A New Term for Intellectual Dishonesty

Secular Knowledge Integration Strategy

How Would You Describe Your Secular Knowledge Integration Strategy?

a) I discard or ignore most secular knowledge

b) I accept most secular knowledge and only discard that which blatantly contradicts Torah

c) I carefully sift secular knowledge to see if it is truly consistent with Torah

d) Other

This is not a parody. It's from a group blog for baalei teshuva -- people who have become Orthodox Jews as opposed to having been born into it.

The Yetzer Haemes (The Inclination to Truth)

In Orthodox Judaism they talk about the yetzer hatov (good inclination) and the yetzer hara (evil inclination) as components of the human psyche. It's obviously an oversimplified version of reality, but so is Freud's id/ego/superego. It can still be a useful concept.



As regular readers know, I've been thinking for a long time about how and why some people become skeptics and others, even very smart and educated ones, continue to believe in what I see as fairy tales. I've investigated various hows like compartmentalization and good, old-fashioned denial, but I haven't really gotten into the why. Why did I stop believing, while others maintain their faith or even harden it?

Subjectively, it feels to me like I have what I'll call a yetzer haemes, the inclination to truth. When I think or hear something that doesn't ring true, I feel a nagging sensation in my brain, analogous to the one I felt when I was a kid and wanted to break a rule that my parents had set, which would have been the yetzer hatov. I feel it when someone I disagree with says something that rings false, but I also feel it even when someone I agree with makes an argument that rings false. It's even caused me to delete some of my own drafts for this blog instead of posting them.

Maybe it's a function of nerdiness. I am a computer programmer, and I have (but fight) that nerd's compulsive desire to "fix" statements that are even just a little imprecise, let alone false. You know that nerd who will interject into a conversation to correct somebody's off-the-cuff remark about something totally unimportant? ("Well, actually, in ancient Rome, the aqueduct was blah blah blah...") That would be me if I hadn't learned how to shut up so I wouldn't get made fun of in middle school*.

There does seem to be a correlation between nerds and atheism. Scientists are disproportionately atheists, science fiction is full of atheism, etc. On the other hand, engineers and accountants are nerds who tend to be believers more often than programmers and scientists do, in my experience -- maybe their need for an orderly, sensible universe combined with a cautious, conservative nature overrides their desire for correctness at all costs. And anyone who knows Orthodox Jews knows there are plenty of nerds who believe, too.

So do other people just not have that yetzer? Or is it much weaker? Or have they just gotten into the habit of ignoring it or running it over? Has religion taught them to ignore it, perhaps identifying it with the yetzer hara? Is it possible that even fundamentalist religions like Orthodox Judaism really ring true to them on that level?

I guess I don't really have any answers. I just thought the concept might be worth thinking about.


*For those who still suffer from this malady, software developer and blogger Miguel de Icaza gets into it in Why you are not getting laid.

Load-bearing Beliefs vs. Cosmetic Beliefs

I've been arguing a lot recently on various other blogs, mostly about the standoff in Wisconsin between the governor and the teachers' union. (I'm for the union, obviously.) Like an idiot, I went in thinking that since my position makes a lot of sense, at least to me, I'd be able to convince the people I was arguing with to if not change their minds than at least see that there was another reasonable point of view.

Instead, I found myself responding to not to just a couple of counterpoints, but to a number of arguments multiplying so fast that I couldn't possibly keep up. I'd attack the first six, and not only would I not have convinced my opponents, but there would suddenly be six more arguments on top. If I attacked those, there would be six more. No arguments were ever conceded, either, so they could cheerfully go right back to the first six arguments if they ever ran out of new ones. This is a not a new insight -- people have compared arguing with certain people to playing Whac-a-mole.

I was thinking about how frustrating this situation is, though, and I realized that not all of the arguments are equally important. Some arguments reflect the genuine reasons the person believes in their position, while others are arguments they just think will help their case. I'd like to call these load-bearing arguments and cosmetic arguments.

Load-bearing arguments

These are the only arguments that matter. If you can convince someone that a load-bearing argument is false, then it will rock their belief. It won't necessarily convince them, because if their belief is psychologically important to them, they'll quickly shove a bunch of other arguments under there and hope they hold, but you're not wasting your time. If you could convince them that the load-bearing argument is false, it's going to at least temporarily shake their confidence.

