Category Archives: Athesism Christianity

Viable Scenarios and Rationality

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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

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A common view is that we are rational when we weigh the evidence for and against any belief we hold, and if the weight of the evidence says it is more likely than not true we can/should continue to believe it.   If not, then we shouldn’t continue to believe it.   Another approach is to say we should “apportion our beliefs to the evidence.”   These approaches are different from each other, but as far as they go they seem ok and I am not trying to parse them out here.  Instead I want to suggest there is more to having rational beliefs than simply following either of those approaches.

Consider the various Cartesian skeptical scenarios.  These scenarios force us to ask how we know anything about the external world. ( BTW throughout this  blog I am using “know” as imprecise short hand for “reasonably  believe.”  I think “knowing” something does require more certainty that what we “reasonably  believe”  but my sentences are awkward enough so I am sticking with the term “know”)     We might be dreaming.  Some god or evil genius may be manipulating a brain in a vat somewhere causing us to have these experiences etc.  If that was the case it would seem there is still something (a thinking thing) having an experience and so in some sense “I” (this thinking thing) would still exist,  but nothing external to my mind would need to exist as I perceive it.  This is where we get the famous “I think therefore I am.”

Perhaps the easiest way to start getting the idea of these scenarios is the dreaming argument.  Everything I know about the external world is due to my experiences.   However, since I have had dreams where the experiences were such that I couldn’t tell I was dreaming it seems at least possible that I could be dreaming now.   Do I have “evidence” I am not in a very detailed dream?   We can’t step outside of our experience to see what is causing our experiences, so no I do not.  Yet I believe I am not in a detailed dream.  So that would seem to violate the notion that rationality involves “apportioning belief to the evidence.”

Moreover, my rejection of the dreaming argument seems to violate a notion of parsimony.   Every time I have the experience of oncoming headlights traveling opposite my direction on a highway, not only do I have that experience, but I also believe there are physical people with minds and lives of their own in those vehicles. And not only that I think those people will pass headlights and behind those headlights will be real people with real lives and concerns etc.

We do not think there actually are physical things (that may have their own minds) that correspond to the imagery we experience when we dream.  We just think there is the experience of seeing people in our dreams, but those people don’t really exist with minds of their own.   It is possible there are material things existing somewhere that somehow correspond to the dream experiences we have, but our experience does not require that these material things actually exist.   It seems absurd to think any material things exist somewhere corresponding with our experiences – at least when we are talking about “dream experiences.”

But when we talk about experiences we have when we believe we are awake, we somehow think the opposite.   Belief in all those extra material things and minds suddenly seems justified – even though we know from dreams – we could be having the experience without the extra material things or minds existing.

My point is not to try to convince people we should believe we are in a dream or other skeptical scenario – I generally don’t try to convince people of things I do not believe myself.   But rather I want to point out that it is not the “evidence” that is apportioning our beliefs here.  The various skeptical scenarios take up a very small percentage of real estate in my mind.  Most of my beliefs are formed around the notion that I am a real person moving around with other real people with minds of their own.   I do this even though I have no evidence against one of the skeptical scenarios being true.     So in doing that I am certainly not “apportioning my belief to the evidence.”   So if it is rational to believe I am not in a skeptical scenario then there must be more to rationality than “apportioning  belief to the evidence.”

I think there is at least one other reason we do not orient our  beliefs towards a  Cartesian Skeptical scenario.  That is because it is hard or impossible to know what we should do in such a scenario.  The converse is also true.  If we did know exactly what we should do if we were in one of these Skeptical scenarios then it would be a much more rational to orient our beliefs to account for this scenario.  It would be a possibility we could better account for because we would have an understanding of how we should deal with it.   Thus whether we could have some idea what we should do in a scenario is important to whether we should consider it a viable scenario.   But without any understanding of how we should deal with or act in such a scenario, that scenario seems a dead end.   It is only rational to orient our beliefs to viable scenarios not dead end scenarios.

Now let’s get back to reality as we believe it exists.  We see things and believe many of them exist in a material form independent of our experience of them.   But does having this “materiality” actually answer how we should deal with this scenario?   Some would say it does, but I don’t think knowing about how things are tells us how they should be.  So I think just adding materiality to the scenario accomplishes very little if anything.

But regardless of where you stand on that question, you still may agree with me that the viability of a scenario does depend on whether we have any hope of knowing what to do if we are in that scenario.   If we don’t know what scenario we are in then, any scenarios where we would have no clue how to act anyway should be discarded from consideration in orienting our beliefs/actions.   This is because by definition whatever beliefs or actions we orient to would not  be  better or worse than any other in those scenarios.  So a rational person focuses on the possible scenarios where we could know what to do and form their beliefs based on the possibility of those scenarios being true.   Those are the “live options” or what I call the “viable scenarios”.

But do we have to “really” know what to do or can we make up what to do?  That is, do we have to be a “moral realist” or can we be an anti-realist and just admit we are making things up  based on our experiences.    It seems to me that if we can just make up morality through a form of constructivism it wouldn’t matter that we are in a real world as opposed to a skeptical world.   It would seem we could just as easily make up morality if we are dreaming or a brain in a vat.  It is also at least possible that there is real morality even though we are a brain in a vat.  And it is also possible our beliefs and intended actions are morally relevant.  But the important point is that if the real world we think we live in does not offer anything better than a form of anti-realist morality, then it is no more “viable” than a Cartesian skeptical scenario.

It seems to me a “viable scenario” requires that 1) moral realism is true and 2) we have a way to know what morality requires.  That is we have a way to know how we should act and what we should believe.      A scenario where we can’t possibly know what to do in it, is not a viable scenario.  Whether viability is an on off switch, or more of a sliding scale may not be all that clear.  But let’s just say any scenario where 1 and 2 are not met is not a very “lively” scenario.  They would share the same trait that makes the Cartesian doubt scenarios non-viable.

Now consider the possibility that naturalism is true.  We can look at the possibility that naturalism is true without any preconditions and we might say the probability is X.  But then let’s consider the probability that naturalism is true if we are in a scenario where moral realism is true.  Some, myself included, would say that if they knew Moral realism was true then they would think the probability naturalism goes down.  So on moral realism the probability of naturalism becomes X minus Y.    Others might not agree.    But one thing I am fairly certain of, is that if the scenario we are in, includes 1(moral realism is true) and 2 (we have a reliable way to know what morality requires) then the probability of naturalism being true is very low indeed.

The logic of the arguments made by Sharon Street, Mark Linville and Richard Joyce demonstrate this.   They persuasively argue that if naturalism and evolution is true, even if moral realism is also true, we have no way to reliably know what morality requires.  Street and Joyce believe in naturalism so they reject the idea we can reliably know what moral realism requires even if it is true.   Linnville, and I, think that in light of this sort of argument we should reject naturalism.

For the reasons I stated above I think rejection of naturalism is the more rational option.  That is because holding on to naturalism leads to believing in a non-viable scenario, and rational people orient their beliefs around viable scenarios, naturalism should  be rejected.    If naturalism is a scenario where the probability of 1 and 2 is extremely low, then naturalism implies a scenario that shares the same trait that makes the Cartesian skeptical scenarios non-viable.

Of course, people can dispute whether 1 and 2 are necessary for a viable scenario.  They can also disagree whether 1 and 2 make the probability of naturalism low and vice versa.  But I think this is the best way to understand the structure of my moral argument for God.

Anti-theists and Pharisees can Interpret the Old Testament the Way they Want, I will Interpret it the Way God Wants

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, Catholic, christianity, history, law, logic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, scripture, Uncategorized

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This a second post about how Christians should deal with the objections to Christianity based on Old Testament verses.  Often opponents of Christianity will try to tell Christians about the parts of the bible that were not “cherry picked” by their Church or Sunday school teachers.  They will often talk about how they read “the whole bible.” And then start spewing out all these obscure bits and pieces of the Old Testament – and then accusingly ask “do you believe that!?”  If you try to interpret the scripture in a way that complies with the basic gist of your faith, (as opposed to their hyper-literalist reading) they will say you are just making up that interpretation.  If you simply say, well I don’t know what to make of that scripture they will say aha! You don’t even know your own scripture.   If this is troubling you then this blog is for you – and hopefully those opponents of Christianity who engage in this line of argument.

I think the best response to this is to test out how much they actually know about the bible.  Simply ask them: What did Jesus say about the old testament scriptures?  The Gospels are full of Jesus being tested on interpretations of the old testament!  We will get to these in a bit.

Don’t be surprised if the only thing the Christian opponent will remember is the “one jot” passage from Matthew  that I blogged about here. I get that as a response so often that I chose to just blog about it first.  When you get this passage  (and you inevitably will if you do this apologetics schtick long enough)  Ask them if they know when Jesus said that and how he elaborated on what he meant.  The above blog deals with that quote and the context much more extensively, but in sum, the quote was part of his famous the Sermon on the Mount.    He clearly elaborates what he means and likely contradicts the anti-theist’s approach to the old testament – which are usually literalistic and amazingly similar to the Pharisees of Jesus time that often wanted to “test” him.

Ask them if Jesus ever summarizes the old testament.   Does he give us guidance as to how we should understand the old testament as a whole so that we live the lives he calls us to?  People who have actually read the Gospels will know he does, repeatedly.  The Gospels record numerous situations where Jesus repeatedly teaches by his actions and words how we should understand the Old Testament.   It would be good to see if the remember any.   I have gathered up several passages where Jesus himself addresses the Old Testament Scriptures.

But before I begin why just quote Jesus?  Why not Popes or other Scripture?   I certainly could, but, Jesus is the lens through which we should read all Christian writings, not the other way around.    When we interpret scripture we of course should make sure we are interpreting it in a way that God directly tells us we should!     Jesus himself informs us that scripture is not just the word of God – it has dual authorship.  See e.g., Mark 10:1-12.

Regardless of how one might understand scripture the vast majority of Christians will agree that when Jesus says something it is God speaking very directly.  Jesus is the head of the church (Colossians 1:18) not the pope, not the bible, but Jesus.  Christians can disagree with each other about scripture.  Martin Luther even said James contradicted Paul.  But if Jesus himself is telling us how to interpret the old testament, a Christian should listen up.  ( Even scripture says we should take special notice if we are getting this directly from Jesus as opposed to Paul e.g., “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband” 1 Corinthians 7:10)

What did Jesus say?   The most important point is that Jesus repeatedly summed up the old testament.  He did not dive in and give us rules for each and every verse of all forty-six books of the old testament.  That would be a continuation of the rules model that he superseded.  Instead he repeatedly tells us we should understand a general bottom line from the old testament and repeatedly rejects precisely the literalist interpretations offered today by certain anti-theists.  (Although, it was religious leaders taking the literalistic view of the old testament in Jesus’s day.)    So what is the bottom line God explicitly tells us we should take from those 46 books?  Let us quote God directly from the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John:

Matthew:

 “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12

This is then repeated:

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 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.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.””

Matthew 22:34-40

Mark:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[f] The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[g] There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31

Luke:

“ On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

[Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan]

Luke 10:25-37

And John:

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.”

John 15:9-17

It isn’t a pope who is saying these things.  It isn’t a protestant reformer or a Sunday School teacher.   It is God himself telling us what the bottom line is.    If you are interpreting any of the old testament in a way that goes against this then are you going against God’s interpretation.  I am not interpreting God, I am quoting him.   Accordingly, churches are not “cherry picking” passages but rather being mindful of what God explicitly told them they should take away from the scripture.   Sure they will focus on the passages that they feel deliver the message God told us we should get from the Old Testament and not dwell on passages where it is hard to see the connection.  But that is not cherry picking that is being obedient to God.

Scripture is God revealing himself to us at very different times and environments.  But God is infinite and our understanding is finite.   It should not be surprising that God will use different tools that work better for some times and places than they do for others.  And it should not be surprising that scripture will never entirely reveal everything about God so we can completely understand God as a whole.  So the fact that we look at some verses of the 73 books and have to shrug our shoulders should not be surprising!  An infinite being revealing himself is not the same as telling the story of Harry Potter.     Does God give us enough direction to live a moral life.  I think any honest reader of the gospels would agree he does.

