This is the transcript of my video response to a Christian on the subject of gay marriage.

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Hi, Apologetics. In my two years here, I have not made many video responses to lovely young ladies. Maybe it’s a demographic thing, given my usual subject matter. Maybe it’s because I look strange. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s rather shameful and a bit ironic that I will be responding to you, of all people and on this rare occasion, on the subject of gay marriage. This also sucks from my perspective, because, your ideas notwithstanding, you’re kind of cute. Fortunately, you seem to be a good decade or more behind me on the age curve, so I suppose I can berate you with a clear conscience, though I will make every effort to do so politely. I can’t promise to be nice, but I will be civil.

Before I get into your video, I have just a quick comment about your user name. When I think of apologetics, gay-bashing is not the first thing that comes to mind, usually. Most people who call themselves apologists at least try to be evidential, philosophical and/or scientific, with varying degrees of success. Maybe you’re a self-appointed apologist for the anti-homosexual crowd. That’s entirely possible. I could just be reading something into your user name that isn’t there. It’s just that your arguments are so bad, that I’m actually looking forward to hearing you address something that I actually consider apologetic, like the various arguments for the existence of God, attempts to establish an ontology for God, evolution, cosmology, that sort of thing. You mention “evolution/creation” on your main channel page, so maybe things will get interesting eventually. I’ll check back on occasion, because I think that might be extremely entertaining.

Okay, your video. This shouldn’t take long.

You deal with two main points: design and requirements. For design, you claim that marriage was “designed for a man and a woman.” You never identify who did the designing. You never make an argument as to why it should be this way and this way only. You try to make an analogy with a scenario wherein a girl is allowed into the Boy Scouts because she prefers it over the Girl Scouts, and you claim that this would devalue the Boy Scouts, therefore homosexuals getting married will devalue marriage. That’s silly for a number of reasons.

1. Let’s change the analogy so it more accurately reflects the state of society. Let’s say a girl wants to join the Boy Scouts and is allowed to do so, because there are no Girl Scouts. She has nowhere to go except the Boy Scouts, and all she wants is access to the same activities that her male peers have. I think that changes the landscape significantly.

2. Value is subjective. There is no objective devaluing of marriage that will result from homosexuals getting married. It might devalue marriage in general to you, due your preexisting moral disposition toward homosexual, but I don’t share that preexisting moral disposition. A lot of people don’t. Even if we grant that homosexuals might devalue marriage in some sense, you don’t make any argument as to why that should preclude them from marriage. I suppose you just assume that it should. I can just as easily assume that it should not.

3. As noted by Sarahon06 in his response to you, the girl does not choose to be a girl. You would do well to keep that in mind.

Now for your second point, requirements for marriage. Basically, here you engage in what we call argumentum ad baculum, an appeal to force. You talk about legal requirements, man-made, institutionalized rules that are imposed. You mention driving requirements, loan requirements, and even the requirement that you must divorce a current spouse before marrying again. From this point, you refer back to your previous “design” argument – which you never defended, by the way – and claim that gays do not meet the requirements for marriage, because the requirement you have laid down is your design argument. So this point about requirements fails, because it is based on your previous point, which failed. It amounts to saying something is wrong because some people say it is wrong, and they will fuck up anyone who disagrees.

You then rattle off this list of shit about choices – people choose to get into relationships, people choose to get married, etc., etc. Then you say, regardless of whether people are born a certain way or develop in a certain way due to childhood environment, you don’t care because all of these things are ultimately choices, and attempts to circumvent this status quo amount to asking for “extra rights.”

Being born a certain way or growing up in a certain environment – if we assume either or both are pertinent to homosexuality for argument’s sake, as they very well might be, then no. These things are not choices. So what you’re saying, in effect, is that people should be legally, forcibly denied choice based on factors that they have little to no say in whatsoever. Does that not bother you? At the beginning of the video, you congratulated yourself for being called a right-wing bigot, so maybe it doesn’t.