Cosmetic Arguments

These arguments are just for show. They exist to create the appearance that the belief is supported by a vast and ever-multiplying array of arguments, but they are just decoys. Upon examination, not only do they not hold up, but you realize even this particular believer isn't convinced by them.

It's important to realize that an argument is load-bearing or cosmetic for a particular person -- it's not an objective categorization. One person's load-bearing argument might be another's cosmetic one and vice-versa. There are some arguments, though, that are always cosmetic.

Some examples

Let's take abortion. I think "God says it's wrong" is a load-bearing argument. If (obviously a big "if") you could convince a person who uses this argument either that God does not exist or that He does not say it's wrong, it would shake their belief. Again, it's possible that they would hold onto it by putting other arguments under it, but there would have been a moment when the belief was actually at risk.

"Abortion is murder," on the other hand, is a cosmetic argument for most people. If you could convince someone who says this that abortion and murder aren't exactly the same, they would likely still oppose abortion without ever wavering. That's because they don't really believe this argument in the first place -- their belief rests on a different argument entirely. (As evidence that they don't really believe abortion is murder, they would send a woman who killed a baby to jail, but would never send a woman who has an abortion to jail.)

How about our old favorite, the existence of God. I think some version of the Argument from Design is often a load-bearing argument. I'm not talking about the formal argument -- I don't think formal arguments are good representations of how people actually think -- but the genuine intuition that some intelligent being must be responsible for the dazzling complexity of the universe. If you can convince a believer that the universe *could* have come about without a designer, you will often have genuinely shaken their belief. Again, they might not be convinced, they can shove other arguments under their belief, but there will be that moment of panic. I think that's what happened to my belief in God. Hawking shook it with A Brief History of Time and Dawkins sealed the deal with The Blind Watchmaker.

That's why Darwin was so revolutionary and why he is still so reviled by many religious people -- he didn't just disprove a literal reading of Genesis, he demolished the Argument from Design as it applies to biology and human beings. Even though he didn't explain why the universe exists, how the planets formed, or even how life began, it was enough of a blow to the idea of a Designer that it convinced a lot of people, himself (probably?) included, that God does not exist.

Note that the Argument from Design is not load-bearing for all believers. Some believe that they have personally witnessed God or that they can see him in everyday life. For them, the Argument from Design is a cosmetic argument and this other thing is the load-bearing one. Convince them that the universe could have come about without God and it won't shake them. But if (huge if) you could convince them that what they experienced was a hallucination, for example, or that what they took to be God's influence was really a series of coincidences, then their belief would be rocked.

I think the Ontological Argument is a rare argument that is *always* cosmetic in all its forms:

When we hear the words "that than which a greater cannot be thought", we understand what the words convey, and what we understand exists in our thoughts. This then exists either only in our thoughts or both in thought and reality. But it cannot exist only in our thoughts, because if it existed only in our thoughts, then we could think of something greater than it, since we could think of something than which a greater cannot be thought that exists both in thought and in reality, and it is a contradiction to suppose we could think of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be thought. Hence, that than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in thought and in reality. Therefore, that than which a greater cannot be thought really does exist, and in later chapters of the Proslogion Anselm argues that this being has the traditional attributes of God like being the omnipotent creator.

I can't imagine anybody's belief rests on such an obvious gimmick.

How to Tell the Difference

Again, most arguments can be either load-bearing or cosmetic, depending on the believer. It's all about the genuine reason the believer believes, and that might be ultimately unknowable. However, I think there are some clues.

Cleverness

Some arguments are clever, and the believer might be proud of them. This is usually an indication that it came after the belief already existed and is used simply to score points -- that's why the believer is proud of it. The Ontological Argument, discussed above, is a prime example.

When I was in yeshiva, we were talking with our rabbi about the "apparent" contradiction between an omniscient God and free will. (In Orthodox Judaism, playing Resolve that Contradiction! is a popular pastime, both in casual conversation and in Torah study.) I came up with an analogy. I said we people living in this century can look back at people living in the last century and know that they chose X instead of Y and yet they still had free will. So, since God exists outside of time, it's pretty much the same thing.

