You can find more by Uk artist, Doug at QualiaSoup, his YouTube Channel.

(My cupboard has several indigo drawers and handles shaped like rabbits that glow in the dark. How’s that for metaphors?)

If Pauly Shore can do it why can't I?

It may be your civic duty, but jury duty sucks and people are always looking for a way out of it.

About six weeks ago I received a summons to go through the jury selection process today. During that time whenever I would mention it to someone they’d suggest a way for me to get out of it. “Tell’em you hate cops. “ “Tell’em your for capital punishment.” “Tell’em you’re against the whole system.”

Maybe I’m being Pollyannaish, but I wasn’t willing to lie to save myself a little inconvenience. As it turns out my honesty and (what I perceive as) my rationality prevented me from serving.

The Answer That Got Me Out of Jury Duty

When faced with the question: Would you believe the testimony of a police officer over that of another witness? I answered: yes.

That answer got me nixed, because it wasn’t the answer the prosecution or defense was looking for. They wanted people who believe that experience and credentials don’t mean anything. But those people are wrong. They do.

Witness Vs. Expert Witness

If you’ve ever watched one of the half-million courtroom dramas, you’ve seen the defense pullout its expert witness. You know the moment, it’s normally followed by gasps from the audience, panicked looks from the prosecution and an immediate cut to a commercial.

But do jury members really know the difference between a forensic pathologist and a forensic psychologist? If you had a forensic pathologist give their opinion about a defendant’s metal state I bet most jurors would except their testimony as valid. Even though they’re giving testimony in fields outside their expertise.

I don’t know (and most jurors don’t know) what it takes to be a good forensic whatever-ist. But with a police officer; I don’t have that problem.

Instant Credibility

When you tell me someone is a police officer, I automatically know several things about them: they can pass a background check; they’re civically minded; they’ve been trained to gather evidence; and they’re likely to be experienced witnesses.

If a hit-and-run occurs on the street most people will be shocked and look around to see what others are doing. A cop will be getting the car’s license plate number.

Cops aren’t infallible. They might not remember the plate number exactly right. But in general, a cop will be a better witness because they’re trained not to be frazzled by the situation.

Why Would a Cop Lie?

It’s obvious why a defendant would lie. Lying might mean keeping themselves out of jail. The risks of an additional perjury conviction is minuscule in comparison to the reward of getting off scot-free.

However, if a police officer lies he / she risks loosing their job, going to jail, and being banned from the profession. Convictions look good on their record, but most people would be ethically opposed to convicting an innocent person.

In court everyone is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A cop saying someone committed a crime doesn’t remove reasonable doubt. I would never make a case for that. But can you honestly not consider someone’s experience and motivation when trying to determine if they are a credible witness?

I only recently realized how powerful the Euthyphro dilemma is. Throughout my life, I’ve had certain areas of thought that have been simply closed off to critical thinking. The journey out of religion has been the process of intentionally examining many of these areas and exposing them to the discerning light of reason, abandoning ideas that couldn’t hold up under basic scrutiny. Still, there are many things that I know I have yet to consider in a critical light. Until a few months ago, the Euthyphro dilemma was one of them. I was so used to accepting the stock religious answers without questioning their validity that I didn’t see why the Euthyphro dilemma was particularly compelling. So let’s get to it.

As you likely know already, the heart of the dilemma comes in Plato’s dialogues where Euthyphro tells Socrates, “Piety is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.” Socrates responds, “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.” In other words, “does God command what’s moral because he recognizes that right and wrong exist objectively outside himself, or does he define right and wrong as simply whatever his own nature dictates?” Neither of the two answers is acceptable.

Let’s look at the easy one first. If right and wrong exist outside of God and he’s just going along with them, then there’s a higher power and authority than God. There’s something or someone else that we can look to for moral authority, and God is an irrelevant part of the equation. I don’t personally know any Christian who would affirm this option, although, without the irrelevant God part, it would probably be the position taken by most secular humanists when exploring morality.

So what about the second answer–that right and wrong are an inherent part of God’s nature and that he makes the moral rules himself, based on what he wants? For a while, I thought this was very compelling. I thought that right and wrong were based on God’s nature and character, and that if God liked different things, we’d think different things were right and wrong. As a fundamentalist Christian in high school, I actually told a friend the following: “All our morality comes from God. If God was a murderer, we would think that was a high virtue and pursue it as best we could.” Yes, I actually said that.

When you really think about it, however, I don’t think theists can affirm this option in the Euthyphro dilemma, either. Morality isn’t as simple as “because I said so.” Life is more complex than “what are God’s preferences?” If right and wrong are indeed completely arbitrary for humans, based on what God happens to like (though his omnipotence means that he can change his mind about morality, as he most certainly did when transitioning from Old Testament to New), then God himself has no standards.

