It strikes me as odd how readily some issues seem to get divided into being dealt with by one of two approaches. We either take a deeply metaphysical "nothing is ever certain" approach and allow people the maximum autonomy possible to express their beliefs, or we take a scientific, "best current theory" approach. I'm not sure I really understand the reasons why subjects get put in one or the other.

I would never deliberately offend a transgender person and I think society should accommodate their wishes where there is no risk of harm, but in conversing about the subject, I expect to be allowed to voice my own beliefs about gender (so long as they are neither incoherent, nor inciting immediate harm), which is not always the case in such debates. Furthermore, when it comes to actual potential harms, like the suicide of transgender teens, I have a duty to do what I thinks is best to prevent that harm, whether that is by lobbying government, campaigning within my social group, or just setting an example in my own personal behaviour.

As I've said before (and I've no interest in starting this debate again, I bring it up for context only), I believe that if a person sees potential harm in some belief, it is fair and reasonable of them to take what action they think is necessary to mitigate that harm i.e. they must resolve the uncertainty into what they think is most likely, they may no longer withhold judgement. In contrast, where there is no harm to be predicted, it would be grossly unreasonable to forcibly resolve an uncertainty, just for the sake of it.

Transgender issues are no different. One cannot say it is impossible that some people are born a woman in a man's body. Maybe God made them that way and so it must be true, maybe the dualists are right and this non-substantial 'mind' stuff from whence our free will derives also dictates our gender. When talking about religion, all sorts of metaphysical positions seem to be allowed, when talking about gender it all seems to get very biological of a sudden. A bit hypocritical when talking theory, but I think entirely appropriate when talking policy because of the potential harm.

Transgender teenagers have an alarmingly high suicide rate, something has to be done to reduce this and no-one is ever going to resolve the issue of whether it is possible for someone to be a man in a woman's body. If we can't use science to say a man did not walk on water (because sience is a metaphysical position that can't be proven), we certainly can't start invoking it to say that all of gender can be reduced to biology and culture, maybe gender too has a metaphysical component. But where we can see serious harms, we can, and indeed must, act nonetheless. We must pick one belief and act on it in such a way as to prevent the harm.

Personally, I think that as a society, the only fair way to resolve uncertainty into action when it is necessary is by science. Science invokes only experiences that we all share, in that it is based n the physical world. If there is no scientific evidence that brains are born women, even though they are in a man's body, then it is reasonable (no matter how uncertain we may be about that conclusion), to approach the suicidal teenager with that presumption, not play along with their delusion, just because it 'might' be true.

Don't be silly! — tom

Oh well, if I'd known that the Oxford University journal was silly I wouldn't have been citing it all these years

How about this one, specifically stating a model consistent with both causality and local determinism.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?q=http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/504/1/012015/pdf&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjTy6rS4N_YAhUCI8AKHVbxC2YQFggjMAY&usg=AOvVaw3_v7Q0Jr37DuqRGIeAsw9d

Let me if this one's silly too, maybe by process of elimination well end up with a set of respected journals we can actually trust.

Never heard of him; what has he written? — JustSomeGuy

OK, he's basically written exactly what you've just suggested (if I understand you correctly). He outlines the way in which the earth can be considered as a living thing in its own right. His theory is that the earth self-regulates to maintain homeostasis and each life form plays a part in maintaining conditions suitable for life as a whole just like each part of our body plays a part in sustaining us. It's more science than philosophy, but its along the lines of your post.

You're missing the point of what I'm saying entirely. The simple fact is that some equally intelligent people have come to an alternative conclusion, as the paper I cited shows, meaning that nothing has been proven, it has only been theorised.

Since the discovery of quantum entanglement, you can't have determinism and causality; they are incompatible unless you make a radical change to our conception of the Reality.

Also, results like the Free Will Theorems of Kochen and Conway prove you can't have determinism and causality. — tom

No one has proven anything, it is a perfectly legitimately contested theorem

http://m.oxfordscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577439.001.0001/acprof-9780199577439-chapter-14

It requires a belief in set axioms, which some authors believe beg the question.

Using experiments like this to justify a belief you choose to hold is fine, and if that belief really can no longer be justified then of course we must discard it, but presenting contested results as if they answered the question once and for all doesn't help anyone.