God took the time to give us a summary of the old testament.   I do think Christians should at least understand this often repeated summary.  Love God and love each other.  So if we read a passage and we don’t see how it yields what God told us it should, then it is fine to say we are not sure what we should make of that passage.    Perhaps the story is conveying a message to people based on understandings we have lost.   Perhaps what seemed loving and forgiving to the ancients no longer seems so.   Jews and Christians have made quite a bit of moral progress over the last several centuries.  An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth may seem extreme to us but it may have been a very moderate statement if the culture typically asked for the heads a culprit’s whole family in exchange for a tooth.  As we might expect God’s guidance has helped us make moral progress!

Jesus said as much himself.  At times scripture was written as a practical tool to guide people in the state they were in at the time.  See e.g., Matthew 19:1-9 and Mark 10:1-12.  Where Jesus says although the old testament allowed divorce that was not really how we should live.   (I would note Paul points out Jesus said this and that would be very hard to square with the view that Paul did not think Jesus was alive on earth as some Mythicists would claim.  “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband” 1 Corinthians 7:10.)

Let’s look at how Jesus himself applies his bottom line summary in response to the Pharisees who often would raise almost the identical issues that Christian opponents raise today.

Stoning People

John 8:2-11 is an obvious and direct answer from Jesus on how we should deal with old testament laws:

“At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group  and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

These ancient codes like Lev. 20:10; Deut 22:22 have been so often quoted by Christian opponents you would think Jesus never addressed any of them, let alone addressed them directly and explicitly.

Many atheists will talk about how this passage from John does not appear in existing early texts.  But that is a red herring.  All Christian Churches I am aware of include this passage in their scripture.   Whether it was in early transcripts and taken out of some – or was a story about Jesus that was passed on and later included into John is unimportant.  It is part of our scripture and it tells us what God said.

In any case this is just one of many examples where Jesus’s bottom line that old testament laws must be understood in terms of treating others as you would like to be treated.  That would of course include judging others as we would like to be judged.    See e.g., Matthew 7:1-5, Luke 6:37-42 and Luke 6:31-36.  Where Jesus tells us to focus on our own shortcomings instead of trying to judge others for theirs.    These teaching not to judge others guts the penal aspects of the old testament across the board.  But let’s move to some other specific examples.

Healing on the sabbath, another rule broken! 

“Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.  Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.  Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”

Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.  Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

Mark 3:1-6.  See also Matthew 12:10-13, Luke 13:10-17

Harvesting Grain on the Sabbath was explicitly forbidden in Exodus 16:23–29 even gathering sticks was not permitted Numbers 15:32–36.  So we should not be surprised by the Pharisees who are so similar to many of today’s literalist rule obsessed Christian opponents.

“At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?  He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.  Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent?  I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.  If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.  For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Matthew 12:1-8

“Unclean” woman and Jesus.

Leviticus 15 talks about how women who are menstruating are unclean.  It is not just that an unclean person should not touch be touched by anyone, but you become unclean even if you touch things they touch! They are not supposed to touch anyone, and they are supposed to yell they are unclean so that others won’t contact them.   Yet she touches Jesus and Jesus does not condemn her for violating the Rules.   Indeed, he even praises her for her faith and heals her!  Matthew 9:18-23 Luke 8:43-48  and Mark 5:21-34.

According to Leviticus 13:45-46 and Numbers 5:2 lepers are also unclean.  So people are not supposed to touch them.   But what does Jesus do?  Yep he “reached out his hand…. but quickly pulled back saying ‘the rules say I can’t touch a leper, sorry dude!’ and walked on by” Anti-theist bible page 752:42.

For those interested in Christianity here is what the Christian Gospels actually say:

“When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

Matthew 8:1-4

See also Luke 5:13 “Then He put out His hand and touched him…”

Rules says we are not supposed to touch corpses Numbers 19:11-22 and number 5:2. But he seems to do just that when he takes a dead girl’s hand in Matthew 9:23-25.  Now Jesus said she was just “sleeping” but I do think the author intends us to think she had died in the sense we would mean by it.

Jesus also cuts against the teachings that one might read in the OT that misfortunes are the results of our sin or those of our ancestors.  Exodus 20:5 Deuteronomy 5:9 and Second Samuel 3:29.  No doubt passages like these lead the disciples to ask whether a man blind from birth was suffering due to his own sins or those of his parents.  Jesus said “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” John 9:3. See also Luke 13:4-5

“Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

In my last blog I talked about the rule based systems Jesus is here repeatedly and emphatically moving away from and rather pointing us in a moral direction.  That direction can best be expressed by loving God and treating others as you would want to be treated.   That is the basic rule Jesus applied above and it can serve us to address all these “tests”.

Imagine this from the perspective of the woman caught in adultery and the rule Jesus is asked to address.    Imagine being a person suffering from paralysis or blindness and believing Jesus can heal you, but unfortunately the time Jesus comes near just happens to be the Sabbath so he follows the rule and says he will not work that day so you are out of luck.   What if you were the woman who suffered from hemorrhaging for years (thus preventing you from going to temple and forcing you to be considered unclean causing you to be outcast from society) knowing that if only you touched him you would be cured.  But when you did touch him instead of healing you he reprimanded you for breaking the rule!  Lepers obviously suffered.  They also had to announce to others they were unclean.  Jesus could heal you with a touch but sadly touching was against a rule so he walked by.  Putting ourselves in the shoes of others is the key that now makes all these “tests” seem easy.   If you were a Pharisee listening to the Gospels at Jesus time I am not sure you would always anticipate how he answers these tests.  Jesus directly and radically changed the rule based system.   That is one of many reasons why the Gospels are so amazing.

Am I saying that God Changed what is Moral?

