Morality 2.0

From New Scientist - Sep 2015

Morality 2.0: How manipulating our minds could save the world

IN JUNE, a new voice backed up what many scientists have been saying for a while – that climate change is caused by human activity and we have a moral responsibility to tackle it. In an historic edict, Pope Francis warned that failing to act would have “grave consequences”, the brunt of which would fall on the world’s poorest people. His words came as a stark reminder that global climate change is among the most pressing moral dilemmas of the 21st century.

It joins a long list. He could have added spiralling inequality, persistent poverty, death from preventable diseases and nuclear proliferation to the ethical challenges that define our times. Some are newer than others, but all could plausibly be fixed. The fact we’re struggling with all of them raises a troubling question: does our moral compass equip us to deal with the threats we face today?

For many of the pope’s billion-strong flock and other believers, moral judgement is an operation of the mind beyond scientific explanation. In recent years, however, psychologists and neuroscientists have gone a long way towards understanding the machinery underlying our moral thinking and behaviour. In the process they are getting to grips with what really drives how we decide what is right or wrong. Their insights are not only revealing the limitations of our moral minds, but also suggesting how we might manipulate them – by employing psychological tricks, or even pills and brain zaps.

Human moral psychology evolved over tens of thousands of years as we became an ever more cooperative, social species. Early humans living in small bands were forced to hunt and forage collectively or starve. That requires cooperation, which fuelled the evolution of cognitive facilities underlying collective action – the ability to share goals, responsibilities and rewards.

“Morality is a device for solving the social challenges of everyday life, where the basic problem is to get otherwise selfish individuals to work together as a group and enjoy the benefits of cooperation,” says Joshua Greene, a neuroscientist at Harvard University.

So how do we make these everyday decisions? One key insight came from New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who revealed that moral judgements are frequently driven not by rational, reflective thought but by intuitions and gut feelings.

In one study he quizzed people about the morality of various acts, from cleaning a toilet with the US flag to having sex with a chicken bought from the supermarket. Participants often said these acts were immoral and clung to these judgements even when they couldn’t provide good reasons for doing so. Frequently, they’d throw their hands up and say, “It’s just wrong!” – a phenomenon Haidt calls “moral dumbfounding”.

This moral intuition is often fuelled by emotional reactions. Most people are repulsed by the thought of a human engaging in coitus with a deceased chicken, and that alone is enough to condemn the act. When reasoning comes into play, it is frequently to rationalise these intuitive decisions after the event.

Yet we are not slaves to emotion. “We have gut reactions that guide our judgements and behaviour,” says Greene, “but we can also stop and think, and reason explicitly about situations to try to make better decisions.”

Greene has shown how this plays out in the brain by getting people to mull over dilemmas as they lie in an fMRI machine. A famous example considers whether it is morally permissible to push one person off a bridge on to railway tracks to stop a runaway train from hitting five people stuck just ahead, killing the person in the process. Most people feel a strong gut reaction to say no, which shows up as increased activity in brain regions that process social emotions. The upshot is that aversion to up-close-and-personal violence trumps the greater good.

But if you instead ask whether it’s OK to flick a switch so that the runaway train is diverted from the track with the five people on it and towards another where it will hit and kill just one person, most people say yes. The moral maths is the same, but hitting a switch just doesn’t feel as bad. Greene’s studies indicate that responses to these kinds of dilemmas are dominated by colder, calculating processes grounded in the “rational” dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Greene likens our moral psychology to a digital camera. Intuitive moral sentiments are akin to the automatic settings, he says, while rational deliberation is analogous to manual mode, where you adjust everything by hand. “The automatic settings are good for the situations for which they’ve been programmed, making them efficient but not very flexible,” says Greene. “Manual mode is flexible but not so efficient, as it takes time to punch in the settings.”

In the same way that many of us rely on auto mode on our cameras because it is easier, we tend to make quick-fire moral judgements based on gut reactions. So here’s the question: is auto-mode moral decision-making, which evolved to navigate small-scale social worlds, suited to handling issues that impact millions of distant strangers and future generations?

Greene thinks not. “These are very good at solving the problems of everyday life, but not global moral problems like environmental destruction or poverty in faraway places”.