Your “exit only” argument is ridiculous. Homosexuality is like stopping at the gas station and putting the nozzle in the exhaust pipe. That is so juvenile, and I think it shows your age. Or maybe it’s a sad statement about whomever put these ideas into your head in the first place. Heterosexuals engage in oral and anal sexual activity. You may not want to hear that, but it happens. I’m sorry. Is it your position that heterosexuals – even married heterosexuals – engaging in anything other than standard sexual intercourse are morally wrong?

I would say “God bless” in return, but I don’t believe in any gods, so I’ll settle for, “Have a nice day,” and I hope you do.

Just kidding. I wanted to get your attention, that’s all.

I don’t write about religion much here. When I have in the past, it’s usually been to antagonize Muslims. Outside of LessGov, however, I kick around the subject of religion quite a bit. Maybe I should write about it more. I’m writing about it now, at least, but this won’t take long.

A Yahoo! Answers user named Bobert recently posted the following intellectual gem when asked for proof that God (presumably the Christian God) created the world:

The universe exists. [Therefore] God exists.

It is impossible for something to come into [existence] from absolute nothing with absolutely no cause. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

Therefore there must be a Creator.

Brilliant, eh? No? Well, there’s no fooling you, apparently.

Really, it’s straightfoward nonsense, but this particular specimen is interesting due to the creative invoking of thermodynamics. Bobert starts off all wrong with his little syllogism — “The universe exists. [Therefore] God exists,” – because such a statement has no more meaning than, “The universe exists; therefore Zeus exists.” Sorry, buddy. That’s what we call a non sequitur.

The next line — “It is impossible for something to come into [existence] from absolute nothing with absolutely no cause,” — is no less than an appeal to Primum Movens, or more specifically the lauded cosmological argument. This necessitates remaining vague on identity and exempting the deity from the “first cause” by placing him/her/it outside of space and time, which by all definitions is nonexistence. The deeper implications hinge on metaphysical primacy (existence vs. consciousness), and I may take a notion in the near feature to explain why I think primacy of consciousness is a hopelessly pathetic notion.

Additionally, the “from absolutely nothing” portion demonstrates a staggering ignorance of prevailing scientific theories, as none that I’m aware of posit that anything came into existence from nothing. For that matter, if the theist can posit a god that is exempt from all known laws of nature and can exist without existing, who are they to object to a hypothesis centered on a singularity that might have expanded (ala Big Bang) by way of natural processes we simply have no knowledge of yet? That strikes me as far more plausible than magic.

Then we have Bobert’s … attempt at humor, perhaps? He claims, “That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.” He says “laws,” but I’m not sure from whence he derives that.  Here I will assume that he is likely referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that a non-isolated system not in equilibrium will be subject to entropy over time. Since Bobert did not cite the law(s) in question or explain why they are violated, I am willing to bet he doesn’t even know the first thing about thermodynamics but simply regurgitated something from a Kent Hovind video. Predictably, his claim stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the second law, which is addressed concisely at TalkOrigins on their Index to Creationist Claims:

1. The second law of thermodynamics applies universally, but, as everyone can see, that does not mean that everything everywhere is always breaking down. The second law allows local decreases in entropy offset by increases elsewhere. The second law does not say that order from disorder is impossible; in fact, as anyone can see, order from disorder happens all the time.
2. The maximum entropy of a closed system of fixed volume is constant, but because the universe is expanding, its maximum entropy is ever increasing, giving ever more room for order to form (Stenger 1995, 228).
3. Disorder and entropy are not the same (Styer 2000). The second law of thermodynamics deals with entropy. There are no laws about things tending to “break down.”

So at last we reach Bobert’s awe-inspiring conclusion: “Therefore there must be a Creator.” However, his short path to this finale has been plagued by poor reasoning, crazy leaps of faith and simple bad information. Suffice it to say that he has not convinced me of anything, except that he would serve his cause better by finding a new argument.

I’ve always been confused by the label “militant atheist” or “militant atheism.” It’s a label often applied by the religious, particularly Christians, whenever they perceive any manner of intolerance for their faith-based view of the world. In recent years, there has admittedly been an increase in the aggressiveness of some atheists, partly due to the Internet and the resulting enhanced ability of the godless minority to communicate and organize. But this seems a poor excuse for calling atheists “militant,” since Christians have been highly organized and vocal for most of their history, especially within the evangelical movement in the United States over the last century.