The rabbi was delighted and the other students smiled and nodded and I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a clever argument. The argument, though, now that I don't believe, is obviously bullshit. Even if we allow for a God that exists "outside of time," he also must be "inside of time," because he allegedly interacted with the universe in the past. Therefore, he knew about people's choices before they made them and the contradiction still stands.

If someone had pointed out the flaw in my argument to me then, I would have shrugged and been like, "Oh yeah, good point" but my underlying belief in God (and free will) wouldn't have been shaken for even an instant. That's what makes it a cosmetic argument.

Tentativeness

Oftentimes, a believer will offer up an argument or several tentatively. Now, obviously, there's nothing wrong with offering an argument tentatively rather than confidently, especially if it's a bad one or one not yet investigated or challenged, but it's on obvious indicator that it's not load-bearing. Either the person does not yet believe the conclusion of the argument (hence the tentativeness) or the person already believes the conclusion and the argument is just cosmetic.

For example, in this thread at the great XGH's, commenter Thanbo offers four "solutions" to the same problem - the conflict between the Documentary Hypothesis and the belief that God dictated the Five Books to Moses - and adds "I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of." Clearly, regardless of the merits of the individual arguments, they are all cosmetic because if you knocked them down, it won't affect Thanbo's belief. He's sure there are others.

I find that a lot of believers who think of themselves as more open-minded (but not so open-minded that their brains fall out!) do this. They see a contradiction in their beliefs and are too "open-minded" to either pretend it doesn't exist or to pretend that any particular argument resolves it, so they'll say well this could be a solution or that could be a solution, etc. Ultimately, if you destroy every "solution" they offer, they'll just shrug and concede that it's an issue, but it won't shake their faith in the slightest.

Arguments that don't directly support the belief

Some "arguments" don't really support the belief in question. For example, Pascal's Wager is more of an attempt to convince the audience that it's in their self-interest to believe than it is an argument that the belief in question is true. Arguments that not believing would have adverse effects (religion makes me happy and healthy or it keeps me behaving) might point to explanations for a person's belief, but they aren't load-bearing because knocking them down would not directly affect the person's belief.

Conclusion

Engaging with cosmetic arguments is a waste of time if you're trying to convince a believer (in anything) that they are wrong. In the best case, defeating a cosmetic argument might cause the believer to start questioning the source of that argument, but in no case will it directly lead to a change in belief. It's probably still a waste of time to engage with a load-bearing argument since it's so hard to convince anybody of anything, but that is where you should direct your efforts if you decide to argue. It's the only one that matters.

How Smart Intellectuals Believe In Orthodox Judaism

Chana has a bizarre post today that I think explains one of the most confounding questions for us OTDers: how could smart, intellectually curious adults possibly believe that stuff?

The answer can be found in a paragraph she quotes from every Modern Orthodox intellectual's favorite rabbi, "the Rav," Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik:

The religious Jew accepts the entire Torah as a hok, both in regard to its immutability and also its unintellegibility... To be a loyal Jew is to be heroic, and heroes commit themselves without intellectual reservations. Only one who lacks the courage of commitment will belabor the "why"...

Do you see that? It's "heroic" to commit oneself to something admittedly unintelligible without intellectual reservations.

This is related to, but slightly different from the other technique I've identified that intellectual Orthodox Jews use to believe: compartmentalization. In compartmentalization, the intellectual simply chooses not to apply his/her full range of intellectual techniques to certain religious questions. (An example of compartmentalism is applying the techniques of textual criticism to the Talmud but not to the Bible, or using skepticism during one's day job as a scientist but not applying it to religion.) I've always understood compartmentalization as a technique people use when they are too scared to question their foundational beliefs.

But this is something different. This isn't turning away from the truth in fear, but rather turning away with pride. Somehow the Rav and many like him convince themselves that there is something noble ("heroic") about believing the unbelievable.

What should we call this technique? "Heroic denial?"

Compartmentalization Observed in the Wild

At the Conservative Passover seder I attended this year, the woman next to me told me that she is a middle-school ancient history teacher. I asked her if that included Egypt, and she said, "Of course."

