I was reading the opinions of a well-informed poster at a technical site, a man who signs himself by the somewhat pompous title “software craftsman” (presumably contrasting a homespun, artistic, pride-in-one’s-work approach to all the ‘engineers’ doing impersonal number grinding.) His posts were good, though, and I was sufficiently curious about the “software craftsman” bit to visit the homepage he linked to.
The gentleman is one Eric Sink. The name did not originally spur my memory, but reading his About Me page I learned he was the original architect (er, craftsman) of the AbiWord project, a terrifically important and impressive semi-clone of Microsoft Word for Linux. I have used this program extensively, and finding this, thought I would read more on his site. I turned my attention to his Weblog. On the navigation bar to the left of the page, there was a link to a post called Rebuttal to Richard Dawkins.
The thing I can truly thank Mr. Sink for is the pointer to a Guardian editorial by Richard Dawkins, published four days after the World Trade Center attacks. Although I am an avid reader of The Guardian (as regular readers of this blog will know) I had somehow missed this article. I read the editorial before reading Mr. Sink’s response.
Dawkin’s writing was (as usual) powerful and lucid, and I admired his bravery in discussing something that I have been somewhat reticent to discuss in mixed company: that it could be said to be an accident that the hijackers were fundamentalist Muslims. In describing the zealous brainwashed state of the hijackers and the origins of this state, the reader is keenly aware that the words could apply to zealots of any denomination. I think the his main thesis may be summarized in this excerpt:
Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster
Could we develop a biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a pigeon but with a man’s resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn’t mind being blown up. He’d make the perfect on-board guidance system. But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was actually looming. Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? … [C]ouldn’t we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? …
It’s a tall story, but worth a try. You’d have to get them young, though… If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it… [I]t would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.
It came from religion. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
I half forgot that there was an attempted rebuttal waiting for me, so I went back to see what the software craftsman had to say. The tone of the attempted rebuttal was rather insulting, but I expect that Richard Dawkins is used to this, even if it offends me. In his third paragraph, for instance, Mr. Sink writes “Beginning in paragraph eleven, may I assume that your local village idiot finished the article for you?” Later in the essay he writes “As my eyes glazed over, I found myself unable to proceed past paragraph thirteen.” I intend to extend to Mr. Sink two courtesies that he found unnecessary to grant Dr. Dawkins: politeness, and bothering to read a short article to its completion. Let me begin with one of Mr. Sink’s statements:
First, you categorize all religions together, as if all people of spiritual beliefs are equally capable of the heinous acts committed last week… Did you really intend to dump Orthodox Jews, Christians, Mormons and others into the same contrived pigeonhole?
Well, yes (by the way, this is stated explicitly in the unread last paragraph of the essay.) Breaking the argument into steps might give us a good place to start.
- Valuing one’s own life is natural (except perhaps in extreme cases in which the life of one’s offspring is more likely to bring about survival of the agent’s genes; consider the fabled lioness protecting her cubs.)
- Therefore, external education is necessary to have a rational agent select death.
- The hijackers received an education that taught that death is not final and led them to choose death.
- Therefore, this education devalues life in the eyes of the agent.
It follows that all religions that offer such an education devalue life to one degree or another. Mr. Sink’s insertion of the word “equally”, as in “equally capable of the heinous acts”, is his introduction and does not appear in the original argument. Sink maintains that the
willingness of an individual to sacrifice their own life for a cause is not evidence of the cheapness of that life. On the contrary, martyrs understand the value of that which they are giving up.
One clarification: all that is necessary is that the value of an agent’s life is devalued in the agent’s eyes. However, the main point that martyrs are making a considered personal sacrifice is not borne out by the evidence in this case, nor indeed in most cases of religious martyrdom. In a non-theistic framework, or a theistic framework that teaches life to be finite, such acts may evidence altruism. But this is not necessarily (and not likely) the case if the agent is expecting a reward. An argument that an “eternal life” argument does not contribute to a person’s likelihood to martyr himself defies credulity. Mr. Sink writes:
You offer no indication that you understand any of the actual intended functions of religion in society. The world’s religions have brought hope and assistance to billions of individuals for several millennia.
To an extent I agree with Mr. Sink’s second claim here. It is true that the role of religion at all times and in all places has not been to create homicidal sociopaths. For instance, it has frequently served as a rapidly-instilled substitute for education (e.g., “allow your fields to lay fallow because you sin against a deity otherwise” versus “allow your fields to lay fallow because this will increase crop yields.”) It has served as justification for social support by a community. It has served as a convenient method to instill personal morality, using inexpensive fear as a motivator rather than time- and thought-intensive analysis and deliberation. It has inevitably and largely unintentionally been passed as a meme along with other elements of group knowledge (”this is how to speak, this is how to make a fire, this is how not to piss of a fierce creature in the sky”). But the only point where these considerations come into play is in a cost-benefit analysis, namely, “Are the benefits of religion worth the evident costs?” It is not the case that Dr. Dawkins does not recognize the broader impact of religion in the world; his cost-benefit analysis convinces him that the world would be a better place without it.
Consider the following also:
You identified yourself as a person who does not know the difference between religion and faith. And, you appear to be a person who is afraid of both.
I admit to some confusion here myself. However I am in some company. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the terms as follows:
faith: belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion; firm belief in something for which there is no proof
religion: commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance; a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Considering that the terms are mutually referential, the question is far from settled. I have re-read Sink’s article and I cannot determine which he is eschewing and which he wishes to be associated with. Would it be too obvious to note that “you disagree with it, you must be afraid of it” is a less-than-impressive argument?
On to another argument. Those versed in formal logic will recognize the term Argumentum ad baculum, an appeal to force. This is the classic but reprehensible technique showcased in “I’ve got a knife to your throat, still disagree with me?” arguments. So when Mr. Sink writes the following, his argument inevitably deteriorates from unsubstantiated and rude to simple bullying:
I’ll defer discussion of [an afterlife] for the time being, but I would enjoy the opportunity to discuss this concept with you in person. Let’s meet over coffee in a thousand years or so. I’ll be living in a large city that is extremely well-lit. If you need directions to get there, you should probably ask me soon, because you might want to get started on the journey.
The reader will surely recognize an irony here: Religion is not here to brainwash people nor manipulate them with tales of a glorious afterlife. Religion is not violent. If you do not accept this, you will burn in hell forever, whereas I will be treated to an eternal life of luxury.
I cannot credit Mr. Sink with the invention of brute-force, logically fallacious arguments. But we would be doing ourselves a disservice not to notice one here.
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