I don't care what you think

But "Weird Al" Yankovic thinks I'm pitiful. That stings

One of my favorite websites (don't call it a blog) is Why Evolution is True, launched in connection with Prof. Jerry Coyne's 2009 book of the same name. A recent post on that site led me to a story on CNN about the results of a contest to come up with "Ten Non-Commandments". It's a pretty good list, but I want to focus on just the second one.

"Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true."

This seems straightforward enough, but I think it has profound implications if we really take it seriously. And we should. On the surface, it's a simple warning to avoid wishful thinking. However, what it's really doing is subtly shifting the goal of reasoning itself. When asked to consider a given proposition, what most of us usually do is we start with our general sense of whether or not it is true. If we're good skeptics, and we want to protect ourselves against our own cognitive biases, we try to remain open-minded pending a thorough review of relevant evidence, so that our ultimate opinion will be founded on as firm a basis as possible. That's terrific. But whether we're good skeptics or not, we're giving our opinion as to whether the proposition in controversy is true.

Make a special note of that word "opinion". This simple that word that everyone understands is surprisingly tricky.There are two major types of opinion that I want to distinguish because I think the differences may be important. One kind of opinion is exemplified by aesthetic judgments. In these cases, there is simply no fact of the matter, and these opinions therefore can never be considered right or wrong. But we also use the word "opinion" to refer to provisional beliefs about matters of fact in the face of uncertainty. Predictions, for example. In my opinion, Hillary Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic nominee for President. Unlike aesthetic judgements, that is a factual claim. It is (or will be) either true or false. Also, counter-factuals. In my opinion, they would have won if the quarterback hadn't been injured. It is notoriously difficult to evaluate counter-factuals because they can't be tested, but we can still talk about what would happen if they were. We have opinions about unsolved historical mysteries. I had an opinion about the identity of Deep Throat, the Watergate informant, but it was wrong. We have opinions about whether or not celebrities are gay, or defendants are guilty, and so on. .

As New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is supposed to have said, "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts." When "opinion" means "aesthetic judgment" and "fact" means "established fact", it means exactly what it says. But when our opinions are standing in for unknown facts, the situation is quite different. When we apply that principle to those opinions, we conclude that a person is entitled to any opinion which could be true. I've seen this principle invoked in hundreds of arguments between atheists and theists. After an atheist presents a list of very good reasons to think that there is no god, the theist may reply "But that doesn't prove that there is no god. Can you deny the possibility?" Apart from moving the goalposts (the possibility of god is a very different question than the existence of god), this point implies that you are entitled to believe anything which isn't demonstrably impossible.

This may seem reasonable to you (surely it must seem reasonable to lots of people), but there's a serious problem with using certainty to distinguish fact from opinion. First of all, it's ambiguous. Do you mean that it is certain as a matter of fact, or merely that you feel certain about it? Clearly, feeling certain about something is not evidence that it is true, so that's no good. But "certainty as a matter of fact" is also a bit tricky since nothing is entirely certain. All knowledge claims are probabilistic, which means that all claims are uncertain, which means all statements of fact are actually opinions in the face of uncertainty (even if it's very, very little uncertainty). If we apply the Moynihan principle to these opinions, we have to conclude that anyone is entitled to believe anything about anything. While this is true as a matter of political liberty, it is obviously not a valid way of reasoning.

So let's look again at that Non-Commandment. The key phrase is "most likely to be true". That is a game-changer, because opinions about what is more likely to be true are opinions in the face of uncertainty. Even though each of us must reach our own estimate of the probability in question (because our estimates will be based on a whole lot of other considerations about which we will disagree), it is ultimately a matter of fact. It's objective. It may be open to debate, but it is not a matter of opinion. When you approach a question in terms of what you think is the right answer, you give yourself license to believe anything that isn't clearly impossible. But once you consider that not all possible answers are equally likely, it raises the question of whether it is ever reasonable to believe a less likely possibility over a more likely possibility.

So when I titled this post "I don't care what you think", I mean that I'm not interested in what you believe is true. That's the wrong question, and it's "just a matter of opinion". Your opinions can't challenge mine because we're each entitled to our opinions. If we disagree, it doesn't mean that (at least) one of us is wrong. I'm interested in what you think is more likely to be true because that is a matter of fact. If we disagree, and you're right, then I must be wrong.   

