On this day...

On this day, we must honor those who have died for our country. On this day, we must honor those who fought and lived, often with lifelong ailments of both mind and body. And how best to honor them? Do the parades and flag-waving actually mean anything anymore? What are we waving the flag for? Who are we saluting? For what are we fighting?

The answer for Americans has been and can only ever be one thing...FREEDOM.

But are we still fighting for it? Or is it something we passively accept? Do we still feel the weighty responsibility of the blood that has been spilled to defend the right to rule one's own life? Or have we surrendered it for the sake of the silken promise of serenity? How can we claim to be fighting for freedom when our government continues to allow torture? How can we claim to be fighting for freedom when our government takes control of businesses? How can we claim to be fighting for freedom when we rush to surrender our property and our choice to selected officials? Have we truly forgotten the horrors of the Berlin Wall, the Killing Fields, the Third Reich, the purges and concentration camps, the barbed wire and minefields, the executions and assassinations (public and private)?

Have the young people of today never learned of the horrors that chained whole continents to a destiny of fear and oppression? Have they never learned that these chains were all forged from promises made of an easier life, promises of the right to dispose of the blessings granted others as your own, promises that the blood of today will be the prosperity of the future? But that prosperity never came...only the blood. And true prosperity vanished as a whisper on the wind chasing the fleeting phantasms of its butchered progenitors.

Have you ever wondered why it is that every single country which has tried to earnestly enact the idea of wealth redistribution has had to keep its citizens within its borders at the point of a gun? Have you ever wondered what freedoms you would have left in the world you desire?

If you still remember these things, or if you see the error of fighting for freedom and then turning it over to a populist mob, then perhaps you can honor those who died fighting for the American dream. The American dream? Isn't that supposed to be a house, a white picket fence, 2.3 kids, 1.4 cars and a dog? No. The American dream is anything you want it to be. Therein lies its power. Therein lies its majesty and mystery. If the things you would fight for are nothing more than material objects than you are a fool, destined to find yourself in a gutter lying next to all the other petty criminals and thieves.

But if you would fight for freedom, for the true legacy of the right to decide for yourself, of the right not to support the fallacies and contradictions of your neighbors if you so choose, of the right to make up your own mind and the freedom to act on that choice-if you would fight for these things, then you are truly honoring the brave men and women who lost everything that they had just for the chance, for the shimmering sliver of a dream that freedom could be a reality.

So please, rather than making empty token gestures of patriotism today, go out and protest. Howl, scream, demand, argue, rant and petition for your freedom. Talk about it with your friends, lovers, spouses, co-workers, everybody you can. Post, comment, blog, YouTube it, Facebook it, Twitter it. Today is a day for honoring freedom. Even if it is just at arm's length, go and honor freedom today and the people who died for it.

I leave you with one of the great historical speeches that many of you may have never even heard of before.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM

Obama or McCain? Vote Bob Barr for President

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5-jKSRYdgc



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe-ulwqnQ9k



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttZXK8n3rY



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqFrbRw5R_g

City of the Living

Here's a political art piece depicting the spiritual and concrete consequences of certain philosophical beliefs. I think I've been able to achieve a higher level of subtlety in this one as opposed to my earlier videos. I hope you like it.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WavGf6NYul0

Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy

I'm taking a little break from the American story right now just to point out that in some parts of the world, fascists have taken to calling their countries democracies when they are really anything but. All one has to do is look at Zimbabwe, where the fascist dictator Mugabe actually has the gall to claim that he is an elected official. How can a thug dare to call himself a president? Easily...his boys have the guns. Countries like this are a constant reminder of the necessity of checks and balances in government and the essential nature of human rights as absolute values. Freedom is not something that can be compromised and still retain any meaning. When you hand over your responsibility to make decisions to a big mob with guns, it may not be so easy to get your right to make them for yourself back again.

And take a hard, close look at the financial chaos in Zimbabwe. The nation is on the brink of collapse. Why? Is it because of greedy multi-national corporations? Or is it really because of a government laden with corruption and barbarity that scorns all the principles of capitalism and yet still cries mournfully for succor from the wealthy nations of the world. Why are the wealthy nations wealthy? Is it because they just happened to be that way? Not so. Many of the countries of Europe and Asia were financially wrecked just a mere 60 years ago, after the second world war came to an end. What made them able to rebound and outpace their collectivist neighbors was that they adopted certain values, values which mimicked those of the United States Constitution. Those values being freedom in society and freedom in business. The extent to which they embraced these values was to the extent to which they became affluent. Where there is no freedom, there can be no affluence, nor progress. If you don't believe me, don't take my word for it. Simply look at the broken and battered nations of Africa, where petty dictators lash their people into inhumane poverty and then beg for the developed nations to grant them succor...only to expand their armies and drive around in Mercedes and Cadillacs.

The next time liberals beg for you to placate the suffering in Africa, take a good hard look and imagine who it is that your money is going to really help. Will it be the starving poor? Or will it be bloated and evil fascists like Mugabe? Think about the architecture of poverty. Who is it that drives away industry, drives away the intelligent, skilled workers from a country? Who is it that murders the poor for obeying, or murders them because they don't? It is the system of oppression which creates poverty. It is freedom which ends that oppression. So before you turn our freedoms over for the sake of the unnamed poor, who you understandably wish to help--After all, to cast a blind eye to suffering would be inhumane--before you do that, first think of what would be the best way to help.

