On offensive analogies

I make a lot of analogies when talking to people lately. Some of them don't work as well as I would hope, and others work fine. Because this particular subject keeps coming up in some form over the last few years, I'm going to make one as a thought experiment which might be offensive. You have been warned. It's also not originally mine.

Something which occurs often in atheist and secular circles is the question of how to deal with often zealously religious people, and some not so zealous. I find I probably have fewer problems than most other atheists. Mainly because I wasn't brought up with some strange beliefs and did not lose many friends or associates as a result of abandoning them either. I was raised on cultural things like Star Trek and its humanism and the writings and philosophies from Aristotle, Mill, and Adam Smith, and later the Stoics. Maybe those are strange to others, but they're fairly normal within American and Western culture. I was also brought up around a rather more tolerant friend group, and family members that did not tend to push religious beliefs. There were occasional arguments over evolutionary theory or points of ethics, but it wasn't by and large causing major social rifts. The fact that I didn't and don't like most people did that, or vice versa.

What I intend to do is explain how it is I try to get along with religious people, and why it is that breaks down sometimes. There's a famous formulation of analogy for belief in god to wonder whether there is a tiny teapot floating between Earth and Mars. While there are some logical philosophical problems with it, it should suffice to examine this question for my purposes.

The primary disagreement atheists and theists have is whether or not there is a teapot there in the first place (and indeed this is the primary logical problem with the argument is that this materialist framing bogs it down in the face of faith-based reasoning in teapots). This is a rather trivial disagreement in my view. I do not care if people want to believe in very silly things to extract comfort and meaning from life or on how to practice and put forward their ethical values. Only whether or not these are sensible ethical values or lead to contented and fulfilling lives for as many people as possible seems a pertinent question to me. The metaphysics of teapots isn't a very interesting debate for me. Ethics are.

The relevant disagreement atheists and theists that I see as having is to suppose that this difficult to find teapot has also been broadcasting instructions and teachings on the ethics and meaning of existence to human beings for centuries, and that human beings should act accordingly and follow this as a doctrine or dogma about what appropriate human behaviors and social arrangements are.

This poses (at least) four separate scenarios for how human beings will act. (Note that none of this requires that the teapot actually exist, merely that some people believe this is an origin point and act upon that).

-1- That the teapot sends beneficent messages about compassion, kindness, generosity, charity, hope, tolerance, or love, and people who follow its teachings mostly try to follow these examples and virtues in their actions. In so far as being kind or compassionate is difficult to do sometimes, they won't do it perfectly, more something to aspire toward as a set of values and virtues.

-2- That the teapot sends beneficent messages about compassion, kindness, etc, etc, and teapot followers do not mostly try to follow these teachings, but instead expend a lot of energy about which version of the teapot's teachings they should listen to, or whether or not other people believe in the teapot in the first place. Or if they do believe in the teapot if they do not follow it perfectly or in the way they believe is perfect. Rather than whether or not other people tend to ascribe to some significant elements of those teachings in their own independent behaviors and judgments of ethics and decency and tend and intend to behave as such.

-3- That the teapot sends mixed messages, with some benevolent and some intolerant or cruel, and people have to decide for themselves which are beneficial and wise and which are not, or determine when they apply and when, or if, they do not from context and structure of words and accompanying doctrines. Sometimes people will succeed at this challenging task, and sometimes they will fail.

-4- That the teapot sends cruel or intolerant messages and people decide (or not) to follow these, and act accordingly. (Trump and some of his more rabid religious Christian followers, ISIS types, etc). This is one possible solution to the theodicy problem, to suggest that the teapot has a message, or at least some parts of messages, that would be favored by some sick fucks in the first place and at least some people are acting in accordance with that.

In the first and perhaps third versions, if the net result of people's belief in teapots net results in acts of mercy, kindness, charity, and love and compassion for other people (and sometimes even other living things), I see little reason to complain about this. I can think it's silly, but they're unlikely to bother me much about it or be bothered that I think it is silly in the societies that result. In general, many religious people I have encountered try to work within that framework, trying to be decent human beings toward one another, and not all that bothered that I am not of their religious tribe if I likewise act with decency or kindness and respect toward them. I might have some significant quibbles with what things are found to be ethically questionable at times by their teapot related messages, or what things are deemed intolerant or cruel by teapot followers. But these are not generally because they believe in wise and virtuous space teapots or not in the first place. More because ethics are really hard as a subject for people to reason through, and they mostly do not bother to try (teapots or not). And because these are not always simple and non-contradictory commands that are being followed. Interpretation is involved, and wisdom or folly will proceed from there.

People will learn, hopefully, from their errors, and the correcting instruction of others, how to behave sensibly and appropriately, and generally this could result in a more just and fair society. I see little basis for judgment or derision of the silly beliefs in teapots somehow being reliant in forming these habits of justice in others, so long as they are aspiring to form these habits and mostly successful at doing so. Many religious people I encounter act more in this world according to the wishes or teachings of a benevolent teapot and ignoring other considerations or scenarios. This does not make them always good people, but it can make them more sensitive to arguments about compassion even for people who might violate some of the more strange ethical commands made by the benevolent teapot. And the net result is a society that could kind of slide by those more strange and perhaps harmful conceptions of goodness in favor of the more beneficial ones.

Not all people however hew to this arrangement. It is the second and fourth versions I find really challenging to deal with, and also perplexing as common in public perceptions of teapot followers and common behaviors by some. And indeed, perhaps increasing in the commonness of public perceptions that these are the more likely ways for teapot followers to behave.

The second option devolves into a lot of arguing over theology and doctrine and ingroup-outgroup tribalism dynamics. It is responsible for a lot of bloody wars and genocides over the last several centuries. This is hardly an ideal way to follow this teapot with its supposedly benevolent messaging. It remains active as an artifact of skepticism of the Christian bonafides of Catholics by other Christians for example, and generally leads to a wide array of religious people fighting with each other. As an atheist, this scenario has the most impact upon the quality of arguments and salience of religious orders, simply because it acts to weaken them and cause disarray and distrust of them internally within religious organisations that are no longer as unified by their common belief in the great teapot. If it were thus limited to that arena of humanity, people willing to fight and die over such disagreements, this would be deeply disturbing but not something I would actively work to stop either. This group of people will expend a lot of time harming people that don't really care that much about these arguments, and mostly just wanted to follow the general messages of good teapots everywhere (or those who don't care about teapots in the first place and want some coffee or beer instead, say). Either by making such people look bad by acting like fools and defaming the good name and example of decent people, or by acting with intolerant cruelty and hypocrisy toward people of the "other" groups.

It nevertheless makes dealing with such people incredibly frustrating. The quality of theological debate is typically poor and poorly informed, the quality of philosophy poor, and the embrace of any positive social messages and changes they might otherwise have used as poorly convincing but at least beneficial evidence of their beliefs gets bogged down in these tedious spaces. Society does not progress toward a more beneficent set of arrangements for its people and risks or inflames many pointless conflicts along the way.

The fourth scenario has its obvious drawbacks. The first being that convincing people that their teapot is in fact a vile asshole is really hard. Trump, as a practical example, is really, really popular among very religious (white Christian) Americans, particularly with a lower standard of education, and not so popular at all with anyone else. Or at least many people who claim to those beliefs. This suggests these are people don't see his actions and behavior as a problem, and further suggesting their beliefs and teapot based communities are more about intolerance and cruelty he displays toward unfavored others in the first place than about any beneficial messages from their teapot.

The second and most pertinent problem is that it would lead to a lot of unethical and inappropriate behavior harming other human beings. Cruelty and suffering being things that should be avoided where possible to foster a peaceful and prosperous world for people, following such a teapot's messages or the people who think they would prosper by them, is something that should be avoided. Getting people to stop doing so is going to be really hard, and probably not usually worth the effort. But that still leaves cleaning up the messes they're making on the way, which is not absolved by ignoring vile and unpleasant people either.

Paris

This happened several days ago. Any delay in composing my thoughts has a number of personal reasons (I had a lot going on), but it also has a lot to do with the general reactions I was observing. Indeed, it is those I wish to comment upon rather than upon the attacks and attackers and their victims themselves. I have a number of loosely connected thoughts, so bear with me if you wish.

Lots of people changed their social status via an app to show concern with a French flag overlaid on their profile. Or associated changes to lighting in various venues around the world. I respect this outpouring of sympathy as an avenue to feel like one has done something. It is well that some people are concerned about the well-being of complete strangers in other places they may never have been. I myself messaged a few of my friends when I first heard of these terrible incidents. I count about 10% of my social circle that has done this change. Most likely they have done other things as well, and some equal number have commented eloquently themselves with calls for help or for local attentiveness if help abroad seems too complicated and impossible.

