A correspondent of mine sent me a copy of this faith and science flow chart and asked me to comment on it. My thoughts are as follows.

1. The flow chart on faith appears to be a caricature. According to the chart faith is a three fold process, (a) one just comes up with an idea (out of nowhere it seems) (b) one ignores all the contrary evidence and (c) one continues to believe it. I don’t know who has ever held this model of religious epistemology certainly no one is cited as a representative. Whats noteworthy is that it differs from the model I have found in the writings of Christian Philosophers like Alvin Plantinga or Bill Craig or Roy Clouser. In these peoples writing the process faith involves some thing like the following: (a’) one finds the central message of Christianity to be self evident (to use Clouser’s terminology) (b’) one takes seriously evidence against Christianity and offers refutations of such arguments Finally (c’) one uses Christian beliefs as premises by which one develops a coherent perspective of the world that answers to various philosophical ethical existential questions on the basis of this message.

Now it’s simply false on this model to suggest that faith is an idea a person simply “gets” and then believes ignoring all contrary evidence. In fact several ideas a person “gets” will not be accepted on faith according to this model. Any ideas one does not find self evident and which one has no reason or arguments for believing, any ideas which are self evidentially absurd, any ideas there are good arguments against and any ideas which are incoherent or which do not provide coherent perspectives or answers to existential and philosophical problems.

Now it may be the case that Christianity fails on one or more of these criteria. However this needs to be argued. One cannot simply assume it and then define faith so as to assume this is true.

2. While Philosophy of Science is not my area the little I have read suggests the science flow chart is excessively simplistic. Two initial observations suggest themselves. The first is the issue of under-determination of theories by the empirical evidence. On the model in the above flow chart. One adopts any idea that is consistent with the evidence. However, one thing Philosophers of Science often point out is that the empirical evidence alone is frequently compatible with several mutually incompatible theories. What leads one to choose one of these theories over another are non empirical assumptions about what types of theories are an are preferable to others. The second issue is that the flow chart suggests that if a person discovers empirical evidence that is contrary to the theory it’s rejected. But this also is not how science actually operates. Scientists frequently stick to a theory is spite of evidence against it until a better or more comprehensive one emerges. Most major theories in science have trouble with some empirical data, and the problems the empirical data provide are often not resolved till many decades after the theory is adopted.


3. Finally I want to note a few things about the model of science that are relevant to the faith science issue. Accepting the account in the chart for the sake of argument three points suggest themselves. First note that for the theory to work there needs to already believe certain things. One first needs to “get an idea” now one can only get an idea if they already have a set of beliefs about the world if one believed absolutely nothing then they would have no ideas at all. Second, one needs to test this idea against evidence, which means there will already be a body of information which the scientist already accepts as true by which ideas are tested. Finally one needs to use the theory to better understand the universe. This means that prior to the theory one already has a set of beliefs about reality and that generate various questions about it that one wants answers to and which create puzzles that need explaining. Hence prior to any scientific theorizing one needs to already to have quite a bit of beliefs about the reality. These beliefs are needed for the process in the flow chart to be followed hence they cannot be discovered or based on science in the first place. Moreover if the process in the chart is to be effective these beliefs will need to be beliefs which it’s rational for the scientist to accept. Hence the chart itself suggests that a large number of beliefs are rationally accepted, despite being unable to be scientifically proven, it also suggests that without these beliefs scientific theorizing will be impossible.

So my conclusion is this, first the account of faith is a caricature very different to the accounts actually proposed by Christian epistemologists. Second the account of science seems excessively simplistic and third even if the account of science is correct it shows that that science requires a body of beliefs which are rationally believed prior to and hence independently of the scientific method. This account then is quite compatible with the idea that there are some things one knows which cannot be proven scientifically. In fact this model requires such beliefs to get off the ground.

Finally let me make a final suggestion. Perhaps on some issues what divides believers and non believers is not that one follows science and the evidence and the other does not. But rather both start with different presuppositions by which the evidence is assesed. If this is true, a mere appeal to evidence or science will not resolve the dispute, one needs to have a deeper debate about the various presuppositions employed in assessing the evidence.

As I was driving around Auckland this morning talkback was rife with people discussing the recent body snatchers case; an estranged father, against the wishes of both the deceased and her next of kin stole his daughters body and buried it in a family plot. Of course I remember the furor over the previous case, and my thoughts now are as they were then.

What people seem unaware of, or at least have not articulated clearly, is that the controversy over this case is symptomatic of a deep problem with the popular liberal response to pluralism. Let me elaborate.

The problem of Pluralism is this: we have in New Zealand people who hold to and live in accord with various differing “comprehensive views” as Rawls called them. A comprehensive doctrine can be theistic like Islam or Christianity or it can be secular like certain forms of Naturalism; Marxism, Liberal rationalism, humanism etc. However such views function as religions in that they answer fundamental questions such as who are we, what is the nature of good, what is real, etc. Now the problem such plurality creates is this: How does one maintain peace and order in a society characterized by radical disagreement over these fundamental questions? Each group believes (and cannot but believe) that their view is true and the others mistaken. Failure to find a solution to this problem can be deadly people can and have killed each other over these questions.

In New Zealand the answer popularly given is “tolerance”. One should allow each person to believe and act in accord with whatever view they think is correct and no one should be compelled to adopt some form of enforced orthodoxy. However there is one immediate problem with this response. Sometimes believers in different comprehensive doctrines will interact with one another. Hence, there needs to be rules or norms governing the relationships between believers of different “comprehensive doctrines” and the obvious difficulty is that these different groups frequently disagree over precisely what the correct norms or rules which constitute our duties are.

This is the case in the body snatchers incident. One group of people come from a community in which individual autonomy is an important value (this btw reflects certain religious and philosophical beliefs articulated in the late middle ages). Under this understanding of the world, when a person dies the individual who died can, prior to death decide ( within reason) how their body is to disposed of. Moreover certain relatives, become next of kin and aquire the responsibility to carry the deceased’s wishes out. The problem is that people from other cultures have quite different understandings of the world. I am not an expert on Maori culture and so will not try and elaborate. But the idea seems to be that individual autonomy is subordinated to the wider family and certain traditions which this family are required to uphold. Hence the wider community decides where one is buried in accord with their traditions regardless of the individual in questions wishes. Moreover there are different understandings of what constitutes membership in the relevant group. One group tends to think that if one is not brought up within a culture or does not conciously adopt it they are not part of a group that embodies this culture. Another however believes that mere biological lineage determines ones membership in the culture.

In this case a person dies. According to group A the deceased is not part of group B and the right thing do do is X. According to group B, she is a member of group B and the right thing to do is Y. Y however is incompatible with X only one of the two options is possible. I maintain that there is no *culturally or religiously neutral* way of adjudicaticating this dispute. At the end of the day we must decide which view of the world is correct and side with the solution they propose.

This case shows up the popular liberal response to the problem. The popular response is to suggest that the no group can impose the norms they believe in upon another group. Instead, norms governing relationships between practioners and believers of different comprehensive doctrines should be governed of norms that all reasonable people can accept regardless of their religious or quasi religious beliefs. This idea is often described as “public reason” the notion that there is a set of premises which are accepted implicitly by all reasonable people from which public policy regarding what rights everyone has can and coercive laws enacted can be decided.

The problem, which this case shows, is that public reason is something of a myth. If one defines a "reasonable person" broadly there is simply does not exist a set of principles which is both accepted by all reasonable people and also sufficiently “thick” and comprehensive to provide a basis for answers to public policy questions. On the other hand if one defines "a reasonable person" narrowly to exclude radical disagreement the very concept of a reasonable person will depend on the truth of a particular comprehensive perspective for its plausibility. The debate over Gods existence is a good example. Alvin Plantinga has argued, correctly I think, that if God exists and created men in his image and then revealed himself to them, much of what Christians believe is probably rational. If however God does not exist, its probably a delusion. However, its impossible to come to an answer on the rationality of theism without presupposing a stance on the ontological question of its truth. In fact it's difficult to see how one can come to an understanding of what constitutes a *reasonable person* if without appealing to premises specific to some comprehensive doctrine about what exists and what sort of beings people are.

That’s what’s seen in this case. We have two very different views of understanding the world. Each one if true entails that a certain course of action is mandated. If certain notions of individual autonomy then the body snatchers are wrong. If one does not they are not. The problem is according to a popular conception of liberal democracy the state has to be neutral with regard to differing faith or quasi faith positions. It should not privilege any group by writing its views into law and demanding that the others who don't accept the tradition live in accord with them. The state therefore can do nothing one way or the other. Interestingly that is precisely whats happend.

There is a solution to this. It’s an older view, and it’s far less palatable to many modern or post modern people, but it has the advantage of being correct. On this view the whole popular liberal idea of tolerance is a chimera. In his book Reason in the Balance Berkeley Law professor Philip Johnson argues that while liberal societies do not (and I would add should not) have established Churches they must always have a defacto “established religious philosophy.” By religious philosophy Johnson means “a way of about ultimate questions” and by saying its esthablished he means not that “dissenters are subject to legal punishment” but that “it provides the philosophical basis for law making and public education”. People who dissent will be tolerated within reasonable limits and what constitutes a "reasonable limit" will be determined by the esthablished religious philosophy.

