Thanks to Hank Pellissier for the opportunity to share my views on the subject of Mormonism and politics, and for the candor in his closing remarks on the article, "A Mormon? For President? Who are these people?". I have many friends who are atheists, and although I'm a theist, their concerns resonate with me. Religion and theism, even those with which I identify, have too often been abused. Religion is a social technology, probably the most powerful of them, and like all powerful technologies, it can be used both for good and evil.

As Hank points out, religions do tend to make extraordinary claims and engage in divisive politics. Trained in philosophy, with an emphasis in philosophies of science and religion, I know the value of critical analysis and seeking disconfirming evidence, as well as the value of divergent thinking and epistemic humility. Mormonism exercises in me, sometimes to the limits of my abilities, each of these activities. I value both the practical consequences of working toward its vision, and the practical consequences of working out the tensions and conflicts its history and politics raise in me and with others. I sometimes disagree with the majority of my fellow Mormons (such is the case with our political activities related to Proposition 8, mentioned by Hank), but I still love and identify with them. I am, perhaps irredeemably, Mormon.

On the other hand, Transhumanists, with whom I also identify, also make extraordinary claims and engage in divisive politics. Of course, Transhumanists will argue, rightly in many cases, that their claims and politics are better justified by contemporary science and technological trends than are those of most religions. However, too many Transhumanists are failing to acknowledge that our claims and justifications are compatible with many religious views. Too many fail to recognize that our long term expectations have probabilistic implications regarding our past. It's either naive or arrogant for us to aspire to the status of Matrix Architect, so to speak, without also acknowledging the probabilistic implications of such status. We almost certainly would not be the only or first. Where there are Matrix Architects, the extraordinary loses some of its extra.

Below are my original responses to Hank's interview questions. He needed to edit them for length requirements on the IEET web site.

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Hank: Two Mormons are running for President as Republicans. Can you explain why Mormons are invariably Republican?

Lincoln: Actually, in the nineteenth century, most Mormons were Democrats; and today, although most Mormons in the United States are Republicans, we're not monolithic. At the denominational level, members the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the United States tend to be Republicans, while members of some smaller denominations such as the Community of Christ and Reform Mormons tend to be more diverse or Democratic leaning. At the individual level, even the LDS Church harbors some diversity. For example, one of the highest ranking Democrats in the US government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a member of the LDS Church; while 77% of Mormon Transhumanists are also members of the LDS Church, only 7% identify as conservative in cultural politics; and I'm both a member of the LDS Church and a left-leaning independent. I attribute Mormons' current Republican inclination to the late twentieth century political influence of some prominent conservative LDS Church leaders, such as Ezra Benson, who was highly critical of the civil rights movement and the Democratic party before becoming president of the church, at which time he became less vocal about his political views. More recently, the LDS Church has taken up the practice of regularly reminding members of its political neutrality, while encouraging us to engage in partisan politics without implying any endorsement from the church.

Hank: Which one - Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman - has the most support from Mormons, and why? Is one more "Mormon" than the other?

Lincoln: Among Mormons in the United States, Mitt Romney is more popular than Jon Huntsman. One reason for this, along the lines you suggested, is that most members of the LDS Church perceive Romney as being more serious about his Mormonism, exhibited by regular participation in church services and programs. Another reason is that Romney, like the majority of Mormons, currently positions himself further right on the political spectrum than Huntsman. This latter difference, however, may reflect their current political strategies more than enduring personal convictions, as Romney appears to have been more moderate as the governor of Massachusetts than he is as a candidate for the US presidency. I suspect Romney, if elected, will prove to be a moderate president.

Hank: Jon Huntsman has spoken out against "Obamacare." Is there something about Mormonism that is opposed - in principle - to universal health care?

Lincoln: There is nothing in Mormonism, either on the whole or as taught by the LDS Church, that is opposed in principle to universal health care. To the contrary, it is easier to use Mormon scriptures to make a case for universal health care than it is to make a case against it. Our scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, are replete with exhortations to care for the poor and the sick. Almost any Mormon you ask would be in favor of universal health care in the broadest sense; however, we disagree among ourselves regarding whether any government can or should be the provider of that health care, and to what extent. You'll also find that Mormons will often express concern that governments should not compel individuals to participate in or support most social programs, but rather individuals should enjoy broad freedom of choice. A significant reason some Mormons may not perceive the need for government-run universal health care is that the LDS Church runs worldwide financial and education welfare programs, established on principals of both opportunity and responsibility, that effectively supplement whatever government programs are already in place.

