Should science give us advice as well as facts?

Our world in flowers, balances the science of the earth form and also the beauty, or the spirit captured in flowers

Editor-- Science, says Sam Harris author of “The End of Faith,” might want to look at not just finding out the facts but examining the moral consequences of these facts and provide information not just on what we can do but what we ought to do.

Harris’ book, “The End of Faith,” created a considerable firestorm in the religious community when he examined how faith cannot answer simple questions that science does.  At the same time, scientists responded that there are certain areas where science falls short.  Scientists therefore often give the floor to religious folk when they have difficulty explaining what our moral compass needs to be relative to scientific facts.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values” examines the notion of science providing a direction for people to follow as some sort of moral compass.   In this book Harris tells us there will come a time when science will be able to give us information on how to live our lives the best way possible.  But that “best way” remains the disputable question among many,

Harris believes science needs to assume a moral authority along with determining facts so that moral relativism doesn’t continue to absorb human consciousness and have people turn instead to religious myth when facts might be more helpful.

But some writers say that rather than removing religion from the moral values area and replacing it with science as the leader in making pronouncements ab out man’s best direction, perhaps science is better used as it supports religious values.  Some believe that science supports religious truth, and that being the case, values are therefore best determined by religion.

And Slashdot raises an interesting question, "Is Science Just a Matter of Faith."  Many people question science just as they question religion.  A man by the name of Hugh Pickens observes that few people understand some of the scientific issues such as the origins of man and the universe, so in some ways they take the conclusions as fact based on faith.

The final question to ponder, however, is whether religion is scientific. Scientists have determined that there was an ark and a flood.  And historians, outside of the Bible's passages, have observed that there was a man called Jesus who lived and taught the people and was crucified for his ideas and claims.

So there is a balance, one might say, in both science and religion with benefits to both yet problems that confound man as well, things that neither seem to answer by themselves, some say.  Yet there is agreement as well.  On that basis, advice that follows from the merger might be seen as reasonable and potentially helpful.  Uniquely enough, there are religions that teach exactly that.

What does it mean to be a Voluntaryist?

Dave Scotese — Voluntaryism is a purposeful misspelling of volunteerism or voluntarism (take your pick) because it is not founded on providing services for free. Instead, it's founded on the non-aggression principle. More precisely, it's founded on the idea of never threatening to violate another person's rights. That makes it sound very common, and I believe it is, but threats of right-violation can be hidden. For example a tax is a state demand for property, and if it weren't backed by the threat of violation of property (seizure) or movement (incarceration), then it wouldn't be a tax. Sadly, most people accept taxation while also remaining largely voluntaryist otherwise. I believe this duplicity has been a core reason for human suffering for many centuries.

I like to provide some work for free to new clients and allow them to encourage me to work more by paying me. If they don't like my work, they don't pay, and I don't work for them any more. This way, there's no contract. My view of contract itself has changed too because to me a contract is merely a written specification of an otherwise joint agreement, intended to nail down details that might otherwise be forgotten. I would never rely on a contract in court, but rather, if I have kept up my end of a deal but the other guy hasn't, that's my fault for trusting someone who is untrustworthy. If you read "Woe Unto You Lawyers" by Fred Rodell, you'll see that both myself and my clients are protected from the legal profession through this strategy.

About 20 years ago, my friend Brian Gladish suggested that when we vote, we are attempting to control the ways in which we can violate each other. One guy says we can take more money from everyone and spread it around to the less fortunate. Another guy says we can take more money from everyone and use it to spread Democracy. After thinking about it, I realized what he meant. Both of these guys want it to be OK to raise taxes and spend them on various presumably good efforts. But taxation, as described above, is stealing. Voting is generally just an attempt to control what we do with our plunder, which is managed by the state. He asked if I had read Atlas Shrugged and I said yes. He said that explained some of the advanced understanding I seemed to have.

A couple years before I met Brian, I noticed that the Internet was connecting people, which presented a tremendous opportunity for cooperation. The problem is information overload. I wanted to find or build a website that would allow the readers to increase or decrease the likelihood that other readers would see a piece of writing. That way, information that was useless would only have to be seen by a few people before it got filtered out. My friend Jeff Hardy said "Like slashdot?" I'd never heard of slashdot, so I checked it out. One of the posts I found there mentioned Condorcet Voting, so I checked it out. It is one of the best mechanisms for finding consensus, but it isn't used much. Brian and I shared an office, so I mentioned Condorcet Voting to him one day, and that led to his point about taxes.

I built my website, litmocracy.com, based on this voting method, used to accomplish my goal of filtering out the less appealing writing submissions. What it has taught me is highly instructive: When the Condorcet Method is used by a large group of people, the group naturally separates itself into multiple pieces, each with its own set of values. For example, women tend to like one kind of writing better than another, whereas men like the other. Democrats and Republicans do the same thing, and so does subject matter: funny, about food, about animals, philosophical, etc.; each has its set of followers. In terms of picking someone to rule you, the lesson is this: Every person who wishes to be ruled should choose his or her own ruler. No ruler should be imposed on someone who doesn't want that ruler to rule them.

The non-aggression principle is more important than filtering out low quality information, so when I think about what the Condorcet Method taught me through my website, I conclude that we don't need rulers - we need leaders. My friend Don Eminizer said I am one, but I don't have enough exposure. Another friend, Ernest Dempsey, said my writing is good and wanted to use it on a site he works with. Voluntaryism rejects electoral politics and so do I, but Ron Paul is a great leader and educator, and if you're going to keep trying to force me to obey rules invented by politicians, then I urge you to choose someone like Ron Paul (or Gary Johnson) to be the president. Just remember that you are supporting what Bastiat explained: "The state is that great fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else." It is a tool of oppression and the more people stop using it and instead defend themselves and others from it, the better. And that means being a Voluntaryist.