Yet There Is Method In It

I recently finished Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Emerson. It was well worth reading. Emerson was ordained as a pastor but distanced himself from institutional religion. He developed his ideas of transcendentalism and the value of the individual. He utilizes paradoxes in writing and his call for to me at peace with your own nature puts him as a precursor to existentialism. (He is a contemporary of Kierkegaard but I am not aware of any cross influence. Nietzsche did read Emerson but probably not Kierkegaard.)

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

In his iconoclastic “Divinity School Address” he calls for ministers to use ones own instinct to reinterpret religious teaching and not to rely in previous experts to define doctrine that is set in stone.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man [Jesus] is made the injurer of man.

Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.

They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

As you can probably tell, his writing style is very quotable. But it takes a surprise effort to read, as his sentences tend to be fairly lengthy. This is not ideal for scan readers. In agreement with Kierkegaard, he does think there is an objective (and transcendental) truth behind everything. But the unknowableness of this objective truth makes it rather superfluous to my mind.

Anti Citizen One

A quick recap on these two arguments:

• We observe that universe has certain properties
• These are consistent with properties that we would expect from a designer (with good intentions)
• Therefore the universe was designed

• Bad things happen
• A good and omnipotent God would prevent bad things from happening
• Therefore God is not both good and omnipotent
• A Defence: what apparently is “bad” might have be “good” but we cannot fully comprehend it from our current point of view.

Recently, I noticed an interesting thing. If we admit this defence of “bad things” are really good, we therefore say “we are not in a position to assess the attributes of the universe”. This statement may then be applied to the design argument, which undermines the first axiom of us observing the “designed” attributes of the universe. So these arguments are in fact the same argument, two sides of the same coin! So things that appear designed at this point in time might be the work of a short sighted designer, only to backfire later (or as the product of many other origins). This possibility cannot be distinguished from a competent designer using the design argument.

(I omit discussing the other objections to both these arguments, false dichotomy being the most obvious.)

Anti Citizen One

PS Happy new arbitrary length of time!

PPS Ireland’s anti-blasphemy laws come into effect that forbid causing “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of [a] religion”. Nice step backwards. They need to amend their constitution to remove the moronic basis for this law. Given the hysterical nature of many religions, we can look forward to curtailment of free speech… idiots.

PPPS A topical quote that illustrates some of the above issues:

“God is ultimately responsible for the earthquake in Haiti and has a reason that is beyond our ability, trapped in time, to understand or comprehend. But it would be theological ignorance coupled with absolute arrogance to try and interpret God’s actions as a judgment against a particular person or nation.” — Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, for Newsweek.

This is hardly news worthy to people who know that “There are more idols than realities in the world”:

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. New Scientist

I have started reading some Emerson. It is actually quite a good read!

Anti Citizen One

Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show.

More than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons – or provinces – voted in favour of the ban. BBC

An interesting issue is at stake. Amnesty International, for whom I have great respect, is against this – as well as the Swiss government. But democracy is a funny thing – freedom in politics conflicts with freedom of religion. It again illustrates the self conflict of natural rights. On the other hand, is this really a matter of religion? Admittedly, my knowledge is limited but I was not aware that minarets was a religious duty? And if it is a cultural convention, can’t Swiss culture said to have precedence on its own ground? Even if it was a religious law, why does religious freedom trump architectural tradition and taste (and therefore cultural practice)?

I feel somewhat unsatisfied with the above, as it raises several questions and hints at my views with very little commitment… What is my view? Good question… mmm. I don’t think minaret construction is a major issue. More significant are the values that go with it. By “it” I mean religion generally and particularly institutional religion. Political control lies behind most or all additions to early manifestations of religions. I’d say let them be built but question the goal of their construction – to cement the influence of institution over personal religious or mystical experience. But very few have the appetite for individual ventures in this rocky terrain.

(Looking at the above, I think post-modernism has warped my fragile little mind.)

Anti Citizen One (still reading Derrida! for now…)

Human rights lawyers reviewed computer games with a war setting.

The group chose games, rather than films, because of their interactivity.

“Thus,” said the report, “the line between the virtual and real experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real life situations on the battlefield.” BBC

This key assumption, that actions in games are morally equivalent to actions outside the game is laughably untrue. We don’t see people getting post traumatic stress disorder from computer games. Playing games is nothing like being in a war. Other studies show that gamers are not desensitised to actual war violence (stated later in the article). Therefore, the choices are not the same as those posed outside games. Games are more or less works of fiction and the choices posed to the player are almost forced outcome moral choices, since the player is not acting as “himself”, but as the character created by the game’s script writer.

I was recently hearing about the Australian Prime Minister apologising for the treatment of child migrants. This apology was presumably done on behalf of the institution that he represents i.e. the state. But the state does not feel “regret” since it is merely a concept. Even if the people comprising “the state” feel the actions were wrong, it is the individuals themselves that are responsible, not the state itself – which cannot act or think independently! Unless the individuals themselves were responsible, guilt does not even apply. Although it may cheer the victims of injustice, I am concerned that if we shunt the responsibility (and “guilt”) for wrong actions onto institutions, it diminishes the personal responsibility that each individual bears and transfers in onto a mere concept. In the extreme case, it may lead to the bystander effect, were everyone does nothing to correct injustice because it is “the state’s” responsibility. So I distrust all institutional apologies and think of them as political tools.

