Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart Read online

  Lex: John, do you believe that brushing your teeth every day will reduce your chance of tooth decay?

  John: Yes. Not only do I believe it, but I’ve experienced the consequences of failing to brush my teeth properly when I had a cavity when I was young. That was more than enough to teach me that it’s worthwhile to take a few extra minutes each day to care for my teeth. And I don’t forget to floss, either.

  Lex: That’s one I need to work on myself—flossing more regularly. Let’s move on to something without that kind of directly observable evidence. What is matter made out of?

  John: Matter consists of atoms, and each atom is composed of a nucleus and a cloud of electrons. Even though I can’t see the atoms themselves, I learned about them in chemistry in high school. I also see evidence of the effects of electrons, for example, such as the electricity powering my laptop and photos I’ve seen rendered by electron microscope imaging. Nuclear reactors are another good example of electrons, neutrons, and protons at work. The electron and nucleus is the simplest explanation for all of these things that I am aware of. I learned about basic atomic structure of atoms initially in science class and have also had conversations about this with knowledgeable people I trust. I regard their opinions as a form of testimony about the accuracy of this knowledge. But I can’t directly perceive these elements of the atom, and I don’t have a deep technical background in physics; so I’d categorize this belief as a strong opinion.

  Lex: Okay, let’s try to make things a bit more interesting. How about this: Do you believe aliens have visited Earth?

  John: No, I don’t believe that. The so-called evidence for this tends to be spotty enough to make me think that reported sightings and alleged alien encounters are probably either hoaxes or cases of mistaken perception. I’ll go with the simpler explanation that some people have been deceived, are deluded, or are lying rather than the idea that multiple aliens have visited our planet but left no concrete evidence of having been here.

  Lex: Fair enough—but what about the possibility that humans will make contact with intelligent life on another planet?

  John: That’s even more conjectural—you’re asking whether we someday will?

  Lex: Yes, at some point in the future. What do you think?

  John: This is a tough one, because there’s so little to go on, but I guess I’d have to say no. I have no evidence to support such an opinion, so inductive reasoning isn’t going to be much help. I have to use indirect evidence to work out the probability. Because the universe is so vast and the distance between stars is so great, even if there happened to be intelligent life-forms on another planet, the only way we could encounter them is if they (or we) develop faster-than-light travel. This is something considered impossible by many physicists. They would also have to point themselves (or ourselves) in the exactly right direction for us to find each other. So I’d say I’m skeptical of meeting intelligent life from another planet, but I wouldn’t say it’s nonsense. I’ll remain skeptical until better proof comes along.

  Lex: Do you believe in ghosts?

  John: Ghosts? No, I don’t. I’ve never seen serious evidence for their existence, despite the subject getting plenty of attention from TV shows like “Ghost Hunters” and “Celebrity Ghost Hunters.” You’d think that one of these shows would be able to muster up some reasonable evidence for ghosts if they existed, but all they manage are not-very-special effects. Even worse than the lack of evidence is the lack of logic in the accounts we do get from people who claim to have seen them.

  Consider a few common depictions of ghosts: there’s the ghost clad only in a tattered bedsheet, the ghost dressed in Colonial attire, or the spooky Dickensian “Christmas Carol” ghost bound in heavy chains. Consider what each of these versions of ghosts is asking us to believe. Not only are we supposed to accept that human beings survive their bodily death and ascend to the spiritual plane, but their clothes and accessories apparently cross over as well. Do clothes have a spiritual existence? Are they damned to the human realm to resolve some unfinished business? Or are ghosts haunted by their clothes?

  Lex: “Are ghosts haunted by their clothes?”—I’ll bet that’s the first time anyone has uttered that sentence! While we’re on ghosts, do you believe in life after death?

  John: No, I don’t. Some people might say “I don’t know” is a more appropriate answer since I’ve never experienced death. But I think we have enough information based on what I have encountered to make a reasonable conjecture. I’ve never encountered a mind without a brain. So if the brain dies, it’s reasonable to assume the mind that lives in that brain dies with it. To believe in life after death, I’d have to believe in some supernatural concept like reincarnation or a soul. But while religions offer plenty of detail about the afterlife, they’re awfully quiet on just how the soul survives death.2

  People who believe in a soul or afterlife would have to explain not just how an immaterial soul could interact with a physical body, but also how this soul could be me and not just be a copy of part of me, at which point we’re sailing in Theseus’s Ship.3 I’d need to believe that there’s a nonphysical element in every person—and that’s a much more complex solution than disbelieving in life after death. As you know, I think simplicity offers the best path to the truth. I’d certainly prefer to keep existing after I’m dead, but there is just no meaningful evidence for it. In fact, it’s so improbable that it’s irrelevant to the way I live my life.

  The only way I could ever conceive of a form of “afterlife” would be through scientific developments that allow the brain of a person to keep functioning separated from its original body through a brain transplant or some brain-in-a-vat scenario. Or perhaps, if Ray Kurzweil’s prediction comes true of the “singularity”—a time when computers will be able to replicate the human mind. So I’m a skeptic here. I think beliefs in the afterlife or reincarnation are more likely products of wishful thinking than accurate and honest assessments of reality.

  Lex: Here’s something more down-to-earth: Do you believe the stock market will go up tomorrow?

  John: Gee, I hope so. But I have absolutely no idea about that. As far as I can tell, the movement of the stock market on any particular day is pretty much impossible to predict, especially for the layperson. Traders at firms like Goldman Sachs have more knowledge and experience than I do, as well as access to more information than I do, so they might make better guesses than I do. But they aren’t infallible, and no one can predict the market perfectly all of the time.

  We can see some clear patterns in John’s personal beliefs. He has a strong belief in the scientific method and trusts evidence that comes from his personal experience or is corroborated by people he trusts. He doesn’t believe in any supernatural phenomena—gods, ghosts, life after death—for the very simple reason that he hasn’t had any experience with such phenomena and favors simplicity over accepting the supernatural into his view of reality.

  What about questions such as, “Is euthanasia ethical?” or, “Is murder immoral?” These are also vitally important questions, and our framework and non-commandments still haven’t provided us with any tools for answering such questions. But we’ll get there shortly.

  In this chapter, we haven’t added any new beliefs to our Ten Non-commandments for the Twenty-first Century, but we have tested our initial core assumptions and the first five non-commandments. They seem to be working pretty well and holding up. To recap:

  I.

  The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.

  II.

  We can perceive the world only through our human senses.

  III.

  We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.

  IV.

 
; All truth is proportional to the evidence.

  V.

  There is no God.

  II

  A Framework for Ethics

  7

  From Beliefs to Behavior

  Happiness is a direction, not a place.

  —Sydney J. Harris

  The decisions we make every day are often more complex than just trying to figure out what is real. We also need to decide how we should behave. The transition from a worldview based on facts and data to a worldview about ethics and morals is not obvious. How can we link these seemingly disparate spheres of knowledge? How can we go from questions about existence (questions about what is) to questions about right and wrong (questions about what ought to be)?

  Let’s start by asking the question, How should we behave?

  Can we use our framework for discerning what is real to shed light on what we ought to do? Perhaps if we rephrase the question to be more in line with a question about what is or is not, it will be easier to make some progress. Instead of asking how we should behave, let’s ask, What motivates our behavior?

  This is a question about reality, so it still falls within the framework of belief we’ve developed. This includes such tools as the senses to perceive the world around us and our intellect to decide what to believe based on these observations.

  But what evidence can we gather to understand what motivates our behavior? The main source is the “observations” we can make about our thoughts and feelings when making decisions. In other words, we can use our own personal introspection as our guide.

  Using introspection instead of direct observation is a little different from what we’ve done so far. Up until now we’ve talked about using our five senses to explore the external world. But when examining our own thoughts, we are not actually using any of those five senses. We are just aware of the thoughts in our minds.

  These “observations” are still consistent with the framework of belief we’ve already developed. As part of that framework, as you may remember, we accepted the use of language and thought (the third non-commandment). This includes the ability of the mind to organize thoughts, find links between ideas, and draw conclusions. We also acknowledged that we have an ability to perceive thoughts.

  A thought can be regarded as a real thing—it exists if you perceive it, and doesn’t exist if you haven’t yet consciously perceived it. To make an analogy to our other senses, perceiving your thoughts is like listening. Just as you can listen to music in the distance and reach a conclusion on the existence or nonexistence of that music, you can “listen” to the ponderings of your mind and reach a conclusion about whether or not a thought or desire exists.

  Returning to the question of what motivates our behavior, we can rephrase it as, What thoughts or desires exist in our minds when we are deciding how to act?

  Our first impulse when choosing how to behave is to gratify our own desires and inclinations. When we feel hungry, we try to relieve our hunger. When we feel lonely, we seek out the company of others. When the length of our hair grows irritating, we get haircuts. We have a natural inclination to satisfy our desires, which come in many forms. Some are clearly innate or biological, like the desire for food, warmth, and sex. Others can be more abstract, such as the desire for power, material wealth, social status, or intelligence. Are these desires independent motivators, or do they all have something in common?

  Just as most beliefs about facts are based on other beliefs, most desires are based on other desires. Say you want to buy a new home. If we asked why you have this desire, you might reply that you want a home with more space and in a better school district. Why do you desire a home with more space? You want to start a family and need space for a kid’s room, and you want to be in a neighborhood with good schools so your kids can get a good education. Why do you desire a good education for your kids? Because well-educated people tend to get better opportunities in life. Why do you desire better opportunities for your kids? This can go on for quite a while until we finally arrive at your set of fundamental source desires.

  If we each reflect on our own personal desires and keep asking what the motivation is behind each layer of desire, it eventually becomes evident that all desires boil down to a single fundamental desire to seek happiness—a state of well-being and contentment—and avoid pain, whether physical or emotional. Happiness can arise both through physical pleasures, such as basking in the warmth of the sun, and through emotional ones, such as feeling loved. Receiving a gift can create feelings of happiness. Hearing bad news brings pain. Being praised can bring joy; being insulted can bring pain. So when we refer to happiness, we aren’t speaking only about the good but also about avoiding the bad.

  We can expand this notion of happiness even further to include both the short-term and the long-term perspectives. To capture this broader concept of happiness—which includes both physical and emotional pleasures and pains, as well as our estimate of all expected short-term and long-term happiness—let’s use the term “life-happiness.”

  Life-happiness is an estimate of the total amount of happiness and pain you anticipate experiencing during your life. The balancing act between short-term and long-term happiness can be quite complicated because we often need to sacrifice some of that short-term happiness in exchange for greater happiness in the long term. For example, a child who gets an inoculation shot at her doctor’s office might cry, but we know that the pain of the shot pales in comparison to the life-happiness she’ll gain by avoiding contracting a preventable disease.

  We can make an analogy between life-happiness and the financial concept of a company’s market capitalization (“market cap”). Just as a company’s value includes assets and liabilities, our concept of life-happiness factors in both the happiness and sadness in one’s life. The fair market price of a stock at any point in time is supposed to reflect not just the shareholders’ best estimate of the value of a company at that moment but also their estimate of its earnings and debts projected into the future.

  In analyzing the prospects for a company, different weight can be placed on the value of current assets and earnings compared with expected future growth, depending on the type of company and where it is in its development. So the market cap of a young company often weights future projected earnings more heavily than those of mature enterprises. As market events unfold, or industry trends become clearer, the stock price of a company is adjusted accordingly.

  The same is true for assessing life-happiness. We can guess at the sum total of happiness we’ll experience over the course of our lives. New situations or realizations can affect our estimate of the expected happiness and pain we might experience in our lives. In our twenties, we don’t generally value good health as much as we do if we reach our sixties. And at every stage, the tradeoff between short-term and long-term happiness varies, even within the same person, depending on state of mind, general outlook toward the future, and the type of experience in question.

  Returning to the question posed earlier—What motivates our behavior?—we now have our answer. Our behavior is motivated by our desires, and these desires are in turn based on an urge to maximize our own life-happiness.

  Simply put, all behavior is motivated by a yearning for happiness in life.1

  Suppose a genie magically appeared and offered you a guarantee to experience the best life you were capable of living. Who wouldn’t accept? While there are no genies (alas), we each attempt to grant ourselves the same wish by continually balancing and optimizing our short-term and long-term expected happiness.

  Philosopher Jeremy Bentham said it best when he wrote:

  Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the o
ther the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.2

  But how do we know what leads to our own happiness? We have to know what will make us happy if we’re going to pursue it. It may seem that we just know we like cheesecake more than chocolate cake. But that knowledge, like most knowledge about what increases our happiness, isn’t simply innate. Instead, it’s most often gained from experience. A preference for cheesecake over chocolate cake usually follows years of eating both kinds, and a lot of others, and these “experiments” help us map out our own preferences.

  By continually trying new things, we usually learn that our preferences change over time. Most kids don’t like spicy food, and most adults don’t like sugar-blasted cereal. Our internal “happiness meters” are calibrated and recalibrated through time and experience.

  But that raises its own question: if we’re projecting forward to maximize our life-happiness into the future, how do we factor in things we haven’t experienced yet? We’re not saying that in order to understand what will make us happy we need to experience everything. Even if it weren’t impossible, such a strategy would be both undesirable and would waste lots of time. Instead, another form of real-life experience can be useful—reports from other, proven-reliable people.

  Just as we weigh the testimony of others to form beliefs about facts, we can do the same thing to decide what we’re likely to find pleasurable. By seeing what other people do and prefer, and asking them how they liked their experiences, we can learn about things we haven’t tried or seen ourselves. You don’t have to have an automobile accident to know that it’s likely to reduce your happiness. You’ve heard from enough people who’ve experienced one. By the same token, when you were young, you probably knew your first kiss was likely to be something special because of the millions who had bravely gone before you.