Can we really help the most by trading in our property rights, our right to our own moral consciences and then expect that other countries will in turn value those these even more greatly? Can we seriously expect that? Or should we instead make more of a stand for our own liberties and our own rights, so that we can go out into the world with moral certainty and the firmness of our convictions to serve as a powerful example of what ideals can actually accomplish when translated into reality.

It is always best to lead by example. If we surrender our rights at home, we cannot expect the rest of the world to 'do as I say, and not as I do.'

I'll end with these links to articles and video on the Zimbabwe situation:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25432146/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25470052/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/144274

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143803?from=rss



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFJUOa_ABUg



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRS0n1inpWg

Lara Logan: A Rare Integrity

I live abroad and so I must admit that I'm probably behind on a few things, but I ran across this video on YouTube and this reporter impressed me with her carriage. I rarely see reporters nowadays who express convictions or who seem to be dedicated to rational discourse in the way Lara Logan does. I'll be following up on her work from now on. Enjoy :)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I420_fPM2E

Supreme Court Puts Foot Down on Abrogation of Due Process

http://www.newsweek.com/id/14150

Usually I complain about things here, but this news story struck me as reassuring. The Supreme Court finally acted against Bush's insane power-grabbing. It struck to restore some of the balance of powers which have seemed to be so oddly out of balance since 9-11. And they struck to secure human rights as a universal and universally applicable to all. Of course it's only the beginning. There's a lot of mess to be cleaned up from Guantanamo. And unfortunately in some cases I'm sure that justice will be a casualty of reasserting the rule of law in America. But without fundamental agreement on the universality of rights, none of us really have them. This assertion by the Supreme Court declares that it will not tolerate the erosion of our concepts of justice, humanity, and basic freedoms. The dissenters can bray and howl as much as they like for the dark genesis of their messianic paranoia has been neutered. And their idealized mentor, Herr Bush, is not long for the White House. Hopefully he can still be impeached. If ever there were men guilty of treason, they are those of the current administration. The majority voters in this decision are the true patriots and true champions of liberty. At the very least, they have shown that some vestige of the concept of justice remains alive in the institutions of our nation.

Cheers!

A Brief History of Life on Earth

This is a fascinating video I found. The narration is by Carl Sagan from his old series "Cosmos". The video was re-edited by Cyraside. It's a short synopsis of the entire history of life, from the first molecules to the quest for space. I hope you enjoy it.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kOLIHi9pTY

Defend Freedom of Speech. Reprint the Mohammed Cartoons.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24976215/


If you would like to submit to the arbitrary edicts of fanatical militants, then by all means cower in fear of their retaliation and do nothing. However, if you value freedom of speech, the time-honored right of all free human beings on the face of this earth, then do what you can. If you have a blog, print the cartoons there. If you run a newspaper, reprint them there. They can't bomb everybody. Our soldiers are brave enough to put their bodies between the extremists and us. We can at least be brave enough to preserve the freedoms that they believe they're fighting for. The alternative is to let them die in vain. How about it? Do we still value freedom?

I do.

















(Also posted here)

The Myth of Religious Moderation

For today's blog I would like to direct you to the following two news stories:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24919800/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/139433

Now,　the first seems to be forewarning of growing rivalries and tensions within Islam. The second seems to be saying that there are seeds of moderation growing within Islam, that may lead it to become a more truly peaceful religion than it is today.

So, what's the point? Which view do we take seriously? Is Islam inherently dangerous and growing more internally divided as rival fundamental viewpoints wage very active and real war against each other? Or is Islam inherently peaceful, with modern Islam hijacked by a rabble of renegades harnessing the gullible with their political rhetoric?

The answer, I think is to go to the facts. And go to the source. Just as you can look at the bible to see what views Christian moderates are promoting to fundamentalists as the word of God, so too can you go to the Koran to see what views the moderates are promoting to fundamentalists as the word of God.

Well, fact #1 and the elephant in the room is that the only difference between moderates and fundamentalists is how much of their holy book they take to be the unequivocal holy word of almighty God. Moderates cut out the nasty bits. Fundamentalists take it all whole. You could almost say that the moderates are hypocrites in that they purport to follow a religion based on a text which is supposedly mandated by God, yet they have the audacity to say that they know better than their own God which parts are really really God's will and which parts are not. Because of this latent hypocrisy, fundamentalism will always have the potential to rear its ugly head. This is not because they are hijacking an otherwise peaceful religion. Fundamentalist, by definition means one who is adhering to the fundamentals of the religion. As such, the most sincere devotees of a religion must always be fundamentalist. Moderates are, for the most part, moral cowards. They are those who know well enough that the morality encoded in the literal word of their holy book makes absolutely no sense in the modern world, and yet are so terrified of their version of an ethereal boogie-man in the sky that they lack the courage to renounce their faith and set about defending and encoding a modern moral truth.

This is the kicker and it's what will cobble the efforts of anybody who seeks to negotiate their religion into supposedly "passive" forms. As long as the religion honors a text which encodes violence and immorality as ideals, then the religion will always bear the seeds of violence and immorality. So, let's check the sources and see if the Koran, and for that matter the Bible encode violence and immorality.

(Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)

They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.

Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded. "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.

OK, you may say, but that's in a time of war and we all know that war is hell, right? So how about rape about town?

(Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)

If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.

Well, that seems pretty damn evil to me. But even if we just take that as hardcore justice, let's clarify what God thinks about some other stuff. How about child killing? I think we can all pretty much agree that there is nothing more evil than someone who hurts children willfully.

Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants. (Isaiah 14:21 NAB)

The glory of Israel will fly away like a bird, for your children will die at birth or perish in the womb or never even be conceived. Even if your children do survive to grow up, I will take them from you. It will be a terrible day when I turn away and leave you alone. I have watched Israel become as beautiful and pleasant as Tyre. But now Israel will bring out her children to be slaughtered." O LORD, what should I request for your people? I will ask for wombs that don't give birth and breasts that give no milk. The LORD says, "All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them. I will drive them from my land because of their evil actions. I will love them no more because all their leaders are rebels. The people of Israel are stricken. Their roots are dried up; they will bear no more fruit. And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children." (Hosea 9:11-16 NLT)

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told." (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed. Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died. (Exodus 12:29-30 NLT)

If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted. (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)

Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)

Now, you try and tell me why I should be respectful of a religion in whose holy text--a text they proclaim as the holy word of almighty God--declares that butchering children and raping women is good? Bullshit! You can pick and choose as much as you like, but your very act of denying that these passages express Christianity means that you, yourself have declared that the Bible is not perfect, that it is not the unassailable word of almighty God. You can't have it both ways. And if you believe that the rape of women and slaughter of children is good, then you are a vicious, evil worm of a creature. So admit it, Christianity worships one sick bastard of a deity. Or admit it, you are one sick bastard.

Now that we've dealt with the flower of Christianity, let's take a look at what the pleasant poetry of the Koran has in store for us.

And as for those who are guilty of an indecency from among your women, call to witnesses against them four (witnesses) from among you; then if they bear witness confine them to the houses until death takes them away or Allah opens some way for them.

Well, at least house arrest sure beats stoning. Let's see what else is in there...

Oh, wait a second, what's this?

And when Musa said to his people: O my people! you have surely been unjust to yourselves by taking the calf (for a god), therefore turn to your Creator (penitently), so kill your people, that is best for you with your Creator: so He turned to you (mercifully), for surely He is the Oft-returning (to mercy), the Merciful.

Oh, and this isn't so friendly:

They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

And this:

You will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and (do not) offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these We have given.you a clear authority.

And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly, We have indeed given to his heir authority, so let him not exceed the just limits in slaying; surely he is aided.

I wonder what qualifies as a "just cause"? Fighting for the glory of Allah?

Say: Have you considered if the chastisement of Allah should overtake you suddenly or openly, will any be destroyed but the unjust people?

I guess that answers that question, doesn't it?

And when We wish to destroy a town, We send Our commandment to the people of it who lead easy lives, but they transgress therein; thus the word proves true against it, so We destroy it with utter destruction.

Mmmm....peaceful......

Then We said: Go you both to the people who rejected Our communications; so We destroyed them with utter destruction.

And some even more destroying with utter destruction goodness:

And to every one We gave examples and every one did We destroy with utter destruction.

Like we need to make it dead, really really dead. Dancing on the dead, dead, hyper-deading dead dead. But, who really has time to sift through all this crap. If you would like, there is a searchable online Koran which is where I got all these lovely quotes. All you need to do is search for things like destroy, kill, etc. In all fairness, there was no mention of rape that I could find, so perhaps the Muslims do have a moral leg up on Christianity after all. But as for being a peaceful religion? No, I don't think so.

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,

O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil).

(And in case you were wondering where I got all the juicy Bible quotes, they're from EvilBible.com. )

Comic Relief: The Babel Fish

Just happened across this clip from the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hope you enjoy it. It always cracks me up.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcncPpQ8loA

Shoot the Quran. Shoot the Bible. Shoot the Torah.

Here's the link to the article which inspired my commentary this time: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24792627/

Well, it seems that once again, our leaders have to bow and plead and beg forgiveness for what should normally be a non-issue. So what? So the guy shot at a Quran? So what? It's a book. Paper, ink, glue. The man's job is to shoot people. But he wasn't doing that. He was practicing by shooting at a sheaf of paper. For this he gets sent home? While I think that there are better uses for books than shooting, a book ultimately is no more special than any other object. The only difference is the meaning that believers assign to it. And is that belief rational? Let's see, in Afghanistan they rioted and KILLED people because someone shot a book.....a BOOK!

Now, while his act MAY have been in bad taste, perhaps it wasn't culturally sensitive. But, after all, he was not a diplomat. He was a soldier. And a soldier's job is to kill. Killing is not a particularly nice job. And who is it that our soldiers are fighting? They're fighting Islamic fanatics. It doesn't take a lot to see why he may have some hostility towards the holy book that goads those fanatics on to ever more shocking displays of barbarism. So, let's be fair. Let's be egalitarian. Let's be honest. There's nothing that makes this soldier's act condemnable aside from our irrational concession to religion in general that it deserves to be treated with respect by default.