"Let me ask you something," I said. "Is there any evidence that the Jews were ever in Egypt, outside of Jewish sources?"

She smiled and said, "You know, I was talking to my Rabbi a few days ago about how the anthropological record compares to some of the events recorded in the Torah. Basically, we decided that faith is faith and anthropology is anthropology. But faith is still important."

(Previously on compartmentalization.)

An Inside View of Scientology

An interesting slashdot comment from an ex-Scientologist on what he calls their "reality tunnel."

Orthodox Jews might find that some parts of his story hit a little close to home:

Anyone who attacks the church is either a suppressive person (2.5% of the population who are evil - think Hitler), PTS due to a connection to an SP (Potential Trouble Source - 20% of the population), or has committed various other overts and withholds (ie sins and secrets) and it trying to justify their own actions by making the Scientology seem less (because if you admitted to yourself that Scientology was the "one and only solution" then your otherwise small crime would have to weigh fairly heavily on your conscience).

It is also taught that if someone encounters the OT3 materials before being ready for them, then as part of the psychological conditioning to create "prison-planet" earth, the person may get sick and die and this is the reason it is considered "confidential" and heavily protected, and only available to members of the church past a certain level.

(Zohar, anyone?)

This "truth" or "reality tunnel" is slowly conditioned into you until you internalise it. There is a huge taboo against reading or discussing anything potentially negative or "entheta" against Scientology or the church, often the taboo will extend down to the point that you feel it is wrong to "think" about potentially negative things regarding Scientology. To do so would potentially detract from Scientology and is thus a mortal sin against humanity, or you might wind up making yourself sick. I know this, because I was brought up within the church, and through the process of leaving the church and the Scientology "reality tunnel", it took me around two years to fully confront this internal taboo to the point I could openly think and speak on the subject.

Well back to the original question of do David Miscavage, Tom Cruise and the others running the Church, truly believe in what they say? My guess is that they do, they are so fully immersed in the Scientology reality tunnel, that they cannot actually see outside of it. Once you start questioning it, the contradictions become obvious and starts to crumble fairly quickly (it can be scary if you have nothing to replace with), so instead it is accepted 100% as a matter of faith to the point that they have dedicated the whole of their lives to this mission of "clearing" the planet, and "handling" anyone who gets in their way. There is too much at stake (the whole future of mankind) to even consider the possibility that they might be wrong or deviating from their course.

The Two Belief Systems of Modern Orthodox Judaism, or Chizuk for XGH

(This post loosely based on XGH's Looking for Chizuk in all the Wrong Places.)

It seems to me that Modern Orthodoxy contains two separate belief systems: the one you pretend to believe (the Nominal Belief System) and the one you really believe (the Actual Belief Systems.) The NBS is absurd and contrary to all fact, but it has the virtue of connecting Modern Orthodoxy to traditional Orthodoxy. The ABSes do not have to be counterfactual, but supply enough meaning for people to stick around.

I think that a lot of people who have trouble with the NBS are simply uncomfortable with the tension between the NBS and the ABSes. Many, if not most, Modern Orthodox Jews do not actually believe the NBS, but have private ABSes. For whatever reason, this does not bother them. Either they don't really care that much about what's true or they've made a conscious or unconscious decision that it's worth keeping their ABS to themselves in order to remain in the community.

Here's my advice for the frum skeptics who want to remain frum: start to see the NBS as just a ritual that connects to the past, a shared lie the community has agreed to tell itself in order to maintain the lifestyle they call home. You are one of those who sees clearly that the NBS is false, but you have failed to see that many people don't really care if it's true or not; they just care that it lets them live the life they want to live.

Those of us who have realized that the NBS is not true have congratulated ourselves on our clear thinking and lack of bias. Perhaps we should also recognize that we have had an unclear perspective on the purpose of the NBS. For many or most Modern Orthodox people, it does not matter if it's true or not. If you want to leave, leave, but if you want to stay, stop being such a stickler for the truth.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." I think you need to expand that to your own religion. Believe it in the sense that you believe your wife is beautiful. You don't need to search for empirical studies demonstrating your wife's beauty, and you don't need to provide a sound philosophical treatise on why it's really inner beauty that matters. Just say that she's beautiful and recognize that she's beautiful to you and quit worrying so much about what's "really" true.