In agreement with our favourite existential thinkers, a new study has linked suffering with religiosity:

Gray and Wegner created a state-by-state “suffering index” and found a positive correlation between a state’s relative misery (compared to the rest of the country) and its population’s belief in God. Sciam

That’s all the news that’s fit to print.

Anti Citizen One

Interesting piece on the choice of degree and the change in student’s religiosity. (Annoyingly, I have not found the original research paper.)

How important do students think religion is in their lives? For scale, Miles Kimball says, if the difference between the religiosity of people living in the Bible Belt and those in the rest of the country equals 100, then the effect of majoring in a particular subject would be:

-47 Social science
-28 Humanities
-24 Physical science/math
-14 Engineering
-13 Biology
0 No college
+2 Business
+10 Other
+16 Vocational
+23 Education NYTimes

Ah, those Godless social scientists! One conclusion is this effect seems to be smaller than regional variation of religiosity.

Anti Citizen One

In interesting issue is being debated by the UK Supreme Court (yes there is a Supreme Court now): what rules can faith schools apply to school admission? It can be an interesting conflict in freedom of religion with freedom to attend competing with freedom to define a schools identity.

An article on the BBC outlines the Jewish school situation: can a convert to the religion attend an orthodox school that insists on Jewish decent on the mother’s side? Is this a case of freedom or of racial discrimination?

Other faith schools may be affected by the presidence in the above case. For example can a Catholic school insist on church attendance for admission? I am interested by the possibility that non-attendance might make a person more Christian based on the writings of Blake, Kierkegaard, etc. I was trying to recall the basis for church going on the Bible (within the New Testament) and I could not recall any; until I remembered I only have passing familiarity with the gospels and hardly anything in acts, etc. There does seem to be a contrast in institutional religion between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Every instance of Jesus going to the Temple seems to highlight the gulf between what he stood for and what organised religion represents… Not to mention: “Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts[...]” Luke 20:46

I was on a bit of a rant there after C S Lewis’s pro-institutional views….

Anti Citizen One

I finished reading Mere Christianity by C S Lewis. Well written but the ideas are not worth analyzing on this blog. (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” LW) But there are two points of interest that made reading it worth while. Kierkegaard fans might like to read the final chapter of “Christian Behaviour”. It is like a pro-institutional version of SK (yikes!) and he references the verse speaking of “fear and trembling”. Nietzsche fans might like to read the chapter “The New Men”, where he claims the “superman” is in fact a Christian. He uses one similar expression by likening Christianity to lightning, perhaps a distant echo of Nietzsche calling the superman “lightning out of the dark cloud”.

Anti Citizen One

PS Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion contains better arguments FOR god than this! (among other things…)

I started reading Francis Collins’s book but its not going very well. I was interested of a tale of an atheistic scientist that found God. The first argument and apparent centre piece is based on an unusual mix of the meta-ethics, argument from analogy, argument from design, and a bit of the ontological argument. He attributes it to CS Lewis with numerous quotes from his books. (And I thought I was bad with my narrow selection of quotations!) I have outlined the argument in as clear form as I can by separating the two main threads, then I have proceeded to “kick the tires”. It has been a while since I have attempted this type of activity. I am motivated and intrigued by the authors repeated claims of rationality and his previous work as a scientist.

Axioms:
The existence of the concepts of good and evil are accepted by most people.
Humans act in an altruistic manner.
Human altruistic behaviour and the concept of good has not been explained.

‘The argument that most caught my attention, and most rocked my ideas about science and spirit down to their foundations, was right there in the title of Book One: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” [...] Disagreements are part of daily life. [...] each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law. [...] Virtually never does the respondent say, “To hell with your concept of right behaviour.” What we have here is very peculiar: the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all members of the human species[...]‘

Arguments:
The concept of “good” is analogous to a house that has been designed an architect. The concept of “good” must also have a creator, which is God.
The altruistic actions are analogous to a house that has been designed an architect. The concept of “good” must also have a creator, which is God.

If the Law of Human Nature cannot be explained away as cultural artifact or evolutionary by-product, then how can we account for its presence? There is truly something going on here. Francis Collins

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicious? C S Lewis

Axioms: The argument relies on the axiom that the concept of good is universal. Unfortunately for this argument, counter examples exist – just look at existential philosophy. If we still use a weakened form of the argument, “most people believe in good”, we end up with an imperfectly universal “Moral Law” and therefore an imperfect designer. If we argue, “those existentialists are just deluding themselves”, the reverse argument is also allowable “the majority of people are deluded about Moral Law”. I don’t think this could be clearer:

My demand of the philosopher is well known: that he take his stand beyond good and evil and treat the illusion of moral judgement as beneath him. This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts. Twilight of the Idols, FN

So much for the universal concept of Moral Law. If only Nietzsche’s demand was more well known…

The other axiom is that people act in an altruistic way. Collins defines altruism as “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others with absolutely no secondary motives”. He cites Oskar Schindler and Mother Teresa as examples. Well I can think of one motivation: religion (they were both Catholic). Also, these individuals decided “they know best” in how to help people in distress. This generalising of a personal morality on to other cases generally seems very selfish to me!

Update: I should distinguish that the belief in a God (irrespective of the validity of belief) is a sufficient explanation in these cases. The existence of God is what Collins uses as the explanation of altruism.

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Luke 6:35 (my emphasis)

He wishes to succour, and does not reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. Gay Science Aph 338, FN

Argument from analogy: this is an unsure method of argument more suited to rhetorics. If the cases that are compared are not equal, the analogy does not necessarily hold. We must be particularly careful if we are comparing something like a house to something like “the concept of good”. On what grounds are we to compare “the concept of good” to any physical object, without invoking the characteristic of “design” which would be merely begging the question in that assumes a designer? This great quote from Hume rebuts comparison between the universe and a house but it might be equally applied to comparing a morality and a house.

…the subject in which you are engaged exceeds all human reason and enquiry. Can you pretend to shew any such similarity between the fabric of a house, and the generation of a universe? Have you ever seen nature in any such situation as resembles the first arrangement of the elements? Have worlds ever been formed under your eye; and have you had leisure to observe the whole progress of the phenomenon, from the first appearance of order to its final consummation? If you have, then cite your experience, and deliver your theory. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume

Argument from ignorance: In some ways, this argument should have been stated first since it is a simple logically flaw and not easily rebutted. If we don’t know where the concept “good” comes from, we can’t form any conclusion based on what we don’t know. If we allowed this, he might become religious based on an argument from ignorance but when an explanation emerges, is he compelled to renounce God? That would be absurd. This has been discussed many times before as “God of the gaps”.

Since this is an argument from ignorance, I could explain the concept of “good” being caused by extra-terrestrial alien interference. Although I don’t believe that theory, the flimsy supporting evidence is better than Collins’s no evidence whatever (in the context of this argument from ignorance).

Infinite regress: If there is evidence of an “architect”, what created the architect? The architect’s designer presumably. And who created that? And so on. I really can’t be bothered to flesh this out since this objection has been known for hundreds of years.

Some points that I found while flipping though the book:

“This principle [Occham's razor] suggests that the simplest explanation for any given probelms is usually best. Occam’s Razor appears to have been relegated to the Dumpster by the bizarre models of quantum physics.”

This is a straw man of Occam’s razor. Does it only say the “simplest” argument is best? No. It doesn’t. And for a practicing scientist to claim this makes me worry. (If this really is Occam’s razor, the best theory would be “the universe is random, any pattern is a coincidence” and we can stop research since we have the “best” theory.)

“If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith.”

Nice ad hominem tu quoque. But it is easy to restate this argument to say “religion can neither prove nor disprove his existence” and therefore it is “blind faith”. This refutes his own argument from evidence in one fell swoop. On the other hand, if God is “inside the universe”, science or atheists can comment on God’s existence. Oddly Collins seems to alternate between God being “outside the universe” and yet occasionally intervening in human affairs. Is he a deist or theist? From this quote, I don’t think he knows himself.

An alternative analysis I suggest is that “good” is a product of language to express social norms. Social and community norms exist in humans and other animals. Of the animals, we have the most complicated language – if we use a broad definition of “language”. The short cut to refer to community norms in language is what created the concept “good”. Not a big deal – and certainly no proof of God. My suggestion to Francis Collins: get a copy of Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” and read it (again, if applicable). I would have liked to have read his ideas on coexistence of science and religion but his first few chapters were so incoherence so I stopped and I don’t think I missed much by not reading on. But apparently he rejects creationism and ID. Perhaps scientists should say away from philosophy? (note to self…)

Anti Citizen One

PS I have less of a beef with religious people who don’t claim rational justification for God. This post obviously does not apply to you.

The UN recently passed another non-binding resolution on “combating defamation” of religion. A quick check sees there have been several previous resolutions with a similar intent. Most of the supporting states are Islamic and most of the opposing states are Western. The mind boggles. Many states enshire the right to profess a religion but only a handful ban criticism of religion. This sounds awfully like Islam does not tolerate criticism – no other religions are mentioned in the resolution. I know criticism and defamation can be distinct but who decides the division? In many theocracies or media hysteria tend to lean on the broader interpretation of what is defamation.

Of course the resolution is worded in terms of “promoting harmony” and preventing incitement to hatred. Most of the articles are fairly standard UN-ism about protecting individuals from discrimination. But you might note the title of the resolution is defamation of religion; not defamation of its followers. Eventually, the resolution gets to the point:

8. Deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards any religion, as well as targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons

Yes, it says that relgious ideas cannot be “targeted” – which I take to mean “criticised in any way”. Of course, you might call me paranoid but considering the states that have the death penalty for blasphemy, I’d say their idea of “targeted” is what is intended.

Anti Citizen One

PS It’s hard to think of any juicy insults for an entity I deem (provisionally) as non-existent.

PPS That last link was so relevant, I embed it below: