Looks like I went 11-5 last weekend. Not many to be proud of. I guess I got close on some scores, but I missed on my upset picks and whiffed on a few more. Watch for my picks next week!

UT Martin at #1 Mississippi State: I picked MSU by 100 and Dak Prescott winning in bunny slippers. MSU won 45-16.

Virginia at #2 FSU: I picked FSU 35-31. They won 34-20.

Texas A&M at #3 Auburn: I picked Auburn 60-15 in OT. They literally lost by the seat of their pants 41-38.

#4 Oregon at #17 Utah: I had Oregon scoring its first points on a trick play. I’m going to say I got that one right. Oregon won 51-27, but everybody broke their leg in the game. Go Ducks.

#5 Alabama at #16 LSU: I had LSU upsetting 16-5. They won, and then the Hatter found a way to lose. Bama won 20-13 in OT.

#7 Kansas State at #6 TCU: I had Christians over Wildcats 45-21. It was 41-20.

#14 Ohio State at #8 Michigan State: I had MSU. OSU won 49-37.

#10 Notre Dame at #9 Arizona State: I picked ASU 21-14. Shoulda known it would be higher scoring. 55-31.

#40,000 Presbyterian at #11 Ole Miss: I’m not even going to acknowledge that this was a week 11 game.

#12 Baylor at #15 Oklahoma: I had 52-37. 48-14 was the final.

#18 UCLA at Washington: I went with UCLA 21-0. They won 44-30

Colorado at #19 Arizona: Arizona was supposed to win 10-0. They won 38-20.

#20 Georgia at Kentucky: Georgia 24-14. Not quite. It was 63-31.

#21 Clemson at Wake Forest: How did I get this one wrong?

#22 Duke at Syracuse: I had Duke winning. They did.

#23 West Virginia at Texas: Holy cow that looked like UT again all of a sudden. 33-16. Didn’t see that coming.

#24 Georgia Tech at NC State: I had State on the upset. GT took it 56-23.

#25 Wisconsin at Purdue: Badgers won. I picked them.

This is pretty sweet. I discovered it in the comments section of The Atheist Experience blog. Basically it summarizes epistemological positions as circular, regressive, or axiomatic. The presuppositionalists I’ve discussed before are circular, the “turtles all the way down” types are regressive, and the “we’ve got to start somewhere so let’s agree on something” people are axiomatic. I favor axiomatic because I believe it is the most productive.

There’s a fourth category, which is fallibilist, but I think it’s a little different because it’s not mutually exclusive from the other three. It basically states that things can’t be proven true with certainty but they can be proven false. I’ll explain in another post why I like the concepts of fallibilism, but I think they have to be put in the context of axioms. Also I disagree that, in the epistemological context of the first three positions, anything can be proven conclusively false. But there’s lots of nuance and definitions that need to be teased out.

Anyway, for now just go check out the Munchhausen Trilemma. It’s pretty cool food for thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

Go do it now!

I know, I know, it’s a philosophy/religion blog or something. But in the atheism/skepticism communities, I find myself relatively alone in two things: (1) being an accountant and (2) being a sports fan. Since nobody anywhere wants to read about accounting, I figure if I’m going to carve out a niche readership, I should go sports. So from now on you can consider this your one and only stop for skeptic atheist accountant college football predictions. It’s what you’ve been looking for in a blog all along; you’re only now realizing it!

So let’s get started:

UT Martin at #1 Mississippi State: Mississippi State mistakes this spot on their schedule as a bye week and recognizes their mascot on the tube halfway through their fourth bowl of Cheerios, but it’s a home game so a few of them show up for kickoff. Dak Prescott gets there halfway through the 4th quarter and runs for 6 touchdowns in bunny slippers. Miss State 100-0, but I may have slid a decimal point.

Virginia at #2 FSU: Jameis Winston plays a perfect game… from a point shaving standpoint and FSU wins 35-31.

Texas A&M at #3 Auburn: This is a letdown game for the Aggies after their emotional win over Louisiana Monroe last week. They’ve had that one circled on their schedule since February, and this is a dictionary definition trap game against little known Auburn. Auburn pulls the shocker and beats A&M 60-15 in overtime.

#4 Oregon at #17 Utah: The team whose stadium’s name is more clever than their mascot’s puts the Oregonians to a test in a late night game. The Utes give up an early safety because the Ducks arrive in their new Nike “sports reporter” uniforms and schedule a post kickoff interview with Travis Wilson in his own endzone. That old gag. The Ducks tack on four 2-point conversions and win 34-28.

