Randianism

Consider this list of philosophies:

Rationalism,

Empiricism,

Analytic philosophy,

Existentialism,

Phenomenology,

German Idealism,

Socialism,

Anarcho-Socialism,

State-Communism,

Libertarianism,

Moral Realism,

Solipsism.

Next, consider this list of philosophies:

Platonism,

Kantianism,

Hegelianism,

The philosophy of Nietzsche,

The philosophy of Sartre,

Aristotelianism,

The philosophy of Wittgenstein,

Marxism,

The philosophy of John Locke.

Each of these things are what ordinary people would call a "philosophy." But these are not one thing, these are two types of things, the first set of which, from the first list, is what I call a systematic philosophy, and the second set of which, from the second list set forth above, I would call an individual's philosophy. A systematic philosophy is a philosophical system comprised of a set of philosophical views, while an individual's philosophy is the philosophy of one individual philosopher. Note, however, that each systematic philosophy is formed by importing a set of ideas and views from a set of individual's philosophies, or else one individual's philosophy could form its own entire one systematic philosophy. For example, the philosophy of John Locke contributed views to Empiricism, and Marxism contributed views to socialism. Multiple individual's philosophies can contribute to the same systematic philosophy. For example, the philosophy of Nietzsche and the philosophy of Sartre both contributed to Existentialism. One systematic philosophy can also have multiple systematic philosophies which are variations or sub-parts of it as a whole. For example, Anarcho-Socialism and State-Communism are both coherent systematic philosophies in their own right, but each is also a sub-part of the broader systematic philosophy of Socialism.

Now, the question is: What is Objectivism? Is it a systemic philosophy? Or is it an individual's philosophy?

Within the Objectivist movement, there is a great debate and conflict between the open-system and closed-system Objectivists. Closed-system people believe that Objectivism is limited to the philosophy created by Ayn Rand, and it ended with her death. Open-system people believe that Objectivism can be added to and expanded by other people and is not only limited to Ayn Rand's ideas.

I have come to believe that the conflict arises from linguistic imprecision, that the closed-system people understand Objectivism to be an individual's philosophy, merely another name for Randianism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, while the open-system people believe that Objectivism is a systematic philosophy, a set of philosophical views united around the theme of a common worldview in philosophy, and therefore obviously it could be added to by anyone, although at its time of original creation, 100% of the ideas in systematic Objectivism came from having been imported from the individual's philosophy of Ayn Rand, Randianism.

The two sides in the debate do not understand each other and cannot understand what the other side is saying, because they are using two different definitions of the same word, "philosophy," so it is impossible for the two sides to communicate, and neither side understands what the other side means. If Objectivism is an individual's philosophy, then it is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and obviously the closed-system side is correct. If Objectivism is a systematic philosophy, then it is defined by a set of philosophical views, and anyone who holds those views while adding ideas could add to it, and then obviously the open-system side is correct. The two sides mean different things and so can't see eye to eye to resolve their dispute.

I propose to solve this confusion by creating a new word, "Randianism," to describe Ayn Rand's individual's philosophy, which is defined as the philosophy of Ayn Rand, while keeping "Objectivism" as the name for the systematic philosophy, the philosophical system defined by that certain set of views about objectivity, reality, reason, rational selfishness in ethics, free-market capitalism and the moral defense of capitalism in economics, individual rights in politics, etc. At its inception, Objectivism was formed 100% from Randianism, but the two are analytically distinct, based on the understanding which I have provided.

Some critics might say that, as I have defined it, only an individual's philosophy is a "real" philosophy, and what I call a systematic philosophy is merely a historical category, or a worldview, or a philosophical view, or set of views. But that is not, in fact, how ordinary people use the term "philosophy." Each of those systematic philosophies is, in fact, a philosophy.

Faith, Skepticism, Knowledge, Rationality

Definitions:

Faith: The absence of doubts and questions, or the condition in which doubts and questions are not allowed.

Skepticism: The condition in which doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed, or the process by which a position is subjected to questions or doubts, but this is also the name of the belief that knowledge is impossible, as such.

Knowledge: a position or belief which is held with the belief that it cannot be wrong or that its truth is the one and only possibility.

Faith-based knowledge: knowledge that is held without doubt, without question, without testing, without evidence.

Rational knowledge: knowledge that is held, and which is asserted or claimed to be known, but which is, or can be, doubted, questioned, tested, while still maintaining its status as knowledge, or knowledge which exists in a condition where doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed.

The tradition position holds that you must choose between faith-based knowledge or rational skepticism, but you cannot have rational knowledge. Now the question is: Is rational knowledge possible? If so, how, and under what conditions?

Consider this: Claim, or assert, that you know that X is true. Logic, or science, or math, or history, or whatever, shows that, if X is true, then experience Y will be observed. You can test or question or doubt X by looking for Y in your observations or experience.

Now, you test for Y or not Y, and run an experiment to see if Y is true, or you question or doubt Y and Y withstands the critical scrutiny and proves true, once, and you see that Y is true. Does that mean that you rationally know X?

Consider this: You test X and/or Y an infinite number of times, and X and/or Y is proven true, against doubt and question and test and experiment and experience, an infinite number of times.

Would this, then, be rational knowledge? You know that X is true because X and/or Y withstood doubt and question and critical inquiry and critical thinking, but, for N number of times which X and/or Y did so, X and/or Y might fail a test at the N+1 experiment or test or doubt or question. So you can never rationally know philosophical truth.

Yes. But the problem is: how can you possibly test X and/or Y an infinite number of times?

Consider this: If X is such that if X is true then Y will be observed, and if X is a metaphysical or philosophical principle that is universal and infinite in scope, then (and here is the important part): if X is true, then Y will prove true an infinite number of times, if doubted and questioned an infinite number of times. Y will prove true an infinite number of times, because X is true.

And, if X is true, then the application of logic and reason to thinking about X, will produce knowledge of X.

So it isn't that you rationally know X because X was proven true by an infinite number of doubts and questions being withstood with X's truth intact. Instead, you rationally know X because X is true, and X would prove true in an infinite number of questions and doubts, if such were to exist, because X is true.

