A Dog's Life (Vets vs. Doctors)

From Reason.TV, Ted Balaker explains some good stuff on health care:

Paul Krugman's Appeal to Mediocrity

As readers of my blog should probably be aware, I hate Paul Krugman.

He is a god awful economist (make no mistake, the Nobel Prize he won is for some derivative work he did in the 1970s on new trade theory - which basically just glorifies Mercantilism - and he hasn't done anything remotely useful since).  Not only god-awful, but positively one of the worst ever released on the unsuspecting public.  His critical thinking skills are lowest-common-denominator at best.  And worse than that, he attracts the dumbest people of all time to his weekly New York Times column.  Did I mention that he's also the textbook definition of "Backpfeifengesicht"?  Yeah, that too.

He is also the modern embodiment of Ayn Rand's character, Ellsworth Toohey... For those who aren't familiar with this particular literary villain, Toohey appears in the book, "The Fountainhead", and is a thoroughly mediocre Architecture Critic modeled off of Harold Laski (a British "economist" & Fabian Socialist/Marxist, primarily responsible for India's spectacularly miserable economy from basically 1950 until market liberalization began in 1990).  Toohey is a man of mediocre intellect who is largely motivated by jealousy and bitterness, combined with a constant need for the approval of those men of actual genius who's work he typically pans.  The famous quote is: 

"Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed."

I'm not sure anything sums up Paul Krugman better than this, and his recent NY Times article, "Learning from Europe", and the resultant reader comments perfectly illustrate the point.

In this article, Krugman uses anecdotal evidence, bad logic and weak data to pretend that Europe's economy is thriving, proving that "social democracy" (otherwise known as socialism-lite) works!  Here's Krugman's basic thesis:

"But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works."

Europe is an economic success! 

Well, thank goodness... That proves it.  But in case you're looking for evidence, apart from Krugman's appeal to the anecdotal experience of wealthy US travelers to Paris & London, that's a commodity in very short supply.

"For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London?"

Fortunately, I am one of those Americans!  What's more, unlike most Americans who've traveled for business or pleasure, I'm actually a rather curious sort who likes to leave the central tourist hubs, hop on a local bus or train and occasionally go on the all-day walk to "nowhere" to discover what the rest of these cities look like.  For instance, Copenhagen is a lovely city... Provided that you stay downtown, and visit the major sights, like the Little Mermaid Sculpture (although that is apparently regularly defaced and often decapitated by vandals, as a point of fact).  However, if you leave the city center, you find a very different picture... Even in the bright spots of Europe, you see people living in what (to me) are actually pretty poor and run-down conditions in comparatively middle class areas.

This is all relative, of course. I've also been to the home of a bus-driver in San Jose, Costa Rica (who was pretty well to do by local standards) who lived in the neighborhood next to one filled with houses made primarily of corrugated steel salvaged or stolen from previously demolished buildings.  Plus I have friends from Indonesia and Sri Lanka who's local living conditions are substantially worse than that.

But this isn't about anecdotes.  I'm merely trying to point out that while Krugman is correct that;

"when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it."

He's just way off base if he thinks that most American travelers (or ex-patriate workers for that matter) actually do "see" the real Europe.  Most Americans find their way to the prescribed places when they travel - to the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Louvre, the Guggenheim... Etc.  What they almost never do (and believe me, I've spent a great deal of time specifically around American tourists, while running instrumental music for 4 of Holland America's cruise ships) is leave those areas and go look at the conditions of the average people.

It's like people going to Aspen, Colorado and thinking that most people living in that part of the world are wine-swilling, sweater-wearing ski bunnies who spend their evenings eating $50 steaks and hanging out at the lodge.

But that cluster of bad reasoning and anecdote pales in comparison to the hilarity that follows it though!  Krugman goes on to claim that the statistics back up the fact that Europe's economy is just as good (if not better) than that of the United States.  He then provides almost NO hard numbers at all...  Here's what you get:

• "It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980... America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year."

Note that Europe has grown at a rate about 1/3rd less than the United States over the past 30 years, and that's pretty substantial in any case - if you start with $100 and add 3% to it for 30 years you get $242.73, whereas you get $192.10 with a 2.2% growth rate... Now, multiply that by trillions and you can see how big a deal a little thing like .8% is.  But that's also a handicapped figure!!  Krugman discounts all those formerly communist nations for no reason except it skews his numbers south and hurts his already weak point.  But are those nations not also part of the EU?  Oh, I think they are.

Krugman is just trying to eliminate the evidence that doesn't fit his thesis, or tweak the existing numbers so that his point looks better than it is.  Lame.

He goes on to claim that this is just a reflection of differences in populations growth:

• "Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there."

Ok... But the rates of population growth are very similar, compared to the GDP growth numbers.  Also, I should probably note that there's a pretty severe problem with GDP as a measurement anyway, since it includes government spending.  If government spending balloons by some large number, but isn't actually funded by anything but borrowing or printing money - as has happened in the US and all throughout Europe then it looks like the economy is growing when it isn't.  It's all just fictional numbers pulled out of thin air, and in the process devaluing everyone's standard of living via the time-honored method of coin-clipping.

Krugman's other "statistics" are just as pitiful... He tries to make the case that Europe is doing just as well, yet everything he says makes exactly the opposite point - and here he scrupulously avoids giving any real numbers (emphasis added): 

• "In the late 1990s you could argue that the revolution in information technology was passing Europe by. But Europe has since caught up in many ways. Broadband, in particular, is just about as widespread in Europe as it is in the United States, and it’s much faster and cheaper." 

Here's the thing... Europe's internet systems are newer, built on the innovation of the technology in the US... Krugman clearly admits this.  It's pretty typical of Europe though: Let Americans invent something hugely beneficial, take all the risks, make all the mistakes, fix all the bugs - then adopt the technology in its developed form for a fraction of the cost.  Then idiots incapable of logical reasoning like Krugman forget all the important stuff and just comment on how much cooler it is to be in free-riding Europe.

• "And what about jobs? Here America arguably does better: European unemployment rates are usually substantially higher than the rate here, and the employed fraction of the population lower."
  

At least he admits it.  But of course, Krugman re-frames this as being totally cool, because teenagers and old people really don't need jobs anyway.  Naturally he forgets to mention the connection between Minimum Wage laws and the under 25 unemployment rate here in the US and abroad and that perhaps those of us in our mid-20s  trying to develop our careers, start families and make our fortunes might actually want a decent job market.

• "And Europeans are quite productive, too: they work fewer hours, but output per hour in France and Germany is close to U.S. levels."
  

Why limit ourselves to France & Germany?  

This is just another trick to help Krugman skate over reality.  The productive output of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovakia, and the rest of Europe isn't even remotely comparable to that of the US, and last I checked they're all part of the EU as well.  

Krugman does this repeatedly though.  When the facts don't fit the story, he just narrows his view to only cover the couple nations that make his point... And even then, the best he can do is say that the productivity is "close to" that of the United States.

Yet Krugman concludes;

"But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own."

IN WHAT WAY!?

