In Lehmann's Terms

Fun with Semantics

I share Glen Whitman's assessment that there simply is no need for a concept of "agnotheism." The coinage has been around for a while, and I've seen it used to refer to a number of different concepts, but I guess Jane Galt gets credit for inventing or popularizing its current meaning as "an agnostic who puts a very, very low--yet non-zero!--value on P(God)."

Of course, my first problem with the term is that it would appear, on its face, to break down to something like "the theory that one can't have knowledge of whether believers-in-God exist." But Glen lays out the more cogent argument -- essentially that Galt's definition amounts to yet one more distinction in search of a difference:

As recently as a few years ago, I referred to myself as an agnostic for just the reason that Jane describes. I reserved “atheist” for absolute certainty of the non-existence of god, and “agnostic” for a degree of certainty less than 100%. But after many conversations with my old roomie Julian, I realized that was silly, because I’m not 100% certain about anything. I’m not 100% certain that unicorns don’t exist, yet I don’t call myself a “unicorn agnostic.” I’m not 100% certain there’s no such thing as ESP, yet I don’t call myself an “ESP agnostic.” When I say I don’t believe in unicorns or ESP, it means that I just don’t have any good reason to think they’re real, and so I proceed on the assumption that they aren’t. If P(unicorns) and P(ESP) are sufficiently small, they don’t merit having representation in your label. Why treat P(God) any differently?

I'd go a step further than that even. The idea that one can simultaneously be "agnostic," and assign a probabilistic estimate to whether God exists, strikes me as incoherent. Presumably, agnostics agree with atheists (and even most theists) that there is no physical evidence of God's existence, so that would seem to rule out assigning a frequency probability. But agnostics also believe (at least, as I've always understood the term) that it is impossible to know whether God exists. So what room does leave for Bayesian inference or filtering?

Sure, anyone can just randomly assign numbers to serve as ordinal placekeepers, but since these numbers don't actually refer to any extant information about the real world, why bother? Would you actually use them to compare the likelihood that God exists to the likelihood that, say, unicorns do? And what could serve as the basis of any such comparison?  Unicorns likely would strike most as the more fanciful  hypothetical, but hey, at least there we might be able to point to the recombinant potential of horse DNA. Where's the starting point to begin ascertaining the "probability of probabilities" when it comes to God?

Moreover, I would contend the thought that there are actually some statistically significant number of adherents to what is sometimes described as "strong" atheism -- i.e. the stance that P(God) = 0 -- is fallacious to start. I can't say I've never met ANYONE who held that view, but at least in my subjective experience, it's been a tiny minority of those who self-identify as atheists. Most, instead, hold to some variant of "weak" atheism, or what Michael Shermer has called "nontheism."

But I think Shermer's coinage to be just as unnecessary as Galt's. A-theism is "without a belief in God," much as a-pathy is "without pathos." Nothing in the construction of the word suggests a positive rejection of or active hostility toward belief in God. To the extent there are any who hold such a stance, it would properly be labeled anti-theism, much like anti-pathy.

Of course, these semantic games bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to the inane libertarian/ liberal/ classical liberal/ market liberal/ anarchist/ minarchist/ anarcho-capitalist  debates that have dragged on for decades in libertoid circles. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to both fringe anti-state and fringe anti-church communities drawing similar types of adherents (or, in many cases, the exact same adherents.)

That being the case, if Megan's "agnotheism" could serve to unite all non-believers under one banner, then I'd be perfectly willing to dispense with any quibbles about the awkwardness of the term and just run with it. But since that's not what she's proposing (and it wouldn't happen, even if she were) I think "atheist" already covers the people she's describing pretty well.

Atheism: 1, Foxhole: 0

By the good grace of modern medicine, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett reports to edge.org that he has emerged from the foxhole of an dissected aorta. If that weren't enough good news, he survived the ordeal both with his atheism firmly intact, and singing a few bars of that old Broadway showstopper "Don't Pray For Me, Argentina."

These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it. 

Thanks to Ted Frank for the pointer.

Big Gay Ted's Sexcellent Adventure

The first time I saw American Beauty, my reaction to the denouement scene and the revelation about Chris Cooper’s character was one I’ve heard shared by many other viewers: I just rolled my eyes at the whole sorry cliché.

I mean, come on – the homophobe who’s really a closet case? How played-out can you get?

And yet, here in the real world, preachers and conservative pols with secret yearnings for boybutt just insist on perpetuating the stereotype every….single….time!!!

So, of course, I guess it shouldn’t really be a surprise to hear that Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals, is just the latest to be brought to his knees thanks to an uncontrollable urge to hate the sin, but luuuuuuuuuv the sinners.

Already, Haggard has copped to scoring crystal meth from a call-boy in Denver (that part would have been hard for him to deny, since he’s caught on tape setting up the buys) but so far, he’s sticking with his story that, no, really, he just happens to be an effeminate heterosexual.

And who am I to doubt him? The case isn’t yet a slam dunk, in no small measure because his accuser flunked his polygraph. (Incidentally, the boys at Pinkdome argue the reason Haggard might have been able to negotiate the cut rate price of $200 a lay is that Mike Jones is a 49-year-old with loose skin and old balls.)

But the fact that he was so quick to quit both his NAE post, and his congregation (whose walls apparently feature some rather, ahem, interesting murals) not to mention the speed with which his story about Jones has morphed from a St. Peteresque “I don’t know him” to “He was my dealer” to “And he gave me a massage that one time,” leads one to suspect that he’s just raring to go from 0 to Foley in no time flat. 

In any case, his fellow fundie nutballs are wasting no time in throwing their guy under the bus.  First up was the venerable Dr. James Dobson, who issued a release declaring that “the situation has grave implications for the Cause of Christ” (Really? How?)

Following just behind is everyone’s favorite former gay-prostitute-dating coke dealer turned fag-hating preacher -- Stephen Bennett. Despite apparently having so much in common with Haggard, Bennett said he was “completely disgusted and dismayed” at the news. He explains:

"Today, my life is totally different. I am no longer gay. I'm happily married for over 13 years to my beautiful wife Irene, and I'm the father of two little children - a boy and a girl.” 

You can tell yourself that all you like, Stevie-boy. Alas, after hearing that Barry Mannilow impersonator you’ve got piping on your web site, I have to break it to you, dude –- you’re still gay. Trust me on this one. No straight man would ever choose that music.

Whether the allegations about Haggard end up proving true or false, about one thing there can be no doubt – he’s a delusional creep. This, Dr. Dawkins has already capably demonstrated:

 

Whose Stereo Are You Typing?

Bryan Caplan reports surprise upon learning, based on analysis of data from the General Social Survey, that fundamentalists are no less likely to get divorced than the population at large. This, he says, contradicts the general "stereotype" that fundamentalists take their vows more seriously than other people do.

I have to admit to being somewhat puzzled by the assertion. I've never stereotyped fundamentalists as being unlikely to divorce, and wasn't aware that that was a stereotype. When I hear the word "fundamentalist," I think "Biblical literalist, evangelical Protestant."  And perhaps this just betrays the residual prejudices of my Catholic school background, but my first inclination is to assume that Protestants of all stripes are MORE likely to get divorced. They are, after all, allowed to get divorced, which Catholics -- who represent one-quarter of this country, by far the largest bloc of any single religious sect -- are not.

The K. O'Reilly Factor

In comments below, the honorable Kevin O'Reilly, the man I used to be able to refer to as "that OTHER libertarian insurance journalist," takes issue with my dramatic whinging on behalf of the downtrodden atheist class:

As an atheist myself, I must say that I've never felt discriminated against. Now, I don't go around broadcasting my beliefs, just as I probably wouldn't be wearing a giant gold crucifix if I were a Christian.

The inclination to remain discrete and modest about one's own religious outlook is an understandable one, and under slightly different circumstances, I might even call it an admirable one. But the tenor of these particular times suggests to me that remaining humble about what we believe is no longer a virtue.