But how does one gain rational knowledge that X is true, other than by the satisfaction of an infinite series of doubts of X and/or Y? By means of logic.

What matters for rational knowledge is not whether you know it, what matters is whether or not it is really true. If it is true, then you will come to know it, provided that you use reason and logic.

Contrast this position with the faith-skepticism dichotomy: the claim that knowledge must be based on faith, because reason always allows doubts, and knowledge is that which is known to always be true, so rational knowledge could only come by means of a process of an infinite series of doubts being satisfied, because, if you assert or claim that your knowledge is rational, either you or someone else is always, at any or every point in the future, entitled to question or doubt or test that position which you claim to know, and no position can satisfy every doubt and every question because there could be an infinite series of such leading into the future, so only faith, as the absence of all doubts and questions, or as a condition where you are not allowed to doubt or to question, could make knowledge possible, so you must choose either faith and knowledge, or reason and skepticism, but you can't choose reason and knowledge, you are not allowed to choose to believe that rational knowledge is possible in a practical way in reality for humans.

Objectivism rejects the faith-skepticism dichotomy. The belief that rational knowledge is possible is a core element of the philosophy of Objectivism.

The truth has nothing to fear from skepticism. Indeed, rationality is skeptical knowledge, in a sense. If someone suppresses or avoids being questioned, and seeks to censor doubts, that is the surest sign that they are hiding something, that they fear rational inquiry or critical thinking, that they want you to believe their assertions when what they say is false, and they know it is false, or they themselves don’t know but they fear it is false, in their hearts, so they attack the skeptic who questions and doubts to insulate their own doubts from irritating their guilty conscience, because your doubts become a symbol of their own doubts in their subconscious minds, and they hide from themselves. As Ayn Rand said, “to name the unnamed,” to openly state the doubt or the question or the need for a test, to openly ask why and to call the belief into question, is the surest antidote to this type of fear. When someone has no answers, they seek to avoid the questions, but if they have answers, then they do not fear, or need not fear, skepticism.

Bertrand Russell's Paradox, and Set Theory

In my book "Everything is Something," I set about to accomplish many things, one of which was to refute Bertrand Russell's Paradox. After finishing the book, and publishing it, I realize that I could have phrased my account of his paradox differently, and more accurately. In the book, I describe his paradox as "a set that is not a member of itself." In retrospect, it would have been more accurate for me to have described it as "the set of all sets that are not members of themselves." His logic actually makes far more sense in the second description, than in the first, which I had said. However, in "Everything is Something," I prove, and demonstrate using logic, that every set is a member of itself. A set is the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to all of its members, and all of its members are within the set, therefore the set is within the set, therefore the set is a member of itself, and this is true of all sets, because it is true of a set as such, of the essential set, because of the essence of a set, and is deduced without reference to any specifics that might differentiate this set from any possible set, which is the methodology of essential logic. The fact that every set is a member of itself refutes both formulations of Bertrand Russell's Paradox, so my error was only in my statement of his paradox, there was no error in my statement of my proof of my refutation of his paradox. The only set which is not a member of itself is the set with no members, which is the null set, the empty set, but, because it has no members, the null set does not exist, it is equal to zero, because it contains zero members, it contains nothing. It can be thought about and conceptualized, but it does not, and can never, exist, in the sense of being a real thing, in reality.

More broadly, regarding set theory, which I discuss at length in "Everything is Something," I later realized this, also: Bertrand Russell (and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein) sought to derive math from set theory, and to prove math using set theory. But math is set theory, math and set theory are identical, so their effort, their quest, their work, was doomed to failure from the very beginning. For example, what is the difference between "a set of ten things," as such, and "the number ten," as such? What is the difference between "a set of one thing," "a thing," and "the number one"? In my opinion, there is no difference. So, the attempt to derive math from set theory, and to prove math using set theory, reduces to the attempt to derive math from math, and to prove math using math, which adds nothing substantive to math itself, as an academic discipline. Philosophy can say how we gain knowledge of math, and what role math plays in the world, and what math is useful for, but math is math, and philosophy does not, fundamentally, add anything to the statement "math is math," for one does math by doing math, not by analyzing math by means of philosophy, although philosophy can add to the understanding of math, to our wisdom with respect to math, so to speak, for example by saying whether numbers exist in the physical world or exist in a separate spiritual or intellectual world or do not really exist at all, which is within the province of philosophy.

And I argue that numbers do physically exist, and there is no need to refer to or rely upon another dimension or an intellectual or spiritual world where numbers exist, and it is also obviously not true to say that numbers do not exist or they are merely our way of speaking about things but they themselves are not real, because we can see that numbers are real, if we look out the window and see a flock of ten robins then we can see with our own eyes, and know beyond doubt, that the number ten is real, because a thing is a set of properties, and an essence is one property or set of properties isolated out of a thing or things and then analyzed using logic, and a number is the essence of a group of things as being a certain particular number or amount or quantity of things, so, if groups physically exist, if, for example, there is a group of ten squirrels living in my back yard, and they are real, then the number ten physically exists, because the group of ten squirrels is a thing that has a property of being the number ten, and a property of being a group of squirrels, and a property of being in my back yard, and the property of being alive today, and so on, for example, and "the number ten" simply uses essential logic to isolate the property of being ten, from a real physical group of ten things, or from many such groups, which is abstraction and induction, and then uses the number ten in math to prove things in math, which is deduction and logic. For another example, if there are three boxes on my shelf, those boxes are the number three, plus many other properties such as being boxes and being on my shelf, and the number three physically exists as those three boxes, because that real thing has the property of being three. And there is no difference between that number ten, as a group of ten things, and that number three, as a group of three things, on the one hand, and the numbers ten and three of abstract theoretical mathematics, in intellectual math, on the other hand.

Our knowledge of math does come from the physical world, and this is why math, and math used in science, can describe the physical world, and is useful for technology in physical reality. As I have also written elsewhere, I believe that math works in science, and math describes the physical world, because I do not believe that there is any real difference between the theoretical abstract space and time of math, on the one hand, and our actual real physical space-time, on the other hand, the only difference is that the first space-time is thought about in some mathematician's mind, and the second space-time is one which exists objectively, outside of our minds, and which we experience as the physical world, but the actual math is exactly the same for both. So, when mathematicians think of an intellectual or spiritual world where math is real, it is actually our own physical reality that they are thinking about. Science, and the scientific world, is essentially the manifestation of the abstract mathematics of space-time into the concrete experiences that you have as a person observing and experiencing the little slice of space-time in reality that your point of view is privileged to experience. Science is really just how all the math fits together to form reality, and to form our experience of reality.

Objectivism in Ten Quotes

1. "Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?" (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, which is an almost verbatim statement of one of the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, although Rand spent her entire life denying that Nietzsche influenced her.)

2. "...for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. ... For a principle which every one must have who understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis. ... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect..." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged, quoting Aristotle.)

3. "No one survives in this valley by faking reality in any way." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

4. "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island--it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his seed stock today--and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

5. "I am, therefore I'll think." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

6. "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists--and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

7. "Reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. The most depraved sentence you can now utter to ask is: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

8. "Life, Liberty and Property." (John Locke's statement of basic human rights, which America's Founders, lacking the political consensus to use that phrase, changed to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.")

9. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was God, and Logic was of God." (Alternate English translation of the original Greek version of the opening passage of The Gospel of John, The Christian Bible. Although a Platonic doctrine based on the Greek philosophical concept of logos, which means "the logical understanding understood expressed in words" but which is often mistranslated in Bibles as "The Word", this might as well be an Objectivist slogan.)

10. "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

What is the Libertarian Axiom? Politics, Reimagined

Most libertarians would point to the principle that one should never initiate violence and use force only for self defense as the core axiom for liberty—the axiom that I call NVP, the Non-Violence Principle. Here I write to propose a second axiom, based on some recent conversation with my fellow Libertarian Party members.
I know one LP member who opposes big government except for public education to give poor kids a leg up. I know another who opposes big government except for Social Security for retirees, on the belief it isn't fair to deny someone benefits they paid into for decades. I know a third who opposes big government except for welfare and food stamps for the very poor. This person is convinced that a Marxist revolution will happen if all welfare is cut. I have also heard a Libertarian talk about the "real" pain and suffering of the poor that is alleviated by welfare, as if the pain caused by big government is not equally real.
These people, and I now suspect most Americans, understand libertarian economics, but they think that theft (in the form of taxation) is justified if it is for a good, worthy cause. Each person has his own pet cause that he wants government to fund, even while wanting taxes cut to pay for anything else.
I propose a new axiom: that the ends never justify the means. I term this the Anti-Marxist Axiom. If you believe this, then theft is never justified, even for the noblest purpose, and even if the rich have more money than they need. My justification for this axiom is moral, not pragmatic, and, in a weird way, Kantian. Kant's signature contribution to ethics is the theory of the Categorical Imperative, which I interpret to mean that, for something to be good, it must be right at all times and places universally. If there is an exception to an ethical (or political) principle then it was not rational or true, it was merely an expediency of the moment. To be a coherent theory, libertarianism needs the Anti-Marxist Axiom, otherwise it is just a rule of thumb to be compromised or abandoned when someone feels justified in doing so. If you use evil means to achieve good ends, logically the result will not be ethical, because you conceded to evil in order to achieve your goal.
If you want to fund a good cause with taxes then you conceded the validity of statism. If you accept that people make and earn money, and thereby morally deserve to own wealth, and then say that you can take someone's money away from them to spend as you see fit, even for a good cause, you have conceded and condoned widespread systemic theft. It should not then surprise you that a bunch of crooks, literally thieves, actual criminals, will run for office to acquire this opportunity and then will raise taxes on you to pay for evil things while spouting all sorts of virtuous good causes to justify it. There is a saying "power corrupts, and power attracts the corruptible." (Attributed to Frank Herbert.) I can say something similar: theft attracts criminals. This is a necessary and sufficient explanation for why big government is evil and will always become evil even if it begins as good.
Absent this axiom, you will find good cause after good cause, requiring tax raise after tax raise, and more and more theft to pay for your virtuous plans, until, from a libertarian starting point, you inevitably collapse into socialism. Either you have a universal, absolute axiom, or you face a very realistic slippery slope--even if sliding down it takes a nation 200 years.
Libertarians should consider abandoning their pet causes and commit to the Anti-Marx Axiom, to protect the purity of our principles. Libertarianism as a political theory needs an axiom, a self-evident principle to justify itself. If it does not have a principle then it is not a theory, it would be a mere pragmatic movement, or merely a feeling that government is bad. NVP is a good axiom, but many libertarians feel justified in making exceptions. The axiom that the ends never justify the means says there are no exceptions. If people want compromise, let them vote for the establishment. If they want principled politics, then they should vote for us. But how can we be a party of principles if we don't know what our core principle is?

Links to My Newly Released Nonfiction Books: On Forgiveness, and A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs

I have to share links to my two new books on Amazon--just to make it easier for you to find them!

A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs: The Proportionality Test for E-Discovery Law

And

On Forgiveness

Love them or hate them, this nobody can deny: my nonfiction books are unique!

My Two Newest Books: On Forgiveness and Law and Economics

I recently pushed two new nonfiction books:
On Forgiveness
And
A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs.
On Forgiveness explores forgiveness, not from a religious point of view, but instead from a psychological perspective. It explains self-forgiveness, and the way your self-esteem benefits if you forgive yourself for your own flaws.
The other book is aimed at lawyers, and people who hire and pay lawyers. If you are grappling with understanding why your lawsuit is so expensive, this book may help. Fans of the Law and Economics jurisprudence also have to read this book. I present some new ideas on that topic, and those ideas are must-read ideas.
Please do check them out on Amazon!

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

Russell Hasan

Where is All This Money Coming From?

The federal government is borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for the coronavirus bailout. What does that actually mean? Where does that money come from? Who pays for it? And if the government can give away $2 trillion, why don't they do so more frequently?
The best analogy is a farmer and seed stock. A farmer harvests seed. Some of the seed, he and his family eats. Some of the seed, he saves to plant a future harvest. The seed he saves? That's his seed stock.