After critical examination, can you really think that murder wouldn’t be wrong if God, whose preferences are our only moral source, happened to like it? We’re alive, and we want to stay that way. Life is short, and living is, for the most part, good. How could any of this change, structurally speaking, if God’s preferences were different? We know that killing is wrong and harmful completely separately from what God might or might not be like.

I can hear the objections now–because I’ve heard them before: “Of course we can’t imagine a system where murder could be okay, because our minds are so completely influenced by God’s character; we just couldn’t picture it any other way.” This objection does not stand, as most Christians would admit that our morality isn’t perfectly in line with God’s to begin with. Why else would some people feel fine about being gay, getting drunk, or committing other sins? In Christian theology, we don’t share God’s perfect holiness–we think about things in a different, human way.

It’s not like our wills are so intertwined with God’s that if he changed his mind we would suddenly start seeing morality in a completely different light. We’d still have our separate, human way of going about things, which would be based on our experience and expectations about life, and open for revision as time goes on and we refine our moral sensitivities. Unless it’s not already clear, this is a good thing. Commands from God (or actions based on God’s perceived character) are dangerous fantasies because they can justify almost anything and aren’t up for discussion. Not having those dictates (or a moral system based purely around what you think God’s arbitrary personal preferences are) is a good thing because it means we can discuss important moral issues and come to reasonable, human-focused answers.

One of my entry-level statements when discussing human morality is that no matter where it does come from, we can be fairly certain it’s not from the holy books of the monotheistic religions. I’ve been surprised at how many people actually believe that we would be immoral barbarians without these sets of “guidelines”; my assumption that most Christians approached the moral argument for God from the “universal inner light of conscience” angle instead of the “book of laws” angle was the driving force behind the approach I took to writing the previous article on secular morality.

Anyway, one of the most common and hotly disputed arguments for the immorality of the Torah (which all three major monotheistic religions honor) is God’s commendation of slavery, so I’d like to focus on that as an example case (as opposed to taking a general swipe at the myriad moral incongruities of the Torah). I don’t think we’ll get very far without first reading the verses in question (from the mouth of God), so here we go….Skim this if you know the verses.

Slaves can be taken and passed down as inherited property (i.e., “real” slaves):

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Slaves of your own race (!) are to be released after six years, but you can keep any wife or children that slave attains along the way. If he doesn’t want to be separated from that family, guess what? He’s your slave for life, too:

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. (Exodus 21:2-6)

Exodus 21:7-11 gives regulations for the practice of sex slavery (selling your daughter), and Exodus 21:20-21 gives regulations about how hard you can beat your slaves (as long as they don’t die, you’re pretty much good to go), but I won’t quote these here in the interest of time. Just read ‘em.

There are four basic responses that I’ve heard (largely from Christians) attempting to justify the issue of slavery in the Torah, and I’ll deal with each one in turn.

1. God is allowing slavery, not condoning it. This seems to be the weakest of the various arguments. If God is giving specific instructions on how to deal with slaves, there is no practical difference between “allowing” and “condoning.” The only definition of “allow” that doesn’t overlap with “condone” is avoiding completely, and both God’s instructions and his omniscience/omnipotence rule this option out.

2. God condoned slavery, but only because it was ubiquitous at the time and impossible to stop. This argument has more internal congruence, but it doesn’t square with the fundamental idea that the word of God represents our universal guide to morality. As soon as you make this claim, you’re launching into moral relativism and accepting the fact that social mores have changed drastically over time–an idea that most secular humanists would wholeheartedly embrace. In fact, when you admit that modern secular morality is superior to what is taught in your holy book, we cease to disagree on this particular point.

Moreover, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the God of the Torah was opposed to making rules that completely upset the status quo in the ancient Middle East. Why would he have banned idols in the ten commandments, for example, if he was dead set on not upsetting the social mores of the times? According to the biblical record, this was a big deal for the Israelites, and a command so stunning that they had a notoriously hard time keeping the idols out of their society–much to God’s chagrin.

With all this existing hassle in instituting difficult (but moral!) laws, would it have been so hard for God to make room or erase one of the less important commandments (like not coveting) and put in a solid zinger like “Thou Shalt Not Own Thy Fellow Man”? Or at the very least remain utterly silent on the issue? No, instead we have the joys of slave ownership forever emblazoned in God’s one, holy, eternal revelation to humanity.

3. But that’s the Old Testament! And why don’t you care just because God said it in the Old Testament? If Jesus=God, this argument is moot. It’s the same guy, and he can’t be “perfectly moral” just some of the time. Why was slavery ever okay? Why are you still hanging the Ten Commandments in your house if you don’t accept the teachings of the Old Testament? Jesus affirmed every word of his own law (see Matthew 5:18), never chose to speak out against slavery at all, and presented it in a positive, matter-of-fact light when he did mention it (e.g., in parables or references like Luke 12:47). And it’s not like the New Testament as a whole is any better about slavery regardless (see Ephesians 6:5 or 1 Timothy 6:1-2)….

