Faith 10: Classification

I use the following classification system when I try to categorize the level and kind of religious/non-religious belief I encounter. The following is a rough continuum of where I find different kinds of believers/nonbelievers seem to fall. Atheist / NON Agnostic Atheist / Partial Agnostic Atheist / Agnostic Agnostic / Partial Atheist Agnostic Agnostic / Partial Theist Theist / Agnostic Theist / Partial Agnostic Theist / NON Agnostic Non-Agnostics refuse to admit outside of insincere "for the sake of argument" purposes the possibility that God exists/does not exist; i.e., they attribute certainty to their claims of knowledge vis a vis the supernatural. This is a level of confidence beyond doubt, scrutiny or reasoned analysis. There is no real discourse possible at this level, in either direction. Basically at either end of the spectrum it wraps around to fanaticism. Partial agnostics admit to the possibilty of being wrong on some categories but not on others; specifically, theistic partial agnostics cannot believe that there is not "something more" to the universe; i.e, that no wider 'higher truths" exist on a supernatural level. This is a non-specific sort of belief that rejects the pure materialism of methodological naturalism. Atheistic partial agnostics refuse to consider the supernatural as a concept for a variety of reasons (chiefly; absurdity and incoherence) but might acknowledge naturalistic divinities- i.e., there could be godlike entities but they are as part of the natural world as any other and follow rules. Rules possibly inaccessible to human reason, but they follow rules. Partial Atheists/Theists are agnostics who lean in a particular direction or have assumptions mostly from one school of thought but a few borrowed from the other or a mixture of both with a dominant component. A partial atheist might have some supernatural beliefs, ritualism, superstitions, etc, while a partial theist but believe in a non-interventionist deity as in deism or strong pantheism. A "full" or "true" agnostic is either completely dedicated to refusing to make a statement one way or the other out of a conviction vis a vis the nature of knowledge, or someone oscillating between atheism and theism of one form or another. I believe the first category is fairly rare outside of deeply intellectual philosophical types, because ultimately if one is continuing to practice a religion or not doing so, one has made a decision vis a vis the strength of their uncertainty. In other words, I find it incongruous to say that someone who doesn't go to Church or follow religious obligations is not on some level an atheist, and the same is true for an 'agnostic' who might still go to church out of habit or such. Still, self-identification trumps practice- after all a person can act as a theist insincerely; a lifelong churchgoer with serious doubts, an atheist interested in fellowship, public approval, etc provided by religious communities. This category does not however include many self-described agnostics who would be more accurately described with some other metric; I find agnosticism is an oft-misused term. It's fundamentally a statement about knowledge rather than religion, and a person can be both an agnostic and a follower/nonfollower of religion. Atheist/Theist agnostics are full fledged practitioners/non-practitioners who have a high degree of confidence, self-actualization, commitment, sincerity, etc to their beliefs, but recognize fundamentally that there is always doubt, room for error and change, skepticism, scrutiny, either. The majority of both camps fall under this category. Belief tempered by the awareness of fallibility, of the fundamental uncertainties of human awareness and knowledge, is intrinsically moderated. It is this that lets religious and non-religious people get along, it is the absence of this valid self-examination that breeds fanaticism and intolerance. When you can simply shrug and say, "Hey, lets agree to disagree and go get a beer" then all beliefs are compatible. When you can't, then the belief has led you astray from a commitment to common humanity. I consider the extreme ends of the spectrum unreasonable, the penultimate ends somewhat unreasonable (just because the supernatural is absurd doesn't guarantee it isn't real, and no, there may well not be "something more" at all) and then the middle sections entirely reasonable. Not to say that pure agnosticism is the "most reasonable" contention; the central sections are all equivalent, based on personal experience and inclination. Now obviously I've personally come to accept atheism as the truth as far as I can tell, but hey, I could be wrong.