But as usual with changes in colours on my status, I find the sort of signaling behavior involved unpleasant for my own behavior. It feels hollow and inadequate, and in this particular case, I was further annoyed that we received the ability to do this for attacks in France, but nothing happened for a large attack the day before in Beirut. Suggesting our concern was believed to be very specific. It undoubtedly was. This bothered me in some way. The scope of destruction and carnage may be a factor, but the loss of life via senseless violence anywhere in the world should be a cause for mourning, grief, and sympathy by other human beings, and demand our attention and response if we can. We attach more importance to the lives of those we may feel a degree of connection to, as is natural, and this leads many people who have traveled to Paris (or who wish to) to find sympathy an easy response. More work is required to get to the same level of attention for Lebanese who suffer, or Syrian refugees seeking to escape a much more intense version of violence still than that afflicted upon Paris.

I do not feel people who did much to react to Paris (and to some degree, only Paris) are to blame, or are terrible people if they did not react to news from Lebanon with equal concern. Far from it, as the violence in Syria or Iraq is now regarded as so routine it barely registers news coverage, even as it kills many thousands of people per month, and terrorist attacks in Lebanon used to be routine as well (they are not now and have not been for about 25 years). It is natural that our collective attention should be divided and incomplete to not hear of every event of suffering and horror elsewhere and respond instantly and correctly in all cases. It's just not the path I would choose in how sympathy and assistance should be rendered is to signal a specific cause. My concern is humans more broadly and how we should treat each other.

This is far afield however from some of the more typical reactions I saw as it at least begins with a place of sympathy and concern for the grief and needs of victims and those directly trying to help them. In many cases, people were, as happened after 9-11 here in America, out for blood. Calls for any captured assailants to be tortured, in some cases scarcely veiled. Demands for renewed vigor in attacking ISIS, despite this being unclear as a foreign policy goal that would achieve anything of use in providing security for the French people, or anyone else either. Demands for preventing many thousands of suffering people from reaching safety as refugees, even before any connection to refugees were made, and in spite of the fact that this was unlikely to be refugees fleeing that would be the source of the problem versus people who were familiar with French culture and society and could identify suitable targets for committing violent atrocities that would garner attention and then successfully plan and carry them out. People who had lived in France or at least Western Europe for example. All of this resembled more lashing out and a baser demand for vengeance rather than an appreciation for human suffering and the limits of our abilities to either prevent such suffering or accommodate those who are so afflicted. This too was natural, but I do not forgive it anywhere near as lightly or easily. Perhaps because I have little attachment to fear such incidents as likely to threaten my own existence, or those of friends, I do not see anger as an appropriate response.

One of the most annoying elements of writing at all about international relations and in particular about terrorism as an event within foreign policy is the nature of response tends to be perceived as diametric by the public and by many pundits within the field. We must either go all out to try to kill people using military forces or we are "doing nothing" or perhaps we "look weak" and obviously then "the terrorists win". This is nonsense masqueraded as grand strategy. To the extent that there are at times in history some very terrible people who perhaps may need to be sought out and fought and defeated on battlefields in foreign lands, I agree. That sometimes remains true in international relations that our own security as a nation and that of allies (such as France) depends upon this.

But even accepting this limited position leaves open a number of questions that are not answered by stating that there are threats abroad.

Whether it is ourselves that must do this, or whether someone else could do so? Someone with more local knowledge of the particular group, or more direct interest in the defeat of groups involved, such as in this case, Iran. Whether the use of air power and bombs is an effective measure of applying what amounts to counter-insurgency? I regard this as dubious at best. Are there no soft power measures which may be more helpful? For example, offering aid or refugee to Syrians/Iraqis in a war zone area? Do we even need to engage such forces with military force to defeat them at all, or at the very least, can we protect ourselves from perceived threats abroad with much less effort and achieve the same or even better return on our efforts? And finally, how big is the threat to ourselves really? Just how much should we really be worried about terrorists abroad as a danger to American society? Many seem to regard this as an existential conflict where the doom of America as a country and Western civilization as an ideal is at stake. I do not. Nor do I believe we have much to fear from terrorists that we must defeat them anywhere and everywhere on the globe versus other methods of interdiction to prevent them from making attacks like those carried out in Paris and Beirut last week.

In general, I find myself farther from most people on international relations. The vast majority of human beings have relatively peaceful and serene lives, much more so than at any point in human history, and our goal in such dealings should be the preservation and extension of that peaceful co-existence as much as possible, while preserving our own security and prosperity as best we can. There are specific hotspots on the globe that afflict tremendous violence to life and through destruction of infrastructure the quality and prosperity of those lives that remain (Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, as examples). These attract considerable attention and debate within American foreign policy discussions. It is well that they should as they represent some of the largest sources of human suffering on the globe and they are man-made in origin via violent armed conflict, suggesting man-made resolutions may be possible. Our thinking however is generally too narrow in response (use of force or do nothing) and this often limits our ability to make productive impacts.

What is less clear to me is how or even whether our military can help resolve these conflicts. This is not what they are trained and equipped to do in most cases, and such kinds of warfare can be of the most difficult to conduct properly and intractable to extricate ourselves from that they may not be wise conflicts to intercede directly into anyway as they would result mainly in the overextension of our forces and the diminished ability to prepare for and attend to larger geopolitical threats for which our considerable military forces (and those of our allies) are much better prepared and equipped to defend against.

There are ways to use a military force in what amounts to a soft power demonstration to help bring about local peace within divided factions warring abroad in a foreign land, but none of the fighting in these now unpleasant and terrible places abroad directly threaten our own security, and most even do little to damage neighbouring territory and peoples. They are self-contained bloodshed and can be contained further with military forces, both local and international. The best most military actions and interventions may do is perhaps minimize the abilities of (some) warring factions to directly attack one another by injecting another force of violence into the equation. This is unclear if it provides some benefits in many cases in compelling these factions to seek peace. Indeed, some of these factions seem intent on embittered warfare with their neighbours and rivals despite any limitations in their conventional abilities (ISIS for example has no navy or air power).

We can be gravely concerned with the humanitarian problems such conflicts create, and we can and should do much to ameliorate those. We can be concerned about the diplomatic status of allies nearby and their security near a conflict zone, or whether they may be drawn into such conflicts or feel it necessary to intercede, and we can offer them support and advice on how best to do so. None of that suggests that it is necessary to deploy American forces into these armed conflicts in order to preserve relative peace of billions of human beings, much less the incredibly secure lives of Americans from foreign threats. Nor does it imply that such deployments will in some way secure additional security for Americans, or improve the quality of lives for people on the ground in far flung places about which we often know very little. We can purchase our own security very cheaply, with intelligence gathering about major plots, and common sense measures of security (reinforced cockpit doors on airplanes for instance), without regarding millions of citizens with excessive suspicion, and without invading or bombing other countries and their people or leaders in these crises. That does not mean we have done nothing in response and does not mean we could not do more than we have, or do things differently.

To me it simply means our responses thus far have been unimpressive in their results, and often more damaging to our security or prosperity than they have been helpful for a variety of reasons. For example, discouraging air travel through heightened and excessive security at airports encourages people to drive more. Driving is more dangerous and less productive than flying. Excessively broad (and potentially illegal) surveillance potentially enmeshes hundreds of thousands of Americans in bureaucratic nightmares trying to travel and otherwise attracts unnecessary attention and resources of intelligence organisations trying to identify actual threats, the number of which is much smaller, or diverts resources to combat other dubious national interests that are dubiously related to threats of international terrorism (for instance, the drug war). Material support for police forces using military hardware is granted via concerns over "terrorism" that are extremely unlikely to ever materialize in the vast majority of American cities and towns, and predictably are diverted for other purposes. Invading or toppling unpleasant and horrible regimes in other countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) provides an unstable power arrangement over which we exercise precious little influence and control and may as a result be as hazardous and destructive as the previous regimes to the lives of citizens of those nations, and from which we may feel a measure of responsibility and remain entrenched militarily and economically for decades at a time. Each of these measures may have limited points of usefulness. Surveillance and intelligence gathering of potential threats can be done with a warrant, or done without one over foreign nationals and people traveling into these war zones for dubious purposes for example, and at times, the destruction of vile regimes may serve some legitimate humanitarian goal. But these are difficult boundaries to tread over successfully and without considerable pitfalls. The breezy way that they are described as our only and best way forward is troublesome.

Finally. I wish to address the questions over Islam and Muslims that such actions and atrocities, when committed by Muslims (and not by some other agent, as often happens in the US at least and as used to happen with great frequency in France as well), naturally surface and engender. I am troubled here too by the breezy assurance that it is Islam itself that is a significant cause of these concerns, if not "the" cause of our concerns as regards terrorism. There are many, many problems with this line of analysis. To be sure, many organisations and many terrorists who commit acts of horrible violence identify with various statements which are religiously ordered and drawn from religious texts and decrees. I do not believe this is denied. Many billions more people do not commit acts of horrible violence, or even identify with those who carry those out supposedly in their name. This seems like it ought to factor heavily into our analysis.

