Gay Marriage and Subjectivity

Short Version:
How would you feel about gay marriage if you learned it wasn't (whatever reason you have for being opposed to it)?


How bigots view the laws of Nature
subtitle: I wonder how they don't find it at all strange that the Universe has the same biases as them

( lolgod.blogspot.com )


Long Version:
Why are you against gay marriage? Is it because it is sinful, against the will of god or unnatural? What if you learned, irrefutably, that none of these were true. Let's not be distracted by the implausibility. We've all come to some point(s) where we realized something(s) we had believed was incorrect. Otherwise we would still believe the things we believed as children. I don't know what it would take to convince you. Certainly nothing I say or write will do the trick. But let's assume, purely to consider another question, that there was a way to convince you. Let's also assume, purely hypothetically, that somehow you've crossed that threshold.

Somehow... something... caused you to realize that the basis for your opposition to gay marriage was misinterpreted, misrepresented, faulty, wrong or completely absent. Whatever that reason was, your previous basis for opposition is now completely neutral. It's not that gay marriage is necessarily good. It's just that (again, hypothetically) you no longer have an instruction, evidence, example or reason to to be against it. Whatever reason you had, let's pretend that it is now completely indifferent to gay marriage.

How then would you feel, and I emphasize "feel," about homosexuals getting married? Remember, in this hypothetical it's not a sin. God doesn't care. It's not unnatural. Whatever objection you had, is now irrelevant. The question here is how would you personally feel about it. If your church, your holy text, your political party, your social club and everybody & everything in the world suddenly became OK with gay marriage would you still have a subjective desire to prevent homosexuals from getting married? What is it you would be feeling?

Would you be indifferent to two men talking about when one of them popped the question? Would you feel indignant if a lesbian shared her nervousness about the marriage bed? If gays got to visit their spouse in the hospital, claim "married" on their taxes, adopt as a married couple, come to you for advise on their anniversary party, be the default "by law" beneficiary, be eligible for alimony/palimony and brag about how great married life is... would that be OK with you? Or would you still find it objectionable based purely on how you feel about it? Would the way you feel about gay marriage change if cultural and religious objection vanished? Or do you think you would feel the same way?

Conclusion:
The point of this hypothetical line of inquiry is to suggest that perhaps many people hold up their ideologies as a justification of their personal objections. As it relates to gay marriage, if gay marriage would still feel somehow offensive in the absence of source-able external objections then we should consider what that might mean.

Maybe it means your ideology is justified by your feelings because your gut or intuition is reliable. Maybe it means god has written this on your heart. But if we go that route we would have to answer some tough questions. Regarding the people who were against abolition, women's suffrage, racial integration, civil rights... What is it about your gut, your intuition or what's written on your heart that is superior to their collective gut, their intuition and that which was written on their hearts? And not just you, why are the opinions of everyone who agrees with you more reliable than the opinions of those who were for slavery, against suffrage, etc.? For many things, "how you feel about it" is a perfectly legitimate factor in informing your opinion. But when it comes to limiting or liberating other people's civil participation, "how you feel about it" means very little. Just as it did for those who felt women should not be allowed to vote.

Maybe instead of your ideology being justified by your feelings you've attached yourself to an ideology that justifies your feelings... an ideology you're comfortable with. Would you cling to a belief system if it caused you emotional discomfort? Regarding belief systems, you are where you are for a reason.

For most of us, perhaps all of us, there is a vicious circle of our feelings informing our beliefs and our beliefs further (perhaps irrationally) justifying our feelings. If we can accept that this is true of many other people then perhaps we should consider that it's probably true personally as well. It isn't as simple as you having jumped on the band wagon because they were playing your tune. This is a life-long process. If your sources of information are limited then your perspective will likely be limited as well. Every belief has a cost/benefit motivator, not unlike Pascal's wager. And thinking objectively and critically is hard and can be counter-intuitive. But objectivity and critical thinking are the best tools for breaking the feelings>beliefs vicious circle.

Returning to the point, if gay marriage would still feel somehow offensive in the absence of source-able external objections then what does that say about your objection? I'm not asking you to defend your objections. I am asking you to try to better understand it. Where does that feeling come from? Do the feelings justify the beliefs or do the beliefs justify the feelings? Or would you benefit from taking a step back and considering just how much your feelings and beliefs are dependent on each other. That interdependence is fine if you just wanna live your life. But if you feel the need to speak on matters of public policy and to restrict the civil participation of other people, maybe your feelings and personal beliefs aren't enough. If I wanted to limit or change your civil liberties based on my feelings and personal beliefs, how seriously should you have to take me?

