William Lane Craig vs Stephen Law: An agnostic's perspective

On October 17^th 2011, William Lane Craig and Stephen Law debated the question “Does God Exist?” at Westminster Central Hall. Craig, a research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and a well known Christian apologist, argued the affirmative case, while Law, a philosopher and senior lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, argued the negative case. Rather than being a generic debate on whether a God exists, this was a debate on whether the God of Christianity, and of Craig, exists. This debate can be listened to in full here.

As the title indicates, I intend to offer some thoughts on the debate from an agnostic perspective. By agnostic, I mean that I maintain a position of uncertainty as to the existence of a God or creator of the universe – that is, I neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of such a being. Furthermore, I doubt that it is possible, at the present time and perhaps ever, to prove the existence or non-existence of a God and that the question is therefore irresolvable. On this basis, I’m essentially atheistic towards all the major religions, although I would not be prepared to state with certainty that they are not true. I’m open-minded on this issue and could therefore be convinced with the right evidence and must also admit to finding a certain appeal in deistic explanations of the origin of the universe.

Craig’s case

Craig began by stating that he would defend the contention that there are good reasons to think that God exists. He proceeded to offer three arguments to this effect. The first argument was the ‘cosmological argument’, which holds that, since every physical thing that begins to exist has a cause and that the universe began to exist, the universe therefore has a cause. Given the seeming impossibility of an infinite regress of physical events, Craig further argues that this cause must be an immaterial, timeless, and personal being of unfathomable power. This argument certainly has considerable intuitive appeal, and to my mind is more believable than the view held by some atheists that the universe literally popped into being out of nothing and without cause. However, it does not prove the existence of the Christian God, which Craig happily concedes, and at best provides a basis for deism. On this basis, Law chose not to engage with this argument, despite being prompted by Craig on a number of occasions.

The second argument Craig presented was the ‘moral argument’. This argument holds that if God does not exist then moral values do not exist, that moral values do exist, and therefore that God exists. Craig did little to prove the premises of the argument to be true, other than claiming that there are “truly evil” acts that would merely be “unfashionable” on the atheistic view and asserting that we “apprehend a real of moral values and duties that impose themselves upon us”. Law did a fine job of drawing attention to the contentious nature of the premises of this argument during his rebuttal.

As an aside, I can’t help but find Craig’s view of morality rather disconcerting. It appears that, to him, the only reason not to act in ways that cause harm or suffering to others is that an objective system of values obliges him not to. The truth is that notions of “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad” are not required to inform decisions about how to behave towards others. As human beings, we have the mental capacity to understand the existence of other minds, to predict how our actions will affect the mental states of others, and to understand how our actions will impact upon their physical welfare. We ourselves do not like to experience mental distress or physical pain and we can therefore choose not to inflict these things on others. This should be the basis of our behaviour towards others, and it is irrelevant as to whether or not it is “objectively good”. It’s rather sad that Craig would consider rape or child torture to be merely “unfashionable” in the absence of a God, as if the suffering of the victim during and after the act is somehow entirely irrelevant. If there really is a God, surely that being would look upon people who treat others well because they want to far more favourably than those who merely follow rules in order to avoid punishment, like the child who refrains from being naughty while in sight of his parents.

The final argument Craig presented was based on the claimed resurrection of Jesus. He gives three facts to support the view that Jesus rising from the dead is the “best explanation” of the available evidence. First, on the Sunday after his crucifixion, his tomb was found empty by a group of women followers. Second, different individuals and groups saw him alive after his death. Third, the original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Given this, Craig argues that Jesus must have been who he said he was and that the God he revealed must exist. Law only briefly engaged with this argument, where he cautioned against simply accepting the “best explanation” of such an event as being true. There is sufficient doubt surrounding this event to prevent most rational people from accepting it as true and consequently adopting the Christian religion.

The truth is that these three arguments, either separately or collectively, are not what convinced Craig to embrace Christianity. In an interview available on YouTube, Craig states:

“The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don’t think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus, evidence is entirely irrelevant to Craig. If it contradicts his view then he will simply disregard it. However, if it seems to support his view he clearly has no reluctance to use it. Although Craig did not make this kind of argument in this debate, in previous debates he has typically presented an argument from the personal experience of God as the last in a series of five arguments, including the present three and also the teleological argument. Perhaps Craig did personally experience God; I’m not in a position to claim that he did not. However, it would be that experience that would cause him and others to embrace Christianity, not the three arguments he presented in this debate.

The ‘evidential problem of evil’

Law presented one main argument against the God of Christianity, known as the “evidential problem of evil’. He later pointed out that this argument can be made without the use of the word “evil”, which I find more appropriate. The argument is quite simply that there has been an immense amount of suffering to both humans and non-humans throughout history and that it is highly unlikely that a morally good God would create a world in which this occurred. He proceeds to demonstrate how similar reasoning could convincingly refute the hypothesis that there is an entirely malevolent creator – that is, the considerable amount of good in the world would be inconsistent with such a being having created the universe. In addition, Law neatly demonstrated that the many rationalisations of suffering in the world offered by Christians can be inverted in order to support the existence of a malevolent creator. The challenge for Craig, therefore, was to justify why it is sufficiently more plausible to believe in a morally good God.