Take empathic concern, one of the key features of auto-mode morality. Roughly speaking, this is feeling the pain of others. It functions like a spotlight, throwing into stark relief the plight of whoever falls under its beam, and moving us to action. So you might think empathic concern is an unalloyed force for good.

You would be wrong, says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University. “Empathy, being a spotlight, is very narrow,” he says. It illuminates the suffering of a single person rather than the fate of millions, and it is more concerned with the here and now than the future. “It’s because of empathy that we care more about, say, the plight of a little girl trapped in a well than we do about potentially billions of people suffering or dying from climate change,” says Bloom. The visceral reactions towards recent photographs of a dead Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach provide another case in point.

Empathy’s shortcomings are compounded by the fact that we end up pointing its beam on causes that happen to come into our field of view – typically the most newsworthy moral issues, rather than those where we can do the most good. The response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, in which some charities received more donations than they could spend, is one example.

All this sounds a bit disheartening, but there is hope. “We can use manual mode to train automatic mode,” says Fiery Cushman, who runs a moral psychology lab at Harvard University. “In the past 10 years, we’ve learned that there’s an enormous role for learning in shaping our moral intuitions.”

In a study out last year, for example, Cushman asked people how they would feel about performing a mercy killing on a terminally ill man by various methods, including giving him a poison pill, suffocating him and shooting him in the face. You might expect opposition to each method would be predicted solely by the amount of suffering it causes. But Cushman found that it was better predicted by participants’ aversion to performing the action (Emotion, vol 14, p 573).

So it looks like we base our instinctive moral judgements not only on our emotional reaction to suffering, but also on how the physical acts that cause it make us feel. And here’s where we might be able to change ourselves. We learn to assign moral value to actions through the brain’s dopamine system and the basal ganglia, and Cushman suggests we might manipulate this process to shape our instinctive moral reactions.

One approach is to deliberately seek out particular experiences, he says. Imagine an aspiring vegetarian who is concerned about animal welfare. If bacon sandwiches are proving too much of a temptation, they might watch videos documenting the mistreatment of animals. “This could change their automatic attitudes, so when they see meat in front of them they find it disgusting rather than appetising,” says Cushman. The same tactics might help people forge an aversion to actions that increase their carbon footprint, say, or add to the plight of the world’s poorest people.

New age of reason

But the choices made by a select few are hardly going to be sufficient. When it comes to creating the large-scale moral change required to solve the planet’s greatest problems, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at New York University, argues that “the question isn’t ‘What should I do?’, but ‘What should we do?'”. And although manual-mode thinking can help us set our sights on the causes “we” should pursue, reshaping moral thinking en masse takes more than deliberation and reasoning.

Appiah has studied the history of moral revolutions such as British abolitionism – the 19th-century movement to end the transatlantic slave trade. “The rational, moral and legal arguments for ending the slave trade were well known long before abolition,” says Appiah. What tipped the argument over into becoming a movement was that broad swathes of society came to feel collectively ashamed of being engaged in the trade. That shift was driven by activist groups raising awareness of the dreadful human cost and making the anti-slavery cause part of British national identity.

In Birmingham, for example, local politicians and thousands of citizens signed anti-slavery petitions, to be delivered to the British government. “They wanted to be part of a city that had done something about this trade,” says Appiah. “This civic pride was a big part of the abolitionist movement.”

Appiah suggests campaigns that speak to our sense of collective identity – as members of a city, nation, religion or social movement – are likely to be most effective. So why not scale up and play on our shared identity as humans to tackle problems that affect us all? “The problem with the notion of humanity is that there’s no outside group to compare against,” says Appiah. “It would be a more useful notion if there were some aliens around.”

Still, shame at immoral actions and pride in tackling moral problems could yet prove effective. Jennifer Jacquet, an environmental scientist from New York University, argues that we may need to recruit the power of shame to modify moral behaviour on social issues like climate change. “Aimed cautiously and well“, shaming can be deployed for the greater good, she thinks.

Take BankTrack, a global network of NGOs that exposes banks involved with projects that threaten the environment and human rights. BankTrack has looked at banks lending to the coal industry, a major source of global carbon dioxide emissions, and compiled a list of the top “climate killers”.