This is probably obvious in the context of what you're saying, but have you read any James Lovelock?

We hear a lot of this kind of nonsense from conservatives. If someone were to invent a completely useless gadget, whose properties were such that it caused harm both socially and environmentally, but due to an excellent marketing campaign it became very popular and made the inventor rich, Conservative thinking would have us believe he had justifiably 'earned' his money. Likewise someone born into wealth, invests money in the arms trade and earns a fortune.

The conclusion is that the means by which they earn their money does not have any bearing on whether their wealth is truly 'theirs' in a justified way.

So, following this logic, if a group of people get together and, by campaigning and voting in a democracy, obtain themselves a government who is willing to tax the wealthy to provide them with a UBI, how had their chosen means of earning money suddenly become unjustified?

Explain to me how you think information exists in brains. What is brain information in your book - the kind that you are claiming to be mechanically deterministic? — apokrisis

I'm not making any claims, I'm trying to understand yours. Determinism is a belief of mine. As with any reasonable belief (in my opinion) I test that belief by trying to disprove it, so the only interest to me in your argument is the extent to which determinism is necessary. That's why I'm asking how you reached your conclusion. All you've presented so far is a vague "because fundamental particles cannot be measured, we must have free-will", which is fine if you're looking to simply justify an already held belief in indeterminacy, but not really a sufficient argument to ground its necessity.

If the answer to your question helps you to explain your argument somehow, then for me information is the state of a collection of neurons, no different to the way information is the state of a collection of transistors in a computer. That state, together with inputs from the external system, determines the state in the next moment. Of course, given that this is a transition from one state to another, it could also be described as a process, but I see that as a semantic issue, not a metaphysical one.

So I’m not arguing against the ability to constrain uncertainty. I’m attacking the presumption of absolute determinism - mechanistic understanding of physical and informational processes.

The point of having a brain is to make the best choices, given an uncertain world. You seem determined to recover some kind of actual determinacy in what the brain does. But I am arguing from a systems science or hierarchy theory perspective where the causality of reality in general is understood in terms of constraints on degrees of freedom. — apokrisis

I understand the position you're arguing from, and the aim of such a position, what I'm lacking is the actual argument.

How is the brain's model of the future not determined entirely by the information it has at the current time and the neurological connections which represent its current responses to all the multitude of stimuli presented in the model?

We frequently hear how physics is not determined, but no one has yet put forward a theory explaining how that has any impact on the human brain. It seems to lead to entirely predictable determined behaviour in everything larger than a single particle, which our brain certainly is.

When we use the terms 'selfish' and 'selfless' it seems that there is an inherent meaning to both terms that we rarely have to come to terms with.

Consider someone of little wealth deciding to give all their money to an already wealthy dictatorial tyrant. Would anyone really describe such an act as selfless, merely because it dismisses the well-being of the subject in favour of another? Even if we were to concede that we'd be forced, by linguistic consistency, to say that the term applied, it would be uncomfortable to use it in such a way.

So it seems, in our common usage, we're not simply defining selfless as benefitting another 'self', but rather dissolving the 'self' in favour of the community at large. If we take this definition it resolves many of the conflicts about pleasurable (but apparently selfless) acts because the actor themselves is a member of the community they are helping, and so it is via the increase in the community's well-being that they derive their own pleasure.

Essentially the difference is not between acts that cause the actor pleasure and those that don't (but do cause pleasure to another), it is between acts which cause the actor pleasure directly and those which cause the actor pleasure simply by virtue of their being a member of a community which the act has benefitted.

See this is why Truth and Reconciliation won't work with regards to the Catholic Church's history of abuse. With slavery, apartheid, even sectarian violence we can look not just at what happened, but why it happened (the really important 'truth') so we can prevent it from happening again. This is essentially the difference between the satisfactory resolution of an atrocity and a cover-up.

People want to see the perpetrators of the atrocities brought to justice, but by and large there have been no calls for those responsible for allowing them to commit such acts to be punished similarly. With regards to the institutions, people are largely just calling for something to be done to stop it from happening again.

The trouble is, religion seems immunised from criticism in this regard, we can't have a truth and reconciliation process if one of the possible 'truths' has been ruled out before we even start. If we look into what it is about religious institutions that allows these things to happen (in order to stop it from happening again) then we have to allow that some tenet or belief within that religion might be the cause. If we rule that possibility out before the investigation has even started then no-one is going to have any faith in the process.