#5 Alabama at #16 LSU: LSU fans are the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful people on the planet. LSU feeds off of the good vibes at their home field and wins 16-5.

#7 Kansas State at #6 TCU: A wildcat is no lion. Christians win 45-21.

#14 Ohio State at #8 Michigan State: The Big 10 is happily in the middle of their conference schedule, as there each game guarantees at least a win or a tie for a conference team. MSU over OSU 30-14.

#10 Notre Dame at #9 Arizona State: Everett Golson sits out the game to study for exams. ASU wins 21-14.

#40,000 Presbyterian at #11 Ole Miss: Olay Miss, as my adorable Puerto Rican bride calls them, hangs on to win 60-1 in another gutsy scheduling call by the SEC.

#12 Baylor at #15 Oklahoma: So many questions surrounding this game, I’m guessing. The off-the-field scandals of some sort are pushed aside as Art Briles focuses on game day. The recent death of somebody’s near or distant relative motivates one of the two teams to a thrilling, passionate, special, or typical victory. Exact score: 52-37, but the real winner is the human spirit.

#18 UCLA at Washington: The Huskies beat themselves again. No really, Shaq Thompson gets confused about playing both offense and defense and accidentally puts on a Bruin uniform. Before it’s too late UCLA goes up 21-0 and the score stays there for the second half.

Colorado at #19 Arizona: Arizona calls more Hail Marys than all the Popes combined. Anu Solomon (who doesn’t have a Twitter account because it won’t let him put a space between his first and last name) is successful on one of them, which is enough to beat a Colorado squad suffering from a rash of injuries. If you count sucking as an injury. 10-0.

#20 Georgia at Kentucky: Georgia 24-14.

#21 Clemson at Wake Forest: Wake 38-10. I feel pretty good about this one.

#22 Duke at Syracuse: This ACC showdown is going to be awesome… in basketball season. Duke wins, but nobody catches the final score.

#23 West Virginia at Texas: Charlie Strong realizes he only left a 17% tip at Kerbey Lane this morning and suspends himself for misconduct. West Virginia capitalizes with a 20-3 victory in Austin.

#24 Georgia Tech at NC State: State 22-19.

#25 Wisconsin at Purdue: Badgers run for 600 yards and 14 points, winning by 3.

That’s it! Put your picks for any games, ranked or not, in the comments. Hell, just say anything in the comments. I want so badly for someone to comment on my blog.

Welcome to part 2 regarding the subjectivity and objectivity of values and morals. Here’s a quick overview of my ideas, the first three of which were presented in the previous post:

1. Values represent the conditions we wish to see in the world around us.
2. Morals represent the relationship our actions have with our values. Morals can aid or hinder realization of our values.
3. Values are subjective. No values are objectively good or objectively bad. This is the most critical and interesting (IMHO) element to my positions on morality and values.
4. Morals, in contrast, are objectively good or bad, depending on how well or how poorly they assist in realization of values.
5. We make several errors when we make decisions about values and morals.
   1. We can be in error about what our own values are. We can say and even believe that we hold a certain value, when in fact we do not.
   2. We can hold conflicting values without realizing they are in conflict.
   3. We can be mistaken about how effective our morals are at achieving our values.

Today I’ll pickup from the 4^th item:

4. Morals, unlike values, are objectively good or bad.

This one’s fairly simple, since morals represent the activities you choose to achieve your values, it makes sense that actions that help you achieve your morals can be considered objectively good while those that hinder you from achieving them are objectively bad. An example I brought up last week had to do with the Ten Commandments. Many consider the Ten Commandments to be good regardless of any values. They are good either because God says so or because they are just objectively good and God conveys that information through the Commandments.

I feel that the Ten Commandments are only good insofar as they relate to values. If, like me, you value things like peace, then the commandment not to kill is generally a good thing, even though there are some conceivable contexts (extremely few in my opinion) in which killing may be necessary for overall peace or to achieve other values. The commandment to worship “the Lord your God” may be a good moral if pleasing the God you believe exists is a value you hold. Since I value freethought and don’t believe in a God, I consider that commandment immoral.

But while we could hold opposing views about the morality of the Ten Commandments, in the context of values, those morals are objective. The moral commandment to worship God is moral for achieving your value, and immoral for achieving mine. This does not, in my mind, make the moral subjective, only the values.

5. We make several errors regarding values and morals (aka, ethics is hard)

I fear I’m doing something I’ve done in a few essays, which is sputtering to the end of a topic. In this case, I’ve already burned through my most interesting point, point #3, and I’m about to finish with an incomplete brainstorm. Oh well, my blog. It gives my commenters (to date nobody) stuff to criticize, and if you’re like me, criticizing is fun for you. So you’re welcome.

