Morality, Religion & Philosophy: March 2004 Archives

I could go on and on about the good observations to be found amidst some logical flaws in Dave Sim's anti-feminist rant "Tangent", but I haven't read the whole thing yet and I don't think I will ever have the energy to comment on such a long piece that's likely to have much I agree with intertwined with much I don't (and much that's just plain bizarre). Almost anything I could write would likely be misconstrued, to no benefit for myself or anyone else.

That said, Mr. Sim makes an assertion midway through part one that mirrors my own experience:

It is ridiculous to discuss equality between the genders as anything but a feminist hallucination until women agree to surrender their "right" to alimony. Of course women will never surrender alimony because they are not, contrary to their very vocal protestations, equal to men. A percentage of the female population is capable of providing, for themselves, the basic necessities of life. But it is a small percentage, indeed, when compared with the female population which relies on the largesse of boyfriends, husbands, ex-husbands, fathers and/or the government...

[These hidden, obfuscated transactions - the husband who finances the start-up of the wife's boutique business, the fat alimony settlement which serves the same purpose, the father who co-signs his daughter's car loan or mortgage, who pays all or part of the down-payment - compel self-deluding women to believe that they are self-reliant feminists]

...and of that small percentage a still smaller percentage of the female population is capable of generating surplus wealth - that is, creating employment, creating excess capital which provides not only for themselves but for others. That still smaller percentage exists in numbers sufficient only to make possible banner headlines and full colour photo-spreads of anecdotal success stories in Cosmo and People magazines: anecdotal success stories which are evasive of a central reality: that for every much-celebrated, much-heralded female success story in a given profession, discipline, art or business, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of male success stories in that same profession, discipline, art or business which are unheralded and uncelebrated: which are "merely" the fiscal foundation of our society and the source of our society's - and most feminists' - material wealth.

If this is false, then women are self-sustaining. If women are self-sustaining, then alimony is unnecessary and must be eliminated.

If this is true, then equality between the genders is an hallucination, a cul de sac of delusional societal "thinking".

(He had a lot of italics in there that I didn't reproduce due to laziness.) Perhaps this brief excerpt will serve as an example of how I partly agree with much of what Mr. Sim writes, even though I think he misses many important factors. For instance, many women are not self-sufficent because they do spend a lot of time and energy raising rearing children. Mr. Sim rightly decries publicly-funded daycare, but the most logical alternative (and the one he appears to prefer) is that women do the job, thereby inevitably reducing their self-sufficiency.

Nevertheless, in my experience -- even removing children from the equation -- there are far fewer self-sufficient women than self-sufficient men. Am I wrong? (I'm not particularly interested in how insensitive you perceive me to be for asking the question.)

OpinionJournal has a nice little piece about an Iraqi Christian pastor and his church in Baghdad. As I've written before, one of the greatest benefits of liberating Iraq will be the establishment of religious freedom in the heart of the Middle East (excluding, of course, Israel). Iraq's interim constitution provides equal standing to all religions while acknowledging Islam as "a source" of law, and I don't expect the Coalition to approve any final constitution that limits religious freedom more than that.

My pastor quoted some statistics about marriage on Sunday that left me skeptical; he's going to send me a link to the source because I can't find the data online myself. Supposedly:

1. 33% of marriages end in divorce. This sounds pretty much in line with other data I've seen, although I've seen projections claiming that 50% of existing marriages will end in divorce.

2. When counting only marriages solemnized with church ceremonies the divorce rate drops to 2%. I have a hard time believing this, because I'd assume more than 67% of marriages are done in churches (but I can't find national stats on this).

3. When a couple goes to church weekly the divorce rate drops to 1 in 1200. Again, I'm very skeptical. I've seen claims that divorce rates are higher than average in "Bible belt" states, for instance.

I'll post the data once I get it, but I thought I'd post the claims right now and see what you all think. Meanwhile, here's some data on how divorce correlates with other factors, including religion. Apparently, Baptists have the highest divorce rate of any Christian denomination -- higher than atheists and agnostics. (My theory: Baptists may feel more pressure to get married in the first place, and thus enter into unwise marriages at early ages. People who marry young are particularly likely to get divorced.)