Every single piece of evidence he presents - even the anecdotal bits - do not remotely promote that conclusion.  They promote the conclusion that Europe is substantially worse off economically than the United States.  And as readers of Logicology should know, I'm *not* remotely a fan of US economic policy... We are far too close in reality to how Europe's economy is structured... Like Europe, we have a central bank controlling our money supply & interest rates (from my vantage, one of the worst ideas in the history of man kind), we have ever increasing regulations on what people are allowed to trade for, and from where... We have import tariffs on goods from other nations, like the recent trade war started with China, for no reason except that some companies don't like the competition and have buddies in Washington.

There's very little I'm happy with with regards to Economic policy, but the one saving grace for me is often "It could be worse... I could live in Europe".

Ironically, this is all prelude to Krugman's real - and extremely twisted - point that vastly higher tax rates and leviathan-sized social programs are oh-so-good for us.

"After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. Taxes in major European nations range from 36 to 44 percent of G.D.P., compared with 28 in the United States. Universal health care is, well, universal. Social expenditure is vastly higher than it is here."

Of course, Krugman also totally ignores the free-rider issues.  He doesn't admit that the US produces the vast majority of technological innovation for the rest of the world in everything from communications and electronics to medicine.  He doesn't acknowledge that when he talks about "Universal Health Care", what he's really talking about is "universal" health insurance.  This is actually a pretty important distinction as there is an ever-increasing amount of "medical tourism" out of Europe to places like India in order to get life-saving and other treatments which people need and are either not covered by the government insurance plans or are needed in a timely manner and can't simply be delayed for the 6 months one might spend on a waiting list.

But the big elephant in the room is the massive amount of spending the US provides in the form of military protection.  Europe spends a tiny fraction of what we spend, and as a result has had 70+ years of being a freeloader, never really having to worry about protecting themselves from any of the aggressors from Hitler & Stalin to Kim Jong Il and Al Qaeda.

Of course, discounting all that (i.e. ignoring about 50% of reality - all the parts that don't "fit")... Sure, Europe's economy is functioning perfectly well.

What happens if the US (as it absolutely should, for a million reasons) actually stops being a military superpower?  What happens when European countries actually have to put up for their own military protection?  What happens when they have to put up for their own medical technology?  I'm guessing, very bad things.  

And don't get me wrong, I actually like a lot of Europe. There are aspects of certain countries like Spain or France which are more free than the US - particularly in terms of what people are allowed to eat, so that's definitely a good thing.  The thousands of years of history, art & architecture and ancient cultures shouldn't be discounted either.  Additionally, the US is in just as bad or even worse shape in the long term - precisely because we have been following the model of creeping socialism for about a century.  Everyone with any sense of history realizes that the US economy was radically restructured in the early 20th Century, and then again during the Great Depression.  What guided that restructuring was not a rekindling of economic liberty, but a great admiration for socialists & fascists.

Almost no honest historian or economist would deny this...  FDR was a huge admirer of socialism & socialists like Mussolini (note that fascism is just one variant of socialism), and most of the intellectuals in the US absolutely loved socialists of all stripes - even if they were mass-murderers.

W.E.B. DuBois once said;

"Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous."

These are the people who shaped American society and economic policy throughout the 20th Century, and yet thanks to a tradition of individual liberty and a Constitution that frowns on an all-powerful state, the US has adopted socialist policies much slower than Europe, and in general we are much better off for it!

But the assault on sound economics and liberty haven't ever really ceased, though the fall of the Soviet Union (something almost no public intellectuals except the likes of F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises predicted) at least produced a lull for a little while.

Krugman's whole point is ludicrous, and I suspect that deep down - much like Ellsworth Toohey - he knows it.  He's mangled all of the evidence to fit his argument, and even then, since he stops short of actually lying, the actual "substance" of his article leans completely the other direction, showing that in fact Europe is doing much worse from a statistical point of view.  Krugman, as usual, pulls a completely nonsensical conclusion out of thin air - and what a surprise, it does nothing but support higher taxes, less freedom and a panacea for central government to take even more control of people's lives.

Fortunately for the good doctor, the comments section are filled with people who are even worse at basic reasoning and understanding reality than he is... Take Mike Harry of Boston, MA:

"I could not agree more on this, Mr. Krugman. Social democracy not only works but also reduces the income gap between the rich and the poor and ensures a better living standard. Europe (EU 15) had to face two World War scenarios and the threat of Communism but still the growth and economic propsperity prevailed. USA faced the Great Depression and caused the recent Financial Crisis which devastated most of the dveloped economies in the world- all as a result of capitalist democracy. USA has a great deal to learn from Europe."

I guess the US had nothing to do with World War II or "facing" the threat of Communism.

There is no shortage of similarly sycophantic comments.  It's a struggle even reading most of them, and even worse because the NY Times moderators have this lovely open way of sending the most obsequious right to the front of the line, presumably designed specifically to drive me insane.  

I just don't know what to say about Paul Krugman anymore.  The guy is one of the best examples I've ever seen of someone who has had praise and publicity heaped on him throughout his life for completely inexplicable reasons.  He is the quintessential "intellectual".  As he looks down from his ivory tower and writes utter piffle that appears intelligent to his weak-minded audience, he manages to influence public discourse, and thus public opinion and public-policy.  But look at what he's advocating?  Throughout this entire article he is literally trying to convince his readers that Europe's perpetual economic mediocrity is a good thing.

Interestingly though, he doesn't ever seem to set out to raze the shrines of greatness... Krugman perfectly fits Ayn Rand's observation of Harold Laski;

"He [is] very subtle and gracious, he rambled on a great deal about nothing in particular--and then he made crucial, vicious points once in a while..."

With a soft voice, an arrogant tone, the appearance of real intellect and absolutely no substance what-so-ever, Paul Krugman merely enshrines mediocrity.  Sadly, he seems to have a mindless audience always at the ready to cling to his every word.

How I *Really* Feel...

The last few days, I've been working on some VHS-to-DVD conversions for my parents, and in the process of capturing the video, color correcting, audio editing and DVD menu creation, I've had some time to kill. As a result, I did something I haven't done in ages: Flame war!

Sorta...

Over at Reason Magazine's Hit & Run blog, there is a troll. His name is Tony. He's what Vladimir Lenin would have called a "useful idiot". Now, Tony himself is not evil per se... But he's catastrophically ignorant of history & philosophy. So he's what you'd call, a "statist" - and thus stemming from his ignorance supports massive amounts of evil all the time, frequently believing that he is doing good works.

He's also gay... By which I mean, homosexual. I mention this fact only to note that Mr. Tony is constantly shilling for the organization which expressly violates his liberty all over the world. When members of what one might view as oppressed groups work as ignorant advocates of their oppressor, I'm always shocked and a little dismayed.

I write about this now (when I most definitely should be going to sleep, or alternatively writing an article about James Cameron's Avatar) because I suspect that once I'm back home, comfortably in my own apartment, I will be far too busy to deal with this again and re-reading some of my comments, I find that it's a good repository of both libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosophy backed by solid history - and - it's a way to condense a lot of people's common complaints/arguments into one place.

So while it's fresh on my mind, I want to share some of these comments & responses with you all now. (Disclaimer: There may be some "adult" language... Hit & Run is often kind of a brawl and Tony and I go way back with these kinds of things - so I've certainly dropped the niceties.)