A common charge from some Christians is that certain historical figures were atheists and also happened to be tyrants and mass murderers. Stalin and Mao are oft-cited examples. Since atheism is a “religion” unto itself, as is often claimed, the history of atheism is just as tainted and, indeed, bloodier than the history of Christianity. Of course, atheism, properly understood, is a mere disbelief in deities, not a religion or ideology that intrinsically entails any philosophy, per se. Surely, it isn’t rational to make assumptions about the nature or views of a man who denies or disbelieves in the existence of Zeus. The assertion that a lack of belief in deities is fundamental — or even causal — to a demented philosophy makes about as much sense as asserting that a belief in God is fundamental or causal to the same. Further, it is theists who, despite interpreting their sacred literature in a variety of ways, at least draw from the same source. There are no atheist scriptures to which one might dogmatically adhere or after which he might model his life.

So, similar to passion and organization, the atheism of notable tyrants seems a weak means of linking a lack of belief in gods to the “militant” qualifier.

All that said, perhaps an examination of the term “militant” is in order. Some common definitions from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary are as follows:

1. “…vigorously active and aggressive, esp. in support of a cause.” (Random House Unabridged)

2. “…engaged in warfare; fighting.” (Random House Unabridged)

3. “Fighting or warring.” (American Heritage)

4. “Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause….” (American Heritage)

5. “…wishing to take, or taking, strong or violent action.” (Kernerman English Multilingual)

Definition number one certainly applies to some atheists, though how one determines what is “vigorously active and aggressive” is up in the air, as is defining what constitutes a “cause.” Using this definition, it becomes obvious that almost anyone who ardently pursues anything is militant, yet I wonder why the word is not applied more liberally.

Perhaps the reluctance to throw the term around wantonly has something to do with its negative connotation. I’ve never heard a Christian proudly proclaim his favorite evangelist to be respectably militant, nor is Ghandi widely known as a militant peace activist. Are scientists militant in the pursuit of knowledge? Richard Dawkins writes books and harshly denounces religion. If he is militant, what about Christian apologist Lee Strobel? Creationist Michael Behe? Author C.S. Lewis?

As you can see, “vigorously active and aggressive” isn’t necessarily the whole story, and the other definitions predictably paint a more comprehensive portrait of the word “militant.” Accordingly, it makes very little sense to describe prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, P.Z. Meyers, Sam Harris and others as militant simply because they disagree with a particular world-view. Even if they are militant, this label necessarily includes Christianity’s own heroes, which presents the question of why some theists are so quick to apply it.

So having established that aggressive atheism and atheists who are militant by no means inherently equate to militant atheism, the question is raised: Does militant atheism even exist? Clearly, adherents of various faiths have been persecuted and slaughtered over the centuries, by both adherents to other faiths and those with no religious faith at all. Of course, as explained earlier, atheism entails no ideological or philosophical concepts it and of itself, so it is obvious that those who militantly oppose religion are militant for reasons other than atheism.

The closest thing I can find to “militant atheism” is antitheism, which Wikipedia describes as an “active opposition to theism” that “may be adopted as a label by those who take the view that theism is destructive.” Still, even this label is convoluted, as anyone can see by just browsing through the article. Timeless attempts by theists to equate atheism to religion — using phrases like “atheistic evangelism” and “opposition to God” (which is nonsense, because atheists disbelieve in all gods) — make any objective definition of the concept all but impossible.

In my view, applying a label like “militant atheism” cheapens the term “militant” in a rather disgusting fashion, much the same way in which some socialists cheapen the horrors of chattel slavery by associating it with their flawed idea of so-called “wage slavery.” Only behaviors, not mere ideas, can be militant, and assigning a word that denotes coercion and violence to an idea simply because one disagrees with or does not understand it reeks of arbitrariness, dishonesty and ignorance. At the very least, I would like to see more theists who are willing to accept the militancy of their own if they are going to hurl the “militant” qualifier at active, outspoken atheists. However, given that such assignments are pejorative and consequently meaningless, a much more effective strategy for facilitating rational discussion and the pursuit of truth seems to be reserving the “militant” label for actual militants.