My general feeling about values and morals is that humans aren’t very good with them. Like businesses with poorly formed mission statements, we stumble through life never really articulating what we value. When asked what we value most, very few of us list Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, when that’s probably closer to the truth than what we state as our values. Several times in this set of posts I’ve said that I highly value peace on Earth, but I spend a remarkably small amount of my time working to support it. I spend more time watching football. It’s not that we’re lying to others necessarily, we’re just having trouble identifying our values to ourselves.

We can also hold conflicting values. We have to, to some extent, and we need to balance those values. I value individual freedom to pursue your own happiness however you please, but I don’t value infringing on others’ rights. Clearly there are times when those values have to be reconciled. We may not like to admit it, but there are times when we feel that it’s okay to infringe on someone else’s happiness just a little tiny bit if it will bring us immense happiness. Or consider how we feel it’s okay to outperform a competitor in business or sport or in attracting a mate. We don’t find those to be related to bad values.

I could go on, but I think I need to stop and brainstorm and maybe discuss this with others before rambling on further. In this set of posts, I think I’ve gotten out a few good ideas, but I think it’s getting away from me. I guess I find it fascinating how hard discussions about values and morals and ethics can be, so I’ll post some other random thoughts about it over the next few weeks in between blogging about other topics.

Right now would be a good time to chime in with your thoughts. Maybe you have some better ideas than I do.

🙂

I’ve heard a lot of discussions about whether morals and values are objective or not. I’m going to try to summarize my positions on this in a couple of posts. You could probably categorize me as a “relativist”, but my opinions are a little more nuanced than that label conveys. Below is an outline of my ideas:

1. Values represent the conditions we wish to see in the world around us.
2. Morals represent the relationship our actions have with our values. Morals can aid or hinder realization of our values.
3. Values are subjective. No values are objectively good or objectively bad. This is the most critical and interesting (IMHO) element to my positions on morality and values.
4. Morals, in contrast, are objectively good or bad, depending on how well or how poorly they assist in realization of values.
5. We make several errors when we make decisions about values and morals.
   1. We can be in error about what our own values are. We can say and even believe that we hold a certain value, when in fact we do not.
   2. We can hold conflicting values without realizing they are in conflict.
   3. We can be mistaken about how effective our morals are at achieving our values.

I’ll tackle the first three today and follow up with #4 and #5 in two separate posts.

1. Values represent the conditions we wish to see in the world around us.

These first two items are in here just to set definitions. Dictionary definitions can be ambiguous, so it’s best if we start off defining important terms. Primarily I’m interested in making a differentiation between values and morals. Values are the conditions toward which we aspire. Peace on Earth is a value. Equality and fairness are values. Values don’t necessarily prescribe behaviors. That’s what morals do.

2. Morals represent the relationship our actions have with our values. Morals can aid or hinder realization of our values.

In contrast to values, morals prescribe behaviors. They are the methods or actions that you employ to realize your values. The Ten Commandments could be an example of morals. Some people confuse morals and values, placing morals at a sort of axiomatic level where values should be. “Thou shalt not kill” represents a moral imperative, but it’s senseless if there are no values around violence and suffering. Murder isn’t bad simply because murder is bad; rather it’s bad because we value health and well-being , and don’t value unnecessary suffering in ourselves or in other people.

3. Values are subjective. No values are objectively good or objectively bad.

This is my controversial point, and it will take the longest because there are many potential objections to address. I think most people take it as given that some values are objectively good and others are bad. It’s clearly bad to value pain and suffering in people around you and it’s clearly good to value health and happiness in the world, right? It seems to go without saying. Even people who hold these values are seen as somewhat unethical if they don’t also consider those good values to be objectively good and those bad values objectively bad. I mean, even if someone values peace on Earth, how could you trust that person if they don’t also think that value is objectively good.

Some people think God dictates which values are objectively good, but that doesn’t work in my mind. If God decides that something is good, all that means to me is that a really powerful supernatural being thinks that it’s good. Even if it’s God’s opinion, that’s still subjective to me. As Tauriq Moosa of The Indelible Stamp blog states regarding claiming the moral high ground by following the Ten Commandments, “You’re working on a pre-determined outline of what constitutes ethics. You haven’t said why it’s ethical.” If you want to explore this idea further, take a look at the Euthyphro dilemma or pretty much any advanced discussion about ethics.