* * * * *

Tony:

...you could try not being such a moralistic libertarian absolutist and stick with your friends and family and try to influence the pretty-good system you happen to live under.

Me:

First off, that is primarily what I'm doing, but it galls me to no end that I even have to. The America I was told about in history class in school not only doesn't exist now but it hasn't for over 100 years... The lessons of the Constitution I learned in my Civics class have been entirely abandoned.

I frankly, shouldn't have to work this hard to save sheep like you from destroying the very core of the system that provides you with "benefits". The US was at one time a nation that had liberty built into it's charter - that was the first time that's ever happened, and the US is unquestionably the most successful nation of all time. It's now declining because the framework that made our progress possible - i.e. well protected property rights, highly limited government that was based on actual laws rather than the whims of the rulers, and a comparatively massive amount of liberty for people to pursue their own values - is being systematically demolished. It's being demolished precisely by people like you who don't seem to be capable of understanding some very simple concepts, for instance: You cannot promise people a "right" (privilege) to have a good or a service without first denying the (actual) rights of those who create & provide it - meaning you are legitimizing theft. When you do stuff like this, the country moves from one based in evenly applied laws protecting the individual and his life, time, money & property into a kleptocracy where the currently favored group benefits at the expense of everyone else.

I shouldn't need to spend my life dealing with this shit, Tony - yet I do. I can't make any promises as to how much longer I will keep fighting though, at some point, I will give up and leave you to get exactly the economy & the society you deserve as a consequence of the government you've chosen and watch the rise of tyranny from somewhere else.

Tony:

All I'm saying is that government(s) have jurisdiction over you because of the geographical place of your residence.

Me:

One of the weakest arguments for enslaving people of all time. It's also strangely, and annoyingly, American-centric... I guess if you live in North Korea... Tough luck, huh? You were born there, so Kim Jong Il owns your ass. Right, Tony?

Tony:

You enjoy the benefits of that system immediately, and you also have obligations immediately (don't kill people).

Me:

If only the government also had the obligation not to kill people. Funny how one-sided these things are...

I get the obligation to pay about a 50% tithe or higher in perpetuity, I can have the obligation not to do anything that might piss off the ruling class, and the obligation to do what I'm told - or I can enjoy the benefit of watching as the rulers come with guns, lock me up, steal all of my things and then fine me for the pleasure.

Of course, if I had been born even 50 years ago, perhaps I would have had the actual benefit of being able to pursue some of my own ambitions in an environment that wasn't crushing and economically impossible. Perhaps the value of my currency would have still been worth something, and perhaps I wouldn't have been burdened against my consent with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to other nations - and thus there might have been capital available for starting the projects I actually want to start.

Instead, I was born more recently, and I have the distinct "benefit" of seeing government idiocy cause a 1000+% decline in the value of the dollar, politicians incurring heaping piles of debt on my behalf, economically illiterate policies push unemployment higher & higher, causing first a decline in the value of a college degree coupled with massive increases in education costs, then watching as the same thing happens in health care & housing - all the while watching everything else that the government has more or less left alone decline in price by huge percentages...

Yeah... Great benefits. Perhaps I should just have been born 30 years earlier.

Tony:

And as a bonus you are free to renounce it all if you really feel that oppressed.

Me:

Right, which is great, since your options are Oppressive Place A, or marginally less Oppressive Place B.

Tony:

Can you explain what system would be preferable?

Me:

Sure, Tony. It's simple... The system is to just get the hell out of everyone else's lives.

I'll take care of me - and my family, and my community, and everything else that I deem important to me - and you can take care of you. We respect each others' property, and agree that if either of us want something from each other, we obtain it by offering something in exchange - a trade - and we don't simply hire thugs with guns to take it. We back that up by protecting our own property with tools and hired help if need be, purely for defense, and if we have more complex dealings, we write contracts which stipulate how arbitration will be handled if one party was lying or causes damages.

If you simply must have a government for that purpose, then you limit that government exclusively to making sure people aren't initiating force against one another - they aren't stealing, killing, defrauding, or attacking each other. It's a small, but important roll which is, as it stands, pretty easy to achieve on very little money - which should only be raised by bond auctions or voluntary fund drives. No IRS, no taxes.

Tony:

That at birth, every man is an island, with his own laws? How would that work out?

Me:

Repeat after me Tony: "Government and Society are not the same thing"

Don't conflate the two. No one is an island, we are all connected in one way or another and that's great. That doesn't give you the right to force other people to do what you want, in fact, since we know and can easily demonstrate that people have unique values, hopes, dreams & other goals or interests, forcing people to do what you want - to give you their time or their products, to give you their money, to behave how you want them to (provided, again, such behavior isn't attacking or harming anyone else) - is is not only immoral, but a disastrous condition socially & economically.

I would like to stop moving towards the disaster, and move back away from it. Quit doubling down on failed policies, go for more freedom.


[Here, Tony repeats his oft-mentioned belief in the "Social Contract" theory of government - that is, merely by product of the geographical location of a person's birth, there is an unwritten contract that each person has with his government to obey the laws of the land or move away.]

Tony:

Now we're getting into social contract theory. According to the contract you have with your fellow citizens, which you became a party to upon birth according to the rules of the system you were born into, via custodianship of your citizen parents, there are certain rules you must obey and certain rights you enjoy. You have every right to renounce your citizenship and move abroad.

Me:

Really Tony, have you ever looked into how that works? You realize that it's nearly impossible to do this without already being a citizen of another country, right?

What if, for argument's sake, you actually didn't want to be the property of *any* government? What then?

Tony:

There are about 200 governments to choose from. In any marketplace that would be considered a large enough pool of competition. I may want a flying Hummer but if one doesn't exist, that's just too bad. In the marketplace of goods and the marketplace of governments there is no guarantee that you'll get everything exactly as you want.

Me:

It seems you're missing the point, Tony - as usual.

Let me repeat what I wrote for you so it can sink in one more time:

What if, for argument's sake, you actually didn't want to be the property of *any* government? What then?

What if I find the idea that someone else having the power to take my time & effort and the products of my labor by force is immoral and unacceptable? What if I actually want a life where I get to choose who I deal with, why I deal with them, and under what terms, without having a gun at my back compelling me to do what rulers I didn't elect & haven't asked for want me to do?

Attaching myself to one of the other 200 Governments around the world doesn't exactly help that situation, does it?

[Tony fails to grasp this concept again... He proceeds to equate choosing which government to be subject to with a marketplace - so, double fail there. Continuing on with Tony's "Social Contract"...]

Me:

Oh yeah, also, I think we've covered this in the past, but last I checked, "Social Contract" theory is bullshit.

I've neither signed, nor agreed to, nor ever read, nor authorized any such contract and legitimate contracts can only exist between parties who are freely able to choose to enter into them. And supposing that I did accept the horrendously flawed premise that simply because I was *born* in a particular geographical location, I am a subject of such a government that exists there... Then the only sensible conclusion would be that the terms of the "contract" would be the written Constitution. In the case of hte United States, the Constitution as written has been clearly violated a thousand times over. So it's the *government*, and not me or anyone else who's displeased with the way things are going, who has broken the terms of the deal. I still pay my taxes, I pay for parking tickets and register my car... I live up to my end of the non-existent contract every day of my life. But the government does not. So how does that get addressed?

