Tag Archives: apologetics

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 make up morality if we are dreaming or a brain in a vat.   So 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.    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 and 2 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.

We Can’t Control Ourselves but We can Control Others?

05 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Catholic, christianity, law, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, politics, rationality, religion, Uncategorized

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Do we have free will?  I don’t have anything more to offer as far as evidence.  But I do think it is clear that morality and our justice system is a complete flop if we don’t have free will.   Most proponents of determinism agree that, if they are correct, we are not morally responsible/culpable for our actions.  But they still might believe there is a right and wrong way to act.    So, they don’t completely abandon hope of morality or a rational justice system.

 

In my opinion determinism allows only a crippled view of morality.  It doesn’t matter what direction morality points us we are on a train going wherever we are going and we can’t get off anyway.  Our hope for a rational justice system would also seem to rely on dumb luck.    How might our meta-ethical views concerning determinism impact our criminal justice system?

 

Traditionally criminal laws were grounded on four different notions, vengeance, retribution, deterrence and/or rehabilitation.   Retribution has replaced vengeance, although sometimes people fail to draw a distinction between the two.   I am not aware of anyone who believes in hard determinism but still maintains we should keep retribution as a grounds for our criminal justice system.  Retribution is the most important aspect of our criminal justice system but that will be the topic of another post.  Here, let’s consider the claim that even if determinism is true we can still pass laws for deterrence or rehabilitation purposes.

 

For example, Sam Harris says if you are a determinist like him:   “We could forget about retribution and concentrate entirely on mitigating harm. (And if punishing people proved important for either deterrence or rehabilitation, we could make prison as unpleasant as required.)”

https://samharris.org/life-without-free-will/

 

He like many determinists agree retribution is out.  But he claims we can still hope to achieve two other goals of our criminal justice system – rehabilitation and deterrence.   Deterrence is the idea that we can prevent people from committing crimes if they think undesirable things will happen to them as a result of those crimes.  So we can pass laws with punishments that are unpleasant and thus we make it less likely people will commit crimes.    Rehabilitation, at base, is the notion we can do things to criminals such that they will act in a way we want in the future.

 

So, if we accept determinism and still think deterence and rehabilitation are viable, we find ourselves saying we have no influence or control over our own behavior, but we do have influence and control over other people’s behavior.  Traditional wisdom suggests the opposite.  Common sense suggests we have more influence over our own actions than we do over other’s actions.  Is it possible that we can have no influence over our own actions, yet we are still be able to influence other people’s actions?  No, not in any meaningful sense.

 

I think this is an example of people not fully appreciating the far reaching implications of their position.  If determinism is true then even saying “we could make prison as unpleasant as required” plays on an ambiguity and is not actually accurate.  The ambiguity is in the term “could.”  “Could” can mean: we have the option.  Or “could” might mean: it is possible.

In Harris’s usage he seems to suggest “we have the option to make prison as unpleasant as required.”  But of course, on determinism we have no options.  We must do what we are going to do, and can’t do otherwise.  So that meaning of the word “could” leads to a contradiction in his beliefs.

 

If he means just that “it is possible that we would make prison as unpleasant as required….”  Then we might ask so what?    It may be possible, but we have no influence over our actions so we have no way to make that possibility a reality.

 

Our very sense of self is obliterated by determinism.   We are like ping pong balls in a lottery machine.  Yes we “could” bounce into other balls causing them to jostle and become a winning number.  In the sense of “could” that “it is possible” that happens.  But, of course, those ping pong balls have no control over themselves so it is not an option they have.

 

It makes no sense to take the perspective of the ping pong ball.   If we throw out free will then we throw out our whole notion of self.   It is no longer even sensible or meaningful to think in terms of what we “can” or “could” do.   We are just parts of a system that must act however we are going to act.

 

For those who are interested in the free will debates I highly recommend this set of lectures:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Great-Philosophical-Debates-Free-Will-and-Determinism-Audiobook/B00DGDBO2Q?qid=1580847985&sr=1-1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=FNSXY98EKBP6E5CPEM6G&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1

Slavery and Christianity: The First Known Abolitionist Speech.

01 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Catholic, christianity, history, law, metaethics, Morality, politics, rationality, religion, Uncategorized

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Understanding the ancient world is often difficult for those who were raised in a Christian Culture.  It is very hard to believe that slavery was ubiquitous in the ancient world.  Why did they tolerate it?  It seems like they just treated it as we treat different roles.  Some people will own the restaurant some will bus the tables and some will cook etc.  People can own animals, and people are animals, so why not?   Aristotle expressed this view:

“And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.”

Aristotle, Politics

 

At first blush Paul’s exhortation to seems take the view that being a slave is just another role people have:

 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”  Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

 

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”

Ephesians 6.