Economics is simple, with a few basic premises. To spend money is to consume stuff. To make money is to create stuff. You pay for the stuff you consume with the stuff you create. If someone spends money to eat food, that's like eating some of the seed. The consumer's money pays for the seed. If someone invests money, that's like paying for seed stock. If someone gives you a loan, it's like they're buying seed stock for you. You pay them back from next year's harvest.
The American economy has an enormous amount of what is metaphorically seed stock. Americans invest wealth in productive activities and reap their profits in the future. For example, an investment in real estate buys food to feed the workers who are building a skyscraper set to open in five years.

When government borrows money to give to people for them to consume with no return on investment, it is taking wealth that was slated to pay for future profits, and consuming it today. You pay the workers so they can eat, but the building isn't built.

Death Now, Death Later

The government borrowing money to give to people during the age of coronavirus is as if the farmer is about to starve to death, so he eats some of his seed stock. That is the correct decision for him. He would die otherwise. But he can't eat so much of his seed stock that he doesn't have enough left to plant for next year's harvest. If he did, he would die of starvation when next year's harvest is due to be eaten.

So the government can borrow the money, and the economy can pay for it. But there is a serious, fatal risk if Trump and Pelosi borrow and spend too much. They need just the right amount: enough for us to survive the coronavirus crisis, but not so much that the economy can't pay off the debt and goes bankrupt. Everyone dies if the government does too little or too much. Theirs is a grave responsibility. I hope they get it right.

Infrastructure and Jobs

Another recent policy proposal from Trump and Pelosi is borrowing money to build infrastructure to create jobs. That is not rational. The only reason why all the jobs went away is because of the coronavirus. If the coronavirus crisis ends, the jobs will come back. They will have no reason not to come back. And if the coronavirus crisis isn't over yet, then it's the wrong time to be gathering large groups of workers for construction projects. One infected worker could spread it to all the others. So it's pointless.

With small business loans so easy to get now, that money will be invested in private business if it doesn't end up in a federal infrastructure project. To return to my farmer analogy, it just shifts which fields the seed stock gets planted in. It does not actually create more seed for anyone to eat.

This concludes my explanation of federal debt for coronavirus relief.

What is Objectivism?

What is the philosophy of Objectivism? Let's learn about it together! I bet you'll learn something new!
Objectivism is the name of a philosophy--a set of ideas--developed by novelist Ayn Rand in the 20th Century. Objectivists are people who practice Objectivism. What do Objectivists believe? They think that a person should be happy, and that your happiness is the moral and ethical purpose of your life. They claim that rationality and reasoning are your main tools to succeed in the world, and that success causes happiness. They promote capitalism and individualism, feeling that the individual is more important than society.
Did you know? The 1980s were called The Decade of Greed because many people were influenced by Objectivism at that time, including high-ranking officials of the Reagan Administration. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was also a known Objectivist.
Who was Ayn Rand? She was born in 1905 in Russia to Jewish parents. She lived through the 1918 Communist Revolution in Russia, which gave her a lifelong hatred of Communism and socialism. Eventually she escaped the USSR and fled to the USA. She achieved wealth and fame with her bestselling novel The Fountainhead (1943), and followed it up with her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Atlas Shrugged is the foundation of Objectivism, and is over 1000 pages long!
Did you know? There was a surge of interest in Objectivism in the 1960s, and a large Objectivist movement, centered around New York City. But Ayn Rand had an affair with another one of the leaders of the movement, a man named Nathaniel Branden, and when they broke up in 1969, an explosive conflict developed and the fallout destroyed the Objectivist movement of the 1960s.
I hope you enjoyed learning this lesson about Objectivism as much as I did! Thanks for reading!

Work Portrayed on Television

The essay Thoughts on Work and Working in the October 2013 issue of The Freeman is the inspiration for this blog post, which will discuss the portrayal of working and jobs on television. In the essay, author Sarah Skwire reviews the book "Working" by Studs Terkel, which contained oral narratives of different types of workers talking about their jobs. The author uses her analysis of the book to argue that the public's view of free market capitalism is influenced by how we view and talk about work. Specifically, if we hate our job and view working for a salary as slavery to the rich then we will hate capitalism, and if we enjoy our job and take pride in doing good work then we are more likely to favor capitalism.

Ms. Skwire cites cases in Mr. Terkel's book which show that this hate-my-job vs. love-my-job dynamic does not line up neatly with poor vs. rich or working class job vs. upper class job. She describes blue collar workers, like cashiers and assembly line workers, who love their work. Here I will elaborate on this point that working class jobs are not exploitation with reference to the portrayal of jobs and working in two TV shows: Shark Tank and Project Runway. Up front I must confess that I watch and enjoy both of these shows, for reasons that should become clear below.

(1) Shark Tank is a show about a group of wealthy venture capitalists called "sharks," including famed Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who hear presentations by small business owners and then decide whether to invest in the business. This show is interesting to a libertarian because the rich investors are not portrayed as exploiting the small businessmen. Although the sharks do often make predatory initial offers, like buying 75% of a business for $10,000, the five sharks compete with each other and if the investment opportunity has merit then they frequently undercut each others' offers in ways that favor the entrepreneur, e.g. the initial offer could become a final offer of $20,000 for 20% of the equity.

The entrepreneurs who pitch ideas to the Sharks are frequently people who started off in a working class job and loved what they did and wanted to start or expand a business where they take their expertise and passion of an area and develop that passion into a brand or product, for which they need capital. Indeed, many of the Sharks themselves, including Mark Cuban, began as small businessmen and then got rich due to hard work and success. Shark Tank depicts in reality what it looks like for capitalism and Wall Street to help small business and create jobs, rather than describing that in disembodied abstract theory as so many libertarian economists have done.

For example, in the last season of Shark Tank a boy in middle school, who happened to be from a town close to where I live in Connecticut, dreamed of making gourmet dog food, and cooked up batches of dog treats in the early morning before school and sold dog treats to his friends and teammates' families at his sports teams' practices. Despite what some Marxists would assert as child labor, his story felt like an ambitious passionate young person wanting to work and make an honest living for himself. He pitched his dog treat business to the sharks and, although four of the sharks did not really take him seriously due to his age, one of the sharks liked his product and gave him a reasonable offer. He decided to take her offer and he did the deal to get her investment capital.