Its manifesto is simple: “By naming and shaming these banks, we hope to set the stage for a race to the top, where banks compete with each other to clean up their portfolios and stop financing investments which are pushing our climate over the brink.”

owever, harnessing the power of rational reflection, collective identity and shame may not be the only options for would-be moral revolutionaries. In their book Unfit for the Future, philosophers Ingmar Persson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford argue that our moral brains are so compromised that the only way we can avoid catastrophe is to enhance them through biomedical means.

In the past few years, researchers have shown it might actually be possible to alter moral thinking with drugs and brain stimulation. Molly Crockett of the University of Oxford has found that citalopram, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor used to treat depression, makes people more sensitive to the possibility of inflicting harm on others. Earlier this year, for instance, Crockett and colleagues found that participants who had taken citalopram were willing to pay twice as much money as controls to prevent a stranger from receiving an electric shock (Current Biology, vol 25, p 1852).

Biomedical enhancement may even work on complex social attitudes. Roberta Sellaro at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands has shown that delivering low-current electrical signals through the scalp to stimulate the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area implicated in regulating social emotions, can reduce stereotyped attitudes towards members of different social groups.

Don’t expect to see morality pills on pharmacy shelves any time soon, though. These studies are far from conclusive and the effects demonstrated are subtle. Even so, the fact that such behavioural modification is possible raises the prospect that someone might use it.

Of course that raises moral questions in itself – who to treat, how, and at what age? But Persson and Savulescu argue that if the techniques can be shown to change our moral behaviour for the better (who or what defines “better” is another question), then there are no good ethical reasons not to use them. Take the issue of consent, which children could not provide. “The same is true of all upbringing and education, including moral instruction,” says Persson.

Moral robots

But wouldn’t biomedical moral enhancement undermine responsibility by turning us into moral robots? Persson and Savulescu argue that biomedical treatment poses no more threat to free will and moral responsibility than educational practices that push us towards the same behaviour.

Yet even if moral hacking with drugs and brain zaps could be deemed ethically sound, putting it into practice is another matter. “It’s not as if there’s a moral circuit in the brain that you simply want to ramp up,” says Greene. “Moral decision-making draws on a number of major brain circuits, so you’re not going to be able to enhance people’s morality in a pinpointed way.”

And assuming you could get people to make the “right” choices, how would you deliver artificial moral enhancement across entire populations? Would we add drugs to the water supply? Would we fortify kids’ cereal with moral enhancers?

Even if we could overcome these obstacles, Bloom insists that artificial enhancement is not the way to go. “I think people approach it the wrong way, and work under the illusion that we’d be better people if we messed with our emotions in one way or another.”

Bloom argues that when it comes to tackling moral problems such as climate change, which we have no reliable instinctive way of dealing with, the best way forward is to try to spend more time in manual mode.

“Moral issues are complicated and hard, and they involve serious trade-offs and deliberation. It would be better if people thought more about them.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Morality 2.0″

By Dan Jones

Dan Jones is a science writer based in Brighton, UK

Magazine issue 3040 published 26 September 2015

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Fossil Records and other Archaoelogical Hits

Extracts from The Infinite Monkey Cage Podcast – Chicago

Fossil Records and other Archaoelogical Hits

© BBC Radio 4 2015 

Guests:
Peter Sagal - playwright, screenwriter, actor 
Paul Sereno – Palaeontologist
Julia Sweeney – Actress, comedian and author
Jerry Coyne – Evolutionary biologist

Peter Sagal
I want to say something in defence of American stupidity, which I make my living making fun of.  Why is fighting evolution, and denying it, and being aggressively creationist such a big thing here in the USA? Remember, American culture and society was founded by the Puritans who you guys threw out because they were so obnoxiously wrong.  Their attitude was, to hell with you, we are so certain of our opinions we are going to travel the ocean in our rickety wooden boats and risk starving to death just so we have the right to be wrong.  

There’s something about the American character and experience which is, if my society thinks I’m an idiot, I have the right to go over there and find like minded idiots and set up my own town. Here in the Midwest there are many places like New Harmony Indiana, which were set up as utopian communities for these people from the east coast in the early 19th century. The Mormons of course are the last and most successful remnant of this (they were supposed to be in Missouri before they got kicked out of there). These people said: We believe something profoundly different, and you tell us we’re wrong but we think you’re wrong, so we’re going over there to get way from you.

