumstances? And why do the few cases that don’t have extenuating circumstances end up with the offending officers in jail? If this is an epidemic – where’s the epidemic? 30,000 commercial flights land safely each day in America. They don’t make the news either.

As Whittle implies, it’s because the likes of MSNBC and CNN would have us to believe that there is a racial outbreak of white cops killing black teens. Statistically, that proposition hardly seems the case. Summarily, “Some identifiable groups . . . commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate. Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact,” wrote former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy in 2005, and many blacks find themselves the victims of such acts.

Too many journalists ignore all of what I have laid out here, and this negligence is unacceptable. In journalism ethics scholarship, there is something called the social responsibility theory of the press, which is rooted in the 1940s Hutchins Commission. This group formulated five principles by which the press ought to operate, two of which are:

• a truthful, comprehensive account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning
• projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society

Scholars tend to agree that the commission failed to affect change in the industry and disagree about how well the theory translates to news media. However, studies show journalists and journalism students concur with the ethical content of the principles even when they are expressed in the commission’s language. As I will attest with my educational experience, discussion of journalism ethics are framed in the terms of social responsibility.

So, journalists know better, yet both of the above requirements are being defiled by mainstream news media by blowing out of proportion the killings of Trayvon Martin and Brown as evidence of a prejudiced society out to get blacks. The considerable contrary details and facts surrounding their deaths are obscured without a reference to hard crime data, while partisan speculation takes center stage to prove the overarching narrative. Take this drivel, which thoroughly lacks credibility because there is no attribution and transparency in its presentation. There is no account of who made the video, how CNN got it, no names for the witnessing construction workers (the paper I worked had a strict no anonymous source policy outside of exceptional cases like sexual assault victims), no cross-reference between the streets depicted and where Brown died, no verifiable way in the footage itself to show where it was taken outside of CNN’s assertion it’s in Ferguson and the overall poor visual and audio quality of the footage. As I’ve been taught, I would never feel comfortable running such an incendiary and controversial story without these type of things to back me up.

Furthermore, take for example this misrepresentation of the prosecuting attorney’s Robert McCulloch’s explanation to not indict Wilson as merely a lack of sufficient evidence opposed to his articulation of the positive physical and forensic counter-evidence that supported Wilson’s account in the text underneath the photo gallery. How about NBC’s Brian Williams saying on-air the grand jury “failed” to produce an indictment, as if it was their responsibility. The tactic these last few days has been to question McCulloch’s objectivity and the grand jury as a legal procedure — as if their convened kangaroo court of public opinion that is ready to draw and quarter Wilson is any better — while disregarding all the scientifically collected and verified evidence from the scene. Again, all these distortions and misdirections perpetuates the myth that the criminal justice system is unequivocally against blacks. It is absolutely sickening and impossible to shrug off these mistakes institutionally as honest lapses in human judgment. They are far too many and too concentrated for such graceful appraisal.

Why has journalism become so blatantly unethical, biased and dishonorable? I have no studies to support me here, so the following is all me. Apart from incentive for profit, the majority of journalists tend to be liberals, and the industry is ideologically homogenous. Newsrooms have become ivory tower echo-chambers with only one voice resounding, which is bound to tacitly promote one way of thinking and thereby influence journalistic practice. Many journalists I have worked with are decent, intelligent people but are products of modern liberalism, which conditions people with appeals to emotion. I also have noticed both the lack and expressed depreciation of the abstract critical thinking skills needed to overcome their subjective opinions and biases to not become unwitting cogs in the Left’s propaganda machine. For the most part, I think their errors are not in harmful intent, but I do have suspicions that the media elite, so convinced of their righteousness, knowingly manipulate coverage because they ultimately think they know what’s best for the electorate. To quote a translation of Karl Marx, “The philosophers have only variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.”

Conspiracy theories aside, Ferguson is a dark snapshot in history of America showing its absolute worst, as created and captured by journalists. In this time, a man is presumed guilty only based on the color of his skin, legal processes and civil servants are repudiated in favor of mob justice and a community cannibalizes itself perhaps to the point of no recovery. Only the truly depraved can dismiss the senseless and gratuitous destruction of private property and utter rejection of civilized law as not only irrelevant to some imaginary injustice but also extol such disorder as progress while still making money off of it. Journalists moreover have aided the civil rights movement’s transformation into a disgusting parody of itself. That isn’t to say there aren’t racist cops out there, and police brutality against blacks shouldn’t be appropriately and expediently dealt with. But in Ferguson and other places, all that matters to civil rights leaders and their acolytes, journalist or not, is that Wilson is white and Brown was black; indisputable and related facts like petty theft and assault of a police officer have no bearing in their calculations to condemn a man of murder. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed to have a dream that one day people will not be “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Oh, how we have pissed on his wise words and his venerable grave.

Behold the good reverend’s nightmare:

Modus Pownens

*No sequential or causal order is meant to be applied for video and photos.

Contentious Pretentious Musings: Is marriage a social construct?

My online pen pal Oscar at Pretentious Musings has decided to take me to task about this argument against same-sex marriage I’ve been boasting about for quite some time. Good, I need a challenge from a worthy interlocutor because it’s been getting pretty lonely and pathetic just rambling into the great cyber wilderness of the Internet all by myself.

So. Here. We. Go.

Given that Pownens originally presented this argument as “non-Biblical”, I am going to approach this from a completely secular standpoint. Insofar as we accept this, the argument is problematic in that it attributes a normative standard to a social construct. Basically, Pownens is claiming that marriage ‘ought’ to be this way, when there is no ought to begin with.

Frankly, Oscar’s paragraph confuses me. I’ve never made a prescriptive claim to what marriage “ought” to be in any way. From whence I have scoured in my posts, I haven’t found any argument like “most of the world believes that marriage is between one man and woman” or “marriage has always been practiced as between one man and woman”; therefore marriage ought to be only between one man and woman. Neither has Alan Keyes. Nor am I applying my ethical preferences as a standard by which to yea or nay same-sex marriage. Instead, we have attempted to give an account, which is descriptive and not prescriptive, of what marriage is in reference to a moral debate, not what the institution ought to be. To do so is not an error in logical inference but the basis of rational moral discourse. After all, to claim “murder is wrong” requires an understanding of what murder is. Similarly, to imply there is marriage inequality, as same-sex marriage advocates do, requires an understanding of what marriage is. If anything, I’m making claims about what law ought to be based on what I purport marriage is. It’s no different than a feminist advocating for how law ought to recognize sexual consent predicated on what she thinks rape is. Ought is already assumed and used in such contexts. So, the indictment that I’m trying to fallaciously stem the is-ought gap in the manner Oscar surmises is off-kilter.

In fact, I reject the Humean skepticism that seems to influence Oscar’s objection, as I don’t hold that “matters of fact” are only derived of “impressions” from the senses. In other words, I don’t think the only facts are empirical ones as Hume did. Anyway, the rabbit hole here becomes too deep too quickly for this post, but as I hope the above paragraph successfully suggests, this alleged sacred distinction is not so nearly stark and rigid as both Hume and Oscar maintain.

Given Oscar’s background in philosophy, I’m a little befuddled about how he inferred claims about how marriage ought to be from phrases like “ontological impossibility” and comparisons to non-existent objects such as married bachelors, all of which are at least it part of the vernacular of metaphysics, which, to put it broadly, studies what is said to exist or what is and what is not.

I also find it interesting that Oscar evens opens this dialogue with this move. If he is correct that marriage is a merely social and cultural fabrication, then if any group is “attribut(ing) a normative standard to a social construct,” it’s the people who are pushing rather aggressively to redefine it on the basis it’s unfair to gay couples. Are they not arguing that marriage “‘ought’ to be this way” — namely that same-sex couples ought to be allowed to marry because of equal protection under the law — “when there is no ought to begin with”? So, if my argument dies by Oscar’s hand, then their case too must suffer the same fate. From his “completely secular standpoint,” this reasoning taken to its logical peak pushes all political debate on the issue off the ledge to the rocks below, as no reasoning on either side is justifiable. Pragmatically speaking, this will not do.

Therefore, I must challenge Oscar on his bare assertion that marriage is a social construct, as this claim is really where our conflict lies. His contention hardly seems evidently true, and he offers no reason as to why anyone should accept it. Plus, here’s a reason to doubt it: If marriage is a product of culture, a social construct, it’s likely we should have observed a greater variety of “marriages,” as Oscar understands them, across time and civilization than what we have. Obvious artifacts of culture like language, cuisine, art, religion have differed and changed from time and place. Even morality, although which is an objective feature of the world, has at least had a somewhat misleading facade of fluidity, as people’s ethical convictions have evolved throughout history, giving a false appearance of relativity. Yet, marriage has seemingly stayed remarkably static and universal in cultures for millennia. Sure, there have been various forms of polygamy, polyandry and arranged unions, but they all are rooted in human sexual complementarity. If marriage is purely created by culture, why haven’t we seen a host of diverse arrangements, wholly truncated from procreation, considered as marriage before now? Perhaps, it’s because marriage is actually founded in something more objective and is not actualized ex nihilo by society, as Oscar so opines.

Moreover, there’s also an ontological bugaboo Oscar has overlooked. And, it’s fairly straightforward to show what it is by going backwards. Let me explain: According to him, marriage, as a social construct, is determined by cultural whim; culture is a product of societies; societies can’t exist without people; people come from families; families spring forth from fertile loins, i.e. the union of a man and a woman, which, ipso facto, is what we social conservatives call a marriage. Summarily, men and women have long entered into what are clearly marital relationships way before there was culture to acknowledge such unions as marriage. And I’m not talking about fornicatin’. I mean forming households. The fact is domesticity predates civilization, society and civil law and is a necessary precursor to it all. Society doesn’t decide what is marriage; it just recognizes what has been here the whole time: the comprehensive union of a man and woman and its implicit reproductive potential.

