ANYways, I do have a bit of a side project which is consuming signifigantly more of my free time now than it used to do… probably something to do with me no longer having an occupation where I spend all day watching four news channels simultaneously and taking notes. Literally. I AM PAID FROM YOUR TAX DOLLARS. How does THAT taste? Taste good? Like a greasy guy with a cheap suit and more teeth than a shark has his hand in your pocket RIGHT NOW? Seriously, I’m salaried… so you personally are, technically, paying ME to type this.  I may also be consuming alcohol, who knows?

I DO.  MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously, you actually clicked on “Read the rest of this entry…” ?  How bored are YOU?

So, yeah.  Side project.  It’s a book of epistemological and religious philosophy under the working title of “The God Indictment: Irrational Arguments for Irrational Beliefs”.  In brief: the palpable, fundamental difference between people who are religious and those who are not is one of first principles.  People who make decisions based upon reason begin their lines of thinking within the sphere of the known, within the accumulated knowledge and experience available to them at that time.  People who make decisions based upon faith, however, begin from a different foundation: that the word of their religion is truth.  Therefore, anything arising from reality that contradicts their personal truth must be in error.  This is one of the key defining characteristics of irrationality: that evidence cannot influence one’s thinking.

Having worked in the military for a little while, I have met a (probably) disproportionate number of hardcore right-wing religious types.  What I have discovered is that these are NOT bad people; there is a bit of a disconnect between the objective mentality required to be a successful (or at least still alive) defender of one’s country and the deep and abiding hope that all homosexuals would contract a particularly specialized version of the Ebola virus… but they’re not bad people.  In the interests of diplomacy and being able to get any work done, I have developed a means by which to coexist intellectually with this particular demographic.  It involves doing away ENTIRELY with any line of rational discourse.  Yes, this is a huge fucking integrity compromise for me, but if doing so will purchase harmony with only myself paying the costs, then I choose to believe my actions are in the service of Good.

The key to reasoning IRrationally is to employ some good ol’ 1984 doublethink:  start with the postulate that God (etc.) literally exists and the Bible (etc.) is literally true, then find commonalities between the derivative lessons (or dogma, as needed) of the Bible and actual, real-world rationality.  Restraining your conversations to these topics enables a harmonious workplace at the cost of some mental self-flagellation on your part.  For the faithful, discussions of this type are the only way to effectively connect with (or alter) their thinking in a real-world direction: by definition, reason does not affect people who do not make decisions based upon reason.  Practically, since your argument does not agree with the truth of the Bible, your argument is faulted from beginning postulates on up, and can be discarded out of hand.  By beginning a line of reasoning from the same truth and adjusting course towards the Realm of Reason, one can display the utility of reason even within a religious context.

The book will be an examination of this type of interface, but with the diplomacy removed.  Reasoning in this way, accepting the other person’s terms and still managing to produce a conclusion that is practical, viable, moral and useful in the real world, is sure to make either a dedicated enemy or a lifelong friend, depending upon the person’s own intelligence.  Over the past two years or so of employing this sort of methodology on a consistent basis, I have reached an interesting series of conclusions.  One (or more) of the following conclusions, following logically from the truth established by the Bible, seems to be necessarily true:  1) God is either arbitrary or unnecessary;  2) God lacks either omnipotence, omnicognizance, omnibenevolence or omniscience;  3) God is either dead or absent; or 4) the Bible was actually written/inspired by Satan.

Someone is going to murder me over this book.  I’m not joking in the slightest, particularly given the implications of the fourth conclusion.  Most disturbing to my current way of thinking is that the fourth conclusion, assuming that God exists, is actually the most likely to be true; the other three conclusions would render the Bible inconsistent with itself.  However, given what is known of the universe in general and the nature of man in particular, treating the Bible as a piece of disinformation propaganda would enable the most good in the world.  Keeping the basic message of altruism that Christianity (and Islam, and Judaism, and Voodoo, quite frankly) claims is the meaning of their religion and discarding the literal truth of the Bible as being a naughty trick played by the Devil would, I believe, help a great many currently religious people make a more comprehensively positive contribution to the world and ease pretty much all of the doublethink cognitive dissonance required of them by religion.

So that’ll be the book, really.  I have the outline down pretty much as I want it, all that remains is to spew heresies and find a publisher headquartered in a fireproof building with really thick doors.  Think your typical Frankensteinian mob, but with modern, NRA-sponsored weaponry.  In all likelihood, I’ll be using this space to organize my thoughts for this book, so IF there’s anyone other than myself and Gerry reading this blog, then feel free to cut me some feedback as you see fit.  Much better than cutting me in a more literal sense.

Comma bitches.

The Theory of Tools is both a procedural and an ethical theory; it involves holding a particular moral mindset towards both one’s own ideas and the ideas of others, that mindset being one of moral neutrality towards the idea itself, reserving ethical judgments for the uses to which that idea is placed. An idea is nothing more than a tool, neither evil nor good in and of itself in exactly the same way in which a hatchet (the greatest tool evar) is neither good nor evil. Whether the tool in question is a hatchet, a bible, fire or Democracy or a thermonuclear MIRV, the moral and ethical connotations surrounding that tool can only be responsibly applied to the use to which that tool is placed.