And that freedom to be profoundly stupid is really an important part of the American creed. It’s why we beat you.

Gostak!

A post By Kai_Daigoji (a poster on Reddit who sometimes claims to be agnostic and sometimes claims to be atheist) 

Here, Kai demonstrates a lack of understanding of Burden of Proof

	Kai says...	I say...
1	Saying that atheism is 'simply a lack of a belief' is becoming more and more common as a debate tactic in religious debates online; and let's be honest that it is a tactic.	It’s not a tactic – it’s a dictionary definition https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheism
2	It resolves the atheist of all need to defend their stance or support their arguments, or indeed, even have a stance or make an argument in the first place!	If that’s’ true then there’s no point writing anything else!
3	They simply 'lack a belief' and if presented with an argument, can continue to lack that same belief.	No, they would have to address the argument. They can’t just ignore it!
4	This tactic is disparagingly called 'shoe atheism' sometimes, because carried to its logical conclusion, it suggests that inanimate objects (which likewise can be described as 'lacking a belief') are atheists.	This is a category error, because by definition, an atheist is a person… https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheist But if someone really wants to categorise shoes as atheists, that’s fine with me.
5	And yes, I've actually seen atheists defend this definition, arguing that shoes and stones and other inanimate objects are atheists	IF that’s how atheism is defined, then fair enough. If X does not believe in God, is it because they have never received any information regarding God?  By that definition, infants, shoes and stones are atheists.
6	The problem is that atheism is more than a lack of a belief, and it's obfuscatory and intellectually dishonest to claim that it is.	Depends how you define atheism I suppose. But it seems a bit silly to claim the dictionary is “dishonest”!
7	Part I - Why atheism is more than a lack of a belief
8	Let me start by describing something that pretty much everyone in this sub will actually lack a belief towards. The Gostak. What is a gostak? you might ask. Well, it's simple: the Gostak distims the doshes.	I’ve never heard of the Gostak. And neither have my shoes, so we have that in common. My immediate response is that the explanation of what a Gostak is doesn’t make any sense. I need to know what distim means and what a dosh is. All I can do at this point is agree that The Gostak might exist. I need to see some evidence.
9	Now, since no one here has ever heard of a Gostak before (or if you have, have never heard an argument for or against its existence, or indeed any property it could have apart from dosh distimming) it would be accurate to say that everyone here 'lacks a belief' when it comes to Gostaks.	True.  Up to this point I’d never heard of The Gostak. And neither had my shoes. I do now have at least some information about The Gostak. My shoes are still in complete ignorance (I assume).  Unlike my shoes, I am ready to receive information about The Gostak and find out what it is.
10	In fact, until you read this paragraph, you probably didn't even realize there was a Gostak shaped hole in your life, delimiting your lack of belief in it.	I certainly didn’t realise such a hole existed in my life. (How does Kai know?) But this is another piece of information. The implication is that The Gostak can fulfil some kind of human, emotional human need.
11	(Possibly some uber-skeptic among you will claim that they can either believe or disbelieve in the claim that the Gostak distims the doshes, so let me save you some time)	I need more information about the Gostak. At the moment all I can say is that the Gostak might exist.
12	that isn't a claim about Gostaks, it is definitional. If it distims doshes, it is a Gostak, and if it doesn't, it isn't.)	OK. That’s like saying, if a thing creates thunderstorms then it is Thor, and if it doesn’t it isn’t. Hence a static electricity build up in clouds is defined as “Thor”.    To explore the concept of Gostak I  need to know if there are other things which can distim doshes or, is Gostak the only think that can do that?
13	However, now let's say that I make an argument: A Gostak, I might claim, is more than something which distims doshes: it has some property which you can either accept, or not. For example, I will say that it is blue.	Kai is jumping the gun a bit here. It’s all very well saying Gostak is blue, but I still have no idea what Gostak is or whether it exists. Saying that Gostak is blue is not providing any evidence for Gostak’s existence.
14	Now, I can see three options for you: you can (a) believe me when I say that the Gostak is blue; you can (b) say that regardless of what I say about Gostaks, you have no evidence that they are or are not blue, or you can (c) say you do not believe they are blue.	I go for option (b): I have no evidence that Gostaks are blue or not blue. I don’t even know if Gostaks exist! (The plural suggests there is more than one Gostak. That’s another piece of information)