Further, here's a page with very poor layout but very interesting statistics on the effects of divorce. For instance:

Divorce and Depression

The National Institute of Mental Health found that women in cohabiting relationships had much greater rates of depression than women in married relationships (second only to those twice divorced). The numbers fall as follows (annual rate of incident of depression per 100):

Married (never divorced) 1.5
Never married 2.4
Divorced once 4.1
Divorced twice 5.8
Cohabiting 5.1

Lee Robins and Darrel Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 64. ...

Pre-Marital Births

The risks for teen births for unmarried women are as follows:

Study Population Two-Parents One-Parent
NLSY 11% 27%
PSID 14% 31%
HSB* 14% 19%
NSFH 20% 30%

* [Adolescent girls who became pregnant in school are less likely to finish high school. This accounts for the smaller disparity between the two family forms in a school-based survey like The High School and Beyond Study (HSB).]

McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994, p. 53.

Does divorce cause all the problems described, or is it merely a coincident effect? I don't know, but I do know that as long as a marriage remains intact there's hope for renewal and rejuvination -- once it's destroyed the damage is permanent.

I'm not sure how much weight to give an argument that something shouldn't be killed because it can feel pain. After all, no one denies that cows feel pain and I have no problem eating them.

But a judge in New York has decided to allow expert testimony by a pediatrician who says a fetus can feel pain during an abortion. The National Abortion Federation and the ACLU are challenging the recent partial-birth abortion ban Congress passed last year, and the government lawyers defending the law think the testimony is relevant.

A pediatrician who says a fetus can feel pain during an abortion will be allowed to testify in a legal challenge to a new law banning a type of late-term abortion, a judge has ruled. ...

The judge rejected arguments from the National Abortion Federation (news - web sites) that the testimony would be irrelevant and unreliable. ...

The judge said the doctor's testimony will help him assess Congress' findings that the procedure is "brutal and inhumane" and that "the child will fully experience the pain associated with piercing his or her skull and sucking out his or her brain."

I think I agree with the NAF, but the Congressional findings confuse the issue. The real question isn't whether or not the baby can feel pain, but whether or not the baby is a human being with a right to life. If not, then it doesn't matter whether there's pain involved -- we hurt non-human things all the time when it suits our purposes, and most people don't have a problem with that. If the baby is a person then it still doesn't matter because you can't kill people, painlessly or not.

What confuses the issue is Congress' use of the word "inhumane". Treating non-humans in an "inhumane" matter is inconsequential, by definition. So is Congress implying that unborn babies (at least at this stage of life) are human? Apparently so. That seems far more significant than the question of whether or not the baby feels pain.

In a comment to the earlier post, Kimberly points to some Census and CDC statistics that show that poverty and early child-birth go hand-in-hand. We can see that more blacks and Hispanics live in poverty than whites and Asians, and that they also tend to have first children at an earlier age. "The tables show that the largest percentage of first children are born to 25-29 year olds for Whites, and 30-34 year olds for Asians. But for blacks, the largest category is at 15-19 years, and for Hispanics, it's at 20-24 years."

As Kimberly points out, correlation doesn't prove causation. What's interesting though is that these statistics for first-births obviously don't include abortions, and black women have approximately three times as many abotions per capita as the average woman across all races. I don't know the stats for Hispanic women or Asian women.

I don't know how much blacks are suffering from direct racism these days, but I do think their subculture is still suffering the effects of past discrimination. As subcultural lines break down over time and the various American subcultures continue to mix, these effects should be mitigated. As for Hispanics, the problem isn't discrimination so much as the fact that many Hispanic families haven't been in the country for very long yet and haven't had time to assimilate.

For a fun and newsworthy example of how children can be harmed by selfish parents who divorce or don't bother getting married, read up on the story of the 9-year-old girl at the center of the "under God" pledge case that's coming up before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The case was brought by Michael Newdow (search), an atheist who does not want his 9-year-old daughter exposed to the phrase "under God," which Congress inserted in 1954 in a Cold War expression of abhorrence of godless communism. [editorialize much? -- MW]

The girl's mother, Sandra Banning (search), is a born-again Christian locked in a bitter custody dispute with Newdow, whom she never married. Backed by former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, she has told the justices that her daughter has no objection to reciting "under God" in school each day. ...

The acrimony between Banning and Newdow is intense. They could not even agree whether the fourth-grader in the Elk Grove school district near Sacramento could attend the Supreme Court arguments. ...

Banning, who regularly takes her daughter to the Calvary Chapel of Laguna Creek, said she became romantically involved with Newdow after she divorced another man — a brief period when she "lost sight" of her faith.