Encounter: The King of All Douchebags

So I am on the train, going home. A young man sits down next to me, obviously hung-over, in stereotypical frat-boy garb, smelling of alcohol. The kind of person you look at and conclude: "They worked hard for a beer pong victory last night."

He went to sleep immediately, but he arranged his hoodie sweatshirt such that it incompletely concealed the custom T-shirt he was wearing underneath, which read:

GIRLS I BANGED LAST SEMESTER

and then a list of names followed. Full names. Middle initials.

On a shirt!

What do you think I voted for at Omaha Beach?

I found this very touching. Hopefully one day soon we'll be able to do better as a country in making our laws than relying on the barbaric and ignorant sexual norms of bronze-age goat herders.

Faith 9: Voluntary Death

I was in an argument with a super-Catholic friend of mine yesterday on the subject of suicide and euthanasia. I argued that there were circumstances where I would personally seek or desire death and that I would attach no specific immorality to that pursuit. She was astounded that for someone who does not expect there to be an afterlife, why I would want to cut a precious life short. I replied that as an existentialist, I believe in living my life with a self-guided purpose and a meaning I create for myself, and so it is only natural there would be conditions by which I could no longer fulfill that purpose and would therefore have no interest in continuing my life. For me, these are a set of grisly 'fate worse than death' scenarios as in "Johnny Got His Gun" or a similar situation, such as a cancer of the brain that would gradually or rapidly destroy my personality or strip me of my memories.

Going unstated in the conversation is the morality of such a desire; specifically, whether or not suicide or assisted suicide is a sin. It is that specific element I would like to discuss, as I have been thinking on it since the conversation concluded. After all, the purpose of this blog is for me to think out loud; I find if I don't write my musings down I continue to muse, whereas if I discharge them in the harmless and unread locality that is a random corner of the disused internet, I can get to sleep. Before I launch into the discussion, I in no way endorse suicide except in the very specific circumstances (terminal illness, extremely disabling injury or condition). Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, it is one of the most vicious and emotionally traumatizing things you can do to your loved ones. That out of the way...

First, a personal anecdote. Several years ago while I was at college, my dog's condition deteriorated and it became clear she had cancer of the brain; she lost the ability to recognize members of the family, lost interest in activities she previously enjoyed and could no longer even perform basic tasks she had once been trained to perform. She would persist in this miserable state- possibly for months- until her condition killed her. My parents had her put to sleep- a decision I wholeheartedly endorsed when I learned of it. I have made it clear several times to my family that if my condition were ever similar I would want the same treatment. Specifically, if I were, for whatever reason, rendered incapable of living my life in the way I would want then they are to put a bullet in my head, pull the plug, smother me with a pillow or do whatever it takes to end that life. Naturally I wouldn't expect this if I were still aware enough to communicate that I was comfortable with whatever horrific life-changing injury I had sustained, but if I were in a situation where I could not take my own life but would want to, I expect to be shown the same mercy we showed to our dog.

This does not strike me as callous in the slightest, but compassionate. As an atheist I have no expectation of eternal life by any mechanism, so I do regard what life we get to be essentially precious. Every individual is literally unique in the universe; their perspective, experiences, personality, inclinations and quirks will exist for their lifespan and then vanish forever. This makes human life immeasurably valuable, especially given consciousness itself seems to be quite the rarity in an otherwise cold and empty universe. All death is a tragedy, in this regard. But there is more life than just "being alive", it is not enough to just survive. Life may be precious, it may be unique, but it can still be brought to irreparable ruin.

As an atheist I have no choice but to conclude we were not created with any particular purpose, as a knife was made to cut or a shoe was made to be worn. As thinking beings we are responsible for deciding our own purpose in life and how we will create meaning from our existence, short as it is. Who am I to declare that stoic endurance of inescapable suffering is meaningful and required of all individuals? If I am unable to communicate, to engage in the activities I find meaningful or pleasurable due to an injury, if I am facing an incurable, terminal illness and a period that will be nothing but suffering and the annihilation of my dignity- why should I not decide that my life's purpose can no longer be fulfilled and therefore it is appropriate to end my life or have it ended? To be sure, if it is a terminal illness or some kind of crippling injury rather than a comatose state or a degenerating mental condition, I can seek a new purpose and find new meaning. But if I am not interested in that, or if I do not have the strength to do that, why would it be immoral for me to choose otherwise? At a certain level, if I know my life will have nothing but suffering, or so much suffering as to be unbearable, then I may rightly consider that life no longer worth continuing. It's up to me, and I cannot judge those who opt out harshly; I can only sympathize with them even as I admire those with the strength to endure.

Why would a just and loving God consider despair, of all things, to be a human evil, rather than something that calls out to His compassion? It is my life, after all- even if God exists, I choose my own purpose, I make my own choices. Indeed, a loving God could not have created thinking beings as slaves but intended for us to search for meaning and purpose in the universe. This could even explain why a just and loving God would conceal its existence.

Thus far, I have essentially talked about voluntary death in the event of a seriously crippling injury or terminal illness. But in discussion with another (also Catholic) friend, she stated outright: "Suicide is a sin." I was aware that this was Catholic doctrine (and common to wider Jewish, Christian, Muslim doctrine as well as many other religions). This has provoked some thought on the subject. I had always considered it to be a shallow and ad hoc patch on a contradictory set of superstitions; if after death a virtuous soul goes to heaven and we know the criteria for virtue, then it would only make sense for such a person, assured of his virtue, to kill himself before he could sin. To avoid this suicide itself must be a sin. Any religion that didn't want to trigger a rush towards suicide and had both the fear of Hell and the desire for Heaven as its motives would have to declare it a sin just to keep the seats filled. I had never given it any further thought than this simplistic dismissal of the implications.

But, when I realized that this friend- whom I regard as a good person- genuinely believed that suicide was not only a sin but a mortal sin and therefore incurred eternal punishment, the implications of that belief became somewhat disturbing. Suicidal tendencies or ideation is a sign of serious mental illness if acted upon and a sign of serious depression or negative thinking if merely fantasied about. Full disclosure: I am often fairly depressed, due to what I have surmised is a simple and hereditary tendency towards melancholy combined with some negative habits of thought I picked up rather than any exogenous factor. This does mean that I have occasionally thought of suicide. I have never seriously entertained the idea or formed a plan; I may joke about it, but I do not believe myself to be a suicide risk. I just sometimes- more often in depressed periods, less often in cheerier times- get this sensation of tiredness, that it would be a relief to just...end it all. Again, I never entertain this idea; it is an automatic thought and it typically passes immediately, just one of those weird things that pop into our heads sometimes.

But let's say I did do it. We can judge the morality of an action by its effects (after all something that has no impact, positive or negative, can't be said to be moral or immoral). Committing suicide would probably upset my friends, though they'd get over it, and it would devastate my family- and they'd likely never completely get over it. I think this is fairly reasonable and not egotistical of me to say that my parents and siblings do genuinely love me. Well, I have some doubts about my brother- he's been plotting against me for years- but the rest of them are alright. This is clearly harmful to my loved ones at the very least; by my own standard of harm, suicide is an immoral action. The exception I discussed above (terminal illness, etc) occurs because in that case the expectation of family members that I continue living in absolute suffering is unreasonable and indeed it is their empathy that should cry out for my merciful end. Just as I must have compassion for my family and resist even the most mild of suicidal temptation, in such a horrible situation they would have to have compassion for me and put me on the 9mm pension plan or feed me poisoned key lime pie. (Mmm....pie)

But that isn't the end to our moral calculus. The existence of a family/friend network is no means guaranteed- what of the truly lonely soul, who commits suicide? Is that an evil act? If, for example, every person I cared about was gathered together for the same massive party and they all ate from the same batch of tainted clams and died, how evil would it be for me to shrug and say: "Well, I like clams..." and join them? At worst, you're inconveniencing whoever has to dispose of your body- but this is hardly harmful enough to warrant our attention so long as you don't kill yourself in such a place that your rotting, horror-stricken corpse will be discovered by, say, a kindergarten class that then goes on to be traumatized for life. In other words, don't throw yourself in front of a subway train.