Unfortunately, they're the ones with the big guns.

Tony:

No provision of the social contract says that because Sean W. Malone declares something unlawful, it is so. The contract, which yes includes the constitution, provides for the means to arbitrate these questions.

Me:

Again, you raving f***tard, the Constitution is in EASY TO UNDERSTAND language! The fact that you can't understand it is sad, but it doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of [y]our government's actions over the past 100 years have been completely against the Constitution.

Let me give you a simple one: To go to war according to the US Constitution, the Congress must ratify a declaration of war. Name me the last time that's happened with respect to US military action internationally?

Think back, Tony... Think back real hard there...

I don't feel the need to provide you with the 10s of thousands of other examples, both large & small, that fit this category of unconstitutional problem.

Another fundamental issue for you - is that you clearly don't understand the flaw in the judicial & legislative system that allows easier access to unconstitutional laws. That flaw is simple: Laws aren't reviewed for constitutionality as they are written, and are only struck down after the fact by the Supreme Court. So it takes years, sometimes 10-15 for that process to play itself out... In the meantime, legislators write *other* laws around the first one (i.e. Dept. of Homeland Security and associated offshoots like the TSA) and it becomes harder and harder to reverse the problem. This doesn't make the initial legislation any more Constitutional than it was when it was written, but it does make it increasingly difficult to strike down.

Unfortunately, your lack of understanding of this problem seems to have lead you to this bizarre and very naive position that actually does beg the question and puts you in the position of essentially asserting that all laws are constitutional, and we know that because there can't be any laws that aren't which the Supreme Court hasn't eliminated.

It's naive, it's stupid, it's perfectly predictable from you...

But it doesn't have a damn thing to do with "my" declarations. It has everything to do with decent reading comprehension and a cursory understanding of history & 18th Century political philosophy... Sadly, you lack all of the above.

[...]

Also, of course, you see how your answer precludes the possibility of ever being wrong, right?

Your arguments work like this:

1. There is a social contract you are born into which obligates you to do everything the government says.
2. If you disagree with what the government is telling you to do, too bad, you're contractually obligated to obey anyway.
3. Fuck you.

If the government does something against the contract - in your world - it's legitimate 100% of the time, because by mere product of being the government, anything they do is lawful and thus acceptable.

If you don't like it... Move somewhere else. Awesome.

The universe you live in makes my brain hurt.

Tony:

Obviously governments can overstep their bounds. Our system is set up to at least attempt to prevent that, with checks and balances and its system of jurisprudence.

But you try violating a law and trying to escape punishment because you declare the law illegitimate and see how far that gets you. You are only obligated to follow the rules of the system insofar as you care about the consequences of not doing so. That's why it's a contract.

Me:

AGAIN, Tony. Try to understand this.

The GOVERNMENT is the one that violated the "contract", insofar as that contract is on display as the US Constitution. They have done so repeatedly. The language used to explain their powers in the Constitution is quite clear overall... You like to pick "gray" areas like the Social Welfare clause while ignoring virtually everything else that is so clearly spelled out you cannot possibly "interpret" it.

So when the Government's "checks and balances" have all but been eliminated (which is largely true in the US), and they do things blatantly in violation of the contract - exactly what is the recourse for the average person (who isn't in control of a 3 million+ member army with tanks & aircraft) who is getting screwed by that abrogation of contracted duty?

You're right Tony, if I try to violate illegitimate laws, I get a boot up my ass. If government violates the law, then - according to your circular reasoning - the violation is the new law.

This is precisely how we wind up torturing and wiretapping people, not to mention converting a somewhat competitive market into pure socialist fascism, and the government gets to hide behind the facade of everything being "legal", as if A. it is remotely legal to begin with, and B. that the supposed legality isn't created by those individuals seeking the power, and C. that legality somehow translates into moral acceptability.

Tony:

I believe torture was illegal. I hope that the system is strong enough to punish any and all responsible for the illegal act. But it's not my job to declare it illegal, it's for our system of jurisprudence. I'm not prepared to be as cynical and nihilistic as you. Our government isn't perfect but it could be a lot worse. There could be no consent of the governed at all, just a king and his arbitrary will.

Me:

Well Tony, I think it's time that you wake the f*** up and realize that that's nearly what we have now.

Massive, society altering legislation happens every year that has no public support what so ever. The bailouts of 2008-2009 being an obvious example, the Iraq War being a wonderful example, the current health care bill being a pretty huge example... It doesn't matter. Neither does your vote. Welcome to the real world

Tony:

The state can justify its own existence without social contract theory. "I get my authority to enslave you from God" is a common one. Social contract theory provides a framework for people to enact a legitimate government that exists via their consent.

Me:

False. I didn't give my consent - neither did anyone else I've ever met.

Tony:

Your consent comes from when your parents, acting as your custodian, chose your place of citizenship upon your birth. No further action is required to continue the agreement, and you can renounce your citizenship at any time and thereby dissolve your agreement. Or you may have explicitly entered into the contract yourself by becoming a naturalized citizen.

There are many contracts that take this form; that is, the agreement remains until explicitly revoked.

Me:

And yet again, here we have you arguing that a contract can exist which I never gave consent to, nor signed, nor have any way out of without abandoning my family, friends and life - purely because you assert that a government has the power to control me on the basis that that's where I was born.

Dumbass.

You know what else Tony? The Bible is true & provides all moral and legal authority, because God wrote the Bible, and we know God is true because the Bible says so...

[And now for the final - and worst - part of what I wanted to share here... The part where Tony's ridiculous confusion comes to a full boil and he fails to understand the U.S. Constitution itself and is utterly baffled by the concept of rights...]

Tony:

The other question is what does our government have the power to do given its own rules. My answer is that the rules themselves have provisions for deciding this very question. I don't have to arbitrarily decide whether an action is in the service of the general welfare or is necessary and proper because that's what the courts are for. The constitutional language is simply too vague to provide an unarguable definition of government's proper role.

Me:

Tony, I hope you realize that Jefferson, Wilson, Paine, and Madison in particular deliberately went out of their way to write the Constitution in plain language so that the common person would be able to understand it.

They did this because they were of the opinion that any government who's fundamental principles could not be easily understood by the average citizen was going to be intrinsically tyrannical.

Funny how you are now arguing that it's totally ok if the meaning is willfully obscured, failing entirely to realize that the more it becomes obscured the more the document legitimizes precisely the kind of tyranny (and in fact on a much grander scale) than anything the Founding Father's had to deal with.

Here is a group of people who started a revolution over *the principle* of a 2% excise tax and you seem to think the document that came out of that revolution legitimizes the theft of 90+% of some people's earnings?

What PLANET are you on, Tony?

Tony:

Earth, what about you? Here, the complaint was a lack of representation, not the very idea of taxation. On the planet earth any idiot knows that taxes are necessary to the maintenance of human civilization. Except libertarian crazies who want a free lunch out of everything while condemning everyone else for being parasites.

Me:

That's absurd Tony, how can you be so retarded? You're the one sitting here advocating that people can have a "right" to other people's hard earned money, time & products - and you're accusing *US* of wanting a free lunch?