"At that time in my life, I wasn't participating with my faith or going to church. As a result, in our dating relationship, I did get pregnant," said Banning, who does clerical work at home.

Good work. You know, it's pretty easy to avoid pregnancy these days.

Newdow himself sounds like the type of guy that needs to get his butt kicked on general principles.

Newdow said he studied to became a doctor at the University of California at Los Angeles, to help people, then got a law degree at the University of Michigan so he could sue doctors. He made a fortune in medicine. And now his legal battles consume most of his time.

Newdow also challenged — unsuccessfully — the religious invocation at the inauguration of President Bush. He is also challenging a California law requiring him to pay Banning's legal fees in their custody battle — more than $300,000 in all.

But anyway, the reason he apparently lost shared custody of his daughter is ridiculous.

As for his daughter, Newdow said he was partially stripped of custody rights because when the girl was 5, he let her enter a bathroom by herself at an airport.

"I lost custody because I let my daughter go pee!" he exclaimed. "When she came out, I told her she needed to tell her mom, because she would be proud."

The girl's mother said the child was put in danger.

And if he'd taken her into the restroom himself he'd be sued for child abuse or something.

Poor girl. Both of her parents sound pretty idiotic, and now she's being used for publicity purposes in one of the highest-profile Supreme Court cases of our time. Do you think all these shenanigans may end up being more harmful to her than saying the Pledge of Allegiance?

I stole the first part of my title from FoxNews because I liked it so much. Apparently, the FCC has ruled that using the f-word is profane.

The Federal Communications Commission (search) on Thursday overruled its staff and declared that an expletive uttered by rock star Bono (search) on NBC last year was both indecent and profane. The agency made it clear that virtually any use of the F-word was inappropriate for over-the-air radio and television.

"The 'F-word' is one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language," the commission said Thursday. "The fact that the use of this word may have been unintentional is irrelevant; it still has the same effect of exposing children to indecent language."

Well sure, but that's not what profane primarily means:

pro·fane ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-fn, pr-)
adj.
1. Marked by contempt or irreverence for what is sacred.
2. Nonreligious in subject matter, form, or use; secular: sacred and profane music.
3. Not admitted into a body of secret knowledge or ritual; uninitiated.
4. Vulgar; coarse.

The original purpose of the prohibition on "profanity" was clearly to prevent broadcasters from defaming God, as the AP reporter notes farther down.

The decision also marked the first time that the FCC cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God's divinity.

As this 2003 decision from the FCC asserts, bans on profanity are probably not legal anymore.

The United States Supreme Court has also struck down a state statute banning "sacrilegious" movies as violative of the First and Fourteenth amendments. Burstyn v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952). In so ruling the court stated: "[i]t is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine. ..." Id. at 505.

There's a world of difference between true and honest, and between false and deceptive. Something can be true without being honest, and false without being deceptive -- and vice versa in both cases.

Most people think lying is wrong, and what we generally object to isn't saying things that are false but saying things that are deceptive. There are many circumstances in which making false statements is acceptable, or even laudable. For instance, fictional writing is all, by definition, false, but unless the author tries to disguise his fiction as fact no one is bothered. There are even many games that require players to make false statements and to be deceptive within the context of the game -- no one has moral objections to bluffing in poker because that's how the game is played; bluffing is expected in general, even if people are deceived in a particular instance. At an even more serious level, criminal defense lawyers are expected to be deceptive (within the bounds of the law (the "game")) and to put on the most vigorous defense possible for their client. This moral allowance -- if you want to call it that -- helps ensure that the innocent aren't wrongly convicted.

On the flip side, everyone knows it's possible to speak the absolute truth and still be deceptive. For example, imagine the following exchange:

A: I think everyone should give $100 to the soup kitchen!
B: That's a good idea, are you going to?
A: Everyone should!

A hasn't actually answered B's question, but it would be easy for B to infer from A's response that A is going to give $100. The question of deception hinges on whether or not A actually implied that, given the context. "Everyone should" doesn't mean "I will", and it only directly implies "I should". Most people in B's place wouldn't be entirely decieved and would recognize that A left himself some wiggle room, but people would also be restrained by common courtesy from asking the follow-up: "I agree they should, but will you?"

Attempts to clarify and eliminate wiggle room are generally seen as rude, partly because they imply that the questioner doesn't trust the original speaker. More than that though, I think it's generally recognized that if someone doesn't want to give a straight answer, that itself is an answer.

