Undeniably Nihilist

For quite some time I have been thinking about questions regarding meaning, purpose, and value. Ever since I became an atheist back in 2009 I've been operating under the assumption that we have to make our own meaning. It wasn't until this year however that the implications of this really unpacked themselves for me.

During much discussion amongst friends, and in a group that I'm part of at my university, on the topic of morality I came to realise that I am a moral nihilist. I don't think moral facts exist. Morality to me is a useful fiction that allows society to function as a cohesive unit. I even gave a presentation to the group (we regularly hold academic lectures after class time at university, usually from guest speakers, though I gave this talk) on the topic of morality and the is/ought problem. The video of the presentation will be uploaded to youtube soon, and I'll post it here when it is. The crux of my presentation was that morality simply cannot be objective, and to suggest that it is seems like a category error. Morality isn't the kind of thing that can be objective, moral propositions aren't the kind of things that can be true or false, they are something else.

That aside, acknowledging my moral nihilism caused me to look further into nihilism. I realised that I had never really understood what nihilism actually was. I fell for the common misconception that nihilists were people who didn't believe in, or care about anything. This simply isn't the case, it's a caricature of the position. Nihilism is, and always has been the rejection of any inherent meaning, purpose, or value in life or the universe. At this stage I'm uncertain whether I'm willing to go so far as to reject the possibility of knowledge, though I am willing to concede that all of our knowledge of the physical universe is at a base level, drawing off assumptions and intuitions. Take for example the idea that we can trust our perceptions, and that the data we collect about the physical world is real. These cannot be proven, they are simply brute assumptions we have to accept on an intuitive level, though they seem to be useful.

My actual moral positions have not changed as a result of this revelation however. With the possible exception of a heightened sense of (subjective!) value for meaningful self-determination. My nihilism didn't arise out of pessimism, though I certainly express a considerable amount of pessimism at the idea of human progress, but that can wait till another time.

Think about it. I certainly will.

CMI furious that Christians are against YECism

I have probably mentioned before but I'm on the CMI (Creation Ministries International) mailing list, for shits and giggles. Through this I discovered today that they're really mad because "Homeschooling parents demand evolutionary textbooks". Good on them. I'm not so optimistic that this indicates in any way a strong trend away from creationism, as CMI seem to think it is, but at least it's a start.

I'm not going to link to the article, because CMI never link to anything they disagree with. Fuck them.

Objective Morality

is Bullshit.

While I think the quest for an objective metric of morality is often well intentioned it is extremely misguided. This is particularly the case for quests for scientific metrics of morality. Science is by nature, in the business of figuring out how things work. This helps us hugely in informing our ethical systems, though giving us a better understanding of things like sentience, and its possible implications for other species and so on. What it does not do is provide us with moral imperatives.

Moral imperatives are wholly subjectively derived. I would go so far as to say they are inter-subjectively derived but no further. What I mean by this is that we construct our ethical beliefs based on what subjective effects actions have on other ethical beings (by this I mean being capable of ethical thought). We may be able to detect through brain activity what effect some actions may potentially have, but this does not tell us what is good, only what *IS*. We must then appeal to our ethical construct, which has been inter-subjectively defined. This is what I mean by science informing morality, but not constructing it.

More on this in the future.

Does it matter?

It has been a long time since I last posted here, and there's a good reason why. I haven't converted to theism or anything like that, I'm still very much an atheist, and still think that the arguments for the existence of gods fail. However, the process that I mentioned had begun in my post in August last year, I've moved on even further. I no longer read any atheist blogs, I've unsubscribed to most of the atheist YouTube channels that I used to watch and I've only read three books on religion all year, two of which I actually started reading last year, and the third had as much, if not more, to do with politics than religion.

I am considering getting back into blogging, but it will most likely be on my politics blog, Straight Up Socialist, where I posted today. There is an area of study that has recently been drawn to my attention which I am very tempted to persue in greater depth, and it is known as political theology. I find it fascinating from an analytical and sociological perspective; although I don't buy into the 'theos' behind it, I think political theology has the potential to foster social progress. I also will be doing a presentation in a few months on the is/ought problem in philosophy/ethics, so some of my research into it may get blogged here.

Peace.

America vs. Islam

If you're not aware, there have been a lot of protests lately in the Muslim world. They have been protesting against an amateur video on the internet (that was made by an American) which is extremely offensive and extremely shitty (link). Some of the protests turned into riots, and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked leaving fourteen dead (link).

Obviously I'm opposed to the violence, that is a given. I'm also opposed to the making of the film, it is incredibly racist and discriminatory and I'm not surprised that many Muslims were gravely offended by it. What makes me really sad however are the flow on effects of this conflict. Instead of accomplishing their goal of stopping people making films like the one in question, the escalation of violence is only going to make it worse. Anti-Islamic sentiment around the Western world is only being stoked by this, and the film that started it (this was probably the intention) only serves to fuel the same, and inflames anti-American and anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim and particularly Arabic world.

The damage has been done, I just hope like fuck that this doesn't start another war in the Middle East, because that's the bloody last thing they need right now. The U.S. Presidential Election just became that much more important, and I hope that whoever wins it (Rombama or Obomney) isn't a closeted warmonger.

For Marriage Equality Part 2

Since the last post I made on marriage equality was focussed on an argument someone made that tried to rely on evidence (it failed though), I thought I would address some more subjective elements. I may not mirror this post on my politics blog because a lot of the content of this one will be religious in nature.

