Jesus

On this day of Easter, let us not forget this important fact: Jesus did not exist.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that there was a guy named Yeshua who came from Nazareth and preached in Jerusalem and was crucified for his beliefs.

But that's not the person that Christians are talking about when they talk about Jesus. They're talking about the son of God, born of a virgin, who performed miracles and rose from the dead. That Jesus never existed. And that Jesus is not the same person as Yeshua. If he is, then Santa Claus lived in Turkey in 300 AD.

And we know next to nothing about the "real" Jesus. The only writings we have that talk about Jesus and were written anywhere close to when he actually lived were written by Christians, and were talking about the miraculous version.

EDIT:
And it's entirely possible the "real" Jesus didn't exist either.

Moral Intuition

We usually judge moral theories with our intuition. We see what a moral theory says about a hypothetical scenario and see if that agrees with our intuition. People arguing for a particular moral theory frequently give examples of situations in which that moral theory gives an answer that most people's intuitions agree with. People arguing against a particular moral theory frequently give examples of situations in which that moral theory gives an answer the most people's intuitions disagree with.

But a lot of times the examples used are very unlikely situations. That's not a problem for the moral theory. A good moral theory should work in any situation, likely or unlikely. But it is a problem for our intuition.

Intuition is only useful in circumstances it evolved in.

Consider physics. Humans have pretty good intuition with regards to running, jumping, throwing and other things we've been doing for millions of years. But outside our relatively limited experience, our intuition is virtually useless. There's nothing intuitive about general relativity or quantum mechanics.

Which is why I don't think hypothetical problems like the Trolley Problem are useful in determining what makes a good moral theory (though they can be useful in helping us examine our intuitions). Because such hypothetical scenarios rarely reflect our normal experience, so our intuitions don't necessarily apply.

So then, the question is, if we can't trust our moral intuition, then how should we judge a moral theory?

Would Gay Marriage Lead to Polygamy?

An argument that opponents of gay marriage make is that legalizing gay marriage will inevitably lead to legalizing polygamy, which would be a bad thing, therefore gay marriage shouldn't be legalized.

As a syllogism, it's not invalid. If the premises are true, the conclusion is too. If gay marriage actually did lead inevitably to polygamy and polygamy actually were a bad thing then gay marriage is a bad thing. But neither premise is true, so the conclusion doesn't follow.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with polygamy. Past implementations of it have been sexist and bad, but then again, past implementations of regular marriage have also been sexist and bad.

And gay marriage won't lead inevitably to polygamy because they're two separate issues - and polygamy is significantly more complicated. To change straight-only marriage to include gay marriage, all you have to do is replace every instance of the word "man" and "woman" with "person" and replace every instance "husband" and "wife" with "spouse". It's not like the husband gets certain privileges the wife doesn't, at least, not anymore.

But to generalize marriage to more than two people takes more work then simply replacing "two" with "two or more", because a lot of the ways marriage currently works assumes that there are only two people involved. For example, when one spouse has a medical problem and is incapable of making a decision about what to do, the other gets to decide. How would that work if there's more than one other? What if they disagree? Also, is marriage a transitive property? That is, if A is married to B and B is married to C, does that mean that A is married to C? These are questions that never arise when marriage is restricted to pairs.

I don't have any answers to those questions, but they'll need to be answered to legalize polygamy. And legalizing gay marriage doesn't get us any closer to answering them, which is why it won't inevitably lead to polygamy.

Beware Superstimulus

All animals have evolved instincts and reactions to stimuli they ordinarily encounter. For example, birds protect things that look like eggs, because ordinarily if something looks like an egg, it is an egg. And they'll protect larger eggs rather than smaller eggs, because more resources go into creating a larger egg.

But in a scientist's lab, something that looks like an egg might not actually be an egg. And in such circumstances, birds will protect large non-eggs more than small eggs. They respond to the stimulus even when it no longer indicates what it ordinarily indicates, and the stronger the stimulus, the stronger the response.

We are just as susceptible to this as other animals. In our ancestral environment, sugar and fat were hard to come by, so when it did come by, you wanted to eat as much as you could while it lasted. So sugar and fat taste good, and they keep tasting good even when they are no longer in short supply.

Superstimuli are a large cause of today's obesity epidemic. Ice cream and cheeseburgers have more concentrated sugar and fat than anything a hunter-gatherer could get, so they trigger a stronger response.

Superstimuli apply to more than just food. Models are made-up and airbrushed to look more perfect than any real person ever could. Our modern society is inundated with superstimuli. Movies, television, computer games, the internet, porn. These all provide stronger stimuli than you could ever get otherwise. And when the stimulus becomes disconnected from the benefit it provides, the response does as well.

AlDraw on Android

I've mentioned my program AlDraw before. It's the one that lets you make cool geometrical constructions like you can see here.

Well, now I've released it as an Android app. If you have a device with Android 3.0 or higher, check it out! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=strinka.aldrawandroid

How Can You Be Moral Without God?

Some theists claim that god is needed for morality. They ask, "How can you be moral without God?"

They might as well ask "How can you be moral with God?" Or better yet, "How can you be moral?", or "What is morality?"

I don't claim to have the answers to those questions. Philosophers have been debating that for thousands of years, and have come up with many contradictory answers, so most of them have to have been wrong.

But bringing god into the question doesn't make it any better. If you say that god's commands are good, you run into the Euthyphro dilemma. Does god command what is good because it is good, or is what is good good, because god commands it?

If the answer is the former, then we're back where we started. If god doesn't determine what's good, then what does?

The alternative has some implications that don't agree with what most people would consider morality. For example, god could change what is moral on a whim, and it wouldn't be wrong. After all, if god determines morality, and it said "It's moral for me to change the laws of morality", well, it couldn't be wrong, now could it?

And consider this analogy (adapted from this). Suppose aliens came to Earth, with overwhelming technological powers. It's impossible for us to fight them, they just vaporize our weapons as soon as we try to use them. And they impose on us some rules that seem quite arbitrary. For example, no one is allowed to wear blue shirts on Tuesday. They reward people who follow their rules, and punish people who don't. Further suppose, that after some time, they eventually leave. Which do you think would be the more common reaction to their departure? "But who will stop us from wearing blue shirts on Tuesdays?" or "Thank god those terrible aliens are gone!"

If what is good is determined solely by god, then his commands would appear to us to be arbitrary. We wouldn't consider a command against murder any more important than a command against blue shirts, and we wouldn't be worried that god is needed to give such a command.

Halloween

In some ways, Halloween is a lot like Christmas and Easter. They were all Pagan holidays relating to the changing seasons that were later co-opted by Christianity, and now don't have much to do with either. We still tend to practice the Pagan rituals, but without thinking about where they came from or what they have to do with nominally Christian holidays.

But one important way that Halloween is that no one takes the mythology of Halloween seriously at all.

During other holidays, children are taught to believe in things that don't exist, whether it's Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or Jesus. But on Halloween, children are taught that all those ghosts and goblins wandering the streets are actually just other kids dressed up.

That's why Halloween is the skeptics' holiday. The lesson of other holidays is to have faith in things unseen. The lesson of Halloween is to investigate what looks mysterious and find the truth behind it.