For too long, our silence has been used against us, as implicit acquiescence to the will of the majority. Over and over we are told how “America is a religious country,” usually in defense of some asinine policy like school prayer or gay marriage bans. That a full 5% of Americans report that they do NOT believe in God – 1 in every 20 – is never offered as a counter to that assertion. If it is mentioned at all, it is only to support the claim that since there are relatively few of us, the majority is fully entitled to shove whatever pro-religion nonsense they’d like down our throats.

And by and large, we just take it and keep our mouths shut. When one of us has the gumption to stand up for himself, even on the most minor or mundane of issues – as Michael Newdow did over the “under God” wording in the Pledge of Allegiance – he is treated like the proverbial uppity n*gg*r who doesn’t know his place is to sit in the back of the bus.

Firmly ensconced on the current bestseller list is a tome by a man who shares your surname, the central thesis of which is a call for an all-out jihad on those of us who would welcome a declining role for religion in public and civic life, and celebrate the secularization of American society. And in what amounts to a sick joke, he has managed to convince millions of his lapdog followers that it is WE who are the well-organized cabal, pulling all the string from behind some magic curtain. As the other O'Reilly puts it:

For the S-P agenda to succeed, religion in America must be de-emphasized, just as it already has been in Western Europe and Canada, where secular-progressives have made huge gains. … [T]he American S-P generals have learned that goal No. 1 is to secularize the American public school system in order to drive children away from religion and into the S-P camp. And what is the most wondrous display of religion worldwide? Why, Christmas, of course. Little kids seeing a manger display just might develop a curiosity about this baby Jesus person. … There is no danger of that happening with winter solstice or with a holiday tree.

Well, Bill, count me guilty as charged. I do cheer when I see children driven away from the delusion of religion. I would consider it progress if America was just as secular as Canada and Western Europe. I believe a more secular America would be less likely to interfere with the free choices of its citizens, whether those choices are little things, like the ability to do on-line gambling or to download some porn, or big things, like being able to enter enforceable marriage contracts with one’s chosen life partner or to more fully research the potential of embryonic stem cell lines. 

The onus should be on men like THAT Mr. O’Reilly to explain why this isn’t progress. And the retort that “America is a religious country” shouldn’t be an acceptable response.

Now, as to discrimination, I’ll concede that blatant, Civil Rights Act-type discrimination may be rare, but clearly there is unequal treatment in a variety of areas. Some of them are so obvious that the only reason you don’t think about them is that you’ve been institutionalized, my brotha.

Case in point: If you were to hold a weekly lecture series to which you charged admission, then each year, come April 15, the fine gentlemen at the Internal Revenue Service would be kindly expecting their cut.

But break out the incense, put on a backward collar, put up some stained glass, and all of a sudden….

A more serious case in point: Consider yourself lucky that you haven't endured a child custody battle with an ex-spouse who happens to be a believer. As Eugene Volokh has demonstrated, the odds are pretty good that you’ll lose.

As for electing atheists, it happens all the time. Most people who aren't religious don't go around talking all the time about why or how they're not religious. It's a waste of time.

I have no doubt that it does. In fact, I know of more than one closeted atheist in Congress, though I don’t think it my place to out them. Still, does it not discomfit you even a bit that this should be an issue? Does it not fill you with melancholy that no matter how brilliant he or she might be, no jurist who has ever admitted to atheism publicly will ever be named to the Supreme Court? It does for me. And no, I’m not so deluded to think there’s anything my little Web site will do to rectify that situation, but sweet Popper, we’ve got to start somewhere, don’t we?

And perhaps I could more easily accept that it were a waste of time were it not for the fact that, in less than one week, control of the United States Senate may very well come down to a single race in Tennessee, where even the Democratic candidate has been given to making pronouncements like:

My friend Lincoln Davis who chairs our campaign says there are, there's one big difference between us and misfortunate Republicans when it comes to our faith: he said that Republicans fear the Lord; he said Democrats fear AND love the Lord. – Harold Ford Jr.

Get me a barf bag, please.

Most Americans are seemingly willing to dispense with religious principles they find discordant with modern living without giving up their belief in God or whatever. And when it comes to public policy, it's rare to see even religious figures make explicitly religious arguments.

You’re absolutely right on that. Instead they make fallacious secular arguments to promote policies with specific religious intent. Like how the institution of marriage need be “protected” by reserving it for those who are capable of rearing their own biological children (which is, of course, why we don’t let the elderly or the infertile get married, right?)

And hey, as I see it, the infidels are our natural allies. Perhaps Dawkins gets a kick out of antagonizing hypocritical believers, but I think it’s our duty to reach out to them and encourage them to raise their own voices. They don’t want to be told what to do by their church leaders any more than we do.

In the United States today, people are rarely punished for having unpopular or idiotic beliefs. It's going to take some doing on your part to convince me otherwise and to get exercised about it, so I look forward to reading to see what evidence you come up with.

Perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I ought to have been, but it’s not my intent to show we are being “punished.” But we are certainly hated. Turning to Volokh again, he posted late last year about a Pew Center poll that showed 50% of Americans had either “mostly unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” attitudes toward atheists.

Substitute “blacks” or “Jews” or even “gays” for atheists in that poll, and you’d see a five-part CNN series on “The Hate that Divides America.” But because it is atheists, no one bats an eye – even, it seems, other atheists. That disturbs me, deeply. Which is not to say I have an answer to the problem, but that there is a problem is something I don’t think I can just sit back and ignore any longer.

Episode IV: A New Hope

There comes a time in every blog's life when it must stop and ask itself the big questions -- what am I? Why am I here? What purpose do I serve, other than to occupy bits of bandwidth and server space, and for what good reason would anyone keep coming back to read me on a regular basis?

Almost since its inception, In Lehmann's Terms has been unable to answer those questions. In part, this is because it is a blog, not a sentient creature, and thus incapable of animate thought or speech, no matter how far its creator tried to stretch out this tortured metaphor. But in larger part, it is because that same creator, yours truly, never really had any good answers to those questions to begin with.

For years, I resisted the call to start blogging, because I considered the whole enterprise....well, kind of goofy. Eventually, on a lark, I decided to give it a whirl. But while it's been fun at times and, yeah, there are a small handful of posts I've made that I don't consider to be complete crap, I can't say I've ever been completely sold on what I was doing. That is, when I bothered to do it at all.

The problem, you see, is that this has always been a blog without a purpose, and that's never sat particularly well with me. I'd intended originally for this to be a space to blow off some steam. My day job is comprised entirely of reporting straight news, so having an outlet to bloviate my own opinions once in a while seemed like a welcome opportunity.

But opinions....about what? Does the Web really need yet one more libertarian screwball, tossing off the same old hoary cliches on all the same old topics? Spend just a few minutes cruising the libertarian blogosphere -- and especially the giant echo chamber that is the D.C.-centered libertarian blogosphere -- and the answer comes back a categorical NO FUCKIN' WAY!

So, what then? Pop culture? I don't consume nearly as much of it as I used to, and dwelling on the subject mostly leaves me feeling old and out of touch. Philosophy? Still fun for the occasional mental wank session, but I'd end up boring even myself. Economics? It's already a crowded field, and I don't have nearly enough technical training to do the subject justice or compete with the big boys. Business? Finance? Insurance? Only in that last area can I say I have a true comparative advantage, and it's the one subject that prudence dictates I just the shut the hell up about.

Which doesn't leave much. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David may have been able to get away with doing a show "about nothing," but a blog about nothing is a pretty gruesome thing.

It seems Professor Bainbridge had been thinking along these same lines recently. As he put it:

With the blogging "market" increasingly crowded, the model of an eclectic, general interest blog is a less viable one. Perhaps more importantly, I'm just getting tired of the punditry style of blogging. I'm not enjoying writing that style as much; for that matter, I'm not enjoying reading other punditry blogs very much these days.

The Prof is now currently in the process of remaking his blog to focus much more exclusively on business law and economics. And after much deliberation, I've finally decided upon a specific focus that I would like to pursue as well, one that engages my mind and inflames my passions, but which has little to do with my politics and nothing at all to do with my day job.

So let me welcome you to the newly relaunched In Lehmann's Terms, a site devoted to the cause...of secularism, devoted to celebrating progress made toward a more secular culture, and to defending the social status of the non-religious in American culture.

I know what you might be thinking, but let me stop you right there. Whether you believe it or not, I promise that the decision to steer the site in this direction was made several weeks before Wired magazine's publication of Gary Wolf's article on The New Atheists -- Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett. Nonetheless, if theirs is a movement that helps to push this debate forward, then I proudly declare myself a fellow traveler, if not quite an enlisted soldier in the Army of (Not)God.

The New Atheists' represent a strident brand of atheism toward which I maintain a certain degree of ambivalence. Don't get me wrong. I don't have any fuzzy-bunny feelings toward believers. I don't particularly care if it's "mean" to call their beliefs "delusions." It doesn't make it any less true. But the problem I see with the Dawkins-Harris strategy is that all it does is amp up the volume on the same program they've been trying for years.  At its heart, it's still consumed with the idea that one can use reason to persuade the irrational, a conceit just as deluded as anything the fundies themselves could come up with.

The reason Dawkins and Dennett and their ilk always return to pick from this same fruitless branch is that they are academics. Moreover, they're conservative academics, and thus accustomed to a certain type of polemical discourse. They think if they dominate the debate and win all the points, the other side will have no choice but to see the light.

For men so smart, this is a profoundly stupid approach. This war will not be won in a classroom. In fact, it will not be won at all, if the goal is to "convert" the other side. My goals are much more modest. I don't demand that any current believer change his mind about his or her own beliefs. I just, frankly, don't give a toss. What I do demand is that I, and the other nonbelievers, be given the same damned respect that any other citizen could count on as a matter of course. Maybe Dawkins and Co. just can't see it, but to me it's plain as day --  the issues that face atheists and agnostics and other nonbelievers today are the issues of prejudice and civil rights.

Let's face some facts, gentlemen. We are a minority, both in America and in most countries around the world.  We are, furthermore, a minority that has been, and continues to be, profoundly marginalized. We live in the midst of a majority that is hostile, both to us personally, and to our beliefs, generally. Make no mistake about it -- we are hated. And not only does our culture offer no sanction against those who express that hatred publicly -- such contempt is encouraged, often by our very own elected leaders.

If you doubt the claim, or think it an exaggeration, consider this: Depending on whose statistics you use, there are between five to 10 times the number of atheists in America that there are Jews in America. And yet, despite that numerical advantage, and despite eons of anti-Semitism, six years ago, a clear plurality of Americans voted to elect an Orthodox Jew to the second-highest office in the land.

Can you think of one place -- one city, one county, one hamlet -- where an admitted atheist would stand a chance to be elected dog catcher? I can't.

Now, when I say this is a civil rights issue, I don't mean that it is primarily a civil liberties issue. I disagree with a great many of the currents in the American political scene, and find many of those currents are hostile to the nonbelieving minority. But that's only a tiny piece of the problem, and often -- particularly in the hands of groups like the ACLU -- it can be used to distract from the broader issues.

As I read the First Amendment, it says the federal government can't establish a state religion or prosecute people for their religious beliefs. I can be simultaneously grateful for the doctrine of separation of church and state while also recognizing that it appears nowhere in the Constitution. And the greater point is -- it need not appear in our Constitution. We should endorse it as a rule of thumb because it's simply good public policy.

But first, we need a seat at the table, the table of our own culture. Just as the homosexuals have been doing for 30 years, we need to come out of the closet. We need to stand up to anti-atheist bigotry. We need to make our voices heard. We need to highlight positive atheist role models and support atheist youth groups and establish atheist charities and atheist civic organizations.

Let's not forget that, in the end, the ultimate triumph of the original civil rights movement was not the Supreme Court decisions or the Civil Rights Act or even the end of Jim Crow. It was in a whole group of Americans standing up, en masse, and changing the culture -- changing it simply by insisting that their voices be counted. Some of those voices were just as strident, in their own way, as Dawkins and Harris are today, and I don't begrudge them that at all. It took all of those voices to create the conversation.

Ours is one that has only just begun.

The only chain that a man can stand
is the chain of hand in hand.
Keep your eyes on the prize
and hold on.