I found this excellent article on Iranpressnews. It asks the insightful question why does the fate of Muslim women suffering under oppressive regimes not appear to matter to western feminists? And offers an insightful critique of the banalities and trivialities of western feminism.

When I was teaching the history of early modern philosophy at Otago last year, one of my students told me I reminded them of Dr Jim Flynn. This was supposed to be a compliment. Flynn was highly regarded at Otago even those who considered themselves conservatives had good things to say about Flynn. I knew him by reputation only, having never had the privilege of meeting him. I did however learn one thing about Flynn during my stint at Otago: he is a left wing activist who is militantly secular.

Recently Flynn has attracted negative attention for these comments.

"I do have faith in science, and science may give us something that renders conception impossible unless you take an antidote,"

"You could of course have a chemical in the water supply and have to take an antidote. If you had contraception made easier by progress, then every child is a wanted child."

Flynn here seems to view a situation where contraception was placed in the water supply an example of progress. Many have interpreted this to mean that Dr Flynn believes that the government should put contraceptive in the water supply? Flynn has claimed this is a misrepresentation of his comments.

Dr Flynn told the Otago Daily Times he was merely trying to illustrate a point,
not seriously suggesting contraception in the water supply. Considering the opposition to fluoride in the water, such a scheme would never go ahead, he said.
But to have a contraception device that meant women had to take action to get pregnant instead of having to take a pill not to get pregnant, "would be wonderful". "It doesn't seem to me too controversial at all."

What really bothers me in this quote is that Flynn only states that such a policy is politically unfeasible. He does not appear to think it is unjust or violates people’s rights. I think this fact illustrates something important about the political culture in which we live.

First let me state why I believe a policy of putting contraceptives in the water supply is unjust. It violates a persons freedom of religion. Let me explain: As a Christian Theist I believe that every person has a sacred responsibility to carefully consider ones conscience and act in accord with what one considers to be Gods will. The existence of this responsibility entails a freedom or right to carry it out. Now according to Roman Catholic teaching artificial contraception is a mortal sin which violates natural law. While this teaching is popularly associated with Catholicism Catholics are not alone in believing it, many of the Protestant Reformers also held this view, and many Protestants still do. Now I happen to disagree with them. I do not think contraception violates the law of God. However, I do acknowledge that these people believe sincerely that God commands this and because of this they have a right to refrain from using contraception if they choose. They have right not just to opt out of contraceptive practises but to not opt in in the first place.

Now, there is an obvious objection to this argument: freedom of religion is a only prima facie right. Consider Sati a Hindu practise whereby a wife is burnt alive at her husband’s cremation. This practise was justly suppressed by the British in India. This however shows that freedom of religion is only a prima facie right and it can be overridden by other more weighty principles such as “do not kill innocent human beings”.

But this is precisely where I see the battle lines being drawn in contemporary culture. While there is a broad consensus that there exists a prima facie right to freedom of religion. There is no consensus on when is it appropriate to override this prima facie right? Are you permitted to do so only when the religion advocates engaging in a seriously immoral action like homicide? Or is the promotion of social utility sufficient to override it? To make things specific: If it is good that every child be a wanted child is this good of sufficient weight to override the prima facie right to freedom of religion?

This brings me to a crucial point: How one answer’s this question in fact depends on the theological perspective one adopts.

Suppose one believes that belief in God is irrational on par with belief in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy and those traditional views about sexuality and procreation are simply homophobic misogynist bigotry. Suppose one is also a secular utilitarian and believes our duties consist not of following commands but of doing whatever maximises net utility. Then one is not going to grant the freedom to follow what one believes God commands a huge amount of weight in ones reasoning. Suppose a person stated that he was opposed to a utility maximising policy because he thought Santa Claus had informed him that Aryans’ were the superior race and this policy prevented him and his community living in accord with that belief. How many people would cease to support the policy? Most I think would be unmoved.