 I confess that most of what is attractive to me about this Non-Commandment is that it makes the case for atheism so much easier. It's hard not to conclude that the existence of god is unlikely (especially when you start loading up the concept with claims about virgin births and winged horses and such), therefore belief in god is unreasonable. Objectively unreasonable. That may be as close as we'll ever get to a definitive disproof of god, but I think it's quite close enough. However, I'm under no illusions that this little Non-Commandment is going to end religion. Plenty of people will conclude that god is more likely than not to exist for all manner of reasons, and so the debate will go on. But it will go on in terms that are a lot more favorable to atheism.

The elephant in the room

I feel like there is a topic looming over this blog that I have to address, but I'm not sure how to approach it. I'm not at all ambivalent about the issue itself, but I'm conflicted about how to talk about it. I feel like the stakes are very high, but I don't understand why that is. I have either witnessed or participated in enough of these conversations to know that they can turn very nasty very quickly. I'm also acutely aware that discussing this topic will probably alienate me from a significant portion of the audience I'm trying to reach. On the other hand, the two main goals of this blog are to address issues of consequence from an atheist perspective and to address controversies within atheism, and this topic sits at the intersection of those goals. 

The topic is feminism.

I'm surprised by both the extent and the intensity of the hostility atheists have toward feminism. Surprised and disappointed. I'm also surprised and disappointed when prominent atheists who rarely discuss political issues not directly related to atheism still go out of their way to attack feminism. I'm surprised and disappointed that this is the issue around which factions are being formed. But if I must take a side, then I must side with feminism.

If you'll allow me a brief digression, I was aware that Richard Dawkins was controversial and divisive before I knew why that was so. Around the time that "The God Delusion" was published, I started to notice that he was frequently being denounced in rather harsh terms, and I started to wonder why. Whenever I saw one of these controversies flare up online, I would always look into it, and every time I would come away with the impression that Dawkins's critics were being totally unreasonable. After this happened a few times, I gradually became of fan of Richard Dawkins, and I owe it all to his critics.

I mention this because a very similar process brought me around to feminism. It all started with "Elevatorgate". At some point I became aware that there was a raging online controversy involving this person I had never heard of before. Her name was Rebecca Watson, and wanting to see what all the fuss was about, I watched her infamous video in which she relates a personal experience about an encounter with a man in a hotel elevator. I'm not going to go through the whole story. Suffice it to say I quickly concluded that Watson's point was quite reasonable, and I was stunned and horrified by the reaction she got for it. It just seemed grossly out of proportion, and so very hateful. When I saw that other women were dealing with similarly hateful attacks in response to similarly reasonable points, I decided that it was no longer enough for me to be passively supportive of feminism in principle. That's when I became a feminist.

To tell you the truth, I really don't understand the other side of this at all. When they talk about feminism, I don't recognize what they're talking about. They describe this authoritarian monster that ruthlessly enforces a strict conformity to dogma, but I don't see any of that. Besides, how would that even work? Shouldn't there be a trail of victims: a long list of careers ended by angry feminists? I can think of many careers which have survived angry feminists, but I can't think of any that were ended.

One thing that puzzles me is that it's not enough for anti-feminists to just disagree with feminists about something. Anti-feminists seem to believe that merely expressing feminist opinions is inherently harmful in some unspecified way. In discussing the "shirtstorm" controversy, Richard Dawkins concluded not only that the shirt was perfectly appropriate, but also that it was an outrage for anyone to think otherwise. I am aware that some opinions are so vile that they are an outrage unto themselves, but I can't see how questioning the appropriateness of a shirt could ever meet that standard.

There's something weird going on here, and I'm fascinated by it, so I'm going to talk about it on this blog. You can expect me to weigh in on these kinds of controversies in future as they arise. In addition to that, I'm also interested in applying some good old-fashioned skeptical rigor to the claims of the anti-feminists, because I don't think they hold water. As for the broader picture, I believe that some women have been driven away from atheism in part due to its hostility to feminism. I think that weakens us as a movement and hurts us as a community. That sucks, and I want to help reverse it if I can.