People often misunderstand what relativism is or at least when it is objectionable to the moral realist.  The moral realist does not say that a certain action – say killing someone is always immoral.  Rather they say that it is not dependent on the mind of the person judging.   So there may not be anything wrong with someone making an “eeeeee” sound.  But if you know that action is aggravating/effecting those around you then it may be immoral.  The moral realist is fine with that view.  The moral realist agrees the surrounding facts can effect the morality of a specific action.  However the objective moral realists says the rightness or wrongness of a given set of facts is not relative to the mind of the person doing the judging.  So if Jesus not stoning the adulteress (assuming all the facts and circumstances of her case) then it is not evil then it doesn’t matter if some Pharisee thought it was evil.    The relativist would say his not stoning her could be morally good for Jesus but not morally good for the Pharisee.  I address this common misconception of relativism here.

The passage from Mark 3:1-6 is especially illuminating on this point.   Jesus states “ Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil….”  Of course, if it were objectively evil to break a rule (do any work on the sabbath) his statement would not make sense.  But they know what Jesus did was good and not evil despite the rule!  And Jesus knew he did not need to explain.  How did he know?  Because God is a loving relational being and he made us in his image.  Yet we are so attached to rules that even today people will still ask is ok to work (in a hospital healing people no less) on the sabbath?  Following Jesus does not require a high IQ and an understanding of a complicated rule system.  That is not why it is hard to follow him and do good.

Hopefully anyone can see one of the main messages that Jesus repeatedly taught was that specific rules are often twisted so that they work against their intended goal.   He repeatedly tells us what the moral goal is (love) and shows us how to apply that goal to our thinking.   This is why I am somewhat baffled by people asking why didn’t Jesus just simply announce another rules against [insert whatever specific rule you want].    “’Are you still so dull?’ Jesus asked them.” Matthew 15:16

It is likely just that people haven’t read the Gospels, or if they did, they read them with a motivation other than trying to understand what Jesus was trying to communicate.      The anti-theists of today are so much like the Pharisees thinking they could teach morality better than Jesus by using the rule based system.   It is almost miraculously prophetic how Jesus addresses this same issue so directly and repeatedly.  It is also interesting that just as in Jesus day those who want to harden their hearts to his message will succeed and not understand even the basics of what he repeatedly taught.

So when Christian opponents say we are “cherry picking” passages or reading the passages in ways that allow us to be loving, we should admit it is true.  That is what God told us to do.   Don’t let their ignorance of even the basic, repeated, and explicit teachings of Jesus lead us off the path God told us to take.

Christ’s “Moral Direction” Versus “Moral Rules” Approach: Surpassing “Every Jot”

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

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

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I have a few blogs drafted on understanding the Old Testament.  A common attack on Christianity will be to take a passage out of the Old Testament and try to use it a sort of “Gotcha!” statement.   And sometimes it will be a gotcha statement for people who are raised Christian because Christians usually do not dwell on these passages – for good reason.  The reason is because God himself in the body of Jesus gave us instruction on how we should understand the Old Testament.  So by focusing on Jesus’s teaching we can see the Old Testament as God intended.   I Hope that by reading these blogs atheists and theists will gain a deeper understanding of how Jesus calls us to live.

 

Quite a few atheists will ask questions like: Why doesn’t Jesus say it is wrong to have slaves?  Why doesn’t he say it wrong to discriminate based on  [insert category]?  Why didn’t he command [insert rule]?      This is what I call the “rules model” of moral behavior.  Certainly, taking individual actions and saying you must (or must not) do X is one way to inform people how to act.  But Jesus overwhelmingly took a different approach.  He gave us a moral direction not more rules.  That is why early Christians were “followers of the way” rather than “keepers of the code.”

 

Both models have their advantages and disadvantages.  The atheist complaint that there are a lack of more simple minded rules, that the rules model offers tends to misunderstand Christianity at a fundamental level.   But that is not to say I do not understand where they are coming from.  There is a certain comfort in having a set of rules and believing as long as I follow these I am ok. Regardless of the authority figure, parent, police, referee, school teacher it seems obvious and fair to have the rules set forth in a plain way.   So we see that just as we want to know the rules today, Jesus was also asked for the rules.  What are the rules to get past those pearly gates?

 

But there is another reason we want the rules.   And here we are getting into a drawback.   We want to know the minimum.  We don’t pay more for items than the price tag, we don’t overpay taxes, etc. We often think of morality as a restriction similar to a lack of money – in that it can limit our pleasures and increase our suffering.   We really don’t want that.  We don’t want to give up more of our worldly pleasure than is necessary.   This focus of living a life of earthly self-centered pleasure and avoiding suffering is often understood as a form of slavery in Christianity.  It can keep us from living a life of love, and service to God and others.

 

Because “rules model” tend to make moral minimums the bar, it makes sense Christ would not dwell on specific rules.  That model tends to cap off our goodness.   With rules you only have to go so far and you can comply with a code/rule, but Jesus wants us to always strive to go further in a moral direction.  Does anyone really think they are a good person just because they do not own slaves?   It is obvious that Christ wants much more.

 

Yet often Christians – including myself – when we think about whether we will go to heaven we will naturally at least go through the ten commandments and consider if we have kept them.  Jesus does not entirely discourage this, but obviously he goes beyond that.  see e.g., Matthew 19:16-28    We should love each other so, obviously, we shouldn’t murder.  But we are not ethical just because we follow the rule and do not murder someone.  Jesus wants more from us than a simple minded rule model suggests.  Jesus teaches the basis of the rules and then tells us to take the basis to the fullest.  Because his moral directional teaching does not put a cap on our morality like rules based morality Christianity has lead to unprecedented moral progress in the west where Christianity has had the longest and most intense effect.

 

“Rules models” have at least four downsides.  First, As explained above and below they tend to suggest we can cap off our morality.

Second, They are subject to gamesmanship in interpretation e.g., what is slavery?  Are indentured servants slaves?  Are all workers in communist countries slaves?  Is saying if you don’t work you don’t eat forced labor?   Is slavery ok in prisons or for prisoners of war?   There are many questions we could ask just about slavery.  The bible might have to be an infinitely thick rule book to cover all the different and wide ranging moral questions.  Human laws are always restricted by our lack of ability to understand someone’s true intentions.  We can only make inferences about their intentions from their behavior.  Thus people often play games and try to technically comply with rules even though they violate the spirit of the rule.  See e.g., Jesus healing on the Sabbath.   Unlike human laws that can only deal with what humans can learn, God’s law addresses our intentions and scripture consistently makes it clear that we should not think we can fool God.  “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 God does not have to rely only on the outward behavior we can observe, so his judgment is not so limited.