Of course, Oscar and those in favor and actively invested in marital redefinition will not be convinced that the aforementioned first relationships are marriages (ah, the bigotry). They will extol Oscar’s reasoning and will cheer him as their champion. They are probably smitten over his swift dismissal of my argument. Some have probably even come to same conclusion that Oscar has and have drank the Kool-Aid without realizing the poison contained within it.

I had a philosophy professor who once said something along the lines, “Every solution to a problem in philosophy has a cost.” Oscar was able to diffuse my argument seemingly with ease because he didn’t directly address it. By denying that marriage has an essence derived from objective features of the world, Oscar did not question the validity or attack a premise. Instead, intentional or not, he assaulted the presupposition that there is any rational discourse to be had on this issue, a radical tactic which undermines any topic for debate. It’s probably the best compliment he could give me with his sudden overturning of the game board and all its pieces. I actually take it as evidence for the veracity of my position. Platitudes aside, however, if he’s correct that marriage is a social construct forged from subjectivity, same-sex marriage proponents have as much logical ground to stand on as me, which is none. Oscar has scorched it all. Their morally-charged appeals to the 14th Amendment are as “problematic” as my analytic analysis of marriage. It’s not a victory; it’s mutually assured destruction.

At the very best, the implications are more favorable to my side of the battlefield. If marriage “is merely a reflection of what society wants,” there should be a reliable means to divine what people desire in this regard. Surely, the oligarchical fiats of federal judges overriding democratically ratified state amendments voted in by public referendum isn’t such a measure. Truly, the most accurate method to ascertain what society wants marriage to be is to have its people, “bigots” and all, to decide for themselves and put those recent pro-same-sex marriage polls to the test. Wouldn’t you agree, Oscar?

Fun like always,

Modus Pownens

The Right’s fatal mistake in the conflict against same-sex marriage

In that immemorial contest of wills and strength known as tug of war, from the get-go, you never concede more than half the rope to the opposition. It bestows an overwhelming advantage to your opponent that results in this undignified position:

Most people call it defeat. The Left dubs it as “the wrong side of history.” In response, the Right needs to emphatically disparage the phrase and others like it. Yet, in their folly, conservatives don’t discredit it for being question-begging and fallacious — consensus or success in the Culture War does not make the position the truth. It also assumes fatalism, an impossible claim to knowledge of how events will unfold. Instead, conservatives ingest this poison pill we’re not forced to swallow. We hand them more than enough rope to tug nooses tight around our necks.

Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella offers this as wise counsel to any self-appointed champion of the Right: “As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don’t talk like a [insert favorite expletive] liberal. Don’t validate, by adopting, their question-begging epithets and phrases.” That means don’t use terms like “white privilege,” “war on women,” “rape culture,” “assault rifle,” “Islamophobia,” “disproportionality of force,” “income inequality,” “class warfare,” “xenophobia,” “social justice” and yes, “same-sex marriage.”

If my posts here and here haven’t been abundantly lucid, there is no such thing as a same-sex marriage. It’s a contradiction in terms, an ontological impossibility. In the same way the concept of bachelorhood intrinsically requires a man to be unmarried, the concept of marriage, in principle, requires the type of relationship to be procreative. All same-sex couples cannot procreate, no matter how many times they lovingly bump uglies. A pregnancy will not occur because it cannot occur, as dictated by the laws of nature. On the contrary, most opposite-sex couples can procreate. In fact, a pregnancy is prone to occur when a male and female have coitus. When two women or two men engage in sex, there is no chance. Zilch. That’s a huge difference between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples. Plus, emotional love is not what makes a marriage, otherwise there would be no such thing as an arranged marriage. So, like the fact married bachelors do not exist, marriages between individuals of the same sex whose unions are innately infertile, by definition, do not exist either. Therefore, the Right should object to the use of “same-sex marriage” at every turn, as any rational person would to “square triangle” or “massless body.”

The burden of proof falls upon same-sex marriage advocates. They push “marriage equality” — another one of their dastardly sayings — for same-sex couples, but the slogan implies as it stands, there is marriage inequality. It assumes heterosexual and homosexual relationships are one and the same, yet there is an imbalance in the sight of the law. As rationality in the practice of debate and making of public policy mandates, the same-sex marriage movement must show that marriage law is unjustly discriminatory. Mind you, it’s a very heavy burden to bear, as it requires an understanding of what marriage is, which if properly recognized, lays irrevocably entrenched in the same-sex marriage movement’s path. The Right’s duty is to make same-sex marriage advocates attempt to hoist that burden repeatedly and publicly, a responsibility we have shirked to our detriment by permitting the term.

Likewise, we have also foolishly conceded the phrase “same-sex marriage ban.” How can what amounts to a logical impossibility be banned in the first place is a feat well beyond my cognitive prowess. It also is ridiculously puerile and imprudent to prohibit what not only what doesn’t but cannot exist.

Moreover, lets scrutinize what actually is a ban, shall we? By definition, according to Google, “it’s an official or legal prohibition.” As such, every ban has an object to which it is directed. For example, “The university banned smoking from campus.” Smoking is the object of the predicate banned. In other words, whatever is outlawed must be defined for there to be a ban. Now, states that have not legalized same-sex marriage have been categorically alleged to have constitutional bans barring same-sex marriage. Well, take a look. Many — not all as media assert — of the so-called “bans” are not directed toward same-sex couples. These amendments affirm one type of relationship as marriage; they don’t “ban same-sex marriage.” Missouri, for instance, makes no mention of other types of relationships. So, the elevation in status of one sort of relationship over others is as much a ban as Missouri recognizing the channel catfish as its state fish. It’s no prohibition against any other species just like many of the state amendments’ contents is no prohibition against same-sex marriage. They actively elevate something in particular in status, while bans directly relegate something in particular in status.

As a an act of degradation, bans also intimate a period of decriminalized experience with their objects of interdiction. There is a familiarity with something that is banned. Books must be read before they are barred from schools. Drugs must be used before they become illegal substances. Then, same-sex marriages must have been instituted if they are banned. Of course, that’s false, as redefining marriage, up until roughly 15 years ago, has never been considered before in history. However, what it does subtlely convey, by those who proliferate the term, is that same-sex marriage, i.e., the love between same-sex couples, was the norm, which can be obfuscated and expanded to mean regular, typical and morally permissible, especially given the ethical relativism infesting society. There connotes a bias fitting a narrative of victimhood that these big, nasty constitutional amendments are bans passed in animus against gays and that their pre-established rights were cruelly stripped away from them.

As a rhetorical weapon, such a myth is lethal to our cause. Therefore, when applicable, it is vital to deny there is a ban against same-sex marriage, just like there is no such a thing as same-sex marriage. They will inevitably channel Saul Alinsky and denounce you as bigoted for trying to be rational, but this claim too is baseless. Hold them to task to justify their slanderous indictment, as the unsustainable burden proof again falls upon them. We can’t afford to continue to forfeit more and more ground. The debate can’t be in terms that already make us the oppressor. If the fight is fair, same-sex marriage has no chance.

Ensure that it is,

Modus Pownens

The dark side of same-sex marriage media doesn’t tell you about

Over at the Public Discourse, the site recently featured Janna Darnelle’s testimony about how her husband came out as gay, divorced her and the subsequent fallout. It stands in direct contradiction to the rosy narrative same-sex marriage advocates pander, a story journalists have gobbled up without properly vetting. It’s a lie of omission they’ve been all too happy to tell.

Excerpt:

Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers. No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: ‘I am gay, and I deserve my rights.’ It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, ‘If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.’

I truly believe that judge was legislating from the bench, disregarding the facts of our particular case and simply using us — using our children — to help influence future cases. In our society, LGBT citizens are seen as marginalized victims who must be protected at all costs, even if it means stripping rights from others. By ignoring the injustice committed against me and my children, the judge seemed to think that he was correcting a larger injustice.

My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage.

The fact Darnelle, the children’s biological mother, lost custody of her own children when she did nothing to warrant losing them is chilling. This anecdote shows the oft-peddled claim, “How does allowing gay couples to marry affect your (heterosexual) marriage?” as vacuous. By redefining marriage, it alters who the law recognizes as legal parents. If a type of union between individuals is infertile, by its nature, is elevated in status to be on par in legal jurisprudence to the type of union that is, the vast majority of time, fertile, then blood ties, the biological connection between parent and child that is recognized by law as the adhesive that formulates families, becomes irrelevant. The implication of legalizing same-sex marriage is that the state does not have to recognize that genetic bond. In the sight of the law, mothers and fathers become optional. Familial bonds become strictly social constructions with no basis in objectivity, which makes it much easier for the state to meddle in domestic affairs. In other words, by advocating for same-sex marriage, you are advocating for the dissolution of a buffer zone that keeps the government out of your home, the means of taking away your children from you. Yep, saying “yes” to the illusory right to marriage is saying “no” to children having the real right to be raised by their biological parents. Darnelle is an example that this alleged slippery slope is quickly becoming legal precedent in reality.

A second and equally pivotal excerpt:

USA Today did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media…

…After our children’s pictures were publicized, a flood of comments and posts appeared. Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my ex-husband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me.

There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally.

Every same-sex family can only exist by manipulating nature. Behind the happy façade of many families headed by same-sex couples, we see relationships that are built from brokenness. They represent covenants broken, love abandoned, and responsibilities crushed. They are built on betrayal, lies, and deep wounds.

This is also true of same-sex couples who use assisted reproductive technologies such as surrogacy or sperm donation to have children. Such processes exploit men and women for their reproductive potential, treat children as products to be bought and sold, and purposely deny children a relationship with one or both of their biological parents. Wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is always missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.