On the other hand suppose one believes that God exists, that he issues commands to human beings that constitute our moral duties and that God holds people accountable for how well they discharge these duties. Then one will grant the freedom to act in accord with what believes to be Gods will much higher weight. Moreover, seeing one sees morality as “a set of rules or precepts of conduct, constituting a divine law”[1] one will not find utilitarian justifications of social policy plausible.

Returning to the policy of putting contraception in the water supply from the perspective of some secular leftists there is nothing unjust about this policy. True the policy violates freedom of religion if that freedom is understood in Christian context. However, if we remove this right from this context and replace it with a secular context freedom of religion can be re-contextualised. Re-contextualised in a manner where Roman Catholicism does not fall under it. And where the freedom to be an evangelical protestant is viewed the same way current society views a Nazis freedom to be a Nazi something begrudging deferred to when the matter is not to serious, but easily overridden by important social policy.


[1] Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 6.

A little while ago a friend and I were discussing New Zealand politics with an American associate. My friend spoke of how he was an economic centrist and I informed him I was not. The topic got to kiwisaver, a policy with which he agreed. I thought his comments were interesting. Basically he cited anecdotal evidence to support the contention that many New Zealanders do not save money. He then noted that kiwisaver will mean that they do, seeing this was a good result one should support kiwisaver. The conversation was prematurely ended. But I thought my friend had revealed something important about how social policies are often justified in New Zealand.

Now let’s assume for the sake of argument that the conclusion he supported with anecdotal evidence is also supported with empirical evidence and is also true. The argument then is something like this:

[1] Kiwisaver results in more people saving

[2] A policy that results in more people saving is justified

Therefore

[3] Kiwisaver is justified

Now this argument is formally, valid and I have granted that [1] is true. However, [2] is clearly flawed. To see why imagine the following; suppose that one discovered that you could convince people to save by threatening to kill them if they did not. A state policy of issuing such threats would therefore bring about more people saving, and hence by [2] be justified. But such a policy is not justified, why? Because it achieves this good result by unlawful means; by threatening violence against innocent people consequently, the fact a policy results in my people saving by it’s self is insufficient to justify it.

It seems then that [2] needs amending, what is needed is something like

[2’] A policy that results in more people saving, and achieves this by lawful means is justified

But now [1] and [2] do not entail [3], to entail [3], [1] needs to be amended to [1’]

[1’] kiwi saver results in more people saving and achieves this by lawful means

However, the problem now is that affirming [1’] is not justified by the evidence I granted for the sake of argument above. There I assumed that the evidence suggested that Kiwisaver resulted in more people saving. This does not show us that it does this by lawful means, this latter claim is a moral or normative claim not an empirical or sociological one.

Moreover not only is [1’] not supported by the evidence, I am inclined to think that [1’] is false. We need to remember that kiwisaver is taxpayer funded. What does this mean? It means that kiwisaver works this way. Person P signs a contract with another person Q where Q agrees to pay P in exchange for labour. The state however, steps in and threatens P, telling him that if he does not give the government some of the money he has worked for and is entitled to by contract the government will separate him from his wife and kids and lock him up (violate his liberty). In other words Kiwisaver achieves its goals by threatening violence against others. Threatening to violate there liberty rights if they do not comply.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not an anarchist; I am not saying that the state is never justified in threatening people or taking their life liberty or property. What I do think however is that one needs justification for this. If we are to avoid tyranny, then it cannot be the case that the state can just do this whenever some good consequence or cause would be furthered by doing so. Policies like kiwisaver appear to be premised on the denial of this principle they suggest that merely helping others save is sufficient justification for threatening others with violence.

This is why I am not a centrist, and why I am not a leftwinger. While the left claim to be opposed to violence they really are not. They in fact have a very low threshold of opposition to opposing violence and are willing to use it for almost any reason at all. The left tend to oppose violence when its being used against criminals, such is in cases of capital punishment or in just wars where aggressive or tyrannical regimes are being resisted by force. However, when it comes to innocent people, people who have committed no crimes the left will justify violence for almost any reason. If a policy has a good consequence, such as helping people save, or helping a person educate there children, or helping people artists paint a picture, or whatever, they will allow the state to threaten innocent people to do so.