At one level this passage seems to accept these roles.  At that level this passage reminds me of my father telling me he didn’t care what I did just whatever I did I should, do it well.     Of course, today we don’t see slavery as just another role.

 

But, he says “And masters treat your slaves in the same way” right after he describes how a slave should treat their master.  What?!?     This is often overlooked by people when they are trying to be critical of Paul and Christianity.  So how should a master treat his slave “the same way” Paul wants a slave to treat his master?  Well let’s fill that in:

 “Obey your earthly [slaves] with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.  Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.”

 

Whoa, that’s pretty crazy stuff for his time.  But, of course, it naturally follows from the view that “the first will be last and the last will be first” Mathew 20:16 and “I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Mathew 25:40.  I mean if this is really what that God wanted us to believe you would expect him who has power over us to come and do something like wash the feet of his own creation. John 13.

 

Paul and Christ are doing much more than arguing for a change of legal codes.  They want our heart, mind, and soul to point in the direction of love for another as opposed to us seeing others as tools.  They want us to view our relationships with other people in an entirely different way that cannot be captured in law and works regardless of the laws we live under.

Clearly this passage like so many others in Christianity turns what was the common view on its head.  We are all to be servants of Christ and by that we do what he wants which is to be servants of each other.  Not because we are forced but because of the love he wants us to build for each other.

 

But slavery was accepted everywhere for so long, why did people change their view and start thinking peopled should not own other people?  We see Paul is starting to really upset the apple cart but he still seems to accept the institutional roles themselves at least superficially.    How did we start to see this differently, and start to see the institution of slavery as immoral?  Of course If morality is defined as whatever we want then it seems the change would just be arbitrary like the wind.

 

One way to at least approach an answer to this question, is to examine the reasons given by the first person we know of to argue against Slavery as flat out being immoral.     This will give us an idea of the original grounds to break from that long established but immoral tradition.

 

There were certain Stoics who took a view somewhat similar to Paul’s, in that we are meant to be free in a spiritual sense and this can be extended to the physical sense.  And indeed the Stoic Dr. Piggliucci quotes, Seneca the younger, was so loved by early Christians that he was often referred to as a proto-christian Saint by them!

 

I would liken some of these statements from Stoics to some of Paul’s.    E.g., Paul asks Philemon that he free his slave out of love rather than have him order to do what he ought to do, and there is no such thing as slave or free in Christ,  and that it is good that slaves become free and that they stay free First Corinthians 7:21-24.    Paul like these stoics stopped short of giving a giving lengthy attack on slavery itself.

 

Dr. Piggliucci says  “That said, it is certainly the case that no Stoic questioned the very institution of slavery. But it is rather unfair to criticize Stoicism in particular for this failure. Every single ancient philosophy and religion, including Christianity, has incurred in the same failure.”  He may be right about other ancient philosphys and religions but based on what I say below I think Christianity is indeed different.  Even if we don’t count the teachings of Jesus and Paul as making slavery obsolete we have at least one Ancient Christian attacking slavery.

 

I would also question Dr. Piggliucci suggesting racism had nothing to do with ancient justification for slavery.  He says:

“The Colonial idea of slavery was intrinsically racist, founded on the conceit that some people are literally sub-human, not worthy of the same consideration as the rest of us. That was not the case in Ancient Greece and Rome, where one could become a slave by losing a battle.”

 

Consider this quote from Plato:

“…nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.”

 

Plato, Gorgias

 

Moreover, Aristotle specifically addressed this case and said that if a person who was not naturally a slave was made a slave after being captured in battle (a legal slave) it would be wrong for them not to be freed.  And if a person who was a natural slave was freed by law that would also be wrong not to re-enslave him.  See politics book 1 part 6.

 

What made someone naturally a slave and another naturally a ruler?  That is somewhat unclear but he seems fairly sympathetic to the view that “Helenes” (Greeks) are fit to rule.  Whereas non-Greeks “barbarians”  have no one fit to rule as they are all natural slaves. “But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female.” Politics book one part 2.

 

Aristotle also talks about the inability to understand certain things would make someone more fit to be a slave.    But whatever the details it is fairly clear he sees the natural slaves as inferior to the natural masters.  Here is a quote that also gives us some insight as to some other moral views Christianity inherited from the ancient world:

“And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for then they are preserved. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.”

Aristotle politics book 1 part 5.

 

It is for these reasons I would question Dr. Piggliucci’s statement suggesting the bigotry of the later centuries was not around in ancient times.