Yes, people, this issue is a matter of social justice, but not in the way it’s portrayed by journalists. Same-sex marriage advocates are waging war against women and children. Unless there’s a divorce and adoption — both of which are messy affairs — third-party reproduction is always involved in the establishment of a same-sex household, but to coax this family into existence, wombs must be rented out, sperm must be collected like milk and children are commoditized. I hope such methods are seen for what they actually are, obviously and unequivocally depraved.

Please, take Darnelle’s words, experience and tragedy into your consideration on this matter.

My thoughts and prayers are with her,

Modus Pownens

Savage words for Dan Savage’s guide to interpretting Old Testament law

Remember when this blog was about philosophy and Christian apologetics before all the politics? Believe it or not, I still do, and I want to get back to doing some of the good ‘ole Lord’s work. Dan Savage, the prominent same-sex marriage and gay rights activist, affords me the opportunity to do both. So, what’s that saying about birds and stones?

Basically, Savage attacks the Pentateuchal laws in regard to homosexuality as null and void because the rest of the stuff in there is no longer followed or believed to be binding. He calls condemning homosexuality and ignoring all the other rules about menstruation, diet, ceremony, etc. is hypocritical. Furthermore, the Bible’s alleged treatment of slavery and lack of abolitionist sentiment severs any credibility and authority about any other moral claims it establishes. Savage paraphrases from Sam Harris that “The Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong: slavery. What are the odds that Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent.” And as such, the book is ethically bankrupt.

Well, no, and here’s why. The schtick about cherry-picking what to follow from the Old Testament is an all too common criticism, but it relies on sloppy exegesis. First of all, Christian theologians for ages — I’m talking as far back as Augustine and Tertullian — recognized three categories of laws within the Leviticus and company. Ceremonial laws dealt with issues such as circumcision, diet, cleanliness, sacrifices and priestly garments. Civil/judicial rulings for things like crimes and business exchanges. The moral category involved basic normative principles often involved in the Ten Commandments like murder, theft, deceit, adultery and idolatry. Also of import, Israel, as God’s chosen and holy people, was supposed to be a theocracy. Hence, the ceremonial and civil/judicial laws are considered to be only applicable to the Jews at this time. Therefore, this section of the legal code is not viewed as appurtenant to Christians, as we don’t live under the same circumstances. The moral laws, on the contrary, transcend time and space and are authoritative. So, the ones about human sexuality, like those in Leviticus 18 and 20 about homosexuality, are still very much in play. Indeed, Savage is mistaken: The Christian, who denounces homosexuality on the basis of the Old Testament, is being fully consistent in his or her beliefs.

Of course, there’s also the New Testament edicts that prohibit homosexuality in Romans 1: 26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9, which bears the notion the entire Bible needs to be interpreted comprehensively, not this sniping of verses and passages out of context. The Old Testament often does not make sense without the New Testament and vice versa.

This exegetical principle now brings me to Savage’s, and those of like mind, fixation on slavery in the Bible. Admittedly, the issue is not so easily dismissed like his first criticism, especially given our cultural and righteous aversion to the institution in modern Western society. However, it’s crucial to remember that the Bible is to be understood holistically. Scrutinized verses need to be weighed against similarly themed passages and with the whole of Scripture. So obsessing about relatively miniscule chunks, loading them into your anti-Christian cannon and blasting away as if your ammo is deadly to the whole Christian worldview is honestly nothing more than blustery. Let me also write, given my two years in graduate school, such attitudes presented to other positions in academia would be deigned as inappropriate and ineffective. There is something called the principle of charity, which deems a critique as efficacious if it attacks the strongest form of the argument, not the low-hanging fruit.

Hence, Savage and other “New Atheist” types who attack the Bible are too content with their marauding diatribes about the hateful, capricious God of the Old Testament, the atrocities against the Canaanites and, in this case, slavery. They claim victory prematurely, as Christians have been grappling with these passages since the 2nd century A.D. Yep, sorry to burst your bubble, but these criticisms aren’t some new insight never considered. Enter Origen who proposed the Bible must be read through the lens of Jesus. In other words, if you read Leviticus and think God endorses slavery, this conclusion makes no sense in the light of Christ’s love in his death and resurrection, and you therefore, have misinterpreted the text. Following from this idea, C.S. Lewis advocated what’s known as “mere Christianity” or the foundational propositions of the Christian worldview. As William Lane Craig notes, “If God exists and has revealed Himself decisively in Jesus of Nazareth, then Christianity is true, and the rest is working out the details.” According to Craig, the slavery accusation, as it is often asserted, is very much in the details and has no bearing on whether or not theism is true or the historicity of Jesus. Admittedly, Savage here never claimed these alleged contradictions mean Christianity is false, — only its moral claims — but such a view is implied and plausibly inferred. In either case, the apt reply to Savage’s obsession with the little things is “so what?”.

Moreover, another thing to remember, the Bible is less interested in individual social standing than it is invested in spiritual salvation. Whether or not a person was a master or a slave doesn’t really matter when the soul could be forfeit.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19-20).

The Bible repeatedly urges devotion to the eternal than what is material and temporary. It’s message breaks the chains of sin. That’s the paramount biblical message, i.e., the Gospel.

However, some might find find the above described exegetical strategies and explanations as wishy-washy, so here are some more little “details.” For example, the slavery laws clearly belong civil/judicial category, which had no intention of application to any gentile society, let alone modern America. Similarly, Biblical slavery most likely resembled indentured servitude and not the plantation-style Antebellum South practice with which we strongly associate. It was voluntary and like a form of welfare for the destitute, with many of the laws protecting the slaves from harm. Service was also supposed to be temporary, as mandated in Deuteronomy 15:12. It was actually quite humane and progressive for its time.

It might be objected that regardless of the favorable conditions, it still is deplorable to own a person as property, and surely a just God would reflect that moral truth in its decrees. Ah, but the Bible does twice in Exodus 21:16 and Deuteronomy 24:7. Still, I don’t see why the Bible must overtly express abolitionist sentiment to be considered morally authoritative. Moreover, this objection seems in line with the same thinking behind the arguments from evil, only it’s posed specifically around whether or not the Bible has moral worth, not around God’s existence:

1. If the Bible is moral, then it has laws that prohibit the possession of people as property.
2. The Bible has laws that permit and regulate the possession of people as property.
3. Therefore, the Bible is not moral.

As a modus tollens, it’s valid, but it’s not sound as the first premise is not solid like in similarly formulated arguments from evil. For there could be a morally sufficient reason for God tolerating the temporary and voluntary possession of people, such as to prevent widespread poverty that afflicted ancient peasants as is suggested in the Bible. There could be others, but the fact is humans are epistemically limited and have about an amoeba-sized view inside the Earthly petri dish. God’s perspective is rather all-encompassing, so it’s conceivable that we don’t have all the information to judge why God would tolerate the owning of people. Premise 1 also is colored by a Western-centric interpretation of slavery: If the Bible does not meet that worldview’s expectations in regard to morality, then it’s devoid of normative weight. But that conditional is clearly false.

Furthermore, I think Savage’s contention that the Bible “is a radical pro-slavery document” is a gross mischaracterization. His ignorance becomes incredibly evident when he makes that jab at the book of Philemon. In the letter, Paul beseeches Philemon to welcome back Onesimus, a runaway slave of Philemon’s who had become a Christian. He implores Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave” but “as a dearly loved brother” (Philemon 1:16). Although Paul didn’t speak against the institution of slavery, the implications of the Gospel were not conducive with the practice of institution. As all people are sinful, they’re all equal, and moreover, equal as brothers and sisters in Christ. This claim clearly is not compatible with the Roman or American South’s slavery institutions. This might be speculative, but I would conjecture this idea also undergirded Christian abolitionists’ rationale for ending slavery and influenced the Founding Fathers’ revolution and subsequent nation-building.

So, the Bible did not get “the easiest moral question” in the Bible wrong if, indeed, it’s in regard to slavery. It took a nuanced position on a complicated issue that only faintly resembled what Americans consider as slavery. If anything, the Christian tenants, properly understood, implied the buying, selling and trading of human beings as chattel as morally reprehensible and laid the groundwork to formally ending the injustice. Then for curiosity’s sake, what is “the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced?” Infanticide seems pretty straightforward, as it seems pretty hard to justify the killing of babies unless of course, they happen to be inside the womb. Then it’s not even ok; it’s a woman’s righ—oh, wait…

This also reminds me: Isn’t it interesting the famed champion of the bullied refers to the Christian students who walk out on his tirade delivered from what is a bully-pulpit as “pansy-assed?” Savage justifies his behavior as executed in self defense, despite the video shows Savage verbally segueing to talk about the Bible in his presentation and seemingly no students are heckling him for his sexual orientation or offering any sort of provocation. Though it does bear asking, why the hell is Savage speaking, first of all, at a high school journalism conference, and secondly, why is the Bible a topic at such an event? All but the iron—no sorry, I mean hypocrisy is lost on me here. Here is a man who is vehemently condemning ethical double standards and slavery, who openly endorses the breeding and purchasing of children to gay couples as equality under the law.

“Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of an owner and are bought and sold as if they were commodities.”

Google it,

Modus Pownens

Unmanicured talons: Feminism’s mysoginistic outrage at anti-rape nail polish

Sometimes, the reasoning of feminists bamboozles me. Take this response to an innovative nail polish whose wearer can test her drink for date rape drugs in her drink by dipping her finger into the beverage. The nail polish changes color to alert a targeted women of the intentions of the devil grinning at her. Oh, but the precautionary genius of this product is lost on those who presumably should be its loudest supporters.