 

Third, people want to know the reasons for the rules not just have a list of dos and don’t “because I said so.”  We don’t want to do things that seem arbitrary.

 

Fourth,  by addressing who we are and why certain moral rules exist we can understand and develop many moral understandings.  So not only do we go further than each rule we can develop our own rules on different issues.    For example understanding that all human life is sacred and made in God’s image not only prevents murder but it can, and has, lead to much more, including the understanding that slavery and discrimination is wrong.

 

Where is the scriptural evidence that Jesus ended the rules model of the old testament but not the moral commandments in a directional sense?    It was the point of his statement about “the smallest letter or least stroke of the pen” from Matthew.  It is perhaps one of the most quoted passages from Jesus by atheists trying to buttress their “gotcha” verses by claiming it means that Christians must follow every “jot” of the old testament in a literal sense.    But that takes Matthew 5:17-20 way out of context and can even contradict Jesus.  First here is the passage:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-20

 

What is the context?  Jesus said this near the beginning of his famous “Sermon on the Mount.”  And we have three full chapters of Jesus himself explicitly elaborating what he means by that quotation.  Those chapters are Mathew 5, 6, and 7.  And indeed when you understand that statement in the context of rest of the sermon on the mount, you will see why atheists not only misunderstand the context but often try to use that quotation to contradict what Jesus explicitly said when he elaborated on what he meant.

 

In that sermon Jesus famously blew the “cap” off of many Old Testament moral commands.  He kept the intent but insisted we go further in our moral development.   He explicitly says how we are called to not just meet the morality of pharisees and teachers of the law but “surpass” them.  He then goes on to specifically articulate how we should “surpass” them.

 

I always encourage people to read the gospels but here, I won’t quote all three chapters but rather just paraphrase with citations.   Not murdering is not sufficient don’t even get angry or disparage others.   Mathew 5:21-22   Don’t just avoid literally committing adultery.  Do not even look at another woman with lust.  Mathew 5:27-30.   Not only should you be required to give a bill of divorce before leaving your wife, you shouldn’t divorce her at all.  Mathew 5:31-32  Not only should you not violate your oaths but you should always speak the truth.  Mathew 5:33-37  Not only should you limit your vengeance based on the violation you suffer (“eye for an eye”) but instead you should not take any vengeance and instead give your enemy more than they wrongly took and the beggar more than what they ask for.  Mathew 5:38-42 He expands the love of neighbor to everyone even enemies.  And directs us to love our enemies. Mathew 5:43-47  “Be perfect…” Mathew 5:48.

 

Don’t just give to the poor but give to the poor silently without a big show. It is to be done out of love of others not to improve your image. Mathew 6:1-4 Likewise pray but your prayers should be for your relationship with God not in order to make you look holier than thou.  Mathew 6:5-6  Forgive everyone like you want God to forgive you.  Mathew 6 9-15.  Fast but do not do it so others will be aware of your holiness but again make the sacrifice without letting everyone know.  Mathew 6:16-18   Desire for money and greed should have no place as they will control you instead of God. Mathew 6:24  In all things rely on God and don’t be a slave to worldly possessions Mathew 6:25-34.

 

Notice Jesus specifically rejects the atheist interpretation of the harsh punishments of the old testament and specifically that we should not to judge others. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” Matthew 7:1 and we see this theme of not retaliating but instead forgiving throughout the above sermon.     He says we should focus on our own moral shortcomings rather than those of others and understand that we are always biased to think we are morally better than we really are. Matthew 7:1-5.

 

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12. “When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” Matthew 7:28-29

 

Amazing indeed.  He changed our morality from the simple minded view of “ok just don’t do these things and you’re good” that atheists often claim to want, to the much more challenging call to love others as best you can.    This change in approach has lead to moral progress never seen before or since and of course will lead us to even greater moral progress if we continue in this direction.

We Know Much More from Hearsay then from Modern Science

21 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, christianity, epistemology, history, logic, philosophy, rationality, science, Uncategorized

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Lots of times certain atheists will argue that the bible is “just hearsay and that is not evidence.”   As a trial lawyer with a pretty good understanding of the rules of evidence I think there are some important points to be made here.  If people don’t know what they are talking about they may end up with a very odd epistemology (that is the fancy word for what it means to know things or to have your beliefs justified or warranted) if they just repeat the scorn heaped on “hearsay.”  To understand how hearsay fits in to our justified beliefs we have to understand what hearsay is and that will take some explaining.  So the first part of this blog will go into what hearsay is and is not, and the second part will explain why so much of what we believe is based on hearsay.

 

Almost all of the important information we know we learned through what would be considered “hearsay” under typical court rules.    The US Federal Rules of evidence 801(c) defines hearsay this way:

“Hearsay. “Hearsay” is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted”

 

So any sort of written or oral statement made outside of the courtroom, would be hearsay if it is offered for the truth of what is asserted.   We can ignore the “at the trial or hearing” bit, because I am looking at the substance of the rule.  So if someone is telling you something they saw with their own eyes or heard with their own ears etc, and they are able and willing to answer your questions about that under oath, it would not be hearsay according to the standard I am using in this blog- even if they are telling you this information outside of a hearing or trial.

 

 

There are exceptions to the rule where the courts allow certain hearsay in even though it is hearsay.   Unlike the definition of hearsay I gave these exceptions can vary from state to state and I won’t go into them, other than to say I think  the existence of these exceptions serves my point.  Courts are extremely strict about the evidence they let in, but even they allow hearsay in if it is under certain exceptions.  Again my point is that hearsay is really where we get much of what we consider “knowledge” so the fact that courts might let some in shows it is not always considered invalid.