Craig failed to establish a strong case for this position. He first asserted that it was up to Law, and therefore atheists, to “prove that it was impossible or highly improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world” and asked “But how can the atheist possibly prove that?”. The answer is that there is probably no means by which this can be proven. Therefore, not only is it entirely unreasonable to shift the burden of proof on to the sceptical position, it is also unreasonable to demand a proof that it is not possible to provide. It is surely up to those asserting the existence of God to prove that God exists, that God is morally good, and that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting suffering. Craig provides no good reason to believe that there would be morally sufficient reasons to permit suffering; rather, he merely appeals to the idea that we aren’t in a position to know what God’s plan is.

Typically I find nothing objectionable or offensive in debates such as this, but Craig’s response to the issue of animal suffering makes this an exception, for a number of reasons. He sought to circumvent the problem of animal suffering by claiming that “even though animals are in pain, they aren’t aware of it”, and that this is a fact emerging from “recent scientific discoveries”. In reference to such “scientific” work, Craig cites the book “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering” by Michael J Murray. In fact, Craig omitted the second part of the title, thereby concealing the true nature of the book, despite taking care to point out that it was published by Oxford University Press. He also neglected to mention that Murray is a Christian apologist with no credentials whatsoever in neuroscience, neuropsychology, pain research, or any other scientific area directly relevant to the issue of pain in human or non-human animals, and a clear vested interest (that is, to diminish the “problem of evil”) in promoting the view that animals are not able to suffer.

The book to which Craig refers has received just four citations since being published in 2008, which is perhaps indicative of its irrelevance, and certainly does not include any groundbreaking scientific research suggesting that animals can not experience pain. In fact, Murray seems to refer mostly to the work of Bermond, as he also did in his article “Neo-Cartesianism and Problem of Animal Suffering”. Importantly, Weary et al (2006), in an article entitled “Identifying and Preventing Animal Pain” published in “Applied Animal Behaviour Science”, state that “Arguments such as those of Bermond actually play only a limited role in scientific thought”. As a philosopher, Craig should understand the serious epistemological difficulties associated with research on pain and consciousness in non-human animals (I've written a little more on this issue previously here and here). While self-report is available for humans and is considered the gold-standard, it is not available in non-linguistic species. Given these difficulties “no systematic neuroscientific investigation of animal consciousness has yet been undertaken” (Edelman & Seth, 2009). Despite this, Craig is happy to accept the view that animals can not experience pain on the basis of highly simplistic neuroanatomical comparisons, arguably because it is theistically convenient for him to do so.

In addition to dishonestly portraying the work of a Christian apologist with no scientific credentials, and the controversial minority view on which it is based, as being the prevailing scientific consensus, Craig stooped further still by asserting that the inability of animals to suffer should be of “great comfort” to “animal lovers” and “pet lovers”. I certainly find no comfort whatsoever in an unfounded view which would remove the basis for animal welfare and opposition to animal cruelty. To commit an act of cruelty requires that the consequence (e.g. pain) can be experienced by the victim. If an animal can not experience pain, then causing physical harm to one is surely as morally neutral as tearing a plant up from the ground or smashing a computer to pieces. Fortunately, not all Christians regard animals in the same way that Craig does.

Another response offered by Craig to the many millions of years of animal suffering in nature was that predation is essential for a viable ecosystem. Law hinted that he had a response to this, but he chose not to air it. My objection would be that this would entail that the creative ability of an allegedly omnipotent creator is constrained by the concept of “ecosystem”. It could certainly be argued that predation is essential for a viable ecosystem in the world in which we live, but could it be demonstrated that ecosystems and the brutality they involve must necessarily be present in the creation of an omnipotent and morally perfect being? The immense quantity of animal suffering in the natural world calls into question either the omnipotence of God or the moral perfection of God. Craig shouldn’t have been allowed to wheedle out of this by appealing to a highly controversial, minority view on animal suffering.

Conclusion

Insofar as it is possible to “win” a debate of this kind, I feel that Law won. Craig presented three arguments which failed to provide “good reasons” for believing in the God in which he believes. Law was able to demonstrate the irrelevance of the cosmological argument, to cast sufficient doubt on the premises of the moral argument, and to cast sufficient doubt on the resurrection argument. He also presented one main argument of his own which Craig was unable to refute. No rational person could adopt Christianity via reason alone on the basis of this debate.

Despite this, I feel that a number of Craig’s arguments, particularly the cosmological, moral, and teleological (which he did not present in this debate), are sufficiently strong to move people away from the dogmatic, militant atheism of the Richard Dawkins variety, to a more open-minded and possibly agnostic position. In previous debates where the focus wasn't on a specific God, Craig has done much better and undermined the case for atheism (i.e. the belief that a God or anything like a God does not exist). For now, I remain agnostic and will continue to be open to where the evidence, reason, or experience leads me. 

