Monthly Archives: April 2019

Answering the Many Gods Problem

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, Catholic, christianity, philosophy, rationality, religion, Uncategorized

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One of the common questions Christians run into is this:  Even if you think God does exist how could we possibly know the Christian God is the correct one?  This might come up when addressing Pascals wager but it comes up in other contexts as well.   They will sometimes then go about naming every type of god or spirit that they can find on the internet. (Let’s call these hitherto unknown gods “the gods of the internet”).  This appears to be an invitation to start wasting much more time than this argument should take.   It also seems like an attempt to overwhelm us.   Don’t be waste time or be overwhelmed.  This question can actually be a great invitation to explore how quite a bit of evidence supports the Christian God.

 

If we get to the point that for whatever reason we accept we should believe there is a God, but we need to which god it is, then we should consider “good reasons” to believe one way or another.  As I indicated before, “good reasons” to believe something generally fall into one of three categories.  1) It is theoretically rational to believe (ie. There is evidence that the belief is true.); 2) It is pragmatically rational to believe (that is, weighing the consequences of being wrong or right on this issue favors belief); and 3) It is logically consistent to believe.  With this criteria we can start comparing the gods/religions and see which one wins.

 

What we should not do is try to talk about some imagined “burden of proof” and then try to think if the evidence for this or that god “meets the burden” or does not.  This is not a rational way to choose between multiple different exclusive alternatives.  (You can argue for exclusivity later.  I won’t do it here.)  This is because when we are choosing between multiple exclusive choices we do not necessarily choose the one that is more likely than not true.  It is rational to choose the one that is simply best supported by good reasons even if it is not more likely than not true.  In other words if at the end of the day we say the Islamic God has a 15% chance of being true the Jewish (non-christian) God has 30% of being true the Christian God has a 31% chance of being true and several other gods add up to the remaining 24% we can still say we should choose the Christian God.  Of course pragmatic and logical considerations can come into play but to the extent those are equal then it would be rational to choose the Christian God even though we only give the Christian God a 31% chance and not over a 50% chance of being correct.

 

Getting back to proper reasoning one thing rational people should do in determining whether to believe in one God versus a different God would be to compare the evidence for each.   Of course I think pragmatic rationality can play a role in this as well, but lets set that aside for now and focus on theoretic rationality.   What sort of thing would even be “evidence” for a particular God?

 

Well lots of things could be evidence for God for different people.  If the atheist refuses to believe anything could be evidence for God then ok you are probably dealing with a mind so closed no amount of rational discussion will help.  If that is the case maybe you could use pragmatic reasons.    But let’s say they are at least willing to agree some things could be evidence, what would evidence of God be?

 

Miracles are the thing asked for as proof of God most often.  I know it is what I would want.  Asking for “signs” (the bible’s term for miracles) seems to have been around since at least Judaism itself.  The Gospel of John couldn’t be more clear that he is relating the signs in his Gospel for this very purpose.  He flat out says:

 

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name. “

John 20:30-31

So the God that offers the best evidence of miracles would seem to me to be the main consideration if not the dispositive one.  What sort of evidence do we have of miracles supporting Zeus or the God of Islam or the Christian God or the other “gods of the internet”?

 

People may have had a miracle in their own life (or the life of someone they know well and trust) which can serve as evidence.  And considering the application of such an event would seem to be very rational thing to do.  But what if you don’t think you, or anyone close to you, has had a miracle happen or even if it did, you don’t know that it points to one God as opposed to another?  Then I think we should look at history and how such miracles are evidence for a particular religion.

 

As far as the miracles actually being proof of one God or another.  It should be clear the miracles done by Jesus himself would support the Christian God.  As it would be clear that miracles done by Mohamed would support the Islamic God.  But even if we grant that lightening striking a particular ship at sea is a miracle, why should we think it is proof of Thor?  So we would need to consider that when looking at the evidence.

 

Now then we have different historical miracle claims that are assigned to different religions.  How do we analyze the competing historical claims?  I suggest we use the same analysis historians generally use.  Bart Ehrman gives several criteria that historians consider when evaluating whether something in history occurred.  Using this criteria seems like a good way to evaluate different miracle claims.

 

Dr. Ehrman says these are the typical criteria historians use in evaluating historical claims:

1)            Multiple sources

 

2)            Preferably Independent sources

 

3)            Non biased sources

 

4)            Contextual credibility

 

5)            Close in time to the events

 

6)            No contradictions/internally consistent

 

They seem to be rational criteria.  So I would suggest that people when considering what God is most likely “the true God” take these criteria into account in evaluating the various historical miracle claims.

 

So, for example, let’s take the “close in time to events.”  Sometimes people argue that those who wrote the new testament did not themselves see Jesus.  They at best could have seen elderly eye witnesses who saw the event.  Ok Ill grant that for argument’s sake.  But now let’s compare that to Zeus.  Who saw Zeus perform a miracle and how long was it between the person who saw Zeus and the person writing about the event?   As we start to go through the list of criteria we may wish the Christian God was better supported but when we compare it to gods like Thor or the various gods of the internet well we see that the Christian God really does do quite well.   Jesus performed many miracles proving his religion.

 

If for example we have records that say someone on a clear day said “Let Thor’s power Strike this ship!” and then the ship was struck by lightening, ok, I would agree that would indeed be some evidence of Thor.  But how do such accounts hold up under historical criteria?   Who claims to have seen it and  when was it recorded in relation to the event, are there multiple independent sources? etc etc.   Encourage your atheist interlocutor to rationally compare these various gods of the internet against Christ’s multiple miracles using this criteria.  Let them decide for themselves whether the Christian God is the most rational God to believe in.   Let them see for themselves that there is good reason to believe in the Christian God.

 

I think that any rational person who actually takes the question of what God is the true God, seriously and pursues the matter in a rational way will almost certainly end up with only a few Gods if not one. Whether a rational person will be left with 4 or 2 or 1 well I am not arguing that right now but clearly there will not be this bewildering number of gods.

 

So just by considering the theoretical rationality we are likely to narrow down the number of Gods dramatically.  We should of course also consider practical rationality.  This might or might not further sort out some Gods.  And then you have the more narrow questions of deciding between the few remaining Gods and in the case of Christianity you have to sort out all the different denominations.  And of course you should do this in a rational way as well.   But we can leave that for another blog.

 

 

“Love” Versus Selfish “Emotional Empathy”

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in atheism, Athesism Christianity, Catholic, christianity, Morality, philosophy, religion, Uncategorized

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When I speak with atheists about morality they tend to want to talk about Empathy rather than Love.  Maybe empathy seems more “scientific” or exact and, of course, it is less Christian sounding.    It is true that “Love” has many different meanings and the Christian view of Love, agape, is only one sense of the term.  Here I will again offer the Aquinas definition as being good enough for our purposes:

“To love is to will the good of another.”

 

Empathy also has a few different meanings.  Generally, it seems that there are about 3 general types taking shape in the literature:  Emotional (aka, affective), Cognitive, and Compassionate.

 

“Cognitive empathy” is the ability to figure out what someone else will feel.

 

“Emotional empathy” is the one found especially lacking in sociopaths.   Emotional empathy is actually feeling the feelings of others.  With this empathy our brains actually fire in the areas as though we are directly feeling a pain when see someone else being hurt.

 

“Compassionate empathy” is mostly marked off by including a desire to help when someone is suffering.  It may start out from the emotional empathy but it then brings about a will to act.    In short Compassionate empathy basically adds Christian love to the equation.  And indeed, we can do exercises called, unsurprisingly “loving-kindness” meditation that may improve our compassionate empathy.

 

So what should we make of these three types of empathy from a moral perspective?

 

As Christians we are called to love each other and compassionate empathy in the literature is what is most closely associated with that term as understood by Aquinas.  Compassionate empathy adds willing the good of another into the mental state, which as we know is basically Christian love.    Love is a root, if not the root, of Christian Morality, so yes, I am all for that.

 

Cognitive empathy seems fine enough just like any sort of knowledge.  It might have practical benefits in helping us serve others.  However, it is also the type of empathy that allows sociopaths to manipulate others as they seem more adept at this type of empathy than they are at the other two.  But, on the whole, I would say simply having knowledge is not itself morally meritorious.   Like all knowledge I think it is good to have this knowledge but not necessarily morally good.

 

But what about the emotional empathy?  That is the form of empathy where you feel what someone else feels.    It is the form of empathy I think most scientists would refer to, unless they specify otherwise.  (And from this point forward I will just refer to emotional empathy as empathy.)   This is the empathy that most clearly separates the sociopath (who is lacking in this form of empathy) from the normal person.  Sociopaths are, of course, traditionally seen as morally deficient people.    But our new scientific understandings of emotional empathy makes it tricky from a moral perspective.     Let’s dig deeper into what science tells us about this type of empathy.

 

 

Emotional Empathy is a feeling we get.  And as such it is not necessarily meritorious or culpable in itself.  It can help us to love, and to that extent it can be beneficial.   But there are some important points to make.

Empathy Mitigates our Good Deeds by Making them Self Centered

First it seems that emotional empathy makes many moral actions, well, less “selfless.”

 

“As kids, we are told not to hurt others, and we are told not to speak with our mouth full. Kids quickly come to feel very different about violating these two types of rules. Empathy is what makes the difference. Each time you hurt someone, that person’s distress becomes your pain, and you start to associate your vicarious pain with harming others. Violence then starts to feel intrinsically bad. Helping others, on the other hand, makes you feel their happiness, and will start to feel good.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-empathic-brain/201307/inside-the-mind-psychopath-empathic-not-always

 

When we avoid hurting others due to empathy, in a real sense, we are actually avoiding hurting ourselves.  When we bring others joy we are bringing ourselves joy.  To the extent we have more empathy we are acting in our own interest when we avoid hurting others.  Sociopaths do not have this pain when they hurt others so they are not restrained by their own self centered desires.

 

The very same parts of the brain can be triggered by emotional empathy that are triggered when we are directly hurt.  As explained by Bloom in his book “Against Empathy”:

 

“I feel your pain” isn’t just a gooey metaphor; it can be made neurologically literal: Other people’s pain really does activate the same brain area as your own pain, and more generally, there is neural evidence for a correspondence between self and other.”

https://fs.blog/2017/12/against-empathy/

 

“For example, meta-analyses on empathy for pain studies have revealed that a portion of the anterior insula and a specific part of the anterior cingulate cortex were consistently activated, both during the experience of pain as well as when vicariously feeling with the suffering of others.”

https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0960982214007702?token=471C4CEBC686EAE67A44C1DE5EC5F3248787E2DCA1A19E4841999B652AFDE1D37FBBA59721230AF2ED203630842E9246

 

So in effect Empathy is like God giving us a shock every time we hurt others.  But some people – sociopaths do not receive this corrective or it is much duller.  To the extent this is why we act morally better than sociopaths I dare say we are not more moral at all.  When our actions are simply driven by our own desire to avoid pain or discomfort we should not claim the moral high ground.  Can this empathy transition into love?  It seems it can but until we get full blown love and remain in simple emotional empathy – avoiding our own emotional pain or guilt seems to cut against what we should consider meritorious intentions.

 

Now to be clear I am not saying there is something wrong with acting in our self interest.   We should act in our own interest all things being equal.  But to the extent we are acting in self interest we shouldn’t think we can properly claim all the merit of acting selflessly for someone else.    And it is that concern for others that we traditionally find most meritorious from a moral perspective.

Empathy Spreads Suffering

The other problem for some is that empathy would seem something we want to avoid if we adopt a morality that focuses on avoiding suffering.   Empathy seems much more poignant when I see someone suffer than when I see someone celebrate.   I share some joy but I think on the whole I would rather not have any empathy experiences as opposed to several empathetic experiences where I share extreme pain or agony coupled with experiences where someone undergoes great joys.    Is it perhaps that envy is cutting into my joy of seeing others experience joy in a way that the empathy relating to pain seems undiluted?   Research supports the conclusion that negative empathy is stronger than positive empathy:

“Empathy is the ability to perceive and react to another person’s emotions. Much attention has been paid to empathy regarding negative emotions, but little is known about how (or if) we respond to positive emotions in the same way. Now, a new study reports that joy may be harder to share than distress.”

http://www.brainblogger.com/2013/01/26/joy-to-the-world-empathy-and-positive-emotions/

 

But even if, contrary to current research, positive and negative empathy were to balance out or even if empathy of positive emotions was stronger we would still need to ask if empathy of suffering was good.  That seems problematic if you want to say empathy and reducing suffering are both important.  Empathy with someone’s suffering increases the suffering in the world.  If we all see a horrible event where someone suffers pain and we have strong empathy we just magnified the amount of suffering in the world.    You have the person who is actually suffering directly and then the suffering all of us empathic people feel!  Whereas if we were all sociopaths well the person suffering would still suffer but that would be the extent of it.

 

As a Christian I certainly don’t view morality as mostly about avoiding pain/suffering so I do view empathy as a good springboard to love.  But I think those who want to view morality in more simplistic terms – as systems to avoid suffering they have a real problem.   The notions that suffering is a brain state and morality should be geared to avoid those brain states has a very hard case to say empathy with others suffering is morally good.

 

I imagine their argument will be along these lines:  Empathy makes people not want to hurt others so less people will be directly hurt by others if we all have empathy.  I would concede that may be true.  I think it would still be mitigated by laws that even selfish sociopaths would want because they protect them as well as others.  Laws would reduce the harm of sociopaths just like they do now.

 

The real problem for a morality that wants to be based on reducing suffering and yet wants to keep empathy is natural and unintentional suffering caused by natural disasters and diseases etc.  If you are all about reducing suffering it seems difficult to argue that multiplying all that suffering to everyone else with empathy is worth the slight decrease in direct harm caused by others.   It just seems that a morality based on reducing suffering would want to root out empathy.  This is one reason why we can easily think of counterfactuals to moral systems that claim to be all about reducing suffering as I presented here:

https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/12/19/a-moral-hypothetical/

 

Again, empathy is contrary to moral systems like Sam Harris’s that seem to want to claim morality is all about suffering and brain states of suffering.  I of course do not believe morality works that way.  I am not thrilled with suffering either – but the goal is love not just the ending of suffering.  So to the extent suffering (through empathy) leads to love then it is ok and even desirable.

I go more into the problems with Harris’s view here:

https://trueandreasonable.co/2019/02/11/sam-harris-worst-possible-misery-for-everyone/

 

In sum, to the extent emotional empathy removes the selfless intentions of our actions and increases suffering it can be problematic for some moral systems.  Love on the other hand seems morally desirable all the time in just about every moral system.

Love Versus Envy

02 Tuesday Apr 2019

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Love is the basis of Christianity and so it is only fitting that a Christian should consider what it is and what it is not.  In this blog I will compare love and what I think is the opposite of love – envy.  In the next blog I will talk about how love has important differences with empathy.

As Christians we know that craving anything before God is sin.  Wealth is one of those things that can lead to sin.   It, however, is not always intrinsically wrong to have property.  Christ wants us to give to the poor.  If giving them items caused them to be in sin, he would not ask us to do that.  Moreover, the fact that we are commanded not to steal suggests that owning property is part of God’s plan and can be healthy.

If I tell you that country A has a wider wealth gap then country B many people would say that, in itself, is reason to think country B is better.    I’m not one of them.  If people in A are all wealthier then all of those in Country B I would rather live in A, even if I was at the low end of that gap.   I would rather have more in absolute terms in country A even if relative to others in my own country I had less.

I know lots of people who have much more money than I do and I am glad they are in a situation where they can have that.  Envy has actually been one sin that has not usually been a problem for me.  But I do notice that my view is not shared by all.  Some people do think inequality of wealth is itself a problem.   Some people would rather have less themselves in absolute terms if it meant those around them had less as well.   This seems to be a lose/lose option based on envy.

Envy is specially targeted in the tenth commandment.   Envy is also a sin that is especially useful in fueling political and social movements.  Envy of the Jews has lead to antisemitism.  Socialism in particular uses envy to fuel it’s movements.  See for example the Kulaks, and the Ukrainian Holodomor.  Most politicians today do not talk about “the 1%” because they want to express how happy they are for the advantages they have.

Certainly I am not saying that all advantaged people “earned” their advantages.  That is obviously not true.  Some people are born smart or wealthy and this was obviously not “earned.”   However, being born smart or wealthy is not itself an immoral action either.   Don’t we wish we were born smart and wealthy – and good looks would have been nice too while we are at it.   Is it not due to our love that we want our children to have advantages such as good friends, wisdom, family, and yes, at least, some material possessions?

 

Christ commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’

Matthew 22:36-40.

 

The Catechism quotes Saint Thomas Aquina’s short but effective definition of love:

To love is to will the good of another.

Now let’s look at Merriam Webster’s definition of Envy:

painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage

 

I think this helps us understand the direct opposition between the envious heart and what Jesus commands.  Instead of rejoicing that others have the advantages we also want, instead we react negatively toward others receiving the goods we want.

Again I am not saying we need to claim every advantage was earned.  And indeed we should agree that some advantages are not only unearned but are unjust.  If someone cheats someone else out of their property justice dictates they should not keep it.   But we need to make sure we are not rationalizing and fueling our resentment of others having more when they did nothing immoral to get what they have.  That would be envy, the opposite of love.

We can be envious even when someone did earn their advantage.  And as for the unearned, if some people were born lucky, like we wish we were born, do we rejoice for them, or are we resentful?  If we are resentful, obviously, we are not loving them as we love ourselves.

It seems to me that envy has as much claim to be the antithesis of love as hatred does.  I may hate many things about someone as they are now but still hope good for them.  Just as I can hate many things about myself and still hope good for myself.  But envy directly fights against willing the goods for others that we will for ourselves.