4. No matter how you read the biblical text, real Christians don’t support something as immoral as slavery. This is an interesting objection, but based on what’s in the Torah (see above), it’s really just a textbook example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. The theist’s mores have changed and grown with society like everyone else’s, but this process has necessitated ignoring large portions of their holy book–while still clinging to the belief that everything in it is moral.

This is demonstrated in stark relief by reading the sermons of many “upstanding,” biblically grounded Christians during the 19th century. Kazim on the Atheist Experience blog makes the excellent point that these Christians saw the Bible as proof that slavery was sanctioned by God, and he quotes an essay called “Scriptural View of Slavery,” which was written in 1856 by the Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, a Baptist minister from Culpepper County in Virginia. I’ll quote the passages he highlighted on the blog:

Job himself was a great slave-holder, and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his duty to his slaves.

See Lev. xxv: 44, 45, 46; ‘Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.’ I ask any candid man, if the words of this institution could be more explicit? It is from God himself; it authorizes that people, to whom he had become king and law-giver, to purchase men and women as property; to hold them and their posterity in bondage; and to will them to their children as a possession forever; and more, it allows foreign slaveholders to settle and live among them; to breed slaves and sell them.

This, by the way, is a singular circumstance, that Jesus Christ should put a system of measures into operation, which have for their object the subjugation of all men to him as a law-giver–kings, legislators, and private citizens in all nations; at a time, too, when hereditary slavery existed in all; and after it had been incorporated for fifteen hundred years into the Jewish constitution, immediately given by God himself. I say, it is passing strange, that under such circumstances, Jesus should fail to prohibit its further existence, if it was his intention to abolish it.

If, therefore, doing to others as we would they should do to us, means precisely what loving our neighbor as ourself means, then Jesus has added no new moral principle above those in the law of Moses, to prohibit slavery, for in his law is found this principle, and slavery also.

We can agree, of course, that Revered Stringfellow was wrong about the morality of slavery. But we can’t say that he didn’t hold to a stringent, accurate, biblical code of morality.

In conclusion, I’ve found this last argument to be the most common. Good Christian people are utterly committed to the idea that God hates slavery, and they’ll insist on it no matter what they read in their book. “There just has to be a reasonable explanation,” they’ve told me, without knowing what that explanation could possibly be. If you serve the “God of the Bible,” slavery and other moral ills are unavoidably endorsed by your god, and our standard of morality certainly isn’t measured by his words.

Ah, yes. The moral question is a big one. It’s been addressed many times and by people way smarter than myself (e.g., Richard Carrier), so I’m going to focus on a simple, one-word answer: empathy.

The reason I choose to focus on this word is that it gets right at the heart of what most religious people mean when talking about the moral necessity of God. Typical atheist objections to religious moral arguments are along the lines of Richard Dawkins’ observation that being moral out of a fear of hell or punishment is a very sad reason indeed for being moral. This is true for people who actually do good things because they’re afraid of hell, but I think it’s an oversimplification of the religious arguments, which, at their core, claim that morality is an argument for God because no one but God could have given people a conscience and an innate sense of right and wrong. The religious argument is ultimately about what’s inside, not about any outside force, supernatural or natural. (This is in conflict with the Christian doctrine of “total depravity,” but that’s a discussion for another time.)

In fact, the moral argument for God has to be about the conscience and an innate sense of right and wrong. If it was about external moral laws imposed by religion (or law “from God”), it would fall into the category of all the other laws that humans have erected for survival and society. It would also immediately fail to explain why atheists and members of other religions can be good, moral people (hey, they don’t have your book of laws!). No, the moral argument for God rests on the idea that there is some built-in human morality that speaks to the existence of a higher being.

Before I go on to discuss these arguments, let’s examine a few quotes to make sure I’m not misrepresenting the religious position here. Timothy Keller quotes both C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga in his recent book, The Reason for God. These aren’t straw men; they’re at the forefront of modern and late 20^th-century apologetics. Here’s Lewis:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of “just” and “unjust”?…What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?…Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies….Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.

Basically, he’s saying that we couldn’t know what was “just” or “unjust” if God hadn’t given us a universal moral conscience. Here’s Plantinga:

Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live….A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful…argument [for the reality of God].

Essentially, the same thing. If we admit that there is a better way to live and a worse way to live, we automatically have “a powerful argument for God.” As I established earlier, this has to be some inner moral sense that humans live out and which presents the basic argument for a higher power.