Elaborating on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's comments on puppy farming

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recently stated that those who consume the meat of farm animals (e.g. pigs) are not in a position to object, in principle, to the organic farming of puppies for food. Predictably, many people entirely missed his point, concluded that he was advocating this in practice, and were accordingly outraged. Of course, he was not seriously suggesting that this is something that we should be doing; he stated that he would not eat such meat unless he was “on the point of starvation”. His actual argument is as follows:

“'You can't object, unless you also object to the farming of pigs. It's an artificial construct of our society, a cultural decision, to make pets out of dogs and meat out of pigs.”

In pointing out that the way in which we view dogs and pigs in Western culture is culturally determined, he is entirely correct. This view is not universal. In some cultures, pigs are not looked upon as food and dogs aren’t considered to make for welcome additions to the family home. In certain countries, dogs are killed and eaten, and even skinned alive for their fur. It is perhaps fair to say that, in those places, the dog has a similar status to that of the lowly pig or cow in Western culture. More broadly, the distinction between “farm animals” and “domestic pets” is culturally determined. It has no basis in objective reality – that is, outside of human thought, these categories simply do not exist.

On what basis, then, can those who happily eat meat from pigs, cows, and other farm animals, and therefore endorse the breeding and killing of these animals, object to the breeding and killing of dogs for food? Arbitrary, culturally derived classifications certainly shouldn’t be accepted as providing a basis for this seemingly hypocritical position, and nor should notions of the cuteness of dogs and their behaviour, their suitability as domestic animals, or their usefulness in other areas of human endeavour. Stripping all of this away leaves what we intuitively consider to be conscious creatures with the ability to experience pain, fear, distress, and discomfort. This raises the moral question of why it should be considered right that some of these animals should exist in factory farms and be brutally murdered while others are singled out for love, affection, and protection from cruelty.

For vegetarians and vegans, the challenge that Fearnley-Whittingstall presents is not a problem, for we would consider the farming of puppies for food to be wrong in the same way that we consider the farming (especially intensive farming) of animals such as pigs to be wrong. The fact that the former are cuter, fluffier, and more suitable as domestic pets than the latter does not cause us to apply our moral judgement inconsistently. For the meat eater, however, it is quite a problem. It is not possible for them to justify their inconsistent position in a sensible, rational, and objective way. They must remain hypocritical, or accept that puppy farming would be no more wrong than the farming of other animals, or else come to consider it all to be wrong. 

Some of the issues covered here are also covered in a previous entry entitled 'Reflecting upon arguments against vegetarianism". 

Reflecting upon arguments against vegetarianism.

As it is coming up to World Vegetarian Day (1^st October), I thought I’d reflect upon some of the arguments that are levelled against vegetarianism. Having previously been a meat-eater, I have experience of both using and being on the receiving end of such arguments. While at university, for example, I had many a discussion with an ethically motivated vegetarian. Rather ironically, when I met him again at graduation and proudly announced that I’d become vegetarian, he informed me that he and his fiancé had started eating meat again! In the brief discussion that ensued, he was using the arguments that I previously used against him, and vice versa.

While some arguments against vegetarianism warrant serious consideration, many are quite ridiculous. Examples of the latter include “But… Hitler was a vegetarian!” and “Carrots feel pain too!”. If such arguments carried any weight, we would have done away with motorways on the grounds that Hitler also thought they were a good idea, and pulling a carrot from the ground would be widely regarded to be as morally reprehensible as an act of animal cruelty. Religious arguments which hold that animals were divinely created for human consumption are no better.

There are a number of more challenging arguments against vegetarianism and it is these arguments that will be considered here.  

“We are meant to eat meat”

It is often claimed that humans are “meant to eat meat”. The ability of the human body to digest the flesh of non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals) is cited as evidence that this is something human beings should do, and have indeed been ‘designed’ to do via biological evolution. On this basis, it is often further argued that the consumption of animal flesh is essential for good health.

If this is granted as true, for the sake of argument, the obvious implication is that the failure to regularly eat the flesh of animals should have negative consequences. A robust body of scientific evidence on the ill-health caused by vegetarian diets should therefore be expected to exist. Importantly, it does not. As Key, Appleby, and Rose (2006) state, “Overall, the data suggest that the health of Western vegetarians is good and similar to that of comparable non-vegetarians”. The view that humans are meant to eat meat is quite simply irreconcilable with the good health of vegetarians.

If good health does not depend on the consumption of animal flesh, the basis on which humans are meant to eat it is unclear. Perhaps it could be argued that the ability of the human body to digest it is itself an adequate justification. However, on such a view, any action which is made possible by the physiology and anatomy of the human body and which should not cause immediate personal harm must be accepted and engaged in unquestioningly: the mere potentiality of an act is evidence that evolution ‘intended’ for it. Fortunately, behavioural decision making is typically a more complex process involving, amongst other factors, rational and moral thought.

While many meat eaters might like to believe that they are meant to eat meat, they really aren’t. Worlds apart from the genuinely predatory animals that instinctively kill other animals and eat their raw flesh on the spot in order to survive, human beings are carefully cooking (to avoid food poisoning) pre-packaged meat and preparing it into meals in their kitchens despite it being within their power to use non-animal ingredients. Worse still, human beings have developed elaborate intensive farming systems into which certain species of animal are bred, imprisoned, and artificially pushed beyond natural limits. It is absurd to believe that any of this is entailed by biological evolution. It could all be otherwise, in a way it never could be for predatory animals. Vegetarians are living proof that this is a fact.

As an aside, it is instructive to consider the human consumption of cow’s milk. As with meat, it is claimed that this is something we are meant to be doing and something that is essential for good health, particularly of the bones. Most people at least accept the latter claim to be true. But there are good reasons to doubt the truth of both. Milk serves the purpose of providing nourishment to the offspring of an animal. A human baby is meant to drink the milk of a cow no more than a calf is meant to feed from the breasts of a human. The situation becomes all the more bizarre where adults are concerned. If a human adult engaged in the behaviour directly by suckling on the udders of a cow, they’d be considered weird- a sexual deviant of some kind. But if someone else artificially inseminates the cow, collects the milk, pasteurises it, and packages it, then it is completely normal, and essential, for people to buy and consume this product. The very notion that human health is dependent on drinking milk intended for the offspring of other animals is ludicrous.

The truth is that eating meat is not necessary. It is neither required for good health nor is it evolutionarily ordained. In civilised society, human beings are not living in an environment where hunting and eating animals is required for survival. An individual can decide to eat meat or not to eat meat, in the same way that they can choose to wear a real fur coat in winter or not to wear such a coat. They can decide whether to behave in ways that contribute to the killing of animals and the infliction of suffering upon them or to behave in other ways. Sadly, too many people choose the former.

“We are top of the food chain”

Another commonly used argument against vegetarianism is that we are “top of the food chain” and that therefore there is really nothing wrong with killing and eating animals. Just as a cat will kill and eat a mouse or a lion will kill and eat a zebra, humans should kill and eat any animal of their choosing – it is merely the natural order of things in a brutal and amoral world. Some would take this argument further and suggest that the intensive farming procedures developed by humans are just more efficient and effective means of doing what we would otherwise be doing on a smaller scale and that there is nothing really wrong with this as our intelligence affords us a position of dominance over other animals.

Despite the beauty of the natural world, it is undeniably brutal. The strong do prey on the weak and there is no moral dimension to their acts as animals are (to the best of our knowledge) incapable of moral thought. There is no right and there is no wrong where their behaviour is concerned. According to this argument, the human species is just one of millions on this planet and we are too are part of this natural order.

Importantly, however, human beings are capable of moral thought, which draws a distinction between us and animals and requires that our behaviour be judged on a different basis to theirs. A human being is able to evaluate potential acts against notions of right and wrong and to decide on the basis of this evaluation whether or not to act in a particular way. Our ability to understand the existence of other minds, to empathise with others, and to anticipate how a particular course of action would affect their mental state is important in informing this moral evaluation in many instances. We are also not particularly instinctive. Aside from the rare occasion on which the survival instinct might be required to kick in, our behaviour is usually the result of a decision making process that can take into account a wide range of considerations, including moral considerations. Given these important differences, it is inappropriate to judge human behaviour on the same basis as, say, a frog extending its tongue to capture a fly in an instinctive act devoid of a moral dimension. It must also, therefore, be inappropriate to use such behaviour as a guide for human behaviour.

Another important difference is that while the relationship between animals in the wild just is, the way in which humans relate to animals is variable. Human intelligence, adaptability, and the ability to be socialised in vastly different ways allows for societies, and individuals within them, to relate to animals differently. These qualities allow for, say, Westerners to traditionally eat cows while Hindus do not and for individuals to freely adopt an entirely vegetarian diet. They also allow for us to keep domestic pets, which we look after, feed, stroke, and treat, all for reasons relating to companionship, enjoyment, or satisfaction. This desire to have companionship with animals and to look after them certainly doesn’t sit well with the view that we’re predatory animals (which we must surely be if we are “meant to eat meat”) sitting at the top of the food chain. When considered in a moral evaluation of killing and eating animals for food, the ability to freely choose to be vegetarian and to maintain good physical health in so doing is particularly damning.

A further objection, similar to an objection to the “we are meant to eat meat” argument, can be raised here. That is, the potential to act in certain ways does not mean that we should act in those ways or that those acts are desirable, sensible, or moral. There is no doubt that the intelligence of the human species allows it to dominate this planet and to do as it pleases to animals. And it is worth noting here that it is indeed intelligence that affords us this position. In comparison with the predatory animals that meat eaters imagine we are like, we are physically rather feeble – we’re slow, weak, with blunt digits, blunt teeth, and a small and weak jaw. If an unarmed human happened to be confronted by a lion, it is very unlikely that they would emerge from that situation alive.