(2) Project Runway is a show, hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum, where a group of fashion designers compete in a series of challenges to win a $500,000 prize. Most of the contestants in this reality shows are poor and/or gay, and many of them have fascinating and eccentric personalities. Although the challenges are grueling and difficult, like sewing and working all day and all night to design a runway-ready evening gown from idea to finished clothing in 24 hours, the show does not depict the contestants as slaves in a sweatshop who are exploited by the $500,000 prize's control over them. The opposite is true: the show depicts the money as a prize for the worthy, not as an evil system of oppression. The contestants are young and ambitious and have a deep love of clothes and they enjoy the work they do despite it being very difficult. Most of them view Project Runway as an opportunity to show the world their talent and be rewarded for all their hard work and skill.

In the most recent season, the show ended in a competition between two designers, Alexandria and Dom, with everyone else having been eliminated by the end. Alexandria ended up losing and was very upset and bitter (despite winning $25,000 as runner up), but Dom, a poor young black woman from Philadelphia, had done what was in my opinion the best collection to show on the runway in the finale, with clothes that were exotic and attention-grabbing, and she worked hard and deserved her prize. Project Runway depicts work as good and something that earns its just reward, not as a necessary evil that we should all complain about and try to abolish.

Television, like Hollywood and the news media, has its fair share of Marxists. But these two shows, and others like them, are getting people to talk about work in ways that are accurate in assessing the values of freedom and capitalism.

Deconstructing the Motives of Marxist Professors

Deconstructing the Motives of Marxist Professors

By Russell Hasan

Most ideas which are too smart for their own good eventually end up in a Woody Allen movie. Continental philosopher Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction was no different, showing up in the movie Deconstructing Harry. Deconstruction looks at something, typically a text, and peels away the layers of explicit meaning and logical order in order to see the bloody reality that lurks beneath. It is interesting to attempt to apply the theory of deconstruction for a libertarian analysis, specifically by deconstructing the motives of Marxist professors on college campuses and examining why so many academics are Marxists.

Marxist professors appear to preach the political philosophy of Marx because they believe in it. Or, perhaps, they are Marxists because that is what they were taught by their professors way back when they were themselves students in college. But a deeper motive can be discerned by looking underneath the surface. In Ayn Rand’s opus Atlas Shrugged, the physicist Dr. Robert Stadler justifies his betrayal of John Galt and his support for the State Science Institute by telling Galt that he wanted to set the mind free from money by getting government funding for scientific research. The deconstruction of this statement shows that the free market either does not, or might not, place a high value on the work that professors do, such that some scholars could go unfunded if left without state assistance. Generally, in a free market traders trade value for value, so that in order to buy something you must first be productive and actually make some money. What is it precisely that a Marxist professor of sociology, history, or political science really produces? Unless their scholarship and ideas have some sort of concrete financial value, the free market would not pay them very much in return for their work. On the other hand, government funding for universities, especially in the form of Department of Education-backed student loans but also from government grants for research, results in a situation where the salary of the typical college professor bears no relation whatsoever to his or her productive value.

The situation in the economics behind university education might accurately be called a higher education bubble. Spending on education, motivated by the Department of Education’s policies, goes ever higher and higher, as seen in data presented in the Wikipedia article Higher Education in the United States, while the actual productive value that results from a college education bears no real relation to rising spending. The university administrators and professors in general don’t seem to care. Indeed, the theory of a “liberal arts” education, as articulated by Progressive education pioneer John Dewey, believed that the purpose of an education was to free the mind, not to help the student make money. Dewey also asserted a belief that part of the purpose of education is to convert youth to Marxism, as seen in the Wikipedia article John Dewey, and Dewey’s influence upon modern education cannot be understated. Today’s students should thank Mr. Dewey for the fact that their minds have been set free while their bodies need to eat in a job market that has been mercilessly crushed by the Great Recession, which resulted from the statist policies of Bush and Obama.

Perhaps the situation will be rectified when the higher education bubble bursts and the forces of supply and demand wreak havoc on college funding and drag spending back down to what is fiscally justified by the return on investment for a college education. Bubbles usually burst when state-controlled systems run out of other people’s money, in this case, the taxpayer’s money which funds student loans and grants. If the economics of supply and demand are allowed to correct the higher education bubble, then many Marxist professors might be fired unless they can provide something to students which furthers the students’ careers or future earning capacity, which would mean that the professors are actually productive. A plausible deconstruction of the motives of Marxist professors is that the professors just want to maximize the amount of money in their salaries, because the state’s influence over education accomplishes a vast disconnect between the professors’ salary received and the value that they produce. Note that the state also receives a quid pro quo from the professors in the form of the Marxist propaganda which they teach to their students in order to persuade impressionable young minds to believe in statist economic policy, so that the achievements of Marxist professors would have no value in a free market economy but have a high importance in a centrally planned economy.

Fairness and Equality, Libertarian-style

I recently had a vigorous, healthy (i.e. mean and nasty) debate in a Libertarian discussion group on social media. I argued that rich children have an unfair advantage over poor children because poor children are trapped in failing public schools, and rich children can attend good private schools. The two people I was debating (one of whom was nice but foolish, the other absolutely vicious) could not think past the mistaken idea that I was saying it is unfair because the rich have more money and can afford to send their children to private schools, and poor people can't, which is NOT my argument. My argument was the libertarian argument that the government uses VIOLENT FORCE to compel poor children to attend the failing public schools, because of our rotten socialized k-12 public education system and compulsory attendance. Because the government uses this force against poor children, but not rich children, it is UNFAIR for the poor children, and the law is treating rich children differently from poor children, and giving them preferential treatment. I was making a libertarian argument against government and for the privatizing of primary school, yet the dim, dull people I argued with somehow could not get it around their brains that I was not making a Marxist/Socialist argument to outlaw private schools. Very frustrating, but, obviously, political dialogue is a good and vital element of a functioning democracy.