I find this morally perverse, justice requires distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty, those who are threatening others and those who are not. A just state concentrates threats of violence and if necessary uses violence against the latter and not the former. The state can collect taxes for this purpose but it cannot threaten people for any reason it likes no matter how socially useful such violence may be. Yet the political left have distorted our culture that people now, apparently in large numbers, will justify threatening their law abiding neighbour to help them save money.

This opposition to violence, and wanting it limited by principle is central to me; My faith in fact teaches that God opposes such violence and we have a sacred duty to avoid it. This is why I oppose killing unborn children who are not threatening the lives of their mothers. It’s why I do not oppose executing criminals or fighting in just wars, and it’s why I oppose economic policies that justify threatening people with violence and utilise coercion to bring about monetary or economic gain. Violence must be used to punish the guilty and protect the innocent from attack. Not turned against the innocent for social gain.

And that is why I am not a centrist. If opposing arbitrary violence against the innocent makes me a “rightwing extremist” so be it.

Tonight I watched an ad on TV which has a man congratulating New Zealanders for being the first to give women the vote. This ad reminded me of the following picture which I discovered in Alvin Schmidt’s book "How Christianity Changed the World."


The picture on this page shows women voting at the polls in New Jersey between 1790 and 1805.

Almost a hundred years before NZ granted women the vote.

Kind of reminds me of the woefully ignorant Victoria University ads that claimed that in the 14th century everyone thought the world was flat... must find that map of the world from the middle ages astronomy textbook and blog it, its a funny shape, it is round.

RELATED POSTS:
The "Dark Ages" and Other Propaganda
More on the "Dark Ages" and Other Propaganda
The Flat Earth Myth

Desiree Wright please email me. I miss you.

m_flannaganDELETE@clear.net.nz just remove the word DELETE from this email address.

Madeleine :-)

I hate the new anti smoking ads.

I am not a smoker, I do not advise that anyone smoke nor do I approve of smoking. As I see it we have a duty to respect not only other people but ourselves, as beings made in the image of God. For this reason we should look after ourselves and our bodies and not poison them. However I also think we should not poison our minds and that is why I hate these ads.

Consider the content; person A comes on and tells us that smoking is “so 1997” and “no one is doing it any more” note the reasons being given, don’t smoke because its no longer fashionable. Your peers are not doing it neither should you. Person B comes on and tells us that its just as fashionable, cool, popular etc to not smoke as it once was to smoke. Again the message is clear don’t smoke because not smoking is cool, popular or fashionable now. Then comes person C he tells us that people smoke because they think its cool, but people should not be themselves and not mindlessly follow the crowd.

So apparently we should not smoke because (a) its unfashionable uncool, and also (b) we should not do something because failure do so unfashionable or uncool.

I expressed my contempt for this stupidity loudly one night. And I was informed ( by a teenager) that ads were good because the people in them were well respected amongst youth culture and so whatever they said youth would listen to. That’s sad. If what she said is true the ad effectively says that you both should follow the crowd and not follow the crowd because the cool people in the crowd say so.

There are worse things than polluting your body, teaching a generation of people to pollute there minds by encouraging stupidity is far worse. This ad encourages just that. Respect for oneself means not just refraining from smoking it means respecting Gods gift of reason and learning to use it.

According to one version of the Moral Argument for Theism, God provides the best explanation for the existence of moral obligations. The most sophisticated version of this argument is arguably that provided by Robert Adams in “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” (published in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays). Richard Chappell thinks those who follow Adams in this argument have a “daft’ position. Because, Chappell states, any aspect of morality God can explain can also be explained by appealing to what God would have done in counterfactual situations a. Chappell writes

"Ideal standards can be grounded in counterfactuals, e.g. facts about what an
ideal spectator would recommend."Suppose we want to ground goodness in God's
nature. This does not require God to exist. We could just as well appeal to
counterfactual natures, and what God would have wanted (had he
existed).