We're the bunch who invented TINSTAAFL [There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - for the uninitiated] for f***s sake!

I don't want a free lunch Tony, I want you to quit taking my stuff, quit pretending I owe you and whoever else you deem worthy a living off the back of my labor. Without governments or with extremely minimal ones, people have gotten along exceedingly well many times throughout history, and with technology as it is today largely as a result of particularly America's previously pro-liberty, pro-competition marketplace, it's easier now than ever before.

But all that we built America on, you and your ideological flock are busy destroying. Good luck with the results.

Tony:

Where do rights come from? And how do they persist without an institution in place to defend them?

You can't get beyond the mystical explanation that rights somehow come from God or the universe. That may be a useful bit of rhetoric employed in the declaration of independence, but it's just not adequate.

Me:

Tony, I'm an atheist too - as most people know - have been forever. I don't accept that "god" or a "creator" in any specific sense granted me any rights, I'm flat out saying that because I am an autonomous self-owner (meaning, I am the final arbiter of all my actions), at the very most basic level of discussion - I OWN ME.

You don't.

Thus, I (not you) get to decide what I spend my time doing, who I spend that time with, what I do with the things that I create or have a hand in creating and by extension, what things I trade my labor for.

It's fundamentally that simple. You don't own me. You don't get to place a lien on my life or demand that I pay you for any reason. What you get to do is offer me the possibility of voluntary exchange. If you've made something I want, and i have something you want, we may agree to trade - if not, you don't get to cry to Big Brother and have him point a gun in my face and take whatever you want from me anyway. That's the deal.

You "own" you. I "own" me. I don't steal from you, control your actions or enslave you, you don't steal from me, control my actions and enslave me. We get along as a society partially due to our biological proclivity to be social, and partly because we rely on each other physically for the means of survival. When what you want collides with what I want, the solution is recognizing ownership - which in about 99/100 cases is pretty cut and dry.

God is unnecessary in that picture.

Tony:

I don't have an agreement with you to loot my house. I do have an agreement with government to pay taxes as required by law and receive in return services only it can provide. Pretty simple arrangement. And if I don't like it I'm free to bitch all day long or leave. Is there some other way to go about things?

Me:

There's a LOT of other ways to go about things, starting with the idea that there are any services "only [government] can provide".

I reject that notion out of hand. Everything that the government does can be handled better, cheaper, more efficiently and non-coercively by private actors.

And if that were the case then instead of "bitching all day long", or "leaving" you would have option #3: Hire an alternate service provider, or option #4: Start your own business offering a service.

I can currently hire private security, private legal arbitrators to deal with contract disputes, I can buy bottled water or have a pump built on my property, I can hire a firm to build a sewer or septic system for my house, I can generate electricity to power my needs quite easily without any government run power plant (though I'd be much happier to pay for power services from a competitive market of power providers), I can and have driven on private roads and I could (and probably will) send whatever children I eventually have to private schools.

It doesn't matter what you name, a private option would be better - first because economically; market competition and a free price system produces far superior results simply because rational calculation is possible... and secondly, because morally; no one is forced to contribute to anything they don't wish to pay for.

The moral side has some secondary upsides as well in my opinion - people learning to be more self-sufficient and autonomous is good for society overall because they must rely on critical thinking & problem solving skills to succeed, rather than relying on being able to force others to support them and make decisions for them...

Tony, unfortunately, desperately wants someone to make all his decisions for him. Weak.

Tony:

Since most of the history of humanity has consisted of mass enslavement rather than societies of free rugged individualists, the idea that you own yourself isn't totally self-evident. It's a moral principle based on an article of faith.

Do you really expect to be able to enjoy the freedoms and luxuries of the civilization you happened to be born in and not contribute anything back? As I said, you're free to give up your citizenship, but as long as you're here you are compelled to live by the same rules as everyone else. What exactly do you want? You can't be this autonomous being here, there are too many taxpayer funded services you encounter daily. You are free to try other countries, but good luck finding much more freedom. Might try Europe, at least they are free from worrying about healthcare bankruptcy.

Someone Else:

Who owns you, Tony? You, or the government? Or do we ALL own a piece of Tony?

Ew. Forget I suggested the last bit.

I'm nobody's property. My body, my choice. Sound familiar?

Tony:

You own your personhood, unless you forfeit it by breaking laws. Then not only does government own your ass, your big hairy cell mate does too. Anyway, being an autonomous individual doesn't = having the right to possess every cent you manage to get your hands on.

Me:

Why do you make this about "cents" when you clearly don't understand what money is?

To break this down for you Tony, money is nothing more or less than a voucher you get for your labor or the products thereof, which you can trade for someone else's labor or products.

So the chain of logic is quite simple:

Premise 1: I own me & every action I take as an individual - productive or otherwise.
Conclusion 1: I control my time, my associations, and have ownership of all property I've used my time to either create myself or through voluntary arrangements with others, traded for.

and...

Premise 2: Money is representational of human labor & productive effort
Conclusion 2: I do get to keep "every cent" I acquire through this process because I own 100% of my time and labor.

See how this works, Tony? It's quite simple.

You own exactly 0% of me.

I own exactly 100% of me.

Since money is merely an abstract, widely-accepted and easy to transport reflection of my time & labor, assuming my money has been acquired without coercion, then in fact I do get to keep all of it... And then, I can use all those cents to pay for things *I* deem necessary.

Don't worry Tony, I pay my own insurance, I would gladly pay for some sort of personal physical protection (there's alarms in my apartment and lo-jack on my car already so that shouldn't be a huge issue)... I wouldn't, in that case, have to pay for military bases in 120 countries, or for you to have the brain replacement surgery you so desperately need.

So once more, with feeling: I'll handle me. You handle you. Quit advocating the theft of my time & stuff. I don't appreciate it.

* * * * *

So............. It goes on actually (it's a pretty long thread if you actually read through it), and Tony gets into health care and other issues... But now that we've come full circle I just want to make one final comment here.

Tony's position is fundamentally that government - which he mistakenly conflates with "society" - owns it's citizens. Additionally, relying on profoundly circular reasoning, Tony is saying that whatever laws exist are - by product of existing and having not been struck down by the Supreme Court - "Constitutional" and therefore legal. As a consequence, you'll note that Tony finds himself accepting torture as just another law he's required to obey. Unless, of course, it gets struck down by the court system.

It seems to me that Tony is representative of the kinds of sheep that wound up making the infamous Milgram experiment possible.

But look at the above exchange! Tony's arguments are largely easily-refuted nonsense, filled with question begging and completely circular rasoning. But he winds up painting himself into a corner where he has to defend torture and suggest that (purely because of one's geographical birthplace) everyone must obey all laws no matter what, even when they are clearly unconstitutional or even worse, entirely immoral. So Tony - someone who's right are violated across the United States and much more severely around the world, insofar as his freedom to contract and associate has been abridged with anti-marriage laws, and in many states even activities he might wish to engage with in the privacy of his own home are illegal as well - winds up defending the government which is his oppressor.

Isn't that sad? I really think so...


*UPDATE*

I was reading through another comments thread and found this great exchange too..

Tony:

"Elective procedures would obviously be more subject to market forces than necessary ones."