One reason I suspect it is easy to think and believe otherwise, that any Muslim or at least specific persons of a Muslim country of origin may be a threat, is that we do not have many Muslims around, and they are often of a fairly invisible nature to Americans (many are fairly well acculturated and Westernized that live in the US). The considerable inconveniences we thus demand to impose upon them actually only impact some small number of people, a few million at most, while then "allowing" the rest of us to proceed unmolested in our daily lives. Such inconveniences are not trivial to individuals but on a societal level they may appear so. We are then left with the uncomfortable work of having to convince a mostly Christian country that these strange people of a "foreign" religion in their midst are not by default a threat and do not deserve to be treated as such with so grand a suspicious attitude. This work is then increased by the notion that many prominent secularists take a specific interest in the violence and extremism of some Muslims and accordingly share in some of these demands. I regard this quest as not rational as a response, and a serious error in logic and thinking, things which secularists ordinarily pride themselves upon. There are a series of problems with it.

It assumes a threat is posed by the doctrines of a particular faith without evaluating the behavior or even the practiced beliefs of those who describe themselves as adherents to it. As a comparison, my evaluation of most Christians is that they have only very limited association with the texts and theology of their beliefs (for better or worse). Muslims are likely little different in my experience as the availability of diverse scholarship in belief, practices of beliefs, and textual emphasis that results carries a similarly varied and otherwise iffy nature. This logic suggests some amount of wariness is appropriate given that we may be unfamiliar and perhaps underestimating the probability of having wacky and dangerous beliefs as opposed to holding fairly benign or even beneficial beliefs. But translating that wariness and unfamiliarity into severe limitations on civil liberties more broadly is not a sensible response. Even where if were a case that many American Muslims were conducting and advocating violent actions, it would be difficult to carry out, and relatively easy and more successful to identify such threats with far more minimal inconveniences made upon those many who did not wade into these waters than are often advocated and supported.

It assumes a threat posed by extremists requires treatment of anyone vaguely similar as a potential extremist. This is a poor use of intelligence and deterrence strategies, profiling of this kind is extremely unlikely to be an effective deterrent to thoughtful terror cells who can easily avoid such efforts, resulting in precisely the same kind of "prevent the last attack" mentality that appears to govern many of our security efforts right now but with the added "benefit" of taking poorly trained and selected bureaucrats and giving them powers to apply ethnic and racial animus with legal force, while generally ignoring anyone who might also pose a threat to security instead. All of this theory behind profiling relies upon assumptions of percentages of people who are like X being much higher than is likely the case. Even the NSA's broad casting of surveillance suggests that there are potentially very few people who are radicalized threats to other Americans living among us, of any kind.

This is also not a source of treatment which is applied to other groups who have violent extremists in their midst. Christians tend not to have to disassociate themselves publicly from the behavior of radical persons and can still call themselves Christians with fairly minimal assessments of hypocrisy and inconvenience of mental gymnastics being imposed upon them. There are not generally calls that people should stop being Christian, or at least that they should acknowledge that their own dogmatic beliefs must include violent actions toward others. As they can and sometimes do too. Similar issues apply with, say, right-wing ideological views that these are not seen as automatically disqualifying to the general public. Perhaps to some left-wing ideological travelers. This seems like a double standard at the very least, if not a sign that this is an incorrect way to response to the actions of radicals is to associate such radicals with everything else related to whatever they radicalized and have weaponized into violent behaviors. All of this should be a factor in our thinking.

Finally it assumes that a threat posed primarily in the form of violence done in unstable Muslim-majority countries is likely to translate to a fairly stable Western democracy with the same level of regularity and for the same reasons as a basis for our efforts as a source of risk (if we do "nothing"). This is extremely unlikely. The expenditure of vast amounts of capital and resources in interdiction of threats and the accompanying potential reductions in the liberty of citizens of all faiths and customs may be regarded as "worthwhile" if it were appreciably reducing the level of violence from one where major terrorist incidents like those of Paris, or Boston, or New York are not only infrequent to one every few years but instead might occur daily. They do not. Such actions are fairly difficult to organise recruit, fund, train, plan, and successfully carry out in a stable Western liberal society. This is one good reason they do not occur with the level of frequency and resulting destruction and mayhem that one finds in Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria. Finding disaffected people willing to risk death to inflict death is fairly easy if life is unpleasant, suffering is significant, and it is believed that such actions will help others. In a modern state with a civil government and functioning society, this is not the case. Other options are available to redress grievances. Funding and assembling people to be trained to carry out complicated operations is also something that can be easily detected and tracked. While there are many counter-surveillance tactics and strategies that can make this more difficult, all it requires is one foolish error to attract attention. Meanwhile known sources of radicalism can be monitored and tracked.

Accordingly, this is also all happening in societies with relatively few Muslims living there. Even France is only about 10% Muslim by population. The US is barely over 1%. India may have the only Muslim minority population of note (around 20%) of a relatively modern state. We are thus dealing with societies that may find such people strange and suspicious by nature and thus attract more scrutiny from neighbours, co-workers, local police, and so on. The idea that this extra scrutiny requires official sanction and bureaucratic license strikes me as more dangerous than necessary. The idea that such a tiny percentage of the population can seriously jeopardize our system of jurisprudence, our general values for humanity, and the relative prosperity and well-being of significant numbers of citizens is highly dubious. They can manage to make attacks and even kill some number of people per year. Such actions however are extremely small in number relative to the numbers of Americans who kill themselves or each other in more prosaic ways. This suggests that we have other problems more worth worrying about and attending to as a concern of suffering of our own country than that of terrorism, radicalism, and Islam more broadly.

Series of quick blurbs

Or maybe not so quick. We'll see.

1) Was the clock kid arrested/suspended because he brought a clock to school or because he was a Muslim kid who brought a clock to school.

Short answer is probably a bit of both, but mostly the latter. There's some, but not much, justification to question what it is that a kid has, but if they don't have it out, and show it to a teacher rather willingly and openly, that should be a sign it isn't intended as a prank and was intended to be something random and fun that they built and hoped would be appreciated. It wasn't. That ought to be have been the end point. It wasn't. So here we are. The key points though that suggest there's a racial/ethnic/religious dimension on top of the overzealous school safety considerations would be that the school never took any of those overzealous school safety considerations at the time. If it was thought at any time to be an actual bomb, the school (and the police) never behaved as though they thought it was. I would be suing the cops for wrongful arrest/detention as a violation of civil rights (they had no probable cause for an arrest) and I'd be at least changing schools pronto if I were his parents. Sounds like at least one of those is happening.

2) Will Kim Davis end up back in jail for fiddling with the state forms?

Short version: maybe. She probably shouldn't be. Most of the state officials seem to think the forms her office is issuing are legal or at least will be recognized as legal for their purposes, and that this point it appears to be a question of state law that would matter. But they're very clearly being issued in an defiant "fuck you" manner to the court that required the issuance of certificates. Which courts and judges don't tend to like very much.

3) Why is Sam Harris still talking about racial profiling (particular of Muslims at airports).

Short version: I have no idea. He seemed very clearly to have lost badly in public debates he himself posted online several years ago on this exact topic. But he seems to have ignored this rather glaring flaw of history of his engagement to the subject matter. It ties into the clock story and the Harris/Republican narrative that "Christianity is under attack", whatever that means, in so far as there's a lot of strange rhetoric based upon fear that isn't easily translated into effective and legal policy. Maybe Harris' underlying argument is that Muslims are the most likely source of threats to airplanes and airport security, which is perhaps a plausible case for now but hasn't always been true and isn't the best way to secure them even if they are to treat such people as we can identify as possibly Muslim as the only likely source of threat. How that translates into an effective security process from that assumption is a very big logical step that overlooks a lot of costs and difficulties. Secularists and liberals tend to want to govern processes of law by reasonable steps, such as cost-benefit analysis or effectiveness. Apparently not when fear is concerned. Then the arguments look very much like the same ones that conservatives make when telling us Davis was in jail for practicing her faith, rather than violating a court order.

A short legal primer. Sort of

So. Kim Davis is a trendy topic. Those probably were not words most of us would think to write a couple of months ago.

Some explanations for people who haven't followed this closely or imagine themselves to agree or disagree with her.

1) County clerks in Kentucky are elected officials. They're still public officials charged with doing public duties, like providing marriage licenses. One result of this elected status though is that they cannot be fired by another public official (a Governor for example). They have to be removed from office via an election or a process of impeachment that is typically complicated and time-consuming.

2) States could decide they don't want to issue marriage licenses, which to me seems like an idea likely to be less popular than is being imagined by some Christians or anarchists and some number of libertarians, but until or unless they do so, some city or county official will be charged with providing these licenses officially. In this case, a county clerk's office was tasked with this duty. There may be other public officials in the county that can perform this legal duty but they have other duties often (judges for example). Since the state gives out marriage licenses on a fairly regular basis, it is not productive to have this task on an ad hoc basis rather than an appointed office handle the regular business of the state.