 

There is no question that courts would consider hearsay to be “relevant evidence.”   So claims that hearsay is not evidence are just false.   Although it is true that it might not be “admissible” evidence.  Hearsay is often excluded because we think people should be able to cross examine witnesses, witnesses should have to formulate their responses by live questions not carefully couch their views in writing, the statements should be under oath,  and the jury should be able see the demeanor of the person and judge their credibility etc.   So courts don’t allow hearsay evidence because they want trials to rely on the best evidence not because they don’t think hearsay is evidence.  The courts want the best evidence if they can require it.  So they do.    But there is no question that hearsay can be “relevant evidence” in that if fits the definition federal rules of evidence definition of relevant evidence.

  “ Rule 401. Test for Relevant Evidence

Evidence is relevant if:

 

(a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and

 

(b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.”

 

I talked about this definition in this blog.

So anyone who says hearsay is not “relevant evidence” simply does not know what they are talking about.   Let’s get a bit better understanding of what “hearsay” is.

What does it mean to be “offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted”?  It means that the person is trying to use the contents of the statement as evidence that what is asserted in the statement is true.  So for example in my post on empathy versus love I quoted a source which said emotional empathy triggers the same brain neurons that relate to direct physical pain.  I was quoting that source as evidence of the truth of what was asserted by that source.  So it was hearsay.  Now unless the person I quoted actually did that experiment himself and looked at the brain mris himself then he likely was just repeating what he read in a journal or some other writing.  And he was doing that for the purpose of evidencing the truth of what they were saying in that writing.  Thus it was hearsay on top of hearsay – AKA, double hearsay.  And that assumes he read the literature directly from the person who made the observations.  So it is likely at best double hearsay.

What would not be hearsay?

A statement might not be offered for the truth of what is asserted if for example you just wanted to prove a person believed it to be true or to attack someone’s credibility.    So an out of court statement is often used when cross examining a witness.  For example  “In a prior deposition, you said the defendant was wearing a red hat didn’t you?  Now you are saying he was wearing no hat at all.”  Well assuming it is not crime to wear or not wear a hat, that fact likely is not directly an element of the case.  So the purpose is not to prove he was wearing a hat or not.  The purpose the prior statement is being used for, is to challenge the witness’s credibility, for example, maybe lead to doubts about the witnesses accuracy in identifying the correct person.    So that prior statement is not being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted (that the person was in fact wearing a red hat) but rather to attack the witnesses credibility.  Therefore that statement would not be hearsay because it is not being used for hearsay purposes.

 

Also if someone is telling you what they themselves heard or saw with their own senses and they are able and willing to answer any questions you have on the matter under oath that would not be hearsay.  (No I am not saying it has to be a courtroom for purposes of this discussion)  But they would only be able to tell you what they saw with their own eyes.  Experts can also share their opinions but again they would need to be able and willing to answer all your questions.  So we can’t just take an article from an expert science journal and enter it in evidence with nothing more.  That would be hearsay.  That said if your sister told you she saw a cardinal in the backyard and she was there to answer questions that would not be hearsay.  Your believing that there was a cardinal in the back yard based on her statement would not be based on hearsay.     If you yourself saw cardinal in the back yard, you knowledge of it being there is also not based on hearsay.  Of course, those things are not known based on science either.

 

But any information you learn about from reading that science journal is based on hearsay.  The journal is telling you about experiments or science and you are reading it for the truth of what they are asserting.     Most of the nonfiction we read, is “for the truth of the matter asserted.” So when I read a history book that says the Ribbontop-Molotov pact was an agreement between the Nazis and Socialist Russia to divide Eastern Europe that is hearsay.  It is communicating that information for the purpose of making me believe the statements are true and that is how I am reading the book.    Hence the vast majority of what we know from reading any sort of nonfiction is hearsay.  All of history, geography, sociology, sports, news, is all overwhelmingly hearsay.  None of it is modern science.

 

Even if you read a copy of a diary explaining what a person saw themselves, it would still be hearsay.  At trial you would not be able to just enter that diary.  You would need to be able to call that person live and that person would have to be able and willing to answer questions under oath.  So hopefully you are starting to see just how much of what we know (or at least “reasonably believe”) is in fact hearsay.

 

Modern science started around 1600.  Before then People lived lives where they knew all sorts of things about those around them. Sure lots of it through hearsay especially after the printing press.  But very little of it through what we would consider modern science.

 

Modern Science is not how we know if we walk on water we will sink or that dead things typically don’t come back to life.  People knew these things before 1600, and really science added very little to these beliefs.    People knew the earth was round.  They even traveled around the world all before modern science.

 

So how much of our scientific knowledge do we know by reading it from books or from people who learned of it from reading books as opposed to doing the experiments ourselves?   All of those experiments you read about other people doing you know through hearsay.   I mean unless you are a very busy scientist who never reads about any other science experiments, probably, the vast majority of what you know about science you know from “hearsay.”  Now at least presumably most of that hearsay does also have a causal root in science as well.  That is the statements would not have been made if it weren’t for the scientific testing done.  So I am willing to call that knowledge as coming from both science and hearsay even though the more proximate cause of our knowledge is hearsay.   Since that knowledge is based on both science and hearsay, let’s call all that knowledge it a wash in our tally.

 

Moreover, we should consider that science is not the only way we can reach what seems like scientific conclusions.  Galileo figured the heavy ball would fall just as fast as the lighter ball by a simple thought experiment.  No scientific testing required.   Consider one cannon ball is heavier than another.  Now attach them to eachother.   If Aristotle was right and the lighter cannon ball would fall slower than the heavier one you would expect the lighter one to slow the heavier one’s descent.   But if they are attached then they are one thing and therefore the combined weight of both balls in this system is more than either individually.    Therefore the two balls attached should both fall faster then either when they were separate!  It is a contradiction to say the heavier cannonball will fall slower and faster if it is attached to the other lighter cannonball.  From this Galileo knew they would fall at the same speed before he ever supposedly went to the Tower of Pisa.

 

Now to be fair I do not think that is hearsay either.  There is a certain type of logical thinking that philosophers do that can yield knowledge that is neither hearsay nor modern science.  Math is neither hearsay nor science.  Math is best understood in ways other than hearsay.  But sometimes people just memorize those times tables and then it could be hearsay.  It would be hard to say how many people know the Pythagorean theorem from figuring it out versus just being told.  If you know it from being told then that is hearsay.  If you know it from being told that is hearsay that is also based on math but it is also hearsay.  But knowing the Pythagorean theorem is clearly not modern science either.   So again that could be something that we know more due to hearsay which may play a part but science clearly does not.

 

Here is another math and hearsay piece of knowledge.   I know there are 73 books in the Catholic Bible.  I could have learned this by counting the books and doing the math myself.  But, I have to admit, I just looked it up and was told – so I know this by hearsay.  How do I know what “modus ponens” means?  hearsay. (If you looked it up then you learned it from hearsay too)   How do I know the word gato in Spanish means cat?  Hearsay.

 

History is huge on this.  Prehistory is usually defined as those times and places before the use of a written language we can access.  This should tell you just about all history is hearsay.  Who was the first U.S. president?  So many facts about the Roman empire etc etc.

 

Now compare all the information that you read or were told about by someone (other than someone who says they were personally there and saw what they are telling you about  and  is able and willing to answer any questions you have) versus that information you have learned from doing a scientific experiment yourself?   Hopefully you are now starting to see that it is not even close.

 

And no I am not even dealing with Humes issue with science.

 

Now it is true that by creating the internet science has spread knowledge.  Similar to how the printing press did before that.  But the knowledge they are distributing is not usually scientific knowledge.  New recipes, history, geography, a different way to do you hair or how build a shed what I did today work matters etc etc.  It’s not science.   But it is hearsay!  Yep most of what we are sharing over the printing press and internet is hearsay.    So again the internet is a win for science and hearsay.  But most of what we are learning is based on hearsay and not scientific knowledge.  And the fraction of information we get about science over the internet is almost always hearsay.   So if we wanted to say there would be no internet without modern science I would agree.  But without hearsay (scientists sharing the results of their experiments in writing) modern science would be so slowed down that we wouldn’t have an internet now either.  Books contain hearsay and they were important to the development of all learning including science.   Hearsay is just as important to the development of the internet as is science and most of what we know from the internet is not science.

 

Even videos that show an event are dependent on hearsay to say they are what they claim to be.  As a lawyer I can’t just show up and start playing a youtube video without a live witness to testify what is actually in the video and that it accurately depicts what it seems to depict.  On the internet we get this writing under the video explaining what it is and that writing is hearsay.    So I couldn’t just pull up a youtube video and say “here judge see the type under the video that says it is what it claims to be?”  No that’s hearsay.    And you rely on that hearsay to know if you are looking at what is supposed to be a real video as opposed to a doctored video.   So even there we need hearsay and most of the videos are not teaching science.

 

Hopefully this posts will help people understand that we base a huge amount of our justified beliefs on “hearsay” but science independent of hearsay accounts for only a tiny fraction of those beliefs.   Hearsay is the basis of so many more of our beliefs it is not even close.

More on the Euthyphro Dilemma: Does it Really help Atheists?

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, christianity, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, Uncategorized

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In a prior blog  I argued that divine Command theory was a form of subjectivism and anti-realist and that all forms of anti-realist morality would have deep problems.  Here I want to set forth a smaller claim.  Do the problems directed at divine command theory apply to all subjectivist theories (sometimes called relativist theories) of morality?

So again Divine Command Theory is the view that right and wrong is simply whatever God decides it is.  Socrates addressed it in the Euthyphro Dilemma by asking:

1) is an act pleasing to the gods because it is good,

or rather

2) is an act good because it is pleasing to the gods?

The Divine command theory says 2 is correct.   An act is good because it is pleasing to God.   Whatever is God’s will to be good, is good.  That is what it means to be good.  Divine command theory is really a form of subjectivism where the person whose judgement is relevant is God.

Russ Schaefer-Landau argued against divine command theory (claim 2) along these lines:

The gods either have good reason to will the way they do or they do not

If the gods have no good reason to will the way they do then their view is arbitrary

If the gods have good reason to will the way they do then something is good due to those reasons not due to the gods’ will. Therefore, we would be looking at case 1 in the Euthyphro dilemma not 2.

It follows that if divine command theory is true then morality is arbitrary.

The same argument would seem to apply to all relativism/subjectivist claims of morality.  We can simply exchange “the gods” for “Joe” or “western culture” or whatever subject the subjectivist/relativist thinks defines what is moral.

So the questions for this blog are does the argument work against all forms of subjectivism or relativism?

I still believe the problems I outlined in an earlier blog pose bigger problems for subjectivism and other forms of anti-realist morality, (except error theory/nihilism) but it seems to me that anything that saves the relativist from this problem would save divine command theory as well.  And to the extent this argument sinks divine command theory it sinks other forms of relativism/subjectivism as well.

It seems that William Lane Craig has a view that saves divine command theory from this argument but it would not save subjectivism/relativism if the relevant subject was a person.

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.    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

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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 we 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.

Sam Harris and Fundamental Beliefs

06 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in atheism, Athesism Christianity, christianity, logic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, religion, science, Uncategorized

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I listened to a podcast recently by Sam Harris.

 

https://samharris.org/podcasts/108702/

 

As some of you may know arguments might be sound but that does not mean they prove anything to anyone.    Why?  Because people might not believe the premises.   I blogged about the difference between a proof and sound argument here:

 

https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/01/11/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-gods-existence-proven/

 

The limitations on these premises presents the questions what are our ultimate goals or beliefs?  This was somewhat explored in that podcast starting around 50 minutes in.   Rebecca Goldstein I think correctly identifies some beliefs that we can’t give up without becoming incoherent – such as belief in the rules of logic.  But beyond that what fundamental beliefs would she hold?

 

She mentions belief in an external world and the laws of nature.   That was interesting to me because I have considered that one myself and rejected as not as important as the belief that a rational person can reliably find out what I am supposed to do in life.    I want to explore why I think that here.

 

They also mentioned belief in moral realism as one that is fairly fundamental.   I think this sort of belief is what religious people will often adopt.  I think non-religious people will often try to reduce the importance of morality in forming our beliefs.  I think that is error.