As for the ethical question, false statements are clearly not prima facie immoral. Deceptive statements may be immoral, given the larger context and the rules governing the game being played. Spies and secret agents must lie to protect their identities, but they're expected to do so and only condemned if they deceive the wrong people and betray the group they should be loyal to. Hence, an American spying on America for Russia is immoral, but an American spying on Russia for America is acceptable.

(The context is even larger than that, however: an American may think a Russian spying on Russia for America is moral because America's goals are more noble. Ends must almost always be used to justify the means when moral questions revolve around international affairs and sovereign nations. If you don't agree, consider people who deceived the Nazis in order to shelter Jews during the Holocaust.)

Finally, let me compare deception with killing. We have a special term for immoral killing: murder. We need a similar word for immoral deception. Not all killing is immoral, and neither is all lying or all deception. The Bible puts it pretty clearly:

Exodus 20:16 You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

Not all lying or deception is condemned here, but only false statements of truth in a formal setting against someone you should be loyal to. That's not a very high standard when you really consider it, and I think the requirements for moral behavior are often greater, depending on context. This command gives us a good foundation to build upon, though.

The issue of honesty is actually quite mysterious, and there is no existing theory to explain why humans are so honest. In any given instance it can be incredibly advantageous to be deceptive, and humans don't generally give long-term consequences much weight. It has been proposed that enforcement of long-term consequences for deception can explain honesty, but simulations have shown that the costs of enforcement are higher than the cost of deception over time. I have a thought on how to solve this shortcoming, but I'll write more about it later.

I work with kids of all ages (and young adults) at church, and I tell them frequently -- particularly the girls -- that the surest way to ensure a life of poverty and hardship is to have a child outside of marriage. Now I've got some statistics to back that up.

Children of all races and ethnic groups who live in homes with married parents are less likely to live in poverty, new census data show.

More than 95 percent of white children who lived with married parents in April 2000 had incomes above the poverty line, said the new report, which is based on Census 2000 data.

Similarly, more than 80 percent of Hispanic children, 81 percent of American Indian children and 88 percent of black and Asian children escaped poverty if they lived with married parents.

Here are some overall povery statistics from the Census Bureau.

Overall, 16% of children live in poverty according to the Washington Times article, but the Census Bureau says 20.8%, including around 30% of blacks and Hispanics.

Comparing the CB numbers with the WT numbers: 12% black children with married parents are poor vs. 30% of black children without married parents; 20% of Hispanic children with married parents are poor vs. 30% of Hispanic children without married parents.

There are many other factors that contribute to poverty as well, but trying to raise children outside of marriage is certainly one of the most important.

Donald Sensing has a post up with excerpts of some good information about modern love and marriage in response to a great post by Dean Esmay on teen pregnancy. From Mr. Esmay:

Now, an interesting thing to contemplate is that we as a society may be making a mistake to encourage people to wait so long to get married and have kids. At times I think it's a huge mistake. I could write a whole essay defending that, but here's a basic point to ponder: one of the biggest frustrations for women these days is that they delay and delay and delay having kids, put tons of time into career, then find themselves in their 30s with their biological alarm clocks going off, frantically thinking about having kids. Then when they have kids, they get hugely frustrated because balancing career and childrearing is exhausting.

But what if you had 2-3 kids by the time you were 21, and then stopped having them? By the time you were in your mid-30s, you would have the next 30-40 years of your life to develop career, go to school, and persue outside interests. You'd also be able to begin playing with your own grandchildren while you were still young and vital, if your daughters started having kids at the same age you did. If this were widespread, it would be normal for parents to help their children start raising their own babies. Extended families would probably be more common, and the whole kids-vs.-career struggle would be hugely ameliorated. A woman in her early 30s would be in the prime of life, with endless possibilities still ahead of her to do whatever she wanted, with no worries at all about her "biological clock ticking," for she'd have taken care of that business long ago! ...

Listen up: I grew up knowing a lot of girls who got pregnant in their teens. Not a single one of them did not know how pregnancy occurred. Not a single one of them was unaware that she could get pregnant. Not a single one of them lacked access to birth control. Every single one of them got pregnant by choice. Sure, some of them would lie and say they "didn't know you could get pregnant just doing it once," or that it was an "accident," but the truth they just said that to make the adults happy. Every single one of them really knew better. They did it anyway.