The important question here is whether the ability to dominate animals and cause harm to them means that we should do so. If this question was asked about the ability to act in these ways towards other humans, the answer would be a resounding ‘no’. Behaviours such as bullying, violent theft, and rape - all of which require that the perpetrator is able to dominate or overpower the victim - are considered morally wrong. Large scale and systematic manifestations of behaviour of this kind, such as enslavement of people (e.g. sex trafficking) or genocide, are met with even greater revulsion and those responsible for these acts are often labelled as ‘evil’. Since moral considerations intervene between the potential for an act and its actualisation where inter-human behaviour is concerned, a clear basis on which to exempt animals from our moral thinking is required if those who eat meat are to do so in good conscience.

“Animals aren’t sentient”

One basis upon which some people argue that moral considerations should not be applied to animals is that animals, they claim, are not sentient. In other words, animals are devoid of conscious awareness and the ability to sense or perceive the external world and it is therefore inappropriate to take moral considerations into account in relation to our behaviour towards them. On this view, killing an animal doesn’t involve the termination of a conscious being and is no more wrong than tearing a plant up from the ground, and while the conditions and treatment that animals are subjected to in factory farms might appear to be cruel, they aren’t aware of anything and so nothing wrong is being done.

This argument is certainly the most challenging one for ethically motivated vegetarians. It is so challenging for two reasons. Firstly, it strikes right at the heart of the issue, for if it is true, and animals are indeed not consciously aware, then it isn’t appropriate to apply moral considerations to our treatment of them and ethically motivated vegetarianism therefore does not make sense. Secondly, the immaterial and subjective nature of consciousness and mind presents serious epistemological difficulties for investigating these qualities in animals, which would be unable to report linguistically on their subjective experiential existence.

Consciousness is a very difficult and controversial area of inquiry. Science has been able to explain many things, but consciousness is not one of them. There are good reasons - such as the ability of psychoactive substances to alter conscious experience - for thinking that consciousness is an emergent property of the physical matter of the brain, but precisely how this occurs is unknown. The scientific method has been able to use advanced neuroimaging techniques to examine neurological correlates of behaviour and reported conscious experience in humans, but this type of investigation has yet to lead to an explanation of consciousness. Self-report is clearly crucial for research on consciousness as there is no means by which the conscious mind can be directly observed. Similar investigations in animals are complicated by the unavailability of self-report, which means that behaviour must be used to make inferences about conscious experiences. This is clearly unsatisfactory and it is therefore not surprising that “no systematic neuroscientific investigation of animal consciousness has yet been undertaken” (Edelman and Seth, 2009).

The implication of the subjective, private nature of consciousness and the additional problems associated with researching it in animals is that it might not be possible to determine whether animals are conscious and, if they are, that it is impossible to know what it is like to be an animal. This is perhaps an uncomfortable idea for those who believe science to be explanatorily omnipotent, but the ‘problem of other minds’ is considered by many philosophers to be irresolvable by the scientific method. Given that it is not known, and arguably not possible to know, whether animals are conscious, the premise of this argument (i.e. that ‘animals are not sentient’) is unwarranted. At the very least it must be conceded that animals might be conscious, in which case it does not follow that we should not apply moral considerations to our treatment of them. If an individual has reason to believe that a particular act might cause suffering, the moral imperative is surely to act differently.

There are good reasons for suspecting consciousness in animals. From an evolutionary perspective, it seems unlikely that consciousness would have emerged suddenly in humans without less sophisticated forms having existed previously. Obviously, the consciousness experienced by an animal would be vastly different to human consciousness – for example, there would be no linguistic element to it and no ability to think abstractly. No sensible person would ever ascribe these higher-order abilities to animals or entertain the idea that animals could be sitting there mulling over the latest discoveries in particle physics or contemplating issues in analytical philosophy. However, it is not these higher-order abilities that are important in informing how we should treat animals, but rather the possibility that they can experience pain, discomfort, distress, and fear. Those who doubt that animals can experience these things would do well to watch video footage depicting animal cruelty – the squeals and shrieks of cats and dogs skinned alive for fur in China would surely be enough to convince anyone that they do.

Interestingly, most people do not consider animals to be the ‘beast machines’ of Descartes. Pet owners, particularly of cats and dogs, view their pets as companions with minds and ‘personalities’ of their own and not as non-sentient biological machines. They like to treat their pets well and ensure that they live good lives. Cruelty to animals is widely abhorred and those who commit acts of animal cruelty are frowned upon. Unfortunately, this opposition to animal cruelty is not extended to those animals which have been unfortunate enough to have been categorised as “farm animals” in our cultures. The conditions and treatment that these animals are subjected to in factory farms and abattoirs doesn’t appear to concern most people, but isolated acts of cruelty or accidental harm to animals in the “domestic pets” category can cause outrage. The case of Mary Bale, who threw a cat into a wheelie bin because she “thought it would be funny” and subsequently received death threats, is an illustrative example. Although it is clearly not nice to put a cat in a bin, farm animals face far worse and on an unfathomably greater numerical scale. To Miss Bale, the cat was “just a cat”, and to many people, the animals they are eating are “just pigs” and “just cows”.