Hank: Both candidates portray themselves as highly-qualified on economic issues. Utah (under Huntsman) recently had the best state economy, and Mormons are a wealthy demographic. Is there something about Mormonism that espouses economic practicality? A balanced budget? Sensible investments?

Lincoln: Mormonism is a practical religion. Faith, for us, is an action word. In LDS Church meetings, at global and local levels, we regularly advocate hard work, emergency preparedness and financial responsibility. As mentioned previously, the church runs successful welfare and education programs for members, as well as private universities with highly ranked financial and business programs. Local congregations gather financial donations to redistribute among themselves as needed, and engage often in service projects for each other. In my local congregation, we've been holding regular seminars on financial management and investment, so that members with more experience in these areas can help others with less experience.

Hank: Mormons are joining the mainstream. But don't they perceive their values as uniquely different from other Christian groups?

Lincoln: Mormons do generally perceive themselves as different from other Christians, although we also share commonalities. Like other Christians, we consider ourselves followers of Jesus Christ, and aspire to trust in and live according to his teachings. We revere the Bible, but unlike some Christians, we do not require literal interpretation or confine ourselves from revering additional books as scripture. Also unlike some other Christians, we teach that our trust in Jesus Christ should lead us to share in the identity of Christ, worship through emulation, and become increasingly like God (theosis), which some other Christians consider heretical. Consequently, some Mormons, seeking improved relations with non-Mormon Christians, have downplayed our doctrine of theosis. I consider that a grave mistake, and a focus of my work with the Mormon Transhumanist Association has been to establish a stronger voice for advocacy of theosis.

Hank: The American Left is very frustrated with the anti-gay agenda of the Mormons. Why are Mormons homophobic? What's in the Book of Mormon that condemns gays? I assume Mormons think gays are going to Hell. Can they change their mind on this?

Lincoln: Not all Mormons are homophobic. At the institutional level, the Community of Christ (the second largest Mormon denomination) recently extended full membership privileges to homosexuals. Also, the LDS Church has in recent years reformulated its positions on homosexuality, for example, no longer characterizing homosexual thoughts as sins, expressing support for various non-marriage legal rights for homosexuals in Salt Lake City, and actively reminding members not to harbor or express hatred toward homosexuals. On the other hand, the LDS Church certainly has been highly active in combatting the legalization of gay marriage. Why? Perhaps surprisingly, there is nothing in the Book of Mormon that condemns homosexuality, although the book does condemn sexual promiscuity generally. It may also be surprising that most Mormons actually don't think homosexuals are going to hell in the conventional sense; most Mormons consider hell to be a temporary spiritual state that we may all experience to some extent, leading eventually to varying degrees of heavenly glory, to be enjoyed almost universally by all but those who do not desire any degree of heaven. I think the main reason Mormons generally have been more active than other Christians in combatting gay marriage is that we have highly developed and deeply revered unique doctrines related to marriage that most consider to be utterly irreconcilable with gay marriage. Could that change? Most Mormons will tell you that they cannot imagine that changing. However, a 2009 poll of Mormon Transhumanists indicated that half disagreed with the proposition that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, and more than half agreed that Mormon doctrine can accommodate homosexuality. Personally, while I don't know whether the LDS Church position on this issue will ever change, I suspect it would change only subsequent to homosexual reproductive technologies becoming effective and commonplace, and non-promiscuous committed homosexual relations becoming commonplace. Such changes would make it easier to see potential for reconciliation between Mormonism and homosexuality.

Hank: It is becoming increasingly well-known that Mormon women have one the highest rates of anti-depressant usage in the USA. Can we infer from this that Mormon women are depressed? If so, why? And why can't women be "Presidents" of the Mormon Church?

Lincoln: Although the subject is controversial, because anti-depressant usage may have an inverse correlation with smoking and other activities that Mormons avoid, I suspect there's some truth to the observation that Mormon women have higher than usual rates of depression. There may be both environmental causes, such as a correlation between rates of depression and high altitudes, and social causes: Mormons do tend to have high expectations of themselves and others, and too often these expectations are insufficiently tempered with patience. Do the social causes of depression among Mormon women include the LDS Church's constraints on women's authority? I know that's a concern for some women, but my informal observation is that they are the minority. For example, the fact that women cannot hold the same positions of authority as men in the LDS Church appears to concern me far more than any of the women in my own family. We do have many women leaders in the LDS Church, both at congregational and worldwide levels; however, they are all directly or indirectly supervised by men. The reason for this is that the LDS Church requires persons in the highest leadership positions to be ordained to the priesthood, and only men are permitted to be ordained. This may be more of a cultural issue than a doctrinal issue. The Bible sets precedents for women in priesthood roles; a prominent early Mormon, Eliza Snow, set a precedent for a woman acting under the title of "high priestess"; Mormons sing about our Heavenly Mother; and Mormon women officiate in temple ceremonies. I expect this matter will continue to evolve with time.

Hank: Jon Huntsman speaks Mandarin and was ambassador to China. Mormonism is an international religion. Does Mormonism make a genuine attempt to understand other cultures? If so, why proselytize? Sending missionaries somewhere suggests that the indigenous culture is wrong, is lacking, and needs Mormonism to perfect itself.

Lincoln: Mormons work hard to understand and appreciate cultures worldwide. The Book of Mormon, available in 82 languages, teaches that God speaks to and through all peoples - not just Mormons, Christians and Jews. LDS Church leaders have regularly affirmed that idea, expressing conviction that God has inspired the founders of many major religious and non-religious ideologies throughout history, and that the work of God is too great to be completed by any one people alone. The LDS Church also encourages members to respect and promote their local cultures. For example, members in Israel observe the Sabbath on Saturday, male missionaries in some tropical island locations wear skirts, and the church operates a formidable Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. Of course, Mormonism may not be compatible with all aspects of all cultures, and members of the LDS Church worldwide make promises to act and not act in ways that may be incompatible with some aspects of their local cultures. Does this mean Mormons think other cultures are wrong or lacking? Most Mormons are not moral relativists, so we may express concerns when we see a cultural aspect that we deem immoral. More importantly, though, we do generally believe that we have something valuable to share with others, not even necessarily to replace what they have, but at least to complement what they have. When training missionaries, the LDS Church encourages them to learn to love the peoples and cultures they'll seek to serve. Sometimes we fail, but my own experience is that it can work remarkably well: my father was a missionary in France, I became a missionary in France, I since married a French woman, and we speak French in our home with our three children. Finally, I'll just mention that the LDS Church also assigns missionaries to serve in Utah, and puts an even greater effort into its internal missionary program known as "home teaching", illustrating that we consider ourselves to have needs like those of external cultures to which we send missionaries.

Hank: There's a high rate of technological and engineering expertise among Mormons. Can you explain this? Is there something in the creed's tenets that encourages tech, science, computer knowledge?

Lincoln: Mormonism has always emphasized education and technology, reflecting founder Joseph Smith's teaching that "the glory of God is intelligence". The Book of Mormon contains an intriguing story about a man named Lehi, who in ancient times sought guidance from God while journeying in the desert with his family to find a new home. One morning, upon opening the door of his tent, he discovered on the ground a fine brass ball of “curious workmanship”. On inspecting the ball, Lehi saw that it contained two spindles, and soon learned that one of the spindles would move to guide him through the more fertile parts of the desert. From time to time, messages also appeared on the ball, providing additional assistance during the journey. When Lehi and his family arrived at the sea, his son, Nephi, climbed a nearby mountain to seek further guidance from God. He was inspired to make tools and build an unusual ship, the likes of which he had never before seen. When completed, the ship served to carry them across the sea to their new home. For me, this story epitomizes the importance of education and technology in the Mormon worldview. Mormons do expect inspiration from God, but we do not expect God to do what we can do for ourselves. We can learn and we can build, and so we do. Like Lehi, we expect education and technology to be part of our journey to a new and better home.

Hank: The American public has probably formed many of their ideas about Mormonism based on two media productions: the book "Under The Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakhauer, and the TV show "Big Love." How do Mormons feel about these cultural depictions of their religion?

Lincoln: Most Mormons don't identify with these productions because they focus on Mormon fundamentalism, which is practiced by a small percentage of Mormons - perhaps vanishingly small, given that the LDS Church has been excommunicating persons practicing polygamy for about a century. The media productions do make for exciting stories, but they're probably as likely to confuse as help you in an effort to understand a Mormon neighbor.

Hank: Mormonism is suspected by many Americans as being very racist. Can you explain these passages in the Book of Mormon? "Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with black skin and have been denied the privilege of Priesthood and the fulness of the blessings of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain" (p. 101).