There is absolutely nothing respectable about religion. Religion has offered nothing to the advancement of mankind. Science has. Science can exist without religion. Religion is unnecessary. We should be more offended when our politicians cater to the spiritual vagaries of bigoted idealogues then when trained soldiers practice on inanimate objects. We should be more outraged when people riot and KILL in the name of their outrage, then when a man whose job is to kill quietly protests by shooting something which has no consciousness, no precious life to be snuffed out.

So, in the interest of fairness, I propose that we should line up the Bible alongside the Torah, the Quran, the Bhagavad Ghita, The Book of Mormon, and Dianetics. I say take a shot at all of them. They all have the same net value for human advancement....ZERO. If every copy of those books disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, the net impact on our knowledge of our existence, our universe, and the moral fabric of our society would not be shifted one iota.

If Newton's laws were forgotten, or Einstein's relativity ignored, or the Declaration of Independence lost to time, then we would notice the difference and severely. If the germ theory of medicine was condemned as heresy and forbidden, to be lost in the swamp of cloudy spiritualism, then we would notice the difference. There would be no condemnatory thunders of flame. The result would be no less subtle though for lack of theistic pyrotechnics. We would simply notice things stop working. We would notice people start dying in larger and larger numbers. They would die of diseases we could no longer fight. They would die of hunger because of food we could no longer grow or transport as effectively. They would die of cold and heat and exposure to an environment we had surrendered our only means of optimizing for human survival.

It's easy to talk about respecting ancient myths and fanatical ideologies when you're sitting in an air-conditioned room, with electric lighting, world-wide internet access and a TV chirping consolingly in the background. But try imagining the world ruled by those 'pleasant' myths. You would quickly lose all of those things. The engine that drives those creations, which keeps them working, and which ensures that you don't have to worry about where they come from is the human mind. Thousands of human minds working in freedom, with reason as their guide.

Betray those minds to a misguided respect of religious insanity, and they will leave you. Perhaps not immediately. The living minds are generally more tolerant than is best for them. They are forgiving. They will let us march towards darkness for quite a while. But once the line is crossed, those minds will be cut off. They will retreat, surrender. And where will all this faith leave us then?

Torture: The Madness that Wouldn't Die

For proof that this madness will just not go away, see this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24530188/

I'm not sure what it is. Do Americans watch too much 24? Is it that they actually believe that Jack Bauer is a decent human being? It seems that as long as you're a patriot, you can be forgiven any sin. Seems a lot like Christianity to me. You can be a filthy evil bastard and as long as you're doing for God by asking for forgiveness, well, then God bless you and Hallelujah.

It cannot be a coincidence that intellectuals and those who are supposedly representing reason have basically handed out a philosophical carte blanche to the CIA and all of those paranoid 24 fans eager to fantasize about a real-life Jack Bauer cutting up, real-life 100% guilty terrorists to stop an imminent 100% confirmed ticking-time bomb.

Come on, gimme a break! You gotta be kidding me! It brings me right back to Sam Harris, who stands prominently as a person who has argued for torture and reason in the same breath. I agree with his estimations of the religious threat to personal freedom, but the kind of nationalistic justification he offers to support his ideas of torture, undermine those very same freedoms. And we still see this hesitation, this dedication to opening the bag on this travesty and I hold Sam Harris partly responsible for this. I hold anyone who has argued for the acceptability of torture as responsible for this.

I debated with myself whether to publish this or not since I didn't formally ask for an interview, but given that there has still been no recanting of his endorsement, I'll post it and let you decide for yourselves what you make of this. I approached Sam via e-mail to present a counter-argument to his rationalization of torture. What follows is the complete exchange, I have selected to replace my real name with my screenname. Also any additional commentary is bracketed [in green font]:

AmericanAntitheist:

Dear Mr. Harris,

First I would like to say that I am a great fan of your work against religion and religious thought. I also think that the concept of rational morality is something that has been abandoned for too long in public discourse and the default has yielded far too much ground to the irrational or corrupt. I would like to applaud your efforts in trying to stimulate discussion along these lines and especially outside the confines of a purely academic audience.

However, I think that one of the greatest dangers to the foundation of rational ethics is the potential for it to be derailed by red herrings and inadvertently lead to false justifications of atrocity under the guise of reason. Having throughly read your writings on the subject and responses to your challengers I am convinced that this is in no way your intent in arguing for the use of torture. I instead see it as a result of 'test-driving' so to speak your conception of a rational ethics and seeing where it can take you. I applaud this effort as well. However, I see the torture issue as a possible misfire of that conception.

I understand that you are rejecting arguments based on the efficacy of torture and are looking for a purely ethical argument that would rule it out in all cases. However, I think that efficacy is a major factor in what makes torture unethical. But, in respecting your desire for a purely ethical argument, I would also like to attempt to convince you of some errors in your reasoning on a purely ethical basis. So I will present two distinct arguments against torture. One will be based on efficacy. One will be based on ethics.