The Philosophy of Science

This mini-essay was expanded upon in my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please take a look at my book.

The Philosophy of Science. Many famous philosophers have sought to take the approach and methods of science and translate science into philosophy to create a truly scientific philosophy. These thinkers include Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Quine. I argue that each failed, for the reasons below:

Hume seemed to think that because scientific theories are always capable of being disproved by new empirical evidence, that skepticism was the scientific attitude. He ignored the fact that science, when theories have been proven and experimentally verified, seeks to provide us some degree of knowledge. We can know that the sun will come up tomorrow, because of the scientific postulates of astronomy, which science has empirically verified. Whereas Hume claimed we cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hume’s rejection of faith was rational, but his rejection of knowledge based on analysis of the physical world, was irrational.

Kant argued that science can achieve certainty and universality only because the mind imposes scientific laws upon the subjective experience of reality. His basic argument was that subjectivism is the justification for scientific knowledge. This is, of course, completely backwards. The scientific attitude is that the mind revolves around the physical world. Kant’s view, that the physical world revolves around the mind, is a religious idea, that faith and belief can alter reality. And any intelligent academic generally recognizes that Kant’s actual purpose was to protect religion from the rise of science. Science achieves knowledge that hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form water, for example, from an examination of the molecules and atoms, which are things in themselves in physical reality. The scientific mind learns from reality, it does not impose its subjective beliefs onto sensory experience.

Wittgenstein sought to apply the principles of mathematics into philosophy, specifically in the form of formal symbolic logic. My favorite argument against him applies a theory called the Chinese Room, originally developed by Searle. If someone in a room is given Chinese words, and a computer software program to process them, then he could put together Chinese sentences, but if he doesn't speak Chinese then he will have no idea what any of it means. The argument is that symbolic logic can reach conclusions, but if you don’t know what the symbols mean, if you don’t know what the words in a language refer to in reality, the objective physical objects in reality to which the symbols refer, then the language, and logic, are meaningless computer programs, devoid of actual meanings relevant to human experience. For example, “sun” is not actually a word, it is a star in the sky.

Quine argued that the philosophical equivalent of scientific experiments, in which theories are experimentally verified using empirical data, is thought experiments, in which a person “tests” a theory by analyzing whether the theory matches the person’s “intuitions,” which are teased out by thinking about the thought experiment. This idea has been widely accepted in academic philosophy. The obvious flaw is that, whereas empirical data comes from objective physical reality, intuitions come from internal subjective feelings, and therefore a thought experiment is nothing like a real scientific experiment. Quine shares the Kantian fault.

The truly scientific approach to philosophy, would be to take philosophical ideas, and actually design real scientific experiments to try to test their truth or falsehood. I call this approach “experimental philosophy.” For example, if you think that sensory experience revolves around the mind, and subjectivism and solipsism are true, then test your belief. Pick up a piece of hot metal, and see whether your mind can impose a phenomena, the experience of the feeling of ice, upon the noumena, the thing in itself which you are holding in your hand. If the iron burns you and your mind could not control it, this scientifically proves, or at least lends credence to the idea, that sensory experience comes from objective physical reality, and not from your mind. On the other hand, if your mind can make you experience a feeling of ice, then your mind is creating your sensory experiences. The Kantian might reply that the structure of the mind could not be controlled by a desire to feel ice, but when we speak of “the mind,” we generally mean something that can be influenced by our feelings, desires, thoughts and beliefs.

December 2012 is Brain Month on my Blog!

The below post was incorporated into my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please consider buying my book.

Okay, this blog is not supposed to be focused upon the philosophical question of the mind-brain identity. Next month I am going to start posting on entirely different topics. But permit me one last mind-brain blog post. . . .

How do we know that the mind is the brain? Three reasons:

1. Brain damage. Science has learned, from over 100 years of experience, that brain damage to a specific section of the brain corresponds to a failure in a specific function of the mind. For example, there is a part of the brain which once damaged causes the mind to cease to recognize faces, so a person can see the face of a loved one and not know who they are, and be unable to remember faces. This strongly suggests that the mind is composed of the collection of mental functions of each part of the human brain.

2. Drug effects. Drugs such as alcohol and marijuana have a specific effect upon the mind. These are physical substances which alter the brain. This is what we would expect if the mind is the brain. If the mind were a soul then we would not expect drugs to alter or control it.

3. Sleep, etc. If the mind was a disembodied soul then we would expect it to remain awake while the brain sleeps, not to be controlled by bodily urges such as hunger, etc.

The counterargument is people's anecdotes of out of body experiences and spiritual experiences, but this is adequately explained by hallucinations and wishful thinking.

One last note: I strongly believe that evolution not only changed the human brain, it also added new things on top of the old ones while leaving the old parts relatively unchanged. Thus I think the neocortex is the distinctly human reasoning part of the brain, while the older brain structures remain much as they were in our animal ancestors. This is why the conscious mind can focus and concentrate, but the older parts of the brain have a remarkably short attention span and are easily distracted: back one million years ago the brain needed to quickly react to new stimuli to survive (e.g. by fighting or running away from predators and dangers), whereas in modern man the need to mentally concentrate is key to survival (e.g. learning and developing technology). A lot of people underachieve their intellectual potential by not engaging the distinctly human reasoning part of their brain and instead let the animal part of their brain do most of their cognitive activity, which explains all the people who have short attention spans and do nothing but watch TV and eat potato chips in their spare time, instead of reading great books and thinking deep thoughts. That last part, however, is just my opinion, and is conceptually distinct from the brain-mind identity hypothesis.

Brains vs. Souls, and Brain Management

This blog post has found a new home in my book The Apple of Knowledge. If you enjoy it, please buy my book!