In NZ the established religious philosophy ostensibly includes the proposition that killing non combatants in war is wrong hence Al Qaeda does not gain religious tolerance in NZ. In Saudi Arabia the established religious philosophy considers apostasy intolerable. In some "progressive" quarter’s today believing and teaching that homosexual conduct so violates the sensibilities of liberal orthodoxy that it cannot be tolerated. In each case we have a accepted orthodoxy and tolerance of dissenters limited by the values of the orthodoxy in question.

In his book Foreordained Failure, Steven Smith demonstrates that there is no such thing as a right to freedom of religion which is upheld by some traditions and opposed by others. Instead there is a spectrum of views about religious tolerance that comes in degrees; no state tolerates all religious sects and very few states tolerate none. He notes that Aquinas, Cromwell, Locke and Mill all advocated and defended forms of religious tolerance. However, each disagreed as to which religions such tolerance should apply to and the proper limits upon those they disagreed with. Smith argues further that these differing accounts of freedom of religion all depended upon comprehensive views to justify them and one cannot adjudicate between them without appeal to such views. Attempts to articulate a right to freedom of religion from a neutral or public stance are quite hopeless.

That’s what we have in this case. I think that those who stole the body should be prosecuted because I believe that the ideas about individual autonomy undergirding those who complain are correct and I think tolerance of diversity should not extend to allowing others to violate norms based on these ideas. Our political climate needs to stop hiding behind slogans of "tolerance" and "respect for diversity" and admit that it supports a particular religious orthodoxy and here are the limits on dissent. Then we can debate whether the orthodoxy is true. If we continue to hide behind the façade of “tolerance” and “respecting and celebrating all diverse view points” it will not be able to do anything in these situations.

Watching the news the other night, I heard how some UN body had declared that the use of tasers constituted torture. (At least that is how it was reported). Predictably the Green party cited this as I for rejecting the use of Tasers.

The implicit argument here seems to go something like this. [1] The use of Tasers constitutes torture [2] Torture is always unjust, therefore [3] the use of Tasers is unjust. Formally this argument is valid. If [1] and [2] are true [3] follows. Most people I suspect will take issue with [1] and I think there could well be problems with this claim. I think however a more interesting issue arises here. Is [2] actually true, is torture always unjust or are there circumstances in which it is justified and, assuming Tasers are torture devices, are they an instance of such a circumstance.

Is torture always unjust? A common argument for justifiable torture goes something like this: A terrorist cell has planted several bombs in malls around the countries; they will be detonated some time in the next 24 hours. One member of the cell who knows where these bombs are has been captured. Would it be acceptable to torture the terrorist to gain this information, or should one instead let thousands die? Cases like this are sometimes called “ticking time bomb” cases. Many people find, that their moral sense or intuitions lead to conclude that torture is justified in ticking time bomb cases. The popularity of shows like 24 attest to this.

Act Utilitarianism provides a prima facie rationale for this judgment. According to Act Utilitarianism, an action is right if and only if the consequences of performing it result in more net happiness than any alternative. In this instance, torturing the terrorist will make him suffer. However, failure to torture him will result in thousands of deaths and thus will lead to even greater suffering. Hence, the former action; that of torturing the terrorist is justified.

Until fairly recently I did not find this analysis convincing, while I see the force of the ticking time bomb case. The act utilitarian assessment seems to me to be wrong. This is because one can construct equally plausible cases where one should not engage in violence against another person, even if doing so results in an increase in net happiness. Consider the following two cases, taken from the literature. Judith Jarvis Thomson [i]. Thomson points out that if a doctor painlessly kills a group of healthy patients and harvests their organs, an even greater number of people can be saved via organ donation. It is in fact conceivable that forcing people to under go various medical procedures such as kidney and or bone marrow transplants would result in numerous people being saved from fatal illnesses. Despite these facts, however, neither killing people nor enforcing compulsory transplants are permissible practices. Although such procedures may promote the happiness of others and in some cases be life saving, they do so by unjust means, killing and assaulting innocent human beings.

Don Marquis suggests a second case. The infamous the Willowbrook experiments which involved experimenting upon mentally retarded children in order to ascertain information for fighting diseases such as Hepatitis or the Nazi experimenting upon concentration camp inmates to learn how to combat hypothermia. Regarding these experiments Don Marquis notes that

The Tuskegee, Willowbrook and Nazi studies were wrong, not because they were bad and useless science, but because the human subjects in them were treated inhumanely…There is now a consensus, both in society and in academic bioethics that this is wrong even when the research will clearly benefit the common good. In short conformity with a respect for human subjects principle is a necessary condition of morally permissible research whatever its benefits.[ii]

I contend that Marquis is correct in these sentiments. What made such experiments wrong was not that they failed to bring about the significant results they aimed at, but rather that the means they did so were unjust, and involved disrespecting and degrading human beings. Hence even if important advancements in fighting hypothermia or hepatitis have been achieved, the experiments should still be condemned.

A few years ago however, I came across a different analysis of the ticking time bomb case that makes sense of its initial plausibility without leading to the conclusion that violence is justified whenever more, or a large number, of people are made happy by its commission.

In his monograph The Theory of Morality Alan Donagan responds to ticking time bomb cases, by noting, correctly, that violence is not unjust if used against an unjust aggressor. Suppose a person is attacking an innocent third party and is threatening to kill them or do them irreparable injury, suppose further that the only way to stop him is by use of violence, either by physically hitting him and inflicting probable pain and injury upon him. In such a situation, both civil and divine law recognise that the use of violence is justified. It’s this moral insight that is behind the legal right to kill or use force in self defence.

Donagan goes on to note that the case I sketched above seems to fit this paradigm of justified use of violence. The terrorist, is complicit in the planting of bombs which are about to go off, hence he is in the process of committing a heinous act of violent aggression against hundreds of innocent people, hence if the only way to prevent this attack from killing these people is to use violence against him, it is justified. This however, seems to leave open a case for justified torture. If one has reasonable grounds for thinking that the terrorist is complicit in such an attack and if one knows that the only way to gain the information necessary to thwart this attack is to torture the terrorist, then one is justified in using violence proportionate to the gravity of the attack, against the terrorist, to extract this information.

Interestingly Donagan steps back from concluding that torture should be permitted in such cases. He notes, perhaps plausibly, that in real life situations its dubious one will really know that a given person is in fact a terrorist. Nor is it likely in most situations that one will know that torture is the only way to prevent an attack hence he concludes. A rule allowing torture in such cases would probably cause much mischief. He concludes “In the last century and a half, torture has come to be prohibited in all civilised countries: and rightly, because it has been found practically impossible , while allowing it at all, to confine it to those very few cases where it would be morally permissible”

This may be a compelling reason for banning torture as an interrogation technique. But it seems clear to me that the context in which the use of Tasers are being proposed is quite different. No one is suggesting Tasers be used as an interrogation device to extract information from suspects. Instead, Tasers are used by the proposed as a defensive weapon, to defend either the police man himself or a member of the public from imminent attack. And it seems false to suggest that the law cannot make distinctions between violence used in justifiable defence of the innocent and that which is not. For centuries both common law and statute law have been drawing just this distinction and applying it in the courts. Section 48 of the crimes act for example allows this defense to assault. “Every one is justified in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use." So it seems then that (i) one can justifiably inflict pain injury and even death on a person in defense of ones self or others and (ii) the law can make this distinction. Hence it’s hard to see why, torture, which is wrong presumably because it inflicts pain and injury on people, can always be unjustified in the context being proposed. Hence even if one grants that the Tasers are a form of torture it does not follow its always wrong to use them.

There is of course a way around this conclusion, an apologist for the greens could argue that (i) and (ii) are false and we should abolish section 48 of the crimes act. I think this is absurd, but stranger things have come from the Green party. Consider, Sue Bradfords tireless campaign to abolish section 59 of the crimes act which allowed parents to use “reasonable force” to correct bad behavior of children. I distinctly remember Sue arguing that this defense should be abolished because. (a) its unacceptable to draw distinctions between reasonable and unreasonable violence (b) all forms of violence are wrong. (c) All people have a right to be protected from violence and (d) what’s reasonable to one person is not reasonable to another (e) under section 59 some people who were guilty of assault were acquitted because they persuaded a jury that their force was reasonable. Now, as I pointed out Bradford herself, don’t each of these arguments apply with equal force to section 48 of the crimes act? In a sense then the Greens have already made the argument that people should not be allowed to defend themselves by implication which, perhaps, puts this whole Taser debate in an interesting context.

I just recieved word from the Editor of The Journal of Ethics and Medicine that my article "Boonin's Defense of the Sentience Criteria: A Critique" has been accepted for publication in a future issue (the exact issue is still being decided). There may be some minor ammendments made but at present the following is the accepted abstract for this article.