Marc:

"Obviously. That's why, for example, food continues to be so expensive--it's necessary, therefore relatively insensitive to market forces."

Tony:

"Totally apples and oranges. Food is cheap, necessary medical procedures rarely are. And people don't act like rational consumers when their health or life is on the line."

Hazel Meade:

"Ugh, Tony. Do you even bother to think through the things you say?"

JoshinHB:

"Tony-"Food is cheap, necessary medical procedures rarely are. And people don't act like rational consumers when their health or life is on the line."

Gee Tony, could the socialist delivery system of the last 70 years have anything to do with that.

Are you Prog Party Hack, or are you really this big of a dumbsh*t?"

Ohh... He is most definitely both. Ugh!

On God: Part 1 - Examining Our Premises

Examining our Premises

The Importance of Clearly Defining “God”:

It is an imperative first step in any argument or debate to first clearly define all of the major terms to be used in the discussion. Though it may seem obvious, this step is one often overlooked in religious debate and subsequently allows the debaters excellent means of avoidance simply by claiming to have been referring to a different definition of “God”.

For an example of this; check out Christopher Hitchens’ debate with Rev. Al Sharpton – towards the end of this debate, Sharpton shifts the definition of God away from the traditional Christian conception (which Hitchens clearly believed he was discussing) to one much more nebulous and limited. Essentially he changed the debate mid-stream by first using the standard conception of God “the Father” then morphing it into God “the Holy Spirit”.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am hereby defining God in the most commonly used sense in the United States and around the world. That is to say, the God of the Q’uran and the Bible (in its various incarnations) – this god has many names; Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, God, Jesus, even Haille Selassie according to some, but in each representation, this god has the same basic characteristics. Thus, any use of the term “God” shall be furthermore interchangeable with the following attributes:

1. Omnipotence: God can (literally) do anything. He is the “all-powerful” creator of the universe – there is nothing beyond his ability to create, materialize, or invent. It is crucial that this be fully understood as part of the intrinsic definition of God. There are no limits to his power. Any and all laws of physics or generalized rules of nature that humanity has discovered within its entire history do not apply to God.
2. Omniscience: God knows everything that has ever been, is now and will ever be. He knows what every living creature in the universe is thinking and feeling simultaneously.
3. Omnipresence: God exists everywhere simultaneously, or at the very least can be anywhere in the universe instantly. Omnipresence is in a sense a result of the combination of being all-powerful and all-knowing in that God exists above and outside the laws of physics such a complete extent that time and space have no meaning. As such, God is by definition immortal as well.
4. Omnibenevolent: God is all “good” or all-loving. This is much harder to define, but presumably it means that God’s primary motives all fall into the category of outwardly beneficial to the other life-forms in the universe he created.

The first three traits are the basic defining characteristics of any all-powerful supernatural being. In tandem, this means that God has ultimate understanding of everything that is (and everything that exists only in the imaginations of anything that can possibly imagine), the power to mold the universe into whatever shape he deems best and the ability to do and know anything simultaneously. The final trait is the most crucial component to the vast majority of religious thinking because it is this single characteristic that provides the positive incentive to believe, to worship, to follow and to obey.

Consider the idea of an all-powerful – omnimalevolent (all-evil) God for a moment:

What would the world of an all-evil creator look like? What type of people would populate such a universe? What would this mean to us?

Many philosophers have postulated this idea while observing perceived “evil” in the world and attempting to reconcile various atrocities with the assumption of a creator who (1) Is aware of the atrocities as any all-knowing being would have to be, and, (2) has the power to stop any and all atrocities effortlessly as any all-powerful being would be able to do and the fact that any all-loving creator would take action to correct things like war, suffering, disease, murder, and anything else that is commonly thought to be bad. The conclusion by some philosophers, like Calvin or Hobbes (I just couldn’t resist), is essentially that we are predestined to exist in a world which is essentially evil and God alone decides our fate in the afterlife (at birth) – at which point we will either continue as eternally damned in hell or be elevated to a non-evil plane of existence called heaven. Other, much older philosophers believed similar things – for example Greek, Roman & Norse gods are all petty, and vindictive creatures who toy with humanity primarily out of amusement. These gods are not all-evil by any means, but they rule purely out of fear – and eventually fell out of favor for a god which presents more positive incentives for worship.

Omnimalevolence is an interesting topic to discuss to be sure, however, it provides no incentives to the religious for belief – only the most masochistic and sadistic of individuals would be remotely interested in that type of existence or God, and even then, they wouldn’t benefit either.

So, I am going to deal exclusively with the idea of an omnibenevolent creator.

There is significance in this exact a definition (as opposed to the one Sharpton slid into at the end of the Hitchens debate) because it distinguishes God – as a supernatural being not bound by any physical laws – from a highly advanced “Intelligence” or alien. (Note: The “Intelligent Design” hypothesis will be discussed at a later point in some detail.)

If one takes a more loose definition of God – the “personal” type of deity that many sensible Americans believe in instead of an active all-powerful one – what results is that “God” becomes effectively no different than an extremely technologically advanced alien species would be. At that stage, the very concept of God shifts from being super or supranatural, to being bound by the same laws of physics that govern human existence.

And at that point, we move into a scientific and secularly philosophical (rather than theological) discussion and are no longer talking about the same God described by nearly every religious text in the world.

So, to reiterate: God, for the purposes of all further discussion in this essay, is hereby defined as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent.

Supremely powerful & supremely good.


And yet - that is an impossibility. Let’s actually examine our premises.

Omnipotence - The Basic Paradox:

Can an all-powerful God create a rock so large he himself cannot lift it?

Well… No.

I know that this argument appears to be set up as a straw-man, but the truth is, most people’s conception of the Judeo-Christian/Muslim God (and many others!) is that of supreme immutable power and thus it is important to examine.

The problem lies in the initial premise that anything could be “all-powerful”. By simple reasoning alone, anyone can come up with a number of intrinsically impossible paradoxes like the question at the outset of this segment.

Thus the mere existence of paradoxes forces omnipotence into the impossibility category.

Again, according to the very definition of omnipotence, NOTHING is beyond the ability of an omnipotent being – yet, there are only two ways to answer a paradox such as “Can an all-powerful God create a rock so large he himself cannot lift it?”, and because there are two aspects to the question that are irreconcilable, either answer results in the omnipotent being failing to do in some way.

1. God can lift any object regardless of its mass, volume, size, scale, etc. – thus resulting in a no to the question of whether or not God can create such a rock.

2. God can create anything, including a rock he can’t lift – thus resulting in a God which is unable to lift an object.

In either case, God cannot do something.

But it’s not “God’s” fault! The premise that omnipotence can exist at all is completely fallacious due to these types of paradoxes. No being can do “anything”! The whole idea is really just an over simplification, quite likely created as an explanation for another premise: God created the universe.

If God created the universe, it’s logical to ask the question, “How did God create the universe?” To which the first and most basic answer is very likely; “God is all-powerful and is capable of any feat, regardless of how inconceivable it is to humanity.”