That said, this requires that rational discussion and the pursuit of truth be mutually accepted standards.

The debate surrounding subjective and objective knowledge is age-old and will probably endure to the end of human existence and beyond. In all the years this site has been online, I have never offered any sort of comprehensive summation of my views on this issue, so I would like to attempt to do that briefly here.

As a disclaimer, please keep in mind that this is the perspective of a layman whose only real interest in philosophy is limited to basic logic and concepts rooted in reality, as opposed to mystical musing about whether existence exists and whether it is anything more than a perpetual dream within an immaterial cosmic consciousness. Philosophy is a tool for discovering truth and enhancing my life with relevant, coherent, consistent principles. Any persons who want to send me treatises on the virtues of solipsism or dualism can, therefore, save themselves the trouble.

Let me begin by offering some definitions.

Objectivism – the philosophical position that certain truths are true everywhere, independent of human thoughts, emotions, opinions, etc. Ethical objectivism or moderate moral realism is the position that certain acts are objectively right or wrong, independent of human opinion.

Subjectivism – a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical belief that all ethical sentences reduce to factual statements about the attitudes of individuals.

Truth – conformity with fact or reality; a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like.

Generally, I will be referring to objectivism and subjectivism in the context of ethical considerations, but there might be broader implications if the reader chooses to apply them.

Truth in and of itself is a fairly straightforward idea, but there is a depth to the analysis one might engage in that is beyond the scope of this article and possibly beyond my ability to care. As such, I’m content with the above definition and will elaborate only in stating that truth may be categorized as self-evident, empirical or deductive.

“I exist” is an example of a self-evident truth, because someone making the statement must exist in order to do so. Likewise, “I do not exist” is self-refuting, because someone making the statement must exist in order to claim that he doesn’t exist. An empirical truth is one than can be observed and tested. This encompasses science and general everyday observations about the universe. Deductive truth is usually found through logic, wherein a series of premises lead to a conclusion. Faulty premises can and often do result in faulty conclusions.

So there’s that, but is any of this truth objective or — *gasp* — absolute?

In short, it is irrelevant. If the human senses are so unreliable, and human logic so imprecise, that the identification of objective truth and accessibility of objective reality remain inexorably out of our grasp; and even if we are to ignore the performative contradiction of asserting that nothing is absolutely true — then the only conclusion one can draw from this is that humans are limited and that there might be aspects of existence that are beyond our ability to detect. As such, if we cannot detect something, which means neither the thing itself nor its effects are testable or observable at all, then that thing — the higher, unknowable truth — is functionally nonexistent to humans and irrelevant. Even if what we can test and observe does not produce any manner of objective or absolute truth, it is pointless to argue in favor of proceeding otherwise on the grounds that truth is unknowable or inaccessible.

Maybe this position can be dubbed “irrelevantism.” I don’t know if there is an existing term or phrase that suffices.

In terms of ethics, then, it becomes apparent that quibbles over objectivity and subjectivity are quite meaningless. The simple solution is to subject ethical propositions to the same rigor one might reserve for any other claim, namely logic and empirical testing. If ethical claims evaluated in this manner are not objective, then neither is any science or discipline ever conceived by mankind, and such status is impossible to attain. It becomes moot to consider anything beyond whether a particular claim is consistent with known reality.

So it is for this reason that I am sympathetic toward objectivism but ultimately convinced by neither objectivism nor subjectivism. Objectivists (including the big-O Randian variants) defeat their own cause by claiming objectivity through reason but reaching so many opposing conclusions that they might as well just call themselves relativists. The Randian philosophy isn’t even internally consistent (which is a whole other article). In the subjectivist camp, as alluded to previously, it is impossible to even make claims without contradicting the core premise of subjectivism. Some might call this consistency, but I call it garbled nonsense.