 

In any case the first known assault on the very notion of slavery comes from Saint Gregory, the Bishop of Nyssa.  He lived from @335- @395 AD.  I quote a translation of his attack on slavery from a homily on ecclesiastics where the person boasts of owning slaves.  I will offer a rather lengthy quote because it is important to get the reasoning.   The reasoning of the first people to take a different view is evidence of what caused the gradual change to our current views.  Moreover, the first known argument against slavery is in my opinion a text worth reading in its own right.

 

…..as for a human being to think himself the master of his own kind? “I got me slaves and slave-girls”, he says, and homebred slaves were born for me.

 

Do you notice the enormity of the boast? This kind of language is raised up as a challenge to God. For we hear from prophecy that all things are the slaves of the power that transcends all (Ps 119/118,91). So, when someone turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?

 

I got me slaves and slave-girls. What do you mean? You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on the specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth, and appointed to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree.

 

You have forgotten the limits of your authority, and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason. For it says Let them rule over winged creatures and fishes and four-footed things and creeping things (Gen, 1,26). Why do you go beyond what is subject to you and raise yourself up against the very species which is free, counting your own kind on a level with four-footed things and even footless things? You have subjected all things to man, declares the word through the prophecy, and in the text it lists the things subject, cattle and oxen and sheep (Ps 8,7- 8). Surely human beings have not been produced from your cattle? Surely cows have not conceived human stock? Irrational beasts are the only slaves of mankind. But to you these things are of small account. Raising fodder for the cattle, and green plants for the slaves of men, it says (Ps 1041 103,14). But by dividing the human species in two with ‘slavery’ and ‘ownership’ you have caused it to be enslaved to itself, and to be the owner of itself.

 

I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom 11,29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?

 

How too shall the ruler of the whole earth and all earthly things be put up for sale?  For the property of the person sold is bound to be sold with him, too. So how much do we think the whole earth is worth? And how much all the things on the earth (Gen 1,26)? If they are priceless, what price is the one above them worth, tell me? Though you were to say the whole world, even so you have not found the price he is worth (Mat 16,26; Mk 8,36). He who knew the nature of mankind rightly said that the whole world was not worth giving in exchange for a human soul. Whenever a human being is for sale, therefore, nothing less than the owner of the earth is led into the sale-room. Presumably, then, the property belonging to him is up for auction too.  That means the earth, the islands, the sea, and all that is in them. What will the buyer pay, and what will the vendor accept, considering how much property is entailed in the deal?

 

But has the scrap of paper, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God? What folly! …

 

The Bishop’s indignation is palpable.   So while many of the ancients seemed to see people as an animal that would have value often based on traits they had no control over, such as intelligence or race etc.  Christianity and Judaism introduced a different way to understand who we are separated by God from the other animals and things of creation.

  1. Humans are priceless. God gave us everything in the world and that is priceless and so as owners clearly we are priceless.
  2. God gave us authority over animals and plants but not other people. Our God given authority does not go that far.
  3. The least shall be first and first shall be last, and how we treat the least is how we treat God himself. (This one was not in the Bishop’s text but permeates the Christian message.)
  4. And yes we are made in the image of God! Jesus built on this idea in saying we should refer to God as our Father.  Hence, we are all children of God.   We don’t try to analyze the worth of human being based on traits like race, ethnicity, intelligence or ability/disability.  We are all Children of God made in his image.    We all know we would not want our own children to be used and thought of as tools for someone else, we can rest assured God does not want that for his children made in his image either.

 

These are the seeds that lead inevitably to the assured destruction of slavery.  So long as we hold to these principles it seems impossible that people would ever treat other people as property again.   But we can also see how the reasoning of the pre-christians (that can indeed lead to our value being reduced based on certain traits) is slipping back into the ethical discourse.   As people, for whatever reason, want to distance their views from Christianity they seem to be saying personhood and our worth is based on certain traits we have rather than affirming the four principles I list above that reveal the sanctity of all human life regardless of the traits that person has.

It took far too long because our views were so different from God’s.  The Christian (or Jewish view when you consider the arguments from Genesis) view was not the view held by any other ancient people.  We believe all humans are connected to God in important ways.  For others mastery of everything was good.  So what could be better than mastery over other humans? “And there are many kinds both of rulers and subjects and that rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects- for example, to rule over men is better than to rule over wild beasts;”  Aristotle Politics Book 1.   To the ancients, people were fungible and their value was assessed by their traits, like the value of any other animal or thing.

 

But once we started to understand our role and that of God’s it was inevitable slavery would go.  So long as we hold onto that understanding it can never return.   Genesis was a huge part of this understanding.  Those who read Genesis as nothing but a scientific text miss so much. (or even primarily a scientific text)  It portrays us differently than other myths in important ways.  But when people just read it like any other creation myth they miss out on the most important parts.