There is a popular Philosophy 101/Philosophy of Mind argument that looks at the data from brains which have had the corpus collosum, which connects the brain's right and left hemispheres together, severed. Severing the corpus collosum was an old remedy for seizures which is no longer used, but the data remains. These brains had minds where one part of the mind did not know what another part of the mind was seeing. For example, the left eye would look at an apple but the mouth would say "I don't see an apple." The Analytic philosophers' argument is that a "person" or a "mind" is one whole being, and therefore the self cannot be identical with the brain. I draw precisely the opposite conclusion: it is scientifically undeniable that the mind is the brain, and therefore cognitive neuroscience must conclude that the mind/brain has many different parts, which work together in a healthy brain but which can become separated by physical or psychological dysfunction. Based upon reading about it and personal observations, I believe the brain has several distinct parts, which most people would recognize. The consciousness or "upper brain" is probably the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, possibly only the neocortex section. The consciousness is aware of reality and uses conscious reasoning. The "lower brain" or subconscious mind is probably many different structures, probably including both the other lobes of the cerebral cortex and structures in the middle of the brain including the amygdalae and basil ganglia. The lower brain uses subconscious reasoning, has emotional reactions such as lust or sadness, and also implements behavioral conditioning through feelings of reward and punishment. The "bottom brain" or unconscious mind controls bodily functions like digestion, and is invisible to the conscious mind.

I think that evolution intended for the conscious mind to "manage" the subconscious mind and to make a deliberate effort for the brain to function properly and for the different parts to work as a whole. The lower brain has a naturally short attention span and gets easily distracted by sensory stimuli or thinking about sex, and has the attention span of a fish--maybe 30 seconds before something distracts it. Concentration and focus come from the upper brain. The lower brain also has a natural tendency to be irrational, and I believe that evolution intended the upper brain to impose rationality upon the lower brain. Cognitive neuroscience indicates that the brain often functions by having biological impulses and urges which can be suppressed and inhibited by the action of the brain, and I think that the consciousness acts by controlling the lower brain and directing the brain's tendencies into a rational plan. Performing a task uses the entire brain, with the bottom brain interfacing with and moving the body, the lower brain using the habits conditioned from experience, and the upper brain paying attention and thinking about the task.

The human brain has a design flaw in that the consciousness naturally thinks of itself as a nonphysical "soul" and sees the lower brain as the "body." I dispute such a view of the mind. The consciousness is a part of the brain, and the mind is a physical object in reality, a "res extensa" to discredit Descartes using his own terms. The consciousness as brain does not mean that there is no such thing as free will. As stated, the brain can modify and influence itself by its internal cognitive processes, and the conscious mind can make decisions which control the lower brain. But the lower brain can also have physical malfunctions which impose irrationality upon the consciousness, which is how I would characterize mental illness. The self is not ethically responsible for mental illness which has an entirely physical origin, although it is the task of the upper brain to impose rationality upon the self, and it is also probably possible for a brain to freely choose to behave in an insane manner. Free will is "top-down" causation wherein the upper brain controls the brain's behavior, whereas mental illness is a type of "bottom-up" causation wherein physiological factors influence or control the conscious mind's thinking. Obviously this would be difficult to scientifically inspect using contemporary methods, but could be inferred from first person introspection. This is not so much a scientific postulate as it is a theory which could be called philosophy of mind/philosophy of science presenting a foundation for cognitive neuroscience.

Religion as Myth and Mental Illness

This blog post was refined and published in my e-book The Apple of Knowledge, which gives a far broader analysis of science vs. religion.

Christians and Muslims, please turn away. It’s about to get ugly. Jews and atheists, keep reading: you don’t believe in Hell, so there’s really no downside to being exposed to my heresy.

Let me begin by disclosing that I am an atheist. My theory of religion is that religion is a mixture of mythology and psychological defects arising from “design flaws” in the human brain. I can explain the myth part of religion very simply: ancient humans circa 10,000 BC to 1500 AD did not have science, but they needed theories to explain the natural phenomena they observed, so they dreamed up gods and supernatural forces to explain lightning, fire, death, etc. The mental illness side of religion is the more interesting aspect, which I will discuss here.

What is a “mental illness”? Let me begin with two foundational premises. First, humans are animals. Second, the mind is the brain. If the brain’s purpose as an organ in the body is to think, then we can define “mental illness” as a physical malfunction of the brain which interferes with the brain’s ability to think properly.

My basic idea is that religion is a type of mental illness, not as extreme as insanity or delusions or schizophrenia, but lacking in sanity and based upon brain malfunctions. It should be clear that religion, in itself, would be defined as a “mental illness” by most psychiatrists if not for the fact that billions of people believe in religion and that makes it socially acceptable and immune from criticism. If someone came up to you on the street and said to you that God has spoken to them, your natural reaction would be to think that this person is completely insane. But for some reason when a book written 2000 years ago says that God spoke to people it is regarded as truth and not as evidence that the Bible’s authors had mental health problems.

It is perfectly understandable that so many people believe in God. I believe that the human brain has evolved several “design flaws,” problems with how the brain works which make it easy for human beings to believe in religion. A list of these mental illness vulnerabilities follows:

1. Confirmation bias. Brains have “confirmation bias” of thinking that something might happen, and then when it happens they think it is supernatural because there was a chance it wouldn’t happen, or else they notice when what they expect happens and don’t notice when what they expect doesn’t happen so they believe in the supernatural. Thus when a person has a religious belief they tend to feel that their experiences confirm their beliefs, but when they have an experience which would refute their belief they simply ignore it. For example, when a believer wins the lottery they think God gave them good luck, but if the very next day this same person’s best friend gets sick and dies they won’t notice it as it reflects upon the existence of a supposedly omnipotent loving God. Another example of confirmation bias: you have a feeling that something will happen and then it does happen, you think you predicted the future, but you do not notice the ten other times today that you felt something was going to happen and it did not happen.

2. Subjectivism, and prayer as a reaction to helplessness. Ayn Rand had a theory which she called “primacy of consciousness,” which is really subjectivism, the feeling that brains have that thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, can alter reality supernaturally without any physical activity or physical causation. The brain knows that what it perceives is real, so some brains incorrectly infer that reality is coming from perception, when in fact perceptions and beliefs are coming from physical reality. This explains the belief in the power of prayer. When the brain is totally helpless it turns to prayer as the only thing it can do, and then when the person who prays is somehow saved they credit the prayer and believe in the supernatural. The people who survive disasters and who prayed to God and were saved then become fanatical believers who tell everyone else to pray, but nobody ever hears from all the people who had emergencies and prayed and their prayers were not answered and they died. When people think that subjectivism is true they think their beliefs and feelings can change reality so when they are helpless they pray. I think the brain actually has a design flaw which makes the mind try to get control of the situation in situations where the person is totally helpless instead of simply accepting one's helplessness.