In my opinion, the values we hold are simply preferences. But what differentiates values from other preferences are that they (1) are very important and consequential to us, (2) require the cooperation or agreement of other people if we are to realize them, and often (3) have more or less universal consensus. Contrast your “value” for peace on Earth against your preference for strawberry ice cream. No matter how much you love strawberry ice cream, you aren’t tempted to say that it’s objectively better than chocolate. You may be tempted to reduce the discussion to objective truths right away by saying that flavor preference is a matter of opinion while peace on Earth is an objectively good value, but I think that statement requires support and I don’t see how one could back it up without resorting to boldfaced assertions. I think both of them are simply preferences, but peace on Earth has those three characteristics that make us qualify them as values. That’s not to say that those three differences aren’t critically important, but such differences simply don’t make our preference for peace on Earth objectively true. They’re still preferences.

So why, then, do many people consider our value for peace on Earth objective instead of subjective like our love for strawberry ice cream? I think it comes back to those three differences. Because there is more or less universal consensus for peace on Earth, it creates the illusion of objectivity, and because the value is very important and requires the cooperation of others, it makes it easier to convince others to cooperate with us in our pursuit of peace on Earth if we can convince them that such values are objectively good instead of being our subjective preference.

Claiming that our values are objective is tempting because it short circuits the need to defend our values. It’s a powerful and rhetorically useful approach, but it lacks the intellectual rigor that’s actually necessary to discuss values and morals on a productive level. It’s a lot easier to assert that people should work to support your values rather than try to convince them why they should. I value peace on Earth, and I think others should as well, but if someone does not share that value, I should try to win them over to my side rather than browbeat them with the unsupported assertion that we should share that value. It’s more difficult, but it’s honest and respectful. Since I also value honesty and respect, then it’s my duty to uphold these values by defending my position with reason.

I’ll stop here for now and pick up soon on the topic of moral objectivity (as opposed to the subjectivity of values). In the meantime, have I left any particular questions unanswered? Do you have any objections to my positions so far? I’m interested to hear your thoughts!

What has philosophy taught us in the past 100 years? Has it revealed to us the true nature of the universe? What about morality? Have we concluded with certainty anything about morality through the practice of philosophy? What about God? What has any philosophy taught us about whether or not God exists?

Now I’m not really bashing the practice of philosophy here. I firmly believe in its value. A primary benefit is philosophy’s ability to remind us how difficult some situations are. We assume we know all there is to know about some simple topic, and some field of philosophy teaches us that things aren’t as easy or clear as we like to think. Try a few variants of the famous trolley thought experiments and you’ll realize that morality is a lot more complicated than just “doing what you know instinctively is right”.

Part of what makes it difficult when discussing the relative values of philosophy and science is delineating between them. In many ways, science is supported by philosophy and even is a philosophy. Likewise philosophy is in many ways a sort of science and is supported by science. The reason I think that both are beneficial and so similar is that at their best they’re grounded in empiricism (observation of reality). Pretty much all good science is empirical, where hypotheses are based on observation and then those hypotheses are tested by further observations under controlled circumstances. Any science not based on empiricism could arguably be labeled as pseudoscience.

In my opinion, philosophy is at its best when it synchronizes with science. Certainly philosophy addresses topics beyond the scope of empiricism or naturalism, the boundaries of science. But in those broader areas that are subject solely to philosophical investigation, we don’t seem to make a whole lot of measurable progress. What do we know now about objective reality beyond our experience? No more than we ever have. Those who claim access to such things generally make unsupported theological assertions, which look more like a pseudophilosophy than a genuine avenue to knowledge. Subjects beyond empiricism are worth discussing, and it’s valuable to explore the reasons why we make so little progress beyond empiricism, but philosophy provides more value (again in my humble opinion) when it joins with science in the arena of naturalism.

Philosophy contributes to science through intellectual exploration. Some difficult moral questions are elucidated through empirical study, and joining the study of psychology in addressing the relationships between values, morals, and behaviors, philosophy can provide some clear direction and respond to empirical results.

Philosophy also contributes by supporting empiricism. I think that the philosophical exploration of epistemology (the study of knowledge) is critical to explaining why we must value empiricism. Epistemology can reveal the failings of some pseudophilosophies and articulate the value of observation and testing.

I realize that my tone, despite my best efforts, is fairly disparaging toward philosophy. That’s not what I’m going for. I consider myself an amateur philosopher and not a scientist, but perhaps it reflects a truly negative feeling that I harbor toward some areas of philosophy. Some philosophical pursuits feel futile and overblown. Perhaps this is due to the many areas of philosophy that I have not explored. But I think that philosophy’s contributions to science and empiricism can be practically limitless, however being somewhat more limited than the boundless expectations some have for the capabilities of philosophy. Maybe more about why we feel that way another time?