Other Arguments

The arguments considered thus far do not succeed in undermining the case for vegetarianism. Basic appeals to evolution and nature ignore the human potential for moral thought, and the unproven assertion that animals are not sentient does not provide a means by which to avoid the moral implications of our treatment of animals. Many people convert to vegetarianism upon learning of the reality of meat production and deciding that the acts involved are immoral. Unfortunately, for many people behavioural change of this kind represents the path of greatest resistance, and so they’ll use various arguments to exempt themselves from guilt. Three of these will be briefly considered here.

“Eating meat is part of our culture”. Eating meat is certainly part of our culture, but that is all it is. It is a behaviour that has emerged from sociocultural evolution, not biological necessity. It is not something which must be part of our culture and it is not something that any individual is obliged to do. People can and do choose not to eat meat. Therefore, those who do eat meat but feel uneasy about the killing of animals or suspect that the way in which those animals are treated is immoral can’t hide behind the fact that eating meat is culturally normative. Slavery was once part of Western culture, but that doesn’t mean that it was right or that those who kept slaves were doing no wrong. Importantly, people identified it as being wrong and campaigned against it.

“I just buy the meat; I’m not doing anything wrong”. This argument fails quite simply because purchasing meat or other animal products contributes to causing demand for those products and their subsequent production. If no one purchased these products, they would not be produced. Anyone who does purchase these products must therefore bear some of the responsibility for the acts required to produce them.

“I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference”. While it is true that one person deciding not to eat meat will not make a significant impact on the plight of animals, this fact does not absolve them of their portion of the responsibility. In addition to personal behavioural change, people can also inform others of their reasons for becoming vegetarian and perhaps influence them to change too. Being free of the guilt associated with eating meat and enjoying the health benefits attributed to the vegetarian lifestyle surely makes the decision worthwhile.

Conclusion

The arguments considered here, either alone or collectively, fail to undermine the case for vegetarianism. Individuals with a sufficient level of moral development can not avoid the moral implications of eating meat by appealing to non-existent biological or evolutionary imperatives, intellectual supremacy over animals, cultural acceptability, or unproven claims of animal non-sentience. Eating meat is a choice. It is not something we are meant, required, or compelled, to do. It is something that people can not do and suffer no negative health consequences as a result. On this basis, the decision to eat meat is one of evaluating ones own personal gratification to be of greater importance than the well being of animals: the enjoyment derived from tucking into a beef burger justifies the killing of an animal and all the suffering it endured in its life. This is an indefensible position.

Obesity: Why is the prevalence so high?

It has been reported today that approximately half of men and forty per-cent of women in the UK could be obese by 2030. This is undesirable not only for the individuals concerned, who will be at increased risk of obesity-related morbidity and mortality, but also for society, which must cover the cost of medical care for these people. If this situation is to be avoided, and if the current prevalence of obesity is to be reduced, action and interventions must address the range of factors that contribute to obesity.

'Obesogenic' environment
Becoming obese or overweight isn't simply a matter of a failure to exercise personal responsibility or restraint. Of course, these things are very important but they do not tell the whole story. The truth is that we live in what has been called an 'obesogenic' environment, in which it is highly likely that people will consume a diet that promotes weight gain unless they are armed with adequate knowledge of nutrition and healthy eating. The supermarket, now the main source of food for most people, is an excellent example of this. Somewhere in supermarkets, amongst the crisps, chocolates, sweets, biscuits, fizzy drinks, processed meats, frozen pizzas, pies, ready meals, cakes, alcoholic drinks, and other unhealthy products, there are in fact some healthy options. But for those who have no real understanding of what is healthy and what isn't, it's quite easy to leave with trolley loads of food and drink that will make them and their families fat and unhealthy.

In addition to supermarkets, there is a multitude of outlets selling food and drink at all hours of the day and night for those feeling hungry while on the move. There are junk food chains, fried chicken shops, chip shops, sandwich, coffee, and cake shops, pubs and bars, and so on. You might even be 'lucky' enough to have vending machines in your workplace or someone from the local sandwich shop coming in to sell you fat sandwiches and cakes. There are some healthy options in these kinds of places, but they are almost always outweighed massively by high-calorie options that are full of sugar and/or fat. Unless someone has the nutritional knowledge to identify the healthy options, the chances are that they'll choose something else.

To illustrate how someone could easily consume way over their recommended caloric intake, consider the following hypothetical example of an office worker in London. They wake up late and skip breakfast. Feeling hungry at the train station, they grab a chocolate bar from the kiosk. By mid-morning at work they are feeling more hungry, so they nip across to Starbuck's for a blueberry muffin and a Caffe Mocha. At lunch, they go with their team to the local Wetherspoon's for a pub lunch - they order the scampi and chips. After a long afternoon at work and having worked late, they grab a Big Mac, medium fries, and medium banana milkshake from McDonald's on their way home. Laid out on a table, that wouldn't look like a lot of food. Nevertheless, it contains 3,300 calories. For a man, that's 800 over the recommended daily caloric intake. Similar examples could be given with foods from other outlets or foods from supermarkets.

In addition to the wide availability of cheap, readily available foods that are high in calories, fat, and sugar, there are other aspects of the modern environment and lifestyle that promote weight gain. Most people have highly sedentary jobs, for which stapling two pieces of paper together or picking up a phone would be among the most physically demanding aspects. People no longer walk significant distances these days either - in the time-pressured lifestyle people are forced to adopt today, they are driving everywhere or getting public transport. The huge amounts of money that companies spend on advertising junk foods can also not be ignored. The reason that these companies spend so much on advertising is because advertising works.

Poor knowledge of nutrition and physical exercise
In addition to existing in the previously described environment, most people simply have no knowledge of nutrition or how to exercise for health and fitness. They do not possess this knowledge because they've never been taught it and have either been too lazy to learn it of their own volition or have tried but been fooled or deterred by the huge amount of myth and contradictory information/disinformation that exists on these subjects on the internet and in the media.

Kids leave school with detailed knowledge of many topics irrelevant to their lives. They can calculate angles within a triangle or talk about people or events from hundreds of years ago, but they don't have the knowledge required to ensure that their own eating behaviour is good for their health. And while they've learned the rules of games like basketball and cricket in PE, they have no awareness of how to actually plan an effective and healthy workout or routine.

Given this mixture of 'obesogenic' environment and widespread ignorance of how to avoid its pernicious effects, it is not surprising that so many people are overweight or obese.

Other issues
Of course, the blame doesn't just lie with the companies promoting and selling unhealthy food, or the educational system that doesn't teach people how to maintain a healthy body and lifestyle. People who are overweight or obese must take some responsibility too. Most people have a general awareness of what food is "good" (or healthy) and what food is "bad" (or unhealthy). They know, for example, that oatmeal for breakfast is better for them than a Mars Bar, even if they can't explain why. They also know that big slabs of chocolate or boxes of cakes are bad for them, even if they are 'buy one get one free' at the supermarket.

Many people also see food as a source of pleasure rather than a source of nutrients for the body. Everything they eat has to taste great and eating must always be a pleasurable experience. If it doesn't taste great, they're not interested in eating it. These people are just like the little boy who wont eat his vegetables because they are 'disgusting'. It is within their power to not behave like spoiled children.

There is also a mentality that values quantity over quality. Many people will choose to buy greater quantities of cheap, poor quality foods than smaller quantities of more expensive, higher quality foods. While more economical in the sense that they get more for their money, it is a practice which is likely to encourage weight gain.

The role of biological abnormalities and deep-seated psychological problems in the most extreme cases of obesity should also not be ignored.

Solutions
Because of the broad range of factors contributing to the increasing prevalence of obesity, no single type of action or intervention is going to solve the problem. Simplistic health promotion messages merely telling people to eat more healthily will be met with extremely limited success. Research in health psychology has shown that these kinds of interventions are not particularly successful. The reason for this is probably that instrumental information (e.g. vegetables are good for my health) are not always the most important predictor of behavioural intentions and that behavioural intentions are often not a strong predictor of actual behaviour.

More comprehensive and detailed health education in schools would be more likely to be effective. The wide availability of cheap and readily available junk foods would still be a serious problem, however. Like it or not, health protective measures have to be taken which would either reduce the availability and advertisement of these products, or make it more difficult for people to afford them. That we live in a society in which McDonald's can sponsor youth football or sporting events such as the Olympics indicates that something is deeply wrong and that action is needed to limit the effects of such organisations on population health.

Was David Starkey's argument on Newsnight racist?

Having watched David Starkey’s appearance on Newsnight, I’m not at all surprised that people have reacted with outrage… as they seemingly do in response to everything these days. Rather than carefully considering his comments and ensuring that they’ve accurately interpreted the point he was making, they’ve heard the words “black” and “white” and cried “racism”.

While I concede that Starkey didn’t articulate his argument well – mostly his own fault, but partly the fault of the others for interrupting him – I feel that it was perfectly discernible (though still not necessarily correct) given a little thought. His argument was that there is a particular black subculture which some white people have now adopted, and that the values of this subculture might have played a role in the recent riots. Perhaps I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I really did not perceive that he was arguing that there is a unitary “black culture” to which all black people belong and that this culture is violent.

His argument (at least as I have perceived it) is not a racist one. A racist argument would be that black people inherently have a greater propensity to commit violent crime. He did not make such an argument, or anything like it. The view that most black people are decent, non-violent, and law-abiding is perfectly compatible with his view that there is a particular subculture (which is traditionally black, but to which most black people do not belong) that has destructive values.