Yep, feminists argue unconvincingly that this nail polish is a well intended but bad idea. They posit that it limits the behavior of women and to curtail one’s actions means the fear of rape is controlling their lives, according to Rebecca Nagle, a co-director of FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. Alexandra Brodsky, a co-founder of Know Your IX, a group working to address campus sexual assault, and The Guardian‘s Jessica Valenti say this product can actually end up fueling victim blaming. Women who don’t use the product could open themselves up to criticism with the onus of culpability falling on them. ThinkProgress’ Tara Culp-Ressler also laments:

Women are already expected to work hard to prevent themselves from becoming the victims of sexual assault. They’re told to avoid wearing revealing clothing, travel in groups, make sure they don’t get too drunk, and always keep a close eye on their drink. Now, remembering to put on anti-rape nail polish and discreetly slip a finger into each drink might be added to that ever-growing checklist — something that actually reinforces a pervasive rape culture in our society.

And here are my favorites. Salon’s Jenny Kutner asks, “Is this really a market we should continue to applaud entrepreneurs’ (notably male ones) tapping into? Or might these resources be better allocated trying to teach people not to rape?” Elizabeth Plank, writing for .Mic,  makes “teach men not to rape” her first prescription on her list of 11 ways to solve rape better than nail polish.

Talk about sexism! So let’s nip this one in the butt first: Not all men are rapists. This “teach men not to rape” platitude implies all men are so vulnerable to our own sexual desires that we can’t help but rape, kind of like a pet that needs to be housebroken. Furthermore, Plank extols the Indian prime minister who said:

In every home, parents ask daughters lots of questions as to where she is going, when will she return, and ask her to inform them when she reaches her destination.

But have you ever asked your son where he is going, why is he going and who are his friends? After all, the person committing the rape is also someone’s son.

All men are seemingly presumed guilty of being a rapist before committing the qualifying act. This isn’t to say that men shouldn’t be educated on consent and sexual assault. They should! But Plank really doesn’t never makes this distinction between the need to inform or indict men. Instead, she and her feminist sisters come off extremely patronizing and — dare I say? — paternal. If this isn’t obviously offensive, how about I spew that we should “teach women not to sleep around” and as a woman, see if you don’t take umbrage.

Furthermore, “teach” is a poor word here not just because it conveys prejudice, but because it actually doesn’t correctly characterize the heinous act. “Rape culture” is similarly another misappropriated term on this issue. Simply, they aren’t authoritative enough and as such, don’t accurately identify what rape is, and this has actually hindered the feminist cause. Rape is not something that can be unlearned or taught not to do. It’s not like an error in etiquette, even an extremely grievous one. This is too generous to the bastards who rape. Likewise, whether there is a “rape culture” is irrelevant. Culture is a descriptive term and lacks normativity. Any discussion about stopping rape must be situated with the language that treats rape for what it is: an act of unmitigated, objective evil. This talk about teaching men to not be slaves to their carnal passions in an effort to change the rape culture endemic on college campuses is not framing the debate seriously enough. It understates the problem so completely, there is now a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s at issue, thereby directing the wrong sort of attitudes and actions against it, say I don’t know, like being feverishly opposed to a nail polish that can doubles as date-rape drug detector to protect women. This mischaracterization has been disastrous for women (more on this later).

The reason for this failure, I believe, is indicative of the moral presuppositions and sympathies that belie many feminists’ rage against rape. Most likely they’re believers in the moral relativism and emotivism rampant in Western society. And as Alastair Macintyre notes in his seminal work After Virtue, this inculcation has led to the breakdown of the moral argument and disagreement in Western civilization, which in turn has rendered true civil and political discourse on issues — take rape, for example — impossible. This truth, as important as it is, warrants tackling at another time.

Philosophy aside, as rape is blatant evil, its perpetrators can’t be reasoned with or persuaded. Men can’t be trained or conditioned in order for rape to disappear. It makes as much sense as outlawing murder on the basis it’s curable. You might as well just shoot down the moon. It’s delusional wishful thinking of a utopia that doesn’t exist. However, evil does, and…

Precisely, and the manner in which feminists deal with it is to pretend shit doesn’t happen, and that matters because they advise against exercising caution in the face of a very real threat. They assert that nail polish, self-defense classes and pepper spray don’t stop rape wholesale, but this is based on a misguided assumption that they are supposed to. Just like seat belts aren’t supposed to end all car accident deaths, the nail polish isn’t intended to cease rape forever and always. It’s designed to prevent a specific scenario where a woman is drugged. Hence, accusing the nail polish for it not being the master solution to the problem is a critical misfire.

I suspect feminists will object that welcoming the nail polish puts the culpability on the woman and enforces the victim stigma associated with rape. It permits a phrase like “if only you wore your nail polish.” First off, it is disconcerting and unacceptable for anyone to chastise someone for being the victim of evil. I’m actually deeply saddened by the existence of such a taboo. I repeat: Such behavior is unacceptable. However, equally inadmissible is the notion women should not take steps to protect themselves under the guise of feminine empowerment. This is the fault of feminists like Nagle, Brodsky, Valenti, Culp-Ressler, Kutner and Plank.

Perhaps the graver sin is that their brand of feminism has been a catastrophe. Sure, when it came to getting women in the workforce, feminism has been a positive force for change. But when it comes to sexuality, undoubtedly the whole social movement has been an abysmal failure. Liberal attitudes towards sex have not been the so-called liberator they were supposed to be; women are still sexual objects and not people, more so than ever, I believe. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have this twice a day on Sports Illustrated’s website. Or this. Or magazines and other forms of mass media that subliminally bombard girls, women and men that to be feminine is to look and act like this.

Is it any wonder we have a rape epidemic on our hands? As Plank notes, “men will confess to the act of rape as long as you don’t use the word ‘rapist’… you end up with a lot of them volunteering the information that they have [sexual assaulted], without realizing that this counts as rape.” You’ve trivialized sex to the point where the moral inhibitions involved also are reduced. This isn’t to make to make an excuse for boys who lack the self-control to be men or anyone who has committed sexual assault. However, it’s still true feminists helped facilitate this “rape culture” crisis they harp about. Sure, men have ignited the fire, but the feminism that encourages women to be promiscuous no matter the cost gathered the tinder.

What is deplorable is that feminists perpetuate the myth that recreational sex is a negative liberty. That, women have a right to sleep with whomever they want, whenever they want, in whatever circumstances. And any inkling of personal responsibility, even in the cause of reasonable concern about safety, is viewed as an infringement on this “pursuit of happiness.” Mind you, it’s a hedonistic, self-destructive chase that increases the probability that it ends in, well, go ask many of the alleged 20 percent of women on college campuses. Anyway, why else would they be in such a tizzy about something as useful as that resourceful little nail polish? That obstinance in spite of reality, my female friends who bothered to read to the end, is misogyny. And it’s been costly.

Happy mani-pedi day,

Modus Pownens

The SoFISHtry of the American Foundation for Equal Rights

I’ve already defended the American Organization for Marriage’s argument in “Marriage = Biology (Not Bigotry)” video from the polemical likes of Mr.Repzion. His channel is just an expression of his personal whims and beliefs. From what I can glean, there is no greater agenda motivating his editorial videos, and he doesn’t project an aura of legitimacy that should be heeded in the comprehensive context of American politics. This isn’t a knock against him but an acknowledgement of the nature of his online fiefdom. He is small fry: A guppy who darts hither and thither through the Internet’s currents, snacking on whatever his floppy fish-mouth can envelop.

Now, to bigger, more dangerous gilled creatures. (Spoiler: Gratuitous allusions and metaphors of fish to follow)

The larger piscean species to be tackled this time is the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and it’s devoted to “finding Nemo,” i.e. marriage equality. The organization also published a video in response to NOM, and before I sink my hooks into this one, I want you all to watch NOM’s video first and then view the “intrepid” Matt Baume and his stellar “refutation.”

You draw your own conclusions, but here is my commentary of NFER’s rebuttal.

00:00 – 00:25: Firstly, NOM’s video never compares same-sex couples to drug dealers and pedophiles. Actually, NOM makes a comparison between gay marriage, “drug dealing” (00:47) and “incest and pedophilia” (01:02). These are behaviors, not citizens, according to NOM. The organization simply is arguing for the prohibition of behaviors it finds destructive and not the oppression of a group of individuals. It’s attacking the actions of people, not the people themselves. There is an important difference.

Moreover, NOM is lucid in this distinction. Throughout the video, the producers change the typography of the words “people” and “behavior” to draw attention to this point. Hint: They’re bolded and colored orange. In the 00:00 – 01:12 span, the upper right hand corner reads “behavior of its citizens.” And if this wasn’t crystalline, in 03:50 – 04:20, the video directly addresses this objection.

00:26 – 00:49: Again, Baume bastardizes what NOM means by natural marriage like Mr.Repzion before him. As NOM implies at 00:15 – 00:17, “natural” refers to — and I’m sorry for the graphic imagery — when a penis releases semen into a vagina due to sexual intercourse, fertilization, followed by gestation and birth can occur. This is a fact confirmed by biology and thousands of years of history and prehistory. Couples didn’t magically manifest because sets of a man and a woman just happened to live together and their tribes, for no reason, just started to call and treat their relationships as what would eventually be dubbed as marriage. No, marriage has always been about sex and the resulting children. The society, people and legality of the institution, the state to that Nancy Cott’s quote refers and the civil rights that Baume’s NFER champions, all came afterward. I’m not just talking about in time either. Their ontological cradle is “natural marriage.”

The whole “This term is nonsense…[marriage] is something that comes from people, a set of laws” schtick is actually the nonsensical claim. Baume’s denial here is like saying a documentary about salmon spawning in rivers is not natural because the cameras, video and sound editing and David Attenborough’s dignified inflections is “something that comes from people, a production created by human technologies.” It neglects the fact the subject of the documentary, the root of the whole enterprise, is a natural phenomenon. Likewise, Baume ignores that the whole reason for marriage, as an institution, is the biological reality of procreative sex.

Moreover, Baume just begs the question in favor of same-sex marriage advocates. He does not demonstrate why NOM’s foundational premiss is faulty, and his asserted alternative is just left without any justification. Granted, it’s a tall order discrediting millennia of successful human reproduction and a biological tenant so apparent, people understood and repeatedly applied the principle way before microscopes made it possible to see sperm, with their flagella, rushing to fertilize egg cells. Instead, it’s easier to not engage your opponent’s argument and falsely conflate people with behaviors again by claiming, “with this term, NOM is calling gay people unnatural.” This statement patently isn’t true as a thorough scouring of NOM’s video will vindicate.  However, there will be more on what appears to be the blatant refusal to do honest discourse later in the post.

00:50 – 02:05: Here’s where it becomes apparent that Baume just wants to discredit NOM without that little something called intellectual honesty. Baume’s sophistry really starts to shine, and any charitable interpretation of his mistakes thus far, i.e. honest errors in reasoning, becomes less and less likely.

He says, “It’s not so surprising that NOM gets their terminology so wrong because their definition of marriage defies reality. Here’s what NOM thinks marriage is…”. Then, he attack NOM’s list of effects of marriage as if these are necessary characteristics of the institution, or its definition.

See, the verb “is” usually accompanies a sentence or phrase that would be considered a definition. For instance, with Baume in mind, sophistry is “a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.” However, the list Baume targets is not expressed with the verb: “Natural marriage creates children, best raises children, protects women, civilizes men, [sic] lowers crime, poverty, and welfare.” All these verbs are extrinsic contrasted with the intrinsic is. They are a posteriori results of marriage and not a priori prerequisites of it. Hence, any of Baume’s thrusts are striking a straw man. For example, NOM’s video never argues that marriage categorically creates children like Baume insinuates. NOM is highly aware that sex is what puts the buns in the oven because the organization bases their entire video upon that fact, which Baume conveniently ignores and only now acknowledges here because he can levy it against NOM’s credibility. Though, he assuredly doesn’t draw any real blood here or throughout his rebuttal. He hits ketchup packets, whose crimson substitute, unfortunately, looks legitimate enough to many who will view his video and take his words as gospel.

Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about this debate should realize NOM’s definition of marriage, like each pro-family group, is delineated as a union between one man and one woman. It’s common knowledge. Baume certainly knows it. He also shows the ability to differentiate between a definition and an effect and what NOM means in this section because he says later, “That’s actually true. Marriage has a stabilizing social influence…”. Therefore, pinning that list of effects as a definition is like saying a pro-choice group’s definition of abortion is that it liberates women, gives them control of their body, etc., It’s a definition no one defends because it isn’t one. It takes a slimy panache to pull such a stunt, a feat Baume continually attempts to outdo.

For example, in regard to natural marriage “[sic] protecting women and civilizing men,” Baume spouts this glorious tidbit:

At least to NOM’s credit, this is sexist against both men and women. This is a hard claim to debunk because it doesn’t make sense, but what NOM seems to be saying is that if gay people can get married, then men will start impregnating women and then leaving them to go commit crimes. This is offensive to just about everyone but most of all, to reality.

What?!?! Baume’s statement is baffling. Nowhere in the span of NOM’s video is such a ludicrous notion even implied, let alone explicitly stated. For NOM, natural marriage has the aforementioned functions. That is all. The charges of sexism are off-kilter because in NOM’s video, the text underneath at 01:12 – 01:30 unpacks what is meant by “protects women” and “civilizes men.” That’s the context of their definition that both “defies” and “is offensive…to reality.”

Lastly, Baume’s contention that the children of same-sex couples are on equal footing with those of heterosexual ones is more contentious than what he portrays. Try here and here. I’ve also read that both sides have used studies with cherry-picked selections, so let’s say for the sake of intellectual honesty, the scientific jury is still out on the question whether same-sex households are equivalent in child rearing to heterosexual homes.

02:06 – 02:23: Once again, Baume demonstrates his uncanny, arbitrary and selective listening skills. The phrase that seems to go through one earhole and right out the other without leaving an impression in his grey matter is “as a whole.” Gay people comprise how much of the overall population? Four or five percent at most. Hence, it is political idiocy granting superfluous benefits under the law to a small minority whose plight amounts to a triangle demanding to be known as a square. It would be crafting an extra class of civil rights for a group of individuals whose choices — the free expressions of one’s sexual proclivities, homosexual or otherwise — afford them no “inalienable” or “self-evident” entitlement to such privileges. To succumb in this manner is not being fair or reasonable. The governance of our whole society is hardly supposed to be dictated by the whims of the irrational few.

Now, let me be transparent: Do gay members of the workforce deserve to be fired or denied employment based on their sexual orientation? Absolutely not. Do gay children deserve to be bullied at school? Good gracious no! Should gay people be derided as “fags” and suffer other malicious slurs? Of course not. They should be given the basic human dignity all imperfect people deserve. And I believe this truth entails gay couples having access to life insurance, hospital visitation, etc., all of which I feel civil unions ought to guarantee.

Ultimately, I’m as much an enemy as the gay civil rights movements chooses to make me. It all depends on you. You can march for what is fundamentally yours, and I will walk shoulder-to-shoulder in stride, or you can continue to tread on forbidden ground and trample the essential freedoms of others in your struggle for “equality.”

Every time you sue a Christian baker for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, coercing a person to violate his or her constitutionally protected religious and moral conscience, you fashion a foe. On each occasion you slander someone who publicly expresses discontent at anal sex, a behavior completely enacted by free will, you raise an adversary. In each moment you indoctrinate our children at school with the lies that a gay lifestyle, consciously pursued, is as healthy as a heterosexual one, and thereby a viable and normal alternative, you forge opposition. Your scorched earth-tactics in this war are growing tiresome. The “tolerance” you so crave is becoming exhausted. We are weary as you tear up our constitutional rights “as recompense for your imagined slights.” Our ranks are swelling; a storm is coming. When it breaks, know that it was your lack of restraint that stirred this furious tempest against you.

The lesson of this ominous forecast, Mr. Baume? Whatever is left, if and when the proverbial straw breaks the camel’s back, it probably won’t be “the land of the free,” and that outcome doesn’t bode well for American society, as a whole. Moreover, the conditions now that are stoking these fires are not paradise for all either.

To summarize, NOM and I contend redefining marriage is and will have implicit and contingent negative repercussions for everyone. It’s clear Baume paid little attention to NOM’s and its listed consequences, so I’ll add more: the weakening of the family, a mediating institution against the reach of the state, the forfeiture of any logical ground to withstand the lunacy that is polygamy, polyandry and bestiality and the path to new judicial precedent in family law — as the litigation of custody battles in experimental same-sex families, in principle, would then be applicable to heterosexual households, the impoverishment of civil discourse, societal abandonment of common sense and the commoditization of women and children as chattel. That’s scratching the surface of the opportunity cost of granting “ancillary benefits” without proper qualification. Alas, this is “justice”; this is now America.

02:24 – 02:42:

There’s only a predatory hatred of gay people to be located within those words if and only if Baume and his allies want such meaning to lurk there. “Merely validates sex partners” refers to the erroneous legitimization of behavior between individuals solely because it’s amorous. It wasn’t intended to denigrate gay people, as Baume falsely asserts. The only one entering the “realm of invasive, personal attack” is Baume, whose blatant misrepresentation of NOM’s video and repeated cries of prejudice are so baffling inappropriate, dishonesty instead of mere fallacious reasoning is fast becoming the only explanation for his utterly feeble rebuttal. He accuses more than he argues, inventing bigotry when no such menace exists. Any attempt at civil debate becomes impossible if all he does is take umbrage at genuine logic.

Moreover, “What’s love got to do with it?” Nothing. The fact the partners, gay or straight, love each other is irrelevant, as the notion of marrying for love is a relatively recent Western addition to the institution. Do political or arranged marriages cease being marriages because the man and woman don’t love each other? Do loveless marriages not exist? Being in love is not a necessary condition of marriage, although I submit it’s certainly conducive to a happy, “until death do us part” endeavor.

02:43 – 02:57:

Once again, both sides of the debate claim academic studies as support to their conclusions. Personally, I haven’t read the studies to fairly ascertain for whom social science is a handmaiden. What I have read is that both are proliferated with statistical and sampling fallacies. Baume, for the first and only time, correctly asks for these statistics. However, he promptly returns to form when declaring their non-existence.

I’ll let Professor Robert Oscar López of English Manif have the honors for this one:

First, it is highly suspicious that studies into same-sex parenting generate a similar “no difference” hypothesis even though we know that the death of a parent, divorce, adoption, and third-party reproduction do cause different outcomes in children, when those aspects are studied outside the label of same-sex parenting. The only way that a same-sex couple can raise a child, is if there was the death of an opposite-sex parent, a divorce or breakup of a heterosexual couple, an adoption, or some kind of third-party reproduction. And on all these latter family issues, the social-science record is clear. Children grieve for dead parents for their whole lives. Divorce has catastrophic effects on children. Adoptees are almost four times more likely to commit suicide and reveal a host of other difficult outcomes. Children of sperm donors were revealed to have many more adjustments problems in a huge 2010 study that was commented on, by Elizabeth Marquardt. And now research into children of surrogacy contracts shows that they have greater levels of depression, disruptive development, and even higher rates of some forms of cancer. Then there is research into the Cinderella Effect, which finds that the highest indicator of risk for abuse of children is the presence of a non-genetically related guardian in the home.

How is it possible that hundreds upon hundreds of studies into same-sex parenting find that when gay parents are involved, none of these family dynamics produce differential outcomes?

I hate to tell you, but it’s not possible.

Now, it bears elucidation: Death of a parent is not always associable with same-sex parenting. However, I believe López refers to a situation in which a single parent dies, and his or her child is then moved to the other biological parent who now is living with his or her same-sex partner. Moreover, surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization and adoption are natural developments of same-sex marriage. In other words, they are very applicable to same-sex families.

Hence, contrary to Baume, the studies and statistics do exist. When gay couples are removed from the equation, studies are lucid that biological, intact families are preferable for child-rearing. However, when gay couples are considered in this same type of research, the evidence for this conclusion vanishes even though “the only way that a same-sex couple can raise a child, is if there was the death of an opposite-sex parent, a divorce or breakup of a heterosexual couple, an adoption, or some kind of third-party reproduction.”

Curious, very curious.

02:58 – 03:19: 

Baume once again asserts, “It’s true in some states that companies might have to do business with gay couples, but that has nothing to do with marriage.” Au contraire, Monseur Baume, there is such a thing as a marriage industry. Where do the decadent wedding cakes, lovely flower arrangements and funky bands come from for both the ceremonies and receptions? Companies have and will do business for gay couples planning their weddings. Plus, it’s been well popularized about florists or bakers suffering lawsuits for refusing service to a gay couples because it would be in violation of their constitutionally protected right to abide by their religious and moral conscience. I’ve even watched a video where Baume comments on situations such as these. Granted, “fund” is an unusual word, and perhaps NOM could be more clear, but government coerced endorsement of something citizens find morally repugnant is what’s at issue here.

I also maintain the subject can be reasonably inferred because of the box floating next to Baume’s head with NOM’s video reading, “Gov’t ‘can override your religion [sic].’ Court rules: Businesses not allowed to reflect faith of their owners.” I also wager the “taxes” refer to the funding of this abuse of federal power, although this connection is more tenuous.

I’m not sure how Baume does not make this realization, as involved and well-versed he is in the happenings involved in this civil rights issue. Certainly, this absence is embarrassing for a “journalistic” show called “Marriage News Watch” that describes itself as “a news and editorial program” at the end of the video.

What the forever slippery Baume is not silent about is that gays have to “file extra returns and pay extra taxes because the government does not recognize those relationships.” This is a red herring, as it is not pertinent to the topic at hand, and civil unions could remedy this issue rather than a radical overhaul of humanity’s first institution. It also fits in nicely with the victim-narrative Baume is broadcasting: NOM is oppressive to gays and wants government to enable that prejudice.

03:20 – 03:59:

Ok, the crucial assumption of this whole push for same-sex marriage is that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are essentially equivalent; therefore, they deserve equal treatment. Ah, but they’re not. Only sexual relations between a man and woman can create human life. Marriage arose because of this biologically affirmed phenomenon. On the other side, a man and a man or a woman and a woman, no matter how many times they try, will never conceive a child without help from outside of the bedroom. In-vitro fertilization, renting out a woman’s womb to compensate and the industry that provides these services are seriously questionable. Women and children are reduced to chattel to be bought and sold. Sounds familiar? The antebellum American South built their society on a similar practice.

Ruminations on the past aside, marriage, by definition, only pertains to couples that can engage in procreative sex. Therefore, NOM’s video is not advocating for “separate but equal” or anti-miscegenation-type laws, as Baume insinuates. A black man and a white woman, vice versa or any racial combination between a man and a woman can still result in offspring. So appeals to Loving v. Virginia are misplaced. Moreover, NOM’s video tacitly recognizes this distinction; Baume dismisses it because marriage, in his view, is mere consensual commitment between loving adults. Human history and biology vastly attests otherwise.

04:00 – 04:15:

No, no, no! NOM’s video never calls gay people “uncivilized” nor deems them as not a part of “civilized society.” If anyone is being demeaned and treated as unfit of dignity, it’s NOM by Baume’s slanderous commentary. NOM refers to the institution, properly understood, as the foundation of civilization. It isn’t even directly talking about heterosexual couples let alone homosexual ones. Again, this is obvious, as any honest viewing of NOM’s video will demonstrate. Plus, the vindicating words are elevated right next to Baume’s countenance.

How stupid does he and AFER believe us to be?

04:16 – 04:38:

Here’s Baume’s concluding and knockout punch:

So let’s see: NOM just compared an entire minority group to criminals, called them unnatural, said they are less fit to raise children, demeaned their relationships and called them uncivilized. And then they say, ‘That’s not bigotry.'”

Except it isn’t. None of these accusations are true.

I would like to add NOM claims “natural marriage creates the best possible family for children.” Their video never says gay people “are less fit to raise children,” as Baume would have us believe. Rather, it means the arrangement or union of same-sex marriage is not conducive to child-rearing. This is not an assessment of gay people’s parenting skills. It’s an evaluation of environment. It’s akin to saying a cage around a diver best protects while swimming with sharks, while a cageless diver is implied to be less safe. This isn’t a reflection of the diver’s swimming ability. The diver is not being questioned. Of course, if gay people choose “to swim sans a cage” and believes themselves as impervious as those who choose to “surround themselves with iron bars,” such folly can and should be challenged.

So, Baume’s wild haymaker does not land. However, it’s so off-target, his charges so false, the video ends with the disclaimer that “The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of AFER or its legal team.” Good think too as Baume’s counterstrike comes off as a low-blow. It’s not just sophistry; it’s slander in what appears to be uttered in actual malice.

Fish stink,

Modus Pownens

Laying Mr. Repzion Out on a Pulpit

This last week, I recently became acquainted with YouTube user Mr.Repzion and one of his videos defending gay marriage against this video from The National Organization for Marriage. He and I are both passionate about the subject, and I’m guessing he fancies himself a reasonable dude. So let’s duel.

00:00 – 00:21: This is an unjustified assertion. Simply positing x is not a good argument.

00:22 – 00:50: Although I’m sure this was uttered in mocking jest, it is woefully unsound. The act of divorce preventing people from killing each other within marriage is false. The conclusion also does not follow. Divorce does not directly lead to perpetuation of human beings that will lead society in the future. As for stabilization, there exists sociological research — although lay people are more than aware too — that divorce is a destructive force on families and not a stabilizer of any sort.

00:51 – 02:15: Here, you at worst beg the question in your favor, assuming that marriage only is a contract between individuals. At best, you don’t make a compelling case for such an account, citing other types of contracts like housing or cell phone contracts. This is a category error. You’re equating the natural (human sexual organs and their use) with the artificial (commercial dealings). Ironically, John Locke would say we do have natural house ownership in a similar way to how NOM’s video identifies marriage as natural.

Let me explain: In this context, “natural” refers to the biological fact that when men and women have sex, they are able to produce offspring. As Aristotle would note, the male and female body is well equipped to accomplish this task. It’s this foundational truth that gave rise to marriage. The institution is rooted in human anatomy and physiology, a subset of biology, which in turn, is a subset of the natural sciences. Yes, marriage does not appear in nature, but the proposition “marriage appears in nature” never appeared in the NOM video.

You know what isn’t natural? Strawmen.

02:16 – 02:33: Instead of refuting the NOM’s point, you unwittingly support it. Your counterexample presupposes the thesis that heterosexual relations creates children. Again, you’re guilty of attacking a strawman. Their video doesn’t claim sex within wedlock is the only possible way to conceive children. Hence, you’re drunk/knocked-up comment is silly.

02:34 – 02:43: Obviously, the answer here is same-sex marriage. The context of NOM’s video made that apparent, and I’m confident you were well aware of the writing on the wall. You were betrayed by emphatically declaring “No!” in the beginning when the video asked “Should marriage be limited to one man and one woman?”. Therefore, the listing of animals is also puerile and uncharitable.

However, it is reasonable to ask for cited sources. Admittedly, this post is not intended to go on such a tangent, but the pro-traditional marriage camp does claim that sociological data supports that traditional households are the best for child-rearing. Moreover, history shows that humanity has been able to subdue the planet, implying we had a reliable method of propagation upon which to launch our global proliferation. As the notion of same-sex marriage had not been conceived until relatively recently, and our subjugation of the earth took thousands of years, it is plausible that same-sex marriage had no role in our success as a species. Therefore, there is scant evidence to show that same-sex marriage is better, on par or even a viable option for our reproduction. Rather, human biology unequivocally shows it is impossible for such unions to spawn offspring.

02:44 – 03:01: Yes, it does protect women, and again this is confirmed by history. What do you think a dowry was for back in the day? Marriage also socially bound fathers to their children, so they couldn’t ditch the mothers, rendering them as lone parents. This defense mechanism is predicated on biology —  surprise, surprise —  as men could impregnate with little cost to themselves while women were heavily invested thanks to their maternal mammalian heritage. That’s why procreation was supposed to happen within wedlock. This isn’t sexism; in fact, it prevents it.

Once again, your “deadbeat dad” example is  a strawman. The dad’s failure to fulfill his fatherly and marital obligations is not necessarily a mark against traditional marriage. Deviation from marriage hardly implies that the institution is bankrupt, unless its theoretical underpinnings repeatedly fail to manifest in reality. History, on the contrary, shows otherwise.

Moreover, why would a gay man or woman be any less susceptible from becoming a “deadbeat” parent? The crux of the argument put forth by advocates for same-sex marriage is that gay and people and straight people are ultimately the same; therefore marriage for either group is the same. So if you were implying marriage has serious problems that cast doubt on its efficacy, then same-sex or opposite sex variations are equally dubious. Then this raises the question why even push for marriage if you are implying — erroneously so — that the institution is irreparably flawed. Or perhaps you think the sexism disappears because a woman wouldn’t be sexist to another woman or vice versa? That one partner wouldn’t leave another because of their homosexuality? This seems utterly absurd and without basis. Gay people mistreat each other within relationships just as much as straight people. And even if this wasn’t the case, would you be implying gay unions are better than ones between a man and a woman? My compatriots and I are called “bigots” for that very same notion by you and your ilk.