Lincoln: This quotation is not from the Book of Mormon. It's from a book by a former president of the LDS Church, and it's not recognized by Mormons as scripture. However, there are a few passages of the Book of Mormon that I do consider racist, in that they attribute dark skin to a curse from God, which is something most Mormons reject today. The Book of Mormon also contains passages such as this: "[God] inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile." Such passages don't justify the racist passages, but they do illuminate a fuller picture. It's also worth repeating that Mormons don't necessarily hold to scriptural literalism or inerrancy. Brigham Young, who led the Mormon pioneers after Joseph Smith's death, once said the following, which resonates with my own view of scripture: "Should the Lord Almighty send an angel to re-write the Bible, it would in many places be very different from what it now is. And I will even venture to say that if the Book of Mormon were now to be re-written, in many instances it would materially differ from the present translation. According as people are willing to receive the things of God, so the heavens send forth their blessings. If the people are stiff-necked, the Lord can tell them but little." On the subject of racism more generally, the LDS Church does unfortunately have some institutional racism in its past, and that was resolved in 1978 when the church extended priesthood to blacks. Since that time, the church has added blacks, as well as increasing numbers of other non-caucasians into leadership roles, at both local and global levels. I confident we'll continue to improve in this area, along with the broader culture.

Hank: The life of Joseph Smith - founder of Mormonism - has come under scrutiny by historians. Many accuse him of fraud, of being a conman. He was supposedly arrested for charlatanism by swindling people out of money with "magic stones." Also - to outsiders - his claim that he was given golden tablets by an angel, but that he later lost them, seems highly dubious. How do Mormons refute, or ignore, these charges?

Lincoln: Joseph Smith was human, and I don't agree with everything he said or did. However, he was acquitted of those swindling charges, and he actually claimed that he returned the gold plates to the angel (still dubious perhaps, but hardly the most extraordinary claim he made about angels). Where I think Joseph is most vulnerable to moral criticism is in his marital relations. He should have been more honest with his first wife before engaging in polygamy. His moral failings, whatever they may be, clearly concerned him too, as illustrated when he mentions his own need to repent in writings that are today part of Mormon scripture. In contrast, though, and without intending to justify any moral failings, I'll add that I consider Joseph Smith a prophet, if ever there was one. A few sentences won't do justice to my reasons, but basically his words and actions on the whole inspire me. Throughout human history, some persons have managed to articulate an esthetic that moves and shapes us, emboldens and ennobles us, invokes in us the strenuous mood toward benevolence and creativity beyond human capacity, toward the divine. Joseph Smith is one of those persons, for Mormons and even for non-Mormons, as expressed by Harold Bloom, a Jew and professor of humanities at Yale, who observes: "A literary critic necessarily is more at home with Emerson than with Joseph Smith, though I would name them both (with Walt Whitman) as our authentic American prophets."

Hank: A Rasmussen poll named Mormons as the 3rd least-electable belief system in the USA behind Muslims and atheists. Do you think this is false, and what can Mormons do to counteract it?

Lincoln: I haven't examined the process quality of the Rasmussen poll, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's accurate. Many persons are suspicious of Mormons, mostly because they don't know much about us. I think if you polled only persons that personally know Mormons, you'd get more positive results, as you would with persons that personally know Muslims and atheists. The LDS Church is doing a number of things to help others better understand and trust us: member profiles published at mormon.org give others insight into our personalities and interests beyond religion; media information published at newsroom.lds.org addresses common misunderstandings and clarifies official positions. At an individual level, most Mormons welcome the opportunity to talk about our religion, as I've enjoyed doing with you. Sincere questions won't offend most of us, so ask! I wager you'll end up agreeing that Mormons should be as electable as any other commonly respected ideological group.

Like others before him, Paul Allen argues that the "singularity is not near": we will not anytime soon engineer computers superior to human brains, he says. His argument is based on the observation that human biology, neurology and cognition are highly complex, and he concludes we will need to understand this complexity before we can match or exceed it with our computers. Also like others before him, Paul is probably wrong because the Singularity does not require understanding.

Scanning technology permits us to model and simulate systems that we do not understand. Of particular importance to the subject at hand, and even generally important given that human brains are the most complex objects known to humanity, brain scanning technology is increasing in resolution at an exponential rate. Assuming the trend continues, we will be able to model and simulate human brains sometime this century, unless current expert assessments of the essential degree of complexity of the human brain are many orders of magnitude incorrect. Furthermore, assuming it is the pattern rather than the substrate of the human brain that leads to cognition, then the word "simulation" would not be appropriate once our scanned models attain a sufficient degree of detail, because they will be cognizing. Yes. Unless trends in scanning technology cease, and unless there's something magical about carbon, sufficiently detailed scanned models will cognize, even if we don't understand how they do it any more than we understand how we do it.

