Little Endian

An Aside on Endianness

2015-12-31T12:34:00.000-06:00

When I first created this blog, I chose the title as sort of a whimsical phrase that reflected my life as a software developer, even though I had no plans to discuss software in this blog. I did not anticipate, though I certainly should have, that this choice would cause people searching for information on big- and little-endianness to find this blog, where I am sure they have not found what they are looking for. As a bit of penance, this post is for those people who find their way here by searching for information on endianness. Update: I am post-dating this to move it to the top of the first page. Originally posted 1/27/2007.

Computers store numbers as a sequence of binary digits, or "bits". Bits, in a fit of cleverness, are organized in groups called "bytes". Modern computers, to my knowledge, all use eight-bit bytes, though I am fairly certain that some older computers used other sizes. Occasionally, you will also hear of half-byte entities (four bits), naturally termed "nibbles".

An eight-bit byte can represent 256 values (2⁸). This can be either an unsigned number from 0 to 255 or a signed number from -128 to 127, at least using the most common number representation, "two's complement". You can read more about the various representations of signed numbers at Wikipedia. This clearly does not handle large enough numbers for many problems, so groups of bytes are used to represent still larger numbers. The maximum number of bytes that can be grouped together and handled as a unit by a CPU varies by the type of processor, and may in fact vary in different functional units in the same computer. For instance, many modern processors have functional units devoted to floating point operations that process data in larger chunks than the integer-based functional units. (See Computer numbering formats for the differences between integer, fixed-point and floating-point numbers.)

For purposes of this post, I will discuss 32-bit (4 byte) integers, though the same concepts will clearly apply to both smaller and larger representations. I will also examine only unsigned integers, since that makes it easier to explain the differences between big and little endian and other byte-orderings.

When you write a decimal number like 42357, that is shorthand for 4 * 10⁴ + 2 * 10³ + 3 * 10² + 5 * 10¹ + 7 * 10⁰. That is, each numeral is multiplied by a power of ten according to its position in the number. Likewise, a binary number like 10110 is shorthand for 1 * 2⁴ + 1 * 0³ + 1 * 2² + 1 * 2¹ + 0 * 2⁰. We write decimal numbers and binary numbers with the highest non-zero coefficient on the left and the lowest on the right. A 32-bit binary number would have the co-efficient of 2³¹ first, on the left, and the co-efficient of 2⁰ on the right. If we break that 32-bit binary number into bytes, the first byte has the co-efficients of 2³¹ through 2²⁴, the next has 2²³ through 2¹⁶, then 2¹⁵ through 2⁸ and finally 2⁷ through 2⁰. Let's give these four bytes (groups of co-efficients) the names A, B, C and D. "A" is also called the MSB (most significant byte) and D is the LSB (least significant byte).

A computer that represents 4-byte integers in ABCD order is said to be "big-endian", because the "big" end of the number comes first: ABCD. But this is not the only possible order. We could represent 4-byte integers as BDAC or CBDA, but that would be confusing. But storing them in reverse order, DCBA, while perhaps a bit unusual compared to our usual notation when writing, is quite feasible and in fact has some advantages (and some disadvantages) when representing numbers in a digital device. This reverse order with the byte containing the coefficients of the least significant bits first is called "little-endian". And while the unusual orders that I suggested earlier (BDAC and CBDA) are not actually used, there are (or have been) computers that used BADC, known as "middle-endian".

The terms "big-endian" and "little-endian" are actually taken from "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift, wherein they were used to describe two factions that differed over which end of a soft-boiled egg ought to be cracked.

Intel and other x86 processors are little-endian. Some processors (for instance, the MIPS R2000) have been able to process integers with either byte order. The Motorola 68000 processors and their descendants were big-endian. The PDP-11 was middle-endian.

When computers communicate, the representation of multi-byte integers in the data must be specified. Computers that use a different representation from that used in the communicated data must re-arrange the bytes before processing. For instance, the suite of protocols under the umbrella of TCP/IP that are used to communicate across the internet define a "network byte order", which is big-endian.

You can read more about endianness at Wikipedia.

As one additional contribution to atone for my choice of blog title, here is a C program to print the byte-order of the computer on which it is run.

#include <stdio.h>

void main(void)
{
  unsigned value = 0;
  char     ch    = 'A';
  int      i;

  for (i = 0; i < sizeof(unsigned); i++)
  {
    value = (value << 8) + ch;
    ch++;
  }

  char order[sizeof(unsigned) + 1];
  char *p = (char *) &value;

  for (i = 0; i < sizeof(unsigned); i++)
    order[i] = *p++;

  order[sizeof(unsigned)] = '\0';

  printf("Byte order: %s\n", order);
}

This should work regardless of how many bytes are in an integer, though I do not actually have a C compiler handy to test it. Again, for 32-bit integers, "ABCD" is big-endian, "DCBA" is little-endian and "BADC" is middle-endian.

Update: If you are willing to assume that little-endian and big-endian are the only two possibilities, this function can be used to determine the endianness of the processor.

int is_little_endian(void)
{
  unsigned value = 1;

  return (*(char *)&value == 0x01);
}

Answering Ernie on Desire Utilitarianism

2007-08-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

This past spring, as my diablogue with Ernie was winding down, there were several topics that were brought up that were just left hanging. One of these was a list of Open Questions on Desire Utilitarianism that Ernie posted. Desire utilitarianism (DU) is the theory of morality that I had brought into our discussion. Ernie addressed the questions to Alonzo Fyfe, the originator of DU, but only for "stylistic reasons". I thought I would take a crack at answering Ernie's questions.

A. Most and Strongest

As I understand it, one of your foundational assertions is that:

“Individuals always act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires.”

Yet, I consider that statement trivially falsifiable. For example, my pigging out on chocolate cake last week was a single minor desire that trumped my many desires to look good, lose weight, and act responsibly. At best, one could perhaps claim that people always act “to fulfill the most or strongest of their desires.” At worst, it might be true that people simply act in accordance with their “momentarily strongest desire.” How do you justify such a seemingly counterfactual claim?

Ernie gave the answer himself: people act according to their most and strongest desires at each moment, even though the momentary strength of a desire may be different than its usual value. How do we measure the strength of a single desire or the net strength of a set of desires? I would suggest we can only do so by observing their actions, given their beliefs and other background information. In this sense, Alonzo's statement is true almost by definition.

However, suppose we had another mechanism (say, some kind of brain scan) that would allow us to measure the strength of individual desires. Suppose further that we could then identify cases where individuals acted such as to thwart rather than fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, contradicting the claim under consideration. Assuming we had good reasons to believe that our measurements were accurate, would that prove an insurmountable obstacle to desire utilitarianism? No, not yet. For instance, we might find that individuals are still most likely to act according to the most and strongest desires, with the probability of so acting being related to the absolute net strength of those desires. DU would be compatible with such a finding (and in fact, I would not be so surprised if this were the case.) If it were found that actions are not correlated or are inversely correlated with the net strength of momentary desires, that would be a problem, but this seems quite unlikely. A more troubling, possibly fatal, finding would be some other causal factor (beyond desires and beliefs) involved in the formation of intentions. How such a factor would impact DU would depend on the nature of that additional causal factor.

B. Praise and criticism

You seem to explicitly eschew coercive measures from your consideration of ethics since they require “power.” Yet, do not praise and criticism themselves require at least “soft power” (i.e., moral authority) to be effective? If so, might not “hard” and “soft” power in reality be two ends of a continuum, that need to be analyzed as a whole?

I think Ernie is simply mistaken here. Alonzo has not completely rejected coercive measures, nor do I recall him ever basing his opposition to coercive measures simply because they involve power. In fact, Alonzo does recognize and analyze a spectrum of responses to good and bad desires and actions.

For instance, while Alonzo is tentatively against capital punishment, this is based on (inconclusive) empirical evidence that seems to suggest that societies that use capital punishment do not promote a universal aversion to killing that would tend prevent violent crimes. But this stance is open to correction on empirical grounds and is in no way based merely on an aversion to power.

Similarly, Alonzo has said that some wars can be justified. If war is not the exercise of power, the term would be virtually meaningless. So, to say that he eschews coercive measures and has not considered the full spectrum of power is plainly incorrect.

On the other hand, coercive measures do have their own problems and there are reasons to limit their use. Alonzo has addressed that in Why Worry About Morality?, among other places.

C. Inter-community enmity

When asked about slavery, I believe you said a moral individual would not wish to enslave another because encouraging such a desire towards might backfire towards the enslavement of that selfsame individual. But, what if the other person was being enslaved due to an attribute that the individual in question did not possess (e.g., dark skin)? [After all, that is pretty much exactly what the white Virginians did to the minority black slaves several hundred years ago.] Does DU provide any basis for considering such slavery wrong, even though it successfully fulfilled the “most and greatest” desires of the dominant white majority for several generations?

Desire utilitarianism does not say that simply fulfilling the most and strongest desires is good. This is addressed on page 11 of Alonzo's book, on the very first page that describes desire utilitarianism. Desires are evaluated according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. This is a very basic point, and the fact that Ernie (apparently) missed it is troubling, considering he has referred to his questions here as reflecting "very serious flaws" with DU.

The (relatively mutable) desires of the dominant white majority thwarted the (relatively immutable) desires of the minority black slaves. Further, the basis of this discrimination (skin color) was both immutable and irrelevant. We have good reasons for condemning discrimination on such a basis in order to prevent the same or other kinds of discrimination on similarly immutable and irrelevent grounds: gender, national origin, hair color, handedness, or whatever. (I excluded religion from that list only because religious beliefs are comparatively mutable. I excluded sexual orientation because I do not want a disagreement over its mutability to distract from my point.)

So, DU does provide a basis for considering slavery wrong: the desire to enslave others thwarts the desires of those others. Further, people ought to condemn slavery (and lesser forms of discrimination) based on skin color because skin color is only one of a number of arbitrary categorizations that can become the basis for discrimination (including slavery).

D. Shaping desires

DU appears to implicitly assume that it is possible to shape the desires of others. However, it also seems to implicitly assume that it is impossible for us to shape our own desires. Is that true? If so, how do you justify that distinction? If not, then what moral obligation (if any) do we have for how we shape our own desires?

Again, Ernie is simply wrong here. DU does not implicitly or explicitly assume that individuals cannot shape our own desires. I suggest reading Alonzo's post Becoming a Better Person.

As far as moral obligations go, my interpretation of the term "obligation" in the context of DU refers to desires and actions that we have particularly strong reasons to promote (if they are good) or inhibit (if they are bad) in ourselves and in others. If we do not meet these obligations, others have strong reasons (obligations) to promote or inhibit them in us.

E. Knowing desires

You make a compelling case that it is sometimes possible to know desires to a high degree of accuracy. Do you in fact assert that we have (or at least can have) sufficient knowledge of desires (either our own or others) to accurately make moral judgments? More precisely, under what circumstances can we be confident we have sufficient information? And what is our moral obligation when we lack such information?

Here I will just supply several relevant quotes from Alonzo:

I have encountered a similar issue with respect to the desire utilitarianism that I have defended here. One of the more frequent objections that I receive says that desire utilitarianism must be rejected because, if desire utilitarianism were true, some moral questions would be difficult to answer. The objector makes the completely unfounded assumption that a moral theory would make all moral questions easy to answer, and that desire utilitarianism must be rejected for its failure to do so.

I would argue for rejecting any theory that distributes answers to moral questions like answers to scientific questions. Some of them are easy to answer. Some are difficult. Some may even remain outside of our ability to answer forcing us to live in a universe with some measure of moral uncertainty. Yet, over time, we have the ability to make moral progress as we make scientific progress, never quite arriving at perfect moral knowledge (just as we will always lack perfect scientific knowledge), but getting closer over time – as long as religion doesn’t muck things up by insisting on teaching moral (scientific) myth.
[source]

Even within science, there is always a maximum potential level of description. We can only know answers within a certain degree of certainty. Below that, we cannot go. There is no reason to demand that a theory of ethics must give us perfect precision on all issues. All we can expect is that it give us as much precision as is possible.

If you know of a way to get more moral precision using another method (one that doesn’t simply make things up), then that theory is obviously to be preferred over the theory I defend here. Without the possibility of finding greater precision elsewhere, then this is the best we can do.

I answered this question in part in the essays on pornography. Desire utilitarianism is substantially a theory on what value is – a relationship between states of affairs and desires. We can lament about our inability to come up with precise answers to all moral questions. However, this will not change the fact about what value is. We simply have no choice but to make decisions in the face of imperfect information.
[source]

F. Non-physical reality

You appear to assert that desires are “ontologically real” because they can usefully predict behavior, even though they are not directly observable. By that same token, could one similarly assert that “spiritual experiences” (e.g., conversion, conviction, etc.) are also real, since they can also provide useful guides to behavior? Why or why not?

I am not sure how Alonzo would answer this. (To be sure, that is true of everything; I do not and cannot speak for him.) But I would answer it this way: first, spiritual experiences, if real, would inform our beliefs and affect our desires, but desires would remain as the sole reasons-for-action that exist and desire utilitarianism would still be a valid formulation of morality. Desire utilitarianism is compatible with the existence of a god or gods; however, these would merely be additional agents with desires, possibly with superior knowledge of and ability to act according to good (or bad!) desires.

The question of whether "spiritual experiences" are real or not, and whether God is real or not, are separate questions from whether desires are real or not. We have good reasons to believe that desires are ontologically real. We have (I believe) only poor reasons to believe and good reasons to disbelieve that spiritual experiences exist (in the sense of being an indication of a spiritual reality in the sense generally meant by theists). But, in any case, the answers to these other questions are not particularly relevant to desire utilitarianism's usefulness as a theory of morality.

G. Cultural relativism

I believe you assert that our desires (and thus morality) are a product of our upbringing and social institutions, and are thus merely constrained — not determined — by genetics. If that’s the case, is it ever meaningful to speak of making moral judgments between societies? Or does morality only exist within the context of shared institutions?

The connection between desires and morality under DU is not quite so direct as Ernie's opening might suggest to some people. Ernie may not have intended such a direct connection here, though his earlier question about slavery seems to imply it.

Remember that in DU a mutable desire is determined to be good or bad according to whether or not that desire tends to fulfill or thwart other desires. An action is determined to be good (or bad) according to whether a person with good desires (or bad desires) would perform that action in its context. These are universal principles. They reflect a sort of ideal, an ideal contingent on desires that actually exist, but not necessarily one that we can completely and accurately identify (as discussed above). And, since the context of our actions necessarily changes over space and especially time and since desires themselves change over time, some actions chosen by a good person will likewise vary, while others will be more stable.

In other words, desire utilitarianism is both universal and contextual. It is universal because actions are evaluated independent of the agent; the same rules apply to everybody. It is contextual, or relative, because actions must be evaluated according to their context. Culture may or may not be a significant part of the context for a particular action. An action is not moral simply because it is traditional in a culture.

H. Scope of desires

More generally, what exactly is the scope of the network of desires I “ought” to optimize? From your definitions, it would seem that the practical scope is either i) “those individuals who might have the power to aid or thwart the fulfillment of my own desires,” or ii) “those individuals whom I have affection for, and thus intrinsically desire their fulfillment.” Is that correct, or am I missing something?

This is a question to which I am afraid I have probably contributed confusion. And I am not sure that I can entirely clear that up. But I will do my best.

First, the universality described in the previous section is relevant here as well. In fact, I originally wrote the middle paragraph in the previous section here, before deciding to use it to answer the previous question.

While I am not sure that I can explain why, the concept of optimizing a network of desires that Ernie and I originated and discussed seems not to have been very helpful. Perhaps it is simply the practical problems involved. At least Ernie's question as formulated presupposes operating within this narrower concept of a network of desires, and it is apparently the practical difficulties of this narrower concept that leads Ernie to ask how far our concern should spread. But as a theory of morality, DU is concerned with universal answers, even while acknowledging the practical difficulty in obtaining some of them.

A second reason that this question may be ill-formed is that DU is a descriptive theory of morality. That is, it supplies a definition for describing things as morally good or bad. It does not itself prescribe certain actions, other than to note that we have reasons to promote desires that lead to certain actions (which in turn will promote other desires). The scope of our concern, then, is a practical matter for which we must make choices and which others may attempt to give us reasons to expand or contract.

I. Counter-cultural choices

What if I live in a society which places social censure on behavior I consider morally good, say 1950’s America which forbade inter-racial marriage? In that context, is the “moral” action to act in accord with societal judgement? Why or why not?

Under DU, the morally good action is that action that a morally good person would choose. A morally good person is a person whose desires tend to fulfill or not thwart other desires (both her own and others'). Societal judgment can be wrong. So can your judgment. Which action is truly moral is independent of either of these.

On the other hand, we do have reasons to promote both the desire to discover what is good and the desire to do what is good even when society is generally mistaken about what is good. If someone made a good faith effort to determine the morally good action and it conflicted with societal norms, and especially if those societal norms did not appear to be similarly based on careful consideration, I would encourage that person to act according her beliefs.

Trying Another Perspective

2007-07-28T17:12:00.000-06:00

Can I suggest to my theist readers a thinking exercise? Try to look at the world and understand it under the assumption that there is no God. What can you think of that makes more sense that way? What makes less sense? What just makes different sense? What would you do differently? What would you do the same?

(It is very important for purposes of this exercise not to try and imagine how the world would be different if there were no God. The idea is to take the world as it is, not as you imagine it might be.)

Was Paul a Heretic?

2007-07-23T23:23:00.000-06:00

In the debate between Christians and skeptics over the truth or falsehood of Christianity, one fact that is entirely uncontroversial is that Christians exist, and have existed in some form or another since the first century. However, a wide variety of beliefs have been held under the umbrella of Christianity, including diverse heresies (at least, so called by the supposedly orthodox). Part of the challenge facing both Christian apologists as well as skeptics is to trace those beliefs back to their origins — accurately. Christian apologists are generally attempting to show that the surviving orthodoxy is an accurate reflection of the truth. Skeptics are generally trying to show that the development of Christianity can be explained (and in fact, can be best explained) without recourse to supernatural involvement.

These tasks are complicated by several confounding factors. We have no contemporaneous records of the life of Jesus, at all, certainly nothing written by him. The sources we do have are almost entirely from Christian writers, and many of the writings that were judged heretical were destroyed, so in fact we have only a subset of the Christian writings. Further, among the surviving Christian writings, we know of many that were pseudonymous, that is, not written by whomever was claimed as the author. And not only were entire books and letters forged, but scribal alterations both intentional and unintentional were common as well, raising questions even about works whose authorship is generally considered authentic. In most cases, the earliest copies we have of most of the New Testament (other than tiny scraps) are from several hundred years after they were written. Finally, it can be difficult to dissociate ourselves from the views that have become generally accepted over the past 1600-1900 years to see how earlier interpretations may have differed.

Careful work can overcome some of the difficulties. For instance, by analyzing the commonalities and differences between various manuscripts, some variant readings can be rejected as (very probably) inauthentic. In other cases the choice between variations is more difficult. Rather than exploring that kind of difficulty, though, I would like to describe something more along the lines of overcoming interpretations that have held sway for most of church history. The particular event I have in mind is the resurrection.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus is arguably the linch pin of modern conservative Christian belief, an importance than I would guess extends a good way into moderate Christianity as well. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:14 that if Christ was not resurrected, the Christian faith is in vain. And there has been a correspondingly substantial amount of verbiage generated by people on both sides of the question, presenting arguments about whether this event occurred. Certainly this was an issue that I felt important to look into both during and after my decision to give up my Christian beliefs.

Now, I mentioned the difficulty that can be associated with overcoming a settled picture of what really happened. I definitely had the idea (an idea commonly repeated in church) that the Bible was a harmonious collection of writings that revealed the truth about God, Jesus and ourselves. We may not always understand the meaning, but we knew it was true. (Think about the implications of that for a moment.) That mental stance works against raising certain kind of questions.

One of the questions that I never thought to ask was, why does Paul, who wrote so much of the New Testament and especially the earliest parts of it, say so very little about the life of Jesus or even anything that Jesus was reported to have said? And, specific to the question of the resurrection, does he say anything that supports the events as portrayed in the Gospels?

The most important passage from Paul's writings in answering this question is 1 Corinthians 15, especially verses 3-11, in which Paul says Christ died, was buried, was raised and then appeared to a number of people, including Peter, the twelve, then to 500 people, then James, then the apostles and finally to Paul himself. (I will say, parenthetically, that some scholars suspect that some parts of this list, or perhaps all of it, may have been due to later non-Pauline additions, the reasons for which are a bit convoluted and not at all conclusive. That is not important to the approach I am describing.) While brief, this seems to provide support for the later reports in the gospels. There are, however, two important points to be made about this description.

First, Paul says that Christ appeared to all of these people, and the word used for all of these appearances is the same; that is, Christ appeared to everyone just as he appeared to Paul, which we know from both Paul and the author of Acts to have been a vision, not a physical, embodied interaction. Second, while Paul mentions death and burial followed by a resurrection, there is no mention of any empty tomb. This might seem like a minor omission, but in fact it is significant. Among the various Jewish sects, for instance, some believed in a bodily resurrection, while others believed in a purely spiritual resurrection (and still others did not believe in any resurrection), so it is an entirely legitimate question to ask if Paul might have been envisioning a spiritual rather than bodily resurrection, a resurrection in which there may not have been physical evidence. The fact that Paul describes Christ's appearance to all of the witnesses listed in this passage in the same terms as his appearance to Paul (which was clearly a vision) already provides some support for this possibility.

In fact, the end of I Corithians 15, starting with verse 35, provides additional evidence for this position, as Paul describes the difference between our earthly natural bodies and the spiritual bodies we will be given by God. This was the subject of a chapter written by Richard Carrier in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (a collection edited by Robert Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder). Since Carrier's treatment of this issue covers fifty pages, I will not pretend to provide anything like a fair summary in one or two paragraphs. I will, however, mention that parts of his argument involve words he believes have been poorly translated from the Greek, so that English translations are misleading on some points. As an example, in verse 51, English translations typically read something like "we will all be changed" which might appear to support the idea that our one body is changed at the resurrection. Carrier writes that a more proper translation would be "exchanged", an important difference in this context. If this were the basis of his entire argument, that might appear pretty thin, but (as you might expect from a fifty page explanation) he brings in quite a bit more support than that. I mention that because someone going and reading the passage in English might conclude that some of those verses provide clear evidence against Carrier's position, when in fact he does address those objections.

An important part of his argument, though, is to look at what kinds of concerns the Corinthian church must have had to lead Paul to answer as he does. There does not appear to be a question on the part of the Corinthians that Jesus was resurrected. Rather, their question appears to be how they can be assured that they will also be resurrected. Carrier attempts to demonstrate that if Paul was describing a bodily resurrection, he would have provided a different sort of answer than he does, an answer more similar to the answers offered by (for instance) the Pharisees who did believe in a bodily resurrection (a belief presumably shared by Paul before his conversion). Because Paul does not answer in this way, but instead develops an entirely different line of argument centered around the differences between two kinds of bodies, Carrier concludes that Paul did not believe that our earthly bodies would be resurrected, but that we would be given new spiritual (heavenly) bodies. Further, Jesus' resurrection was of the same kind as ours will be (Paul says), so his resurrection was also a spiritual one. However, in this view, there would have been no physical evidence of resurrection, since the empty shell of a physical body would have been left to rot, thus explaining the lack of substantial description of any post-resurrection events.

Carrier then looks at the gospel accounts of the resurrection, and notes that by the time of the latest gospels, Luke and John, there is an increasing emphasis on a bodily resurrection. In these later accounts, Jesus displays his wounds and allows them to be carefully examined, strongly implying that his resurrection body is the same body that was killed. This appears to be a departure from the view Paul held. When Origen later wrote in support of the idea of a resurrection into a new, spiritual body, these views were considered heretical. Yet Origen's views appear to be essentially similar to the views Paul himself propounded.

In fact, it is difficult to explain how Paul could hold to a two-body resurrection scheme if he were aware of the stories of bodily resurrection that were later recorded in the gospels. On the other hand, if those stories are later legendary developments, Paul's position is much less problematic. Of course, then we were left with explaining how those stories might have developed, which, as it happens, is what Carrier spends the second part of his chapter doing. (That takes a further forty pages, by the way. There are also thirty-five pages of end notes for that single chapter.)

Nor is this the only discrepancy between Paul's theology and that described by the later gospels and by other apostles. These kinds of difficulties make a great deal of sense when we view the development of Christianity as a human effort lacking divine guidance or, in some cases, evidential basis.

By the way, Richard Carrier has an FAQ for his chapter, available online here. One of the more interesting things he describes there is how Origen's position was purposefully and admittedly misrepresented by another early church figure (Rufinus) to give it a more orthodox flavor.

A History of God

2007-07-01T22:49:00.000-06:00

Today, after reading it on and off for several weeks, I finally finished A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong started her adult life by becoming a Roman Catholic nun, but left after seven years, earned a degree at Oxford, taught modern literature, and became a well-known commentator on religious affairs. "A History of God" traces the various conceptions of God in the Abrahamic religions from the precursors of Judaism to the present day.

To summarize the book very briefly, the initial chapters describe the polytheistic belief systems out of which Jewish monotheism emerged roughly in the middle of the first millenium BCE, especially during the period of captivity in Babylon, though of course the process was a gradual one and it would be impossible to point at a particular time when it occurred. Armstrong does not devote much attention in the text to describing how this picture of the development of Judaism came to be, a picture substantially at odds with what I was taught in the church, though I have since gathered a similar picture to Armstrong's from other sources. Readers only familiar with what is taught in conservative churches would likely find this picture and its lack of justification (in the text of the book) unsettling, but I think that in broad outline it accurately reflects modern scholarship.

In any case, Armstrong moves on quickly to the emergence and early development of Christianity, and then the disputes over the doctrine of the Trinity. This includes not only the disagreements in the Latin branch of the church that came to a head in the fourth century and led to the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed which affirmed that Jesus was "of the same substance" as God (against the views of Arius), but also the diverging views of the Greek branch of Christianity that adopted a radically different conception of God, a view that emphasized an ineffable, unknowable view that was grounded more in experience than doctrine.

After a chapter describing the origin and early history of Islam, Armstrong shifts from describing the major religions mostly (but not entirely) in isolation to describing parallel developments in the conception of God within those religions. The first of these she describes as "The God of the Philosophers", wherein God is conceived in abstract terms and is distant, almost entirely separated from and unaffected by reality as we experience it. In contrast, "The God of the Mystics" represented almost a polar opposite view, where God existed only subjectively in human experience, mostly inaccessible to reason. In both cases, it was often Islamic thinkers that led the way, perhaps because Islamic societies were enjoying a great deal of economical and political success and stability.

Later, the Reformation prompted a "return" to earlier, simpler beliefs among Christians, even as the beginnings of a technological revolution in the West were changing the structure of society. Similar changes occurred in Islam, though in that case the causes were related more to the Mongol invasions as well as conflict with Western Christians. Jews saw at this time renewed persecution by Christians, being expelled from cities across Europe, and this led to revisions in their beliefs as well.

The last few chapters of the book describe the effects of the Enlightenment and exploding scientific understanding that, for the first time, led to serious consideration of the possibility that God may not exist. While some thinkers were happy to leave the idea of God behind entirely, others developed fresh conceptions of God that (somewhat like the mystics) rejected a literal, objective, separate existence. Still others clung ever more tightly to the idea of a supernatural person, regardless of the philosophical and evidential problems associated with the idea, culminating in the modern fundamentalist Christian movement.

Armstrong herself seems particularly sympathetic to the mystical, experiential conceptions of God, berating (very gently) the philosophically naive conceptions that typify both modern believers and those who reject God entirely based on those same naive conceptions. And I must say, I was previously unaware of the full diversity of beliefs that have been held under the names of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I was frequently surprised by the early recognition of various difficulties by early theologians and the sophistication of their solutions. Early Islam in particular was very successful not only in bringing improvements to the developing Arab culture and in co-existing peacefully with Jewish and Christian believers, but also in examining and refining their views of God. And yet...

As I wrote the previous paragraph, I used the word "sophistication" and noted to myself its shared origins (I assume) with "sophistry". Throughout the bulk of the development of the religious traditions that Armstrong is describing, the existence of God was basically just assumed, and all of the effort was expended to describe God, or to say why God could not be described. Various people attempted to solve the problem in radically different ways (viz. the difference between the philosophical and mystical conceptions), and occasionally individuals would vacillate between them as they came to understand the deficiencies of each view. The philosophical God existed, but could not be described and could not interact with a world that was so far below its (not "his") perfect, timeless simplicity. The mystical God, on the other hand, existed only in our minds. The personal, immanent God (and especially the doctrines of Incarnation and the Trinity in Christianity) more familiar to us today ran afoul of apparent philosophical and logical difficulties. Solutions to one problem introduced others.

Further, Armstrong describes how these various developments were affected by their historical context. The development of monotheism in Judaism occurred as the Jewish nations were overcome by first the Assyrians and then Babylonians. Christianity developed during a time of apocalyptic expectations of Jews under Roman rule. Islam developed out of the social ills that were plaguing the Arab transition from nomadic life to their success as merchant traders. As I mentioned before, important developments were related to technological and cultural changes, invasions, persecution, colonization and other non-religious factors.

As I see it, the early conception of a supernatural, personal God was correctly recognized to be untenable by those that gravitated to the philosophical and mystical understandings. It would be difficult for me to say that the God of the mystics does not exist because their conception of God, one which has no objective existence, is so foreign to my own conception. Still, belief in this purely internal, subjective entity grew out of experiences aimed at understanding a God that originally was thought to exist objectively. Without that foundation to start from, this move to mysticism seems misguided. Still, I acknowledge that a mystic might mean something so radically different by "God" that we could not easily have a meaningful conversation on the subject.

Similarly, the philosophical view effectively removes God from examination. Proponents of this view were reduced to describing everything that God is not, eventually settling on describing God as Nothing (a view fairly similar to some forms of Buddhism). Practically, while an intellectually stimulating exercise, this form of God-belief seems otherwise somewhat sterile, and the reasons to believe in such a God reduce to philosophical arguments like the necessity of a First Cause.

These kinds of beliefs were formed mostly during periods of relative economic, social and political stability. They were challenged by periods of unrest, when people wanted a God who could act in the real world. Sometimes, especially for the mystical variants, they were re-adopted when it seemed apparent that God was not acting in the real world. (Jewish Kabbalah mysticism is one example whose growth was stimulated by the tribulations of Jews in Christian Europe.)

The changing conception of God, then, has reflected the context and the needs of believers. To my mind, this reflects poorly on the reasons to believe in God, but Armstrong looks at the problem from a different angle. The summary from the inside jacket sums it up nicely:

Armstrong suggests that any particular idea of God must &mdash if it is to survive &mdash work for the people who develop it, and that ideas of God change when they cease to be effective. She argues that the concept of a personal God who behaves like a larger version of ourselves was suited to mankind at a certain stage but no longer works for an increasing number of people. Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time, she says, is a way to begin the search for a new concept for the twenty-first century. her book shows that such a development is virtually inevitable, in spite of the despair of our increasingly "Godless" world, because it is a natural aspect of our humanity to seek a symbol for the ineffable reality that is universally perceived.

While I do not agree that any present despair is due to being godless per se, I do agree that belief in God will likely persist and change for some time. In any case, Armstrong has produced a valuable and thought-provoking account of the history of belief in God, and I recommend reading it.

Trust? No, Verify!

2007-06-30T01:59:00.000-06:00

I have not been much in the mood to write recently, but I came across a few things tonight that I thought I might mention.

The Box Turtle Bulletin is a blog I follow that deals primarily with social and political issues related to homosexuality. There have been some noteworthy developments recently, including increasing support for the end of the DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) policy in the military. Also noteworthy are a pair of conferences in Southern California, one held by Exodus International, a Christian organization dedicated to helping people overcome their homosexuality, and another by BeyondExGay.com, an organization dedicated to helping people recover from the "help" they got from organizations like Exodus International. Three former Exodus leaders issued apologies this week for the harm they felt their efforts had caused.

My purpose is not discuss any of that in any detail. Rather, the path that lead to this post began with a short post on Box Turtle Bulletin titled Focus on the Family Predicts the Future that pointed out a brief article on Citizen Link (by Focus on the Family Action) describing the conferences. The Citizen Link article states that about 100 people attended the BeyondExGay.com conference, even though that conference did not start until tonight and no pre-registration numbers are available. It also characterized the BeyondExGay.com conference as a protest, which is contrary to the stated purpose of the conference. Finally, the Citizen Link article concludes with a quote from Randy Thomas, the executive vice president of Exodus, who says, "We are always in ongoing communication with people who disagree with us, people with similar testimonies... We definitely will be in communication with them." Yet it was the BeyondExGay.com founders that extended an invitation to dinner to the leaders of Exodus, an invitation that apparently went unanswered. (And, I note also that the article provides no link or other identifiable information about BeyondExGay.com that would allow readers to find out more about that organization or its conference.)

Now, it is certainly possible that the attendence figures were an honest mistake, and it is certainly possible that there is, has been, and will continue to be dialogue initiated by Exodus International, even if this one particular dinner invitation is not accepted. There is reason to be concerned about the accuracy of the Citizen Link article, the intentions of its author(s) and the claims of Exodus International, but nothing necessarily beyond honest mistakes, incomplete information and heavy spin. This was just the first step on my path.

After I read the brief article on Citizen Link, I glanced at the sidebar to see what other kind of content they have on their website. In the section "Focus on Social Issues", they have a sub-category called "Origins". I had never really thought of Focus on the Family as being much involved in the whole evolution vs creationism thing, though I have heard some minor rumblings recently. So I decided to check out what they had to say.

The first article in the "Features" section is titled Evolutionist Admits False Assertions Against Critic of Darwin's Theories. This article was from Agape Press, "Reliable News from a Christian Source". Since I had just been looking into a case where a Christian source had been making questionable claims, what would I find here? I had not heard anything about this.

Well, it turns out that the article was nearly two years old, and it describes an article written by Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education. She had written the article for California Wild, a magazine published by the California Academy of Sciences, describing efforts by a certain Larry Caldwell to introduce anti-evolution, pro-creation materials into a California school district. Larry Caldwell, an attorney and activist in that area, said that many of her claims about him were false and quickly filed a libel lawsuit.

Several of Scott's statements did turn out to be incorrect. That is, while Caldwell was involved in the efforts to introduce the materials into the school district and while he had done some of things that Scott had reported, there were other people involved as well and some of what Scott had attributed to Caldwell was in fact done by others. She issued corrections in the next issue of the magazine. While Scott should have been more careful, there is little reason to believe that she was being purposefully misleading. (The charge of libel would have been very difficult to support.) It is unfortunate that the original article is no longer available on the California Academy of Sciences website, because several writers commenting on the case reported that a number of claims Caldwell made against Scott were factually incorrect; that is, that he made false claims about the content of her article. If true, the irony would be substantial.

The article on Agape Press describing these events is pretty heavily spun. But it includes several statements that are quite humorous to those who have paid attention to the efforts of creationists to promote their ideas: "He [Caldwell] feels even pro-evolution scientists must realize that the integrity of their position is at stake when false allegations and misinformation take the place of fair, rational, and well-informed debate." And, "What Caldwell is hoping, he adds, is that the proponents of Darwin's theories will realize the need to stick to the truth." These statements are humorous because they apply so accurately to creationists. Some of the clearest examples of this can be found in the practice of "quote mining", a technique whereby quotes from scientists are taken out of context (often with critical information elided) so that they appear to cast substantial doubt on evolution. This practice is so common that whole collections of them have been cataloged: the Quote Mine Project contains many examples and references to other similar lists.

Quote mining is not restricted to the anti-evolutionists. Another debate in which this tactic has seen substantial use is the debate over whether the United States was founded on Christian principles (or is a Christian nation, or other similar variations). Just tonight, Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist discusses an article written in his local newspaper by a Baptist minister, Vernon Lyons. Lyons' article argues that the United States was and is a Christian nation in some important respects. Hemant is planning to write a rebuttal and asked for suggestions.

Lyons closed his article with a quote from a Supreme Court decision (Church of the Holy Trinity vs. the United States) in 1892:

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian. This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation...we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

I had not heard of that one before. It does sound fairly compelling, doesn't it? But is it accurate? There are a number of so-called quotes on this subject that are floating around that appear to have been simply made up. And there are those ellipses in the middle of a quote — always a danger sign. A quick visit to Google searching for that last phrase, "mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation", gives as the first two hits two articles explaining the background of this quote. While you can get the details there, the most important word in the second part of the quote that is a clue to the original context and intent of the sentence is "unofficial".

Searching for "embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind" yields an article about a number of fake and questionable quotes that were published by David Barton, quotes that he has since admitted were fake or at best questionable. The first half of the quote included in Lyons' article is one of the fake quotes. (Barton is associated with WallBuilders, a Christian organization "dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history..." It's pretty easy to forget something that never happened.) While the inaccuracy of the quotes has now been acknowledged, the damage has been done. They have been repeated far and wide, and continue to be repeated long after they should have been discarded.

Now, many people who repeat these quotes believe they are giving accurate information; they are misinformed and sometimes ignorant of important facts, a condition which is an almost inevitable consequence of being human. No doubt I have written something here that, while I believe it to be true, is not. Even in the normal course of honest discourse, people will make mistakes and for this reason alone it is valuable to double-check important claims. But as you will see if you read through the quote mining examples and the fake quotes, these are cases where the only reasonable explanation is deliberate misrepresentation by somebody.

I am in no way claiming that these kinds of examples invalidate everything that is ever said by Christians. That would be absolutely preposterous. Neither am I claiming that atheists never commit these sorts of unintentional errors or deliberate deceptions. What I do want my Christian readers to understand, and to see through some of the examples listed here and in the referenced articles, is that there is an awful lot of Christian writing, especially on the Internet and most especially that which comes from more fundamentalist sources, that either originates or uncritically repeats blatant falsehoods in support of the beliefs of the authors. (The same might be said about various political writers.) Practice skepticism! Check their sources. Google is your friend.

We Are Children

2007-06-08T21:49:00.000-06:00

During the past few days, there has been a confluence of events and of thoughts that have provided me some amount of focus for writing. In my last post, nearly two weeks ago, I described some of the questions that I am trying to answer about where to go with my writing here, and some of the thoughts that contributed to this present smidge of inspiration relate to those questions. But in many ways, the subject is much broader, and the route that I will take to describe it is a bit circuitous.

To start, I should back up to, say, junior high or so. I read a fair amount, and it would have been about that time that I started to pick up science fiction by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, two of the classic authors of the genre. Naturally I have read far more since then, but I never did get around to reading any novels by Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke, two of the other most well-known science fiction authors of its early years. (Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke have been called the ABC's of science fiction.) In some ways it was almost embarassing not to have read anything of Bradbury and Clarke other than a few short stories, and that embarassment was most pronounced when, toward the end of April, the local libraries put on a "Big Read", a week focusing on a single book, in this case "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury. The final event of the week was a talk by Bradbury's friend and biographer, whose name now escapes me. I went with a friend of mine, but still had not read that book or any other of Bradbury's novels, and according to a show of hands, I think I was one of only two people there in that apparently despicable condition.

So, I picked up a copy of "Fahrenheit 451" and read that a few weeks ago. More recently, I checked out "The Martian Chronicles" from the library, which I finally started to read earlier this week. The library had several copies, but I picked the one that looked the oldest. It was printed in 1958; the book was first published in 1946. In this particular edition, there is a Prefatory Note by a Clifton Fadiman (I have no idea who he is) who describes Bradbury as a moralist, and says of the book that Bradbury "is telling us ... that human beings are still mental and moral children who cannot be trusted with the terrifying toys they have by some tragic accident invented."

I think I read that on Tuesday. On Wednesday, a woman I with whom I work, whose stepson is deployed in Iraq, found out that four men from his unit were killed last week. The total number of US servicemen killed broke 3500, a number dwarfed by the number of Iraqi civilians killed by us or, sometimes after having been tortured, by other Iraqis. Regardless of your views about how this situation came to be or how it might now be addressed, it must be acknowledged that the situation is tragic, and that the tragedy is the result of human action (not natural disaster). Nor should we forget Darfur, or honor killings, or secret prisons. We are not yet a century past the Nazi Holocaust, the rape of Nanking, and genocide in Rwanda, to name just a few of the most obvious horrors.

This week also brought the G8 summit in Europe, where President Bush, on behalf of the United States, again refused to participate in any meaningful commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Representatives of the US automotive industry met with senators, urging them not to raise fuel efficiency standards which are already the worst in the developed world. Even China has higher standards than we do. Michael Griffin, the head of NASA, made waves last week for statements made in an interview with NPR where he expressed doubt about whether we should bother to do anything about global warming, despite the dire projections of his own researchers. But, he later clarified, understanding Earth's climate is not part of NASA's mission. True — they removed the study of Earth itself from NASA's mission just last year. Meanwhile, Greenland's ice continues to melt, apparently faster even than predicted by the climate models so maligned by climate change skeptics. Somebody forgot to tell the coal industry, which is pushing for government subsidies for coal liquefaction plants, a process that might ease the demand for oil, but only by doubling CO₂ emissions.^*

I could go on, of course. In fact, I had originally planned to address just one of the many factors that contributes to problems such as these (and to religious questions), but perhaps later. Instead, let me agree with Jeffrey Spender, a character from "The Martian Chronicles":

We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.

We are mental and moral children.

^* There is, apparently, more than one way to turn coal to liquid fuel, and not all produce double the carbon emissions. However, the cost of the less damaging processes is prohibitive.

New Directions

2007-05-26T18:03:00.000-06:00

As my online dialog with Ernie slowly winds down, I have been taking some time to think about what I want to do with this blog, if anything. When I started twenty months ago, my intended purpose was to explain my decision to leave Christianity. After only a short time, most of my effort was diverted into my discussion with Ernie, and though parts of my original explanatory intent peeked through, for the most part I think my original purpose in blogging was unfulfilled. Somewhat ironically, that was the source of some frustration for Ernie, who stated at various times throughout the discussion that he did not really understand the essence of my objections to Christianity.

So perhaps the time has come to return to my original purpose, now with the benefit of additional time of thought and study. As I look back at my earliest posts, I think perhaps I started too quickly with details, without establishing a framework into which the details could be placed, and without a good plan for how to build from a beginning to an end. Should I be writing down a personal history, a sort of spiritual travelogue that includes some of the personal events that led me to ask questions and search for answers? Or should I seek to present what I feel are the best reasons for disbelief, regardless of the path that brought me here? What forms of Christianity should I address? What goals am I reaching toward, what good would such an explanation (hopefully) produce? Is it even worth my time, given my glacially slow writing pace? Can I sustain the effort long enough to produce a quality result, or will I end up leaving things hanging? (That happened too much with Ernie, for instance.)

I am still trying to work out an approach that I think might work, and I do not know yet what that will look like, or when I might be ready.

Drawing to a Close

2007-05-06T19:21:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

As we draw our diablogue to a close, it is time for some reflection on where we have been. Coming so closely on the heels of similar reflections that led to a change in format a few weeks ago, some parts of this may be repetitive.

First, some statistics. This dialog started in toward the end of 2005, triggered by a comment Ernie left after my post on Solomon's Temple, followed by what I would consider the first posts that were explicitly intended as part of an ongoing conversation, Testable Propositions and A Post-Modern Faith in Jesus. Since then, I have written 68 posts (plus this one) and Ernie has written 66 (if I counted right). That works out to almost 3/4 MB of text, maybe 100,000 words.

As I look back on some of the earliest posts, I wonder if we really got very far, because some of the same issues we have discussed recently were introduced then. Of course, along the way, we have travelled here and there, discussing hell, epistemology, morality and touches of historical and modern Christianity. Obviously we have not come to any major agreement, but perhaps that is not so surprising.

For my part, despite the lack of resolution, this dialog has been helpful in several ways. It has forced me to consider more carefully my reasoning on various issues, especially regarding those issues that are treated in very different ways by different branches of Christian thought. It has driven me to study philosophical subjects more deeply and particularly develop a deeper understanding of ethics and morality. And I hope (perhaps unreasonably) that I have improved my ability to express myself and to engage in a thoughtful yet perhaps somewhat adversarial discussion.

But do I really understand Ernie any better? I suppose I do, yet what I understand does not move me, intellectually speaking. The primary evidence that seems to be important to Ernie apparently relates to changed lives on both small and large scales. That is, that Christianity has (in his view) produced and continues to produce positive changes that indicate that Christianity must be on to something. My response has been, over and over, that this type of evidence is problematic in several ways: that false beliefs can have (some) benefits, that other belief systems also produce positive changes, that attribution of the large-scale changes to Christianity specifically is difficult, that any weighing of the evidence must also include the evil that can be attributed to Christianity, and that the moral contributions can exist apart from the metaphysical beliefs so that other kinds of evidence must be adduced to support those other claims.

If there have been other lines of evidence offered, I do not recall them now. I think Ernie has made some other types of claims, but (perhaps due to the conversational trajectory) has not defended them. Similarly, I have not addressed or supported all of the issues that lead me to disbelief.

I might summarize my major themes as: the disproportionality of the evidence for Christianity to the consequences for disbelief and sufficiency of non-theistic explanations for the evidence that Ernie claims support Christianity. While I have advanced other lines of evidence external to our dialog, I think most of my half of this conversation has fallen into those two grand themes.

I respect Ernie for his recognition of some of the flaws of modern Christianity and his intention to improve it. There is a great deal of room for improvement in this world, and while may disagree with Ernie on a number of points, I appreciate his willingness to engage for so long in an attempt improve our small part of it.

Thanks, Ernie.

Penultimate Thoughts

2007-05-05T22:42:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief, a dialog that is drawing to a close.

I promised to Ernie that I would write up some reflections on how our dialog has proceeded over the past eighteen months. This is not it.

I have wanted to hear from Ernie more details about his views of the Bible. In our last chat, when I asked about this, Ernie compared the Bible to lab notebooks, written by people "performing real experiments on 'moral reality'" who got "the right answer" even if the standards of evidence are below today's standards. He further compared the process by which scripture was copied and transmitted to the peer review and citation processes of modern science. His claim appears to be that we therefore have comparable reasons to trust scripture as we have for trusting the results of modern science.

I do not agree.

First, when Ernie admits that the standards of evidence were below today's standards but yet claims that they got the right answer, on what basis can he say that they got the right answer? Have there been modern experiments performed according to our modern standards of evidence that verify the Bible's answers about questions of moral reality? If these experiments have not been performed, how can Ernie claim that the Bible contains the right answers? As far as I can tell, Ernie seems to be basing this claim on the success of Western civilization, despite the various problems that exist in tracing this success to the moral claims of the Bible. I am not aware of any modern experiments that would allow Ernie to claim that (according to modern standards of evidence) that the Bible contains the correct answers to questions of morality. In fact, the Bible contains moral instructions that have been discarded by modern believers. This is most clear when examining the moral laws of the Old Testament, but I believe is also true of parts of the New Testament (to varying degrees among different groups).

Second, the Bible contains more than just moral instruction. It also makes claims about the existence and nature of God, of Jesus, of heaven and hell, and so on. Does Ernie claim that these were experimentally verified? How could these experiments be reproduced today? If they cannot, the modern standards of evidence cannot be met.

Third, the process by which scripture was transmitted and eventually canonized has only a vague similarity to the peer review process in science today. Ernie says that "People made claims, others wrote them down, still others decided they were worth copying and transmitting, etc." Without knowing the standards by which such decisions were made, this becomes little more than a popularity contest. An important part of the peer review process today is evaluation of a paper against the very standards of evidence that are important to modern science. Without those standards, standards that Ernie admits were lacking for the Bible, the peer review process loses much of its force.

Now, there were some standards that were supposedly used for the eventual canonization of the New Testament: apostolic authorship, correct doctrine and widespread use. As I have written recently, modern scholarship places considerable doubt on the correct assignment of authorship to a large number of New Testament books. The standard of correct doctrine assumes that there is an independent source of correct doctrine to which the books and letters could be compared. What was that source? Is it still available today? Without knowing what this source was, and without having good reasons to trust in its accuracy, the criteria of doctrinal correctness is in great danger of reducing to question begging. Widespread usage is also problematic. Perhaps if we had good reason to believe that widespread usage was indicative of widespread truth-testing, this might hold some weight. But since some popular books were not included on the basis of doctrinal incorrectness, we have good reasons to believe that popularity was not considered to be equivalent to wide-spread truth testing. (Note too that the doctrinal issues involved often revolved around Jesus' divinity and related concepts that are not open to experimental verification.)

The similarity between the development of the Bible and modern scientific progress is terribly shallow. No matter how many smiley-faces Ernie uses while comparing them, the differences that remain are substantial and important.

As our chat progressed, I claimed that Christianity has had trouble converging. Ernie claims that Christianity is converging, but slowly. He gave as an example of "numerous hard-won convergence points that have enormously broad appeal" the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization that resulted in the Lausanne Covenant. I found this example interesting for several reasons. First, this was a meeting of evangelical Christians, so it already illustrates one of the fracture lines that divides Christians in the world today. Now, Ernie did not claim that this was an example of universal convergence, just "broad appeal", but still this is an important point. The second point of interest is that the Lausanne Covenant affirms "the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice." As far as I can tell, while this statement may have broad appeal, it contradicts Ernie's own stated views about the nature of the Bible. The Lausanne statement does not describe a lab notebook written by fallible humans; it describes authoritive, inerrant revelation.

Ernie and I also discussed Christianity, atheism and secular humanism and their roles in societies. Here there are a few things that I need to clear up. Ernie said, "So, I get the feeling that you're attacking me from both sides. Either you say it doesn't matter that Christianity works, because its false; or else you say it must not work, since its false." This accusation has some merit and I need to answer. I think Ernie's description is misleading because it is not a question of purely working or purely not working. I have tried to acknowledge that there may be some useful contributions of Christianity (so it "works" to some degree). I have also stated multiple times that false beliefs can have some beneficial effects (so again, it "works" to some degree). But I have further claimed that, because it is false (or contains false elements), it will not work as well as belief systems that exclude the false elements. It is possible that this last statement is actually incorrect. Some people have argued that such false beliefs play important roles in social cohesion. While I have to acknowledge that possibility, I also believe that we have good reasons to search for alternatives that do not involve such false beliefs.

Ernie was correct to point out that, to date, there have been no examples of persistently successful societies that lacked some sort of shared religious tradition. Recent trends in this direction, such as in Europe and Japan, are neither pure examples nor have they demonstrated long-term success. It may also be true that secular humanism by itself will prove insufficient to bind a society together. As I just stated in the last paragraph, it may even be true that certain kinds of false belief are inevitable and/or necessary. That possibility raises some interesting questions about how those who recognize the beliefs as false should proceed. But it does not make the beliefs true. Absent other considerations, I would accept societal success as evidence that the beliefs reflect some sort of truth, if perhaps only indirectly. But when we have other reasons to believe that the beliefs are false, and when we also have reasons to expect the false beliefs to have beneficial effects, societal success simply does not carry sufficient evidentiary weight. I will also point out again that societal success (that is, persistence) does not necessarily imply individual well-being.

I had hoped to draw some parallels between this particular interaction and our larger dialog in order to illustrate what I think were some of our larger issues. At this point, I need to wrap this up, so I will simply take care of that in my coming reflections on our dialog.

Chatalogue: End Game

2007-05-03T07:40:00.001-06:00

Ernie and I held our third chat last night, a day earlier than planned due to some scheduling conflicts. I will be preparing some commentary this weekend; for now, here is the transcript:

E: G'day.

A: Howdy

E: Thanks for being flexible.

A: No problem

E: Sounds like Wednesday was better for both of us.

E: So, any thoughts about how you'd like the conversation to go this time?

E: [since you seem less than thrilled by last week's trajectory :-]

E: http://little-endian.blogspot.com/2007/04/remonstration-of-conversational.html

A: Well, I wonder if you understand my concerns about what kind of conclusions we'd be able to reach.

A: And I am also curious about what flaws you feel exist in Alonzo's descriptions of how DU solves various problems of morality

E: I can see it; I'm not sure I "understand" it.

E: That did raise an intriguing possibility.

E: I wonder if this might actually be more "constructive" if we focused on less on trying to construct a common understanding, but actually defend opposing viewpoints.

E: That is, get adversarial (in content and structure, though hopefully not tone!)

A: Interesting. It seems like we just decided to "restart" with less adversiality (is that a word?)

E: Yeah, but every time I try to build something, you seem underwhelmed by the result.

A: That's true.

E: Plus, it seems like you're more interested in the "adversarial" results (or lack thereof) than in anything mutual we've come up with.

E: So, rather than backing into being adversarial, maybe it would actually be more fun for both of us to tackle it (and each other) head on!

A: Well, I thought our first week's chat was helpful, but last week we kind of settled back into the same groove we had already tried to cover earlier.

E: I concede that I easily get stuck in lecture mode.

E: Perhaps debate mode would be more mutual.

A: Maybe.

E: Unless you have a lecture prepared, for the sake of equal time? :-P

A: :-)

E: Do you have any claims you'd like to articulate and/or defend?

A: Grrr... trying again.

E: or even an inquisition you'd like to put me through...

A: Let me back up, and say first, that I am not sure that further discussion on morality seems likely to be that helpful.

A: The reasons I believe (or don't believe) what I do (or don't) are not grounded on what provides a basis for morality, so even if you could show that there were no foundation for morality without a benevelent moral purpose,

A: I am not sure it would matter that much to me. (Not that I believe that is true.)

E: Or, put another way, your commitment to "truth" is actually foundational, not merely instrumental to morality.

E: http://little-endian.blogspot.com/2006/10/reason-morality-and-evolution.html

A: Hmm, I am not sure I would have put it that way. Just stop at "commitment to truth is foundational".

E: Okay, fair enough.

A: Does that make sense?

E: It does, though it somewhat conflicts with an operational/consequential definition of "truth."

A: Why?

E: What is the basis of your commitment to truth? In terms of what do you define truth?

E: My metric has been 'The truth is what works' (even if "what works is not the truth").

A: When you say, "the truth is what works", I would take that to mean that the truth is what lets us make accurate predictions about the world.

E: sure

A: There need be no moral judgement attached to those predictions.

E: Sure.

A: So I still don't see where the conflict is.

E: But, it gets back to what you mean by "truth is foundational".

E: Not a strong conflict, just a request for clarification.

E: Since truth about human beings is difficult to evaluate apart from moral considerations (though not impossible).

A: Why?

E: Well, in my worldview, all human action has a moral dimension.

E: It is related to purpose and happiness, at the very least.

A: So, you assume a moral dimension, so it then becomes difficult to interpret people without it.

E: Right.

E: To me, it would be like trying to interpret subatomic particles while ignoring charge.

A: That kind of seems like question begging.

E: Again, my point was that it is *hard* for me to understand how you define truth.

E: So, how about you show me?

A: The reason that we attribute charge to subatomic particles is that we observe particular kinds of behaviors of those particles.

E: RIght, we interpret their behavior as being due to charges we label as "positive" and "negative."

A: I do think that it is sensible to talk about morality because we can observe various things about how people behave.

E: As I interpret human behavior in terms of positive and negative attributes I label "love" and "hate."

A: Sure. I hope I have communicated that I do actually think that there is a basis for making moral statements.

E: Right.

E: But, getting back to the epistemic question.

E: Our original definition started with assertion that 'truth is good'.

E: http://homepage.mac.com/drernie/iblog/B48962342/C1521058277/E20060225081557/index.html

E: If we don't assume that, we need a slightly different starting point.

A: I still agree with that, but I don't see us making any real progress from that starting point.

E: Fair enough.

E: So, can you propose an alternate starting point?

E: [new link, same article; http://2transform.us/2006/02/26/diablogue-epistemology-of-empirical-essentialism-take-deux/]

A: Well, I am still curious, in a non-adversarial way, in hearing you further explain you views on scripture and why it's "good"

E: I think of Scripture much like I think of Newton's Laws.

E: More precisely, like Millikan's Notebook.

E: http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/millikan.htm

E: The standards of evidence are far below what we'd accept today.

E: But, they got the right answer. :-)

E: Which implies to me that they were in fact performing real experiments on "moral reality", and obtaining useful data.

E: And thus, by incorporating their data into my models I achieve better predictive power than if I ignore or discount that data.

E: Did you drop off?

A: Nope, just listening.

E: [i got a weird message saying you signed on, which is why I asked].

A: Weird.

E: anyway, that's the essence of my argument

A: So, scripture could be reproduced by anyone able to perform the same experiments?

A: (Not in exact detail of course)

E: Sure, to the limits of historical correspondence?

E: .

E: That's what most of the charismatic movement is about, after all. :-)

E: Back to the second goalpost: most of it is due to a small group of old guys from a particular ethnic background wandering in the desert, coming back with paradigm-shattering reports that are difficult to reproduce, but validated by their peers, and prove to have extraordinary explanatory power.

E: Because of that, I tend to believe that their experiences were genuine, and their reports trustworthy -- despite the fact that many counterfeits have presented with similar claims.

E: http://little-endian.blogspot.com/2006/09/found-two-goalposts.html

A: In what ways were the reports validated by their peers?

E: The process of scripture formation was originally organic, and only later hierarchical.

E: People made claims, others wrote them down, still others decided they were worth copying and transmitting, etc.

E: Not entirely unlike our Citation Rank process for scientific papers.

A: Do you have reason to believe those other people actually selected papers for their actual truth value rather than some other characteristic?

E: Do we ever? :-)

E: Peer-review is only as good as the quality of the peers.