Welcome to the homosexual house of hypothetical horrors you opened up there with such a vague and unqualified statement…

03:02 – 03:26: …And deja vu! You err in identical fashion less than a minute later. Your counterexample is not consistent with what you’re criticizing, and therefore another strawman. A does not equal B. So taking issue with B by no means invalidates A.

Additionally yet repetitively, you reenter the same trap as in the previous section. There is no reason to assume gay parents would be any better than straight ones and wouldn’t end up living in subsidized housing as well. And if there is, wouldn’t that render you “heterophobic” by the same reasoning employed by proponents of same-sex marriage against apologists for traditional marriage?

Therefore, criticizing heterosexual individuals for failing to abide by marital norms does not render marriage itself as faulty. Marriage did not fail the individual; the individual failed marriage. Additionally, if the heterosexual parent is so awful, would that make the gay parent just as awful? They’re equal, right?

Your poor use of counterexamples in the previous two sections is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot.

03:27 – 04:08: What you’re failing to grasp is NOM’s video is explaining the theoretical understanding behind marriage and why it is beneficial to society “as a whole.” You bring up a child being adopted by loving gay parents, and again this attack is off target. The video is working in macro terms, while your ad hoc counterexamples dwell in micro realms. Assuming your claim is true, one singular child benefiting is hardly conclusive or applicable to society “as a whole.”

Presumably, you mean children in general adopted by gay parents from foster homes is better for society. However, there appears to be little evidence to support that such households have merit in the long-term. History offers no data. In addition, the potential cost for allowing these households, granted by adoption or artificial insemination, is steep. The reasons are legion, and this article briefly explains some of the dire implications. Pay attention to the answers to 4, 5, 6, the end of 7 and 10.

04:09 – 04:29: Again, you posit your definition of marriage as “a legal contract between two people for their mutual benefit.” But this definition isn’t robust and is so generic, it is useless. By your own parameters, a lease between a landlord and a tenant is marriage. That’s patently false, especially given the sense of how you’re using the term. Two platonic male friends could cheat the system, get married, i.e. enter “a legal contract between two people for their mutual benefit,” and undeservedly receive the financial and legal benefits meant for child-rearing.  There could be more “deadbeat dads” as you weaken the financial incentive for them marrying women. They would be free to impregnate women but have no reason to accept the responsibilities of fatherhood. To qualify as marriage, a relationship must be amorous but still possesses the ability to produce progeny.

Oh, and one more thing, who mediates legal and contractual disputes? The government, and is that an authority we want to concede? Answer: We DO NOT want the government to have the power to meddle in our domestic affairs.

04:30 – 05:00: See once again section 03:27 – 04:08.

You seem to think it’s that gay households are on equate footing to traditional homes, and thanks to our American conditioning, this seems intuitively true. However, there appears to be no support for this idea. There are no substantive examples in history to lend credence that gay households produce able citizens, while on the other hand, the vast majority of history attests to the strength of traditional households.

It is more plausible that these children start at a disadvantage. They don’t have a typical male and female role models to understand how most mature adults of both sexes are. They are not exposed to how the sexes typically operate and behave around each other. In the case of artificial insemination, children are deliberately deprived of being raised by one of their biological parents. As blood ties are diminished, children are reduced to commodities or assets to be divided up by lawyers, and how you don’t see that this wouldn’t be traumatic on impressionable young minds is beyond me. It’s foreseeable that issues would be caused if three parents would have claims on a child, increasing the risk of a dysfunctional family. Think about the drama in The Kids Are All Right. In short, same-sex households and their dynamics seem to be unnecessarily complicated and volatile by their very nature compared to the relative simplicity of a traditional household of two opposite sex parents raising a child of their own making.

This is not to say gay parents can’t be loving, but that misses the point, which is instead what is best for children. Don’t children have the inalienable, objective right of being raised by their biological parents unless extraneous and extreme circumstances mandate otherwise? When have the desires to become a parent outweigh the needs of a child? Make no mistake: Every civilization’s most valuable resource is its children, and they should be treated accordingly.

Your remark about winning the Nobel Peace Prize because you avoid arguments appears to be a non-sequitur. Those are usually considered asinine. At least, it doesn’t make sense to me. You seem to be insinuating some sort of insufficiency here. My only guess is that you feel “merely validates sex partners” is a gross understatement in reference to the importance of achieving same-sex marriage in regard to gay rights. If this is your analogy, however, it is hardly comparative because Nobel Peace Prize winners engage in arguments all the time. It’s the veracity of their argumentative efforts that earn such accolades. There is a gaping lack of similarity here or you need to unpack what you mean better.

05:01 – 05:55: Fine, that is a fair criticism. Sources should be cited, but the gravy train stops here. The tangent that the video’s producers were being blatantly dishonest, lazy or inept for not permitting comments is completely unwarranted. They actually are making an argument and responding to possible objections in a civil manner. Maybe some of the premisses lack support, but it doesn’t follow that their intellectual integrity is questionable.

Then, for you to lecture them on how to conduct themselves in intellectual discourse is enormously hypocritical. You, Mr.Repzion, are not a paragon of scholarly and argumentative virtue. You have not demonstrated that you are capable of commanding such authority. You have ranted instead of reasoned. You have resorted to polemics rather than arguments. It is you who have blurted out a series of fallacies from start to finish. “Don’t just spew out things,” you ironically chide. All you have done is merely describe and indict yourself.

05:56 – 06:34: NOM’s video actually anticipates the objection of infertile couples, but you completely ignore the rejoinder. Impotent couples or marriages that decide to not have kids are circumstantial and ” the exception to the rule.” The objection is ad hoc and runs in the face of the fact, in principle, procreation is inherent in marriage. Just like a worm within an apple doesn’t change the definition of the apple, a heterosexual marriage that doesn’t produce offspring, doesn’t invalidate the definition of marriage. Infertility or abstinence from children is incidental, while it is nomologically (by the laws of nature) IMPOSSIBLE — though I would argue stronger claims of metaphysical and logical impossibility are apt, but musings on modality aside… —  for a gay couple to conceive of a child via homosexual relations.

06:35 – 07:01: It’s a debate for another time when sexual education should be introduced into the curricula of students, but I would claim that it shouldn’t be included until children undergo puberty. NOM’s video is unclear how young the students are when they study gay-friendly curricula, but I can explain why this infuriates social conservatives like myself.

It’s indoctrination of what we believe are false ideas into the minds of children. So I think the video is implying that prepubescent youngsters are being brainwashed to believe that Adam and Steve is the same thing as Adam and Eve. It incites us that such radical theories are being treated on equal footing with well confirmed facts about human existence. We cry foul as we perceive insidious motives in such moves. Simply, same-sex marriage hasn’t shown it can stand in the intellectual arena with traditional marriage. Therefore, it appears to us you circumvent this inability by attempting to condition the heads and hearts of children to be favorable to your false worldview. We are morally disgusted as this subterfuge has more in common with fascism than liberal “equality.”

And real “social studies” shows that traditional marriage definitively works well culturally and biologically, and our laws recognize this to be true.

07:02 – 09:21: Marriage once again cannot be limited to a contract between two adults. See above the section 04:09 – 04:29 to see why. Your asserted denial doesn’t impugn that sexual behavior, as influenced by our physiology, is closely associated with marriage.

You then conflate behavior or practice with persons when you cite hypothetical examples of prejudice involving police. The government’s sponsorship of police work is different from the government’s segregation against persons wanting to become police. Similarly, the government’s sponsorship of traditional marriage is different from the segregation of gay persons who want to get married.  Therefore, your criticisms amount to nothing more the category errors.

Furthermore, discrimination and segregation are not, in of themselves, wrong. Unjust discrimination is. We, as a society, discriminate all the time based on laws that are based on definitions. For example, we discriminate against convicted criminals by imprisonment. They are stripped of their freedom to live where they want, but such discriminatory action is hardly unjustified. To claim, criminals should be freed because it is discriminatory is without basis.

In the same vein, saying no to same-sex couples who want to marry is not unjust discrimination because they don’t qualify based on fundamental, obvious facts of human nature and propagation.

09:22 – 10:11: Your claim that same-sex marriage is accepted is dubious. Many people, like myself, tolerate the idea, but by no means do we agree with it. You’re declaration of victory is like saying the Confederates won the Civil War after defeating the Union at the Battle of Run. It’s premature and without justification. What is more accurate is to say that the matter is controversial.

Interestingly, this claim has no bearing on the truth of the NOM’s main thesis. It’s irrelevant and gives you no ground even if it is true. Disputing every detail does not magically somehow weaken what is being argued for in the video. I notice this is a frequent tactic within your response. You take every chance to discredit the people making this video — and create opportunities where there are none — even if it gives you no rational ammo to use in the debate. There is no strategic worth in these maneuvers. There is only rhetorical capital, i.e. sophistry.

Then why am I appearing to be overly pedantic in my criticism of you? Firstly, you give me a lot to work with. In other words, you spew tons of crap. Secondly, there also is rhetorical merit in demonstrating how inept you are at critical thinking in your video. The difference is I’m making an attempt to be rational and not solely engage in demagoguery like you do. Frankly, you did it to yourself.

10:12 – 10:34: You proclaim: “The foundation of a civilized society is respecting other people’s rights when they come into conflict with your own belief and worldview.” Ah, but where do these people come from in order for them to have rights that require said respect? You misinterpret what is meant by “natural marriage is the foundation of a civilized society.” NOM’s video is referring to marriage as more axiomatic and primal than the proposition you spouted off. It gave rise to civilization. The notion of inalienable rights came afterwards, both in chronology and ontology.

The following accusation against religion is again irrelevant. The Bible nor the doctrine of any religion was mentioned in the video’s presentation. Although, what was argued is complimentary with Biblical teachings.