We have a responsibility to each other as members of a society, and especially as members of a democracy. We know that we have had, will have and do have the capacity to be wrong. We have been, will be and are probably right now wrong about something. For this we can forgive ourselves and each other. But if we ignore that capacity and allow our feelings and personal beliefs to be the the only sources informing our discussions and decisions on matters that effect other people, then we have ignored our responsibility.

It is my hope that people will consider the correlation between what they believe and what they feel. It is my hope that people will recognize the fallibility of basing beliefs on feelings. It is my hope that people will try to understand how to distinguish between facts, informed opinion, ideologically-driven opinion and pure speculation. It is my hope that people will try to understand how to recognize what makes information reliable. It is my hope that people will care enough to want to.

Unless these hopes are realized soon we will be remembered as the generation that got it wrong on gay rights.


In a democracy surely an uninformed or misinformed opinion has greater weight than an informed opinion. For which will do the greater harm?

People: our best hope

Let me share this comment in case it gets deleted:

Joplin is full of relgious groups, you know, all those people with false hope whom you say aren't looking, do everything they can to help.

I have seen no atheist organizations making a concerted effort to help.

Where are those atheist activists like who went down to Joplin last year organizing meetups?

Where are the American Atheists and FFRF?

On their blogs.

Taking swipes as Christians.

Atheist spells Eatshit as far as I am concerned anymore.

Where is Doctors Without Borders? Where is the American Civil Liberties Union? Where is the Heritage Foundation? Where is the United Nations? Midwest relief from natural disasters does not fall within the purview of any of these organizations. Likewise, American Atheists nor Freedom From Religion Foundation.

RichardDawkins.net, in partnership with many non-belief organizations, has set up a donation link for Joplin relief, just as they did for Haiti relief:
http://givingaid.richarddawkins.net/

And of course Westboro Baptist Church is also doing their part.

There are a lot of good people doing good work in Joplin. Some of them might even tell you they are doing so because Jesus wants them to. But even if you could convince these people there is no divinity, they would not abandon their efforts. So too there are many non-religious christians and non-christians that are helping their neighbors. Tightly knit pre-organized church communities are going to make the most of their bonds. The rest of us sift into where we are needed. If anyone bothers to claim they are helping in order to glorify atheism, hopefully those tempted to claim they are glorifying their religious icons will recognize how silly that is.

"...all those people with false hope whom you say aren't looking, do everything they can to help."

While I was speaking more generally, this complaint exemplifies my point. They are doing. There will be those who do nothing more than pray. That's a great way to feel like you're doing something without really doing anything at all. And their prayers will be answered not by angels but by humans. For in other humans, there is real hope. The potential for help, progress and salvation are tangible in social groups, civilization or more specifically: people.

When the buildings once again stand, the foliage fills and the biggest concern is who will make the playoffs too many people will give a perceived deity all of the credit and none of the blame. Maybe we could run an experiment and see how much gets done without any human intervention. Is there any real hope that a supernatural being will replace or repair all those buildings and all that infrastructure? Or maybe we could bet on a sure thing: people. Real hope.

False Hope

I would say that false hope is better than no hope except people who find false hope tend to stop looking for real hope.

The Great Joplin tornado of 2011

(It's somewhat ironic that my last Note was "This Day.")

I haven't seen any of the damage first hand. But from what I'm piecing together... imagine (for my Santa Clarita friends) a force of nature starting at Newhall Ave on Lyons and and demolishing everything from there to I-5. I'm told this may have been a mile wide. From pictures, it leveled everything, cutting a path at least six blocks wide. Does "everything" include sturdy brick buildings? Yes it does. The path the tornado took in Joplin was about 70-80% residential.

I always thought it was a supremely bad idea that both hospitals were tucked in the same corner of town, about half a mile apart. One of those hospitals, St. John's, was hit. I'm told it was "destroyed." From pictures it *looks* like the structure is intact but everything else will need extensive repairs or replacement. A casino/hotel about 5-7 miles away is being used as a hospital.



caption: Water gushes from a broken pipe in a building along Rangeline Road.
credit: Globe/Roger Nomer

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=DO&Date=20110522&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=105220802&Ref=PH&odyssey=mod|mostpopphotos

http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x433426155/Widespread-damage-reported-after-tornado


I took a circuitous route home, around the north side of town, to avoid the problem areas. My folks were without power the last time I had spoken to them. They report they lost some siding off the house. Mom described the storm to me as being on the other side of the railroad tracks. The tracks are about 100-150 yards from their house. There's a ridge about 300 yards beyond the tracks so "the other side of the tracks" is less than 400 yards away. Mara, Rose and Wolfgang were with them when all this happened, hunkered down in the laundry room. That is some scary shit. I had just dropped them off not an hour earlier. I had remarked to the kids during the drive that the clouds looked angry. I had no idea.