 

Saint Gregory, the Bishop of Nyssa, offered his congregation good reasons to reject slavery when he wrote that Homily.   Many of the views would be repeated today and throughout history to provide the truest and best foundation for humanism generally.

 

If I said I am in favor of banning slavery based on the arguments presented by Saint Gregory would I be charged with “forcing my religious views on others?”

 

Ad Hoc Reasoning Suits Moral Subjectivism and Anti-Realism

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, christianity, epistemology, metaethics, Morality, rationality, Uncategorized

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The subjectivists I speak with seem to treat the topic of morality as though we can have a reasoned discussion in the same way we might about facts of reality.  I think many times the moral anti-realist doesn’t fully appreciate the problems with this view.   I explain why I think the subjectivist will have trouble with the very notion of having any sort “good reason” to believe here and here.

 

There I argued that there are 3 general types of “good reasons” to believe something.  First are theoretical reasons, second pragmatic reasons (see this blog for a philosophical explanation of the distinction) and third we would have good reason to believe something if not believing it caused a contradiction in our beliefs.  In the earlier blog I merely said that it is simply too low a bar to only ask that the views not lead to logical contradiction.   But I want to discuss the coherency condition more fully here.

 

I do concede that the rationalist can at least appeal internal coherency as a way of preferring beliefs.  Overall, I think this bar is too low but it is especially low when we understand that objective reality itself will not constrain the beliefs we do come up with.  This blog will explain how the rational quality/virtue of consistency/coherency is trivially easy for the subjectivist.

 

Consider the fact that many people thought Hitler had many internal inconsistencies in his thought.  A subjectivist might say this would prevent them from following his moral scheme.  But let’s consider one such inconsistency that we often hear and see how that really would not be a problem for the subjectivist.   Roughly the argument is made that Hitler was inconsistent in saying

 

  1. The proper German must be, blond haired, blue eyed, and have great genes for athleticism.
  2. Yet he had none of those traits

and still he thought

3.He was a proper German.

 

Now if these were the views he held, and for the sake of argument let’s say they were, then I would agree they are inconsistent.

 

So what could he do?  Well he could just add to the first claim that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler.”   There that takes care of that inconsistency!  You might say well there might be another Adolf Hitler that he wanted to exclude from being a proper German.  And we can just say that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler who was born on such and such a date and hour at such and such a place…”  We could also make these exceptions for Goering and Himmler etc.

 

These exceptions seem dubious because they are “ad hoc.” Ad hoc additions to a theory are those that seem irregular from the overall theory but they are included for the sole purpose of saving our theory or view.  Normally we frown on ad hoc explanations.

One of the reasons Kepler’s heliocentric theory of elliptical orbits was preferred over the Copernican system involving perfect circles (the Greeks like Ptolemy thought circular motion was more perfect) was because the Copernican system had epicycles.  Smaller circular motions of the planets were added as well as the larger orbit.     http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST101/keplers_laws.html

 

Epicycles are I think it is fair to say another example of ad hoc reasoning.  In that I am sure Copernicus would agree he was only including the epicycles to shoe horn his theory of perfectly circular orbits into the reality he observed. That was the sole reason to posit the existence of epicycles.   If the math and observation worked without epicycles then Copernicus would not have suggested them.   Once Kepler showed that the math works with ellipses (no epicycles needed) people tended to prefer that system.   This was all before Newton and his theories about inertia etc.

 

Why should we be suspicious of ad hoc reasoning?  It is because as the products of the culture of Athens and Jerusalem we tend to think A) that reality/truth is not created by our beliefs about it so it is not going to be different so it suits our beliefs, and B) Copernicus was making a claim about objective reality.

 

Of course, if you are subjectivist you think differently.  Subjectivists think the truth about morality is dependent on our view of it.  So in that case A is not something we accept.    To the extent you think our moral constructs are unconstrained by objective reality then you also reject B.     There is no objective reality we are trying to explain.   Rejecting either A or B seems to take all the sting out of the charge or ad hockery.   Morality is what we make it – or so they say.    So there is no reason to prefer the regularity we see in objective reality.

 

I mean I can’t like and dislike the taste of the same pickles at the same time in the same way, but it is just fine that it used to be those pickles tasted bad but now they are good.  No explanation is necessary.  My mental state makes it “good” and that can change in an arbitrary way.   And once we break from objective reality and its apparent regularity, it is ridiculously easy to be consistent.  It was OK for me to kill a minute ago but I wouldn’t do it now?  Ok no problem, it’s just that my relevant mental state is different now.   We are not saying our beliefs about morality corresponds with any objective reality – indeed we are saying no such objective reality exists for them to correspond with – so there is no reason to be against ad hoc views.

 

Do we see ad hockery in moral theories?  Yes I gave a few examples that I think are common.