But humans are different in that we have evolved language and are essentially social creatures mentally organised by cultural evolution. Yes, memes.

No, many other animals have language and culture, chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants and rhesus monkeys have all been shown to have both language and cultural behaviours unique to their geography, learnt from parents, invented, modified and passed on. So if you want to make an argument that humans are different, you need to do more work than that. The rather clichéd "Our language/culture is more complex" is pretty weak without defining the level at which this happens and why.

I have no argument with this;

So freewill is a social meme. It is the cultural idea that being a human self involves being able to perceive a difference between the "unthinking" selfish or biologically instinctual level of action and a "thinking", socially informed, level of self-less action.

but this,

A human, through language, learns to perceive a world that has themselves in it as moral agent making individual choices. That then requires the individual to take "conscious responsibility" for their actions. Every action must be judged in terms of the contrast between "what I want to do" and "what I ought to do".

does not follow logically. You have to presume, for this to work, that moral behaviour is in some way opposed to natural instinctive behaviour. I don't see any evidence for this. Much of a social animal's instinctive behaviour is exactly the sort of activity we would define as moral, and much considered actions taken under the illusion of free will are behaviours we would condemn as immoral.

Putting that rather unsubstantiated assumption to one side though, your argument against determinism doesn't seem in any way related to the very neat and well-put outline of the self illusion above. You then say.

But the very fact it has to start every moment with its best guess of the future, and act on that, already means we couldn't be completely deterministic devices even if we tried.

This does not follow from anything you've said above about the illusion of self, but rather seems plucked out of thin air. Why would we presume that the brain's ability to model the future isn't entirely determined by the information is has gained up to the present and the current state of it's neural connections which together determine the picture it will generate of the future world?

You seem to have taken a lot of very insightful information about the reason the brain creates such illusions and then simply concluded "therefore no determinism", without explaining your logical process at all.

I think the problem is best resolved with the dispositionalist approach to belief of people like Ruth Marcus. By this approach, people do not believe in gravity, rather they believe that gravity will produce the effect of returning the ball to earth.

We could use this approach to allow that people do not believe in God at all, but they believe that God created the universe, in which case they need not conceive of the properties of such an entity, only its actions.

I guess the conclusion to all of this is that if you're going to believe in a creator God, you can't talk about it at all because doing so limits it to our universe. — JustSomeGuy

I agree entirely but it raises an interesting question of whether any one could actually believe in a creator God at all. Sure, they could 'say' the words, but if we've just agreed that a creator God is not something of which the human brain could conceive, then how could anyone believe in it? Can one really believe in something one cannot even conceive of? I'm not sure that sounds possible.

So, if a condition of your God is that it created the universe, you cannot say anything else about that God. — JustSomeGuy

I agree with your exposition, the logic is infallible, for your definition of God, but I don't agree that such a definition is ever the one we're using. I think that because God is a concept in our minds he can only have properties that we can conceive.

We can talk about a God that has other properties, in the same way as we can say "this statement is false", but we are not really imagining him with those properties because we can't.

We can also understand the concept that some things are outside of our understanding, but then, I think it would be disingenuous to all religion to suggest that these things are what they mean by God. God speaks to people, sends thunderbolts, works out moral systems, decides what should happen adulterers. He's very much of this world, intrinsically tied up with human affairs.

So, I agree with you entirely that a creator of the universe must logically be outside of our conception, but I don't really think a creator of the universe (complete with all the logical implications you outline) is what anyone actually has in mind when they talk about god.

You've pretty much nailed what I am trying to say (although I personally have jumped the other side of the fence on the use of the word omnipotent in that I think it is is more useful philosophically to point out it's incoherence than to define it in a useful way). Putting all that aside, your cartoon is as good a summary of what I'm saying as any.

Of course God had to be able to defy logic, because if he wasn't able to, his omnipotence would be constrained by the rock problem. His only way out of it is to say that he can create a rock he can't lift and then lift it, because he's not constrained by the laws of logic that say he can't, or that he can create such a rock because he's not constrained by the fact that such a rock is a logical impossibility. Either way he cannot be both omnipotent and constrained by logic.