At work I was so busy with IT outages that I was mostly shielded from the news, certainly from details. Phone and cell service was spotty over the area. And everybody that had a phone was trying to use it. Luckily I was able to verify and occasionally re-verify that everyone was OK. But it was fairly frantic trying to juggle responsibilities and confirm that my nearest and dearest were out of danger and not taken from me.

As I neared home the clouds to the south were ablaze with lightning. There was barely time for them to grow dark between arcs. Power was out in patches. The light pollution from the city was noticeably dimmer. Traffic lights were out. The path of destruction ended a between one and three miles from our house. The direct suffering this tornado has brought me amounts to inconvenience. We're almost out of laundry detergent. I would go to the nearest Wal-mart super center but there is probably still debris in the road and, oh yeah... that Wal-mart won't be open for a long time. We suffered some anxiety and fear. Sharin had to navigate an obstacle course to pick the kids up and get them home, suffering a flat along the way. Road debris? Can we count that as tornado related property damage? By the time this is over the death toll will probably be in the hundreds. 1000 plus would not surprise me. But me and mine have escaped unscathed.

I am thankful. I got lucky. We (my family) got lucky. But if anyone wants to give the credit for that luck to anything or anyone STOP. Tell it to the people who lost their place of employment. Tell it to the hundreds of people who lost their homes. Tell it to the people who were injured. Tell it to the people who did lose loved ones. Tell it to the dead. Tell them why my family was lucky but they were not. Only tell me if you want me to jump down your throat. I know my family was lucky. I actually wish I had someone or something to thank. I'm not ungrateful. But if there were a something or a someone to thank then I would surely also have to damn them/it for the horrifying devastation visited upon the people of my city.

Which reminds me: Mara won't be going to pre-school in the morning because the church facility where she attends was at least partially damaged. A lot of nice people with good hearts work and attend there. I kind of like the place except for all the displays of archaic torture/murder devices. I don't know how bad the damage was to the buildings. Hopefully not too bad. But it's only about half a mile from St. John's hospital and directly between my folks house and St. John's. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Human interest story: At a fast food restaurant, Wendy's I think, people took cover in a bathroom as the tornado hit. The building was leveled. The survivors had dig themselves out of the ruble. The good new: they all survived. I'm hoping that story is true and stays true. Damn, now I'm hungry.

So far this whole thing hasn't really sunk in emotionally for me. I keep catching myself on the verge of make glib comments, gallows humor. If this had happened the first year I moved out here I'd be on the road back to earthquake/brush-fire/mudslide country. But I've been here so long, it feels like tornadoes aren't real or they only happen to other people. I am completely serious (and completely selfish) when I say I hope it stays that way.

This Day

Every day is special. It is easy to forget as we busy ourselves with the seemingly meaningless day-to-day details. We think of birthdays as special. And anniversaries. We perceive a day as special only if has some historical significance. We are told to remember the sabbath and keep it holy. The other six days it would seem may be forgotten and desecrated. We celebrate secular and religious holidays and bemoan the days between. It is what is expected of us. But every day is a treasure. Every day is fraught with challenges and opportunities. Every day is a gift from god or good fortune. Through suffering and joy we have ourselves, each other and we have this day.

God's Parasites

Assuming for a moment that evolution, or macro-evolution, is not responsible for the diversity of life then explain where these little devils came from.



You probably recognize the tick, flea and mosquito. The parasitic wasp of the Ichneumonidae family may be less familiar. Malaria might be hard to recognize. As for the cymothoa exigua, do not research this creature on a full stomach.

I could have added snakes and spiders with necrotic venom, lampreys, anthrax, chiggers (OMG the chiggers!), tapeworms... the list goes on. For that matter, why would a god make a world for humans and include ANY plants that are toxic or even irritating to humans? "Mysterious ways" or fallacious mythology? Would you call this "un-intelligent design" or "malicious design?" Does anyone want to blame this on scrumping? If we owe this world to a creator, it was either cruel, indifferent or incompetent.

Morality Is Not Objective

Morality, the intrinsic sense of right and wrong, is not objective. If there were a single fount of morality then surely we would be able to trace it back to the head. Our connection to that fountainhead would necessarily correlate to our morality. That's not what we see in churches. That's not what we see in mixed (secular and non-secular) society. And that's not what we see in cultures largely untouched by Abrahamic faiths. Morality is the adhesive between social creatures in the struggle for finite resources. Sometimes we cooperate. Sometimes we compete. Usually we do both.