THE ARGUMENT FROM EFFECTIVENESS

You have argued that the effectiveness of torture need only be as effective as the dropping of a bomb to merit its consideration from utility. However, there seems to be little evidence for the efficacy of torture in producing information. The efficacy of bombing in destroying targets is readily apparent. Both techniques do create "collateral damage" as you have pointed out. However, the target of the bomb is known from the start, whereas the target of torture is not necessarily known. You have said that we should consider that if we are going to drop bombs to kill a single man, then we should be willing to possibly torture innocent men in order to save many more lives. Although I would doubt the rationale of using a bomb to target a single man, perhaps this phrasing doesn't do adequate justice to your position.

Let me rephrase it like this:

Intentionally inflicting misery on innocents due to flawed intel is the same as accidentally inflicting misery on innocents due to flawed targeting. That is to say that the collateral damage of bombing inaccuracies bears the same moral weight as the possible misery inflicted on innocent people by being falsely subjected to torture. The problem is in the efficacy of intel gathering.

Whereas in the first iteration of a cycle of torture or bombing, the results appear to be equivalent, the ethical disparity makes itself known in the way future targets are generated. Bombing does not generate subsequent targets of bombing in the same way that torture generates future targets of torture. If a bomb, misfires, innocents suffer. This is a fact. If torture misfires, then more innocents face torture, which in turn forces more innocents to face torture. How does this work? You have already laid out the process in your appraisal of the Inquisition and how it managed to generate massive numbers of witches when there were none. An innocent man has only one recourse when faced with torture, to try and incriminate as many people as possible, to try and tell the inquisitor what he wants to hear. This generates a new cycle of people eligible for torture as suspected terrorists. The only way to mitigate this would be by objective methods of investigation to corroborate or dispel the intel gathered under torture. If there are sufficient methods in place to corroborate such information, then the necessity of reverting to torture seems less urgent. But this is, of course, assuming that we are not 100% certain that the prisoner has information that would save lives.

For the sake of argument, let us say that we have Osama bin Laden in custody. We know that he is privy to scores of plots to kill innocent people all over the world. We need to know what he knows. Would torture enable us to do so? Possibly. And as you have said the probability of obtaining usable intel need only be as great as the possibility of killing him with a bomb. But would torture have any effectiveness in producing information from a devoted zealot such as bin Laden? Would he not simply try to mislead, misdirect, and stall our efforts to avert disaster as much as he could. He could tell us lies that we would have to waste resources on to follow up. He could incriminate innocent men which we may be forced to torture in an attempt to secure that 'real' intel we need. If a bomb goes astray, we do not successively target greater and greater numbers of civilians. If we inadvertently torture innocents, we may find ourselves inadvertently targeting more and more innocents.

This is, in fact, exactly what happened at Abu Ghraib. I'm sure we tortured some guilty men. But the fact was that our original intelligence, the intel which labeled many innocent men as terrorists and granted us our 'certainty' of the permissibility of torture, came from warlords who were both assaulting US bases and running checkpoints at the same time. The flawed nature of the intel bred more false intel which bred more false intel. It was a spiral which got out of control because the premises guiding decisions were flawed to begin with.

But as you have correctly pointed out, this is not a 'purely' ethical argument. So, let me phrase an objection in ethical terms.

THE ARGUMENT FROM ETHICS

First, we need to look at the fundamental ethical premises in play. One assumption inherent in your argument is that the greater the loss of life, the greater the tragedy. In effect, the more human lives threatened the more urgent the need to remove the threat. As such, it would seem that failing to find the ticking bomb in time would be a greater tragedy then the torture inflicted on one man. And in the extreme case, as you say, what if that man is Osama bin Laden, a man who without a doubt has blood on his hands and who very probably knows things which may save lives.

A human life has value. But do more human lives have more value than a single life? If it is ethical to torture bin Laden to save many lives, is it ethical to torture a man to save the life of a little girl for instance? And if it is, would that mean that torture should be used as a judicial as well as a military instrument? The American constitution is based on the premise that all people are created equal, that we ALL have inalienable rights. The reason for this is simple. The minute we start to arbitrarily decide who gets what rights in which circumstance, we start to see our ethical certainty slide away. Many lives are precious because any one life is precious. Any rights of the masses, or of a group of people exist because every individual has that right. If it is inalienable for one then it is inalienable for all. If it is alienable for one, it is alienable for all. The only way the concept of rights and freedoms work is if it is applied across the board. Otherwise we will always have the specter of relativism hanging over our heads. If rights are not universal, then who is it who decides who gets what rights when? Government? Can we really trust the government to preserve rights if we grant them the authority to revoke them?

One possible objection concerns the principle of the right of a government to punish criminals. This principle seems to imply that by violating the rights of others, one cedes their own claim to those same rights. However, in our society we have extended certain rights even to criminals. This is embodied in the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty". A key assumption in this doctrine is that it is better to let a guilty man go free for want of evidence than to persecute an innocent man in error. If we let a murderer go free for want of evidence, then he may kill again. We have made the choice as a society that it is better that an innocent may die then to punish an innocent. If we turn this on its head and adopt the code Napolean, that we are "guilty until proven innocent", then suspicion is enough to elicit punishment. Fear becomes the focal point. We would be forced to say that it is better to punish an innocent man then let a guilty man free. And this is what it means to say that it is better to torture an innocent man in the hopes of saving many lives. But once again, you're assuming 100% certainty of guilt. So what is the ethical objection to punishing a guilty man, to torturing someone whose guilt is not in doubt?