15	No matter what you believe at this point, however, it is more than "lacking a belief".	Is it? It’s true I’ve received some snippets of information, but I still don’t have any reason to believe in Gostak.
16	Let's look at the agnostic stance (blue-Gostak wise). Isn't being unconvinced "lacking a belief"?	I am definitely unconvinced that Gostak exists because I haven’t seen any evidence. I am definitely lacking belief at this point. (I am a bit confused because I thought lacking a belief was a definition of atheism, not agnosticism. But never mind).
17	No, because although there are many ways to be unconvinced, all of them involve a positive belief of some sort.	No they don’t. At this point I’m unconvinced about Gostak because I’ve had insufficient information to determine if it exists or what it is or what it does.
18	You can, for example, believe that I have not provided enough evidence to overcome your skepticism when it comes to Gostak coloration.	I’m not sceptical about Gostak’s colour. I’m not in any position to consider its colour. I’m waiting for some evidence that supports the idea that Gostak exists.
19	You can believe that Gostaks are generally red, and that a blue one would be unusual enough to require further corroboration.	Why would I believe that Gostaks are generally red? Anyway, we have some more information, albeit implied: Gostak is not singular, there is supposed to be more than one. There are some people who believe Gostak is red.
20	You could believe that I have failed to meet the burden of proof when it comes to blue-Gostaks,	That is true, but perhaps more importantly, no evidence whatsoever has been provided to support the claim that Gostak exists, regardless of colour. You say there’s a Gostak. I say, can you demonstrate that beyond reasonable doubt? You say no. So I doubt your claim.
21	and that being a generally untrustworthy person, I shouldn't be believed out of hand.	Kai’s trustworthiness is irrelevant. Even if I trusted Kai with my life, he has not met the burden of proof.
22	You could believe that the color of a Gostak is a matter of such importance that mere verbal reports are insufficient to justify your active belief.	This is like theists arguing about whether God consists of a trinity or not. They believe God exists.
23	Regardless, every way you can phrase your stance regarding the Gostak's color can be interpreted or reformulated as a postive belief.	Wrong. At this point, my stance regarding Gostak’s colour is that it’s irrelevant.  I need some evidence that Gostak exists before I can even begin to debate what colour it might be.
24	So it is with arguments about the existence of God(s). When you actually get into a discussion, everyone who at first claims to 'lack a belief' in the existence of God(s) actually have a whole host of beliefs with respect to theism that inform their stance.	They do if they have read about God or been taught about God. Theism is a big and ancient subject, with millions of books written about it.  However, the key point is burden of proof and the lack of evidence. Beliefs with respect to theism do not strengthen or weaken the case for God.
25	They believe that the idea of a God is incoherent.	Some people do I suppose. There are hundreds of ideas about God and some are more incoherent than others.
26	They believe that the burden of proof hasn't been met.	That’s true, and that is important to note.
27	They believe that they have outgrown beliefs in the supernatural, and that the sooner theists do the same, the better we'll all be.	Maybe some people believe that, but it’s irrelevan. Such an assertion does not strengthen or weaken the case for God.
28	The one thing I've never actually encountered is someone who honestly lacks belief -	Really?
29	if they did, the moment I asked them a related question, like 'what would it take to convince you', they would have to answer "I have no idea."	No they wouldn’t have to say that. They could say “evidence”. They could say all sorts of things.
30	If they answered with anything else, their 'lack of belief' is really a positive belief that X condition hasn't been met.	The condition that hasn’t been met is burden of proof.
31	Part II - Why this matters
32	This is not an idle conversation about terminology.	Actually, it pretty much is. Look at the statement on lines 4, 5 and 12.
33	This question affects discussions that happen in this sub every day. The problem is that this idea of "lacking" a belief, of a negative claim requiring no justification, is being internalized, and there are atheists who literally think they don't ever need to support an argument.	Maybe there are. But which argument? So far I’ve seen zero support for the argument that Gostak exists. Whoever claims Gostak exists has the burden of proof. They need to support their argument.