Now the best defenders of the meta-ethical argument do not attempt to ground morality in God’s nature. Robert Adams holds not that “Gods nature” grounds moral goodness. But that that the most plausible account of what “right and wrongness of an act consists in” is the theory that moral rightness and wrongness consist in agreement and disagreement, respectively, with the will or commands of a loving God.” Strictly speaking then Chappell attacks a straw man. Nether the less I assume Chappell thinks his argument applies with equal force to Divine Command Theories such as those proposed by Adams. He argues

Consider: you may think (1) that God exists, and (2) that God frowns upon
genocide. Now entertain the hypothesis (3) that God does not actually exist
after all. You should still hold a modified form of your second belief, namely:
(4) God would have frowned upon genocide.

I'm suggesting that claim
#4 can do everything that claim #2 can. It is just as objective, and can
"ground" all the same facts. Any doubts you have about #4 (e.g. "but how can we
know it for sure? We could be mistaken in ascribing these judgments to God...")
will apply in equal measure to #2. There is simply no relevant difference
between them.

Chappell asks us to consider two claims. The first which I will call [a] is the claim that God exists in the actual world and commands C1-C2 in The second which I will label [b] God does not exist in the actual world, however there is a possible world just like the actual world in all respects except that God does exist in this world and does issue commands Cn-Cn+2. Chappell thinks that [a] and be [b] that God will issue the same commands in both worlds C1-C2 will be identical to C1-C2. Hence every aspect of morality which it’s explained by Gods actual commands in [a] will be explained by the counter factual commands in [b].

What I find puzzling about Chappell’s appeal to this argument is that Adams in fact discussed it and responded to it in the above mentioned essay. Which is one of the definitive essays on the topic. After spelling out his argument Adams notes

It may be objected that the advantages of the divine command theory can be
obtained without an entailment of God's existence. For the rightness of an
action might be said to consist in the fact that the action would agree with the
commands of a loving God if one existed, or does so agree if a loving God
exists. This modification transforms the divine command theory into a
nonnaturalistic form of the ideal observer theory of the nature of right and
wrong. It has the advantage of identifying rightness and wrongness with
properties that actions could have even if God does not exist And of course it
takes away the basis of my metaethical argument for theism.

This is almost an exact analogue of Chappell’s argument. Adams response is to deny that God will necessarily issue the same commands in [a] as he does in [b]

The flaw in this theory is that it is difficult to see what is supposed to be
the force of the counterfactual conditional that is centrally involved in it. If
there is no loving God, what makes it the case if there were one, he would
command this rather than that? Without an answer to this question, the crucial
counterfactual lacks a clear sense (cf. chapter 6 in this volume). I can see
only two possible answers: either that what any possible loving God would
command is logically determined by the concept of a loving God, or that it is
determined by a causal law. Neither answer seems likely to work without
depriving the theory of some part of the advantages of divine command
metaethics.

No doubt some conclusions about what he would not command follow logically or
analytically from the concept of a loving God. He would not command us to
practice cruelty for its own sake, for example. But in some cases, at least, in
which we believe the act is wrong, it seems only contingent that a loving God
does or would frown on increasing the happiness of other people by the painless
and undetected killing of a person who wants to live but will almost certainly
not live happily. Very diverse preferences about what things are to be treated
as personal rights seem compatible with love and certainly with deity.

Adams point is as follows much of what God commands in the actual world is a contingent matter. God is not required by the facts of the world or by his own nature to issue the exact commands he does. Of course there are some things a loving God will not command, such as cruelty for it own sake. But once these options are eliminated, there is still no one set of commands which a loving being in a world like ours must command. Hence it simply does not follow that God will issue the same commands in counterfactual situations that he does in the actual world. There are possible worlds like ours where he issues one set of commands and there are other possible worlds like ours in all other respects in which he issues other commands. Hence, there is no determinate answer to the question, what would God command if he existed in a world like ours.

This creates a problem for counter factual appeals to God. The problem, noted by Thomas Carson , is that if we ask what God would have commanded in counterfactual situations we will get contradictory answers In one possible world exactly like ours in all relevant respects God would have commanded us to A. But in another possible world exactly like ours in the same respects, he would have commanded to not A. C1.

