Culture

Gordon Brown’s Missing ‘I’?

I suspect that the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has been widely misquoted in the media reports of last night’s leaders’ debate on the BBC. According to the reports I’ve read, he said:

But I do know how to run the economy, in good times and in bad.

Surely what he really said — or at least meant to say — was the following:

But I do know how to ruin the economy, in good times and in bad.

After all, he couldn’t possibly have meant what he is quoted to have said. Britain isn’t Soviet Russia. It’s not the job of the Prime Minister — or anyone else for that matter — to “run the economy”. We don’t need someone to “run the economy” any more than we need someone to “run the media” or “run the Internet”. But thanks to Soviet Russia and other disastrous experiments in ideological socialism, we do know that governments who think they can run a country’s economy will inevitably ruin that country’s economy.

No, all the evidence suggests that the Prime Minister is missing an ‘i’.

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The Morality of the New Atheism

When it comes to ethical theory, the apologists for the New Atheism are utilitarians almost to a man, if not actually to a man. They endorse some version of the “principle of utility”: what is morally right is what results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

So what makes people happy? As it turns out, studies consistently show a correlation between religiosity and happiness. (Go here for one recent example.) Religious people typically enjoy happier, more contented, more satisfying lives than non-religious people in comparable circumstances. Yet the New Atheists, by publishing books scathingly critical of religion, are attempting (one assumes) to persuade people to abandon religion. So if the aforementioned studies are reliable, the polemics of the New Atheists — if successful — will most likely reduce the net happiness of the human race. Thus, according to their own ethical theory, they are morally wrong to write and publish their anti-religion tracts.

One might reply that the New Atheists write against religion because they’re firmly convinced that religious beliefs are false, and it’s more important to believe what is true than to believe what makes one happy. This is surely correct, but we should note that this response constitutes a de facto rejection of utilitarian ethics. According to the principle of utility, what’s morally right depends only on what makes us happy, and that principle must apply to our beliefs just as it does to any other aspect of our lives. If certain beliefs increase overall human happiness then we should act so as to promote those beliefs, regardless of whether they happen to be true or false. Rather than opposing what they deride as religious mythology, the New Atheists ought to follow Plato in championing the “noble lie”.

Another possible response would be to argue that although the beliefs of religious folk may well make them happier, those same beliefs make life miserable for everyone else (not least the New Atheists). But as we all know, the non-religious constitute a minority of the world population. Wouldn’t it be morally preferable, on utilitarian principles, for this minority to suffer some relatively minor irritations for the sake of the happiness of the majority? Whatever historical atrocities committed by religious fanatics one might drag up at this point, it would be hard to make a credible case that the total unhappiness represented by these outlying cases outweighs the total happiness enjoyed by the vast number of religious believers in the world as a consequence of their religious convictions. We might also note that the prime targets of religious extremists are usually adherents of other religious traditions, not atheists and agnostics. (The prime targets of secularist extremists, on the other hand, are invariably religious believers, as 20th-century history and current world affairs illustrate only too well.)

So the problem remains. By their own moral lights, wouldn’t the New Atheists do better to suffer in silence?

In fact, they could do even better than that: they could get themselves some religion. Who knows? We might even see them crack a smile or two.

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Against All Tweets

Semi-Serious Warm-Up Argument

(1) Twittering requires communication in 140 characters or less.

(2) Almost nothing of substance can be adequately communicated in 140 characters or less.

(3) Therefore, almost nothing of substance can be adequately communicated by Twittering.

(4) A method of communication is intrinsically flawed if almost nothing of substance can be adequately communicated by it.

(5) Therefore, Twittering is an intrinsically flawed method of communication.

(6) One ought not to act in such a way as to participate in, promote, or legitimize an intrinsically flawed method of communication.

(7) Therefore, one ought not to Twitter.

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