Perhaps it is better to rephrase the argument in terms of warfare, and this is where the second possible objection to the universality of human rights can be found as well. War is a state where one group of people uses physical force to kill, subjugate, or neutralize another group of people. Under this umbrella is everything from genocide, to UN "police actions". It would seem that war is a state in which human rights are unilaterally abrogated. The stakes are kill or be killed. It would appear to make no sense to handicap ourselves with rights in such situations, except that it is clear that there is a moral distinction between targeting non-combatants and inadvertently killing them. Simply from this we can see moral issues and issues of human rights enter even into the domain of warfare. It is clear that there is something being held more important than winning at all costs. The principle at play here seems to mirror the principles we adopt to justify our judicial system. We consider it appropriate to punish combatants because they are actively involved in the military threat, they are 'guilty' of fighting us. These 'guilty' parties in war have apparently ceded their rights by choosing to fight in the same way that criminals have ceded their rights by choosing to commit crimes. And yet, if we extend certain rights to criminals so as to err on the side of caution, might we not have the same ethical necessity to err on the side of caution in war? I think most people in the world would agree that we do. This is why we have developed things like the Geneva convention in the first place.

Just as rights must be applied universally if rational, so too must our treatment of criminals be universal to be just, or our treatment of enemy combatants to be civilized. The principle of justice works, because the laws are applied systemically to all people irregardless of affiliations. If we start to make exceptions or treat some criminals worse than others for similar offenses then the sense of justice inherent on our system quickly begins to crumble. We are forced to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold others, and this lends us the moral certainty to criticize countries like China and Egypt for their treatment of prisoners and the inherent bias in their systems of 'justice'. Without this universality, it would all be "relative". The principle of justice in warfare works because we must hold all enemy combatants to be eligible for the same treatment if we are to have the moral certainty to criticize our enemies on ethical grounds.

An enemy soldier is unquestionably a 'guilty' party in war. For whatever reasons, they are involved in actively trying to kill people on our side. As such they surrender some or all of their rights to be treated as we normally would treat other human beings. The extent to which we revoke our consideration of their rights must be equally applicable to ourselves if we are to judge rationally which side has the ethical superiority in a given conflict. So, if our ethical terms are such that it is acceptable to torture the enemy if it may yield information which could save lives on our side even if it means the loss of more lives on their side, then we must allow that it is ethical for our enemies to torture our captives to gain similar information with opposing goals. From the perspective of both sides, the captives are equally 100% guilty of attempted murder and very probably possess useful information. Where then is the ethical distinction?

If it is ethical for us to torture bin Laden so that we may perhaps be better able to kill and torture more terrorists and thereby possibly prevent further loss of American lives, then is it ethical for Jihadists to torture captive American soldiers to perhaps be better able to kill American soldiers and thereby remove us all the more speedily from their land? Of course that isn't their end goal and I am sure that they wouldn't be satisfied until the whole world was Islamified, that our very existence makes us their perceived enemies. But, on what can our ethical claims rest if we do not treat combating sides equally? If it becomes simply a matter of it's ethical because we're doing it for our side, then doesn't the whole concept of rational ethics fall apart? Doesn't it just become might makes right?

The answer is in the universality of human rights, in what constitutes humane treatment of human beings. It is this principle of universality which lends us certainty in our moral superiority in the conflict against terrorism and terrorists. And it is the hypocrisy of trying to circumvent it which undermines our moral credibility in the eyes of the world and of our own people.

I hope that this argument has been sufficient to convince you that the use of torture is not rational or humane. Although I am sure there are probably things which I may have not explained sufficiently, I am certain that these are some core reasons why your hypothesis is in error. If you would like to debate it further, I would be eager to engage in a discourse on the subject. I think that the lion's share of what you have said in your works is admirable and I would like to support many of your causes as much as I, in my limited capacity, can do. However, I can't in good conscience sit by and let reason be used to justify what I perceive as an injustice. I, too, wish to see the further development of the "science" of ethics. It is in pursuit of this that I have offered up this challenge to your views on torture. I think it is vitally important that we provide a rational alternative to the mystical ethics of religion if we are ever to have a hope of driving it into the dark vestiges of our history. But we must be careful not to let it be merely a rationalization of future tragedy.

Sam Harris:

Hi [American Antitheist] --

Thank you for your thoughtful argument re: torture. I think it breaks down is a few places, however, especially in the passage quoted below. What you have given here is itself a statement of moral relativism which I do not accept. It is quite possible, for my point of view, to have a war in which one side really is right and the other wrong in moral terms. Therefore, there would not be the moral equivalence you describe.

In any case, you may not have seen my most recent thoughts on the subject. I have page on my website that I occasionally update. It's here, if you missed it:

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

Best,

Sam

On Apr 20, 2008, at 12:14 AM, [American Antitheist] wrote:

So, if our ethical terms are such that it is acceptable to torture the enemy if it may yield information which could save lives on our side even if it means the loss of more lives on their side, then we must allow that it is ethical for our enemies to torture our captives to gain similar information with opposing goals. From the perspective of both sides, the captives are equally 100% guilty of attempted murder and very probably possess useful information. Where then is the ethical distinction?