There is a motivational aspect as to how we shape our beliefs and consciences.     I would offer two noble goals in what we want our beliefs to be:

1) People want to believe what is true

2) People want to believe things that lead them to do the right thing

Both of these are noble motivations.  And we obviously should try to form our beliefs with both of these in mind.  But what if certain beliefs lead you to the conclusion there is no right way to act?  That is certain beliefs lead you to believe what is wrong is not wrong because nothing is wrong?  Does a rational person have a good reason to reject that belief?   I think they do.

Now that might violate the first noble motivation.  But let’s think about that motivation just a bit and I think we will see it really is subservient to the second.

The idea that we are here to fill our heads with true beliefs and expunge false beliefs is odd.  If I just tried to memorize phone books few people would say that was really a good way to fill my head, or spend my time, even if I could fill my head with billions of true beliefs that way.    We all understand that knowing certain facts are more important than knowing others.  Just like some false beliefs are more problematic than other false beliefs.

 

But why?  Believing any true fact seems to fit the first noble purpose.   If it is a known fact then it has the quality of being true just as much as any other fact.   So why is it that truly believing some facts are more important, and why does it seem correctly believing other facts is extremely unimportant?   To the extent all the beliefs accord with reality, they are all true, and it is not as though some are “truer” than others.   So it is not the extent of “truthiness” that explains this.

I think ultimately the answer is that believing some facts leads us to live a good life and some falsehoods lead us to a bad life.   And I think this shows the second purpose is naturally more important.

What about some beliefs about morals being more important than other beliefs about morals?   Someone may view it as immoral to hunt deer.  The same person might also think it is immoral to round people up and kill them as was done in Poland at various times.   We do not treat the belief about hunting deer as important as the belief about killing people.  What explains this?  Again the person might believe both are immoral.  But the difference is the latter is more immoral.  So it is still the morality of the issue that makes us view the second belief as more important.  This I believe fairly clearly shows that morality is the more important goal that we want from our beliefs.

 

I think religious people tend to know this truth.  Certain atheists sometimes seem to miss it.  But then after they discuss their science, they tend to drift over to issues of morality and what we should be doing.   Science is great and it answers many interesting questions.  But having true beliefs about “what is” in the observable scientific realm, is not as important as knowing what we should do.  It is forever stuck with a supporting role to the star philosophical/religious question of what we should do.

 

 

Faith defined

23 Monday Jul 2018

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

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What does Faith mean?   Of course many people say “faith” is the same thing as what I would call “blind faith.”  Believing something with no evidence or even despite of the evidence to the contrary.  As a Christian we want to know what God wants us to do when he says we should “have faith” or “believe”.  So I have investigated what the New Testament authors/Holy Spirit would have meant by “faith” when they enjoin us to believe and/or have faith.   The conclusion I have reached is a fairly straightforward definition.  Faith is belief and trust in God.   It might be blind faith but that is not the expected variety of faith.  In acts we see Paul would normally reason with people to try to help them become Christian.

“As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.” (emphasis added)

Acts 17, 2-4

Of course, there are places where it appears Paul worked miracles and people gained faith through witness of those miracles.  Which, of course, seems a perfectly rational way to gain faith and would likely be more convincing.  But as the above passage states his “custom” was to spread the faith through reason.

 

Why is there this misunderstanding of faith?   Well there are various reasons.  Obviously Christian detractors would like to label everyone of faith as being irrational so their motivation can be obvious.  But that clearly is not even close to the whole story.  Although most early church fathers and apostles were in favor or reason, some early church fathers emphasized a sort of rejection of reason such as Tertullian.  During the protestant reformation protestant churches seemed to take a hard turn against faith and reason coexisting.  Eg.,  Martin Luther “Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding,…”  Calvin seemed to have them operating as two completely different types of belief.  The Catholic Church has clearly emphasized that they work together and are never in conflict.  Pope John Paul II even described them as two wings for the human spirit.  It is obvious that certain evangelical faiths also want to embrace reason.

 

But lets get to scripture and what was meant.  The word that was translated as “faith” in Paul’s writing is the Greek word “Pistis”.   The word “believe” in John’s Gospel is the word Greek word  pisteuō.” I don’t intend to dive into that too much here but it is worth noting that these words had meanings and were not completely made up when the new testament was written.

 

Now I would like to look at scripture and address one interpretation that of a verse that I think is the most often cited by those who would claim Faith is irrational.  It comes from Hebrews 11:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” King James version.

 

No doubt this is a rather odd wording.  And if we just examine this phrase without the context it may lead people to think the author is saying our belief itself is the evidence for our belief in God.  But in context I think it is pretty clear (albeit still admitting the passage could be more clear) that the author is saying that the faith of the people who came before, and Gods treatment of them, is evidence for us.   To understand my point ask yourself “whose faith?” is the author referring to?  If you read the entire chapter you will see he is referring to the faith of the ancient Jews and describing how they were rewarded by God.  The fact that God was trustworthy to them is evidence that he will be trustworthy for us.

 

The overall tenure of the Hebrews seems to be one of a spiritual pep talk.    In Chapter 11 the author explains how many of the earlier Jews were rewarded by God by taking his word.  Moses, Abraham, Elijah etc.  These people all had faith in God and were rewarded.  Accordingly their faith is evidence for us that God is and God can be trusted.  This is actually quite reasonable.  If someone has proven to be trustworthy time and again and several people trust (have faith in) that person, well their trust is evidence for us.  The author makes this explicit when he says:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,  fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”  Hebrews 12.

 

Relying on the witnesses that God is trustworthy is not unreasonable and relying on witnesses is not believing with no evidence.

 

But what about my definition.  Well that definition is actually in Hebrews as well.  We see the two elements (belief and trust in God) spelled out in Hebrews 11 verse 6.

“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

 

So the author identifies two beliefs both of which must be held in order to have faith.  1. “that he (God) is” and 2. “that he (God) is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”    If you believe in God and diligently seek him,  I think this is tantamount to saying you believe he exists and trust him.