Unfortunately, this over simplification has perpetuated and grown over the ensuing centuries and the concept that God is all-powerful gives rise to many false conclusions – one of the most essential ingredients to fundamentalist zealotry is the belief that one’s own interpretation of God is completely infallible (as any all-powerful/all-knowing being would have to be) and thus, the way you believe is absolute truth. Of course, many theologians will take issue with that statement as a human problem rather than one with God, but the overall point is that omnipotence cannot exist. In and of itself, it is paradoxical and thus to base any belief on the premise of an omnipotent God will result in flawed conclusions.

Remember; even the most rational conclusion based on a false premise is still going to be wrong!

Omnipotence & The All-Good Dilemma:

Though omnipotence can be clearly established to be an impossible paradox, assuming that it was possible for a being to be all-powerful for the sake of argument, and also assuming that said being is all-loving or omnibenevolent, what would our world look like?

Certainly there are things that happen in the world at large that the vast majority of people would unanimously consider as, “bad”. Three of the major ones in general are 1. Theft, 2. Rape, and 3. Murder. These respectively violate our right to be secure in property, our right to be secure in person (and to have our decisions respected) and lastly our most essential right to exist.

However, thefts, rapes and murders happen every day!

So do countless other types of atrocities… and not just isolated cases, but in simply absurd proportions! There is genocide happening currently in Darfur and other parts of Africa. In fact, the 20^th Century alone has seen dozens of mass murders from fabulous dictators such as Kim Il Sung, Mao Ze-Dong, Jozef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Che Guevara, to Fidel Castro, and on and on…

As obvious as this is, if we assume God is “all-good” and that he is “all-powrful”, and we agree that genocide is not good at all, the question must be asked: Why would God not stop genocide?

If God were both omnipotent & omnibenevolent, it is only reasonable to conclude that he/she would stop the terrible atrocities that happen every day. There is an alternative of course – that God has a much larger, all-good purpose for which genocide is a key component. But that requires us to assume a large number of premises that have absolutely no supporting evidence, for the sole purpose of being able to maintain those premises – which is all quite circular, and extremely flawed logic.

Omniscience – Conflict with Omnipotence and the Free Will Dilemma:

Though there is no direct conflict, in that if any being was all-powerful it would inherently also be all-knowing, the concept of omnipotence has a flaw.

To know all is for everything to be complete and unchanging. In a strange way this does present a problem for an omnipotent being because nothing would be created that wasn’t already known. This isn’t necessarily a problem for the supreme being if one accepts that even an all-powerful God cannot generate or create any idea or thing which he did not already know he would have. Which means that omniscience (though an inherent component to the concept of omnipotence) actually negates the possibility of omnipotence.

The whole concept is definitely a bit of a brain twister… So, to clarify:

1. Definition of Terms: Omniscience means knowing all ideas, actions, feelings, events, etc. from all times past, present & future.

a. That would necessarily include all ideas, actions and feelings past, present & future that were experienced by the all-knowing being (God) in addition to those of every other sentient creature

b. Omnipotence means being able to do, create, alter any reality to any other reality at will – to be able to do anything with no limits.

2. Thus, an omnipotent being cannot be omniscient as it would render the being incapable of producing a thought or action that was previously unknown.

Essentially, this is just another way of pointing out that omnipotence is a completely impossible and paradoxical concept.

But again – for the sake of debate - assuming that omnipotence was possible and by extension, omniscience, this does present an enormous problem to the concept of free-will among those of us who are not the all-powerful God.

At this point, we have to come back to the real issue of omniscience – which is that for a creature of any kind, even a God, to know everything, than everything that was, is and ever will be is completely unchangeable.

An Analogy: Say you have just finished reading your favorite novel, perhaps the book is “Sock”, by Penn Jillette. As you’ve completed the entire text, you now ostensibly know everything there is to know about the text of that book – you’ve read and understood every word. You are now “all-knowing” on the subject of the book, Sock. But you are only all-knowing so long as the text doesn’t change. But perhaps let’s say that Penn decides to write a new edition of the book and change a few chapters. When the book has been rewritten, you are no longer all-knowing about the book until you read the updated version. Penn’s free-will and ability to change the text rendered your knowledge of the book incomplete whereas without change, your omniscience in this microcosm could continue. Ultimately, it must also be noted that if you had supreme knowledge of the past, present and future, you would have also known the text of the updated version – which in essence renders the author powerless against fate.

This understanding has led many philosophers to believe (rightly so given the premise) that the existence of humanity has been entirely predetermined by God. If God already knows all that can be, then the future has ostensibly already been written and humans have no legitimate control over their own destiny.

Fate and free-will are mutually exclusive concepts.

At this point, we come to a philosophical crossroads: If God is omniscient, then fate (or specifically all life being managed by God) is in play. In this event, human existence is predetermined entirely by God – so we can now decide whether we believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, or the worst? In other words, good and bad are completely out of humanity’s control, so it’s up to God to decide which to provide in which situations and to whom. In the past, certain philosophers have chosen to believe that God controls everyone’s destiny and the result is the best of all possible things, and some have chosen to believe that God is more vindictive and the result is the worst of all possible things. Ironically, in either case, the belief in fate or God’s plan for human existence would mean that whether or not an individual was optimistic or pessimistic, God (and not the individual) made that choice.

As a bit of an aside, if we all can agree that our lives aren’t perfect and there is a mixture of good and bad in every-day life then we are going to have some difficulty taking the position that God, who is in control of our destiny, is “all-good” or “all-bad”. However, that would contradict God as omnibenevolent and also would suddenly open up a Pandora’s Box of mystery as to God’s intentions.

Note: Shifting back down for a second… This is a very complicated issue precisely because religious philosophy over-complicates itself as a result of accepting ridiculous root premises. In order to successfully maintain the axioms that it holds true at the most basic levels – e.g. the existence of an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful creator – it paints itself into an intellectual corner that can only be escaped by avoiding dealing with the issues that it raises. The theologians of centuries past did not always shy away from these issues, and as a result, entire movements of religious thought realized that to account for some people who are accepted as good and some who are accepted as bad while also maintaining that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, God must favor some people over others by predetermining who enjoys the good and who suffers the bad. And while that might account for why there is a mixture of good and bad in the world, it certainly wouldn’t explain why an all-good God would allow any non-good to exist in the first place. In either case, humans have no control over their actions – and all because of an exceedingly complex set of philosophies that are based on premises that defy reason.

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one." (Occam’s Razor)

We need to ask ourselves – is it more likely that an all-powerful being mysteriously controls our every action in completely intangible ways and although he is ostensibly all-good, actively promotes horrific atrocities perpetrated by a select group of people he has chosen to act out in violent, murderous ways as a means of creating ultimate good on Earth, and that because all that was, is and ever will be is already known beyond all doubt by this being, people’s behavior, morals, social values and the entire future of humanity is already predetermined and completely impossible to change…

Or…

Is it more likely that people aren’t being unwittingly controlled by a magical being but instead are simply freely thinking animals capable of making their own decisions and with that freedom comes good or bad choices as a result of fallible senses and limited intelligence?

Besides which, again it bears reminding that we’re only delving into this topic as a hypothetical exercise… Omnipotence is a paradox in and of itself and cannot exist – and neither can omniscience.