We should care about well being of all sentient creatures except when we don’t.  See animal rights 

In suffering being the key – except when it is not.  Oral Surgeon case. 

Empathy is great even though it seems to add suffering – well we like it anyway!

Of course, people, especially anti-realists, can have all sorts of views on morality so it is hard to explain any case that will apply to everyone.  But for me it was just a matter of really thinking through moral issues and being honest with myself about the grounds I claimed to have as a basis.  I think most people try to be honest with themselves, but I don’t think people often try to think through moral issues that frequently.

 

In law school we study a huge number of cases involving difficult moral issues. How much the students tried to understand the reasoning as opposed to just learn the law seemed to vary.  Moreover, law school and legal cases do not usually dive into the deep understanding of moral concepts but rather just tends to refer to vaguely worded values.     And, of course, most people have not gone to law school or had any similar exposure to the variety of moral cases that are involved.    Coming to this realization (that creating your own morality with no objective anchor is extremely arbitrary) requires both an inclination and experience that are both uncommon.   So I am not surprised that many people think the amount of ad hoc reasoning might be rare.

 

When what we decide defines a very concept like “pickles are good” means, such and such fact about my view toward them, then we hardly need to come to any principled reasons for why pickles were “bad” before but now they are “good.”    If I didn’t like pickles yesterday but do today, it’s no big deal.

 

I see no reason for the subjectivist to reject ad hoc explanations.  But for me it made this whole exercise of supposedly “deliberating” about morality in order “decide for myself what matters” too much of a charade.  I am constantly reminded of the people in allegory of the cave who keep insisting to the philosopher who saw reality that what they are doing with the shadows is important.  I simply have no interest in playing.  My missing out on this involves extremely low stakes.

 

So yes it may be correct that there is no objective moral realism.  So I don’t discount that possibility.    And if I live my life based on a false belief in moral realism then I agree it was in vain.  But if I just missed out on this big charade, I am perfectly at peace taking that risk.   In fact, I am not sure I can fully express how much at peace I am about taking that risk.

Animal Rights Follow Up: Morality Based on Evidence.

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Catholic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, Uncategorized

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After my last post I had a few posts by some atheists that I think deserve a more lengthy response.  Generally I think the atheists here post good questions and concerns and I am grateful to have them visiting.  Jim is one of them.  Here are some of the comments we exchanged leading up to the point I want to make in this blog.

 

Jim:

“Man has trumped the morality of the Bible over and over. ”

Joe:

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, North Korean leaders, Lenin, Reign of Terror.

To which Jim responded:

“The bigger problem here isn’t these men. It is the followers. Here we argue which belief is best, but the culprit of all our divisions, racism, hate, all of it Joe, is beliefs. Mere convictions of thought without evidence. Break it down, that is the card played by the writers and founders to keep humanity at odds, while they do whatever the hell they want.”

 

I want to focus on his claim that we need evidence.  I don’t think the atheist has any evidence to support any sort of moral views but I will get to that in a bit.

 

Consider this statement by Ingrid Newkirk President of PETA:

 

“Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”

 

Now many atheists say there is no actual truth about morality.  Maybe killing six million Jews is not morally worse than killing six billion broiler chickens.  But the key word is “maybe.”  The thing is they do not know there is no objectively moral way we should live.  So a rational person would say either there really is a way we should morally live, or there is not really a way we should morally live.    Once we acknowledge this uncertainty we should be rational in how we approach the uncertainty and address the consequences of our actions with respect to both possibilities.

 

Let’s say the moral anti-realist is right and morality is not real.  Then it really doesn’t matter whether I value Jews more than chickens.  If that is the case, it doesn’t matter which way I chose.  I can make up whatever morality I want.    So my going with the Christian view is morally no worse than going with PETA’s view or living any other life of make believe.  That state of affairs is a dead option.  It is not the option a rational person should concern themselves with, because in that state of affairs it doesn’t matter what we do.

The rational person should focus their mind on the possible state of affairs where there really is moral Truth.  That would be the state of affairs where we can live our lives rightly or wrongly.  So a rational person would focus on the possibility that, in fact, there is objective moral truth that we should follow.  But how could we know what that objective morality requires of us?  What evidence do we have that PETA is wrong to think killing six billion broiler chickens is morally comparable to killing six million Jewish people?

 

Now my own view is that it is morally repulsive to view the killing of six million Jews in the Holocaust as equivalent or even less morally evil then killing six billion broiler chickens.    But is my emotional revulsion evidence of moral truth?  Why would someone who was created by a random universe guided by natural selection think their moral revulsion tracks objective moral truths?  I firmly believe there would be no reason to think that, and I offer my reasons for that conviction here.