10:35 – 11:42: You give a dictionary definition of biology and everything NOM’s video claims falls within the purview of your definition. In fact, the biological claims are so remedial that they were recognized and understood even before there was a scientific field of biology.

Then what follows is when you again become insufferable. You take offense at a group of individuals daring to use your beloved science and reason against you. But no! You act as if only individuals who share your worldview are given that privilege. That you have a monopoly on science and reason. The rest of us are backwards-thinking bigots clumsily trying to use toys that we aren’t allowed to play with. It is pusillanimously insulting for you claim that those against same-sex marriage are trying to justify their bigotry with science. This is special pleading to an absurd degree. There is no reason that stating the simple biological FACT that men and women create children when they have sex and basing an argument around it to defend humanity’s most cherished institution is a crime punishable by being branded homophobic, bigoted and prejudicial. We are not “exploiting science” or manipulating facts to oppress a certain group of people.

That’s you. In what I can only describe as actual malice, you have slandered these people who have made the “Marriage = Biology (Not Bigotry)” video and by proxy, anyone who believes as they do. Not only have you shown a disturbing inability to be rational, you have twisted what they said into an assault on their character. How dare you debase them as morally repugnant when you’re the one who is culpable of doing something unethical! Just because they disagree with your beliefs and the beliefs of gay people who want to get married, does not make them bigots or hateful. I know you know better: 00:54 – 01:18.

You are the worst kind of fool; people believe you.

Quod erat demonstrandum,

Modus Pownens

P.S. That’s Latin for *drops mic*.

Lost in Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape

Brad Lecioni of Killing Common Sense has recently commented on my post entitled “The Other Presumption of Atheism” and has challenged me to “wright an essay which honestly demonstrates both his gratuitous smugness and where his arguments are faulty. (Sam is a pretty honest and rational guy, so good luck.)”  I’m more than happy to oblige, Brad.

Now, Harris doesn’t radiate smugness like Dawkins or Hitchens, but even his cool bed-side manner is not sufficient of a counter example to cast doubt on the claim that the New Atheists and many of their initiates on the Internet are belligerent and intellectually arrogant and SO ARE MANY THEISTS.  Harris, however, is still susceptible to the charge of putting forth poor and unpersuasive arguments as I hope to demonstrate.

One of the “Four Horsemen” Sam Harris and his bestseller The Moral Landscape

I’ve chosen to tackle Harris’ thesis in his latest book The Moral Landscape that science can answer moral questions and some of his responses on his website to criticisms similar to mine.  In general, my biggest gripe with Harris is his failure to clarify his points and definitions and string them together into a comprehensive argument.  For example, in his 2010 TED lecture advocating how science can answer moral questions, he rambles on about interesting yet not pertinent topics like cultural relativism and the evils that constitute religious morality, while spending little time on the advertised big-ticket item.

He defends his TED presentation on the Huffington Post religious blog thusly:

I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “anti-realism,” “emotivism,” and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful.

That’s all fine and dandy, but claiming to have a solution to one of the most vexing ethical riddles ever posed creates an expectation that you were going to enlighten us, Sam.  Furthermore, I’ve watched the presentation twice, and only metaethics was relevant and necessary to define, especially because asserting science can answer ethical questions is specifically a metaethical matter.  If one’s to dive deep in ethical waters at methaethical depths and wants to bring his findings to the surface where the laypeople float, one has to find a way to make the technical vocabulary, which exists for the good reason to identify certain abstract concepts that come up during such sophisticated inquiries, accessible to them.  Defining the terms seems likes an advisable way to start.  This really shouldn’t be such a tall order either given you’ve figured out how to derive an ought from an is.  Also, if your audience, Sam, understands the is/ought gap you’re claiming to cross, words like “metaethics, deontology, noncognitivism, anti-realism, emotivism and the like” aren’t too far of a stretch for your audience if they don’t understand them already.  For those who don’t know what the is/ought gap is, I’ve unpacked it here.  Honestly, I’ve written too many words on this particular quibble.  It’s time to slay a dragon.

As it turns out, however, Harris’ dragon-of-an-argument is rather fangless, incapable of breathing fire and has more in common with Mushu from Mulan than the legendary lizard from lore.

Formidable, right?

As far as I can tell, Harris has two main ideas he proffers, none of which are terribly original let alone paradigm altering.  On his website, he argues his the first point likewise:

Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, of course, fully constrained by the laws of Nature (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science.

Lets now formulate this as an actual argument with premises:

1.  Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds-and specifically on the fact such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.

2.  Forms of well-being and suffering are mental states.

3.  Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of nature.

4.  The laws of nature fall within the purview of science.

Conclusion:  Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science.

The argument is clearly invalid.  Even if all the premises were true, the conclusion isn’t forced from logical necessity to be true.  Harris’ error comes  in smuggling “morality and values” as reducible to the mental states of “well-being and suffering.”  The predicate, “depend on the existence of conscious minds” does not magically make morality and values mental states.  For a concept to depend or be contingent on something else does not mean the concept is reducible to that something else or is made up of the same substance.  The second premise simply doesn’t follow from the first.

Ironically yet not surprisingly, this is a textbook example of falling into the is/ought gap that Harris has supposedly bridged.  Now, it’s arguable Harris meant morality and values are physical constructs of the mind, available to neuroscience.  Yet, this move does Harris no good as he is defining the oughts of morality and values as descriptions or is-statements, which would be ultimately begging the question.  Furthermore, Harris, himself does not seem to want this interpretation as he writes on his website, “not because I am bent upon reducing morality to ‘physical’ facts in any crude sense, but because I can’t see how we can keep the notion of moral truth within a walled garden, forever set apart from the truths of science.”

Then what is Harris “bent upon?”  What kind of moral truth is hidden within a “walled garden,” whose walls can be breached by science?  From what I can gather, Harris never provides clarification.  Admittedly, I have not read The Moral Landscape and am aware that Harris could do just that.  My experience of Harris otherwise suggests differently, hence my irritation.  He asserts the claim, science can answer moral questions yet offers little in the way of support or elucidation of what he means.  Instead, he blathers and bashes religion’s disastrous and undeserved stranglehold on morality and instead contends science can do better.  Unfortunately, many mistake this rhetoric as a compelling style of argument.

Here is what science can tell us about morality: the chemicals activated in the brain or other physiological responses occur during moral discourse and when we as a species started to appear to behave morally.  These, however, are descriptions and are no closer to closing the gap than before.  Moreover, if this is what Harris was referring to when he asserts that science can answer moral questions, this is hardly worth the hullabaloo or notice it’s getting as it’s not insightful or exclusively Harris’ brainchild.

What is worthy of attention and acrimony is Harris’ particular reply to critics, many of whom are atheists, in regards to the all too familiar charge of deriving an ought from an is or taking a value from a descriptive statement.  In Harris’ case, a descriptive enterprise (science) pertains to a prescriptive (morality and values) one.

As I point out in my book, science is based on values that must be presupposed—like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn’t share these values cannot do science. But nor can he attack the presuppositions of science in a way that anyone should find compelling.

Harris essentially justifies and attempts to cross the is/ought or solve the value problem by writing science  inherently has presupposed values or oughts within its practice.  This claim is patent nonsense.  “The desire to understand the universe” and “a respect for evidence and logical coherence” are not values.  Harris phrases them like they are and again tries to sneak in oughts where there are none.

It’s true scientists do have a curiosity toward understanding the universe and realize evidence and logic are helpful in that endeavor.  They would claim these prerequisites are even “good” but not in the moral sense Harris is disguising them as or in regards to his overall grand thesis.  They don’t even have to be valued to do science.  A sophisticated machine could empirically gather data, organize it and then form conclusions.  It would have no “desire to understand the universe” nor “respect for evidence and logical coherence.”  Rather, its “respect” would amount to nothing more than programmed parameters it must operate within.  Interestingly, that is another instance of a descriptive fact that Harris can’t escape from.

You’ll see this trend resurface again with Harris’ second major point that the maximization of human well-being or flourishing is what is the moral good.  Many others prior to Harris have defined normative good the same way, so once more time, Harris doesn’t get any brownie points for originality.  This also means Harris inherits his predecessors’ problems.

Would you please do that, Sam?

Firstly, Harris’ flair for the unclear is again on display as human well-being is difficult to define, though this issue won’t be my main route of assault.  Instead, I would like to continue to identify Harris’ continued strategy to squeeze oughts into where they don’t fit.  Namely, well-being doesn’t necessarily equate to being good.  I grant they seem related, but claiming that the two are the same thing is again fallaciously deriving an ought from an is.  Moreover, why ought we flourish?  There is nothing implicitly good about it.  To define is as such is to once again begs the question.

Another of Harris’ responses seems to substitute health for well-being, claiming this solves the is/ought problem. But’s it is yet another description masquerading as an ought or value.  Health is empirically accessible and another description.  Hopefully, by now you see Harris is banging his head against a brick wall.

My father told me the difference between a mistake and failure is that a mistake happens once, a failure is the repetition of the same error.  In this context, Harris is failing.  He repeatedly tries to traverse the is/ought gap and ends up falling into it.  His attempt to climb out is to continually beg the question by positing a descriptive statement as a value or ought, which sends him crashing back down into the same problem.  Simply put: Harris can’t escape the valleys in his own moral landscape.  What’s worse is that Harris allegedly is well-versed in these pitfalls, or so he claims:

…a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy…while I have read a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind.

So Brad, in light of Harris’ obstinate refusal to acknowledge and engage with the previous work done in metaethics that would be relevant to his metaethical thesis, I have no sympathy for him when he commits fallacies he should have avoided.  I believe that is what people call smugness, and I realize I was a bit too charitable to claim he didn’t exude it like Dawkins or Hitchens.

Here’s to putting square pegs in round holes,

Modus Pownens

Works Cited

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/a

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-critics