A: Yes, but today we know something about the quality of the peers.

E: And the metrics for selection are more complicated than one might think.

E: Only for fields where we're already expects, unfortunately.

A: Then, we have some information, but it is not necessarily that positive.

E: Otherwise, we're simply trusting in the institutions.

E: :-)

E: That's why my espitemic model makes explicit claims about the nature of communities, and relational trust.

A: I think the scientific process is very much one in which arguments from authority are not supposed to be powerful.

E: (which makes it hard to separate from morality :-P )

E: Since when? :-)

E: What that really means is that scientists don't accept arguments from authorities *outside their paradigm*

E: Within a paradigm, we are continually citing authorities.

E: The Particle Data Book, Newton's Laws, the Standard Model, etc.

A: They accept (not always immediately, but eventually) arguments that are consistent with the data.

A: And they are judged by that standard.

E: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2006/html/what_is_pdg.html

E: Again, within a given paradigm.

A: I don't think a similar standard was used for scripture.

E: How can it not be?

E: It was a different paradigm, but obviously people had one.

A: Why should we trust that paradigm?

E: Again, why do we trust any paradigm?

E: More importantly, in which -ways- do we trust the results of those paradigms?

A: We trust science because it works. It has produced results. These results have substantial agreement.

A: There is not a comparable level agreement amongst Christians about doctrine.

E: Can you quantify that statement?

E: Or does it depend entirely on how you define various terms?

A: I think in the entire history of Christianity, there have been and continue to be major disagreements about what it means.

E: As opposed to the history of science? :-)

A: Science converges.

A: Christianity hasn't.

E: Last I checked, the vast majority of Christians still hold to the Nicene Creed.

E: Science tends to discard ideas far faster :-)

E: Believe it or not, Christianity also converges.

E: One fascinating example for me is the charismatic movement.

A: Different pockets converge to different places.

E: Again, how is that different than science?

E: Before the 1960's, the charismatic movement was a fringe Pentecostal set of denominations.

E: In the 1980's, it was enormously controversial.

E: Now, it is more-or-less accepted as normal and healthy by virtually every denomination.

E: There's numerous hard-won convergence points that have enormously broad appeal, e.g. http://www.lausanne.org/Brix?pageID=12891

A: I am not so sure about that, actually. Maybe by some people within every denomination, but not by everybody. It's just another way to split.

E: You miss the point.

E: In the 1980's, there were a huge number of ideologues talking about how charismatic gifts were of the devil, and how anyone who practiced them should be cast out of the church.

E: Now, it is only a handful of relics who would make such claims, and most of those do so quietly -- for they know they'd alienate a bunch of their supporters and colleagues.

E: It is like believing in a Steady State universe -- only those with a huge ego investment in that belief persist in it.

E: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_theory

E: To be sure, we don't converge on *everything* -- but then again, neither does science.

E: But, the church has in fact converged on a great many things, at least to the "majority extent" -- which is all we get out of science, either. :-)

E: We just have an annoying tendency to amplify our controversies.

E: Still there?

A: Yes and no...

E: I get the impression that you feel any of the "common beliefs" of Christianity (and western culture) are "obvious", so Christians shouldn't get any of the credit for having discovered and converged upon them.

A: Some were also discovered by non-Christians. Some were not discovered by all Christians. Some were wrong. The signal is not strong enough to overcome the disconfirming evidence.

A: (Or, sometimes, significant lack of evidence.)

E: Which brings us back to whether you think the success of Western culture and morality is a notable discovery, on par with Newton's Laws.

A: I don't think it was that concentrated and unique.

E: I've never claimed that Christians had all truth, or were always correct; just that it is the most successful paradigm, among other less succesful ones.

E: Further, need I point out that while Christian societies have had mixed results, atheistic ones have been uniformly disastrous?

A: They have had other problems.

E: Other than moral ones?

A: It may be true that Christianity and other religions play a beneficial role while being false. That's something I'm still chewing on.

E: So, I get the feeling that you're attacking me from both sides.

E: Either you say it doesn't matter that Christianity works, because its false; or else you say it must not work, since its false.

A: It's not just Christianity that works in that sense though.

E: (wait, that came out wrong)

E: What sense must it work? Can you come up with a consistent standard, that you'd be willing to judge atheism against?

A: Atheism entails too little.

A: People with vastly different views can still be atheists.

E: Well, do you have a foundational alternative to Christianity you'd propose building society around instead?

A: Secular humanism

E: Or are you just tearing it down because you think it deserves to die, and you really don't care about the consequences?

E: Secular humanism is almost as vague as atheism.

A: Stalin and Pol Pot, while atheists, were not secular humanists.

E: Okay, sure.

E: But they at least managed to run a country.

E: There is zero evidence that secular humanists can actually manage to maintain social cohesion while being true to their values.

E: At least that I've seen -- I'd be willing to be confronted by facts I've overlooked.

A: How would you describe Japan and Scandinavia? They are among the most "atheistic" countries in existence right now.

E: Huh?

E: Sure, if you consider Confucianism atheism, but that grossly mistates the case.

E: Japan is bound together by far more than secular humanism, as you well know.

E: And Norway is hardly secular in the strict sense, even if people are skeptical or organized religion.

E: http://www.norway.org.uk/facts/religion/general/gereral.htm

E: "Norwegian religious expression is largely private; whereas most individuals state that religion is important to them, this is not generally expressed through active religious participation in organized communities."

E: Besides, you do realize that all secularized societies are slowly committed genetic suicide, right?

A: And the religious societies are doing so much better?

E: Well, yeah.

E: At least by that crude metric, the world population is still increasing.

A: But, is increasing population a good thing at this point?

E: Compared to the alternative?

A: yes

E: Look, any society that fails to have children is eliminating itself from history.

E: I would consider that counter-productive.

E: And, it is in fact creating a huge age crisis in Japan, as I'm sure you've heard.

E: I'm not saying that the excessive breeding of African Muslims is a good thing, but at least you gotta give em credit for trying to stay alive.

E: Well, I do; I'm not sure where your morality fits into this.

E: So, we should wrap up.

A: yep

E: Do you want to take a stab at defining secular humanism for next time, and how it obviates the need for a consensus around my Deistic Hypothesis?

A: I'm not really sure I'm interested in continuing, actually.

E: Sorry to hear that.

E: I apologize if my more adversarial tone today didn't help things.

E: But, perhaps that is wisdom on your part, to recognize the futility of dead-horse beatings.

E: still there?

A: yes

A: I don't think we're going to get anywhere.

E: So, maybe we should simply try to end well.

E: Perhaps we could each write up our reflections on how we thought things went, just to wrap things up.

A: Sure. It might be a couple days, though.

E: No hurry; I'm gone all weekend anyway.

E: Perhaps if we can get our respective Conclusions posted, we can chat about them one last time next Thursday.

A: We can discuss that (privately) after they are posted, I suppose.

E: To be honest, it would be something of a relief to have this over; though, I'll miss being connected to you this tightly.

E: fair enough

A: Thanks, Ernie. I'll be in touch.

E: 'later

A: bye

Remonstration of Conversational Trajectory

2007-04-28T14:46:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Ernie,

Regarding:

That G/NOD is a singular, well-defined entity covering all of humanity.

That the moral rules governing G/NOD are *discovered* more than they are *invented*.

That those rules are in principle discoverable by human beings in the right circumstances

That there is such a thing as virtuous character, which is always better than vicious character.

That it is always rational to do that which is virtuous.

Is it your position that these are true statements that must either be derived or assumed? If not, why are they important?

I disagree that DU must assume all of them. (1) through (3) may be assumptions but they are hardly earth-shattering; only (1) is at all difficult. (4) is derivable. (5) may be false, but I may be misunderstanding. Rationality has to do with using reason. This seems to be saying that, using reason, all people will always find that virtuous actions will best satisfy (the most and strongest of) their own desires. DU does not assume this, entail this, or require this. But maybe I am misunderstanding, since this interpretation requires importing some assumptions that may not be correct.

My larger complaint about this whole approach is that there are multiple tenuous connections chained together in series: the importance of Christianity to Western civilization, the role of ontological and ethical claims in that contribution, the admitted possibility that contra-factual beliefs play an important role in such contributions, the mere consistency of those claims with a barely characterized "benevolent purpose" when the claims do not otherwise require such an additional entity, ...

I spent a couple of hours last night trying to write a response to our chat. During the chat, I wanted to let you continue to see where things were going and we may not have gotten far enough to really see that, but so far, my perspective on this is not really any different from your previous attempts in our diablogue. After a lot of work, we'll have only a very weak, tenuous conclusion.

I'm not sure that's helpful.

I introduced UU and DU as ethical theories that require no external "benevolent purpose" or "deity", no mysterious metaphysical claims, in constrast to your claim that such additional elements were essential. DU particularly relies on only a small number of ontologically basic elements: desires, beliefs, intentions and intentional actions. Their existence does not seem controversial. DU does appear to solve a number of issues that plague other ethical theories. Alonzo recently summarized them in Evaluating Moral Theories. While I agree that there may be practical difficulties at this point that could benefit from further exploration, this is enough to satisfy me (at least for now, knowing what I know) that no additional entities are necessary. Demonstrating that the above statements are consistent with (and even derivable from) the existence of a benevolent purpose is unconvincing when the statements are also consistent with its non-existence (or when the statements are not demonstrably true, as (5)).

Can you offer some reason to expect that the direction we are taking will be more fruitful than what it appears to me?

Alan

Chatalogue: Think Globally, Act Locally?

2007-04-26T21:53:00.000-06:00

Ernie and I chatted again tonight. I'll have some more to say later, I hope, but for now I'll just add the transcription:

E: Hello!

A: Hi

A: So, where to start this week?

E: I see you've been doing some homework as well.

A: A bit. The Toynbee book I got was not exactly what I expected.

E: Anyway, i do think you captured the essence of his argument.

E: http://little-endian.blogspot.com/2007/04/civilized-inference.html

A: Was there anything you wanted to say about that, or are we jumping back into the G/NOD thing?

E: I think the key distinction might be what I'm calling "pseudo-factual" statements.

A: Explain?

E: Does that mean that the religious beliefs of the Balinese were true? No, it just means they had evolved successful rules and encoded those rules in religious stories and rituals. The beliefs were false, but they were helpful. On the other hand, while the rules may have been well-adapted to Balinese climate, they may not have worked well elsewhere or during periods of abnormal rainfall or other sus

E: In your example of the Balinese, their beliefs were not entirely "true", but they were "contextually accurate within a given domain."

A: But attempting to extrapolate further from those beliefs would have been difficult, yes?

E: Isn't it always?

E: In my epistemology, *all* knowledge is merely "contextually accurate within a given domain."

E: (some just span bigger domains than others)

A: But you have to be careful of the domain.

E: Sure -- but that is always true, yes?

A: I guess what I see you doing is saying that (for instance) Jesus/the Bible teaches certain things about love. Love seems to be a good thing. So, since Jesus/the Bible was accurate in that one instance, we can trust him/it about other things.

E: No, not at all.

A: So, how do you support the supernatural/theistic aspects of your beliefs?

E: That's too many steps to jump in one leap.

E: Let me start with a simpler set of statements, to see if we can identify where we part company.

E: 1. Successful moral systems must embody some number of valid truths about human nature.

E: 2. The ontological claims of those moral systems may or may not be counterfactual.

E: 3. Medieval Western Christianity (MWC) -- while far from perfect -- has proven to be the most fertile ground for succesful moral innovation of any system yet attempted.

A: How are you determining that?

E: Well, can we go back to the metric of "greatest good for the greatest number?"

E: If you buy Toynbee's characterization of "Western Christendom" as a civilization, it has produced more net happiness than any other civilization to date.

A: See, I don't see how you can make that determination so easily, nor can you easily tie that production to Christianity.

A: It's not that I don't think there is some truth there, but I think there is too much contingency and dynamicism and complexity to make simple attributions like that.

E: Well, here's a simple test.

E: (I have this weird feeling of deja vu -- have we discussed this before?).

E: Compare the "quality of life" of someone in Western Christendom, and its ability to respond to external threats, with that of any other civilization.

A: At what point in time?

E: Pick a time.

A: And how do we know that Christianity itself was responsible for that?

E: The only exception I can think of is the Moorish empire.

E: I didn't say that "Christianity per se" was necessarily responsible.

E: I am saying that a culture which (at least initially) was based on MWC has proved to be extremely succesful.

E: It is a data point, not a proof.

A: OK

E: So, moving on...

E: 4. Many of the ontological and ethical presuppositions of MWC (though far from all) are still a vital part of Contemporary Western Civilization (CWC).

E: go ahead

A: Wasn't sure if you were going on to (5) or not...

E: trying to

E: hard to phrase properly...

E: 5. Any system that presumes to improve on MWC needs to adequately account for those axioms that are in use by CWC, and ideally provide better explanatory and predictive power.

E: there

A: Let me think about that a second...

A: I guess the reason I have trouble with this line of argument is that whatever Christianity (or MWC) got right about ethics, many of its claims about reality go well beyond what are supported by those parts it got right.

E: Maybe, maybe not.

E: The question is, do you concede that your "improvement to Christianity" needs to get right at least as many things that Christianity did?

A: Yes and no.

A: I think the "improvement to Christianity" is wider than ethics. I also think that many of the improvements that MWC has made in the area of ethics have come about in contrast to the established views of Christians.

A: Not sure if that was very clear.

E: Sure, cast the net as wide as you wish.

E: But do you concede that, on the whole, your improvement to Christianity (as we know it) actually needs to be an overall improvement on areas that matter, not just superior in one tiny facet?

A: Yes.

E: Ok, good.

E: We can go back to G/NOD, unless you'd like to tackle something else.

A: That's fine.

E: Okay, well from this perspective I would claim that MWC implicitly made several very powerful assumptions about what we can interpret as G/NOD.

A: Which are?

E: I. That G/NOD is a singular, well-defined entity covering all of humanity.

E: II. That the moral rules governing G/NOD are *discovered* more than they are *invented*.

E: III. That those rules are in principle discoverable by human beings in the right circumstances

E: IV. That there is such a thing as virtuous character, which is always better than vicious character.

E: V. That it is always rational to do that which is virtuous.

E: Of course many of these were also inherited from the Greeks.

E: But MWC managed to develop an ontological scheme that accounted for everything they liked about the Greeks, and quite a bit more.

E: over to you...

A: And does this relate to Christianity specifically in any way?

A: Or theism generally?

E: At this level, not necessarily (except implicitly in III).

E: However, it does relate to my claims regarding the Deistic Hypothesis, and our first goalpost.

A: What part of the ontological scheme requires a deity?

A: Or transcendent morality?

E: Those terms aren't necessarily well-defined.

A: How does this relate to you deistic hypothesis then? Doesn't that imply a deity somewhere?

A: I just don't see where you make the leap.

E: From the MSSB, I define DH as "the various systems encompassing humanity are the result of a benevolent Purpose -- one sympathetic to human Reason, Virtue, and Happiness"

E: I am simply asserting that one can derive all five of those Principles from the DH.

A: I guess it doesn't appear to me that such a Purpose is necessary. Those principles (or similar) can be derived from a G/NOD without reference to external purpose.

E: And that Desire Utilitarianism requires those same assumptions (but ad hoc) "in order to support meaningful “social inquiry.”

E: "

E: No, they can be *asserted* for G/NOD.

E: But not derived in any meaningful sense.

E: still there?

A: Scrolling back up to look at the statements...

A: DU says that desires are real. Individuals have them. They can be aggregated.

A: There are relationships between desires, mediated by actions.

E: Sure.

E: But is there a global solution that maximizes then? Do we have sufficient information to make that determination?

A: There is at least one such solution, right? How can there not be at least one maximum? Unless it goes to positive infinity somewhere...

E: There can be multiple local maxima.

E: It could be flat (zero-sum) with multiple minima.

A: Yes. But at least one and possible multiple global maxima.

A: It's even possible that the maximum is "negative", I suppose, but it's still a maximum.

E: Well, okay. But is it reachable?

A: How is that relevant here?

E: More importantly, is virtuous behavior due to virtuous desire the optimal means to get closer to that maxima?

E: In order for DU to be actionable, it seems necessary to answer questions like that.

A: Virtuous behavior is behavior that promotes desires, so by definition, virtuous behavior move close to at least a local maxima.

A: "closer", not "close"

E: Right, but what if that local maxima takes one away from the global maxima?

A: Again, how is this relevant here? Yes, it seems possible.

E: My point is that if "morally good" is defined relative to G/NOD -- and that's what we care about -- then mere local statements and decisions about what is "functionally good" don't tell us anything about genuine morality.

E: We need some additional assumptions about how maximizing the local Network of Desires (L/NOD) impacts the G/NOD.

E: I'm trying to decide whether DU (as you understand it) implicitly makes those assumptions, or denies their relevance.

A: Ooh, I think we are talking about different sense of the word "global".

A: I am imagining a multi-dimensional landscape where the "altitude" at any point is the total amount of desire fulfillment.

E: okay...

A: A local maxima does not refer to maximizing desires locally (socially speaking) but maximizing desires in the neighborhood of the current position on the landscape.

A: So, the dimensions correspond to the strenghts of various desires.

E: I'm not sure I see the difference.

A: Well, what do you mean by the L/NOD?

E: At any rate, if we don't have a unimodal landscape, it seems you have the same issues.

E: L/NOD = the local set of entities and their desires

A: Local geographically (as in social connections)?

E: hold on

E: okay, I'm back.

A: Let's say there are only two desires that people have, A and B. So there is a two dimensional landscape (with hills).

E: Let us assume that -- at least in principle -- I can observe the entities that I have personal awareness of, and make a plausible assessment of their desires.

E: (which itself is a big assumption, but I can live with it).

A: The hills are the total amount of desire fulfillment in the entire population when that population has desires a in domain and b in domain

E: [feel free to continue your example while I work on mine]

A: Ooops. that was domain ( A ) and domain ( B ) that cleverly got converted to pictures...

E: I was wondering... Beer and angels made a nice contrast

A: So, there may be a local maximum of total desire fullfillment at a=a1 and b=b1 but a global maximum at a=a2 and b=b2. But in both cases, the desire fulfillment of the entire population is being measured.

E: If P is the people whose desires I can observe or infer, then L/NOD is simply D , the aggregate of all their desires.

A: he he

E: D[P]

E: Anyway, I'm concerned with the epistemic problem.

A: How can we find the solution? How do we know when we've found it?

E: Exactly.

E: How indeed?

E: I am asserting that there needs to be some sort of paradigm.

E: And more, that there needs to be a widespread moral consensus about the validity of that paradigm.

A: I don't think I follow.

A: For instance, consider this alternative: each individual promotes in others desires that will tend to satisfy his own desires.

E: Sure.

E: I call that manipulation.

A: At the same time, of course, he is acted on by others in the same way.

A: Do we want to get side-tracked on manipulation?

A: It doesn't have to be dishonest or "tricky".

E: I'm just labeling your definition.

E: Feel free to keep going...

A: Grrr... trying agin.

A: again

A: My point is just that progress can be made by individuals acting as individuals without the widespread consensus you mentioned.

A: It might go faster with consensus, but not necessary.

E: I disagree, at least under the terms you defined above.

E: I would assert that influencing other people's desires requires either a) power, or b) moral authority to succeed.

A: What is moral authority? If not power?

E: And that if influencing you to act according to my desires is not perceived by you as in your best interest, it will interpreted as unhealthy and illegitimate manipulation.

E: If you like you can define moral authority as a form of "soft power" to distinguish it from "hard power."

A: Praising somebody for something they did is a way to manipulate them and others to do similar things again. If the praise is sincere, is it unhealthy?

E: Define "sincere" and "unhealthy".

A: Sincere simply means here that I gave praise because I actually approved of what I am praising.

E: I would define "sincere praise" as "valuing something as truly good", not merely as "beneficial to me."

A: Are you asserting the existence of intrinsic goodness apart from anybody's desires?

E: At least part from the "local" desire, yes.

E: For example...

A: It does not have to be beneficial to me to be praiseworthy.

A: I can praise somebody for helping somebody else, knowing that similar actions could be helpful to me in the future.

E: If a kid in high school who wanted my approval stole the answers to the physics exam, I could easily praise her for her ingenuity and courage.

E: And I would be fully sincere.

E: But it would be manipulative and immoral in the larger scheme, no?

E: Sure, *some* praise is healthy; but that doesn't mean it all is.

A: Oh, definitely.

E: Okay, so let us define 'healthy praise' as this which encourages behavior that tends to maximize the G/NOD, whether or not it maximizes the L/NOD.

A: I'm sorry if I implied that sincerity was the *only* criteria by which the praise should be judged.

E: Or do you have a criteria for "healthy" that doesn't reference the G/NOD?

A: No.

E: So, we're running out of time.

A: I was just going to say...

E: I'm not in a hurry, but we should probably try to wrap up..

A: Yep.

A: I guess we'll leave it there... maybe I'll blog about it before next week.

E: My position is that it is possible to make meaningful statements about how to maximize L/NOD with fairly weak assumptions about reality, but that to make meaningful statements about the G/NOD requires fairly *strong* assumptions about reality (comparable to I-V) above.

E: Is that much at least clear?

A: Clear as lemonade, at least.

E: I'll settle for translucent. Hopefully we can start with that next week, unless we manage to resolve it before then.

A: OK, "talk" to you then.

E: Bye!

A: bye

Civilized Inference

2007-04-21T20:47:00.001-06:00

I wanted to write down a few thoughts I had as a bit of follow-up to my first chat with Ernie and as preparation for our next one.

Ernie brought up Arnold Toynbee and his 22 identified civilizations. I have only the most passing familiarity with Toynbee's work. I picked up one of his books about the history of Christianity at the library today, and I've read through a only couple of articles on Wikipedia about him and his work. So I cannot speak in any detail about his ideas, but I would like to address Ernie's reference to his work.

Basically, Ernie's claim was that the success of Christianity in contributing to so-called Western civilization, one of only twenty-two identified successful civilizations (according to Toynbee) is evidence that Christianity is "onto something" and further, that a "truer belief" must be better than the "false belief" it replaces.

There appear to me to be several difficulties with drawing any strong conclusions from these statements. First, most of the other civilizations Toynbee identified were not based on Christianity or even monotheistic belief systems. Some of these other civilizations continue today. Second, that the lists of "aborted" and "arrested" civilizations includes several based on Christianity suggests that Christianity was not sufficient to guarantee success. Both of these difficulties reflect a more generic problem: we are talking about complex systems of complex elements in dynamic environments, and teasing out causes and effects is going to be difficult. As I understand it, Toynbee advocated explanations based on "creative minorities" and challenges that were neither to difficult to overcome nor too simple to allow stagnation. Whether or not that is true (or partly true), the diversity of beliefs represented in these civilizations suggests that the truth content of the beliefs may not be a critical factor.

Can false beliefs be helpful? Yes, I think they can. Beliefs are important contributors to intentions (and therefore to intentional actions). False beliefs can lead to beneficial actions. They have important limitations and potential for other problems, but they can still be helpful.

For example, in Bali there are water temples whose priests control the distribution of water to farmers through a system of offerings to various deities. In the late 1970's or early '80's, this system was disrupted when the government attempted to modernize agriculture with new fertilizers, new pesticides and new types of rice. After a brief increase in productivity, things fell apart. Later computer simulations showed that the water temple system was far more effective than the newer technology in the Bali climate.

Does that mean that the religious beliefs of the Balinese were true? No, it just means they had evolved successful rules and encoded those rules in religious stories and rituals. The beliefs were false, but they were helpful. On the other hand, while the rules may have been well-adapted to Balinese climate, they may not have worked well elsewhere or during periods of abnormal rainfall or other sustained environmental changes. While the technology that was introduced turned out to be a step backwards for them (based on other presumably "scientific" but false beliefs), science still provides a more reliable platform for learning and eventually predicting and controlling the behavior of the ecological system, especially in the face of changing climate.

I came across a similar example a couple of months ago regarding the ecology of Central or South American rain forests, but I cannot find a reference to it now. The basic idea was that the religion of the native people contained beliefs about the kinds of spirits that inhabited different kinds of trees and/or animals with corresponding rules about the circumstances in which the trees could be cut down or the animals killed. Those rules, again encoded in the guise of religious beliefs and rituals, were found to promote the health of the forest ecology.

Because of these and other considerations, I think we have to be pretty cautious about inferring too much about the truth of Christian doctrines based on the continued existence of Western (Christian?) civilization. Even according to Toynbee, that success is partly dependent on historical contingencies in the form of challenges faced (not too strong, not too weak, but just right).

Chatalogue: True Good

2007-04-19T19:16:00.000-06:00

Ernie and I have exchanged a few emails in addition to our recent posts, trying to figure out a better way to proceed that is less prone to the difficulties that we seem to have been experiencing. We decided we needed to shorten the feedback loop so that we can clarify things more quickly when something is not making sense to either one of us. On pretty short notice (about three hours) we decided to have weekly IM chats and we just finished the first one. Ernie whipped up a little program to convert the transcripts of these sessions for inclusion on his blog, so you can read our first conversation in Chatalogue: True Good. I think we did pretty well for an hour of typing, even if the transcript is occasionally hard to follow when we were typing simultaneously. Just ignore my typos.

Update: I can hardly let Ernie be the only one with a cool translation program to make posting chats easy, so I wrote one too. Here is our first chat, with some typos corrected:

A: I'm here!

E: G'day

E: Did you see my transcribed version?

A: Yes, I did. Nice work.

E: Are you okay with me blogging the transcript like that?

A: We'll see. I guess a chat has a bit different flavor than normal written stuff. It just seems a bit weird to know that everything I am saying is being transcribed for posterity.

A: But, onward!

E: So, shall we start with a bit of meta-discussion, to see if we can get onto the same page?

A: Sure

E: My hope is that, rather than trying to prove each other wrong, we can focus more on trying to build a common understanding.

A: My difficulty is, while I agree in principle, I am not sure what it means to build a common understanding about something that we (may) have fairly fundamental disagreements.

E: Well, ideally we could at least figure out *where* we disagree!

A: I mean, we can agree about things at some meta-level, but I am not sure that will be very satisfying.

E: The funny thing is, we actually seem to agree on the vast majority of facts.

A: Vast majority? Not sure how to count that. Some, many?

E: We both believe in the scientific method, a generally Western set of ethics, a historical critique of the Bible. etc.

E: I have a hard time finding a "point of fact" where we've had serious disagreement.

A: That's still a pretty big tent.

E: From where I sit, it is mostly a matter of "interpretation" and conclusion where our communication breaks down.

E: I also think that, at least in theory, we respect the same rules of logic (even if we sometimes fall short in practice).

A: Sure

E: For example, I presume you agreed with the bulk of logical tools employed by Alonzo in "A Better Place"

A: Yes. Although I had intended to re-read it before we discussed it, and I haven't yet. (Thanks for reminding me.)

E: Of course, that begs the question: if we have so much in common, why do we seem to miss each other's meaning so often?

E: Is it intellectual, emotional, semantic, or purely a communication gap?

A: I am not sure how to classify it. Sometimes it just seems like things that you think are important to critical issues (trilemma, anger, etc.) just don't seem that "helpful" to me.

E: Yeah, I realize that.

E: It is entirely possible that our differences are (at least in part) a matter of priority.

E: I see theism as solving a host of formal and practical problems that you may not consider important and relevant.

A: Hold on a second.

E: ok

A: I get that impression from what you right, but usually it seems to me more like a "if theism were true, it would solve this problem this way", but it doesn't really provide reasons to believe that theism is true.

A: what you *write*, not right

E: Right, which brings us back to the epistemic issues.

A: How is what you are saying not an argument from consequences?

E: It is more an operational definition.

E: I'm still not even sure what you mean by 'true' in this context.

A: I'm speaking a bit loosely, of course. Because we're chatting.

E: Or if you're still thinking of "truth" as a boolean yes/no.

A: vs. a probabalistic sense of truth?

E: Um, not exactly.

E: More like a fuzzy logic sense of truth values.

A: okay

E: The way we can say "Newtonian mechanics is true, but less true than Quantum Mechanics"

A: right

E: From my point of view, Christian theism is a succesful "theory" which explains certain facts very well, but also has many facts which (as currently formulated) it doesn't explain.

A: But from what I have seen, some of the "facts" that you say it explains are not really "facts" at all.

E: Okay, then we get to definition of "facts" :-)

A: For instance, the statement about Christianity being responsible the success of Western civilization.

E: That was a terminology problem, I later realized (after reading another post of yours).

E: I was using Toynbee's classification, and referring to Western Christendom as founded by Charlemagne.

E: My bad -- I should've been more precise.

A: So, Christianity was responsible for Western Christendom? How is that helpful?

E: It is really hard to build a civilization. There's only 22 or so that Toynbee was able to catalogue.

E: There's great diversity, of course, but the "creative minority" who developed those civilization had to find beliefs powerful enough to grow and maintain society.

E: Christianity is hardly unique in this fashion, but it implies they were onto "something."

A: Some people have referred to that sort of thing as "belief in belief".

E: Sure -- but not every belief in belief works.

A: Sure. But the beliefs do not have to be true to work either.

E: Not absolutely true, but at least relatively true.

E: And a "truer belief" must work better than the "false belief" it replaces, no?

A: I've been reading a book by the anthropologist Scott Atran. He goes so far as to say that no society has survived without certain kinds of shared beliefs and rituals, but that they all contain counter-factual, quasi-propositional elements.

E: Sure.

E: So does science.

A: In fact, the "cost" of believing falsehoods is part of what makes them work.

E: Newtonian physics was dead-wrong about action at a distance.

E: Quantum physics has random infinities we just ignore.

E: We know it can't explain gravity.

E: I'm not sure I understand or buy the "cost" part, though...

A: I am not sure I can describe it well enough, quickly enough, but the basic idea is that people tend to trust people who have demonstrated a willingness to participate in expensive behaviors on behalf of their society.

E: Sure.

A: But he develops it much better than that.

A: I have been meaning to blog about it. He has a number of very interesting quotes that relate to various parts of our conversation.

E: Well, then that raises another question: do believe that virtue is rational, and that truth *always* ultimately supports virtue?

E: Like Alonzo tries to prove.

A: I guess I wouldn't word it like that, but yes, more or less.

E: So, I'm confused. Are you saying:

E: a) It is always better to believe the truth.

E: or

E: b) Ethical behavior is contingent on believing a shared group falsehood

A: That's a very interesting question, isn't it?

E: Which is true, or which you're saying? :-)

A: I lean toward ( a ), but I have to admit the possibility that successful societies have been based on ( b ).

A: Note that "successful" is not the same as "ethical"!

E: Isn't it?

E: I thought that this was how Alonzo defined "ethics", and fulfilling societally contructed desires.

E: as fulfilling.

A: A successful society is one that continues. That does not imply that all members of that society have their desires met.

E: Sure, but most definitions of society assume that the individuals see their survival as tied to that of their society.

A: Again, survival is not their only desire.

E: Sure, but in the absence of survival, what other desires can be met?

E: Isn't it at least a prerequisite?

A: It may be the strongest desire, but not the only one. So, yes, it is a prerequisite, but not sufficient.

E: Sure.

E: Let me try to summarize.

E: At least, as best i understand Alonzo.

E: 1) "Good behavior" is that which maximizes desire fulfillment within a society

E: 2) One of the baseline desires of a society is for its own survival

E: 3) Therefore, a set of behaviors "X" that improves a societies chance of survival is, by definition, better than a comparable set "Y" that decreases those chances.

E: Are those all true statements?

A: Sorry... first try didn't work.

A: I think we need to be careful not to conflate the desires of individuals with desires of a "society"

E: Is not a "society" merely the aggregate of its individual desires?

A: If we define it that way, but I think we have to be careful of equivocation.

E: I would love to see a formal definition, as I don't recall one from "A Better Place" (ABP)

A: For instance, when we talk about the survival of a society, are we talking about just the survival of the aggregate of the individuals' desires?

A: When I hear "survival of a society" I think of survival of the various structural elements. Take the example of a country ruled by a despotic line of rulers.

A: The individuals in that country may not be having their desires met, but perhaps the structure persists.

E: That's an excellent point. What exactly does "ethical behavior" mean when the lawgivers are corrupt?

A: That is "surviving" but not ethical.

E: Is murdering the kings tax collectors an ethical behavior?

E: I thought ABP defined ethics relative to the society's institutions and cultural norms.

A: I would say that the society's institutions and cultural norms affect people's desires, so they are reflected in ethics in that sense.

E: I think this is one of those areas where my understanding of Alonzo is murky.

E: Morality is defined relative to a "network of desires", right?

A: Yes.

E: Okay, *which* network? My local community? My society? My progeny?

A: I agree that he is not entirely clear about that.

A: But, I think it is partly the extent to which are actions affect others' desires.

A: What is the "reach" in the network?

E: But, can't one pretty much get almost answer you want simply by choosing the appropriate network?

E: almost any answer

A: As an individual, I am not a member of any possible network.

A: I am a member of a particular network.

A: (with fuzzy boundaries, perhaps)

E: Multiple fuzzy boundaries, with unbounded scope, no?

E: The Carbon you emit could change whether a Chinese power plant gets built, no?

A: Sure. So in that case, the appropriate network is a global one.

E: So, in the general case, is morality defined relative to the global network of all humans who are currently living?

A: Yes.

E: (even if the coupling of certain actions is quite weak)

E: And might live in the future?

E: Or only to the extent some of us alive today happen to care about our progeny?

A: We get into difficulties here because there are practical problems in "evaluating the metric".

E: Um, yeah.

E: That's the problem I have with Alonzo's whole approach.

E: It seems to work fine as a *descriptive* model of what we mean, but it seems to fall apart into uncountable sums as soon as you try to use *prescriptively*.

A: I think there are some difficult cases, and some cases that are not so difficult.

E: But the "easy" cases all seem to rely on ad hoc assumptions.

E: I agree it "might" be true -- in fact, at some level I think DU is true -- but without knowing its boundary conditions, it seems impossible to make any sort of valid claims.

A: I understand where you are coming from there.

E: Thank you.

A: I can imagine setting up a network of desires and "solving" it.

A: But the complete problem appears intractable.

E: Well, not necessarily.

E: Let us define "NOD" as a the global network of desires.

E: The goal is optimize the "most and strongest" of the desires in NOD, right?

A: Right.

A: But remember, that we are dealing with *mutable* desires.

E: The question is, is there some structure in NOD which allows us to reduce the N! weightings to a calculable heuristic.

A: (That is, some of the desires are mutable.)

E: Right. I believe one of the assumptions we need to make is that desires exist with some well-defined distribution.

E: That is, the *important* desires are not fully mutable, but need to fall within some well-defined range.

E: (at least in principle, even if we don't know what that range is)

A: Right. We can take a "statistical mechanics" like approach to the problem without pretending to solve for every individual variable.

E: Exactly.

E: But, that requires us to assume that:

E: a) there are meaningful aggregate metrics that we can discern

E: b) it is possible, in principle, to maximize them

E: c) it is worth the effort to attempt to discover them

E: If the problem is underconstrained, then we get a nice relative world where we can pretty much construct our own morality.

E: If it is overconstrained, then we (or some group) is screwed. :-(

E: Make sense?

A: Yep.

E: So, here's the funny thing.

E: DU only seems to be well-defined and useful if all these other assumptions are true.

E: Otherwise, it is just a post hoc rationalization of what we (or society) have already decided is true based on other considerations.

E: (at least if we're talking about "good" in the moral sense, not merely "good for a particular purpose)

A: I'm not sure that's true.

E: Can you give a counter-example?

A: Let me think a second... still trying to decide.

E: Actually, it is almost 6 pm.

E: Do you want to take that as homework? :-)

A: We can pick up there next week.

E: Okay.

E: So, shall I post this?

A: That's fine. I'll probably post a link to it after you've done that.

E: Fair enough.

E: If I have time, I'll try to clean up the argument.

E: At any rate, I think this was *way* better than our previous exchanges. :-)

A: Yes, definitely.

E: Thanks for suggesting direct conversation.

E: Have a good week.

A: Same time next week? Or coordinate later?

E: Same time, same place.

A: OK. Thanks, Ernie.

E: Thank you!

E: Bye.

A: bye

What Now?

2007-04-14T22:04:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to My Bad.

Ernie's Ashes to Ashes and my response, Dust to Dust pretty clearly showed that our conversation had gotten to a point where we were frustrated with each other. After some down time, Ernie responded with My Bad. We have exchanged a couple of emails since then, since, while I appreciated his response, it left me a bit confused, particularly about what he meant by scare-quoting "repent", what were his mistaken assumptions, and what he meant by his unqualified "I concede."

Other readers may have been similarly confused. However, my intention here is not to explain that in detail. I will just summarize by saying that we agree that if we are going to continue our discussion, we need to adjust our approach to be less contentious and more cooperative. But how will we make that work? I am not sure I have a good answer.

Let me shift now to addressing Ernie more directly...

Ernie,

You asked [via email] about my thoughts on why our diablogue has had difficulty converging on a mutual understanding. I have already acknowledged in prior posts as well as emails to you that imperfect communication skills are one factor. In re-reading old posts, I am aware that, while my meaning was perfectly clear to me, it would not have been so to others, particularly those operating under different assumptions. As an important example, I failed to provide an early, clear explanation of the relationship between ethical paradigms, ethical systems and metrics, and even when I recognized that you had a different relationship in mind, my attempt at clarification was insufficient.

That problem is sometimes compounded by another. Sometimes we need to slow down. We need to reformulate things less often and take longer to develop ideas from a single perspective. This, I fear, is one area where I have been frustrated by you trying to "drive" the conversation. My impression of our conversation is often that you propose looking at an issue from some perspective, I respond to that perspective, and then you propose another perspective. While in some sense, the new perspective is a response, it tends to jerk things around a bit too much. It doesn't really feel like a response. Rather than continually trying new ways of looking at things, can we just take a little bit longer to develop some depth?

I've sat here for awhile trying to develop some other ideas, writing and deleting. What they come down to, I guess, is mutual respect. This is a dialog, perhaps sometimes a debate, but not an interrogation or an interview. It is not a Socratic dialog, not a dialog between teacher and pupil or between doctor and patient. There needs to be symmetry, at least on the larger scale. If we are not both ready to learn, we should not continue.

Having said that, I vacillate between curiousity and disinterest. Disinterest may not be exactly the right word, but I sometimes wonder if this dialog has been or will be worth the effort. Has it helped you in any way? It has helped me by driving me to clarify certain ideas, and probably to be more aware of the diversity of Christian beliefs. It has not yet given me reasons to think those beliefs might be correct.

Alan

Loose Canons

2007-04-06T16:22:00.000-06:00

There is, I think, I fairly common view among Christians (and especially conservative Christians) that the Bible with all of its various books and authors, is describing a single overall truth. Sure, the Old Testament may appear to have a different sort of theology than the New Testament, but that (in this interpretation) reflects the ongoing work of God and his plan for humanity. Sure, there may appear to be conflicts among various New Testament writers, or even among various writings by the same author. These are taken to be indications that the underlying truth may be subtle, and that further study will resolve these apparent difficulties by uncovering a unified underlying framework. This kind of outlook is particularly likely, I think, among those that believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God.

I will not pretend to know exactly how common this type of view is, but I can say that it would have described my own views on the subject for most of my life. However, as I began to re-evaluate my beliefs, I encountered compelling reasons to discard this view in favor of another. In this alternative view, the various books of the Bible reflect the understandings and goals of their authors, understandings and goals which change over time and which are not mutually consistent. Under this view, it is particularly important to identify the context in which the authors wrote, and even who they were (or were not).

Perhaps the most important reasons derive from the development of the New Testament canon. (Perhaps I should say canons, since there are several, but I will focus just on those 27 books that constitute the canon with which most Catholic and Protestant Christians are familiar.) There were many other Christian writings that were not accepted into the canon. How did we get the collection that we have today? Why should we give them particular trust and exclude the others? A common answer given by Christian apologists is that three factors were critical: apostolic authority, doctrinal correctness and widespread use. Apostolic authority means that the books were written by apostles, or by close associates of the apostles in the cases of Mark and Luke. Doctrinal correctness and widespread use seem like fairly obvious criteria, but I will return to them in a minute.

We know of a great many early Christian writings that claimed to have been written by apostles. The Gospel of Judas was in the news last year about this time, having been recently found and translated, but there were many others that claimed Paul, Peter, Thomas, James, Barnabas, Mary Magdelene and even Jesus as authors. All are agreed by modern scholars to be pseudonymous; that is, they were not written by the people that they claim as authors. So, based on the criteria suggested above, they were correctly excluded from the canon, at least the canon accepted by the Catholic church and inherited by Protestants.

However, scholars in the last several hundred years have developed strong cases against apostolic authorship for many of the writings that were included in the canon, including all of the gospels and as many as seven of the epistles normally attributed to Paul, and several others. Some of the cases are stronger than others.

For example, the pastorals (I and II Timothy and Titus) are among those attributed to Paul that are almost certainly forgeries. Evidence for this derives from writing style, vocabulary, doctrine and historical context. Over one third of the words used in the pastorals are not found in any of the other Pauline epistles, but they are common among second century Christian writings. As an example of doctrinal differences, in the uncontested Pauline epistles there is nothing like the misogynistic doctrines described in I Timothy 2:9-15. (I Corinthians 14:34-35 contains similar language, but this appears to be a later scribal insertion, based both on the content of our earliest manuscripts and the lack of continuity with the surrounding verses.) Regarding historical context, the pastorals concern churches with well-developed hierarchical structures, structures which had not yet developed in Paul's time, but consistent with early second century authorship.

Without going into any more detail here, let me just list the books whose apostolic authorship is seriously questioned by modern scholarship: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Ephesians, Colossians, II Thessalonians, Hebrews, James, I and II Timothy, Titus, I and II Peter, Jude, and Revelation. As I said, some of these are more certain the others to be pseudo-epigraphical, but that is more than half of the New Testament books. And these conclusions were not reached by scholars out to destroy Christianity, but generally by Christian scholars seeking to understand the documents that lie at the foundation of their beliefs.

Doctrinal correctness is another interesting issue. The development of the canon was triggered by competition between various doctrinal positions. The first canons were developed in the second century by Gnostic Christians, with "orthodox" Christians responding with their own canons, eventually leading to the canon accepted today. I put the scare quotes around "orthodox" because the question of what is orthodox and what is not is an important question here. While historically one position "won" and came to be called orthodox (which means "right doctrine"), does that really mean those doctrines are correct? Or were they just more popular? How do we know what are the correct doctrines? We cannot appeal to scripture, not when the decisions about what to consider scripture were based on doctrinal correctness to begin with!

If we fall back on apostolic authority we encounter trouble quickly enough due to the questions of what was really said by the apostles. If we fall back on inspiration by God apart from apostleship, who is to say what was inspired by God and what was not? The heretics (as judged by what became the orthodoxy) also claimed inspiration. We cannot even rely on mutual consistency because, whether or not there is some as yet unknown unifying underlying theme, some apparent inconsistencies are as yet unresolved.

Are we left then simply with widespread use? From what we can tell today, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter was more widely used than the Gospel of Mark. It was discarded due to passages that could be used to support the Docetic "heresy". As another example, The Shepherd of Hermas was also widely read but eventually excluded from the canon. As far as I know, this was due to explicitly non-apostolic authorship. So, widespread use alone is insufficient.

So, while perhaps well-intentioned, the criteria of apostolic authorship fell victim to forgeries. The forgeries were probably intended to lend apparent apostolic authority to competing doctrinal positions. For doctrinal correctness to be useful as a criteria, an external mechanism for determining doctrinal correctness would be required. Since apostolic authority was already undermined by undetected forgeries (at the time), apostolic authority could not have really been that mechanism. Widespread use was clearly viewed as insufficient, since that criteria was trumped by lack of apostolic authority and by doctrinal issues. (One might make the case that widespread use could have been sufficient for inclusion in the canon, but in any case, it would be insufficient grounds for judging the texts even probably true.)

Where does this lead? I think it causes grave problems for anyone who grounds their beliefs on the authority of scripture, particularly if their view of scripture includes the entire New Testament. As I said at the beginning of this post, that describes some Christians, but not all. That is, some Christians hold different views about the role of the Bible in forming and supporting their beliefs. By itself, these considerations do not imply that now-orthodox Christian doctrines are false or that New Testament accounts of Jesus and the early church are incorrect. They do highlight some of the reasons that these doctrines invite critical examination and that the supposedly historical accounts should be viewed suspiciously.

Following up on EWE

2007-03-21T19:47:00.001-06:00

In yesterday's post I made a number of assertions without a significant amount of elaboration or references. I plan to fill some of that in during the next few posts. Today I am just going to pass along a few links.

First, I happened to come across again today an essay I had read before, Richard Carrier's Why I Am Not a Christian. His essay covers some of the same points I was trying to make, but from a different angle and at somewhat greater length. It is a worthwhile read.

Second, regarding Lee Strobel's books, the Secular Web has reviews of a number of his books: The Rest of the Story, a review of The Case for Christ, The Case Against Faith: A Critical Look at Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith, Another Case Not Made: A Critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator and Objections Sustained!, another critique of The Case for Faith. I have not personally read all of them, and it has been awhile since I read any of them, but I am fairly confident they will present good summaries of the reasons skeptics find Strobel's books unconvincing.

Evidence? What Evidence?

2007-03-20T21:57:00.000-06:00

<rant>

While I have not brought it up for quite awhile, one the major reasons that I left Christianity was that the supposed consequences for disbelief were vastly out of proportion to the evidence available and our ability to make sense out of it. That is, at least according to some common versions of Christianity, the consequence of disbelief is eternal damnation, an unending tortuous existence. Whether this is punishment imposed by God or the natural consequence of our sinful nature, either way the only way out (we are told) is belief in Jesus as the savior of the world, the one atoning sacrifice, and so on. And yet, what reasons do we have to believe that this is true? Are those reasons so compelling that only the rebellious would disregard them? Are they so solid that those who, having heard them, deserve hell for not believing?

Some would say, perhaps, that people do not deserve hell for not believing; rather, they deserve hell because they are imperfect, sinful creatures and hell is the natural or deserved result of such a state. We should be thankful, according to this view, that God provided a way of escape. But if this is so, why did God do such a poor job of providing evidence to those for whom lack of evidence is a stumbling block? Some Christians have said that, for those who don't believe, that the evidence is not really the reason for disbelief, but this is not the case. While there are certainly people for which this is true, just as certainly there are people who have honestly searched through the evidence, found it lacking, and so did not believe. The problem is not willful rejection of compelling evidence. The problem really is lack of evidence.

The central claim of Christianity, I think it is fair to say, is that Jesus died and was raised in order to save us. (There are liberal Christians who would dispute this, but my argument here is not with them.) This, like many other important aspects of Christian belief, involves a claim about a historical event. This event would have occurred nearly two thousand years ago during a time of even greater credulity than we experience today. The only accounts of this event come from those who were neither indifferent nor skeptical, and those accounts contain clear signs of legendary development as well as purposeful embellishment from the first to the last. They were written over a span of thirty to forty years, and the earliest one was written at least thirty years after the events described.

Do we have other reasons to trust these authors? We do not know who they are. The attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do not come (as far as we can tell) until another fifty to one hundred years after they were written, and scholars have discovered substantial reasons to doubt them. We also know that Christian forgeries were common during this era, as attested by the number of pseudo-epigraphical gospels, epistles and apocalypses that were written during this era. But perhaps the fact that these other documents were eventually rejected by early Christians gives us reason to trust the writings that they accepted? No, for we also have excellent reasons to believe that many, perhaps even a majority, of the other New Testament books were also not written by the traditionally accepted authors. These reasons are not simple guesses, but the result of years of careful study by scholars (usually Christian scholars) who examine the theological themes, language usage, external references and evident historical context to make their assessments. There is still debate over some cases, of course, but in other cases the evidence is strong and the agreement substantial.

The same sorts of evaluations place substantial portions of the Old Testament in doubt. This is not to say that the books of the Old Testament are entirely fictional. Many of the historical events described have some support from archeology and other historical sources, and in other cases we might accept the Biblical descriptions as prima facie evidence of their historicity or at least, of some kernel of historical truth. But yet, there remain significant portions that appear mythical or legendary. We have comparable writings from other ancient sources, but when these other sources describe the intervention of gods in the world, we accept that they are mythological. We can see instances where the Hebrew authors have borrowed concepts from the belief systems of their neighbors and incorporated those concepts into their own. (Examples include the Ugaritic mythology and the dualism derived from Zoroastrianism.) Do we have good reasons, then, to believe the Hebrew accounts but not the others?

Perhaps we should depend on the fact that Christian beliefs have persisted for two thousand years, and Judaism for another thousand before that? Other belief systems have survived for comparable lengths of time. Christianity may be better represented in the world today, but I think a strong argument can be made that this representation can be attributed to the technological and economic growth and subsequent imperialism by European nations where Christianity happened to be dominant. Some would say that this technological and economic growth itself was dependent on Christianity, but this is hardly an uncontroversial claim, especially considering Christianity's prominence during the Western civilization's decline during the second half the of the first millennium.

What about the subjective experience of Christians? Can we not look to the improvement in the lives of believers as evidence to the truth of their beliefs? Unfortunately, similar claims of improvement can be found among the adherents of other belief systems, systems that contradict the claims of Christianity. What proves too much proves nothing at all. Additionally, when we actually look at sociological research for evidence of this improvement, the results are remarkably ambiguous, and occasionally the reverse of what is claimed. If there is evidence to be found here, right now the signal is buried in the noise.

Can we look to philosophy? Is God a logical necessity? Christians have proposed ontological arguments, the teleological arguments, moral arguments, transcendental arguments, even pragmatic arguments. None have been successful. Of course, philosophical arguments have also failed to disprove the existence of God. We must look elsewhere.

What about science? So far, science has not detected God, and I say that only partly in jest. Science has been our most reliable method of learning about the reality we inhabit, and yet we cannot look to science for direct observational evidence of God. For the most part, science has been busy explaining those aspects of the natural world that were previously thought to be dependent on God. Theists are holding out in the shelter of the Big Bang, claiming that a beginning to the universe must indicate a First Cause, an Unmoved Mover. Even supposing this might eventually turn out to be the case, given the general retreat of religious claims before the advances of science, it hardly seems reasonable to depend on our current ignorance about events so remote from us in time and outside our experience for evidence about something even more remote from our observational capabilities.

In the face of this startling lack of evidence, and sometimes contrary evidence, we are told that the consequence for disbelief is eternal hellfire. God loves us and wants the best for us, of course, but the evidence we have was the best he could do? Is there a good reason for him to withhold better evidence from us?

It would infringe on our free will, some say. Nonsense. Twice nonsense. First, because some of these same people will point to the amazing signs and prophecies performed and fulfilled by Jesus (we are told) as evidence of his divinity. If you believe that if God supplied better evidence he would infringe on our free will, but you also believe he performed those signs, then you believe he already did infringe on the free will of those who saw the signs. Why not again? And second, how does additional information infringe on anybody's free will anyway? Does learning something or observing something infringe on your will? If anything, it empowers you to make better choices. If anything, among those who would freely choose to believe if there were better evidence, withholding that evidence is what infringes on free will.

Or should we just believe without evidence? It's a faith thing, right? But how do you choose what to believe on faith? Why this and not something else? If there are no reasons to believe this one thing instead of something else, well, then there are no reasons to believe this one thing instead of something else. No, it has to come back to reasons, and I mean reasons in the sense of evidence, not in the sense of consequences — like the threat of hell.

When all is said and done, the evidence just is not there. If we were asked to believe a fairly ordinary thing with insubstantial consequences, perhaps we might believe it on the evidence we have. Instead, we are asked to believe an exceptional thing with almost inconceivable consequences. A good God would not leave us in this situation. Perhaps God does not exist after all. Perhaps he is not good. Perhaps (and some Christians do believe this), perhaps the whole hell thing was a bit of a mistake. Something has to give.

Before I conclude, I have to mention the state of Christian apologetics. The goal of apologetics is, I suppose, to defend the faith. In this, I suppose it has been successful, but not due to the evidence or arguments offered. They are successful because they give people who already believe the comfortable illusion that the faith has been defended. Some of the best examples of this are Lee Strobel's books, like "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Easter". His shtick is to play the role of an "investigative journalist" and interview various Christian scholars, but I say "play the role" quite purposefully, because he accepts nearly everything they say at face value, even when one person contradicts another. To my knowledge, he never interviews anyone who substantially disagrees with his thesis and he never challenges anyone that agrees. Similar problems exist in other popular apologetic works. They defend their arguments from strawmen. They simply omit facts that are inconvenient to their case. They repeat anecdotes in support of their case that have no basis in fact. But for those readers that are hearing just what they expect, who trust their Christian authorities to tell them the truth, who would never consider reading anything that would actually challenge their beliefs, those readers are comforted by what they read and it seems good to them. I mean, who has time to look into it themselves? Best just to leave that to the experts. And so it goes.

Not every Christian apologist is like that, and not every Christian reader is like that. But some are. Just read the comments on Amazon.com for Lee Strobel's books...

</rant>

Apocalyptic Thoughts I

2007-03-13T17:52:00.000-06:00

The Book of Daniel, which I discussed a few weeks ago, is an example of apocalyptic literature. "Apocalypse" comes from a Greek word meaning "a lifting of the veil" or "an uncovering". Apocalyptic literature in general describes the revealing of important matters that have previously been hidden. This type of literature and the beliefs so described were common through the centuries prior to and following the time of Jesus' life and the beginning of the Christian church, and in these cases the important matters related to God and his (coming) kingdom. There were both Jewish apocalypticists (like the author of Daniel) as well as Christian apocalypticists (like the author of Revelations).

Among the various factions that existed in Palestine during the life of Jesus, the Essenes had a clear apocalyptic bent. The Essenes, who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, lived in communities separated from others in order to prepare themselves for the coming kingdom of God. I have also heard that the Pharisees may have held some apocalyptic views; at least, they appeared to believe in a coming resurrection, a belief not shared by the Sadducees.

This outlook can also be seen quite clearly in the New Testament. John the Baptist preached an apocalyptic message. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 3:2) To the Pharisees and Sadducees, he said "who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew 3:7, Luke 3:7) "The axe is already laid at the root of the tree..." (Matthew 3:10, Luke 3:9) It was in the context of this message by John the Baptist that Jesus entered the public eye, and Jesus soon made very similar statements. "The kingdom of God is at hand." (Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17) In Mark, Jesus frequently describes the coming Son of Man (an allusion to Daniel 7:13) who will bring God's kingdom to the earth, though strangely, there is little indication in those contexts that he is referring to himself.

When will this kingdom come? The quotes above indicate a sort of urgency, but there is yet more specific guidance on the matter. All three synoptic gospels quote Jesus as saying "This generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (Mark 13:30, Matthew 24:34, Luke 21:31)

Did it happen? First, we must answer a different question. What did Jesus mean when he said "the kingdom of God is at hand"? Was he referring simply to his own death and resurrection? Was that the arrival of God's kingdom? Was it the beginning of the Christian church at Pentacost? Or is there another way we should look at the issue?

If we take him to understand that his death and resurrection or the beginning of the Christian church were the beginning of the kingdom, we quickly run into difficulties. First, in the parallel passages from Mark 13, Matthew 24 and Luke 21 where Jesus said that the current generation would not pass away, the larger context is Jesus' response to a question from some of his disciples. He had just told them that the temple would be destroyed, and they ask when that will happen. He proceeds to describe the various things that must happen first: wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution by the Jews ("in the synagogues"), witnessing to kings, preaching to all nations, the abomination of desolation, tribulation, the sun and moon darkened, stars falling and then, finally, the Son of Man coming in the clouds. And it is after saying all of that that Jesus says, "this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." These events are clearly not related to the events surrounding Jesus death and resurrection or the beginnings of Christianity.

To reinforce this point, consider Mark 8:38-9:1 and Luke 9:26-27, where Jesus describes the Son of Man coming with the holy angels, and "there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." Again, the Son of Man comes during the lifetimes of (some of) the disciples.

Further evidence comes from Paul's letters and to a lesser degree, Acts. Early in Acts, for instance, the first Christians are described as selling their possessions, and this behavior makes the most sense for people who do not expect things to continue in their normal course for much longer. But Paul's letters provide much stronger evidence that the early Christians were still expecting the kingdom to arrive quickly. In I Thessalonians 4:15 Paul says "that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep." The clear implication to the recipients of this letter was that some of them would still be alive when Jesus returned. In I Corinthians 15:51 he writes "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed," and again, his readers would certainly expect this to apply to them, that the events described would happen while some of them were still alive.

Did Jesus and Paul really mean the people living then when they said "this generation" and "we who are alive and remain" and "we will not all sleep"? Or did they really mean this to apply to whoever happened to be alive when the events did finally take place? The wording and intention is clear enough. The only reason to ask the question is that the events described clearly did not occur within the lifetimes of the first century Christians. Apart from this inconvenient truth, the teaching of both Paul and Jesus himself clearly anticipate the arrival of the Son of Man and the kingdom of God, as well as their dramatic precursors within the lifetimes of the earliest believers. Alternative explanations (including those found within later writings of the New Testament) are best understood as post hoc rationalizations intended to rescue Christian beliefs from the evident failure of the clear predictions of Jesus and the early Christian spokesmen.