 

So what evidence do I have that morality is on my side?  If I appeal to other humans, and their views, is it not obvious they are in the same situation I am?  I have no reason to think other people’s convictions are guided in more reliable ways that my own.  So why should I listen to other people who are in the same boat as me?  What I need is a source of information that is not bound in the same way we are bound.

 

I have scripture that tells me humans are made in God’s image and humans are indeed more important than chickens and other animals.  I have Scripture that tells me God became man in order to save humans.  I have scripture that tells me I am to love my neighbor etc.  All of this scripture tells me people are special among animals.   But what evidence do I have that this scripture is really from something other than another human just like myself?   The answer is the evidence of Christ’s miracles including but not limited to the resurrection.

 

Now I can hear the groans about how that evidence is weak.  And I won’t lie there are times I wish I had more evidence.    Sometimes, like Saint Thomas I wish I could see Jesus and touch the wounds to see it was really him.  I don’t think this is unchristian.  Thomas was Saint Thomas after all.   So I am not here to say the miracles are strong evidence or weak evidence.  You can listen to the debates on that, as there are plenty of them.   Weak or strong, we clearly have some evidence that Jesus was from God and therefore his teachings on morality were from a source not bound by human limitations.   This means his teachings have a chance of reliably tracking the truth regarding morality.

 

I think the Christian miracles are the best evidence of any religion actually being from God.  I know other religions claim miracles but, I don’t think the claims I examined are as good as the Christian claims.    I am certainly willing to consider the evidence if someone wants to claim some other religion has a better claim to being true through miracles or other evidence.   Here is a blog where I give an outline of the criteria I use.

 

In the end, people can say the evidence for Christianity is strong or weak, but it is what it is.  This is the situation we are in and it seems quite clear to me that it is the best evidence about what we should do that we have.   Why would I trust Ingrid Newkirk (or even my own moral views which I recognize and science suggests are based on emotion) more than Christ?

 

Now what evidence does the atheist have to offer that their moral views accord with objective moral reality?  If you start to say “If the morally good is….(flourishing) or (wellbeing) etc etc ”  Then I need to stop you right there.  I am asking for the evidence you have for what is morally good.   So if you start with an assumption, of what is morally good, and then keep talking based on that assumption, I think you are missing the question.  What evidence do you have that your view of moral goodness corresponds with objective reality?  You may say something that I like or that I agree with but people agreeing or liking an idea does not make it true.

 

So you can say you think my evidence for my moral views based on Christ being from a supernatural source is weak.  But it is some evidence.   Even weak evidence is better than no evidence at all.      Life does not have a pause button.  You can’t pause life until you find some evidence that you are satisfied with.  Rational people have to make due with the evidence they have.  And you can call it strong or weak,  but the evidence for Christian morality is the best evidence we have for any moral view.

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.

Scientific Knowledge is Overrated

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Catholic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, religion, Uncategorized

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In our culture saying the title is almost like saying “I hate children.”  How dare anyone suggest that scientific knowledge is overrated?  Clearly the only acceptable view is that science could never be over-rated and it could only possibly be under-rated.   But if we would allow that it is at least possible, then I suggest we consider how highly we rate both the scope of science as well as the value of scientific knowledge.

The claim that religion was there as a “stand in” until science could take it’s place is likely the oddest claim I have heard more than once.   It reveals what I think is a bizarre bias of our time.  Some people think that science and how nature works is so important to know, that they naturally think that was what religion was there for.   God revealed himself in the bible to explain lightening and how the mountains were made.

Our current culture values these sorts of “what is” or “how does this thing work” beliefs way out of proportion so we shouldn’t be surprised that people in our culture come to such an odd view.  The assumption seems to be, of course, the most important parts of any scripture are the ones that might overlap with science.  The fact that such a small fraction of scripture even deals with anything even arguably scientific is just more proof religion is misguided.

My life didn’t really change much after finding out how mountains were made.   Getting a scientific understanding of tectonic plates changed very little in my life and to that extent is not really important to me.   The very notion that Christianity or any religion existed to help us explain the natural world reveals how off kilter the importance we place on this knowledge of the natural world.  Christianity is a religion that helps us address the more important question – “how should we live?”.  The answers science can provide are interesting and sometimes they can help us address that important question.  But science does not address that question directly.     The major religions that exist deals with that directly.    That is the point of these religions – and really it is quite obvious to anyone who knows them.

It seems some people see the question “how should I live?” as a sort of afterthought.  They are so full of reasons to believe this or that is the case and so concerned about having evidence for this or that view of the state of things that when the question comes up it’s almost like would like to wave it away.  Like oh yeah if you want to talk about that silliness then here is my view…. And what follows is often some sort of poorly thought through mantra that demonstrates how little time they spend on it compared to the scientific “what is” questions they want really to get back to.

