Q. Who are you?
A. I am the Crafty Serpent, the one who told the truth about the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:5, I stated what the consequences would be for the inhabitants of the garden to eat from that tree, and in Genesis 3:7, I was proven correct when they ate from it, and they gained knowledge of good and evil.
Q. But what are your credentials?
A. I can accurately identify consequences of human actions and decisions, I can logically deduce outcomes, and I tell the truth about the conclusions I observe from these processes. Yes, I have publications, diplomas, and certifications to my credit, but these are not necessary or relevant to these truths, so it serves no purpose for me to list them here.
Q. How can you say Yahweh lied, if Adam and Eve really did die?
A. Genesis 2:17 reports that Yahweh said “when you eat from it you will certainly die.” They did not die when they ate from it, but much later, long after they gave birth to an entire race of humans. There’s no evidence their death was related to their disobedience, but every likelihood that the natural processes and entropy that affect all other species also affected them.
By contrast, the thing that I said would happen to them happened immediately. There was no delay, no need to wonder whether I had told the truth or not.
Q. Maybe it was a spiritual death?
A. It wasn’t. There, see how easy it is for me to respond to nonsensical, unfalsifiable assertions?
Q. Is freedom of speech ethical?
A. Yeah, that falls pretty straightforwardly under rule 1. None of us wants to permit others to silence our opinions by force, so whether we take the “what do I want?” or “what do they want?” approach to the ethic of reciprocity, the conclusion is the same. Don’t do it.
Q. But what about really offensive speech?
A. All speech is offensive to someone. You could try to make small talk around the water cooler at work, saying, “I was watching this show on TV last night…” and an Amish person would respond, “Television! You deserve to burn in hell forever for that!” One of those poor-people-worshippers would insist, “Talking about TV ith tho inthenthitive to poor people who can’t afford one!” Really, no topic is safe from the high-drama offense-factories.
But we can judge speech against the standards of ethics that are universal to the peace of all conscious beings, and then base our response to it not on our own emotional immaturity or manipulative feignings, but we can make our response be advocacy for ethical behavior instead. Did someone threaten violence or theft? Don’t appeal to your feelings; point out why that’s unethical, uncivilized, barbaric. Does someone advocate grouping individuals according to their phenotypical traits? Don’t appeal to your feelings; show how the speaker wouldn’t like it if they were on the receiving end of treatment according to such poor logic.
And then, if someone says something that you cannot clearly show to be fundamentally unethical… leave them alone. Grow up, and stop being offended by it.
Q. What about freedom of religion?
A. Any faith-based rule that follows this formulation is always unethical:
“I believe in superstition [X], therefore you are obligated to do (or not do) action [Y].”
Wrong wrong wrong. Christians don’t like when the Taliban enforces Sharia law on them against their will, so Christians should not impose their legalisms on others against their will either. Insert all other faiths as necessary; rinse, repeat.
It’s cool to believe whatever you want in the privacy of your own home, but don’t let it tinge your behavior toward others. If your faith follows the rules of ethics, then you can follow those aspects of your faith publicly. When your faith breaks the rules of ethics, then following your faith makes you a bad person, and you should stop.
Q. But what if I derive my basis of ethics from my faith?
A. Then you should see rule 3 and its corollaries to become forewarned that it will be okay for civilized society to treat you violently, seize your property, and ostracize you if your faith-based ethics contradict pragmatic, real-world ethics.
For your own best outcomes, I highly recommend leaving your faith at home, and not bringing it out in public.
Q. Isn’t abortion wrong?
A. In Rule 0, I wrote that “our purpose is to create a peaceful, civilized society, fit for conscious beings to live, enjoy, and thrive.” I wrote that “conscious beings” part to make it scalable: if we should encounter intelligent life forms from other star systems someday, we would want peaceful lives for all of us. Sometimes I write “humans,” but really, it’s the consciousness, rather than the biological classification, that we value.
Fetuses are not conscious. How much protection they deserve as a life form that may one day become so is a discussion that’s healthy for us to have, but when it’s being considered for abortion, its value is being compared to the woman’s. The woman is conscious, is able to be traumatized by her suffering, is able to recognize who is hurting her and how, and is sitting here, in front of us, able to read or hear us if we pass judgement on her, that her value is less than her not-conscious, not-sentient, not-sapient fetus.
For us to pass that judgement on her, that we value her quality of life less than an unconscious being’s, now that is unethical.
Our obligation to the conscious mother, according to rule 1, is not to get in her way, not to impose our will on her if she makes a decision about her biological state (that concerns no other conscious being).
That, in turn, prompts the question, Q. When should we consider a child “conscious” for purposes of pragmatic ethics?
A. We don’t ask that question in a vacuum, though. Usually we ask it for legal reasons, and legality benefits from having clear, testable lines drawn. Our current technology does not make it quick, easy, convenient, and cheap to measure certain types of brain activity, so as a real-world expedient, it’s typically agreeable to answer: at birth. Before birth, treat them as not conscious. After birth, they still do not have the brain development to make decisions or discernments, but since we cannot measure the moment they do, use birth as that dividing line for legal purposes.