Paul references scanning technology, claiming that it will be insufficient because it will need to model not merely brain state, but also brain function. In other words, it must be both spatially and temporally detailed. He's right, of course, that function is an essential aspect of a detailed model of the human brain. However, he offers no reason to believe that the exponentially advancing capabilities of scanning technology will be limited to spatial details. Is he up to speed on advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging? If so, what am I missing?

I don't know whether there will be a technological singularity, and I don't even think it would necessarily be a good thing (depending on the form it takes). However, it's a mistake to bet against it simply because we think it will take humans a long time to understand our brains. We don't have to understand them. We need only scan and model them, and our computers are already helping us do that, even when human scientists cannot.

In the comments on an H+ Magazine article on "Why Christianity and Transhumanism are not Enemies", Max More disagreed with my assessment of the inevitability of faith. Here's the exchange, including an opening comment from someone named "Ben".

Ben: "Christianity is based on FAITH. Transhumanism is based on SCIENCE. What more is there to say?"

Lincoln: "Science also depends on trust in non-contradiction, spatial and temporal uniformity, causality, etc. Faith is inescapable, but we don’t need to be irrational."

Max: "No, that’s just not true. That’s a common argument, and understandable enough. But you should read Karl Popper and William Warren Bartley. Pancritical rationalism shows why NOTHING need be taken on faith. I summarize this line of thinking here: http://www.maxmore.com/pcr.htm"

I responded to Max that I want to press him on this further, and this post is aimed at that end. Before I proceed, though, I want to say a few things about Max. I had the opportunity to meet and interact extensively with Max during the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010 organized by the Mormon Transhumanist Association in Salt Lake City. The experience was a pleasure. His speech at the conference was excellent, side discussions with him were intriguing, and on a personal level I found him to be engaging and friendly, as friends and I guided him on a tour of the Salt Lake City area after the conference. My respect is particularly high for his broad contributions to and influence on Transhumanist thought.

Near the beginning of Max's article on Pancritical Rationalism, he appeals to a lesson learned from Ayn Rand's Objectivism: "Superficially and officially Objectivism opposed blind faith, dogma, unquestioned authority, and unexamined assumptions ('check your premises!'). Independence and rationality were core virtues; those who could not or would not think critically for themselves were branded as second-handers, mystics, or Witch-doctors." He then goes on to note that Objectivists failed to live up to this lesson, instead becoming "true believers dogmatists suffering from a hardening of the orthodoxies". The use of the word "faith" here, I suspect, already reveals the source of our disagreement.

When I use "faith", I do not mean blind trust. I mean only trust, with no more blindness than necessary at a given time and place. Moreover, I do not mean dogma or any unquestioning or unexamining attitude. Rather, I mean only that no matter how many questions we ask, and no matter how much we examine and press the frontiers of our knowledge, there are more questions to ask, and there are more matters to examine. I also suspect that will always be the case. So we, whether we like it or not, find ourselves in a context that requires faith in practice. Life and death hang in the balance, and we cannot wait for absolute answers (if they even exist) before we act.

Furthermore, even when we have the luxury of time, we cannot make progress without at least tentatively agreeing on basic premises. Science typically posits causality and uniformity as basic premises. Some will argue that these are proven by science, but that's not true, as the empiricist philosophers, Hume and Berkeley, taught us. No matter how many times we think we have experienced something, no matter how many places we think we've experienced it, it could all change the next time we try it. Well, some may respond, at least we have probabilities? Strictly speaking, no, we don't even have probabilities. Can we demonstrate that all of our remembered experiences were not planted in our minds moments ago by an evil demon? A matrix architect? No. We cannot, but we don't worry much about that because it's not practical, or at least so we judge based on our memories, but that is circular reasoning.

The same is true of logic. We require some basic axioms and methods, taken unproven, in order to do any work at all. For example, most logical systems assume non-contradiction, and various operations for coupling, decoupling, and otherwise operating on propositions. Logic doesn't prove these axioms and methods. They are assumed, which is an act of faith, as I'm using the word.

Max proceeds to attribute Objectivism's failure to its claims (or at least attitudes) of completeness and closure. They chose some assumptions, considered them sufficient and final, and proceeded dogmatically from there, without going back to question and improve their initial assumptions. He contrasts this with the Principles of Extropy (a kind of Transhumanism), which affirm "reason, critical inquiry, intellectual independence, and honesty. We reject blind faith and the passive, comfortable thinking that leads to dogma, mysticism, and conformity . . . Extropians therefore feel proud by readily learning from error rather than by professing infallibility . . . We choose challenge over comfort, innovation over emulation, transformation over torpor." Max calls this systematic openness a "pancritical rationalism" or "epistemological fallibilism".