If it is ethical for us to torture bin Laden so that we may perhaps be better able to kill and torture more terrorists and thereby possibly prevent further loss of American lives, then is it ethical for Jihadists to torture captive American soldiers to perhaps be better able to kill American soldiers and thereby remove us all the more speedily from their land?

[I find it interesting that the quote he is providing is a rhetorical question and not a statement of relativism, one which misses the larger point I was making namely that such a conclusion must be wrong.]

American Antitheist:

Hi Sam--

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my e-mail. I understand that you believe that a war can be right in absolute terms, and I share the same view. However the basis for claiming which side is morally superior must be based on a universal standard of rights. If it is moral for one side to use torture, how can it be immoral for the other side of a conflict to do so? If we wish to maintain our moral superiority, isn't it necessary for us to take the high road? I apologize for not phrasing it more clearly in my initial e-mail, but I definitely do not support relativism. I am only saying that the standard for determining the moral character of the combatants has to be universal, or else it just becomes a statement of "It's my side so I'm right." This is most certainly not objective. Anyways I will try to give it more thought so that I can phrase my argument in a clearer and more convincing manner.

Sincerely,

[American Antitheist]

Sam Harris:

It may be moral or immoral to wage war. Likewise, it may be moral or immoral to kill, torture, steal, lie, etc. Needless to say, such things are generally immoral (or tainted by immorality). But the details of the situation matter. I suspect that the two sides in a conflict are rarely truly equivalent in moral terms. There are situations in which we may want to pretend they are equivalent, to serve some larger good. But I don't think we need pretend with Al Qaeda.

American Antitheist:

I would also agree there as well. What I am saying is that what makes us morally superior to Al Qaeda is that by a universal application of ethics, we come out better. That we generally don't think that things like torture are good is one of the things which grants us moral superiority. However if we rush to embrace them, we would become as evil as Al Qaeda and we would lose that superiority. Otherwise, what would be the standard by which we gauge our ethics? If you are saying that we need to judge morality on every single isolated situation, then you, yourself are veering from an argument on principle and supporting a relativist ethical stance.

[And that was the end of the exchange]

And THAT is the problem with all justifications of torture. They come down to the idea that, well we're in the right, so anything we do must be right. It neglects the fact that if we stop being moral, then we lose the ability to assert that we are in the right. And he can't justify torture and human rights at the same time. He speaks of "a greater good" as thought that cultural bromide actually meant anything. The Islamists are also supposedly working for "a greater good" but simply saying that something is better doesn't make it so. It is for this reason that the Islamists are wrong. And for the same reason the advocates of torture are wrong. A concept of rights cannot exist if they are applied selectively. From the standpoint of rights, there is no greater good. There is only the individual. The minute you say that it is okay to sacrifice people, any people, then you surrender the whole concept of rights.

But admitting the supremacy of the individual in the conceptualization of human rights is the antithesis of socialist thinking. The whole premise of the welfare state and of the large part of liberal politics is that the great mass of people which constitutes society, the aggregate statistical faceless mass of humanity has the priority. What socialists cannot and never will be able to answer is how human rights can be granted to a mass of people if individual rights are not guaranteed. The reason they cannot answer this is because it is an impossibility. Society is only the sum of all the individuals which constitute it. If you negate the rights of any individual, then the entire mass loses their claim to those same rights. And if in a civilized society, we have a right to our lives, a right not to face torture, even when we are accused or convicted of a crime, then all human beings must have that right, regardless of whose side they're on. If we remove that from one group, we remove it from all.

That is why, the socialists in trying to remove God, have only found another shapeless idea which they call Society to mount in its place. That is why, despite the inevitable truth that there is no god, the socialists cannot embark on providing a reasoned alternative to morality by religious fiat. Because the best thing they have to offer is morality by social fiat, by the domination of popular opinion or the relativistic cadence of nationalism and what is called pragmatism. And it doesn't take one long to see how weak a proposal that would be. No, to truly embrace a morality based on reason, reason must be it's foundation. And reason dictates that human rights, if they are to be valued at all, must be inalienable for all, or inalienable for none.

Until our so-called advocates of reason recognize, embrace, and proclaim this then the great rally against the enemies of reason will ultimately fail, and we will collapse into one of two fates. Theocracy or Socialism. Both absolute in their power. Both rooted in the same ethical system, namely altruism. And both doomed to stifle freedom and intellectual advancement. The only way to avoid this is to recognize the primacy of individual rights. And to be prepared to err on the side of reason.