If God wants to create or destroy or rearrange a world in any conceivable way then he can. He can do anything. — Michael

This is begging the question. That's what we're trying to find our, if it makes any conceivable sense that God is both omnipotent and unconstrained by logic. If you're starting from the premise that God definatly is omnipotent then you've already ruled out one of the options.

That he could choose to limit his power doesn't then entail that his power is currently limited. — Michael

He is not 'choosing' to limit his power by creating the stone, it is limited already by the logical possibility of creating such a stone.

You'll have to explain why you think such a definition of omnipotent is 'pointless' as opposed to yours because I'm not seeing any reason.

And surprise, surprise, we can choose to do just that. We can disengage a sense of oversight. — apokrisis

As I said, if you are testing an hypothesis that we have free will, the experiments will be meaningless as their results can be explained some other way; 'disassociation' as you suggest. There is, however, nothing metaphysically wrong with holding an hypothesis that we do not have free will. To some this is the only 'scientific' hypothesis as it does not require the creation of some phenomenon we have not yet demonstrated the need for. If one is testing the hypothesis that we have no free will, one would do so by trying to prove we do, and failing to do that. These experiments try to show that free will (conscious control over decisions to act) is necessarily present, but fail to find it. Thus they constitute good scientific justification for continuing with the belief that we have no free will. If you didn't have that belief in the first place you would need to look to other experiments to test your hypothesis.

But then I'm omnipotent right now. There's nothing I can't do right now until some of the Atoms in the universe organise themselves in such a way as to prevent me, which of course they will do the instant I try any impossible action, but right now I can do anything. Humes's problem of induction.

This is brilliant, I've spent the morning reading this instead of preparing for work, it's like a real life version of 'Lord of the Flies'.

Start an amusing game of lateral thinking and watch it descend into sectarianism and a desperate attempt to get other people to take responsibility for reigning-in oppression rather than escape from it ourselves.

This should definitely form part of some social psychology paper.

An excellent idea to scrutinise the details of the experiment. So often people take only the 'headline' and further investigation reveals the experiment actually showed nothing of the sort.

I would like to address a couple of points though where I not sure I entirely agree with the conclusions you draw. It's important to note first that the experiment was set up specifically to address questions raised by the original Max Plank Institute experiment on the precocity of SMA signals so many of the specific details you mention are the result of trying to answer specific questions including trying to rule out the possibility of unconscious higher decision functions other than SMA areas.

Most of the design elements you describe which limit the relevance of the experiment to Free will, in the larger sense are the result of this refinement. As far as these experiments tell us anything about free will, they really should be seen as part of a continuum of study on the neurological markers of decision making processes, rather then in isolation.

Also attention - that limited high level resource - did have a specific job to do. It needed to note the particular letter in a flow of letters that happened to coincide with the emergence of the urge. So attention was kept out of the button choice as much as possible by the experiment's design. — apokrisis

I don't think it's entirely fair to say that attention was kept out of the button choice "as much as possible". The subjects were only given a simple reading task to act as an allocator for their decision, it's not exactly calculus. I gather the experimenters added this part of the experiment to answer the question about higher sub-concious function by adding a potential initiator. They're intention was not to obfuscate by distracting the attention of the subjects, subject paying their full attention to the task had already been tested in the Max Plank experiments so there was no need to repeat that.

In all I agree with your approach to analysis, but I think it's a little unfair to suggest the conclusions of these experiments taken as a whole are just to provide a "wow" factor in the free-will debate. They are collectively very important and this particular experiment furthered some important questions resulting from previous investigations.

Like all proper scientific investigation, it is about hypothesis testing. If your hypothesis is that we have free-will, then this experiment is of no interest to you, be cause it is designed to prove concious functions precede action, hence proving the hypothesis. This experiment is important, however, for anyone whose working hypothesis is that we do not have free-will, because is has helped to support that hypothesis by trying to prove otherwise and failing to do so.

You have the astounding presumption to judge the defined-ness of other people’s beliefs based on the fact that they haven’t been defined to you.
.
There are many Theists, of many descriptions. Do you really presume to know all of their beliefs or positions, or what they mean in their communications with eachother (but not with you)? — Michael Ossipoff

Where have I said in my post that theism is undefined? All I have said is that it is perfectly rational to argue that belief in that which is undefined is not sensible. I did not once provide any examples at all of "things which are undefined", let alone presume that 'all of theism' is one such thing.