Not everything Mr. Esmay says is entirely accurate, by my understanding. While women did marry quite young by modern standards, men generally had to wait until they could afford to keep a wife (and the kids that would inevitably come soon after marriage). It's only recently that men and women near the same ages marry each other, and one can only speculate on the effect it's having on our civilization. Nothing is more fundamental to a species than its reproductive cycle, and I'm certain that these changes have wide-ranging effects, both subtle and obvious.

It's odd to me that females are continuing to hit menarche at ever earlier ages, even as the age that women give birth to their first child continues to rise. This suggests that there is some reproductive benefit to starting menstruation younger, other than the obvious benefit that would be gained if women were also having children at younger ages.

I expect that much of the listlessness of today's youth arises from the fact that they're biologically capable of starting a family, but socially prohibited. I'm not saying this is a bad thing -- the immediate benefits certainly outweigh the costs, or it wouldn't be happening -- but what are the long-term costs? Our society couldn't function without a core cadre of highly-trained college graduates, and as technology advances it's possible that the size of that required core may increase relative to the population. If that's the case, then it may be necessary for the average child-bearing age to rise.

However, in my opinion much of our population is ever-educated. Many people go to college, learn almost nothing, waste 4 (or 5, or 6) years, and then get a job they could have done right out of high school. Not only is this a drain on our economy and a waste of resources for all parties, but college generally delays the decision to get married and have kids.

Reproduction touches every aspect of human society, and I have no doubt there are nearly an infinite number of factors that contribute to and result from these cultural trends. It's possible that our "cultural depravity" is one result and our technological progress is another. Maybe you can't have one without the other. Personally, I don't believe there was a "cultural golden age" in which morally sound values ruled the day, so I'm not sure we've sacrificed anything substantial in that regard. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though.

Update:
Here's some info I dug up about marriage ages throughout history.

Ancient Greeks married at age 30 for men, 15 for women (when females hit puberty back then).

Europeans in the Middle Ages did similarly.

19th and 20th Century Americans married later, with both men and women in their 20s.

Elizabethan Brits married pretty old, apparently.

Eugene Volokh points to an interesting AP story about a woman who allowed one of her babies to die rather than have a Caesarean section to deliver her twins at her doctor's recommendation. Prof. Volokh says:

A really tough issue: On the one hand, I'm skittish about any legal requirement that someone get surgery, even to save her child's life. On the other hand, parents do rightly have a legal obligation to take care of their children, and it may well be that this obligation does extend even to going under the knife. Thought experiment: Should the law be able to force a parent -- on pain of a murder conviction -- to donate bone marrow to save a child's life? Should it be able to do so, but only on pain of conviction of a lesser offense, such as involuntary manslaughter or child neglect?

Incidentally, while this naturally brings up an analogy to the constitutional right to an abortion, the analogy is complex. U.S. constitutional law actually recognizes two different rights to an abortion: A categorical right pre-viability, and a right post-viability when the abortion is needed to preserve the mother's life or health. The first right is surely not implicated here; the baby (and I feel quite comfortable calling it a baby) died at gestational age 9 months. The second right, though, is potentially implicated; the argument would be that it is potentially harmful to a woman's health to have a caesarean section.

But, as he notes, the vast majority of Caesarean sections do not result in any complications or permanent injury.

Society requires parents to make many sacrifices for their kids: feed them, clothe them, shelter them, &c. The difference is that once the child is born the mother can put him up for adoption if she really doesn't want him. In this circumstance, therewas no way to transfer responsibility for the baby away from the mother.

That fact doesn't bother me, however. In this instance the mother clearly had accepted the responsibility of pregnancy and delivery, but later decided to chicken out after the point of no return (legally and morally, even though those points may not be the same).

I think a large part of the problem with the modern approach to children, abortion, pregnancy, and so forth is that the parents think it's all about them. They want kids, or they don't, and at every stage there's a failure to recognize that there are more lives than their own in the balance. The mother in this story wasn't even worried about her own health, she was worried that the surgery would leave an unattractive scar. That avoiding such a fate would kill her child was inconsequential.

Here are the earlier posts. There's much to reply to and clarify, so let's have at it.

To briefly respond to Mr. Katz's most recent comments, let me reiterate that I hold the study of humanity in the second-highest possible esteem, right after the study of God. I didn't go into Computer Science because I love computers, I went into Computer Science because I believe it's the best existing discipline for studying humanity -- which is why I'm specializing in artificial intelligence. AI is the closest field to -- if you will -- applied divinity. Such a comparison is molehills to mountains, but nowhere else does humanity strive towards the greatest of God's accomplishments.