3) Court rulings based around the 14th amendment have decided, I believe rightly, that these licenses should be issued regardless of gender in the couples involved. This means that any Kentucky law preventing such licenses between same-sex couples from being issued is invalidated and that such laws are to be enforced as amended. So the licenses must be issued and the court's interest is in gaining compliance with its orders that the state officials no longer be violating the Constitution.

The relevant factor here is that it is the state of Kentucky, not Kim Davis, which is seen to be acting when it refuses to issue a marriage license. Kim Davis does not make or decide state laws as a clerk. She carries them out and as such represents the state in that capacity.

4) The judge who issued the order to provide the licenses lawfully a) wrote in the 6th circuit opinion that was overturned that he effectively did not agree with same-sex marriages and b) gave Davis several avenues to lawfully comply.

Most significantly, she was to be allowed to turn over the duties to another clerk in the office rather than issue licenses she disagreed with herself. She refused to allow another clerk in her office to comply whether they wanted to or not or agreed with her beliefs or not. She imposed her beliefs upon others in her employ. This is not a power any elected official possesses, whether they imagine themselves to or not. This is ultimately why she was found in contempt of court and jailed, not for practicing her own religious beliefs but refusing to allow others to live in accordance with their own interpretations of faith and law and imposing upon them a required action that was deemed to be illegal by the federal court system and out of step with directives issued by the sitting governor of the state to comply with those rulings.

One of the apparently forgotten aspects of Jim Crow was that it was a binding legal obligation upon all citizens to segregate, not merely the beliefs of racists but the laws of racists as well were in force and on display. There were ways around this, but it was officially sanctioned by the state to require certain private behaviors, whether people agreed with those laws or not. If people do not agree with allowing same sex couples to marry, they are allowed to disagree with this, to voice opposition, to protest, to attend church services that reinforce these beliefs, and so on. What they are not allowed to do is prevent this from occurring legally and prevent others in their employ from executing the required public duties of issuing a license.

4a) (Update) It appears her dispute is that her name has to be on it as though this is constituting a personal endorsement. It is extremely unlikely that federal courts and judges will decide to amend a state law as to whether her name has to appear on a public form from a county clerk's office as a basis for official documentation being deemed valid. Their concern will be the relevant constitutional status of marriage law enforcement more broadly and not the precise mechanics that the Commonwealth of Kentucky decides to use to provide those marriage licenses, who has to sign where, etc. State laws may provide some protection if she were to sue in state court that some accommodation could be imposed or the state could act to amend the statute to provide such accommodations as allowing a deputy clerks name to be valid, etc, though that's not guaranteed of course. And she hasn't done that anyway. Suggesting her legal arguments are less about seeking accommodation and more about something else, or that her legal team is not very good (also plausible). (update to that part, it looks to me unlikely that the state courts would grant some variety of exemption either as the relevant forms only require the endorsement of the "office of", and not the "person of").

5) The absurdity of claiming that people could drive 30 minutes away for a public service required by state law seems to be a point of order as well. What this suggests in logical terms is that Davis does not agree with same sex marriage, but will abide by such marriages as endorsed legally by others in the same official capacity as herself as long as she has nothing to do with it. Except that she won't do that in her own county.

This is very different from say, abortion providers and distance traveled questions and constraints. The state is not in the business of providing abortions. It does not have to mandate that its officials provide them in a reasonable fashion within a legal jurisdiction of a county or major city. The state is in the business of providing marriage certificates. Since the state is in that business, it is required to do so in a non-discriminatory way (roughly speaking, since the state can prevent you from marrying your cousin or sister or father, or an under age child), and more significantly to this question here, the public and elected officials are tasked to do so as well. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, the effective response is that they should be removed from office in order to gain compliance with the legal environment.

Those public officials are free in their private capacity to complain all they want so long as they comply with the law in a non-discriminatory way or make reasonable accommodations to do so. Not issuing licenses at all in a county, without the approval of other city, county, or state officials, and thus requiring people to go to another county to receive a public service they are entitled to legally is not a reasonable accommodation.

6) The wisdom of jailing her to assure compliance with the law has been frequently called into question. I suspect that the intention of her or her lawyers was for her to go to jail for violating the law and that this is why she refused other methods of compliance. This made it unlikely that other forms of compliance would have worked in the interim to prevent violations of Constitutional law and the state's basic obligations from being ignored in the meantime.

As a form of civil disobedience, this is fine. She was willing to pay the consequences. As a form of protest intent on amending the legal environment, I'm less clear on how this would redound to anyone's benefit if they oppose gay marriage and the change in the legal environment. Some are claiming this makes her a martyr. A martyr to an already activated minority is still a losing opinion on this matter. Her actions would have to in some way change people's minds rather than just fire up people who still agree with her. She is not a church, whose practices were not changed by the legal framework of the 14th amendment requirements to civil institutions, and she was being allowed not to perform the ceremonial tasks personally as a requirement of her official duties. I don't see where that changes people's minds in a meaningful way. If anything, more people being aware that what she was actually doing was refusing to let anyone else operate in an official capacity under her charge should suggest that this is not likely to be a very inspiring case.

7) This question of the intersection of religious liberty with gay marriage (both in the public sphere and in the private business sphere) will come up again with a more presentable case. The Supreme Court refused to hear this one on appeal because it was a terrible case easily dismissed on the merits, most likely being used to fund raise by the legal team rather than attempt to actually reform or repeal the legal environment.

Is it the T word?

While there's been quite a lot of air time wasted on Faux News attributing an obviously racially motivated attack to hammer into a narrative about otherwise non-existent violence against Christians in the US, there's a side debate of more interest going on. Whether the killings in Charleston were an act of terrorism. I've noticed several features to this debate

1) People who "refuse to call it terrorism" must be willfully blind/racist, largely because they're liable to identify some similar (or even some ineffectual act) when done by a Muslim, say, as terrorism. I myself am pretty slow to call much of anything "terrorism", when done by any persons of any racial or religious basis, for reasons that I'll examine in a moment. Meanwhile our broader culture, media culture, political culture and largely within mostly white segments of the population, throws this word around frequently to identify actions by groups of people they don't like (while excusing the actions of individuals similar to them as deranged lunatics or bigots rather than part of some common cause event). This dichotomy I find curious in its own way. Clearly I am using a very stringent definition of "terrorism" or others have lost all sensible purpose for the word.

2) There's some interest in identifying the action as racist or a hate crime. Which seems obvious and correct from the motivations expressed publicly by the killer and his victims. This is not necessarily the same thing as "terrorism". But it isn't mutually exclusive with it either.

What I think these two components mean is that after 9-11, our culture tended to take any activity less seriously unless it was in some way broadly related to an action like 9-11. Namely, that it was what we typically associate as "terrorism" (mass targeted killings of civilians for political, religious, or other ideological reasons, designed to inspire fear in a designated group of people, a country, race, religion, political movement, etc). If something could be described as "terrorism", it evoked for many people these images of destroyed skyscrapers and the violent deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people. Actions which aren't in this category could nevertheless be associated as more serious concerns for millions of Americans to consider as problems worthy of their time and attention.

Fear is a powerful motivator to get people to go along with whatever you can then claim must be useful for keeping people safe. And so the idea that there must be all kinds of terrorists and terrorism just around the corner from which we must be protected has proliferated. I think this is a lazy and overused political trick. As a result, I am very slow to identify much of any action as the actions of a terrorist, the cause and actions worthy of the political and legal penalties associated with that terminology. I've seen this phrase used to describe: fairly ordinary murders committed at least in part for unsavory reasons (bigotry, religious intolerance), organised campaigns to intimidate people involved in abortion clinics, pretty much any activity by a Muslim, the distribution and production of various narcotics, attempted plots to attack some target of people more or less set up by the FBI (rather than detected and foiled by them), attempted plots not detected by police and FBI which are carried out and kill or injury a large number of people, and so on. And of these, many are attempted, or succeed in publicly tying themselves to: atheists, Muslims, Christians, right-wing political movements, left-wing political movements, libertarians, individualists, mental-illness, weapons that aren't used in the commission of these actions of violence (or commonplace acts of violence like murder or assault).

And this brings me to the social problem with the legal and cultural definitions of terrorism. They're constrained by political considerations or the dominant/prevailing culture of a society rather than some empirical definition of what constitutes an attack which qualifies. They are inherently likely to spawn arguments about what is and what is not an act of terror, or who is and who is not a terrorist, and inherently likely to be wrong about what actions and what types of people end up on either side of those lines. And much of this will ignore what the appropriate responses for a society to take should be because we will be confusing one thing for another, or ignoring causes and agents that can be dealt with separately or distinctly, and so on.

There's a similar debate like this concerning "genocide" in international relations. Actions like the those of the Ottoman government against Armenians or USSR against rather a lot of people rather than a handful as we are discussing now, are often referred to variously as either acts of genocide or not acts of genocide. Rather than talking about what actually happened, who was killed, forcibly moved, or otherwise harmed and attacked by the actions of nation-states and the societies they nominally oversee, there's a lot of argument about whether it qualifies as some arbitrary definition. These are actions involving several hundreds of thousands of deaths at a minimum. In the USSR case, there's probably several million such deaths caused deliberately in the 1930-1950 period alone. These we would think would not lend toward ambiguity in a way that killing a dozen people, or trying to kill a couple of very specific people doesn't obviously seem like it must or must not be an act of "terrorism". And yet much of time when these subjects come up, it's in the context and contest over whether it is or is not some sort of international crime against humanity rather than stacking up what happened, or telling the story of the people(s) who were being slaughtered and annihilated.

When something awful happens, and some number of people are killed or maimed by heinous actions. I'm not very interested in what we call this action. I'm not even that interested in who does it. Because it rarely seems to be a repeatable set of circumstances that led to some violent being acting upon other human beings with malicious intentions toward a dozen or more people in some way that it could be very easily prevented without a lot of taxing effort on social or culture change. But I am interested in who was killed. And maybe why that happened is of notice and attention. Maybe, how they lived might be more interesting though. I wish we would cover this more often. Deaths caused by murder and mayhem are the ending of what are usually interesting lives to the people who loved and knew this person. They're full of mystery, intrigue, achievement, failure, familiar stories to all of us. One of the successful points to the Fruitvale Station film was that it didn't depict Oscar Grant as some sort of angel to be avenged. He was depicted as a human being, a screwed up person just like the rest of us. And his death was both unnecessary and tragic in spite of this supposed flaw of being a kind of problem child, as most of us are wont to do. When we are deprived of this fuller story that someone's life and lived experiences can tell us, that is a story we should seek out. The ending of that story isn't liable to be as interesting without pausing to see what came before it.

I would point out a few things at this point

1) I am quite certain the motivations of the Charleston killings were racial in nature. The attack coming as it does in a church seems quite incidental. If anything, the selection of a church depicts a level of familiarity with the culture the killer sought to attack, but it does not depict some level of hostility with religion.  Black churches were for a long time banned and burned to the ground throughout the antebellum South. This wasn't because racists and white supremacists of that time hated church. Church bombings in the 1960s occurred because that's where the human targets of hatred and oppression bound up in racist motives were most easily found clustered together and thus killed. So it is now.

2) "Guns in church" is a humorous Carlin bit, but it has little to do with the safety of pastors and worshipers. George had two words for you all who think it might: "Disgruntled worshiper". Pissed off and determined people with guns can cause all kinds of problems even if someone manages to shoot them down during or after the fact.

2a) Neither would most of the more popular proposed forms of gun controls be that helpful here. (Some might have helped, but not most).

3) I'm not sure there's anything wrong with referring to something like this, a racially motivated attack killing or attacking a large number of people, as an act of terrorism. Go ahead if it makes you happy. I don't actually disagree on this point. To me, the biggest question mark isn't what we call it. It's how we respond. Given that I feel how we've responded to terrorism is generally awful and horribly unproductive as a society up until now to establish a poor track record, I'd rather we call it something else just to avoid this clumsy overbearing response that isn't likely to produce a fruitful result. Racism for instance. We respond poorly and unproductively to that also, but it is a subject that is apt to produce slightly more thoughtful effort than people running and scurrying around in fear and in this instance, with the motives of the killer exposed for examination and publicly declared, and the actions so horrifying, there will be relatively few people prepared to declare that this was not a racist acting out the hateful and terrible conclusions to their beliefs. People aren't going to be able to successfully argue this comes into some grey territory.

4) South Carolina is liable to pursue (and get) the death penalty, to demonstrate they take the murders of some number of its citizens "very seriously", without reference to "hate crime legislation" or "terrorism" statutes. This is fairly easy to do because ordinary murders don't take the lives of a sitting state Representative or some number of church pastors, or even just a large number of people all at once. In truth, of late South Carolina has actually been a beacon of "racial progress" in so far as it has dealt swiftly and somewhat harshly with police brutality and violence toward its citizens on this basis of race based bias and violence (yes, that South Carolina).

A number of shootings in the state by police have had the officers fired or dismissed from the force, nearly immediately, and charged with various degrees of murder or assault (in the occasion that the unfortunate victims of these shootings did not die of their wounds). This is to be applauded relative to, say, Ohio and its local governance. Which all but ignored the John Crawford killing, which occurred a few miles from my home. And has done little to nothing with Tamir Rice's killer. It sends a pretty powerful symbol to the community that indiscriminate and inappropriate violence by anyone, even those charged with enforcing the law, is not to be tolerated when the state seeks to punish police officers for inappropriate and indiscriminate violence that takes the lives of its citizens, and an equally powerful symbol when that violence by police is ignored or papered over. Racism isn't border limited to former Confederate or slave owning states. It isn't even border limited to "the USA", for that matter.

4a) South Carolina can remind us of that fact in both directions. Take down that fucking flag. You lost the war that you started on extremely morally suspect grounds (to defend the ability to oppress large numbers of human beings by declaring them property, devoid of agency and ability that is not provided for them to do). Stop trying to pretend you're still fighting for this cause. Apparently some number of your citizens are convinced enough to take up arms, and a larger number are convinced enough that they think they're being oppressed. The latter somewhat reasonably.

Sets of doomed conversations

Gun control debates: Nearly always take place between people who have guns, enjoy having guns, and don't see a problem with people having guns as a result and people who are afraid of guns and don't think people should own guns. No progress between these groups can be made as the discussion rarely moves beyond the two sides' fears and into facts or considerations of various forms of legislation or constitutional matters. One side is afraid guns will be taken away, the other is afraid people have guns. I rarely see facts that are clear and decisive pushed forward, and very, very rarely see plans of action that could be considered under current legal interpretations and put into action, or would even work (eg, "assault weapons" bans, which are useless).

Theological debates: nearly always take place between religious people who are unschooled in theology (or philosophy/logic) but attached to their beliefs and secularists who enjoy pointing this flaw in lacking knowledge and well-thought-out reasons out. This is not because secularists can not or will not debate people who actually know something of theology. It's that there aren't very many people who know something of theology (or logic). Most people appear to believe things that they're told to rather than digging into it very deeply or credit subjective experiences and interpretations/perceptions very highly as evidence rather than dogma. Arguing about dogma therefore is a waste of effort for most such discussions as a result. The logical pretzels are very stale and can be seen coming from miles away. I get very tired of seeing Pascal's Wager come up. Pascal is an idiot on this point.

Libertarians vs other libertarians: Lots of holier than thou digressions occur. Various sources of internal worship are established and battle lines are firm. Most of the discussions are pointless anyway since most people are not very libertarian in their political thinking or political philosophy and it results in a lot of theory over reality. Very little of pragmatic advice will emerge that can be sensibly applied to the real world as it is right now (as opposed to the dream world where libertarians somehow rule over a world with various problems willed away as having been fixed somewhere). Libertarians should basically only talk to "normal people" and learn how other people think as a result (probably wise counsel for any political grouping is to talk to people that aren't in much agreement and find out why). I admire some of the theoretical work of libertarian political philosophy. I don't admire the "steal underpants - ??? - profit" mentality at times as an approach to political reform.

What I would define as a doomed conversation:
1) A conversation that will not change either participant's mind. Nothing can be learned (by either party) and no opinions will be amended.
2) A conversation that follows a certain predictable script of "here's point A that always comes up, here's point B".
3) If it follows a certain script, nothing will be learned, no minds will be changed, and anyone can go look for the very first example of it on wikipedia at this point to see what the argument is. We don't need to replay it in order for bystanders to know what's going to happen. So why bother playing it yourself. It's not even good practice for argument and debate. It dulls rather than sharpens the wit and mind.

I used to have a temptation to look down the conversational chess match and see the next 5 moves. If all of them will be taken exactly as predicted, there isn't much point in engaging further, and it's very easy to see where it starts from anymore that I just don't feel a need to be bothered with certain topics. People might learn they are making bad arguments that are easily and predictably swatted down and that following a certain playbook that everyone involved already knows isn't very useful as a result. But this is really unlikely. People involved will most likely disengage angrily, or at least dismissively with something like "well that's your opinion" or "agree to disagree".

That leaves the audience. And the audience is probably bored by the lack of movement/action or considers these too esoteric to bother with a firm opinion that would require investigation. Most people aren't libertarians. Most people aren't theologians or philosophers. Most people aren't gun policy advocates (one way or the other). Ergo, most people don't have much of a stake in the outcome.

Note: abortion isn't on the list. I think this is because there's more wiggle room. More people care at least a little about it, but don't know enough to feel they have a firm opinion. As such, people are often tempted to go for whatever and whoever has made the most compelling argument recently (hence we get a lot of ill-formed and poorly conceived anti-abortion legislation).