Recently I had a conversation with someone about various churches positions on homosexuality. Their church they said was welcoming of LGBTQIA people and that it is sad that Christianity has a bad reputation in this respect. What I tried to communicate to them was that the reason Christianity has a bad rep is because even most of the churches that are 'welcoming' of LGBTQIA people, most of these churches are not accepting and their church fell under this category. What I mean by welcoming and accepting is quite simple. A church that welcomes LGBTQIA people will not shun them or be nasty to them, but what they won't do is accept them as they are. Instead, there is an underlying belief that being LGBTQ (not sure about church positions on intersex and asexual people..) is immoral and sinful, and in order to not be continually living in sin, you either have to turn straight or remain celibate forever.

Arguably, this position is worse than simply being hateful, though those who hold to it are generally well intentioned. It reminds me of all those "I'm not racist, but...", "I'm not sexist, but..." kind of things. This one would be "I'm not homophobic, but LGBTQ people were born the wrong way and should change who they are to suit my beliefs." I don't know about everyone, but I certainly wouldn't choose to be friends with people who thought that part of who I am (not something that I do, or believe in) is immoral.

So how does this relate to marriage equality? Because many of these kinds of Christians who welcome but don't accept LGBTQIA people are opposed to marriage equality, because they feel like supporting it would mean they tacitly endorse homosexuality, which they believe is inherently sinful. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. We do not live in a conservative theocracy where people's personal lives are subjected to the moral code of a particular subset of a religion. You may also believe that pre-marital sex is sinful, and depending on how conservative you are, you may also think piercings and tattoos are sinful too. I don't see you out there trying to petition the government to make them illegal, so why in this particular instance do you think that allowing consenting adults of the same gender to marry all of a sudden becomes your business?

Three Years On

As of this month, it has been 3 years since I first 'came out' as an atheist. That was a big step for me then and my views and attitudes towards things have changed even more since then than they did in the 3 years leading up to my deconversion. A friend of mine recently used the term 'action-potential' (a neuroscience term) to describe the way I explained my shifts in views. I think this is quite accurate, as my views were quite extreme as a teenager, and swung back well past the 'zero' point before leveling off to a stable state. For quite some time after deconversion I was quite militant, always up for a debate and very confrontational (at least on the internet) about my opinions. I still have a few hot-button topics but in general I've become much less combative over religion.

These days I tend to shy away from identifying myself as an atheist, though the term definitely still applies to me, since I personally do not think any gods exist. I changed my religious beliefs on facebook from 'Atheist', to 'Metaphysical Naturalism' and recently to a simple 'none'. This is for several reasons. First and foremost because I no longer see atheism as a defining characteristic of what constitutes 'me'. I much prefer to identify with terms that actually reflect the things I do believe in rather than those that I don't. Some terms that I currently identify myself with are things like Feminist, Liberal and Socialist.

Perhaps one of the biggest contributors behind no longer identifying myself as an atheist has been the company that I keep. When I first deconverted a large portion of the people that I frequently interacted with were Christians. Over time however that number has dwindled, and Christians now make up less than 10% of the people I converse with. Among my closest friends I think you'd be hard pressed to require two hands to count those who identify as Christian, and I suspect the number is actually zero. Bearing that in mind, it seems rather trite to use 'atheist' as a label that I actively place on myself.

I'm not going to bother trying to explain how my views on religion, life and politics have changed over the course of these three years. I will however say that it has been an adventurous three years of self discovery and personal evolution. The journey through the intellectual, emotional and spiritual (whichever way you interpret that) maze of my life is far from over, I just hope that at each point like this when I look back at where I've been I can say that I've become a better person as a result.

For Marriage Equality

I was recently linked to this blog post titled 'Against Gay Marriage'. The author is a gay man who opposes legalising same-sex marriage. What are his reasons for holding such a position? Because same-sex relationships don’t ‘tend towards’ raising children. He admits in the post that not all heterosexual couples raise children, but he doesn’t flesh out the implications of this, for obvious reasons, as it would leave his argument sorely wanting.

What implications can I see that naturally lead from suggesting the function of a marriage is to raise children? Marriages should then not be allowed to people who are past the age of conception, to people with chromosomal abnormalities, to people with reproductive disorders and the list goes on. I recognise that this is somewhat of a slippery slope but I do not see how this can be avoided when such a limited definition of what defines marriage is offered.

On top of this, what of same-sex couples who do wish to raise children? Should they be forced to call their partnership by a different name simply because they cannot conceive by ‘natural’ means? If you extend that logic like the prior situation whereby marriage is denied to infertile people, should those who cannot conceive naturally or who adopt children then be forced to annul their marriage and get a civil partnership/union instead?

The author of this post also suggests that research indicates that children do better with straight parents. Rubbish, I say. There is plenty of modern research that suggests the opposite (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19014-children-of-lesbian-parents-do-better-than-their-peers.html), that there is either no noticeable difference or in some studies, the children of same-sex parents performed better than their straight-parented counterparts. Even if all the research strongly indicated that children of same-sex parents outperformed those of straight parents solidly on every metric, would I offer an argument to ban straight people from raising children and getting married? Of course not! Rather, I would argue for more integrated and comprehensive parental support systems through local/national governmental programmes, to try to normalise outcomes so that all children regardless of their parentage receive a fair shot. That seems to be the obvious solution to me, but apparently others seem content on relying on flawed or outdated research and holding to a system that is inherently unequal in terms of the distribution of rights.

Obviously the author of the article is not some kind of gay-hating bigot, but he has bought into the bigoted belief that straight people make better parents, which is unfortunate.

More links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting