I've slept quite badly in recent days, and am incredibly tired. Yet I need to be getting up in about two hours, and, after several hours' travel, I expect to be facing class IV-V whitewater on the Colorado River. So of course -- probably because it's especially important that I sleep -- I'm wide awake, and have given up for the moment to write to you about ... altruism and "good" behavior.

I'm not going to do a rigorous treatise on the history of the concept, starting from ancient times, up to Comte's invention of the word "altruism" -- and various takes on the concept since then. Frankly, I'm too ignorant at the moment, don't have enough time to get up to speed, and, besides, those things are boring as heck. (But, if that interests you, you can read a brief one here, which might even contain a true fact or two.)

Instead, I'd like to point out a number of rather subtle errors that atheists often commit while talking about the subject. I've often heard Sam Harris, for example, say that it's nobler to do good because you don't believe you'll be rewarded or punished for it (by some kind of God, of course) than because you do.

Harris is hardly alone in making this argument, but he'll serve as a handy example:

[I]t seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?

While it's clear which answer Harris wants us to choose, it's worth thinking a bit about the philosophical and psychological baggage lurking below the surface. Why is the first motive better than the second one? And how does that link up to the concept of personal goodness and good results?

Error #1: As we read the question, phrased as it is, we think of two people who perform an identical act of helping the poor. One does it, presumably, out of concern for the poor -- with no fear of God whatsoever. Another does it, presumably, out of fear of God -- presumably not motivated by any concern for the poor.

So it's easy to see one reason we think of the first person as being better: Since Harris is an atheist, and is using the first case to refer to himself, one person believes in God, and one doesn't. So we naturally apply the same symmetry to the other attribute: one (the atheist) cares for and feels sympathy for the poor, one (the hypothetical theist) doesn't.

So we think the second person is worse, in part, because a lack of empathy is, by definition, the defining trait of a psychopath. Harris's argument is a subtle ad homen argument, forcing us to choose between a caring atheist and a theistic sociopath.

But there's another problem here:

Error #2: We start by assuming the atheist and theist are both out there feeding the poor. So, since the outward actions are identical, we're forced to move onto the next phase of evaluating the inner motivations.

But, in so doing, the reader is encouraged to skip several important questions: (1) Which is more important to "goodness" -- actions or motives? (2) Which belief contributes more to producing "good" outward actions? and (3) Which belief contributes more to producing "good" inner motives?

Some readers (mostly located on the political left) tend to believe feelings and motives are more important than outcomes. So they'll automatically sympathize with the atheist who is described as caring. They're done.

Others believe actions are more important than feelings. But, again, this story starts in the middle: we're not asked which system produces more good actions. Instead, we're given one example atheist, and one example theist, without asking how representative that sample is among their fellow co/non-religionists:

It might true that systems which impose external penalties on "bad" behavior actually produce more good behavior than those which rely on humanity's alleged innate goodness. This is, in fact, why we have laws, and associated penalties -- so there's no reason to think the same thing wouldn't be true of religion, which can also influence cases where bad activity isn't illegal, or where an individual believes they can't be caught.

Thus, this first effect might completely overwhelm the second one: it may be that religion is so much more effective at creating good external behavior that the secondary valuation (one's inner motives) doesn't come into play much. (Not to mention the practical difficulty, and thus social pointlessness, of judging the heart and inner motives.)

So Harris is here trying to encourage his reader to consider less information, to see less than the whole picture, by deliberately cutting out the first, and most important step in the story. We take two people, caught in the act of feeding the poor, and don't ask how they got there, and how likely it was, given their beliefs, that they are doing that good thing.

Second, and even worse for Harris' argument, it may be that behaviorism is essentially correct: that people generally are not initially wonderful, other-centered beings, but that by imposing external rewards and penalties, people will eventually internalize the implied values.