To this, I respond with support, so long as it is approached practically - faithfully. We should re-examine our premises, our assumptions, our conformities. We should honestly acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge. We should engage in and welcome criticism. All of this, over time, strengthens our knowledge, much like the brutal hardships of nature have shaped our anatomies through billions of years of evolution. However, there are practical limits, and perhaps no philosophical movement has better addressed these limits than the pragmatist school. As William James once described it, you can wait for a long time for hard evidence that a woman loves you, or you can make a move. You can stand in front of a charging bull calculating the probability that it will trip, or you can run. You can wait for more evidence of anthropogenic global warming, or you can begin cleaning up your act. Furthermore, because you are limited, and because you will always be limited, you will always find yourself dependent on this faith, this trust in the knowledge at hand at any given time, according to whatever education or experience you were lucky to have had (or at least presume yourself to have had) prior to needing it.

Beyond the practical necessity, there may even be a creative power in faith. If the universe (or the multiverse) is not finite, if real creativity and genuine novelty are possible, it will not be those who wait for evidence that will be the creators. It will be those who act, despite not knowing everything in advance, that will be the creators. Faith may be essential even to the power of the gods themselves. For this, we need not look even so far as the creation (or computation) of new worlds. The creative power of trust may be seen even in matters as common as love. As we exercise trust in each other, and as the strength of that trust grows, we gain love for each other, and this love in turn moves us to do that which we would not otherwise do. Wo to that person that underestimates the world-changing power of love.

Yet, we shoud examine it, of course. We should question and learn more of it, of course. Yet there are still practical limitations. Should we test hypotheses of how best to terminate our relations? Should we test hypotheses of how best to annihilate the Earth? Perhaps there are some detached and indirect, relatively non-consequential, ways to do these things - simulations or whatever. However, our faith shapes the approaches we take to criticism and examination. We do not proceed arbitrarily.

Max mentioned in his original comment to me that I should take a look at Karl Popper, and at the beginning of his article's section on "Rationalism and Justificationalism", Max quotes Popper: "We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that 'I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth'." I agree with this idea, and perhaps ironically, I see in it an expression of faith! The attitude of acknowledging our limitations is trust that those limitations can be overcome. I don't start with evidence of that, and even after much learning I don't have evidence that all of my limitations can be overcome. The effort to continue, to remain open, to question and seek answers, is itself an expression of faith. Certainly, it's not the blind unquestioning faith against which Max and Karl would warn us. Yet it is still faith of the anticipatory sort.

Max next expounds on some of the matters I mention above, digging into the complexities of competing premises, deductive and inductive limitations, sensory limitations, and the necessity of practical action in life. Clearly, nothing I've written above is news to Max, except perhaps my perspective on "faith". Now, he might argue that my use of "faith" is so unusual that it should be considered a complete redefinition. I understand why he or others unfamiliar with my religious background would think that, and perhaps there's some truth there. However, this is the definition and usage of "faith" that I learned as a child, particularly in Mormon settings, and it's the meaning that continues to resonate with me as I study religious texts as an adult. I'd even argue that the irrational or blind sorts of faith employed by so many religious persons, particularly Christian fundamentalists, are not faith at all. As the Bible puts it, faith without works is dead. As the Book of Mormon puts it, knowledge results after exercising faith. As Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism put it, faith is a principle of action and power.

Of course, this presents some concerns, and Max expresses them. If we must all act in faith, from premises that are themselves unproven, "why not accept as your standard the proclamations of the Pope, or the urgings of your feelings, or the will of the people, or the assertions of der Füehrer?" The problem even goes deeper. Why care at all? In my late teenage years, I encountered such a crisis. I recognized my limitations. I found no grounds for choosing one direction or another. So I felt the weight of concluding that meaning was lost pressing on me. It may sound melodramatic now, but it was quite serious for me at the time. Others have passed through such experiences, and probably most have found one way or another to get out of the funk without killing themselves. I don't know how everyone has done it, but I know what worked for me, and embracing faith, not of the dogmatic irrational sort but rather of a dynamic arational sort, was essential.