As usual with theist apologists that I've experienced, one gets even close to their fragile construct of the world and they fly off the handle. This has happened with literally every theist (bar one professor of theology) that I've ever conversed with.

Do you really presume to know all of their beliefs or positions, or what they mean in their communications with eachother (but not with you)? — Michael Ossipoff

I do not need to know all of their beliefs to draw conclusions about the beliefs I've so far been exposed to, It is a perfectly normal part of human rational investigation. We draw conclusions about the colour of Swans based on all the swans we've ever seen, we draw conclusions about the movement of objects in space based on all the objects we've ever tested, you are presuming that your communication system will work based on all the people you've ever communicated with.

No-one ever suggests that the person wary of Tigers is being ludicrous because their opinion is only based on all the Tigers they've ever heard of, rather than on all the Tigers that exist.

The problem with arguing about God's properties is that God is a concept in our heads. If we can't conceive it, then God can't do it. The whole question is back to front. We have a concept 'God' and the we ask if such a thing exists. I we cannot properly conceive of the thing we're supposed to be investigating, how can we ask ourselves if such a thing exists or not? If I asked people to investigate whether a Jabberwocky existed, the first question would be "well what is it?"

If we're to say that God can defy logic, but then admit we are incapable of conceiving of such an entity, then we are not really making a statement about 'God' (the concept in our heads) at all, because that concept is constrained by the ability of the human mind to conceive of it.

God then, if we pursue this unconstrained approach, ceases to be a meaningful concept and just becomes a place-holder for "all the things we can't conceive of", which is certainly a far cry from any religious interpretation of the deity, even Spinoza's God ceases to have any definition if it no longer is constrained by conceivability.

Although the stone paradox is a problem for essential omnipotence, it isn't a problem for accidental omnipotence. If God can create such a stone but doesn't then there's nothing he can't do. It's only if he does create the stone that he loses his omnipotence. — Michael

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make here with regards to the use of logic to resolve the paradox. If God can create such a stone, the it becomes logically possible for such a stone to exist (by God having created it). He doesn't have to actually create it for the logical possibility to derive. So as soon as we admit that God can create such a rock, the exists a logically possible thing that he cannot do. Whether he actually does it not is irrelevant.

But this doesn't tell us anything about God, it tells us about the uselessness of the term 'omnipotence'. It's like 'infinity', it's a perfectly logical term, but when you start to actually play with it, the meaning starts to break.

We could do the same stone paradox in any number of ways to eliminate the 'can/actually does' problem. Can God create a being more powerful than himself? If he can't then he is not omnipotent because we can conceive of a task he cannot do, if he can then he's not omnipotent because we (or he) can conceive of a being with greater powers.

Can God create a universe in which his existence is unnecessary? (how do we know he hasn't already done so?). Can God reverse time and create a universe such that, on going forward in time he would cease to exist? Can God create something capable of destroying God? I mean we could go on all night. Omnipotence is a meaningless concept unless constrained by what is logically possible.

Investigation and Litigation isn't going to have the same cathartic results that a Truth and Reconciliation procedure will. — Bitter Crank

You have an admirable, but I think misplaced, faith in the ability of 'Truth and Reconciliation' procedures. They work well enough in places like Northern Ireland with regards to the violence there, and probably with slavery, but that's not because they have some kind of cathartic power, it's because the whole of society has moved on, no-one sees slavery as OK any more, most people in Northern Ireland are tired of the fighting.

The moral authority of the Catholic Church is severely eroded, but is still very strong, particularly within the communities where the atrocities took place. The 2009 report of the Irish Governement into Catholic child abuse concluded not only that rape and molestation were "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages, but that the government and local community leaders were reluctant to act against them.

In 2011, abbot of Glenstal Abbey said Ireland had become "a concentration camp where [the Church] could control everything. ... And the control was really all about sex. ... It's not difficult to understand how the whole system became riddled with what we now call a scandal but in fact was a complete culture."

The Parkinson report, highlighted the way in which teachings about sin directly lead to victims being reluctant to speak out about abuse, has the Church altered it's teaching about sin? - no.

The Higgins and Macabe report highlighted the way in which teachings about papal infallibility and the moral authority of the priesthood allowed abusers to continue their abuse. Have the Church retreated from it's position about moral authority? - no.