Well, this gets into issues of self-harm and personal sovereignty. Is it unwise to kill yourself barring specific circumstances? Absolutely; it's a sign of a mental sickness and you should seek treatment. Note, again, just because something might not be evil doesn't mean it's not a really bad idea- and suicide is pretty much at the top of the "bad idea" list, again, barring very specific circumstances. Is it evil to kill yourself when, in essence, no one will care? I honestly don't know; the calculus of self-harm is not something I have been able to work out to my satisfaction. It is one of the "well this gets more complicated, of course" parts of my harm/care moral axis. On one one hand, you're clearly murdering a thinking person whose life is immeasurably valuable, so evil. On the other hand, it's your life and you're not obligated to keep it if you find it unbearable, so not evil. So I cannot resolve this question in a way that sits comfortably with my conscience.

But I think I can address the idea of suicide being a "mortal sin." I will make this particular to Catholicism because it is my own personal religious background and because for whatever reason I always find myself surrounded by them. I've already stated that I don't think Hell would exist at all in a universe constructed by a God that could be safely described as good, but with regard to suicide in particular...I think it requires a profound lack of empathy for the individual who commits suicide to for someone to think that they are suffering for an eternity in Hell as a result of that decision. And this goes for both the "guy with no friends offs himself" and "guy with massive loving family offs himself" scenarios. In the former, someone so alone clearly has some justification for despair; his suicide is a tragedy, something that could have been prevented by relief of his suffering on Earth and does not justify punishment beyond this Earth. I could see God having cause to say, "Nuh uh, you have to finish the entire test, I'm reincarnating you" but tormenting someone whose "sin" was "failing to overcome their torment" just seems...cruel. And in the latter case, even a suicide who hurts everyone around him through their actions...those people are harmed because they care about that person, because that person was worthy of and earned their empathy. So we're, what, expecting God to look at that situation, that horrible tragedy, and compound the tragedy by then casting the suicide into Hell? That would seem to infinitely exacerbate the harm the original action (suicide) caused to the loved ones. After all, the person who committed suicide just killed themselves, it's God who decided to torture him. Yes, yes, "people choose to go to Hell", blah blah- God either sends them there directly or allows them to remain, both are dick moves incompatible with a loving deity.

And either scenario absolutely only qualify for someone who hypothetically enters into suicide as a rational, clear thinking individual, which I don't believe ever even happens (again, barring the "terminal illness" scenario) since suicidal action is a clear sign of mental illness in almost every circumstance and is rarely the result of a rational determination. We don't punish someone for having a cold, why would we punish someone for having crippling depression that manifests as suicidal impulses? It's a sickness; the appropriate and moral response is treatment rather than punishment, especially not the infinite horror of Hell. Unless it is one of those Hells that is actually not for punishment but some sort of spiritual cleansing process- some of the interpretations of Hell in some schools of Buddhism have this function; develop enough bad karma and you get temporarily kicked off the cycle of reincarnation to spend some time in Hell until your soul can again meaningfully resume the quest for Nirvana. But brother, that ain't the Catholic idea of Hell.

So I don't agree that suicide is a mortal sin; obviously I don't believe in 'mortal sins' at all since I don't believe in God or Hell and wouldn't believe in Hell even if I believed in God, but beyond that I think it's a callous determination. I don't think a person who commits suicide deserves Hell even if there is a Hell and it is  somehow a component of a just universe. To commit suicide may be to callously hurt your loved ones and it may be a dreadful mistake, but it is motivated by weakness and sickness and despair, not malice. Maybe if someone kills themself specifically to hurt their loved ones and does so without the influence of a mental disorder of any kind, it would be an evil enough act to warrant Hell. But that's a specific edge case, and my understanding is Catholics believe all suicide to be a mortal sin, regardless of the context.

Even the belief that suicide is a mortal sin is in my view harmful. Imagine how horrifically compounded the trauma of losing a loved one to suicide would be in a Catholic family that believed wholeheartedly that not only did they fail that loved one, not only did that loved one take their own life, but that loved one is now being tortured beyond imagination and will be in that state forever and ever. How could one even enter into Heaven knowing someone they loved was in Hell? The only value to the belief is the possible deterrent it has against suicide; if I genuinely believed God would be really angry at me if I walked off a cliff one day then I might just reconsider. But there must be a better way to deter suicide than to threaten punishment for it, especially since this would only work for Suicide-is-a-Mortal-Sin believers and I'd rather not see any atheists commit suicide either. Fear of Hell is a poor motivation for continuing to live, though in a pinch I suppose it might serve.

Faith 8: Mind

Islam has an interesting tradition of allowing non-human intelligences to accept the truth of Allah and become Muslim (specifically, the djinn). The Dahlai Llama has already stated that a truly self-aware artificial intelligence capable of suffering would be part of the karmic cycle just like a person.

Some religions differ- "Only humans have souls." This has always puzzled me, and I so I will now briefly discuss it. The essential quality of human life is our consciousness; our higher reasoning. It seems to me that any entity with that same or greater level of self-awareness would likewise be similarly precious, unique in the universe. I cannot see why the Neanderthal would not have a soul- they may have been more intelligent than we are, after all. It strikes me as limiting to think God has some kind of short supply on souls and has to reserve it for a single species.

No, awareness, cognition, the ability to suffer and experience pleasure or joy, feel emotions and have a sense of self....that's clearly a pretty damn awesome thing to have. So, in the same way I use first-principle reasoning in other editions of this series, I would say that if God exists and that God is good, then that God must care for anything with a mind. The ability to suffer is a consequence- even a requirement- of being able to think and reason. It makes no sense, morally or just practically, that an omnipotent God would be picky on this score. If we ever construct a truly sentient artificial intelligence, then its suffering would demand our compassion- and call on God's empathy- as much as human suffering.

This includes animals, who have a limited- but still meaningful- ability to suffer and develop self awareness. A dog clearly has its own identity, emotions, personality and awareness of itself. It's not as intelligent as a human, not capable of higher reasoning and we rightly assign greater moral value to human life than to the life of a dog, but it's still not without some value. All other things being equal, we value the life of many animals and treat cruelty against them as immoral.

Minds equivalent to our own- be they alien life, biologically engineered or machine intelligence- are clearly worthy of respect as sentient and sapient beings. You can murder an AI. Were I a just and loving God and I endowed things of this realm with an eternal essence, I would certainly give that to an artificial intelligence that had achieved real self-awareness. Or, for that matter, a clone or human born via an exowomb or some other artificial process. It seems oddly petty for a God to place his entire emphasis on natural birth; that strikes me as superstition. Surely a good, all-powerful God is not so limited or myopic as to care where life comes from, just that it is life.

Faith 7: Life and Death

This is the first segment that wasn't an expanded/clarified version of a single long rant written in the middle of the night. This is instead an entirely NEW rant also written in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep. Hopefully, this one will be shorter.

In any event, I'd like to dive in on some questions vis a vis consciousness, morality, moral rights, identity, suffering, life, etc. I'm unsure where to begin, so I'll start with "What is a human life?"

This isn't an easy question and it's a subject of much debate. Obviously, humans have this quality- so the real question is "When does human life begin?" Is it when the process that eventually creates a human life is initiated, via conception (or shortly thereafter, via fertilization) or is it when a person crosses a certain threshold in the level of their development? Historically, "life begins at..." has varied from culture to culture; from conception to the first breath to the first birthday to others.

I think a systematic investigation of where life begins exactly is probably beyond the boundaries of our current understanding and tools. But I think we can get a broad idea by first asking the question: When do we die? I think the answer to this question illuminates a lot about our lives and not just when they begin, but that is what I shall approach first. I think it is fairly intuitive that we die when our brains die; that is, when our brains are no longer able to sustain the process of consciousness. Not just the interruption of that process or its dormancy, as in sleep or in recoverable comatose states, but it's permanent cessation. This can occur without other life-indicators vanishing due to modern technology; we can keep a person's heart beating and their lungs respiring, but we can not as yet artificially prolong their mind, identity, awareness, memories and personality.

Terri Schiavo, to bring up an anachronism from 2005, was dead. Here heart and lungs kept working due to artificial intervention and the survival of her autonomic functions in those parts of her brain- but the things that made her who she was? Memories? Awareness? Cognition? Thoughts? Personality? Gone, and the autopsy confirmed it without a doubt. All those sections of her brain had atrophied; she was in essence a coma golem, proceeding on some automatic reactions but with no higher functioning. She was incapable of suffering or indeed any experience of any kind, unpleasant or pleasant. Her body would send her mind pain signals and reflex actions would respond, but there was no one home to answer the mail, so to speak.

In other words, we die not just when the entirety of our brain stops functioning, but when the parts of it that dominate our reasoning and cognition die. The essence of a human being is located in this portion of the brain. There is no evidence for the existence of the soul so we cannot include it in this discourse; all our observations of the brain, including damaged brains, indicate that every aspect of our behavior, including consciousness, is an emergent property of our brain (with some other bits from the extended nervous system, glands, etc). Kill the brain, kill the person. Indeed this is generally intuitive; if I ask a person: "If a mad scientist scooped out your brain and placed it in a robot body, where would you consider yourself to be?" The answer is always "In the robot body." Where the brain goes, so goes our nation. The body is more than a shell because there is a deep interplay between physical sensation and cognition; our brains are adapted specifically to our bodies in particular and it would take one hell of a skilled mad scientist to successfully interface one with a robot. But the fact remains- we are our brains.

This has natural conclusions for the beginning of life and the acquisition of "moral rights." That is, the moment where we become something other than an object and develop real agency. If we die when our brain dies, the natural conclusion is that we also 'live' (in the higher sense than simply biological activity) when our brain starts. And not just automatic functions; bacteria, fish, insects have those. But memory and awareness. Namely when we develop a psyche. And when we lose that psyche, we return to being just an object; a corpse. A corpse has the same form as the living person did but lacks that essential spark of consciousness. A corpse cannot suffer or experience the world. Without those qualities of consciousness and awareness, it has no moral rights.

This occurs, as far as we can tell, around the 26th week of pregnancy; the legal limit on abortion in most places is 22 or 24 weeks and I consider it prudent to err on the side of caution with the timeline as it is likely early higher brain activity may be undetectable by the tools we have available. So before the brain is up and running, we are merely potential human life and can not be said to have rights that supersede the actual human rights of the mother vis a vis bodily sovereignty. I think it is reasonable to declare, however, that once that threshold is passed the corresponding justification for an abortion be more demanding; namely a threat to the life of the mother or evidence that the unborn child has not developed properly and won't survive anyway, thereby making no sense to risk childbirth.

I believe abortion to be a sub-optimal strategy as opposed to contraception; I think aggressive use and promotion of contraception can radically reduce the number of abortions requested. In addition, I would favor public policies designed to emphasis the importance of aborting earlier rather than later because again to be consistent with my definition of life I cannot help but conclude an abortion taking place after the 26th week is the taking of a human life, again, except in cases of severe deformity preventing cognitive function or threat to the mother's life; though in the latter case it's trading a developed life for an undeveloped one (a worthy trade, albeit unfortunate). Before that point, it's a self-assembling biological process that can be interrupted without that interruption being immoral. But it is clearly a profound personal decision not to take lightly and something to discourage the necessity for (by minimizing unplanned pregnancies via contraception, sex education, etc) in public policy, even if it is not the taking of a human life. I do think the lives of potential humans must enter into our moral calculus on some level. It is is part of my argument for vigilant environmental protection, for example. I cannot consistently dismiss entirely the rights of a potential human gestating inside of a woman and then say that it is our moral duty to future generations to protect the environment when they're not even in the process of being biologically formed yet. But while I can not dismiss them, I do not elevate them to equality with a full human consciousness, whether it be an adult, an infant or a fetus passed the consciousness threshold of development.

The problem essentially boils down to Forer's paradox. At no single point in the development of an embryo or fetus can we really say "This is a human life, and a moment before it was not", because it's such a gradual process it is impossible to make a precise distinction. I think it is fairly clear that an embryo is not human; it cannot suffer, has no cognition, has none of the qualities unique to humanity. I feel it is fairly trivial to interrupt the biological process at this stage from an ethical perspective- though again, it is a highly personal and meaningful decision that is entirely up to the mother, or both mother and father if and only if the mother chooses to involve him in the decision . After all it is not really all that different from using a contraceptive (it's interrupting a biological process, just at a different stage), which is really not all that different from just not having sex; after all if I do not have sex at all or I have sex wearing a condom, the same results happen- my sperm aren't going anywhere they want to be. I mean this in terms of "creation of life" stages, obviously not in virtually every other respect.

 Eventually an unborn fetus is aware of its surroundings (even though we as adults never have memory of this time) and while their consciousness is undeveloped compared to an adult human it has all the basic qualities we expect from a human consciousness.  I attach no special sin to interrupting a biological process; we do it all the time when we take medicine to interrupt our illnesses or cut our hair or go to the dentist, and contraceptive methods have been employed by humans since the beginning of time. We have sex for reasons other than pregnancy (it's pleasurable because it benefited us from an evolutionary perspective to enjoy the hell out of it, but we are not slaves to our evolutionary instincts) so I can't attach any specific value just to sex for pregnancy. But aborting a fetus that has begun to think or feel is a different matter than interrupting a mere biological process. It is a decision I feel has a great deal more moral weight to it than it would have even a few weeks earlier. It is somewhat of coward's way out to say I'd favor a world where unexpected pregnancies were rare and abortions taken care of earlier rather than later because in effect dodges this weighty moral dilemma, but I think this is an easy place to establish a threshold for when we gain and when we lose moral rights, which are possessed by all living humans.

Life ends when our consciousness stops permanently, so life ends when our consciousness begins. I think even if one believes in a soul, it's reasonable to conclude the two are linked; if there is anything unique about humanity warranting us possessing an essence that survives our death and possibly presages our birth, it's our capacity for higher thought and consciousness. So God presses the "insert soul" button when our consciousness begins and presses the "Recall Soul" button when it ends. I do not feel my thoughts on this issue are callous or monstrous, indeed I would even call them adamantly "pro-life", I merely use what I feel is an intellectually consistent definition of life that is well-founded in our observations of human existence.

Game Review: Left 4 Dead

I have been playing Left 4 Dead regularly since before it came out (in the form of the demo), with occasional hiatuses for one or more months when I grew sick of the game. I return to it regularly, eagerly await Left 4 Dead 2 and I am otherwise convinced it is the finest multiplayer game I've ever played.

One nice thing is that given the finite nature of matches it's hard for me to put in as much time as I would for any other multiplayer shooter- that sounds odd given the several hundred hours of put into L4D since it launched, but compared to my time addicted to say, Day of Defeat, there's no comparison- there you could basically lose hours and hours of your life. If I could get the hours I put into Day of Defeat back...but the "campaign model" in Left 4 Dead delivers a satisfying hour-hour and a half of gameplay that is tiring and intense enough to mean I end up only doing one, possibly two, on any given session, usually with an extensive break in-between matches.

But enough about that, let me tell you about the game. If you don't know, Left 4 Dead is a multiplayer shooter set during a zombie apocalypse that emphasizes teamwork and brutally punishes any lack of cooperation. That's an easy summary but the virtues of the game are a bit more in-depth than that.

Essentially, every campaign (which is a series of levels, some longer, or shorter) in cooperative mode involves four survivors trying to get from zombie shelter to zombie shelter, and finally to the campaign ending rescue vehicle to more permanent safety, managing resources along the way. Teams that cooperate, stick together, form plans, communicate well and otherwise coordinate their approach to the various challenges of the game- special zombies, large zombie hordes, panic events, etc- will survive, whereas teams that don't will quickly get overwhelmed during the various crises that pop up in any given campaign.

One of the elements that keep the gameplay fresh- there were only four campaigns on launch and only a fifth has been added (one designed for the versus mode of the game) is the AI Director, which spawns zombies, items and other elements randomly and based on how well a team is doing. A team that is doing well will get more difficult challenges and fewer resources, a team that is doing poorly will get some slack, how much depending on the difficulty mode. The highest difficulty mode, Expert, is extremely punishing and requires a well-coordinated team, often that has practiced together, to survive. Other than fixed 'panic events', which are moments where the teams must prepare a defense of a stationary location, there are no scripted sequences in the gameplay- it is all procedurally generated by the AI director.

But the cooperative mode gets tiresome after a while; there are only four campaigns (now five, but the fifth is poorly suited to cooperative mode), there are limitations to the enemy AI that lead to certain repetitiveness, and once you have the basic strategy down for each area (where to hide, where to run, etc) it can be pretty rote for experienced players, even on Expert mode. The real meat of the game is in the adversarial Versus mode, which has the four person team of survivors (as in cooperative) up against a four person team of special zombies. This is where the real joy of the game is, because a team of zombies controlled by humans can develop elaborate attack strategies that keep the human team of survivors working much harder to survive. Infected gameplay requires just as much coordination as Survivors do; in order to carry off successful attacks the Infected must utilize their special abilities wisely and in sequence, taking advantage of terrain and whatever assets the AI Director is throwing their way.

This creates a multiplayer dynamic absent in most other online shooters, where "teamwork" is often limited to ad hoc and poorly supported group actions. Most players in, say, Call of Duty 4's multiplayer are mostly just trying to get to the top of the scoreboard for their server. In other words, most online multiplayer is about individual skill in the game. In Left 4 Dead, the conventional shooter abilities- reflexes, aim, etc- are present but far less valuable than an ability to work as a team and situational awareness. Players who pay attention, communicate and stick together will beat a team that out-skills them in the basic gameplay elements but who do not work together. If you are not interested in working as a group, do not get Left 4 Dead.

Unfortunately, like all online multiplayer games, the playerbase is a combination of idiots and the obnoxious. Finding a good group is paramount given the emphasis on teamwork. I would not enjoy the game one iota if I did not have a regular pool of non-obnoxious and mostly non-idiotic players to play the game with. Playing with the general userbase is an exercise in frustration. Other criticisms include the fairly shallow nature of the content; there are at the moment 22 official Left 4 Dead levels divided into four campaigns of 5 levels each and one campaign of 2 longer levels, roughly equivalent to a 5-level campaign in playtime. That may sound like a lot, but as each one takes approximately one hour or one and a half hours in versus (depending on how evenly matched the teams are) the total amount of 'unique content' is dreadfully small, just with very high replay value due to the dynamism added by the AI director and Versus mode.

There are a fairly small number of tools at the survivor's disposal- two kinds of grenades, five kinds of primary weapons, pistols, two healing items, three kinds of one-use items- that have pretty distinctive uses and are fairly easy to master, but eventually become stale. Even there, there are three basic types of Infected with one special ability the player must master; this is not terribly difficult.

If a cooperative multiplayer zombie shooter is at all something you'd be interested in, Left 4 Dead delivers in every respect. I recommend it.