Truth or Consequences

2007-03-06T19:54:00.000-06:00

I am concerned about what is true, and as is clear from my writing here, I do not think that the central claims of Christianity are true. Anyone concerned about discovering the truth needs to be aware of fallacies. Fallacies are arguments (or types of arguments) where the premises do not actually provide logical support for the conclusion. You can find whole catalogs of fallacies around the Internet.

One type of fallacy is an argument from consequences. While there are several variants, a typical form goes like this:

If P, then Q.
Q is good (desirable)
Therefore P is true

Alternatively, it can be framed as an argument against some proposition:

If P, then Q.
Q is bad (undesirable)
Therefore not-P

Neither of these arguments is valid; in neither case does the conclusion follow from the premises, regardless of whether or not the premises are actually true.

Of course, people do not normally express themselves using this form explicitly, and in fact, some of the premises of an informally expressed argument may not even be stated. When this is so, the fallacy may be harder to recognize. Nevertheless, the fallacy is still there.

A pretty typical example in the context of a discussion about the truth of Christianity would be "Without God my life would have no meaning (or purpose, or hope)." This single sentence is usually the informal condensation of the argument:

If God does not exist, my life would have no meaning (or purpose, or hope)
Lack of meaning (or purpose, or hope) is bad (undesirable)
Therefore God exists

Stated in this way, it is clearly an argument from consequences, and so the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even if the premises were true. If God does not exist, and if it were true that meaning, purpose and hope were dependent on God's existence, well, then there would be no meaning, purpose or hope, no matter how much we might want those things.

Another example concerns morality. The claim is frequently made that without God, there would be no grounds for morality. In this case, the argument could be refined in several ways. If the hidden assumption were "Having no grounds for morality is bad", then the implicit argument would be fallacious because it would be an argument from consequences. On the other hand, the unstated assumption could be that "We have grounds for morality." In this case, the argument would not be an argument from consequences, but it still fails, for if the only grounds for morality were that God existed, the argument would be circular, since the conclusion is contained in one of the premises. On the other hand, if the second premise stated that we have grounds for morality that are independent of God, then the second premise would contradict the first premise (that without God, we have no grounds for morality) and the conclusion again would not be supported.

The existence of God or the truth of Christianity cannot be decided on the basis of how much you like or dislike either alternative. Not liking the perceived consequences of God's non-existence presents an emotional barrier to disbelief, but it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of that claim. Further, if your hope (or meaning or purpose) is dependent on God's existence, but God does not exist, then your hope is false, your meaning fake, your purpose illusory. All of that might make you feel better, but it will not be real.

But what if, in addition to the arguments being fallacious, the premises are wrong? What if there can be hope, meaning, purpose and morality without God? If you believe in God because it gives you hope, you would be trading real hope for false hope. If you derive your morality from a non-existent God, but grounds for morality do exist apart from God, you may end up acting immorally. Your ill-founded purpose may be misleading. I think all of these are the case and these all contribute to the harm caused by Christianity.

The particular fallacious arguments that I described are fairly common, and their repetition is harmful because they raise an emotional barrier to proper belief, that is, belief based on true premises and valid arguments. In these cases, the premises are false and the arguments unsound. They do have emotional impact. People appear to fear the consequences they imagine or have been told would follow from God's non-existence. If so, disbelief might and probably will require some courage. But that fear cannot be allowed to prevent us from finding the truth, whatever it might be.

Dust to Dust

2007-02-28T00:51:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Ashes to Ashes.

Ernie,

I am sorry that my writing has not lived up to your standards of clarity, and that I have not responded satisfactorily to your attempts to guide the discussion in the direction you wanted. Without your guidance, where would we be? Thankfully, you have no unarticulated assumptions or we would be in real trouble. Better yet, we can be certain that your philosophical understanding is well-grounded.

As you might gather from the previous paragraph, I found the tone of your last post occasionally condescending.

I will readily admit to being an amateur in matters of philosophy, and between my developing understanding and my imperfect communication skills, it comes as no surprise to me that you might have trouble tracking me. On the other hand, I have gotten feedback from people that do have backgrounds in philosophy, and they have not found my writing difficult to understand or out of line.

Have you considered the possibility that you might have implicitly-held, unarticulated assumptions that prevent you from understanding? I suspect you have considered the possibility, just as I have. The funny thing about such assumptions is that they can be very difficult to uncover, and I think our ongoing discussion has been helpful in this regard. What I object to is the insinuation that I am insufficiently reflective on such matters. Please take care of your own speck.

When I described Universal Utilitarianism as "metric, not imperial", the paradigm that I was attempting to describe is one in which we can assign moral value to our actions by reference to some metric. Different moral systems described within this paradigm will be differentiated on the basis of their metrics. In this paradigm, assignment of moral value is not the same as saying that we have an obligation to act morally, and so I denied that UU was "imperial". I have not said that the metric defines the paradigm. I did say that "the metric defines morality." While perhaps a poor choice of words, my intent was to communicate that under a moral system like UU or DU, we make moral judgements by reference to the metric defined in that system. In general, these systems require no reference to God or intrinsic value; that is, while a metric could be defined in reference to God or intrinsic values if they existed, there exist sensible metrics that do not.

Now, for the last six months we have been focusing on the first of two "goalposts". As I have noted several times now, you said you were willing to defend the proposition that "belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry." You later described this as "Ontological dependence on an omnipotent, benevolent Deity as the ultimate source of virtue and truth". Is it so surprising then that I would attempt to show that a transcendent moral purpose is not essential, or that morality can exist independent from God? How can you now say that you are "simply trying to get [me] to articulate [my] underlying assumptions"? Were your assertions mere rhetorical devices that you did not really intend to defend or support, despite your claims to the contrary?

Looking back at your Shared Paradigm of Morality, my question about its utility derived from my perception of its inability to help us make progress toward or away from the proposition under discussion. You were describing the metric as a means by which we can evaluate moral systems or moral theories. I would describe the metric as a means by which we can evaluate actions. Under this paradigm, the metric is not separate from a moral system; it is the core of a moral system. If we agree on the metric, we are basically agreeing on what it means to act morally (assuming we can actually evaluate the metric in practice).

The only kinds of systems that the metric can evaluate are systems of concrete guidance on how to act in various situations; that is, the metric could be used to evaluate prototypical actions or prescriptions for actions. These evaluations will depend on what is true about the situations and actions described. The evaluation may be different in a reality where God exists compared to one where he does not. This is possible because the metric is defined without reference to God, and since the metric is defined without reference to God, it can neither have nor demonstrate ontological dependence on God. In my mind, if we agree on a metric such as has been suggested, we would be denying the very statement you said you would defend.

I guess that would be progress.

You suggested that I take the next month to reflect on why I "hate Christianity so much" or why it is "something evil to be opposed, rather than merely something imperfect to be improved". I have thought about that for far longer than a month already.

Briefly, it comes down to two things. First, that the core truth-claims of Christianity are very probably false. Second, that those holding these false beliefs frequently (though perhaps not necessarily) bring harm to themselves and others.

How this plays out varies of course, since there is a broad spectrum of beliefs held by Christians of various sorts. This is a point on which I disagree with Sam Harris, who faults moderate Christianity more than Christian fundamentalism, on the grounds that such moderate Christians provide legitimacy for fundamentalists and further, that the continuing existence of religious moderates will stand in the way of progress towards a truly rational spirituality. (See, for instance, the third-to-last paragraph here.) While there may be some truth in that, I do not think we can hold one group morally responsible for the actions of another on these grounds. While I still disagree with some of the beliefs of liberal Christianity, I do think that many people arrive there by exercising the kinds of reasoning and reflection that are likely to be associated with better social behavior; that is, while they may still hold false beliefs (and who doesn't?) they will generally cause less harm than those of more conservative and especially fundamentalist bents.

As I hinted above, Christians are obviously not alone in holding false beliefs. Everyone does, including atheists, including me. So why should I pick on Christianity? Because that is where I came from and where a significant part of my "world" remains. I made significant life decisions on the basis of my prior beliefs, decisions that cannot now be undone but which were based on falsehood. I spent precious time (and yes, money) on a lie. While I know you disagree on the question of truth or falsehood, I would hope that you could understand how a person who makes this kind of transition would feel hurt and angry. It is not at all uncommon. The reference to Sam Harris above was taken from an ongoing dialog he is having with Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic writer. Later in the dialog, Sam writes:

I have received thousands of letters and emails from people describing just how painful it was for them to finally admit that they were duped by Christianity, and that they duped their children in turn. I have heard from many ministers who have ceased to be ministers, and even Christians. More commonly, I hear from people who are terrified to articulate their growing skepticism about the doctrine of Christianity for fear of being shunned by friends and family. I do not doubt how much psychological and social pressure religious people are under. I don't think you should doubt it either.

I have also seen the influence of Christianity on various political and social issues, and frankly the results have not been pretty. Was it inevitable that Christian beliefs would lead to these problems? Perhaps not. If Christianity were not a factor in American politics, would something else cause similar problems? Perhaps so. In a sense, the problem is not with Christianity itself, but with the kinds of thought processes (or lack thereof) that sustain Christianity and other religions or ideologies here and elsewhere. But Christianity forms a substantial part of the problem here and now, so that is another reason to address its problems rather than something else.

You asked why I do not treat Christianity as something to be improved. The answer is simple. The foundation is rotten. I do not mean by that that the foundation is evil, just that it is broken. The factual basis is not there. What is there gets in the way.

To be sure, there is room for improving Christianity even on the foundation it has, and I can appreciate that there are those who are trying to do so, including yourself and, if his book is any indication, Brian McLaren. Similarly, I can appreciate the work that some Christians do to educate others on (for instance) evolution, even when they wrap it in theological trappings. And I can appreciate that there are Christians that are doing important work helping other people, motivated by their beliefs. My concern, however, is that human psychology will make it difficult to counter the more pernicious varieties of Christianity while preserving the comparatively healthy sorts. Plus, I believe it is still suboptimal.

(It may sound like I am now agreeing with Harris on moderate religion, but this is not the case. I recognize moderate religion as progress, but have no wish to make it a particularly comfortable place to stop.)

I hope that that clarifies my motivations somewhat. If further explanation is necessary, I would be happy to attempt it. And if you need to take a break, we can pick up here or elsewhere in a month or so.

Alan

More on Daniel

2007-02-20T01:24:00.000-06:00

I thought I would follow-up on a couple of things related to my previous post, On Daniel, but to do so, I want to back up a little bit and consider very briefly the subject of miracles. David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, wrote about the subject of miracles and one of his arguments is relevant here. He argues that in order for us to accept someone's testimony about the occurrence of a miracle (a highly improbable event), all other possible explanations for that testimony (including human fallibility and deceit) would need to be even less probable. That is, even if a miracle did occur, it would be nearly impossible to have sufficient reasons to believe that it occurred.

This argument, and others that Hume presented, are not uncontroversial, not least because they appear in some cases to beg the question. My goal here is not to dive into that mess, but simply to introduce the idea that when we are confronted with testimony of a miraculous or supernatural event, we ought to have very good reasons for finding that testimony reliable before drawing any conclusions from the occurrence of the event itself. If the testimony to an improbable event is questionable, we ought not rely on that testimony to draw important conclusions.

Now, as I mentioned in my introduction to Daniel, the prophecies recorded in Daniel are often used as evidence for the inspiration of the Bible and the truth that it therefore contains. Relating this back to the point of the previous paragraph, the prophecies are said to be supernatural in origin, and we have a conclusion being drawn (or at least supported) by the supposed reality of those supernatural events. This motivates the question, then, whether we really have good reasons for finding the testimony sufficiently reliable to justify the conclusion that the prophecies were inspired.

An important point to keep in mind is that we are not talking about absolute proof one way or the other. It is not the case that we can prove with 100% confidence either that the Daniel was written about 630 BCE and contained actual prophecies, nor is it the case that we can prove with 100% confidence that Daniel was written about 165 BCE and contained only successful retrodictions (and failed prophecies). Rather, we are looking for a conclusion best supported by the evidence available to us, and the degree of certainty that we can reach will restrict the certainty with which we can make further conclusions. If we could be 99% confident (whatever that means) that Daniel was written in 165 BCE, then despite the 1% chance that Daniel is authentic, we would be unjustified in relying on its authenticity to draw further conclusions. According to Hume's argument, we would need to be nearly 100% certain that Daniel is authentic before accepting its miraculous accounts as true. Rather than quibbling about how close to 100% we need to get, let us use a very generous threshhold of 51% certainty, that is, barely more likely than not.

But how do we establish, or calculate, the degree of certainty afforded by the evidence? One way is to use Bayesian inference, which involves assigning probabilities to various alternative hypotheses with or without each piece of evidence. In some situations the probabilities involved can be determined with a fair degree of precision; in other situations, assignment of probabilities is more problematic. I will not try to assign probabilities related to the hypotheses and evidence concerning the authenticity of Daniel. Instead, I will only point out that, qualitatively, a piece of evidence E makes a hypothesis H₀ more certain if the probability of E given H₀ is higher than the probability of E over all possible hypotheses H_i.

(The probability of a hypothesis being true, independent of any evidence, is called its prior probability. Hume's argument can be understood in terms of Bayesian inference by assigning low prior probabilities to miraculous explanations, and higher prior probabilities to non-miraculous explanations.)

Suppose, for example, that we observe a sequence of coin flips, but we do not know if the coin is fair or if it is two-headed. So long as the result of each successive coin-flip is heads, the evidence grows stronger and stronger that the coin is two-headed, since the probability of (say) ten heads in a row is far higher under the hypothesis that the coin is two-headed compared to the hypothesis that the coin is fair. We can never be absolutely certain that the coin is not fair so long as the flips continue to result in heads. However, as soon as tails is observed, the evidence for a two-headed coin drops to zero since the probability of a tails occurring under the two-headed hypothesis is zero. In other words (and in line with our intuition), since the probability of a long string of heads is high for a two-headed coin and low for a fair coin, the observation of a long string of heads is evidence for a two-headed coin.

Now (without bothering to assign precise probabilities) we can look at how the various pieces of evidence contribute to the conclusion that Daniel was written about 165 BCE. Let's call that hypothesis H₁₆₅ and the competing hypothesis H₆₃₀. (And we will pretend that these are the only two hypotheses.)

Consider the point concerning Daniel's description of Darius the Mede. Under H₁₆₅, the author of Daniel was mistaken about the identity of the king who conquered Babylon. You can immediately see how it might be difficult to assign actual probabilities. What is the probability that an unknown author would make a mistake about events that occurred almost 400 years previously? It would depend on the background and resources available to that person. The value would certainly be greater than zero and less than one but it seems folly to attempt to assign a value with any precision. On the other hand, we may still be able to make a meaningful comparison with the probabilities associated with other hypotheses.

Under H₆₃₀ there are (at least) three sub-hypothesis alternatives. First, Daniel may have simply been mistaken in what he wrote about Darius the Mede. He was incorrect about the identity and nationality of this ruler. Since (under this hypothesis) Daniel is supposed to have been intimately acquainted with the rulers of Babylon, the probability of his making this kind of mistake must be very nearly zero. Second, perhaps it really was an otherwise-unknown Darius the Mede that conquered Babylon and all of the other sources that indicate otherwise are incorrect. An evaluation of this possibility requires information about the nature and volume of contrary sources. The third possibility is a mixture of the first two with an additional twist: that there really was a Darius the Mede involved in conquering and ruling Babylon that somehow was never mentioned in the other records available to us, and that either Daniel was mistaken about the scope of his role or that we have misinterpreted the text as it describes that role.

In both of the last two cases we are faced with the possibility that there was an actual person of some importance who was Darius the Mede. No mention of this person has been found in contemporaneous Babylonian records or in other comparably ancient accounts. Are we justified in assigning a very low probability to any hypothesis that requires the existence of such an important yet unknown person?

If we stated that based on the lack of evidence of such a person that he (probably) did not exist, a critic might accuse us of an "argument from silence". "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Is this criticism valid?

There are certainly cases where an argument from silence is fallacious. Just as certainly, there are cases where it is not. If I stated that there was an elephant in my living room, and when you looked, you could not see one, you would hardly give me any credit for saying "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and continuing to believe that there was an elephant in my living room. On the other hand, if I stated there was an invisible, incorporeal elephant in my living room, then the lack of visual and tactile evidence would not be evidence against my claim. (Of course, it is hardly evidence for my claim either.) How can lack of evidence be conclusive in one case and not the other?

We can frame our answer to this question by going back to Bayesian inference. The probability we would assign to the piece of evidence "no elephant is visible in my living room" given the hypothesis that there is an elephant in my living room is very low compared to the hypothesis that there is no elephant, so the lack of evidence strongly confirms the no-elephant hypothesis and disconfirms the elephant hypothesis. However, the "no elephant is visible in my living room" evidence is equally probably under the invisible-elephant and no-invisible-elephant hypotheses, so that this evidence fails to provide suppport for either. To put it another way, we do not expect visual evidence for an invisible entity, so the lack of such evidence is not meaningful.

In a similar fashion we can address the second and third sub-hypotheses concerning Darius the Mede and the lack of evidence for his existence. If we have reason to expect that we would have found such evidence had he actually existed, then the lack of such evidence is meaningful. Not conclusive, but meaningful. Since we do have evidence for the identities of both the Babylonian kings as well as their actual conqueror (Cyrus the Persian), and since this evidence has no temporal gaps where another king might fit in, the lack of evidence for the existence of Darius the Mede as ruler of the empire that conquered Babylon is meaningful. Further, since we also have evidence regarding names of other officials of the empire, including the name and nationality of the governor of Babylon under Cyrus, the lack of evidence for someone named Darius the Mede in such a capacity is meaningful. So, these sub-hypotheses are not certainly false, but they are probably false.

To take another example, consider the facts that the earliest manuscripts of Daniel (from the Dead Sea Scrolls) come from late in the second century. Is this evidence of late authorship? This, in a sense, is another argument from lack of evidence. The late manuscript dates (compared to 630 BCE) would only be strong evidence for later authorship if we had reason to expect to find earlier manuscripts. In this case, the oldest manuscripts we have of any Old Testament book (so far as I know) are less than one hundred years older than Daniel manuscripts, so this is a case case where the lack of evidence is not particularly meaningful. On the other hand, like the coin-flipping example above, a single contradictory result would have been a tremendous blow to the case for late authorship. Also, beyond there being no earlier manuscripts for Daniel, there are no references to Daniel from earlier sources, while such references do exist for other books, and that does have some evidentiary value.

(I should note that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain fragments from all of the Old Testament books except Esther and Nehemiah. If it were the case that all of the other books were represented in manuscript fragments from the earliest part of the second century BCE, the later dates of the Daniel fragments would be more significant. However, I have not found any indication that this is the case.)

As a final example, consider my treatment of Josephus' account of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great. Under H₆₃₀ this could be true and if so it is not particularly improbable that Josephus would have reported it. Under H₁₆₅, this event could only be a legend (or perhaps an outright lie) that was incorrectly reported as fact by Josephus. Assuming H₁₆₅, is this improbable? No. Josephus was not himself witness to the events; they occurred nearly 400 years before he reported them. The story could have developed as a legend. Josephus had a fairly obvious apologetic purpose in writing his history; he has a recognizable bias that attempts to present the Jews and their religion in a positive light to the Romans. Further, he represents other demonstrably incorrect statements as facts. So under both H₆₃₀ and H₁₆₅, it is not improbable that Josephus would have included the account of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great, which means that these statements cannot be taken as strong evidence in favor of H₆₃₀. This is not an outright rejection of Josephus. We might even conclude that, as an individual piece of evidence, Jospephus' account provides more evidentiary value to H₆₃₀ than to H₁₆₅. But it cannot provide significantly stronger support to H₆₃₀ than to H₁₆₅, and it is not our only piece of evidence. The weight of the larger ensemble of evidence, most scholars conclude, is for H₁₆₅.