Truth and reconciliation only works when society is already willing to accept the truth anyway.

Yes, Harry, and admittedly without a definition, you still argue against &/or presume to evaluate what you don't have a definition of. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't see anyone is arguing against or evaluating the thing that is undefined, what is being argued against or evaluated is this action/activity of believing in a thing that is not clearly defined.

Now you could justifiably make an argument that believing in a thing that is not clearly defined is OK, but it is not unreasonable in the way you claim to argue that believing in a thing that is undefined is not sensible. We may not know what the thing is, but we know what 'believing' means and we know what 'undefined' means, so all the terms in the statement "believing in things that are undefined is not sensible" are fully understood by the person making the claim.

You're right, but it doesn't take many iterations of the consequences before mapping exactly who is complicit and to what extent becomes incredibly difficult.

We can say with a high degree of certainty that Western civilisations as a whole have benefitted from the oppression of slaves and colonies, but to say that any individual has benefitted more than they have suffered simply by virtue of their birth is practically impossible.

More importantly though, I think the concept of reparation payments undermines what I hold to be an important virtue of social responsibility. If we make the claim that one group are responsible for the suffering of another by virtue of an historical linked we can establish, then we must also accept the converse; some other group is not responsible for helping to alleviate the suffering of those in their community (because no culpability can be demonstrated). That is not an ethical statement to which I hold.

I think some people might be confusing 'shame' and 'guilt'. Helen Block Lewis in Shame and Guilt in Neurosis (1971) defined the terms as - "The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, [however,] the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus"

Neurological studies by people like Tangney have since shown considerable empirical support for such a distinction. In fact, in Shame and Guilt (2002) the authors sum up their results from meta analysis of dozens of psychological tests quite bluntly: "The pattern is pretty clear-cut: guilt is good; shame is bad"

We should no feel shame for the actions of our ancestors because they were not our fault, but if we have excess while others suffer (regardless of the reason), guilt is an entirely appropriate response to doing nothing about that.

I am talking about empathy, a real biological phenomenon; your given examples have nothing to do with how empathy works. Levels of empathy vary by individual, but the vast majority of the human race feels emotional distress when they see that another is in pain, the same way we feel nauseous when we see someone vomiting. This is natural for social animals. But again-- the amount of empathy one feels depends entirely upon the individual, and some individuals lack it entirely. They have no intuitive understanding of what is considered right or wrong, and no qualms whatsoever about harming other human beings. — bioazer

You need to be careful here. Many Autistic people struggle with empathy, they (possibly) have fewer mirror neurons that neurotypical people and so find it harder to emulate other people's emotions or predict how they would feel. Autistic people, however, are some of the nicest people I've ever worked with. They make the most unbelievable faux pas socially on a regular basis, but I've never experienced a single malicious act from any of them (I've not exactly worked with hundreds mind).

If there is an intuitive, biological drive to be kind, moral or consider the well-being of others, I think empathy is the tool it most often uses, not the drive itself.

Consider the classic refutation of God's omnipotence.

Could God create a rock which was so heavy that even he could not lift it? If he can't then he is not omnipotent because there is a logically possible object that he cannot create, if he can, then he can't be omnipotent because there is a logically possible task he cannot do.

The counter argument to this is that such a rock is not logically possible because a rock which is so heavy it cannot be lifted by an omnipotent being could not exist, it would have to be more than infinitely heavy.

So the problem arises, if God is not bound by logic, then where does that leave the refutation of the limits to his omnipotence. If he is not bound by logic, then he could create such a rock which would instantly disprove his omnipotence.

If you were to even say that people can decide to support tyranny under the right circumstances, I still wouldn't call you an irrational fascist. — SonJnana

Finally, someone gets it! I feel like I've been wading through treacle, thank you for sticking with it so calmly, my exposition must be considerably poorer than I hoped it might be.

I do think we are bordering on circumstances where an argument could be made for the banning of faith schools, but then I think the same is true of boarding schools too. Given the unacceptable rate of child abuse in both of these types of institution, I just feel that putting a load of children in any institution where they are told to unquestioningly accept the moral authority of a small number of adults is a recipe for disaster, which is a view shared by many prominent sociologists and child psychiatrists. When you add to this rather toxic cocktail the fact that religious schools teach children that to suffer in this life is noble and will be rewarded in heaven, the 'harms' list starts to look too large for me.

