Yet There Is Method In It

My brain hurts after discovering RealCatholicTV’s youtube channel. It is run by Michael Voris, a prolific and pretty slick presenter. But, as you might guess from someone who commits the “no true scotsman” fallacy in the name of their channel, the guy is a loon. I was very recently talking to a Catholic family member and we were agreeing that people can’t go ordering people around, specifically on recreational drugs prohibition. (I managed to resist quoting Nietzsche’s Morality as Anti-Nature.) Michael Voris takes the opposite approach – and sounds not unlike an evangelical. Question to self: are the terms Catholic and evangelical really mutually exclusive? Anyway, here is a comedy gold clip of the immorality of liberalism. My favourite part is where he accuses the liberals of being in the “don’t judge [people] crowd” (at 1 min 58 sec). That’s amusing, considering Matthew 7:1-5 and Luke 6:37-42.

I guess mainstream Catholics would strongly disagree with this guy, but I hope they keep doing that. Otherwise we will be back to the inquisition and burning people at the stake (here’s the thin end of the wedge). Michael, about that plank in your eye…

Anti Citizen One

PS. Remember Blake’s Wheel of Fire?
PPS. Evolution is not mentioned, probably because the Vatican officially has no problem with it, but climate change is discussed.
PPPS. Oh man, Michael Voris is beyond words… so many bonkers videos.

I’ve been reading various Thoreau writings. He was a major figure in American Transcendentalism, along with Emerson. The movement was anti-dogma and attempted to find “truth” and “goodness” by personal reflection and intuition. For Thoreau, this meant rejecting contemporary culture and to attempt is own spiritual way in solitude and in nature. Thoreau would not really have called it solitude – he seemed perfectly happy with plants and birds as friends. His conclusion is we invent too much superfluous baggage in life which is without value. He attempts to avoid the distraction of this baggage and to focus on what he finds more important.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, is a short account of a week spend on a river canoeing trip with his brother. There is no dialogue but, in typical style of Thoreau, it is very descriptive; the rivers, plants and animals are covered in great detail. This can be slightly heavy reading at times. He occasionally mixes proses with verse, which facilitates expressing his message, which is not rationalist, but also partly artistic. There are several digressions, mainly on the philosophy with respect to friendship.

Civil Disobedience recounts the authors experience of being imprisoned for a night for failure to pay taxes. He also includes an analysis of the relationship between the individual and the state. He observes the state cannot fully satisfy everyone, even in a democracy, given there is some differences in opinion. If the state will not be swayed by discussion, the individual is left with little recourse. Thoreau claims that a state that doesn’t represent an individual’s interests can be ignored. In his case, he objected to slavery and the Mexican–American War (he was writing in 1849). Since he refused to support these institutions, he refused to pay tax and was therefore imprisoned. His attitude is a world away from Rousseau with his “social contract“. This call for passive resistance was a forerunner to civil rights leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Walden describes the authors two year “experiment” in simple living in woods by Walden Pond, near Concord (which is near Boston). He provides almost endless descriptions of the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of nature. This can get a little … slow. But the point is tries to convey is that his life was far from boring to live (in contrast to read about). His curiosity keeps him active, not to mention spending hours hoeing his beans. His simple house was built with is own hands using little money. He also provides critique of civilization, in contrast to his life. He questions the need for progress for its own sake, such as rail roads, the telegraph, newspapers, the post office, etc. because he never has learned anything spiritually important from such things. Many of the themes were echoed in Enough by John Naish. Both say we can find happiness, or whatever we are seeking, by scaling back on consumption and avoiding distractions from what we want. I did detect a note in Thoreau of wanting to fight human instincts, but this seemed to be a passing thought. (To attempt such a thing is warned against by Nietzsche.)

I’ll write up A Life Without Principle separately, after re-reading it.

Anti Citizen One

To finish the gospels, I read John. The contrast in the style and teachings of Jesus was very noticeable. The relative modesty (Mark 10:18) of Jesus in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) is replaced by a more egotistical Jesus (John 8:12). The central message in John is “believe in Jesus and have eternal life (or else)”, although with “love one another” (John 13:34). The latter is claimed to be a new commandment, which seems in contrast to the previous statements of “love thy neighbour” being already part of religious law:

He [Jesus] said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he [a certain lawyer] answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. Luke 10:26-27

The synoptic gospels had a different moral message than John. The emphasise the duty of obeying god, loving thy neighbour, forgiveness of sin and having faith. Although these things are touched upon in John, they are very minor themes.

The difference in style is interesting. The synoptic gospels have Jesus teaching almost always in parables (Mark 4:2, Matthew 13:34) but in John he generally uses long metaphorical discourses. The discourses in John are quite abstract and contain rhetorical paradoxes e.g.

Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. John 12:44

The abandonment of parables in John seems strange to me, because I can more or less understand the intent of the parables in the other gospels. I can’t make much sense of his teachings in John, or rather I see they can be interpreted in many different ways. Even his disciples were confused by his method of teaching (John 8:43). This in effect replaces the Bible with body of specialist bible interpreters (notably a human institution) which provides “the truth”, since the metaphorical style in John is frankly obscurantism. There is a trend beginning in Luke and expanded in John to move the concepts of Jesus from a deistic interventional God to being a metaphysical dualistic God. But with this shift, God becomes an unknowable enigma and, I hardly need to point out, an unknowable “objective” morality is a strange an enigmatic beast. Unknowable morality, from our human perspective, is the same as no moral standards (at least within earthly life). If there are exceptions, they are rare – possibly moral knowledge gained from revelation. From my sparse reading, it seems like a shift from William Blake style religion (more themed like the Gospel of Mark) to Kierkegaardian (more like John) but I would be interested in expert opinion on that. I wonder what their preferred gospels were?

John also has many less miracles than the other gospels. Since miracles usually were accompanied by the teaching “with faith anything is possible”, this teaching is not as evident in John.

Strangely, Judas seems to be encouraged by Jesus to betray him (John 13:27). Although this is very like a Dostoevsky plot, it is not explained in a psychologically consistent way (his actions are blamed on the devil). It is likely a hint at the fulfilment of prophesy. This raises implications for free will but I won’t get into that quagmire now. The gospels seemed to go down hill for me, in order they were written (John probably being the last)…

Anti Citizen One

PS Links to previous: Matthew, Mark, Luke.
PPS Will UK civil service scupper civil liberties reform?

Continuing my series on the gospels, I read Luke. Probably being the last of the synoptic gospels to be written, the evolution of the stories was very noticeable, as details were inserted and potentially difficult passages removed. I guessed the order the gospels with written was Mark-Matthew-Luke, and this interpretation is in agreement with most historians. There is a fascinating diagram showing the proportions of overlap between the synoptic gospels on wikipedia.

There are several places in Luke where the narrative in Mark has added detail inserted before it returns back to the original Mark based events. For example when he calls Simon (Peter) and Andrew for the first time to be “fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-18, Matthew 4:18-20) they “straightway” follow Jesus. But in Luke, he talks to Simon on his own and Jesus does a quick fishing trip miracle (Luke 5:1-8) which is serves as a parable instead of a literal statement. So this is an example of a simple event narrative being expanded to being a dual purpose story/parable. (Or somehow both versions are literally true, which seems unlikely. Two separate events?) Similar expansions and insertions are used for love thy neighbour and the parable of the good samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), an angel appearing at the mount of olives (Luke 22:44), Jesus talking to the other two being crucified (Luke 22:39-43) and Jesus meeting Herod (Luke 23:7-9) (this seems particularly arbitrary).

I can’t remember if I have ranted on the blog before about Jesus being strongly anti-materialism and extremely anti-wealth. When I mention this to Christians, I usually get some equivocated answer about “cultural changes”. Anyway the strongest statements I have found is Luke 14:33, Luke 12:33, Luke 6:24, (rich man told to sell up) Luke 18:22, Mark 10:21, Matthew 19:21, (widow’s mite) Mark 12:42-44, Luke 21:1-4, (instruction to apostles and disciples) Mark 6:8, Matthew 10:9, Luke 10:4, Luke 22:35, not to mention the camel/eye of needle thing (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24, Luke 18:25). This is also backed up by Jesus’s example in life. I don’t think this could be much clearer! (Obviously, I personally feel we need to culturally reinterpret the Bible – to the extreme in fact, but this is a central point in the text and not lightly ignored.) On a related note, Nietzsche point it out it is weird saying one should give away your possessions when this burdens the recipient with just what you cast away!

The point at the end of the parable of Lazarus is strange:

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Luke 16:31

Which implies Jesus did not expect his resurrection to be persuasive. But it might be possible to justify the whole exercise on other grounds.

Prophesy gets a good watering down in Luke:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:20-21

I guess they got bored of waiting for the earlier predictions in Mark and Matthew:

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. Matthew 16:27-28

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. [9] And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. Mark 8:38-9:1

This also makes the kingdom a perspective rather than an event or place. This allows a great number of metaphysical inventions to escape their Pandora’s box. (I should write more on that some time.)

Finally, Jesus’s last moments. What is going on there? Three different versions are reported in three gospels. The biblical literalists have a particularly poor response on this conflict: they claim that all three are true but each narrative omits details. This is done because each author has a different “perspective”. This is pretty much an admission that the gospels are not literally true. (As if we needed that admission!)

Anyway, I now know why I was taught Mark at school, it has the least spin and “improvements” compared to the other synoptic gospels.

Anti Citizen One

I continued into read the gospel according to Mark. There are a few interesting things at the start of Chapter 6. He seems to have met his “brothers” and “sisters” (6:3) in his home country. This may be an interesting case of translation ambiguity. Brothers and sisters in the local culture could indicate his cousins or not, it is hard to say. There seems to be controversy on this point, at least among Internet commenters. After stating people were generally unfriendly and “offended”, it goes on to say:

And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. Mark 6:5

Which is a bizarre claim for an supposedly omnipotent being (see also 10:40). The implication is possibly that he could not because of the lack of faith. Apologists claim that “he could” might be better translated as “he would”. This might wash, if the problems were not compounded in 6:6, with Jesus being “amazed”, which implies he is not omniscient. A sceptic like me is not surprised that miracles don’t happen in unfriendly audiences, because they are not as credulous (this would also be consistent with psychology and experience). Alternatively, Jesus did seem to follow a pattern of rewarding faith with miracles. On that theme, Jesus claims that no signs from heaven will be given to that generation (Mark 8:12) but I guess he forgot he was due to be resurrected, which is lucky “corrected” in Matthew 12:39 (and Luke 11:29). The gospel according to Mark seems to contradict that this sign was the primary goal of Jesus’s appearance. This also raised my eyebrows:

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Mark 10:18

Which implies Jesus does not consider himself good. To argue otherwise is torturing language beyond the limit (except for possibly a bad translation, which is torture enough). The prohibition against exercising political authority is very interesting (10:42-43), which might be worth a read for most US and UK politicians (not to mention many others).

The incident of looking for figs on a fig tree, when it was not even the season for figs is an interesting note on the arbitrariness of Christianity (11:13). However there is probably an even deeper message when this incident is raised in 13:28 when it is considered as a parable. This might imply the original story really a parable and not a description of a real past event. Or it could be both a real event and used as a metaphor. The point is parts of the narrative shift between events and parables and we are not necessarily told which is occurring. Imagine if the source material for Mark 13 was lost, many would claim a miracle had occurred in Mark 11. And if Mark 11 was lost, people would claim Mark 13 contained the a parable of the fig tree. Given the murky history of the bible text and the general illiteracy of the time, we can safely assume some relevant sections were omitted (and the irrelevant retained). Since any part of the Bible could have important missing contextual information, the whole descents into a post-modern enigma. This also makes my earlier points somewhat redundant but I am not too concerned. The primary cultural impact of the Bible has been under the assumption it was true based on a rather superficial reading (such as in my limited capability).

Anti Citizen One

It’s been a while since I looked at the Bible. I thought I’d have a read to refresh my memory, after Pullman’s retelling, I’d go back to the original the more popular version. I’d thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the Gospel According to Matthew. These points are not from a post-modern perspective at all. I am mainly interested in mainstream culture, religion and the implications of Matthew.

Jesus claims he has only come to address the Jewish people (10:5, 15:24), but sometimes he seems more concerned with gentiles (21:41, 22:5). He is a critic of religious institutions of his day (15:9, 23:5-8) and these points probably apply to modern institutions (which is a central theme of Kierkegaard). There are strong statements against having or valuing wealth (6:25, 19:21, 19:23), which might be food for thought in the recent UK elections and those putting economic factors as the most important issue. He taught pacifism and non-judgementalism, to the point of “resist not evil” (5:39, 7:1, 26:52), which is contrary to most political systems (and many moral systems). I was amused by the prohibition on public prayer in 6:5-6, which is contrary to national prayer days mooted in the US and in a narrow interpretation, against church going!

There are many instances of Jesus addressing God is a separate entity (7:21, 10:32) and at least once God addressing Jesus as a separate entity (3:17). They don’t seem to share knowledge or their intentions (26:39). There is not much impression of the unity of these two beings. It is also strange that Jesus predicts the world will end within the lifetime of his disciples (16:28, 24:34). History is full of attempts at predicting the end of the world (it probably appeals to human psychology) but predictions have so far ended with egg on face.

The uniqueness of the resurrection might be contrasted by the other instances of rising from the dead in the gospels. This seems to have been a relatively common occurrence (9:24-25,27:52-53). A significant part of the narrative is given over to Jesus curing illnesses. Perhaps this impresses the intended audience of the Bible, but it is not particularly relevant and quite odd give the relative sparseness of the recordings of Jesus’s teachings.