34	I've seen atheists in this sub claim that, as an atheist, they have no inherent biases (since they merely 'lack' beliefs, the source of all biases.)	What a weird thing to say!
35	This is an incredibly destructive and intellectually dishonest (even if unintentional) stance	I don’t now about that. But it does seem a silly thing to say.
36	This terminology doesn't aid discussion, it hinders it. For example, the former terminology discussing the spectrum of religious belief from atheist, to agnostic, to theist, was perfectly serviceable.	Yes I do like that definition.
37	Everyone knew what every term meant.	Because every term was defined using words that had clear meanings. Compare that to Gostak distims the doshes or whatever it was. LOL
38	But now it's been redefined, to eliminate 'agnostic' (someone who is unconvinced of either stance) and create two new categories, which don't describe anyone: gnostic atheist and gnostic theist.	I think Kai is referring to this chart.  Agnostic hasn’t been eliminated or redefined. Agnostic comes from the word “gnosis” which means knowledge.  An agnostic atheist for example, is someone who doesn’t know if there’s a God or not, because no one does.
39	I've never seen someone describe themselves as having absolute 100% knowledge on this subject, and yet we need categories to describe them. Why?	He’s misunderstood what the chart says. There are people who believe 100% that God exists. They are gnostic theists. They are not saying they have 100% knowledge.
40	The only reason is to avoid taking an actual stance, which might require argumentation and justification.	Each of those definitions on the chart is a stance. I suppose there is a group not included, “apatheists”. Those are people who don’t really care about God’s existence one way or the other. They have no interest.
41	If atheism isn't a stance (but simply a 'lack of a stance') then no argument is necessary.	But it’s not a ‘lack of a stance’. Where did he get that idea from?
42	And this attitude has been internalized, to the point where I've seen people raised on this kind of internet apologetics (and yes, defending atheism is also apologetics) call Richard Dawkins' 7 point scale (from atheist, through agnostic, to theist) a 'fundamentalist creation', because it suggested that atheist was more than a 'lack of a belief.'	Really? I’ve always thought Dawkins 7 point scale is very good. It makes the range of belief/unbelief very clear.  Kai agrees with me (see line 36)
43	Lastly, for those who are still going to reply to me and claim that regardless everything I've said, they still simply 'lack a belief' I ask you this:
44	why? Why not commit to something?	Who says I’m not committed to anything?
45	Do you actually think that if you say "I disbelieve in theism" you will eventually be proven wrong?	Disbelieve in theism? What is he talking about. Theism exists. That’s a fact.  No one ever said they disbelieve in Theism. Let’s be clear… a claim was made: Gostak exists. No evidence was provided. Some scanty information was implied such as there is more than on e Gostak and some people believe Gostaks are read and some believe Gostaks are blue. And Gostaks distim doshes. Based on all of that, I have no idea if Gostaks exist. Maybe there’s evidence I have yet to see. In the meantime, I am agnostic with respect to Gostaks.
46	Or are you just promoting laziness to a virtue?	Where on earth did he get that idea?
47	EDIT Two points of conflict have opened up that seem to miss my point, and rather than address it in every comment, I'll address it here.
	First of all, those arguing that "Not believing X is true isn't the same as believing X is false" or "I can lack a belief that a coin has turned up heads without believing it has turned up tails."	Good points.
48	Both of these miss the point - I'm not saying that not accepting theism means automatically believing no Gods exist.	OK
49	My point is that 'lacking a belief that the coin is either heads or tails' is still a belief.	What sort of person would lack a believe that a coin is either heads or tails? What else could it be?
50	It's actually a whole family of beliefs - among other things, you believe the coin has a heads and a tails	When discussing coin tossing, it is generally made clear that the coin is “fair” – and that does require it to have a head and a tail.   My approach would be to ask for evidence, in this case, to inspect the coin.
51	It's odd to me that there's confusion on this point, considering how I argue that agnosticism needs to be reclaimed as a single position between theism and atheism, but whatever.	Based on the comments above, I suspect Kai is confused. It is the middle position if we use the 7 point scale.
52	The second point is for those who are trying to argue that "lack of belief" is the definition of atheism	That’s what the dictionary says. But there are other definitions. We both agreed it's "a" definition - not "the" definition.