In the process of my university education, I've taken many graduate classes in what many might call the "scientific humanities": psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and so forth. I learned a lot, but was frustrated that none of them seemed to go anywhere. As Marvin Minsky said about philosophy, these fields speculate on the nature of man, but they don't have the tools necessary for actual comprehension.

Mr. Katz writes:

In a sense, then, the giants of the humanities are those most steeped in humanitas. Often, their expression of this quality will be tacit or inherently embedded in the incidental language of a particular discipline. Often they will be able to apply it to a science in ways that scientists would never have considered. Michael writes of "the underlying philosophy" of the humanities and of the sciences, but the only unifying philosophy of the former is the search for Truth, and the latter is defined by process, not philosophy.

Anyone who thinks the humanities are about "the search for Truth" is drinking the kool-aid. That may be the ideal, but unfortunately reality has a way of spoiling things. In my experience, the humanities are about the same things as the sciences: getting grants, writing books, getting famous, making money. The real question is whether or not anything worthwhile is accomplished in the meantime, incidental to the motivations of the actors. Because of the scientific process, when people get rich and famous it's generally because they come up with something useful. (Some of the more applied humanities lean in this direction also, such as economics.)

Mr. Katz's conclusion misses the point of my position, I think.

This applies only in a limited way to Michael, but what worries me is modern society's willingness to see science as a philosophy of itself, an arbiter of morality, and to insist not only that it is an important contribution to humanity, but that other pursuits are hardly worth improving upon — or even pursuing, really, except as hobbies — by comparison.

I think the problem is that society refuses to recognize that much of "science" is little more than a philosophy or religion (like secular humanism). As far as the discussion at hand, if the reader takes away anything of value it should be the idea that the humanities are too valuable for our society to continue teaching them in such a sloppy manner.

Marc Comtois comments further with some anecdotes from his own life as both an engineer and a historian (like Clayton Cramer). He agrees that there's more money to be made in science, which seems obvious, despite Mr. Leher's claims that "wages tend to equalize after a few years". I need to see some hard data before I'll believe that.

Justin Katz provokes me to further discussion on the entitled topic by contending that I missed the point of the piece I was commenting on.

Lehrer's suggestion is that the humanities aren't treated with the same degree of academic rigor, and this factor, along with the appreciation that corresponds to greater rigor, push particularly bright students toward the sciences. It isn't that, as Michael concludes, "there are fewer people who can succeed in the sciences than who can succeed in the humanities." To the extent that Lehrer's analysis supports claims either way, the opposite would seem to be the case: fewer people can succeed in the humanities, but those people can also succeed in the sciences, so they go where the rewards seem to be.

As my brother implied in a comment to the previous post, much depends on how you define "success". A higher percentage of people who earn science degrees will go on to use those degrees to greater profit than will those who earn humanities degrees.

Since we're mostly relying on anecdotal data, I know no one who has earned a degree in a scientific field who could not have obtained an equivalent degree in the humanities, should he have so desired. I know plenty of people with humanities degrees who couldn't possibly have earned a scientific degree.

I certainly agree that the humanities are less rigorous than the sciences, but I don't share Mr. Katz's confidence that this shortcoming -- if you see it as such -- is anything but inherent in the philosophy. Likewise, science isn't important or better -- if you see it as such -- because of the surface-level subject matter, but rather because of the underlying philosophy. Indeed, I would argue that Computer Science is the pinnacle of of both science and the humanities.

Consider this quote by the famed philosopher Marvin Minsky.

I think that Computer Science is the most important thing that's happened since the invention of writing. Fifty years ago, in the 1950s, human thinkers learned for the first time how to describe complicated machines. We invented something called computer programming language, and for the first time people had a way to describe complicated processes and systems, systems made of thousands of little parts all connected together: networks. Before 1950 there was no language to discuss this, no way for two people to exchange ideas about complicated machines. Why is that important to understand? Because that's what we are. Computer Science is important, but that importance has nothing to do with computers. Computer Science is a new philosophy about complicated processes, about life, about artificial life and natural life, about artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. It can help us understand our brain. It can help us understand how we learn and what knowledge is.

Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, and other philosophers didn't know that you need an operating system, the part of the brain that does all of the housework for the other parts, to use knowledge. So all philosophy, I think, is stupid. It was very good to try to make philosophy. Those people tried to make theories of thinking, theories of knowledge, theories of ethics, and theories of art, but they were like babies because they had no words to describe the processes or the data. How does one part of the brain read the processes in another part of the brain and use them to solve a problem? No one knows, and before 1960 no one asked. In a computer the data is alive. If you read philosophy you will find that they were very smart people. But they had no idea of the possibilities of how thinking might work. So I advise all students to read some philosophy and with great sympathy, not to understand what the philosopher said, but to feel compassionate and say, "Think of those poor people years ago who tried so hard to cook without ingredients, who tried to build a house without wood and nails, who tried to build a car without steel, rubber or gasoline." So look at philosophy with sympathy, but don't look for knowledge. There is none.

I rarely read or quote Andrew Sullivan anymore, largely because of the vitriolic nonsense he spews over the gay marriage issue; it bores me and leaves me dumber for having read it.

I want to address one particular post of his that I only noticed because Justin Katz is tearing Mr. Sullivan apart over larger topics.

Mr. Sullivan didn't like the movie The Passion, and doesn't much like its creator either -- even going so far as to call Mel Gibson a "heretic" using language that palpably longs to burn him at the nearest stake.

I'm tired of people believing that Gibson is representing Catholicism. He isn't. He is a rebel against Catholicism, specifically the reformed, open, repentant Catholicism of the Second Vatican Council. Gibson doesn't recognize the authority of the current Pope; he doesn't recognize the current mass - the central ritual of Catholics across the world. People are mistaken in believing that he merely prefers the Latin mass; he doesn't. He favors the Tridentine mass, a relic. He believes that all non-Catholics are going to hell, another heresy. He is clearly and palpably anti-Semitic. His movie is an act of aggression against Jews, and, as such, is an act of aggression against Catholicism and the current Pope's heroic efforts to confront the shameful history of the Church with regard to the Jewish people.

Further, on Mr. Gibson's obvious anti-Semitism:

[T]hat Gibson would use the message of Christ to advance it is what makes it doubly unforgivable.

For the first part, Mr. Sullivan gives absolutely no indication of where he gets his information. Some of the facts may be right, but where are they from? As for his characterizations of Mr. Gibson's opinions, those most certainly require some sourcing if anyone is going to take them seriously.

"He believes that all non-Catholics are going to hell, another heresy." Has he said this? If so, I'd very much like to know when and where. I doubt he has though, because his critics would have plastered it up on a billboard long before now, considering some of his biggest supporters are non-Catholic evangelicals. Further, Mr. Gibson has spent a great deal of time meeting with protestant religious leaders during the course of promoting his movie, and from what I've read by Christians I know here in Southern California no one got the impression that Mr. Gibson was anything but sincere. (Then again, he's an actor!)

"He is clearly and palpably anti-Semitic." It's so clear that there's a major controversy over the truth of that "fact", and most people -- across the spectrum -- apparently disagree with Mr. Sullivan. Probably because most people are stupid and...

not familiar with the medieval tropes that signal evil and that Gibson trafficks in. Gibson knows. And he knows how his movie will play in those parts of the world where anti-Semitic tropes are still recognized.

How clever of Mr. Gibson to package his anti-Semitism so subtly that it will be ineffective! Except in other parts of the world that are already anti-Semetic. If you already hate Jews, here's more fodder -- but anti-Semites show a tendency to blame Jews for everything and hardly need rational justification.

"[T]hat Gibson would use the message of Christ to advance it is what makes it doubly unforgivable." I wasn't aware that anti-Semitism is unforgivable. I'm no expert on Catholic doctrine, but my general understanding is that nothing is completely unforgivable. Who's the heretic now?

Andrew Sullivan is a mean, hateful, anti-Melite.

Update:
Here's a quote from an interview Mr. Gibson gave to the Austrailian Herald Sun, in which he says that non-Catholics are indeed hell-bound.

Gibson was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, and the reporter asked the star if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. “There is no salvation for those outside the Church,” Gibson replied. “I believe it.”

He elaborated: “Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."

It sounds to me like he knows he's supposed to believe it because the Pope (that's "the chair", right?) says so. If he really does believe it, his actions don't show it. But if the Pope says it then it isn't heretical (to Catholics), as Andrew Sullivan claimed, right? Eh, I don't know, the whole Catholic Church thing confuses me sometimes.