Al-Qaeda laughs as Yemen government appeases terrorists

Yep, the Yemen government has yet again demonstrated its unwillingness to cooperate in bringing the architects of the USS Cole bombing to justice. For the full story follow this link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24449741/

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone studying the situation in the Middle East that these terrorists are not being brought to justice. The religious front hold all the political power there and secular authorities can only challenge it on threat of death. Its no small wonder that they roll over at the first opportunity and let their prisoners go, make deals, try to curry their favor while they're free to run around blowing up US soldiers. After all, they HATE us. Not just Al-Qaeda but the entire religious establishment over there. Of course they hate us. They hate that we try to represent reason over superstition, that we stand for something greater than who can be the most effective snake-oil salesman in the room. We have, despite all our problems with our own politics, a demand for evidence, a demand for the support of fact to prop up our leaders and to give them legitimacy. That is why Bush's lies about Iraq have so seriously undermined the respectability of his office and our status in the western world.

But in the Middle East it is lies backed up by violence which forms the basis of legitimacy of power. And were a system like ours to gain popularity there it would spell the end of all the petty power brokers and dictators' reigns of terror. Most Americans may hate Bush, but we won't have to worry about him next year. But nutcases like Bin Laden will have the Muslim world in their sway long after they are dead, and for generations to follow, until the day (if ever it will come) when religion is dethroned from respectability and its public voice is reduced to the attention we grant to daily horoscopes and the carnival fortune telling of Madame LaZomba.

The Real War

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8307333/

I present for your perusal the above link in the hopes that it will bring to your attention the nature of the real war against terrorism and what it implies for our future. It is evident that as terrorism becomes increasingly decentralized, that it will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to stamp out. More than military action, more than headhunting the leaders of these organizations, we need to consider what it is that is driving this seemingly endless supply of suicidal mass murderers.

I think Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have been particularly eloquent on this issue and I highly recommend their books. Despite what flaws I see in their arguments when it comes around to supposing what ethics should replace those offered by religion, or in stating that ethics are evolutionarily determined (as though we didn't ultimately choose what we believe), I think it is undeniable that religious thought is and has been the fundamental cause of the greater share of all the war, atrocity, suppression and misery in this world.

We need to cut away the institutionalized harbors of religious zealotry. We need to get religion out of schools, off our money, out of the pledge to allegiance. We need to elect atheist politicians, who will select atheist judges, who will uphold people's rights to not participate in this organized hysteria. We need to criticize the very fundamental roots of these misguided philosophies. And as Dawkins as said many times, we need to take off the kid gloves when we're talking about religion.

Religion does not deserve respect. It deserves ridicule. And those who would blindly march to undo scientific learning and replace it with fatwahs and Hallelujahs need to be exposed for what they are. Purely and objectively evil. We tend to give religious people the benefit of the doubt as to their motivations, but in light of the scientific achievements of the last hundred years, there is simply very little doubt to be left to them. There is no God. There never was. Objections to the teaching of scientific thought based on superstitious lullabies should be laughed out of every school board in the nation rather than worryingly coddled and nurtured. Religious themed schools should receive absolutely no money from public sources, let them earn it themselves from the zealots who support them. Why encourage its proliferation?

What does this have to do with terrorism? Well, the way I see it, Islamic fundamentalism is not that far removed from Christian fundamentalism. It just so happens that a brilliant man by the name of Thomas Jefferson thought it was a good idea to keep religion out of politics. That combined with the massive success of the American experiment, helped to influence Western culture so as to follow suit for the most part in practice if not in theory. Unfortunately we have, as of late, been quick to regret our declarations of human rights, the fundamentals which made America strong in the first place. No, we would much rather have security at home, while we get medieval abroad. We would much rather convince ourselves that while religion breeds fanatics, that religion is not in itself fanatical. We would much rather partition our brains to insulate ourselves from a constant stream of contradicting and irrational conflicts in our hypotheses rather than admit the lie and remove the contradictions. In Islamic nations religion IS politics and politics is religion. There is no separation and brutal dictatorships, death worship, and terrorism is what this has bred.

We will never win the war on terror as long as we submit to religion ourselves. As long as we allow the followers of Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism to convince themselves that this belief is compatible with life in the modern world, then we are feeding the very sickness which threatens to wipe us all out. We will never be able to secure rights for all human beings until we recognize that our society is merely the sum of all the contributions of the individuals in that society.

Of course, those individuals must be free to believe what they wish and say what they wish and do what they wish (within limits obviously). But that does not give them license to speak without rebuttal or to act without consequence. They must be debated and defeated in debate, over and over and over again. They must be challenged in the newspapers, on TV, in the movie theaters, in books, in blogs, on the street, in your neighborhood...anywhere and everywhere they are. Whenever they make a decision based on some mouldy tome of ancient myth. The Real war is a war of ideas. And if we do not confront them, or grant too much benefit for too little doubt, or defer to a false sense of mutual respect, then we may find that confrontation comes too late, that there is no more doubt and that that sense of respect was used against us and to the advantage of those too barbaric to ever countenance such a thing as rights.

Could you imagine a Muslim tolerating your right to free speech? Ridiculous, they have riots over cartoons....CARTOONS!!?? You've gotta be kidding me! Well, go take a look at the list of books your local church group wants to ban, and give up the lie that there's all that much keeping Christians from raising swords steeped in the blood of infidels.

The real war is in our heads and in our hearts. We have to win it there or we'll never have a hope of winning the military one. We need to undo God as a concept worthy of respect and awe. We need to place humanity in it's rightful place at the fount of all creation.

Get busy living or get busy dying. It really is that simple.