Now I think Adams (and Carson) are correct about this, even if I am wrong however, what this shows is that Richard’s argument is mistaken. Richard attempts to criticise a meta-ethical argument for theism. He however ignores the actual versions the argument that occur in the literature and sketches a straw man, he then simply asserts a claim that God will issue the same commands in counter factual situations, which the actual proponents of the moral argument have already noted and argued against. He then concludes from this assertion their position is daft. If people are to rebut Christian philosophers, they need to actually engage with their arguments and that means Richard needs to provide some argument to the effect that God would issue the same commands in a counterfactual situations as he does in the actual world. Divine Command Theorists such as Duns Scotus and more recently Hare and Quinn have denied this claim, and argued against it. They may be mistaken, but simply saying so and ignoring what they have argued is not a rebuttal.

In 2002 I (Matt) publicly debated Dr Bill Cooke from the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists (NZARH). I enjoyed the debate immensely and am confident that I won it. No one whom I know who has watched the debate disagrees with me on this. I was surprised at the time how weakly the arguments he attempted to provide were.

A few years latter Paul Litterick become Spokesperson for NZARH. This I thought was a step down. Cooke was at least a scholar and attempted debate. Litterick appeared to spend his time slagging Christian groups of and launching often dubious and dishonest character assassinations. NZARH after all were supposed to be Rationalists. However, more recently I have read some of Litterick’s criticism of Dr Bill Cookes scholarship I find myself in agreement with much of it.

Litterick and Cooke do not see eye to eye. A few weeks ago Litterick spelt out why here. Dr Cooke it seems has deceived people about his scholarly credentials. Cooke claimed to have a professorship in Philosophy when he did not. In fact Cooke’s Ph.D is not even in Philosophy. NZARH apparently propagated this falsehood and continue to do so even though Paul has repeatedly pointed out its inaccuracy to them. For this and various other reasons NZARH have subsequently expelled Litterick and issued him with a trespass order. Dr Cooke is currently the Editor of NZARH’s magazine the Open Society.

What’s interesting about this is that a few years ago NZARH were all through the News attacking the Maxim institute. NZARH claimed that one of their researchers had passed off other scholars writings as his own ( see their website here). NZARH’s spokesperson appeared on numerous Radio and TV stations condemning this. Maxim’s reputation was damaged by this incident. Now an obvious question can be asked if Maxim lacks credibility because one of its researchers has faked his work. Then it follows that NZARH, by their own logic lack credibility. However, if faking ones credentials is not a serious matter. Why did they attack Maxim for an analogous action?

To add irony to this whole thing Paul has broached the topic of starting a new Secularist society. On his blog he discusses the prospect of doing this with Gaynz researcher Craig Young. (Someone Paul often cites). Craig Young has repeatedly claimed to have a PhD see for example here and here and . The problem is that there is apparently no record of Young’s PhD at Massey library and Massey is where Craig studied as a doctoral student. When an associate of mine enquired at Massey about this he was informed that Craig in fact had never submitted his thesis and hence no degree was ever conferred.

What we have then is an organization, condemning Maxim for faking scholarship which itself fakes the scholarly credentials of its own Editor. This deception (amongst other things) provokes a former member to team up with another academic fake to set up a secularist organization of his own. Welcome to New Zealand Rationalism. I would have thought that it was reasonable to expect a Rationalist society to not contradict itself. Let’s hope this joke of a movement is exposed for what is as soon as possible.

In our online absence we have been rather busy relocating ourselves from Dunedin to Auckland. After 5 years down south we have left to be closer to family.

Its kinda funny cause I used to complain so much about it when we were there but we really miss Dunedin's antarctic blasts and all the snow - at least down there you got a lot more blue sky and you saw the sun much more often than Auckland does (even if it felt like someone had thrown the sun' heat switch). Up here it rains and it rains and the sky always has clouds. I shouldn't complain too much, at least the power bill is much improved now and I can always get a good laugh at everyone complaining how cold it is when there is a low of 7!

Apologies for the long period of silence. We finally have a new computer, one that works and we have broadband! Yay!

Expect to see some regular posting happening here again.