At the very least there should be much stricter regulation of these institutions, with frequent independent checks, but that's not going to happen whilst people blindly associate religion with moral virtue in the face of clear evidence to the contrary like Cardinal Law https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/20/cardinal-bernard-law-death-survivors-react

I'm sorry but that's twice you've openly called me a fascists and that's really not acceptable.

Fascism, according to Merriam-Webster, is a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

I have advocated none of the above;

I have not even mentioned nation or race (yet you have twice presumed that the laws of America automatically equate with moral virtue).

The only vague reference to the style of government I prefer was my statement that society should be made up of the action of all it's individuals (which is pretty much the definition of democracy).

We already live in a society where economics and culture are highly regulated, they're just regulated by cultural institutions, not governments and I'm advocating giving children the freedom to think for themselves rather than indoctrinating them in some arbitrary cultural value.

As for forcible suppression of opposition, remind who is trying to ban whom?

So if a teacher in a faith school teaches that all non-believers are so evil that they deserve to be tortured for eternity, that's fine, but I'm not allowed to suggest that any religious practices not already illegal might be harmful, without being banned from debate?

No, I don't support the banning of public religious practices. What I'm speaking out in support of is the right of people to reach that conclusion if they genuinely believe it's in the best interests of society without being branded a fascist irrational zealot. I would disagree with them, but in a complex world where so many factors need to be taken into account I refuse to acknowledge that religion is somehow immune from that possibility.

You're gonna have to explain your understanding of deontology with regard to the discouraging of religion before this makes any coherent sense. — Buxtebuddha

I don't understand why, I said 'whatever effect religion is having' so it's implicit that the discouraging will be related to the effect. One might feel that preaching itself causes harm (not me, seeing as my personal opinions are becoming so important) so in that case the discouragement would have to restrict preaching, but other cases would require less intervention if the effects to be mitigated were less.

Who is we? If you're an American, there's something called the First Amendment - do you know it? — Buxtebuddha

The next entire section make the same error, conflating law with moral duty. We are not morally obliged to uphold the law (thankfully for the citizens of repressive States. Your argument about the American constitution have no bearing on whether someone could rationally conclude any religious activity should be curtailed. Are you suggesting that the American constitution is so unaliably right that it would actually be irrational to believe something in opposition to it?

. A simple, utilitarian list of pros and cons will do. — Buxtebuddha

Cons -
The discouraging of critical thinking
The absolving of moral responsibility to an authority
Religious wars
Child abuse
Psychological abuse

Pros -
Nothing that is not already replicated in atheists

And before you argue that the cons are all present in atheists too, that is irrelevant. We are trying to eradicate cons, we can eradicate atheist cons too.

fascist-like loons like yourself. — Buxtebuddha

So now I'm a fascist too, I can add that to irrational, zealot as bad as ISIS .

Personally, I think we should limit faith schools and discourage religious attitudes by rational debate, if that makes me a fascist, irrational zealot then there's clearly no place for contrary opinions here.

I'm not even going to grace the rest of your facetious response with any serious consideration.

I will try to make this really simple

1. Everyone has to decide whether to restrict religion (further than it already is), encourage religion further, or leave it as it currently is. No one can not make this decision because the options are mutually exclusive. Inaction has no less of a consequence than action (without begging the question by pre-judging that everything is fine as it is)

2. A rational moral agent will make this decision, and therefore act/not act, on the basis of the amount of harm/good they believe religion causes.

3. The extent to which religion has caused net harm/good in any of its particular facets (preaching, praying, faith schools etc) is disputed, it is not a given fact.

Therefore it is not the case (as TC, JSG etc suggested) that someone who reaches the conclusion that things need to change (in either direction) must automatically have done so with hubris and zealotry, whereas someone who reaches the conclusion that things are fine must automatically be humble and skeptical.

Either position (that things must change, or that thinks should remain the same) can be held with great hubris or with great humility. They are both just responses to the evidence about the harms/goods of religion (which everyone agrees is mixed)

At no point does my own opinion (that religious practice is fine as it is but religious education needs to be further curtailed) have any bearing on the matter. If anyone wants to discuss this particular opinion I'd be happy to on a separate thread, but that's not what I'm arguing about here, I'm arguing solely that it is unfair to label those who think that religious activities need to be curtailed (or enforced) hubristic zealots, it is an entirely reasonable conclusion that can be held with any degree of uncertainty and humility.