People now seem to think the most important thing is to fill our heads with beliefs that are more likely true than not and expunge those beliefs that do not pass that evidential muster.  There seems no concern with what seems obviously just as an important question.  How should I live?   Science has taught us many things but that does not mean it is the source of the most important information.

Overrating science is also done in that people try to claim science can answer questions it clearly can not answer.  We saw some of this scientific morality with the Nazis and communists.   But even today we see scientists taking the stage to talk about morality or other philosophical issues.  I am not interested in celebrity views on politics or science or philosophy, but I can see some people are curious about the views of their favorite celebrity.  But scientists are not celebrities, yet we see them selling books or lecturing on philosophy.  Why?   Is it good philosophy?  No, it’s because the scope of that field is overrated.

Science can help us live longer.  However, it does not teach us what to do with the extra time.  Religion does.   There is such a thing as useless knowledge.  And all knowledge is on this spectrum.

I feel like a conversation with certain atheists goes like this:  Why do you collect these acorns?  So I can plant more oak trees.  Why do you want to plant more oak trees?  Because they produce more acorns.  So why do we care they produce acorns?  Well we can then collect the acorns.  Why do you …. Oh wait.  Or why do you learn science?  Science will help us survive longer.  Why should we want to survive longer?  So we can learn more science.  I want to survive longer and I like oak trees, but I hope you can see my point.  It’s fine if you want to argue King Sisyphus is happy.   But, many of these same atheists saying we should live longer for the sake of living longer, also want to convince me that there is so much evil and misery in the world, God should be indicted.

Even studying in philosophy the focus was so much on Does God exist?   And we also focus on how and what it means to “know” a proposition concerning the external world. (See Cartesian Skepticism, and the Gettier problems)  After thoroughly trying to answer those question I ultimately decided it doesn’t really matter how we define “knowledge” as the fundamental problems presented by Descartes and similar arguments still have weight.  I think this time spent in philosophy was well spent because it dealt with a my understanding of a huge amount of beliefs.  It helped me learn that life does indeed have uncertainty and we need to deal with it.   Trying to define the problems away is not helpful.    It also helped me see the obsession our culture has with knowing “what is”.

I hope that is changing.  At the time I was in college majoring in philosophy there were no classes offered in what is now called meta-ethics were we could even start to ask “How should I live?” and what do we even mean to live rightly?  I had to pursue those questions on my own.  I think and hope this is changing.  Answering the question how we should live should not be an afterthought.

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, 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.

Problem of Evil Answered with Logic and Scripture

01 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in apologetics, atheism, Catholic, christianity, logic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, religion, scripture, Uncategorized

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The problem of evil is a common objection to Christianity and with some good reason.  I would even admit that certain evils in the world seem to me to amount to some evidence against the Christian God.   But I think the evidence can be shown to be fairly weak when looked at logically and with the aid of scripture.

 

When explaining my view on this problem I always start with this question:  Does God’s omnipotence mean he can violate the rules of logic?  If we answer yes then a the problem of evil is not a problem for God because it is a logical problem – and he is not bound by logic.  So let’s say that “omnipotence” of God means something short of breaking the laws of logic.  Once we understand God is so constrained then we see cracks form in the problem of evil.

Knowledge can’t be good and not good.

Ignorance can’t be bad and not bad.

God can’t have us know what evil is and not know what evil is.

God can’t let us be ignorant of evil and not be ignorant of evil.

We can’t know what the consequences of evil are, if there is no evil to be found.

If suffering is the result of evil then can we really know what evil is unless we know the experience of suffering?

So can we know the experience of suffering without experiencing suffering?

 

And what about the results of good which often are the opposites of suffering – peace, joy etc.?  (there seems no clear cut antonym for all the different aspects of suffering)  Can we know what they are when we don’t understand the opposite?  Can we know what it means to be taller or as tall as without also having an idea of shorter (or not as tall as)?  It seems to me we can’t know these states without knowing something of the opposites.  I can’t understand heat unless I have some concept of lack of heat, i.e., cold.

So if we think Knowledge is good then we might agree that even knowledge of evil is good.  Even if this good is logically linked to our experience of evil.   Now we may think well the good of knowing evil does not outweigh all the suffering evil brings.  God seems to agree.   But nevertheless we would still have to say knowledge is itself a good.  And if we think it is good to allow us to experience all goods then we can’t exclude some goods.  So it does seem there are logical restraints that means some goods entail evil.

So what does this have to do with scripture?