In other words, if you reward people for good behavior, however insincere, for many, it will eventually sink in. If I drag you on a mission trip, and force you to feed the poor, no matter how callous you start out -- you will eventually begin to believe in what you're doing. If I force a child to treat others with respect -- even if he has none at first -- he eventually will. Corrie Ten Boom didn't feel like forgiving a repentant Nazi captor. But she forced herself to reach out and touch him, and soon her heart followed.

So it might be that religion, by forcing more people to behave good externally, also ends up producing more good motives and feelings.

And indeed, this is Harris's blind spot in arguments with theists: He'll trot out the argument quoted above, and Dennis Prager, or someone like that, will ask why theists are generally more sensible, morally, than atheists. (Do I need to go into the list of crazy beliefs promoted primarily by atheists?) And why it is primarily the religious who are found, in every study, to be most likely to care for the poor, give to charity, volunteer, etc.

Harris has focused on the alleged motives of those who are already doing good, and forgotten to ask if they're the exception or the rule. He starts his thinking in the middle, so he has no answers about the first, necessary, step.

Error #3: Yet another fallacy lurks here: false dichotomies galore. Harris invites the reader to think that since the atheist isn't motivated by fear of God, he or she must be therefore be motivated by concern. And that the theist, being motivated by fear or reward, can't also be motivated by sympathy!

Of course, in reality we're a bit more complicated than that. Sometimes we do nice things for others, sometimes for ourselves. It's possible to love God, want reward and want to help other people. (I do my job, for example, because I'm paid, but I kind of love it anyway at times.) Likewise, atheists can also be motivated by more than sympathy: they could want to get rewards from other people, respect, a good reputation, even flattering one's own ego and self-image.

Now it's true Harris doesn't explictly say the only possible motivate for the atheist is sympathy, but it's inherant to the argument, which falls apart otherwise. Consider the following alternative:

Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor because the creator of the universe wants you to, or because you'll look like a heartless jerk in front of your girlfriend and fans if you don't?

Somehow, allowing that other possible motive into the picture deflates it a bit! So I think we've demonstrated that a significant part of the argument's appeal is based in a false dichotomy about motive and belief.

Error #4: But there's still yet another problem with Harris's argument, one which seems to plague atheist apologetics: it begs the question.

Specifically, it asks you to rate which of two propositions is "better", without offering any basis for that judgement. No, worse -- while specifically excluding any objective basis for that judgement.

How do we know caring for the poor is "better" than not caring for the poor? Why should I agree? Sure, Harris expects many readers will -- but an emotional appeal is not quite the same thing as a sound rational argument -- the later, we are assured, suposedly being the natural domain of atheists such as Harris.

Again: why should I agree with Harris's values? Why should I agree that feeding the poor is a "good" thing for me to do? Ayn Rand (herself an atheist, I'd note) very much disagreed. How would Harris answer her?

And who is to say a complete hedonist is wrong? We could appeal to a notion like "enlightened self-interest", but to do so is to assert that the universe is wired so that the common good is always aligned with the individual good -- and that statement itself is religious, since it presumes the universe was configured to reward moral goodness. And also assert the hedonist is wrong as to what would please him or her the most.

Or we could say "good" is just shorthand for maximum benefit for all. But what if all don't agree on this "benefit"? Benefit according to who, maximizing for what? Harris believes people are better than dogs because we're more complex -- yet an environmentalist argues that Gaia itself is more complex if it has more diversity of lifeforms, and less of that particular "cancer" called humanity.

Without a common or transcendent morality, there's no such thing as objective moral values -- though Harris argues and speaks as though there is.

Finally, I'd note that Harris, above, is actually appealing to the Golden Rule -- which arose not from the Greeks or Chinese elites (who among them contained a number of early atheists), but rather which comes to us, and to Sam Harris, from a rather religious group of Jews.

There's just something richly ironic at the specter of an angry atheist quoting Jesus and Torah to prove the inherant moral inferiority of religion.