I'd also note one reason these debates aren't that interesting is that they're overrun by emotional reactions and stories rather than reasoned arguments.

On Game of Thrones

This will be some comments on changes from the book versions.

"Dance of Dragons", the book within a book in the last episode, isn't just about the horrible futility of choosing sides in a civil war between family members. It's about a couple of things:

a) The lengths people go to to achieve and maintain power, even sacrificing and fighting with their family members (hmm, wonder why that was in there with Shireen reading it).

b) The fallout from the civil war included a change to the gender politics of the Game of Thrones universe; namely that women were partially cut out of the line of succession, where sons would precede them as kings instead of queens. Regardless of whether they were better suited or not for ruling a kingdom.

One additional reason that matters: The Dornish subplot in the books includes, rather than an attempt on Myrcella's life (though that's implied too), an attempt to place her on the throne instead of Tommen. We've already been shown that the Dornish don't have the same sexual and gender politics as the rest of the kingdoms through the relationship between a prince of Dorn (Oberyn) and a bastard girl (Elleria), for instance. This could still manifest in the show though it doesn't appear to be about to so far. It would have made the usually tedious and ill-shot sequences in Dorn a lot more interesting (Bronn's singing is about the only viable portion of these).

We are seeing that women are just as capable of being quality rulers and just as deluded about their ability to do so. A contest between and within the Lannister family tree over proper claim to rule would be an interesting subplot. Even as their grip on power slides rapidly out of control without this, it would hasten the demise and provide more background to the "history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes" mentality of the show, or as Dany calls it, the wheel grinding through the land.

We've also already been shown Cersei's life quest for power and then how poorly and incompetently she exercises it. And we've already been shown Dany's quest for power and how inexpertly she exercises it when she has it (Tyrion's line about killing and politics not being the same thing still matters), but also how well she learns various lessons about power, and the destructive ends that people go to wield it and whether that is appropriate or not (she tends toward not so much).

The show version just showed us the destructive ends that Stannis is willing to go to, and there are hints that this was somewhere the book version will end up going too. This isn't that far-fetched. He's being told by a set of religious fanatics that he's the one true hope for mankind, and just won a decisive victory at the Wall some weeks earlier to help cement that claim. What lengths wouldn't someone in those circumstances go to? He's been burning people alive throughout the show ever since he first appears (burning people at Dragonstone). Including Mance in the first episode of this very season. It's like people forgot this fact about him that was still in the background because he was correcting grammar and appeared to be a good (but stern) father for a few episodes after playing a badass finally by winning a battle that appeared lost. He can be terribly pragmatic and logical, but he's very single minded where his ambitions and purported destiny are concerned. "Thousands (will die)" at the Blackwater, he says during that battle. It is of no concern if the ends are met.

I'm generally very confused where people end up blaming the show runners (D&D to the internet) for things that are basically what Martin intended to do with the same material. All of this was built up throughout the season as Stannis' supposed redeeming quality, and a quality that he would have to sacrifice, and was told he would sacrifice by Melisandre to claim what is his. All they did here was heighten the emotional stakes for something terrible, as happened with the Red Wedding, and the Sansa's/Ramsay marriage and the assaults involved on her (instead of some nameless character). This is more or less what we'd expect a TV show to do.

Where I think they can be faulted is by submarining some of the other plots rather than by doing things that were always hinted at or intended. They've been touching on the gender politics of this world, but often very clumsily and without the overt signals of the past world to provide hints or clues to say that they're (probably) about to be overturned once again. They also buried the rise of some of the more egalitarian groups like the Sparrows (it's not made very clear how a bunch of religious fanatics would have amassed that much power in King's Landing even with Cersei's help), or the R'hollor worshipers, like Stannis, in the wake of a lot of violent political upheaval. We saw how horrible the road was by following Arya and the Hound around, but we haven't really seen how bad it is for regular people that they'd be turning to religious fanatics to protect them. I suspect these subplots concerning the plight of the regular folk matter quite a bit to Martin's themes, which is why several characters's POV arcs mostly consist of wandering around. These are naturally condensed because they're likely boring to portray on screen (Dany's season 2 arc showed us this), but they shouldn't be totally cut out either. That balance hasn't always been well-maintained.

Second bit I'd point out is that as much positive press as last week's episode got for delivering up fan favorite chats between Tyrion and Dany, and the half hour ice zombie slaughterfest, complete with a giant smashing wights and Jon's "I guess I've got one of those swords" look with the White Walker, the episode was not a positive one throughout or in its ending. Tyrion's "advice" to Dany mostly consisted of him telling her how wise she was in one breath and then telling her it's all going to come to a poor conclusion in the next, and the battle at Hardhome, though the crucial characters escape with their lives, is a total catastrophe. This is not a show (or a set of books) that's calculated for people to come away from an episode thinking the world they are watching is about to be spinning in the right way any time soon. It's a subversive show about the problems of both governance and the fantasy genre. And that means that happy ending scenarios are going to be few and far between.

If you think something awful is about to happen, you should be preparing for it if you're going to watch this show. Book readers have experienced this throughout, knowing that not only is some awful thing about to happen, but they know more or less what it will be, and only now are getting a few major twists and surprises.

Secularists getting more strange advice

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/molly-worthen-wanted-a-theology-of-atheism.html?_r=0

This piece felt really incoherent as a set of ideas being expressed. I'm not sure what the point was but I imagine I could pull a few bits out and make them make more sense.

I wasn't sure if she was complaining about atheists imitating churches or holding it up as some sort of ideal. Is gathering together once in a while to sing songs and eat cookies and cupcakes with people who generally share your worldview considered an example of a way people demonstrate their tolerance and decency? Isn't that one of the problems sociologically with religious organisations is the exclusivity and in/out group behaviors formed and reinforced by gathering together in a regularized way with people who already agree with you? Is this some form of rigorous tradition of secular society to perform the same basic traditional rituals as religions upon which it is drawing for strength and balance while contending with a heavily religiously structured worldview? Short version: Doesn't seem like that part of the piece had much of anything to do with anything else. Secular exchange of ideas has always occurred, in salons and cafes and coffee shops and universities and schools and articles and blogs. It isn't made more suddenly rigorous by placing it in a church-like environment to be worshiped. Neither is the moral functions of humanism or secularism necessarily reinforced by gathering in that way. Or at least no evidence is put forward to suggest that's how it works.

A secular community that lacks a set of common values isn't likely to gain much by trying to gather people together in the way that religious organizations do. One critique of such gatherings is that they can very easily stray into the "let's all bash religion" and become very boring, very quickly. People "recovering from religion" do seem to need more therapeutic release of this type, but eventually something needs to take the place of "I'm mad that people brainwashed me for 20 years" as a basis for secularity or it isn't of much use to anyone else. Much less yourself. Most people are engaging in this, to be fair, but the processes outlined in this piece don't seem to be suggestive of how that would work. People don't need to gather together to remind themselves and each other that god and religion are terrible things or wrong in some intellectual way. We already figured that out generally, often on our own. Maybe it feels good to know there are other people who agree with that position, but affirmation isn't a long-term strategy for social functions. I at least don't want to be told how awesome I must be for not caring about something that doesn't exist in reality. What's at stake is something else that isn't necessarily scratched by these arguments about religious theology that are easily undertaken, or at least those arguments need to be tuned in the direction of what could be a better ethos than religious dogmas often command.

I have generally very strange politics relative to most other secularists on a number of issues. I have a somewhat more tolerant attitude toward some of the hot button issues (gay marriage opponents, low-level religious discrimination, income inequality, teaching of creationism, etc). This makes me somewhat strange among secularists, but it doesn't make me "unusual" in that most people have variance of their moral and political views and what annoys them and grinds the gears into action. One insight that this gives me is that people are generally going to be a little off, and if you can put up with the way they are off, you should try to rather than trying to mold them into neat little boxes that all conform to a single worldview with only a single possible outcome or set of shared goals and ideals. It's not worth the effort in many cases.

I'm also fairly motivated to be decent to other people (most of them, most of the time, or at least indifferent rather than actively harmful), to try to be patient with people who are less verbose or technical in writing out ideas rather than immediately mocking them when they don't seem to be able to get to the point, or to try to help people who are suffering (sometimes not the most reassuring voice, but probably one people find useful all the same). I've also often heard from religious people that non-religious people (like myself) are typically less judgmental of others and tend to be more patient with difficult questions and the uncertainty they can provoke in people, which is often seen as a moral good that religious organisations and the associated societies of people they have cultivated do not always promote well. It is these values that ought to be highlighted in the move to have secularists be more accepted in society. That we are generally attempting to be decent human beings without exceptionally judgmental and exclusive attitudes toward those who are not like us. All of those values appear almost no where in the piece other than as a throwaway sort of "we'll show them we're good people" tact or as a general nod toward "tolerance". Meaning what exactly? That we also attend strange ceremonial rituals? That we also believe we have a set of moral codes that is superior? That a level of civic tolerance toward people who disagree (politely and peacefully) is bad? Those seemed to be the hallmarks of the piece. Those have little to do with being a good person, even in a humanistic ethos. I didn't see a way from point A to point C being laid out.