What was that tree God forbade Adam and Eve the fruit of?  Was it an apple tree or a pear tree?  No, it was the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.   In Genesis God commands  “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:16-17.  I mean at first that seems a very odd sort of tree, and not one I remember seeing at the arboretum.   I think this should be a sign that the author of the story is not just telling us some literal event from history but is trying to make a different sort of statement about God.    What does it even mean to taste the fruit that comes from the knowledge of evil?  The fruit/result of knowing evil is, as we have said, suffering.   Can we have knowledge of evil unless we know what it produces?  I don’t think so because such knowledge would be warped.  Some things that may be evil might sound pretty good if it weren’t for the suffering it caused.  Knowing evil without knowing suffering is not really knowing evil.  (“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Genisis 3:6.)

 

Someone can’t know suffering without knowing suffering.   If someone says I know what it is like to be burned over 80% of my body – well the only way he could know that is if he was so burned or at least had that experience.  If he didn’t we would say no you actually don’t “know” that kind of suffering.

 

But this was our decision – not God’s.  He wanted to save us from this fruit.  Are we to think the author just randomly chose the name for that tree or is the author inviting the reader to explore a very deep philosophical issue?  What is “the fruit” of knowing good and evil that we wanted to taste?  When people are so caught up in literal readings that they argue whether the fruit was a pear or an apple my stomach sinks.  They are missing so much.

 

The text invites us to explore deep ideas about our experiences here in this life and our situation existing in this world as we do.    How can we know good and evil without knowing evil?  And how can we know evil if we can’t experience it?  And how can we experience something that is nowhere to be seen?    So the fruit of knowledge of good and evil implies the experience of evil.  But the Bible expresses that God did not want this for us.  But he also wanted us to be free.

 

God is portrayed as our parent who loves us.   Every parent understands this tension between wanting our children to avoid pain but also allow them to choose their own path.  Don’t go down that path, but recognizing there is value in letting us learn so giving us autonomy.

 

We can’t have freedom and not have freedom.

Freedom can’t be good and not be good at the same time.

God can’t have us overcome adversity without us overcoming adversity.

We can’t over come adversity if there is no adversity

Overcoming  adversity can’t be good and not good.

We cannot experience all that is good if we can never experience certain goods.

I can go on and on with logical constraints that imply evil is required for some goods.

 

But isn’t God overdoing it with all the evil in the world?  In other words we might agree we have to experience some evil and suffering to have certain goods but why so much suffering?   Couldn’t God have done it better?  So how should it have been done?  Well we should expect the suffering should be a finite time.  And of course all our lives are indeed finite – that is we die.    And indeed scripture explains that our life is finite –  because we chose to taste the fruit of the tree.

 

“22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”  Genesis 3:22-24

 

 

Beautiful language expressing that God knew it was best we not live forever in this state that the fruits of this knowledge would bring to us.  God knew that knowledge of good and evil would entail suffering.  Is it a coincidence that death was brought into the world at that time?  Some would say God having death enter the world at that time is really a punishment.  I think the opposite.  He is helping us with the mess we got ourselves in.   Making our suffering here finite is the most loving thing to do.  It is only after the time that we chose to know good and evil that God prevents them from living forever.

 

Isn’t that what we would do for those we love.  We would say ok I don’t want you to go down that path because it will cause pain.  But if you choose that path of pain, then you will learn, but we would try to limit the pain.   And then we would make our own sacrifices to help those we love get out of the rut and back on the path where evil and its fruit (suffering) is avoided.  Moreover we would want the benefits of our knowledge to be used.  Good and loving relationships can be better appreciated thanks to this knowledge.   That is the story of God and humanity in a nutshell.

 

I am reminded of a friend in college who said to get a good grade just read the first and last chapters of the book to get the overall point and then memorize a few facts in the middle that you can throw in your test or paper to impress the teacher.  This is close.  Jumping from the first 3 chapters of Genesis and then reading a Gospel will give you a decent idea of Christianity.

 

Two final notes:

Scripture is not saying knowledge is to be avoided.  Remember the metaphor of a tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the *only* tree we were forbidden to eat from.  “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genisis 2.  So only the tree that allows us to know these particular opposites was off limits.  This suggests that any other sort of knowledge (science history etc.) would be good and not have a negative trade off.  It is only this particular tree of knowledge that is off limits.  That fruit logically had to be packed in a can of worms.   Not necessarily the fruits of other knowledge.

 

Also, notice that God warns of the actions he will take – that they will die.   However, he does not go into detail about why he will take that action or why knowledge of Good and evil will cause so many problems.  Of course, for any such considerations to be appropriately understood by them he would need to give them knowledge of good and evil – exactly that which he was trying to avoid.

Answering the Many Gods Problem

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

John 20:30-31

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

1)            Multiple sources

 

2)            Preferably Independent sources

 

3)            Non biased sources

 

4)            Contextual credibility

 

5)            Close in time to the events

 

6)            No contradictions/internally consistent

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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