Aside from twisting some of his words to portray them as racist, some people have ignored his other comments on the programme which showed that he wasn’t making an argument from race at all. For example, he said “it’s not skin colour, it’s cultural”. He also said that Enoch Powell was “completely wrong” about inter-communal violence, which is the opposite view to the BNP who have been portraying the recent riots as “race riots”.

It is quite sad to see people calling for the end to someone’s career and livelihood on the basis of a misinterpretation.  People like Owen Jones (who was on the show too) seem concerned that Starkey has “opened a floodgate of racism”, but if others misperceive his argument to be about race, then they are merely making the same mistake as Jones himself.

The real question people should be asking is whether Starkey was right to implicate the particular subculture he was referring to as having an important role in the recent riots. 

Riots in England: Conflating Correlation with Causation

It is an elementary point in statistics that it is not wise to infer causation from correlation. While it might appear that two variables have a causal relationship, it is possible that they do not. An example commonly used to illustrate this point is:

As ice cream sales increase, so does the rate of deaths from drowning.
Therefore ice cream causes drowning.


This reasoning ignores the mediating variable, i.e. good weather, which actually explains both the increase in ice cream sales and the increase in rate of deaths from drowning. This is a simple example that is used to make a point.

After the recent riots in London and other English cities, most on the left are attributing the events to "deprivation". Some have mapped the location of the riots on top of deprivation data (only including London, for some reason), observed a pattern, and decided that it's case closed. Not so fast! What pattern would be observed if we were to look at the relationship between other variables and rioting areas? I'm going to use population density and proportion of area that is non-white here, because they are variables that the left will not want to consider.

Table 1 depicts the 40 highest ranking Local Authorities for each of the following measures, separately: average LSOA score on Indices of Deprivation 2010, population density, and proportion of population that is non-white. The Local Authorities in bold font are those for which I was able to find evidence of rioting having taken place. The table quite clearly indicates that if someone wanted to pick a variable and claim it as an explanation, they'd chose population density or proportion of population that is non-white, and not deprivation. Not only do more of the LAs where rioting took place rank highly on these variables, they seemingly account for those areas which were considered surprising from the deprivation perspective. For example, while Croydon and Ealing are right up there on these measures, they're not high on the deprivation index (107 and 80, respectively).

Of course, the left wouldn't even entertain the idea that these variables might have some explanatory value. They dismiss them out-of-hand, as they're not interested in anything which would lead to arguments against over-population or immigration. They are ideologically obsessed with equality, and they will always perceive events in this context. That they're so impressed by misleading maps simply plotting one variable against another demonstrates that they're not at all practiced in arguing from evidence. Take this entry on the Greek Left Review blog as an example.

In summary, the purpose of this post is to highlight that inferring causation from correlation is not a sensible practice and that variables other than deprivation can be used in a similarly simplistic fashion to 'prove' entirely different arguments.

The dishonest Indices of Deprivation map doing the rounds

There is a map doing the rounds which is said to depict level of deprivation and areas where riots took place. This map has seemingly impressed many people and has been tweeted and re-tweeted all over Twitter. It can be seen here.

As someone who has spent a number of years working in statistics and research at the Office for National Statistics, I'm disappointed in this map. I'm disappointed because it represents either a deliberate attempt to mislead, or an ignorance of how to fairly and properly display data. The reason that this map is misleading is because it depicts deprivation for London only. People looking at this could be forgiven for looking upon the map as incontrovertible evidence that deprivation leads to the kind of behaviour that occurred. However, if the data had been displayed for the rest of England, it would be quite apparent that the association between deprivation and rioting is actually quite weak. Failing to map the data in its entirety removes the need for an explanation of why a few deprived areas got involved in the riots, but most deprived areas did not. 

I can only speculate on why someone would go to the effort to produce their own map when a perfectly useful one is made available by the Department for Communities and Local Government, who produce the Indices of Deprivation. This map can be seen below and can be found, along with methodological information in this document.

This map quite clearly depicts high levels of deprivation in many regions of the country. Most of these were not affected by rioting. For example, there was no rioting in the North East. I would recommend looking at the actual data, as it carries a much greater level of detail than a map. For example, from the map above it isn't apparent that the most deprived Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in England is in Tendring, Essex, or that no LSOA in London is within the most deprived 400 in the country. I talk about this data more in a previous blog entry.

Ultimately, excluding items from analysis because they don't show what you want to see is not just bad practice, but it is dishonest. Statistics such as these are created at considerable expense with the purpose of informing policy, not for people to bastardise them in order to support their pre-existing opinions and beliefs. At the very best, the map in question indicates that there were riots in some deprived areas in London. That's it - that's all it does. It doesn't prove that deprivation was an important causal factor. The data as a whole indicates that it isn't actually an important factor at all. This is consistent with what we know about people who aren't financially wealthy - most of them are decent, moral people who wouldn't commit such criminal and immoral acts.