I sympathize with the questions involved as they are important questions. How are atheists likely to overcome significant social stigmas in a heavily religious society? How might more people be accepting of a secular moral worldview (and not dismissive of it)? How might more people learn to be appropriately skeptical of answers to difficult questions or religion, or science for that matter? How might people learn to be decent and kind to one another (or at least indifferent rather than fearful)? What is it that humanistic values or secular values offers positively in exchange for not having to get up on Sunday mornings? How are these difficult moral questions to be resolved in the absence of authority figures telling us what we are to do, how do we put them into practice? And so on. But almost nothing in this piece suggested a path toward resolving those questions. It suggested they are important questions and then threw in a bunch of anecdotes about going to a church that didn't have a bible in use instead and "some things Sam Harris has said". Suspiciously sounds like woo rather than science. (I'm not exactly in the Sam Harris fan club anyway as I've written about him a couple of times in takedown fashion).

Charity to rivals

Some nice things to say about people I will tend to disagree with.

1) Conservatives
 - Abortion- Many ardent pro-life persons actually do seem motivated by a genuine belief and desire to protect the lives of the unborn as a basis for argument, rather than some innate hatred of women. Indeed I don't begrudge those few who seem willing to state that they oppose exemptions even for rape and incest, simply because their priority is on the as yet unborn life in a consistent moral argument. While those making carve-outs are effectively ceding the battleground on which they are fighting to the "I don't like your reasons for an abortion, while mine are perfectly fine" position on which most people are contending with this issue.

My disagreement is whether these prospective lives of the unborn tend to justify the variety of policies put in place to police the activities of women and doctors, whether these are from a moral or ethical standard actual lives or not (in many cases, I would argue not, at least in the legal sense that we could design any practical policy to enforce and protect them that would not also punish or provide investigatory powers for common natural events like miscarriages). And then in many cases, either the tactics or laws pursued are either trivially annoying and ineffective or outright counterproductive to their purported goals. I don't not believe their motives as real in many cases (some perhaps are opportunistic or patriarchal) despite the inability to match up policies they would support with actual results.

- Drug Warriors - Are in fact motivated to combat a potential social problem, drug addiction (or general irresponsible drug use as a secondary issue). They have chosen the worst possible methods I can imagine (police and force instead of doctors and social work). But there is at least the existence of a problem they are choosing to fight using the social tools available to them.

- Police more broadly - I'm sympathetic to the problem of having to enforce a myriad of laws and social mores and directives, with a changing set of political agendas hovering over all of this. I feel the easier solution is less to provide more tools and weapons and aggression for the command of authority to rule the day but for fewer things to be resolved by police and laws, and to allow police to do things on which they are more suited to enforce and investigate (eg, not worrying about vice laws or drug crimes, and more of a focus on preventing murder or theft). Police are not social workers in the broad sense on which we have often deployed them to deal with parenting questions, mental ailments and issues, endemic poverty, race relations and so on. To expect all of that to go swimmingly by using force through the police is to expect something that isn't possible.

- Religious conservatives generally - While I have all manner of theological and atomistic reasons to think religion (any religion) is silly, a great many people seem to extract a sensible set of value from participating in their religious traditions. Tradition in and of itself isn't interesting to me, but it often can contain kernels of wise council about our actions. A broader sense of community isn't interesting to me, but for many people provides purpose and a camaraderie that they enjoy. Metaphysics generally isn't interesting to me at all, but for many people, answering "life's big questions" with a set of prepared answers (whether or not those answers make any sense) is a satisfying practice. Occasionally religious entities even do useful and good things; helping the poor or indigent or providing aid and shelter after a disaster.

There are downsides to the "community" aspects of religion, namely the in-group/out-group dynamics are extremely strong (perhaps rivaled only by nationalist fervor in the modern context), such that outsiders can easily be viewed with suspicion or hatred. And bothering people who don't have much interest in being part of these communities gets really annoying.

- Neoconservatives - Do at least seem to be trying to pay attention to the international community by observing the rise and fall of potential threats. They've often overblown how dramatic the threats are, or have no idea what methods would best resolve the threat before it becomes a real danger. But it's a starting point relative to many who utterly ignore the affairs of other countries, governments, and the people and associations they form, complete with their own interests and goals, in other lands.

This bleeds into security state defenders (strong/invasive NSA policies), where I would agree these are people generally motivated by an interest in protecting people from harm, but who have crafted policies that either fail to do so, fail to do so at the cost, or which are more harmful than beneficial (because others have less noble ends in mind, such as prosecuting the drug war).

- Nationalism - Does form originally from ardent patriotism in most cases. Which would be productive. I don't have anything else good to say about it though so I should probably stop talking. (this is probably one of the worst modern "sins" I can conceive of people having endorsed is to place nationalism ahead of patriotism, or humanism, or their faith, or basically any value set whatsoever would be superior).

2) Libertarians

- Ayn Rand fans - I appreciate that these are people who are starting to grapple with a wide set of public policy questions and issues. The lens used for examination is problematic, but it's a start and people need to start somewhere. Most people rarely study public policy questions with any degree of seriousness, with no eye for coherent ideologies or practical effects. Political philosophy is probably an even rarer source of investigation for most people. Her's isn't much of a philosophy as it is a guideline, but again, baby steps.

- Ron Paul fans - paleo-conservativism has its uses in moderating many of neoconservatism's worst impulses (IR aggression or the security state as examples). I still question the motivations pushing for much of any anti-globalism or anti-trade or anti-immigration notions that sometimes arise in these far fields of political conservatism. But tamping down the worst excesses of another political structure's intentions by offering an alternative interpretation (even if often straying way out into paranoia), is a vital enterprise for public policy.

- Gold bugs/end the Fed types - The average person spends almost zero time observing monetary policy, seeing it as opaque and insignificant. These are people who seem to focus on almost nothing else. I'd hope for a more happy medium from both the public and government officials in the amount of attention and less fussing over precious metals as though that would somehow resolve our financial position ("strong" currencies, of the type usually favored by gold specie demands are meaningless because they can be potentially damaging or self-correcting to economic prospects and provide no additional stability that isn't created by moderately competent central banking).

3) Liberals/Progressives

- Economic views - Seem to be largely concerned about concentrations of wealth or the condition of the poor. I'm ambivalent about the first being a huge problem in and of itself, but the latter certainly is a powerful and concerning issue. Often don't seem to grasp effective solutions and causes very easily. This isn't a critique of progressives or liberals specifically however as most people do not (conservatives are often just as bad on economic policies that they want to put forward).

- Environmentalism - Most people seem to accept a genuine concern for the natural world as a sensible motivation. Activities or positions taken on some issues (nuclear power or fracking for example) are alarmist and counterproductive. There's a real danger in environmentalist positions and movements of the same variety of closed-minded-closed ranks behavior that conservatives have tended toward, where adherence to a set of positions on issues supersedes evidence of actual risks involved in those issues, or adherence to rigid policy outcomes while disregarding any path to them (that isn't an absolute drop/change).

A way to summarize most of these disagreements would be as follows:
"I believe you are well-motivated and have identified what you feel is a problem. But your actual positions and motions to do something about it are misguided, ineffective, or totally symbolic rather than meaningful and productive. Stop being symbolic and do some real work to think carefully about what you want to achieve and whether what you are asking can be done, or can be done in this way."

More complete thoughts on RFRA

This will be the last I have to write on this. It's sucked up too much attention from the Iran negotiations and police misconduct/shootings stories/studies that I'd prefer to be paying attention to instead as there's very little actually happening.

First. My understanding of the law (the original, not including the clarifying aspect) is that it does not actually protect the baker-florist-photographer example, much less more than that like a hotel denying accommodations, with a religious disclaimer to any discrimination claim. RFRA's primary use was religious practices intersecting with government regulations (traditional drug use, beards, etc) and isn't primarily useful in overriding significant government interests, like discrimination arbitration.

Which is to say that the law as written did not actually accomplish much. Neither the supporters pushing for its passage or the opponents demanding boycotts of the state seemed to have understood this. Suggesting the law was poorly thought out, surely, though that is not that unusual.

The problem there is not the RFRA process, but the lack of anti-discrimination laws that protect homosexuals (and others) from being fired, say. In states like Indiana. In states that have such laws protecting sexual orientation as a class from discrimination, there are generally few claims against businesses for discrimination of services. There are two ways to interpret that

1) There are not many businesses which actually have any basis, much less a religious basis, in being interested in discriminating against their customers or employees on the basis of sexuality. It's actually a fairly expensive way to discriminate for one. Race or even class is generally very easy, religion or sexuality are less so and we should expect them to be less frequent. There are also very strong social signals for employers and businesses not to discriminate against people for sexual orientation. Even for people trying to claim some sort of religious determination suggesting they should.