A very serious problem I perceive within this society (in particular… it’s really humanity’s problem, but our society seems to display it with greater enthusiasm) is the tendency of people to commit both the slippery slope fallacy – claiming that an idea’s use will lead inevitably to disaster via a long chain of unlikely steps – and the entire (original Broadway) cast of red herring fallacies, my favorite of which is the ad hominem (against the person) fallacy. Most poignant to our discussion (ok, monologue) today is the appeal to consequences – the endorsement or rejection of an idea based solely upon a possible consequence of the idea’s adoption. Most frequently, this fallacy can be seen during pundit squabbling on whichever cable news network you care to name; invariably, should one speaker on an issue resort to this fallacy, the speaker on the other side of the issue must commit the very same fallacy in the opposite direction in an attempt to balance out the one-sidedness exhibited by the first speaker. Cleverly, this tactic by the first speaker enables later ad hominem attacks upon their opponent, maintaining the status quo of “that side is obviously prejudiced, therefore I must be the fair and balanced party (and therefore my ideas are more valid)”. That this attack can also be (and usually is) used by the opponent is simply more evidence that “my opponent is a partisan zealot”. The “winner” in these situations is generally the side occupied by the host, as the host generally has the last word before going to commercial… but since a person likely shares the political slant of a network if they’re watching that network, they’ve probably determined for themselves who the “winner” is even before the discussion begins. That, however, will be a problem for another day. Moving on.

Similar to the appeal to consequences is the cherry picker fallacy – the act of selectively informing the listener of all the positive or negative effects of an idea in order to build or erode (respectively) support for that idea. Also known as “counting the hits and forgetting the misses”, or vice versa for negative endorsements, this approach to reasoned debate further undermines any attempt at logical evaluation by, again, forcing partisanship upon both parties. I see this type of fallacy used most frequently (again, qualified only by my being forced to watch multiple cable news channels at once at my workplace) on the news by “guest experts”, particularly on MSNBC and Fox News. These people are called in to present a single factoid either in support of or opposition to a particular issue, but the vast majority of these experts do so by presenting only one side of their experience. At the end of their mini-presentation, these experts are also asked for their expert opinion as to the moral value of the idea in question… and the moral debate is where the real fun begins. In their defense, this is probably required of them – paycheck contingency can buy a lot of intellectual loyalty. Regardless of motive, the tendency for news organizations to present ideas in a particular light is an indictment of their Fourth Estate status; responsible reporting (and responsible thinking) is determined by the presentation of facts for facts’ sake; moral debate can be a good way to evaluate the possible applications and consequences of an idea, but for the reasoning to be consistent – and this is the really crucial bit – the moral aspect must be separated from the idea itself. To do otherwise poisons the idea with applications that may never be used; but of course, poisoning the idea one way or the other is what is intended by moral presentation of this sort.

Take “fire”, for instance. The idea of fire is completely distinct from the uses of fire, particularly the potential uses of fire. A full and reasoned presentation of the concept of fire (presented to Caveman Congress, if cavemen had appropriations committees back then) should be in two parts: the conceptual picture (what fire actually is and how we can make/control it) and the applications picture (both intended and plausible uses of fire). The two must necessarily be kept separate to avoid poisoning the idea with potential uses; fire in particular has a wide array of uses, both positive and negative. Imagine with me a moment: Caveman Fox News is doing a piece on this new invention, called “fire” by Fox because “chemical combustion reaction” is just way more highbrow than the image they’re trying to present to their audience. The segment is about a half-hour long: three minutes explaining what fire is, ten minutes of professional blogger cavemen coming up with disastrous possible uses for fire (my hair is flammable!), five minutes shouting at a weak-willed Democratic caveman scientist trying to explain how the absorbable calorific value of meat increases when cooked with fire (Hur! Hur! You use, funny word!) (said Sean Hannity Caveman) and a further twenty minutes of more punditry addressing how that Democrat guy hates Caveman America (moderated by Bill O’Reilly). Oh yeah, and two minutes of commercials (You buy Krog’s Square Wheel! 33% more sides than old, stinky Krood’s Triangle Wheel!).

So from a philosophical perspective: integrity of thought demands that a fair divide be placed in one’s thinking between a tool and that tool’s applications. This philosophy allows a person, group or society to develop new tools without the development process (physical or intellectual) being hamstrung by the fear of that tool being used in an undesirable manner. Furthermore: the Theory of Tools dispenses with the concept of not developing a tool due to possible applications; just because fire could one day be used to burn down a puppy orphanage does not mean we shouldn’t explore fire’s other uses. The idea of attaching a moral quality to a tool – calling something “heresy” or “unclean” or “against Nature” – is equally spurious, though moral judgments of the use to which a tool is placed may still hold valid. The Theory of Tools is one of the foundations of the Mature Mindset, which I’ll outline in the next post I get around to writing.  As a quick teaser: the Mature Mindset is one of the few necessary preconditions of a successful modern society; the fact that our society in particular exhibits pride in shunning maturity is just slightly worrying to me.

Omnium Bonum Est