I also noticed two verses saying truth faith can move mountains (17:20, 21:21) which seems at odds with common experience. On one hand Jesus mainly spoke in parables. On the other, he made the claim twice and in both times it was to explain how miracles are be performed. Obviously, this point can only be a criticism to believers of religious miracles based on faith. I mention it because it was raised by Dostoevsky in the Brothers Karamazov. Since we don’t see mountains move in modern times, we can conclude that true faith no longer exists (or decide not to read the Bible this literally).

The motivation of Judas for betraying Jesus is left unstated. It seems rather bizarre considering the circumstances. Imagine if Dostoevsky had written the Bible, it would have been the central issue of the narrative!

Anti Citizen One

I finished Plato’s Republic. It is the first ancient philosophy book I have read first hand. I obviously knew them second hand via Russell and Nietzsche and so on. It is a very different style and it is rather naive compared to the more modest and more obscurantist modern philosophy. It is very inventive and imaginative, I can’t deny Plato made a contribution to philosophy. I certainly was surprised how easy he was to understand! The book features several famous ideas including the parable of the cave and the myth of Er. My appreciation was perhaps through the optics of Popper’s Open Society and Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (and Birth of Tragedy), so it perhaps is unsurprising that Plato fails to impress because of 2500 years of hindsight!

Plato loves the dialectical style, reduction to the absurd and argument from analogy. The frequent use of analogies reminded me of C S Lewis’s style. Perhaps Lewis belongs in the ancient world? The problem with argument from analogy is it is a very circumstantial. As Hume said:

Unless the cases [being compared in the analogy] be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

To be sure the analogy is sound, it is necessary to make future tests to verify the properties of one entity is shared with a second. If we have no experience of one of the instances being compared in the analogy, the validity of the analogy is sheer speculation. Plato for instance compares the “true being of things” with the Sun. Since no specific resemblance can be verified, the analogy is no more than an opinion or guess. (This also dispatches the Design Argument.) He also uses false dichotomies several times, which is most annoying. They generally follow the pattern: 1) A or B is true, 2) A is absurd, 3) therefore B. Of course the first step may be invalid…

In another place he seems to accidentally imply his theory of “true being” is simply opinion. He already stated that opinion cannot inform us about the “true being” of things.

[...] in my opinion, that knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul look upwards,[...] (emphasis mine)

[...] opinion [is] concerned with becoming, and intellect with being [...]

So we might ask, how does Plato know beyond mere “opinion” about his “true” world?

I found other sections amusing, in terms of what propaganda must be fed to the masses, in order to keep them under control. He insists that we must call God absolutely good because it is an effective tool for social control, along with various other ideas. Most of these ideas were directly absorbed into Christianity (by St. Augustine). Consider the well known problem of evil; it is not even an issue if we admit the existence of evil gods? As Popper pointed out, The Republic was intended to be a political manifesto for a Plato headed dictatorship of Athens. Compared to the flak that Machiavelli and Nietzsche get for their ideas having political consequences, the ideas of Plato are far, far, FAR closer to justifying genocide, slavery, racism, propaganda and tyranny. (I know Plato condemns “tyranny” but this only seems to be tyrannies where he is not in control. Be careful of Plato’s words!)

Plato’s attack and planned censorship of the tragic poets (Homer, etc.) was certainly a surprise to me, I did not expect such an open attack on one of the most famous Greek cultural icons. He also attacks democracy. And objectionable types of music. And the equality of humans. For almost everything we associate with the ancient Greeks, Plato wanted to destroy it (to attain a “blank slate” as he calls it) as a starting point for his utopia. This lead to Nietzsche labelling Plato an “anti-Greek” along with the “Socratic equation” (also adopted by Plato), which is allegedly “reason = virtue = happiness”, being called “the weirdest equation ever seen”.

Anyway, fascinating stuff.

Anti Citizen One

PS Plato’s calculation of the unhappiness of tyrants and philosophers is almost a foreshadowed unintentional parody of utilitarianism, IMHO.

I have been recovering from a stomach thing (“the father of all afflictions”). The good news is I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It was awesome, but certainly not light reading. I had maintained notes of approximately 50 recurring characters! For this literary genre, the length is second only to War and Peace. I mention this book on this philosophy blog as it is a dense philosophical and psychological work. Apart from the many moral situations faced by the characters, they are not afraid to discuss social, spiritual and philosophical issues in depth. Also, it is not obvious to me the author is pushing a particular agenda, although others have dismissed Dostoevsky as merely pushing orthodox christian propaganda. He seems to make a strong case for and against christianity and moral relativism.

The character Alexey (Alyosha) is perhaps the closest to the author’s ideal man, in this work. Prince Myshkin from this earlier book, The Idiot, is perhaps a higher ideal. But both love humanity and the world. Both are deeply religious and principled. They rush around trying to fix everything and usually, tragically fail (is this the author’s ideal!?). Indeed, Myshkin is driven to insanity by his high principles. Alexey keeps his head but is more human and more passionate than Myshkin. He is after all, the son of this father: the “sensualist” Fyodor Karamazov.

Ivan: “It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base?”

Alexey’s brother Ivan Karamazov is an intellectual, a strident moral relativist and possibly a strong atheist. His view is: given the rejection of God and an afterlife, the are no laws to say “love thy neighbour”, therefore “everything is lawful”. This brief expression, rather like a sound bite, borders on a false dichotomy, but Ivan (and the author) is smart enough to not over simplify. He is referring to the existential questions raised by the apparent absence of objective morality. When Ivan is attributed with “everything is lawful”, he said it plainer as “But in my wishes I reserved myself full latitude in the case”. Full latitude in this context includes murder or indeed any other action.

Rakitin: “And did you hear his [Ivan's] stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful?”

Ivan also states his parable of “The Grand Inquisitor”, in which Jesus returns to Earth, but is taken from the people by agents of organised religion and told he is now superfluous considering the current aims of the church. The inquisitor recalls the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness and which are metaphorically faced by the church. The church now chooses differently than Jesus’s choices in the biblical story. This amounts to an accusation of the atheism of organised religion. This chapter has been published separately from the rest of the book.

I was interested to read an expression of the eternal return, which just precedes Nietzsche’s statement in The Gay Science (1880 vs 1882). Although they seem to have expressed the same concept, the way the idea is described is strikingly similar. Dostoevsky has Ivan, driven towards insanity by (possibly misplaced) guilt, hallucinating a devil appearing and talking to him. Nietzsche also writes of a demon appearing at night to foretell the eternal return. Nietzsche appears to have discovered Dostoevsky between 1886 and 1888, based on his sudden gushing praise in Twilight of the Idols. Gypsy Scholar thinks they both may have found the idea in Heine.

Devil to Ivan: “Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth — and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious…”

I mention this as the idea is given far higher weight in Nietzsche, being a central theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra. In Karamazov, the world view which Dostoevsky calls by short hand “underground” is touched upon, as Dimitri is faced with the possibility of being sent to Siberia for 20 years (singing hymns to God from underground). This was of course discussed in depth in Notes from Underground, which serves as a sort of preface to his longer masterpieces. I am inclined to think that Smerdyakov is the most underground character in the book, in competition with Rakitin and Ivan, on bad days.

Anti Citizen One

PS The Onion reports on a film adaptation of many peoples experience of the book…

I finished Pullman’s “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” in a few hours reading. It is certainly an original and subtle subversion of institutional religion, even compared to His Dark Materials. I don’t want to spoil the style and plot but I think I can say it is a retelling of the gospel story. It has many slight twists which make it a perfect book for fans of postmodernism. Competition between truth and history is explicitly discussed. Most of the famous stories are included but modified to make them more naturalistic; meaning they occur in a manner that is consistent with everyday experience. There are many references to events and artistic works that have since occurred. I detected hints of the medieval history of the church, Plato, Blake, Kierkegaard (Abraham And Isaac) and perhaps a discrete hint of Monty Python (“Penny for an ex-leper?”).

I was playing with the idea of listing gospel messages that are contrary to mainstream contemporary Christianity. Well, Pullman did it better than I could!

Anti Citizen One

Just some quick notes that I want to brain dump on the is-ought problem. The conclusion of the problem is that prescriptive statements cannot be derived from purely descriptive statements. One way to avoid this issue is to use prescriptive statements as axioms (e.g. you should be good). But this might allow us to posit a axiom “you should be bad” and we would have no a-priori way to prefer one over the other. We might also remember many cultures have the concept of evil spirits and they probably should not be obeyed. So having a divine nature does not necessarily imply human obedience.

A pragmatic approach might be that prescriptive statements are based on psychology and not on rational argument. This would probably be compatible with neuroscience which seems to suggest we confabulate justifications for almost any action. This would not be acceptable to mainstream theists since we need free will and choice to enable “sinners” to be enable them to be held accountable. I only recently heard that some groups believe in a judging God but without people having free will – I have dropped my expectations of them making any sense, naturally.

Anyway, have fun!

Anti Citizen One