It is perhaps surprising to some people that even in the presence of RFRA laws, there are not successful lawsuits defending the desire to discriminate, and there are not many such cases, given the rhetoric surrounding this debate.

2) What discrimination does exist is masked by people not stupid enough to claim that the basis for this is "I don't want to serve/employ homosexuals". That is, they find some other reason to claim they won't do so which is much more difficult to prove. They may even do so in an implicit bias way, rather than an explicit "fuck off" kind of manner we are accustomed to legislating. This is to say that there are not very many legal approaches we can take that will alter this variety of behavior. Such approaches would require a great deal of intrusiveness (monitoring a business' schedule to see if they are in fact not available at that time for example), and would otherwise be very expensive ways of reducing the likelihood of such activities.

What all of this comes down to, to me, is a different determination. Generally when the state gets involved, and there are legal remedies and approaches being constructed, I want there to be a very large externality (positive or negative) that is being resolved. This is so there is a certainty that government action is helpful and necessary. If there are widespread instances of restaurants refusing to employ or serve homosexuals in a general sense, this strikes me as a fairly large externality worth resolving as it potentially denies access and opportunity to an entire class of people to the market and there is no right being protected to generally oppress others in this way. Likewise the state should not be interceding in determining which private contracts between consenting adults are or are not marriage. At least in so far as it applies to sexual orientation this is a very small cost (some number of people might be offended), and a very large gain (some number of people's privately preferred associations can be fulfilled and recognized with the same rights and privileges as others when they do so).

Where this is less clear for me is more specialised economic services. A business which is generally open to the public must be fairly accommodating and non-discriminatory, at least so far as general classes of people are concerned (a grocery, a hospital, a hotel, or a restaurant). A business when or which makes fairly individualised services (an attorney, a doctor, a cake maker, etc) has more latitude to say when there will not be services offered. It is in effect, inherently a discriminatory service. A family doctor or an attorney does not have a legal obligation to treat everyone who walks in their doors. We might think it strange that a photographer doesn't serve gay weddings (but will do wedding photography generally), but they may also decide not to serve by doing baby portraits, say, or nude photography. This analogy is not perfect, but the point is that we already allow individual businesses a fairly wide latitude in how they will perform their services. It also means there is a market available for those that will perform those services. So there is a market for people to go do wedding photography, and do so where it involves gay or lesbian couples. In most cities, it would be strange to find that no photographer would do so I suspect. Or no cake baker. Or not one florist. None of these are themselves rights of consumers to expect that we may necessarily engage others to do for us. These are general promises made by businesses to make accommodations for us and vice versa. Most businesses will probably do so. Those that do not are at issue.

What that means removed from the market and the intersection with discrimination lawsuits is that the burden of proof that there is a discrimination proceeding is somewhat higher. Someone who foolishly evinces a (potentially bigoted) desire not to serve certain people, or to do so only for general services and not for others, lowers that bar such that it is easier to prove (as in the pizzeria example in Indiana, which explicitly said they will serve gay persons and couples, except under a hypothetical example of catering a wedding, something that I'm dubious has occurred even for many straight couples).

It also suggests something else however. What that does not necessarily mean is that the only right and proper remedy is that the business should be fined by the government or shuttered and any licenses revoked, and so on. Indeed, even if that is a remedy made available, it does not strike me as the necessary path of resolution. It is not clear, and has not been clear to me for the entirety of this debate, why someone would want to compel someone who has already demonstrated a desire not to work with "people like me" to perform a service that requires them to be creative and involved in the manufacture of food or decoration. I would not be confident in the quality of service I would receive and would think it strange to compel it. Particularly if there are alternatives available who would do so without compulsion. Provided there are alternatives, or alternatives could be manufactured to compete easily enough, it might be enough to identify such businesses that are less participatory and to compete economically through boycotts, or through the normal operation of markets to have less-discriminatory players benefit from those that are paying the cost of discrimination (less business opportunities, or fewer qualified employees, etc). There are limits to the amount of backlash to backlash I would sanction. In that I would not be prepared to say we should do anything to destroy or defame the property or harass the owners and operators or employees. But those owners can be made aware that there are problems with their decisions and that those decisions will have economic and social consequences. Perhaps some number of them will backtrack and decide their ideas about what their religion demands of them are incorrect. On this topic, given the rapid shifts in popular opinion, I would expect that there are many people still racing to catch up with what is and is not considered okay or what is or is not considered a demonstration of their faith as it applies to these questions. It is not clear to me that denying services to a wedding is required by any dogma and that mostly these are people who are in the "ew, gay people can get married" mode of thinking and wildly seeking any justification for that offense that they believe others will tolerate. Most people do not in fact tolerate religious pluralism on this question and there appears to be very limited legal backing for that position.

As to the more general atmosphere, and why these kinds of laws are emerging in the first place. I believe one of the reasons I've taken a more "meh" approach is that I recognize the laws themselves are, in most cases as there are exceptions, actually fairly powerless on these questions of discrimination law and what protections they would provide. But that does not mean that the laws are not representative of some legal or cultural attempt that deserves to be recognized for what it is and what is being attempted (haphazardly and fruitlessly as it is doing). In most cases, the recent attempts to enact RFRA statutes by state legislatures are transparently about the legal recognition being extended to homosexuals through marriage laws being overturned to provide legal equality. Since these legislatures, and a few cases the populations of states, are powerless to prevent this, this is a bizarre attempt to fight a rear guard action. It is itself toothless symbolism. I don't mind the existence of general protections of religious freedoms and favor such laws being passed. But under these circumstances, and with some of the exemptions that more extreme laws than Indiana's more general interpretation of the federal law, one cannot hope to notice that these attempts to demand pluralism are coming from the backing of people who have never demanded pluralism before and indeed, sought to suppress it for decades. Pluralism for me and not for thee is not how it works. To that extent, I think it is wise to oppose any new legislation be authored on this topic of religious liberty and to let things continue to play out in the economic, social, and cultural spheres as much as possible.

Some of the other arguments against such laws strike me as more standard progressive interpretations, which may also explain why I sort of shrugged is I'm more classical liberal than modern. Hobby Lobby for instance gave rise to a belief that "now for-profit companies can have religious beliefs". Which wasn't really what the case did. Aspects of the ruling applied to say this, but the RFRA application was to say the government can intercede to provide its interests if there is a minimal burden, the least restrictive one available, or the interest cannot be satisfied in some other way (which in the case of Hobby Lobby, was the case, the government had already provided an alternative that was less restrictive). This does not seem to me an overly offensive interpretation of reality anyway. Most everyone knows the religious stances of certain business owners (Chik-fil-A for instance), and this is in and of itself not objectionable that they should seek to conduct their business in a manner consistent with those beliefs. Some of those beliefs are objectionable. Which is a key distinction. Not every business which aligns itself with the religious beliefs of its core management and not every practice they undertake provides a direct manner of scrutiny in this way.

Similarly there was an argument that Indiana was different because it protected individuals in private lawsuits (as the New Mexico case was). But this is not actually that unusual either. The original interpretation and debate of RFRA included a lot of discussion surrounding private discrimination, rather than discrimination by the government in the form of "public discrimination". Private discrimination claims are typically introduced and taken up by states rather than pursued by those private individuals who are discriminated against. This is not that unusual of thinking or process. Such claims are typically involving many persons who would each have to mount a case separately for instance and the state's interest in preventing discrimination and being seen as preventing discrimination encourages it to take up large cases. The only reason this emerges is a circuit court split allowing for local or state courts to decide that this is not explicitly protected under RFRA laws (because it's not in the text usually). But a fairly standard understanding of how discrimination claims work would say that this is what is being discussed is private actors discriminating and being able to advance an affirmative defense against those claims.

There is a more compelling argument against this, to me anyway. That is that it allows religious claims to be advanced, but not necessarily taken at face value to override government interests like anti-discrimination, but does not necessarily allow non-religious claims. Say an atheist wants to discriminate for some reason, or perhaps more likely is accused of doing so. On the position of discrimination lawsuits, here I think it seems strange that a religious defense is rhetorically and ethically treated as morally superior to a secular defense and given some protection in law. In so far as religious adherents have specific practices, rituals, and requirements that are to be protected against government intrusion or permitted within reasonable accommodation by employers/businesses, and that was one of the primary intents of RFRA laws, that is perfectly understandable. Secular people tend not to have such rituals or requirements, so protecting such actions would be strange. In so far as religious adherents operate their business under the belief that it requires certain discriminatory actions, this is much less plausible as a defense. One that isn't typically being accepted anyway.

The difference of opinion for me is how to respond to that and whether to recognize it as a systemic problem in the market when it occurs or one that we can find a way around easily and resolve through the continuing and evolving standards on how society should treat one another fairly in our private transactions.