My solution to this mess is to consider any ethical proposition that checks out under logical and empirical scrutiny to be valid, until which time the available data points to something else. So goes science. Murray Rothbard’s proposals are mostly good in this regard (though he frequently referred to rights and such, and while I think certain right-ish principles derive from reality, I’ve yet to see a coherent defense of rights as they are usually posed). Robert Nozick’s philosophical ideas always struck me as intriguing, though, like the Randian Objectivists, some of his conclusions fall short of his purported principles. David D. Friedman is uber-practical, and his book The Machinery of Freedom is partly responsible for my acceptance of anarchism, but libertarian consequentialism is an ethical black hole that can “logically” justify almost anything.

In the older school, Lysander Spooner remains perhaps one of the best proponents of natural law — arguably my favorite — and his No Treason papers have yet to be successfully challenged to my knowledge. However, he too was regrettably mired in the concept of rights without any real explanation of whether such things even exist external to cultural conventions. Other philosophers — Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jefferson, Stirner, Proudhon, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Kant — all made their venerable contributions to human thought as well as their respective fair shares of absurdity.

Not long ago, I reviewed a book by Stefan Molyneux titled Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics. While I did not (and still do not) feel qualified to judge whether the ethical “beast” (to borrow Molyneux’s metaphor) has been conquered, I can speak for myself in saying that UPB succeeds where other systems have failed. The reason it succeeds is that it is not a system, per se, that attempts to tell a person what he should or should not do. Rather, it is a framework for evaluating the truth value of ethical statements. For example, “Murder is moral” self-detonates because it requires one person to be moral by murdering and another to be immoral by not murdering. This is, of course, incredibly simplistic, so rather than risk misrepresenting the book, I must recommend reading it for oneself, as it and several others are freely available in digital format at Freedomainradio.com. To date, UPB is the most logical and comprehensible approach to ethics that I’ve encountered. That by no means makes it objective or even true, but like any other proposal subject to rational analysis, it either stands or does not.

Critiques of UPB have been posted at RationalAnimal.net (Part 1 and Part 2) and Back to the Drawing Board, and I encourage anyone who has read the book to take a look at these two sites.

All of the above in consideration, my conclusion for the time being is that there is no reason to proceed as though ethics cannot be regarded as “objective” (or quasi-objective, as it were), at least to the reason-centric extent apprehensible by humans. We know that murder and theft are mostly undesirable, with only certain segments of the population embracing them as viable foundations for an ideal society (the ruling class, typically, along with those who benefit from the violence of the ruling class). As David Friedman observed, “The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”

It strikes me as truly pointless to engage in prolonged debates over whether murder, theft and a general disregard for self-sovereignty constitute moral virtues, evils or neither. Humanity has spent thousands of years on the path of slavery and slaughter. Governments and their armies haven’t solved these problems. Even when they try to, the end result often either involves a mere changing of the guard or is even worse than the original situation. To call the track record of religion in terms of peace and prosperity abysmal is a grand understatement. The collusion of humanity’s two main authoritative institutions is perhaps the most dreaded scenario of all for those of us who value progress and liberty.

So even if one considers objective human ethics to be dubious, unknowable or outright impossible, that is a poor excuse for approaching life as though nothing can be good, bad, right or wrong. If objectivity is beyond our reach as humans, then we can depend only on the science and logic that have given us modern medicine, computers and spaceflight. If objectivity is out there but remains undiscovered, that is likewise a poor excuse for dismissing ethics, as doing so amounts to little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. If objectivity exists and can be demonstrated, then I eagerly long to discover the proof of this.

The American Right is in total disarray. Proponents of “conservatism” currently find themselves mindlessly repeating familiar old drivel while faced with the unrelenting reality of their failed (and increasingly incoherent) philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the ever-growing digital landscape of blogs, news sites and discussion boards.

Recently, a Yahoo! Answers user named “Nikki S” posted the following question:

Are today’s conservatives the same type of people the Founding Fathers fought to overthrow?

Some of the responses so far have been . . . telling.

bugeyes forever
No. Are you the same type of lib who owned slaves.