3. The blank slate problem. The brain is born empty and is essentially programmed like a computer by what it is taught from ages 1 to 15. Young children have no knowledge or experience and most often they simply believe what they are taught. And as adults the human brain tends to simply go with what it already believes instead of questioning beliefs or using critical thinking directed in upon itself. This is why most people believe in the religion they were raised on and were taught by their parents. If there was one true religion then you would expect everyone to believe in the same religion, and if people reached religion is a result of thought then one would expect various religions to overlap geographically. The fact that each region has one majority religion (e.g. Christianity in Europe and the USA, Islam in the Middle East, Hinduism in India) is what you would expect if religious beliefs come from what parents teach to their children. It is rare for a belief to come as the result of what a person reasons independently instead of what you are taught and indoctrinated in. This is because of a design flaw in the human brain which causes brains to soak up beliefs that they are fed as young children instead of thinking critically from a young age.

4. Conformity and obedience to authority. When I took Psychology 101 in college I was taught that it was well established by scientific experiments that the human brain has two tendencies: the obedience to authority and conformity tendencies, which are wired into the human brain. Humans will take orders from a perceived authority figure which they would not take from normal people. And an individual will tend to say that he believes things which parallel the beliefs of the group that he/she is a member of, in defiance of his/her own independent perceptions. So religions get people to say they believe in them because everyone else believes and people tend to conform to the beliefs of the group. If atheism were popular then everyone would be an atheist, but because religion is popular everyone is a believer. Also religion creates authority figures, and the human brain has a tendency to obey.

5. The stress reaction. It is well established that the emotion centers in the human brain react to fear and panic by shutting down the thinking centers in the brain and giving energy to the “fight or flight” response which is accompanied by fear and panic in the emotional parts of the brain. This design flaw in the human brain makes people behave stupidly and irrationally in crisis situations, which makes people tend to seek help from the supernatural to save them instead of calmly, rationally figuring out how to solve the problem.

6. Habits. The subconscious mind parts of the brain tend to develop habits, and the argument can be made that the human brain can be conditioned, like a dog or a bird, to repeat the same behavior if it has been given a reward repeatedly for performing that behavior in the past. This conditioning and subconscious repetition tends to embed traditions in human behavior, which would not exist if decisions were always made as a result of reasoning.

7. Hallucinations. Most people erroneously believe that they see with their eyes. That is not how the brain works. The eyes send neural signals to the vision centers in the brain, and the vision centers in the brain are what actually forms visual perceptions which are “seen” by the mind, really, by the conscious mind which I believe is the frontal cerebral cortex or perhaps the entire frontal lobe. Thus, when the brain chemicals malfunction or the neurons malfunction and misfire and there is an imbalance in neurotransmitter chemicals, it is very possible for the brain to believe that it is “seeing” something which simply does not exist. And these hallucinations are influenced by the ideas which are already in the mind, so if your brain malfunctions you might think that you are hearing God speak to you or seeing spirits which look like your religious beliefs. The brain plays tricks on the mind, and this is probably what happens to ancient “prophets” who thought God was speaking to them. I do not believe that the possibility of hallucination makes it impossible to achieve certainty and knowledge, and hallucination is not an excuse for philosophical doubt and skepticism. But we humans do need to be aware that our brains are vulnerable to design flaws, and also that the people we trust, and the groups we follow and go along with, are all of them vulnerable to human brain design flaws.

8. Problems in the different parts of the brain communicating with each other, i.e. a flaw in the evolution of interneurons. This takes many forms: 

A. Confusion regarding who hears your thoughts: you hear your own thoughts and think God is listening to you. This is a brain malfunction. You also talk to yourself in your thoughts and think you are talking to God, which is part of the origin of prayer. Prayer is talking to yourself in your thoughts and hearing yourself think, and a brain malfunction and the lack of an evolved set of neurons within the brain for the brain to see its own activity permits the mind to think that it is talking to God and that God is listening, the mind sees someone listening but the neurons don’t make the connection that the thing which is listening is also the thing that is thinking. As a matter of neuroscience it is well established that the center in the brain which speaks and forms words is not in precisely the same location in the brain as the center which hears and interprets words. I believe that religious mental illness can arise when these different hearing and speaking centers in the brain do not communicate properly with each other and when the brain does not pay attention to its own thinking and fails to pay attention to its listening to its own thoughts and is not properly self-aware of its own thinking, in other words if the brain does not know that it thinks to itself then it believes that it is speaking to God.

B. The visual parts of the brain when they hallucinate send signals to the frontal cortex/conscious mind and you see the hallucination but your brain does not tell you that it is a creation of the imagination and not from the sensory receptors in the eyes, this is a design flaw in communication between the eyes and the brain and between the different parts of the brain, which would not exist if the neurons had evolved better.

C. The ability to “will” or wish, of the conscious mind to send signals to the brain stem or motor cortex (which control the muscles and move the body) desiring things to happen, and the brain perceives no difference between sending a signal to the muscles to move the hand, which it can do, and sending out signals to cast a magic spell to make it rain, i.e. to “wish/will” it to rain, which it cannot do. If the frontal cerebral cortex received accurate signals from the brain stem and motor cortex to see where its signals went and what they did then this would simply not exist.

In conclusion, if religion comes from brain malfunctions then it is highly debatable whether people are “to blame” for mistaken religious beliefs, since the physical matter of the brain is to blame, and conscious choice plays a minimal role. People are not weak and stupid, they are merely human, all too human. Perhaps religion will remain in the human species until the human brain takes its next steps of evolutionary progress. Perhaps wars between Christians and Muslims will lead to nuclear war and our total extinction before that evolution can happen. These are merely idle speculations. However, from a biological, scientific point of view, there is an adequate explanation of religion purely from physical causes and with no reference to the actual real existence of God or anything supernatural.