What these apologists are missing is that better and worse are judgments that don’t demand divine origin. If I’m alive (Cogito ergo sum), evolutionary theory easily explains why I want to keep living. And when I empathize with others in my species and social group (which is not uncommon among advanced species, e.g., dolphins), I’m caring in a way that can be explained in moral terms. Being imaginative creatures with large brains means we can makes guesses about what other beings are feeling or thinking (which is helpful for survival); this imaginative process results in association and empathy, which of course plays a role in group selection. These traits of caring and empathy are present even in the very young.

Social morality is as simple as two people getting together and deciding that to help them survive and prosper, they don’t want their stuff stolen or their lives threatened. They agree on these basic rules, and require that anyone who wishes to enter their social group also adhere to these rules. Socialization and evolution take care of it from there. Societies that tolerate rape, murder, theft, etc., will die out quickly. This isn’t to say, of course, that whatever naturally happens represents what is “right” (far from it, in fact); it means that humans have the ability to empathize, to work together in cooperative society for evolutionary benefit and the welfare of all, and, ultimately, to develop intellectual abilities that allow us to make moral judgments about welfare and right/wrong that transcend the dog-eat-dog system of natural selection and value every human life for what it is: a precious, one-time shot at existing.

The “conscience” that develops under these circumstances is very similar to the religious “innate, God-given sense of right and wrong” as defined at the beginning of this article. The religious explanation for this conscience is possible; I’m not saying it’s definitely wrong. But there is absolutely no reason to think that it is correct when we don’t need it or have any evidence to support belief in the supernatural. I could propose right now that there are metaphysical, translucent purple whales that somehow manage to float around us in the physical realm and softly massage our hearts when we try to make judgments that don’t fit in with what they have defined (and given to us) as “morality.”

Sure, that could be it. But why on earth would anyone think this? Just because someone has thought of an explanation doesn’t mean it is the least bit likely. (I could think of another ridiculous, possible, and unfalsifiable explanation right now.) We should be able to acknowledge that humans can make objective moral claims about what is “better” and “worse” and still not have to posit an explanation with no evidential support whatsoever. That’s what Occam’s Razor is all about. As long as I can empathize, I don’t need divine explanations for why we have a conscience, moral sense, or anything else like that.

Contrary to Lewis’ assertion, we can make “objective” moral claims because we realize that we’re alive and it’s better to be alive than to be dead. (Ironically, religious folks would have to say the opposite if they took their theology seriously.) It’s better to eat than to starve. It’s better not to get hurt and feel pain than it is to get hurt and feel pain. As long as there are better and worse choices in the world, right and wrong need no divine origin. Morality and moral sense develop over time (values certainly change from century to century), but the process is guided by the fact that we all exist. And in the struggle to assign divine labels to human emotions, let’s not ignore the fact that people naturally just give a damn about each other.

So what keeps me from doing “just anything?” Empathy. The fact that I care about people. The fact that I get pleasure from doing nice things. The fact that I know helping other people furthers our species and, to some small extent, increase the quality of life others (and myself) enjoy. And yes, sometimes the fact that I’ll get locked up if I violate society’s moral/legal code. Sure, I’ve done objectively bad things, and by many religious definitions, I’d be a really bad person; but this doesn’t change the fact that I have the ability to empathize and feel good when I make the right choices.

I recognize, of course, that a lot of people make the wrong choices, but the reasons for this are complex and include things like group pressure/atmosphere, personal needs/desires, and nurture/environment; my goal here is to talk about the “conscience”/empathy trait in humans. Religious pressure (or its equivalent in, e.g., a political leader cult) is, ironically, one of the most powerful ways to break down the natural conscience. “With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion” (Steven Weinberg).

It’s also worth noting things that I can do without guilt. You see, there’s a big difference between “sin” as defined by religions and actions that are “wrong.” One of the reasons atheists are viewed as immoral by religious people is that we realize there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality, and we don’t make people in the GLBT community feel guilty about their private lives. There are bad/evil people in the world for sure, but I think the majority of cultural “sin” decried by religious organizations is simply the result of people who want to eat pork and masturbate. “Sinful” or “taboo” things are not always wrong, and this is a distinction that is purposefully blurred by the regulations of every major religion.

I’d like to close by saying a few words about the moral impotence of Christianity in particular (largely because it’s the religion I’m most familiar with). People who want to believe because they are in need of a cosmic sense of justice should find no solace in Christianity. Besides immediate entanglement in moral contradictions (such as the Euthyphro Dilemma), Christianity teaches that the worst murderer or thief in the world can go to heaven by believing the right thing at the last minute (just see Luke 23:32-33, 39-43), while still sending moral unbelievers (e.g., Gandhi, of course!) to hell. In other words, there’s no ultimate justice here. It’s an arbitrary “who does Jesus love” kind of deal that exalts “who you know” over “who you are.” And morally speaking, my conscience will never be satisfied with that.