Zippy980
Just the opposite my friend. Liberals want to raise your taxes and put the Goverment in control of more aspects of your life. This is what the Revolution was fighting against.

joshsybs
Oh come on!
Are you forced to follow a religion of state and governed by your religious performance?
Read some history books.

joe b
Look into the tangible way these men conducted their lives post Constitution and one can easily see that they were Christian for the most part and used Christian language and prayer within the law making bodies of this country. They used public funds for religious purposes in varying ways. The left wing cannot hide this although they chose to ignore it.

Revisionist Historian
You mean the libs?
Haters of morality
Pseudo-Intellectuals
Slaves to sex, money, and racism
Lovers of Islam

southernmale42
The liberals would be. Our Founding Fathers were very RIGHT WINGED.
Besides, you can’t compare then and now, different time, different people, different circumstances.

shutupdummy
todays liberals are, they have no faith in our might as a nation, even the self proclaimed liberal gods like kerry and rockerfeller want nothing more than to damage our military by their actions and words……

The sampling above covers most of the common conservative responses when they are faced with the inevitable contradiction between their purported beliefs and how those beliefs manifest in practice. “Bugeyes forever” and “Revisionist Historian” expertly demonstrate the belligerence that is as popular as it is inevitable. “Zippy980” is in denial, clearly rejecting the obvious fact that the last 7+ years have seen a conservative administration inserting itself into citizens lives in ways never before witnessed on American soil. “Joshsybs” believes that our current lack of witch-burnings and an official state religion somehow justifies the faith-based orgy that is the U.S. Government.

“Joe b” cites the religious beliefs of long-dead men as a valid excuse for funding religion at the point of a gun today. “Southernmale42” proudly shows the world his sheer ignorance, since the Founding Fathers were extremely liberal in their time; so while one should not conflate classical liberalism with the socialistic statism that passes for it today, it’s quite a stretch to assert that Jefferson and company were “right-winged.”

Lastly, “shutupdummy” makes the disturbingly prevalent conservative error of labeling state-worship a virtue — which means he should actually love these liberals, but I suppose his sect worships only the state’s war machine, while those evil left-wing heretics have the audacity to pay homage to other gods, like welfare. Yeah, didn’t you know? Robbing the people to pay for A is so fundamentally different from robbing the people to pay for B….

This insanity is not limited to Yahoo!, of course. Rush Limbaugh, who has given perpetual head to George W. Bush since before the 2000 election, recently went ape-shit on atheism. He’s apparently jumping on Ben Stein’s Expelled bandwagon, which has fundies everywhere frothing at the mouth. Resultantly, Rush sees the same godless conspiracy in academia that Pat Robertson has been telling us about for years (and Ben Stein is now repeating). Guess what, Rush? Intelligent design isn’t science! Claiming that creationists are victims of unjust discrimination within the scientific community is tantamount to making the same claim about flat-earth proponents.

The coming election should prove interesting. Limbaugh and his ditto-heads have long derided the “liberalism” of crazy John McCain. Now that McCain looks to be the guy for the Republicrat Party, hilarity very well might ensue.

In related news, the current issue of WorldNetDaily’s Whistleblower magazine features an exposé titled “The Secret Life of Barack Obama.” This piece purportedly, “reveals [Obama] to be one of the most dangerous men ever to be considered for the presidency of the United States of America.” Granted, WND routinely lambastes left-wing politicians, but what strikes me as odd is that there is very little praise for John McCain to be found amidst all the criticism of Democrats. I think this speaks volumes about the conundrum 2008 has presented to the right wing, particularly religious fundamentalists.

The rhetoric is there as it always has been, but the results — bloated government, oppression and perpetual war — speak for themselves. For all their delusions and fakery, America’s confused conservatives might see a raving state socialist in the White House come 2009. I for one think they deserve it. It is regrettable, however, that these rulers who quibble over who holds the gun in a given four-year span flatly refuse to restrict their violence to their own. If that were the case, I could perhaps keep track of political silliness without having my amusement clouded by a dark foreboding.