It is a balancing act between perceived self interest, varying degrees of loyalty to various group with which we self-identify (in-groups) and perceived out-groups. In any given situation we have to consider what is best for our self, what is best for our group(s) (family, employer, political party, nation, denomination, neighborhood, etc.) and what forces or entities encroach on our self- or group-interest. This is the way of all social creatures.

But this is a motivator that works primarily at an emotional level. And like most emotions, reasoning beings can intellectually overrule their feelings. Well, theoretically. When resources become more available at the self level we tend to be more charitable to the group. When resources become more available at the group level we tend to expect to benefit personally. When we and our group are doing well we tend to be less hostile to minor encroachment. So too do we reduce our hostility to out-groups when we recognize they are merely a more remote extension of our in-groups.

In addition to the emotional responsibility we feel toward our groups we can also understand and appreciate the benefits of an official civil structure based on codified ethics, rules and laws. While these go hand-in-hand with morality and tend to serve similar functions they are artificial constructions, both extragenic and extrinsic.

If we want to credit a capricious ghost in the sky for our morality (intrinsic selfless social responsibility) but not our selfishness we still have to speculate where that selfishness came from. Assuming we were created, and the god did not put selfishness in us, where did that extra ingredient come from? Were there more fingers in the pie than were reported in the Judeo-Christian creation myths? God and divine creation are very poor explanations for the visceral gymnastics we experience when our various interests are in conflict.

Apologists argue that without an objective source there can be no morality, or perhaps that it is meaningless or that there can be no true justice. But morality is not something that comes to us, it is something that comes from us. It is a balance of interests which are ultimately self-interest. It may seem counter-intuitive to credit self-interest for the creation of morality and selflessness. It may seem vulgar to think that our finest examples of humanity are merely extensions of our basest drives. Though the idea may be hard to stomach, it is staring back at us with pedantic patience. Morality is an intrinsic emotional balancing of often conflicting personal interests in a social environment. While Creation skips over the creation of selfishness, evolution explains both selfishness and selflessness, lo, they are the same.

If everything we could ever need or desire were infinitely available, there would be no competition for resources. Nor would there be an evolutionary selection force for cooperation, other than reproduction. But even reproduction is a need/desire.

When I first recognized that I was no longer a theist I came to the conclusion that morality is a lie and that we need rely only on ethics. Some years later I realized that ethics is a construct that we build. Ethics are cultural and intellectual. And yet even children have an innate sense of justice when objectively observing social exchanges. While they may not be able to articulate why something is fair or unfair, but they are good at identifying injustice when they are a disinterested third party. When they are not disinterested, they tend to make excuses favoring their self or their friend/family.

My first guess is that we are using the term "morality" to represent two different but similar and overlapping ideas. Traditionally, morality is an system of conduct based on ideas of absolute right and wrong. Additionally, such a code of morality is or was typically ascribed as divine edict. That which is permissible by that doctrine is moral. That which is forbidden by that doctrine is immoral. There is also the common belief that morality is ingrained in us by supernatural authority as a sense of right an wrong.

In the absence of divine authority "ethical" and "unethical" should carry the same weight as "moral" and "immoral". Yet they do not. Why is that? What is the difference between ethics and morality? If "morality" deserves more weight than "ethics" we should be able to say why.

When we speak of morality we tend to suppose that good and bad, right and wrong are absolute (or nearly so) and must be recognized. We seem to be appealing to an inescapable source of discernment. When we speak of ethics we are never referring to an innate sense of right and wrong, rather mutually accepted rules for civility or specific activities. Ethics tend to be based on common values. These values are not arbitrary or prescribed. These values are the description of what most people feel intrinsically about what is good or bad, right or wrong. It is not a matter of what is believed, understood or reasoned. It is a matter of what is felt. Is there a word for this raw, unreasoned, pre-intellectual, intuitive, subjective sense of what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust?

What is that word?

I use the label "morality" for that unreasoned sense which is within us as the foundation of social responsibility. If we had another word for it I would use it happily. It is unfortunate that we do not. The traditional definition of morality as a moral code of conduct leaves the subject wide open to the theist's favorite tool of misinformation: the equivocation.

Where I describe morality as "an intrinsic emotional balancing" I refer to that innate feeling of right and wrong that triggers our conscious intellectual consideration of what is right and wrong. In this sense morality is not our end judgment, not our conclusion of what is right and wrong, but rather our initial motivation (in any given situation) for considering what is best.

Before we devote any objective reasoning to a "moral" or ethical question, it is likely that the more subjective regions of the brain have already assigned values to the variables.