While I can’t identify exactly when I became an atheist, I can remember when I started speaking out about it. I remember writing an essay in my African American studies class about the relationship between Christianity and slavery. My instructor, perhaps because she was Muslim, liked it and suggested that class members read it as an example of good writing. I suspect her bias because, looking back, it wasn’t a very good paper. It referenced maybe five or six sources, none of which were scripture. My case was actually pretty weak. For years after writing that paper, I remained unaware that there were any passages in the Bible that endorsed slavery, a fact that is practically part of Atheism 101 now. I look back and wonder how I missed the mark so badly on a term paper that I felt so passionately about writing.

This was a theme for about a decade for me. Transitioning from Christianity to atheism was like a type of existential puberty. I was awkward, clumsy, and naïve. I had no sense of my intellectual identity. For a while I tried looking into other religions, not even clear what I was looking for. I wasn’t sure if I was looking for the truth, something that comforted me, or just something that looked good on me. Much like one’s behavior during puberty, my decisions were based more on tribalism than rationality. While there’s no doubt that I questioned Christianity for years on philosophical grounds, I was much less likely to reject God based on reasoning by Nietzsche than on lyrics by Cornell, Jourgensen, or Graffin.

Like a high school freshman I was insecure. I was worried that I would not fit in with a new group. People in Christian youth groups at least had to pretend to like me, and I was not sure I would get the same reception from another tribe. I was also really afraid of Christian apologetic arguments, so I dismissed them before engaging them with any honesty. Even into my early thirties, I still caught myself being inarticulate about simple religious ideas. I even vividly recall calling a friend stupid for his belief in God.

Like a frustrated kid going through changes he didn’t fully understand, I was angry. It’s not that I didn’t have reason to be angry. I was angry about years of fearing hell, I was angry about praying to God and being convinced that the voice I heard in response was, in fact, his. I was angry about insufficient responses to honest questions. I was angry about sex. Not that anyone had to that point been willing to have sex with me, but I was angry that an unnecessary layer of confusion had been piled on an already nebulous and nerve wracking act, making the nearly unattainable also forbidden. But this anger made me irrational at times and was easily triggered. While some anger was justified, I let it get out of hand for a few years.

Most importantly, though, I remember the excitement. The sensations of growth and freedom that I gained by breaking free from religion were empowering and invigorating. I wanted to tell everybody what I had found. I wanted to convert the world and let them know that the universe and all its wonders had just become a lot more interesting… and a little bit less confusing. I no longer had to bounce all of my decisions off of an imaginary omniscient being or cherry pick sermons to convince myself that God agreed with me. I became accountable to myself and the real people around me, as I should be. My decisions became clearer, the consequences of my mistakes were easier to understand, and the world generally made more sense.

So for the most part the transition was wonderful and I would never wish to trade it away. The anger grew into a controlled passion, the awkwardness became a little more articulate, and knowledge led to a bit more tolerance. None of these were possible without that fumbling five to ten years.

And there are some things I hope I still retain from that time. I feel sort of as if I had it right intellectually from the start. I dismissed religion on some of the simplest philosophical grounds: God seemed absent, people suffered a lot, the universe was big and old and seemed like a strange thing for a God to make, there were practically as many religions as there were people, and there simply wasn’t much good evidence for God. Any advanced counterapologetics  that I’ve learned in the past five years has been for the purpose of responding to arguments that are more complex and convoluted, but not really any better than those I encountered in the 90s. The apologists have just buried their mistakes deeper in their arguments. Sometimes I have to remember to revert back to some of those simple objections to religious claims.

I’m glad that my positions are based more on rationality now, that I’m less dismissive of religious positions, and that I’m even willing and prepared to be proven wrong on this topic so central to my identity. But I hope I can hang on to the best aspects of my transition to atheism. I hope I never lose the excitement, the desire for knowledge, and to some extent, I hope I never forget the reasons for – and motivating power of – my anger. Atheism has made my life better. I can’t say for sure that I’m happier than I would have been as a Christian. I know a lot of extremely happy Christians and bitter atheists, and I know that sometimes the world is dark and cold, and once in a while even lonely. But I believe that I am more fulfilled. I’m fulfilled knowing that I will experience the world for what it is, and that I can grasp the significance of this one crack I have at life and all the pleasures and disappointments that come with it. I find a sense of urgency and deeper meaning when I watch a moving play, visit a beautiful new place, hear a stirring poem, hug my friends, and when I kiss my wife. As far as I know, these things are all I’ll ever have, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.