Omnipresence – Proving a Negative:

In this one instance, after having established that nothing can be either Omnipotent nor Omniscient, we are still left with a common feature of most Gods, which is Omnipresence – or the ability to be in all places at once.

Ironically, since it is impossible to prove a negative (i.e. that God “doesn’t exist”), it’s also impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist everywhere at once. It is important to note that this is only true if we accept that God takes no active role in shaping the universe or our lives, for the alternative would necessarily provide us with ample evidence of his omnipresence. Unfortunately, there is no such evidence.

Notes & Conclusions:

Understand that because it is impossible to disprove the existence of any God, no rational person can, in good conscience, entirely rule out the possibility – provided that the God people refer to is highly limited in his abilities and not of the hyperbolic nature most average people attribute to him.

With that in mind, let it be stated that if God did exist and was omnipresent, he would be relegated entirely to a clawless, toothless being that in essence only had the power to observe and not alter the universe directly in anyway – OR – if God did exist and was not omnipresent, he could have some mysterious powers to alter time and space, but not by any means would he know everything or be able to do anything, in essence, he would be much more like the Gods of Greek or Roman mythology. Powerful in certain ways, but certainly not all powerful… not even the Titans were truly immortal.

But, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins, how many of us believe in Zeus? Odin? Saturn? The Sun-god? Sun Wukong, the Chinese Monkey-god?

We’ve long discarded the concept of specific, petty and highly anthropomorphic Gods of our ancient history. We don’t sacrifice virgin girls to the sun each night in order to ensure the morning light. And we no longer believe that a drought will be in any way ended if only we dance and chant.

But I would certainly contend that the modern, all-powerful version of God is filled with the same level of silliness as any of those ideas! And assuming that there is a God who has some limited powers, but is not magically (paradoxically) all-powerful brings us all the way back to the beginning of this segment in that such a being would be indistinguishable from a technologically advanced alien.

Again, for a God to be supernatural, he must operate outside of the laws of physics. An advanced alien might be inconceivable to humans and be mistaken for a God, but that creature would definitely not be supernatural. However, though the definition of God as all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving certainly makes God quite different from some curious alien species interested in genetic tampering, it has a problem… It just can’t work!

The default position needs to be skepticism (not cynicism!), and extraordinary claims of supernatural beings who have vast powers actively employed to alter the universe into whatever shape suits the whims of said being should be backed with extraordinary evidence of that claim. Logically, the burden of proof has to be on the claimant – if a person walks up to you and says, “There is an invisible fire-breathing dragon standing next to me”, then that person says, “prove that I’m lying”, you will find it impossible to do so no matter how ridiculous that idea might be because you cannot prove a negative. The same applies to God – it is absolutely not enough to say, “An anthropomorphic, omnipotent being created the entire universe instantly, and actively controls the fate of mankind although one cannot hear, see, smell, touch, taste or measure his existence in anyway – prove that he doesn’t exist.”

I can’t. No one can… but do not ever make the mistake of thinking that lack of a disproof is remotely the equivalent of a proof, much less even a reasoned argument. Proofs are positive things that demonstrate an idea clearly and directly and are precisely what faithful believers are missing. So just because I am logically responsible in not claiming to “disprove” God entirely, that does not endorse the likelihood of a God in any way.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

To recap our re-examined premises:

1. God is omnipotent:
1. Entirely paradoxical and simply cannot happen due to the existence of mutually exclusive (oppositional) objects & ideas
2. Would present enormous problems to also viewing God as all-good since he has the power to make everything in the world “perfect” and doesn’t
2. God is omniscient:
1. If God cannot be all-powerful, he cannot be all knowing, as at least some forces outside his control would be acting upon the universe
2. If God were all-knowing, that would indicate that all events, thoughts, feelings, actions, and every single atom of the universe was able to be accounted for from the beginning of time to the end of time – which would mean that no one, including God, has the power to alter their existence in any unexpected way. In addition, even if people don’t know that it is God’s divine decision to create their lives exactly as they are would not change the fact that those lives are controlled by God/fate
1. This leads to a number of depressing philosophies: Determinism, Calvinism, “original sin”
2. Absolves any human (or animal, etc.) from any responsibility for their action
3. Since an all-knowing God would need to be an all-powerful God, and yet humanity regularly experiences violent evil, there would be no evidence-based way to suggest that God was also all-loving
3. God is omnipresent: Since there is no evidence to support an active God, it is possible, however extremely unlikely, that there is a relatively powerless being floating invisibly among all life in the universe
4. God is omnibenevolent
1. If we assume God is all-powerful & all-knowing, we cannot reasonably conclude that he is also all-loving, as there is no correlation between religious belief and susceptibility to disease and perhaps more obviously because multiple tribes who even believe in and worship the same concept of God routinely kill each other, none of whom are magically protected by having pleased the right deity.
2. If we assume God is not particularly powerful, but is perhaps omnipresent, God could also be all-loving. However, since that God would have almost no power to do anything to help or change human existence, it really is an academic point then.

When we break down the premises on top of which people build entire religions and life-guiding philosophy, we find a crumbling foundation not fit to stand on, much less build empires with. From those bad premises onward, we have to start making wild assumptions about the world in which we live and operate under the solipsistic notion that we can consciously understand what God says or believes while simultaneously explaining that he is beyond our understanding as a species. The whole thing leads to innumerable contradictions and overly complex circular philosophies. Yet…

“Contradictions do not exist. Every time you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises, one of them is likely to be false.” – Ayn Rand

The concept of God is built on premises that fail the most basic inductive logical scrutiny – and that’s before taking into account the utter lack of empirical evidence related to the subject matter, which only serves to make the whole idea more suspect. People are often content with this however, I imagine, due to their desire for simplistic aphorisms and feel-good platitudes. It’s really nice to think that there is a plan for your life that will all be for the best and that we as a species exist because a grand creator placed us deliberately in his universe. We are cosmically loved, and if that weren’t enough, when we die, we’re actually immortal and get to spend eternity in paradise! Yes, that sounds good, but only works so long as we avoid taking a deeper look at what it all really means and so long as we can remain ethnocentrically positioned to assume that no one outside of our group has access to God - for the success of another group who also claims the favor and good-willed platitudes of being loved by God, if conceptualized even slightly differently, would mean that there is a chance that God might favor the other group! That idea of course, has lead to countless on-going wars and many of the previously mentioned mass-murders. This isn’t good.

Critical thinking is man’s greatest tool for advancement in a rough universe and we need to apply it to our core beliefs if we hope to truly live up to our potential. Beliefs based on nonsense can only lead us astray, no matter how benign people wish them to be. That is why it is imperative that everyone understand this first concept:

"...otherwise logical arguments do not create true conclusions from false premises, regardless of how frequently or confidently they are repeated."

If the belief in God itself is based on false premises, it doesn’t matter how many conclusions about the nature of God people would like to draw – they are all going to be wrong. The very definition of God is impossible, and anything short of that definition is less than godlike.

Our core beliefs are what guide us and what help us deal with the universe. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to operate with beliefs that represent the universe as it truly is. But when we adopt fundamental principles that are flawed at their very core, we have no chance of seeing the world accurately – and in turn, we destroy our ability to exist in it at our fullest potential. So check your premises!