Where did I put my faith and why? The answer is complex, but I'll aim to provide a brief explanation here. I began with my own wills and desires (which, of course, I have to start from, whether I like it or not, even if I had gone further in the direction of nihilism). I didn't desire the world to be meaningless, so I willed trust in the possibility of a meaningful world. On the other hand, I also didn't desire the meaningful world to be merely meaningful for me, so I willed trust in the possibility of sharing a meaningful world. This sharing of meaning, willed according to our desires (rather than just my own desires), I identified with love. From there, I found an analogy in the environment, whose physical laws (call them "gravity" and "electromagnetism" or whatever) I compared to the communal laws of relations. Love, then, extended beyond merely my will to fulfill my own desires to reconciling myself with communal rules and environmental laws, and vice versa, in an ongoing perhaps unending exchange. From a religous angle, I called this reconciliation "atonement" (intentionally alluding to the Biblical example of Jesus engaged in moral reconciliation), and I saw us all participating in this atonement in every aspect of our lives, perpetually. Science is the epistemic atonement, reconciling anatomical experience with individual knowledge, knowledge with communal truth, and truth with environmental existence. Politics is the ethic atonement, reconciling anatomical desire to individual will, will to communal rule, and rule to environmental law. Art is the esthetic atonement. Each form of atonement affects the others and itself in feedback loops. To help visualize these relationships, check out my matrices. Of course, there's more to say and explain here, but in summary, I put my faith in love, embracing a perpetual work of reconciliation, epistemically, ethically and esthetically. Accordingly, I do not accept the proclamations of the pope without consideration of the laws of biological evolution, I do not follow my feelings without consulting friends and experts, I do not embrace the will of the people without investigating the feelings of the individual, and the assertions of der Füehrer are only one, but still one, variable in an aggregate of tensions and conflicts between and among desires, wills, rules and laws.

Returning to Max's article, he goes on to describe pancritical rationalism (PCR), which he considers to be a solution to the epistemic problem of relying on faith. First, he points out that PCR requires no authorities, either those of a communal sort (scientists or kings) or those of an anatomical sort (experience or intellect). Instead of authoritarian justification, PCR espouses unbounded criticism, even of its methods of criticism, holding nothing beyond criticism. The whole process, as Max characterizes it, becomes perpetually investigational rather than justificational. As I see it, PCR is a meta-epistemology, abstracting across the philosophical investigations and turmoils of the centuries, and observing what it is we've actually done to achieve epistemic progress, even if all the while we were doing it naturally and ignorantly.

A key point in Max's explanation of PCR is the idea that even the practice of holding everything open to criticism should be held open to criticism. He notes, "perhaps someone could produce an argument demonstrating that some of the critical standards necessarily used by a pancritical rationalist were not only unjustified but uncriticizable, that even the pancritical rationalist must accept something as uncriticizable if circular argument and infinite regress are to be avoided." He then expresses doubt regarding the possibility that someone will come up with such an argument. So I'll leave it to Max to tell me whether the following is such an argument: we cannot engage in PCR without faith in meaning itself, which is something shared, and therefore a manifestation of the kind of love or trust in reconciliation that I described above. Even if approached egotistically, within the mind of a single person, meaning is relational, shared between concepts, distinguished from a meaningless chaos even before they enter our conscious and volitional mind. Indeed, something of the beginnings of this faith in meaning or trust in reconciliation may be built into us, into our bodies and minds, from the beginning by evolution itself within the environment where we find ourselves. Can we consistently doubt? Can we consistently deconstruct? As we devolve into flashes and noises, can we persist into the darkness? From darkness to nothing? From nothing to that toward which "nothing" points without pointing? This reminds me of the direction my thoughts took me twenty years ago as I struggled with nihilism. Even criticism, it seems, must have direction. We must trust in meaning, according to whatever desires we may have for it. As we do, relations between the distinctions are formed, and order arises. The alternatives are some combination of suicide and the mental hospital, and whatever of darkness and its lack lies beneath that which has no bottom.

Max points out that, in practice, PCR does not necessitate perpetual deconstruction and paralyzing self-criticism. While our memories may have been implanted into us a few moments ago, we need not take the idea seriously, he says, although we should not rule out in principle the possibility. An adherent to PCR, Max argues, can still be convinced of positions without being dogmatic about them. This, however, I'll argue, is exactly the kind of faith that I advocate. We live and act, as best we can, without turning to dogmatism, either of the sort that permanently ignores possibilities or of the sort that permanently insists on them. Yet, we do this only because we CARE. What do you tell the person that doesn't care? That doesn't share in our common faith in meaning? That would sooner throw feces and squawk at you than reflect on his desires? I don't know, and whole industries have grown around the effort to help them care, reflecting the fact that most of us DO care, and that's part of what makes meaning possible.

As I conclude this post, I trust (notice the faith) that Max can still teach me something here, not merely because of my respect for him, but also because of that respect, which facilitates a communication aimed at meaning. Let us, indeed, increase in knowledge, but let's do it in a manner that promotes life, sustainable and genuine, benevolent and creative, rather than death and nihilism. Knowledge is not inherently good or evil. We can learn much about the slide to hell, as we can about the ladder to heaven. Yet only one of the two perpetuates our power to continue choosing between the two. I trust in that.

Below are thoughts I composed some time ago, as I read the introduction to "Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary" by James Hughes and George Dvorsky. The authors respond to some of these criticisms in the body of their paper, but I composed these thoughts to illustrate what the idea of Postgenderism may evoke from the outset as context for any practical argument. I share the thoughts here now because a friend has been reviewing the topic.

Is our (generally) binary gender assignment accidental? Anatomically, gender appears to be the result of natural selection, which is not accurately described as "accidental". Even if genetic mutations are considered accidental, the survival and reproduction of genes that generally manifest themselves in binary gender reflect these genes' relative fitness within our environment. Individual gender identity is more complex than anatomic gender, but appears to be no more accidental. Given a particular anatomy, within the influence of a particular communal context, an individual expresses some degree of will toward a gender identity. The extent to which we see an accident in this may be no more than a reflection of our ignorance of its various causal and intentional aspects.

Has the (general) gender binary caused the categories of human experience? Or, rather, has the inherent power of binary categories resulted in their frequency among the categories of human experience? Binary categories are the simplest, most efficient and economical, type of categories. The difference between chaos and order starts with the first division, differentiation, or categorization. Practically nothing becomes practically something. Meaninglessness becomes meaningfulness. See, chaos! With that move from zero to one (the original binary), intelligence begins to emerge. From there, all categories are extrapolations, which is the power of mathematics and information technology. Observation of human anatomy lends itself to the first and most powerful of categorizations.

While anatomical gender does, indeed, present us with various limitations, it likewise presents us with various opportunities. Limits and opportunities seem never to present themselves independently, but always in complement. While a man cannot experience the world as a woman, a woman cannot experience the world as a man, and neither can a third gender (or supposed "genderless" person) experience the world as either a man or a woman. To regard one as uniquely limited in relation to another reveals more about the regarder than it does about the regarded.

Is the gender binary the most basic power dynamic in society? Maybe so, yet other contenders come to mind. What about age? The very young and very old are almost entirely at the mercy of other members of our community, and certainly more so than women generally. What about race? When first introduced to a community, race differences usually result in more dramatic disparities of power than do gender differences.

Have post-industrial production, contraception and abortion eliminated most of the benefits of traditional gender roles? They have certainly eliminated some of the benefits of traditional gender roles, but "most" is a strong claim that merits justification rather than simple assertion. It seems to me that we would expect to see broad relinquishment of traditional gender roles if most of the benefits had been eliminated. Instead, we see substantial resistance to such relinquishment. Where there is resistance, there is perceived benefit, and practicality does not distinguish between perceived and actual benefit.

Has the shorter life expectancy associated with higher risk-taking been an overall detriment to males? Is it even appropriate to frame the question in terms of higher risk-taking? Is any particular male that refrains from some sorts of risks, such as combat, always taking less of a risk, overall, than all those that engage in such risks? Given the anatomy of human males, and the communal phenomena that arise from its relation to the anatomy of human females, perhaps males have been continually approaching optimization of our behavior (including tendencies toward combat) for the least overall risk to our survival and reproduction.

Is occupational diversity that reflects gender-coded aspirations necessarily wrong? I don't see how that could be true in any meaningful way. Wrong and right are meaningful only in relation to desires. If a particular anatomy does not desire a particular occupation, how can that, in itself, be wrong, except from the perspective of another anatomy with different desires? So far as I am concerned, it is definitionally (not hypothetically) right for an anatomy to act in accordance with its desires, to the extent they are not oppressive. It is relatively weak to argue that occupational diversity consistent with our desires is wrong. The stronger argument is that occupational diversity contrary to our desires is wrong.

In summary, the introduction casts gender as being generally unworthy of whatever desire we may have toward it. This may detract from the major thrust of the paper's argument: technology will enable us better to overcome particular undesired effects of gender, which will yet persist according to our desires.