What is your argument, then? — Buxtebuddha

My argument;

So what I'm saying is that by failing to act in such a way as to discourage religion, you are expressing your sincere belief that it is at least OK to have religion in the world. You're not withholding judgement, nor being agnostic on the subject. Whatever effect religion has on your society you are deciding with conviction that you are happy to allow that effect to continue, by your failure to act against it.

To put it another way, we each have the same choice to make - how much religion do we think it is our duty to allow/encourage in our society, based on its consequences? How is "none" any less valid an answer to that question than "some" or "loads"? No answer can claim to be more agnostic than any other, each person answering can do so with great hubris or with great humility, what they think the answer is has no bearing on the extent to which they consider themselves to be right. — Pseudonym

My argument again;

Some people, myself included, look at this mix and conclude the bad stuff outweighs the good. But instead of our detractors being fine with that and accepting that we're also intelligent people looking a complex, mixed picture, I'm told that I'm actually irrational, that no rational person could possibly reach that conclusion, only a zealot as bad as ISIS could possibly reach such a conclusion. — Pseudonym

And again;

What does one do if one's belief leads to a conclusion where the uncertainty is very high (my theory is shaky at best), but the consequences of being right and not doing anything about is are really severe? — Pseudonym

And again;

1. It is possible that religion is harmful to society.

2. Someone could theoretically believe this with great hubris, convinced they are right, or with great humility, accepting they could well be wrong, but nonetheless concluding so on the balance of evidence. The nature of their conclusion does not in any way necessitate the degree to which they believe it.

3. Inaction has no less consequence on the world than action, it is no less a response to one's beliefs and can be carried out (if that's the right word) either with great conviction, or with great doubt.

4. It follows from 1-3 that any moral agent must make a decision about how to act (or refrain from taking action) in the face of their belief about the degree of harm/benefit religion causes society.

5. It is possible to ban all religious activity in public (no-one mentioned anything about private beliefs or private religious worship). It is possible to make religious activity mandatory.

6. People, by the collected effect of their individual actions, are responsible for the laws and customs of their society.

7. It follows from 6 that the decision one must make about one's actions in response to one's belief about the harms/benefit religion causes society will involve a decision about how much religious practice society should tolerate (by which I mean the individual exercising the small part they play in the adjusting the direction of societal laws and customs). It follows from 5 that the range of options any moral agent has to choose from with regards to the direction they wish to exercise their small influence in ranges from "none" (no public religious practices at all) to "loads" (mandatory religious practices) — Pseudonym

A brief summary here;

1. No-one is withholding judgement, everyone has made a decision (at least for the time being) to either act to push society in a different direction, or not act and so leave society as it is, in this regard.

2. The decision we each make has no bearing whatsoever on the degree of hubris or humility with which we have made that decision. — Pseudonym

One last time;

My entire point I will repeat, is that;
1. it is possible for someone to hold the belief that religion needs to be restricted for the good of society yet to hold this view without any more hubris or certainty than someone who holds the belief that religion is currently restricted to exactly the right extent.
2. If someone were to believe such a thing their moral obligation to act on that belief would be no different to the moral obligation to not act of someone who holds the belief that things are fine as they are. — Pseudonym

Did you somehow miss all that but miraculously pick up on the two words "myself included" from which to base your entire response?

Really? One mistake regarding the only mention of my view in six pages of posts and I'm "intellectually dishonest". How convenient that you now have an excuse not to respond to the entire remaining argument.

I'm sorry, as JSG has pointed out above I have mentioned the my personal view once, please accept my apologies for not noticing. The whole thrust of my argument really has nothing to do with my personal life answer and in all the long posts I had forgotten that I had mentioned it.

I agree that banning public religious practices would probably lead to worse consequences than allowing them, but I do think we have to be more careful with what we teach our children. It is not possible to teach children critical thinking (as you so rightly point out is important) and teach them that the world is as it says it is in a certain book and that all your moral decisions have been made for you by God. The need to teach critical thinking rules out the possibility of allowing certain classes of faith school.