53	First of all, it isn't. It's a definition	Fair enough. There are indeed dozens of definitions of atheism. It’s important in any discussion to agree on what definitions are being used.
54	And secondly, my entire point is that this definition is inaccurate, and being used in an intellectually dishonest way.	Then complain to the OED!  But in any case, just agree what definition you want to use, and then debate around that definition. Or don't use the word "atheism". It has so many meanings it's becoming fairly useless as a word.  Remember the Gostak is defined as that which distims doshes. Without that definition, what do we have?
55	So unless you have a counter argument for these concerns, I see no reason to respond to those who think the dictionary was handed down from on high.	Did anyone say it was?   That’s a claim for the Bible and Quran. The dictionary explains how words are used and how they were used in the past. Meanings evolve.
56	Lastly, I have broken with tradition, and not stated that I am awesome.	Er… OK
57	I haven't been accused on making this post to make that point yet, but I don't see a reason to tempt fate, so let's get it out of the way. I am awesome. My awesomeness can be arrived at a priori, and therefore doesn't require evidence to be presented.	If you say so. There are similar arguments for God (which are equally flawed)
58	Therefore, this post was not made to pronounce my awesomeness; that is simply a side benefit. I am awesome.	Good for you!
59	EDIT II
60	There's something seriously wrong with some of the atheists on reddit -	Could be.
61	simply say that 'lacking belief' in something doesn't absolve you of justifying your position,	True.
62	and suddenly you're a fundamentalist.	?
63	For the record (not that it should matter for a second, because my argument stands either way) I am an atheist	As Kai says – that fact doesn’t matter for a second.  Weirdly, Kai’s Reddit bio says “agnostic”. But never mind.
64	An awesome atheist, to be sure, but an atheist.	Oh dear.
65	I get that many of you will lack a belief that I'm telling the truth, but you won't try to justify that lack of belief with an argument (since it doesn't require one) so I'm not concerned.	From my point of view, it’s possible that Kai is an atheist. But I don’t se how it matters anyway (see line 63)
66	Third and Final Edit: When I logged on today, I had 81 unread messages in my inbox.	Awesome!
67	It's not possible for me to keep up with this thread, which is a shame, because a small percentage of the discussions have gone to interesting places.	As they do.
68	I don't know why, but I'm going to try one more time to make the point that a lack of a belief can still be something requiring justification.	Go for it.
69	Let's say I tell you I "lack a belief in the existence of China." You'd think this odd - surely I can't be ignorant of China, because then how would I know that I lack a belief in China. Clearly I've had the concept of China presented to me in some way.	True
70	Still, possibly I am unconvinced, so you decide to do a public service and show me a globe with China clearly marked.	Actually I wouldn’t do that because from the previous statement I’d assume that’s already happened. What I’d say is that China is a falsifiable claim. China has physical coordinates and it’s possible to go to those coordinates and test China’s existence.
71	"I still lack a belief in China," I say.	That’s fine. You are ignoring overwhelming evidence, so your lack of belief in China is faith based by definition. (Imagine how difficult it would be to create that evidence without China existing).  But it doesn’t matter. The point is China is a falsifiable concept, whether you believe in its existence or not.
72	Well at this point, it's clear that I'm doing more than 'lacking belief' - I'm rejecting the evidence you're showing me of China.	Yes, you are
73	"Why is this globe with China unconvincing?"	Because it’s a model. It’s not actually China.
74	"You don't understand, I'm not saying China doesn't exist, I simply lack a belief that China exists."	That’s fine – you are entitled to that lack of belief. But if you really wanted to test China’s existence you could, because China is falsifiable.
75	Now, I think we'd all agree that this is unreasonable	It depends. It might be reasonable or it might not. It depends how much evidence you’ve seen.
76	if I'm going to reject the evidence for the existence of China, at some point I need to provide an argument for my skepticism.	The only argument for scepticism is lack of evidence. If you have not seen evidence for China’s existence, you are right to be sceptical.
77	Note that I am not saying that the existence of God is as obvious as the existence of China see my second edit	Even if you did – the point is – Chinas is falsifiable. God is unfalsifiable.
78	I probably agree with you. I'm an atheist. All I'm saying is that those who are claiming that a lack of belief requires no justification (and yes, people have said that in this thread) are being disingenuous.	The only justification for lack of belief, is lack of evidence.