More on Noah and Orthodox Apologetics

Last week, I asked What Do Orthodox People Really Believe? Several commenters argued that many Orthodox people believe that Noah's flood was merely a regional flood and not a global one and that certain Orthodox authorities have stated that this belief is acceptable within Orthodox Judaism.

This is what drives me nuts. The story is obviously mythological, so obvious that it's hard to believe anyone who has read it wouldn't immediately see that. It's also pretty obvious that the story comes from sources alien to Judaism. Let's look at some other parts of the story, all directly from the Torah:

1. Noah was 600 years old.
2. Beings called "the sons of gods" (בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙) married "the daughters of men."
3. God decides that from now on people would live only to a hundred and twenty.
4. By the way, there were giants in those days.
5. Also, there were giants later, when the "daughters of men" bore children to "the sons of gods."
6. God became sorry and grieved that he had created men.
7. So he decided to kill all of them except Noah -- and to kill all the land animals and birds, too.
8. He tells Noah to build an ark, 300 x 50 x 30 cubits, with three levels.
9. He declares that everything on Earth and under heaven shall die.
10. He tells Noah to bring two of every kind (מִינָ֔הּ) of land animal and bird and enough food to feed them.
11. He tells Noah to bring seven of every kind of pure animal and of all birds and two of the rest.
12. The fountains of the deep and the "windows of heaven" (אֲרֻבֹּ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם) opened.
13. All the high hills under the entire heaven were covered. Then all the mountains.
    
14. The water began to recede after 150 days.
15. Noah opened the ark after 40 days.
16. God promises never to do that again.
17. Noah just happened to father the ancestor of all Canaanites, who he later cursed along with all of his descendents for "uncovering his nakedness."
18. Noah died at 900.
19. Noah's sons have sons who all formed their own peoples as well!
20. Then we enter the story of the Tower of Babel.
    

What a story! In a single narrative, we have impossible claims about humans' lifespans, a God who isn't happy with his work and kills virtually every living thing on earth, actual giants, indications of some sort of polytheistic/demigod mythology, hints at multiple authorship, hints of a flat-earth cosmology, just-so stories about how all the nations came to be, all leading up to a just-so story about how different languages came to be!

For those Orthodox people who take the whole thing as a sort of parable or myth, I have no real problem, other than questions about how they know when not to take something in the Torah as parable or myth. (And why the precise measurements of the ark?) I'm mystified, though, about those people who take the story as more-or-less history, even if it's "really" talking only about a regional flood.

Have they never read the story? Did they just settle on the first pat answer to a troubling question? What do they make of all the great sages of old who obviously took the story as history? Do they just try not to think about this stuff too much? Again, I'm wondering about the educated, intelligent, "modern" Orthodox people. What do they really believe?

(Cartoon via Stardust Musings.)

What Do Orthodox People Really Believe?

XGH has claimed that several rabbis have admitted to him in private beliefs that they would never own up to in public. I wonder, if that's true, how many other rabbis are the same way? And how many of the rank-and-file Orthodox are as well?

There are several claims which are (in my opinion) transparently false but Orthodox Judaism depends on. For example:

1. 600,000 Jews literally walked out of Egypt at one time, plus "a mixed multitude" who went with them, along with flocks and herds and "very much" cattle.
2. There was a global flood that killed all living things except those which lived peacefully together on a man-made ark for forty days and forty nights.
3. The five books of Moses were written primarily by Moses, plus or minus a few letters here and there and maybe the last eight sentences.

I know that a lot of Orthodox Jews simply assume that these claims are true. I'm sure that some others are convinced by apologetics that they are true. What of the rest, though? Are we to believe that your average, relatively intellectual Modern Orthodox Jew believes these things? Or do they disbelieve, but keep quiet?

I don't really want to call anyone out, but do people like Chana and Ezzie believe that those things are true? Or do they just not think about them? Or do they accept the apologetics without thinking about those? Or are they literally in psychological denial? What about the rabbis? Is it all a big lie to them, albeit with good intentions, like telling children that the ghost of Elijah drinks from the cup at the seder or that the tooth fairy gives you money for teeth?

I'd really love to know. It's a shame there's no way to find out, short of kidnapping a bunch of rabbis and other Orthodox Jews and submitting them to a carefully-constructed polygraph test.

Reader Poll on Global Warming

Just curious. If you wouldn't mind, please assign what chance (0% - 100%) you think that each of the following is true:

1) The Earth warmed, on average, around .75 degrees C during the 20th century.

2) The main influence of this warming was man-made greenhouse emissions.

3) Variations in solar output have had a significant influence on global warming.

4) If global warming is happening, it will have serious detrimental effects on humanity.

5) If global warming is happening, humanity is capable of halting or reversing it.

6) There was a scientific consensus on "global cooling" in the 70s.

3 Former Leaders of Ex-gay Ministry Apologize

Via Ed Brayton, 3 former leaders of ex-gay ministry apologize:

Three former leaders of Exodus International, often described as the nation's largest ex-gay ministry, publicly apologized Wednesday for the harm they said their efforts had caused many gays and lesbians who believed the group's message that sexual orientation could be changed through prayer.

Speaking at a Hollywood news conference, the former leaders of the interdenominational Christian organization said they had acted sincerely in their years of work with Exodus. But they said they had all, over time, become disillusioned with the group's ideas and concerned about what they described as the wrenching human toll of such gay conversion efforts.

...

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three, including former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, said in a joint written statement presented at the news conference. "Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates."

Now a licensed family therapist in Riverside, Bussee left Exodus in 1979 after he fell in love with a man who was a fellow ex-gay counselor with the group. He speaks out frequently against ex-gay therapies.

"God's love and forgiveness does indeed change people," said Bussee, who remains an evangelical Christian. "It changed me. It just didn't make me straight."

That must have taken a lot of guts. Kudos to them. Not that it will necessarily change anything:

Exodus' president, Alan Chambers, reached by phone at the meeting in Irvine, said he disagreed with its critics, adding that its methods have helped many people, including him.

"Exodus is here for people who want an alternative to homosexuality," Chambers said. "There are thousands of people like me who have overcome this. I think there's room for more than one opinion on this subject, and giving people options isn't dangerous."

Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage

Here's an interesting site which appears to be created by and for female Christians who are (sexually) into spanking but can't admit it to themselves:

We hope you'll enjoy your stay here. This website was created to provide a home for couples involved in a Christian Domestic Discipline marriage where they might find information and share fellowship with other CDD couples without having to wade through pornographic or warped practices of what God created for marriage...

A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is one that is set up according to Biblical standards; that is, the husband is the authority in the household. The wife is submissive to her husband as is fit in the Lord and her husband loves her as himself. He has the ultimate authority in his household, but it is tempered with the knowledge that he must answer to God for his actions and decisions. He has the authority to spank his wife for punishment, but in real CDD marriages this is taken very seriously and usually happens only rarely. CDD is so much more than just spanking. It is the husband loving the wife enough to guide and teach her, and the wife loving the husband enough to follow his leadership. A Christian marriage embodies true romance and a Christian man a true hero.

Yes, thank God we don't have to wade through pornography or warped practices! :-)

The friendly atheist demonstrates that this site has more to do with sex than with Christianity, considering they sell crotchless pantaloons, for example. He also quotes a blog post by one of the site's authors:

Okay…last night wasn’t too bad, I guess, though at one point I did think if he swatted that one spot again the spanking would no longer be quiet, despite his use of the “quiet” evil spatula. I know I’m a weinie. He knows that too, thank God, and he loves me enough not to spank me too hard no matter how irritated he is with me. However, last night was enough to remind me to keep up with my duties as his wife. I respond well to discipline. It will be a long time before I slip up on that again.

Too funny.

It's a shame when people can't admit their sexual proclivities to themselves, but you've got to admire their creativity.

Update: Maybe they aren't as deeply in denial as I first thought:

Though we recognize by its very nature this subject can be erotic, we will keep this website as clean and wholesome as possible. However, we will not seek to deny the erotic nature of some CDD marriages as we believe it is a natural consequence of following God's plan. After all, He created eroticism to be enjoyed inside a Christian marriage.