On Daniel

2007-02-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

Motivation

In my ongoing dialog with Ernie, we have not yet addressed something about which I am most curious, which is his stance on the reliability of the Bible. One of the more curiosity-provoking statements he did make was:

... I trust the Bible because it explains the divinity I observe, not vice versa. To me, the Bible is a reflection of belief in God, not the cause; a subtle but crucial distinction...

He also later said he was willing to defend this statement:

Belief in the Biblical narrative regarding God's role in shaping religious faith is as central and well-justified as belief in the scientific narrative regarding evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans.

From these statements (and a few others) I think it is safe to say that Ernie continues to place great weight on the Bible, even if he will not defend absolute inerrancy. From my occasional readings of the devotional posts he includes on Radically Happy: A Transformational Bible Blog, it also seems safe to say that, in practice, his treatment of scripture is fairly conventional.

While it has not been my intent to provide commentary on his devotional posts, his most recent series has been covering the Book of Daniel. I am not sure how aware he is of the controversy surrounding Daniel, but the purpose of this post is to give an overview of the reasons that the authenticity of Daniel should be doubted, including rebuttals to some of the common arguments offered in defense of Daniel by Christian apologists.

A Brief Introduction to Daniel

The Book of Daniel purports to be written by a Jew (named Daniel obviously) that was taken as a captive to Babylon when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar. He becomes an advisor to Nebuchadnezzar and also to later kings, being found "ten times better [in wisdom and understanding] than all of the magicians and conjurers who were in all his realm." (Daniel 1:19-20) His importance to Christian apologetics is due primarily to his prophecies, which are intended to illustrate the inspiration of God.

The (non-prophetic) events described by Daniel occur between about 597 BCE and 530 BCE. The prophecies cover events for at least 370 years after that, and possibly (depending on one's interpretation) much farther. If these were true prophecies (and they were accurate), this would indeed be impressive.

On the other hand, if the Book of Daniel were not actually written during the 6th century (all dates will be BCE unless otherwise noted) but instead much later, the "prophecies" would not really be prophecies and their accuracy meaningless. What reasons do we have to suppose this might be the case?

First Verse, First Problem

The first major problem is that, despite Daniel's supposed role near the center of power for nearly sixty years, he demonstrates substantial ignorance of the period that he describes. In fact, the problems start with the very first verse of the first chapter, because he claims that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar during the third year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Jehoiakim reigned from about 608 to 597, so the third year of his reign would have been around 606-605. Jerusalem did not fall to Nebuchadnezzar until 597; according to 2 Kings 24:6-12 this was three months afterJehoiakim died and his son Jehoiachin had ascended to the throne. So right away, Daniel is off by eight years and one king. But this is hardly the most serious problem.

Belshazzar

In chapter five, Daniel relates the famous story of the disembodied hand writing mysterious words on the wall during a banquet held by King Belshazzar, words that Daniel is able to interpret. Five times during the dialog that ensues, Nebuchadnezzar is described as Belshazzar's father, and once Belshazzar is described as Nebuchadnezzar's son. This is false. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son Evilmerodach (or Avil-Marduk or Amel-Marduk), who was succeeded by Neriglissar (Nergal-ashur-usur). Neriglissar was followed by Laborosoarchod (Labashi-Marduk), who was usurped by Nabonidus (Nabu-nahid) whose father was Nabu-balatsu-ikbi (as found in Babylonian inscriptions). Nabodinus had a son Belshazzar. It is not possible that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father; we have no reason from contemporary sixth century records to even suspect they were related since the line of succession was broken by usurpation.

Worse than that, Belshazzar was never king! Nabonidus was the last Babylonian king before the kingdom fell to the Persians in 538. Belshazzar did rule in his father's stead while Nabodinus more or less abandoned his post to pursue archeological studies. However, contemporaneous records are clear that Belshazzar was not actually king. Belshazzar also died before his father, and he died in the tenth month of the year, four months after the kingdom fell, not the same night as Daniel reports.

Is it credible that Daniel, having ten times the wisdom and understanding of anyone else in the Babylonian kingdom and being a member of the royal court, would get these facts wrong? Certainly not. But even that is not the end of the problems of Daniel's supposed history.

Darius the Mede

Daniel states, at the end of chapter five, that Babylon fell to Darius the Mede. As I stated above, Babylon actually fell to the Persians, and it was Cyrus who conquered Babylon, not Darius. Cyrus the Persian, not Darius the Mede. (The Medes had already fallen to the Persians in 550.) The first known Darius was Darius the Great, a Persian king that reigned from 522-486. That Darius did organize the empire into satrapies, but only 20 of them, not 120 as Daniel 6:1 reports.

Why would Daniel believe Babylon fell to the Medes? Interestingly, both Isaiah (13:17-19) and Jeremiah (51:11,28) had predicted that this would occur, but they were wrong. Daniel writes in 9:2 that he was reading Jeremiah. (Humorously, some apologists have used the predictions in Isaiah and Jeremiah to defend the accuracy of Daniel on this point.) Similarly, the apocryphal pseudo-epigraphical book of Baruch, thought to have been written in the second or early first centuries, recorded that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son (Baruch 1:11). This is the first small clue of when Daniel was actually written.

Prophecy: Success and Failure

The other clues derive from the accuracy of Daniel's prophecies. Starting with his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's statue dream in chapter two, and then from chapter seven through chapter twelve, various visions and prophecies constitute a substantial portion of the book. Without going into all of the details, and while there are disagreements about how to interpret some of the visions, cases can be made that the visions do correspond to actual events that followed the time that Daniel supposedly lived. Of particular interest in this post, however, are the events described in Daniel 11 and 12.

This chapter begins with the ascendency of the Persian empire, followed quickly by a Greek empire led by a mighty king, clearly a reference to Alexander the Great. When Alexander died, the Greek empire was split into four pieces, ruled by men who were not his descendents, just as verse 4 states. Verses 5-20 trace out an accurate (if brief) reconstruction of events that followed Alexander's death, particularly related to the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties. In verse 21 we pick up with "a despicable person", who can be seen to refer to Antiochus IV (or Antiochus Epiphanes) whose acts include looting the Jewish temple, erecting an altar to Zeus in the temple and sacrificing a swine there, forbidding Jewish sacrifices and other rituals, and generally behaving very badly. The historicity of these events is supported by (at least) the deutero-canonical book of I Maccabees, and I know of no reason to doubt them.

Again, Daniel's description of events related to Antiochus IV is very accurate -- to a point. Verses 21-39 track very closely with what is known about Antiochus IV from the time he took the throne in 175 until 165. At that point, the predictions go completely off the rails. In verses 40-45 (the end of the chapter), Daniel predicts that Antiochus IV will again invade Egypt and that this time he would succeed. Daniel also predicts that, due to "rumors from the East and from the North" he would "go forth with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many", only to die between the sea and the "Holy Mountain" (Jerusalem). However, Antiochus IV did not invade Egypt again, and he died in Persia (according to I Maccabees 6:1-16)

The troubles continue into chapter 12, which more or less predicts the end of the world which (to my knowledge) has not occurred yet. As Ernie points out, there are a variety of interpretations among Christians (and Jews, I suppose) of what this all means. The one possibility he neglects to mention is that the prediction was intended to be relatively straight-forward and immediate, but was also incorrect.

Because of this sudden transition from successful "prediction" to failure (and also because of the historical problems above), we have good reasons to believe that the Book of Daniel was in fact written somewhere around 165 BCE, not 530 (or so). The amazing predictions would not be predictions at all, but instead recent history.

Evidence of Early Authorship?

Of course, dating Daniel this late would be impossible if we had clear evidence of its existence prior to this date. Is there any such evidence?

Ernie refers his readers to an article on the prophecies of Daniel that includes this defense of authentic authorship:

The Book of Daniel is a stunning example of Bible prophecy. The book claims to have been written sometime in the 6th century BC, but because of the accuracy of its detailed predictions, Daniel's critics insist that it must have been written after the events described. They contend that it must have been written sometime after c.160 BC. Nevertheless, Flavius Josephus, court historian for three successive Roman Emperors, documents Alexander the Great receiving a copy of Daniel upon his annexation of Jerusalem in the autumn of 332 BC (Antiquities of the Jews XI, chapter viii, paragraphs 3-5). Furthermore, according to both the pseudo-aristeas account and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews XII, chapter ii), Ptolemy Philadelphus (308-246 BC) commissioned the translation of the Septuagint (a.k.a. the LXX) from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd century BC. Daniel is included in the LXX. Daniel is also included among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) which date from about 200 BC (the oldest Daniel manuscript, 4Q114, dating from the late 2nd Century BC). [hyperlinks added]

The first reference from Josephus does specifically say that the Book of Daniel was shown to Alexander the Great. But it is important to remember that Josephus was writing in the late first century CE, over 400 years later. He cannot be regarded as a primary source, certainly not as a source that predated 165 BCE, and there was ample time for this story to develop as a legend. Josephus also reports a great many other things from Jewish history that we have good reason to disbelieve including, in Book 10, Chapter 10, the story of Daniel, though he merges the story with information gleaned from other sources, and not all of that correct either. (For instance, he does include the other Babylonian kings that followed Nebuchadnezzar, but substantially mis-states the lengths of their reigns.) As a source on Jewish history of the first century CE, Joseph has some authority, but we have little reason to trust him on the issue of Daniel.

As far as the Septuagint (LXX) is concerned, yes, it was commissioned in the 3rd century. However, the sources listed above do not enumerate the contents of what was to be translated and certainly there is no explicit mention of Daniel. (And again, both of the sources listed were written considerably later than the events described.) While the LXX was commissioned as early as 285 (early in the third century), it was not finished until the first century, around two hundred years later. This leaves plenty of time for Daniel to originate in 165 and still become part of the LXX.

The final claim above is a bit disingenuous. What does it matter if some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were dated from about 200 BCE if the oldest manuscript of Daniel was not dated until the late second century?

(While I cannot find it right now, I think I remember reading that the earliest known reference to the Book of Daniel and/or the earliest known manuscript was from about 130 BCE, not early enough to challenge authorship in 165 or so.)

Other Apologetical Defenses

There are apologetical defenses offered to explain the various difficulties I described above. Regarding the relationship (or lack thereof) between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, I am familiar with two explanations. One is that the use of the terms father and son were figurative, not literal, and simply reflected that they were both in the same succession of leaders of a single kingdom. The second suggestion is that they were in fact related (though not actual father and son) and that the terminology used was flexible enough to cover this kind of relationship.

It may be true that occasionally one man was called the son of another due to successional relationship. But reading Daniel 5, the usage, even emphasis, of the relationship suggests an actual family (and specifically father-son) relationship. Look at verse 11, where the queen addresses Belshazzar:

In the time of your father he [Daniel] was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar your father —- your father the king, I say —- appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners."

If the successional relationship between rulers was intended by the word "father", why did the queen need to emphasize that the father was king? It would have been implicit. Additionally, it is not until the second sentence that we find out that "father" refers to Nebuchadnezzar. If a successional relationship or non-father-son relationship was intended, this would have been ambiguous as any of the previous kings could have been meant and I suggest that, more likely than not, such a reference would have been disambiguated immediately if it was in fact ambiguous.

Keep in mind as well that Daniel shows no awareness of the Babylonian kings that followed Nebuchadnezzar, though there were four (and Belshazzar was not one of them). While the omission of any mention of these other kings is not by itself crucially significant, if they had been mentioned it would be far easier to make the case that the author of Daniel was actually aware that Belshazzar was not the literal son of Nebuchadnezzar. Because they are not mentioned, making the case becomes harder.

As far as a more distant family relationship is concerned, that cannot be disproven, but yet no archeological finding suggests that such a relationship existed. One cause of difficulty, however, comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived during the fifth century BCE. Herodotus apparently gives a somewhat confused account of the Babylonian rulers, referring to two kings (father and son) named Labynetos, which some have identified as Nabodinus and Balshazzar, although others have identified the younger Labynetos with Nobodinus, and in some cases the older with Nebuchandnezzar. Additionally, Herodotus briefly mentions a Babylonian queen named "Nitocris" who some believe was the wife or daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and also the mother or grandmother of the younger Labynetos. In this way, some defend the existence a family relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Balshazzar.

Unfortunately, the various sources I have found have fairly divergent accounts of what Herodotus actually said, and I have not read his accounts directly. I get the impression, though, that what began as conjecture by earlier apologists attempting to reconcile the difficulties in Daniel is now being repeated almost as established fact, without correspondingly strong evidence (and not just in the case of the relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar). As an example, look at the Wikipedia article for Belshazzar and then read the discussion. A fair amount of what is stated as fact in the article is contested there and the disagreements seem to be fairly typical. So at this point, I can only recommend skepticism and further research about what support Herodotus can provide to those claiming a relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.

Still, as with the prior case, the lack of any sign of awareness that Nebuchadnezzar was not the actual biological father of Belshazzar makes claims that no actual father-son relationship was intended in Daniel more difficult to support.

And what of the fact that Belshazzar was never actually the king? Most apologists admit that he was just second in command, and not truly the king. However, he is plainly referred to as king, repeatedly. The text refers to his nobles. It is his reign that will be ended by the Medes and Persians (according to Daniel) and his kingdom that will be divided. To him the queen says "live forever", a phrase reserved for actual kings. And here again we must observe that there is absolutely no indication that the author of Daniel was aware of any other king. Resolving the contradiction between the text and historical fact in this way is ad hoc, and still unsatisfying.

A similar problem is encountered when we examine the common defense of the problem of "Darius the Mede", the fictitious conqueror of Babylon. Since we know for sure that there was no such king, apologists have suggested that perhaps there was a general, governor or viceroy who ruled Babylon under Cyrus that was named Darius and who was a Mede. This suggestion fails for several reasons. First, as with Belshazzar, the text of Daniel clearly refers to Darius as king, including again the phrase "live forever" (in 6:6 for instance). Second, right away in 6:1 we are told that Darius appointed satraps to rule throughout the kingdom. A local or regional ruler would not have this authority. Third, no reference to a person named Darius has been found that might refer to a person in such a position. Fourth, we do know the name of the governor of Babylon during the reign of Cyrus: Gubaru (or Gobyras), a Persian.

As I said above, there was a Persian king named Darius that followed shortly after Cyrus, Darius Hystaspes or Darius the Great. This was the king that actually introduced the satraps, and he was the father of Xerxes (Ahasuerus), where Daniel reports that Ahasuerus was the father of Darius. These hint at the possibility that the author of Daniel had this Darius in mind, but was mistaken on a number of key facts. Mistakes of this nature are understandable for an author at a later date, but not for someone who was personally involved, as Daniel is supposed to be.

Additional Considerations

This post has gotten rather long, but I should quickly mention several other items. First, this is not an exhaustive list of all of the problems with Daniel that suggest later authorship. Some hints come from vocabulary, for instance. There are problems with other "prophecies" of events that occurred between the sixth century and the second; as prophecies they fail and as history they demonstrate that the author of Daniel was relying on other faulty or incomplete sources of history (such as other books of the Old Testament).

Second, the Book of Daniel is unusual because various parts were originally written in two different languages, Aramaic and Hebrew. Partly for this reason, some scholars believe it had multiple authors, and possibly the various parts were written at different times (but still not by or about an actual historical figure).

Third, none of the other books of the Old Testament contain any reference to Daniel. There is a "Danel" mentioned in Ezekiel 14:14,20 and 28:3, mentioned along with Job and Noah. This suggests the person referenced here was from the more distant past, and in fact such a person is mentioned in the Ugaritic texts of the late second millenium BCE as "The Legend of Dan-el".

Fourth, I have to mention that, according to Matthew 24:15, Jesus referred to Daniel as a prophet. If Daniel is fictional, then either Jesus was wrong about him being a prophet, or Matthew was and he put words in Jesus' mouth.

Conclusion

The case against the authenticity of the Book of Daniel is strong. The apologetic defenses are ad hoc and unsupported by evidence.

Additional Resources

I spent somewhere around ten hours over the course of several nights reading about this subject and writing this post, including the articles to which I linked above. Some other articles that I read include:

Daniel in the Debunker's Den, http://www.atheists.org/christianity/daniel.html

Revealing Daniel, http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/comment/daniel.shtml

Beware of Bible Fundamentalists "Quoting" Sources, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1999/5/995bewar.html

Dating Daniel: A Response to Everette Hatcher III, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/2001/1/011dan.html

The Point That Hatcher Keeps Evading, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/2001/1/011point.html

Lions 1, Daniel 0, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1998/6/986lions.html

Missing: One Goalpost

2007-02-04T01:39:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to SPOM, spom, Spom, SPoM....

Ernie,

If I understand your goal in introducing a "Shared Paradigm of Morality" (SPoM), you are trying to establish a framework that would allow us to compare "moral theories" and determine when one theory is superior to another. In particular (if I understand you) we would use the "means" of "our cognitive, perceptive ... and evaluative faculties" to evaluate moral theories according to a chosen metric, with "maximize happiness and minimize suffering" being an example which is probably not ideal, but at least illustrative and not too far wrong.

Unfortunately, I fail to see how this helps us.

The primary reason that I do not believe your SPoM will help is that, from my perspective, the metric defines morality. I do not have a separate moral theory that can be evaluated against the metric. The metric defines what is good and what is bad. Sure, we can construct derivative theories about what kinds of actions best satisfy the metric, and such theories have practical significance. But since they are derivative, they cannot challenge the metric itself, except perhaps to demonstrate that the metric has undesirable properties that might lead to a revision of the metric.

What you appear to be proposing are what I would call derivative theories. Yes, we can evaluate various derivative theories according to the metric. Suppose we could demonstrate that the best response to anger is love and forgiveness. Fine. That would be good to know (if it were true). However, so far as our dialog is concerned, such a finding helps little to not at all, because nothing in either the metric or the derivative theory demands that God exists or that Christianity (in any meaningful form) is true.

You could even demonstrate that some particular action is good under the metric, given Christianity or even just deism, and bad otherwise. But that does not help either, because the truth of Christianity or even just deism is just what is in question.

You might try to demonstrate that the moral precepts of Christianity satisfy the metric so well that they must have divine origin. This would be a different sort of argument, one that perhaps has some chance of traction. You would have to account, though, for various highly sub-optimal precepts in the Bible. And of course, you would actually have to demonstrate, not just assert, that the moral precepts of Christianity are really superlative in relation to the metric.

From my perspective, I think there exist sufficient grounds for objective moral truths without ontological dependence on God. Those grounds are established by defining morality in terms of metrics applied to other objective truths. What those moral truths are may depend on whether or not God exists and other related questions that are objectively true or false, but the existence of moral truths by itself is insufficient to require a deity. I do not see how further discussion on the subject can help us make any progress, unless we independently establish sufficient reasons to believe or disbelieve that God exists and has particular characteristics. Or do you question that sufficient grounds for objective moral truths can exist without ontological dependence on God?

I will give brief answers to the five questions that you raised:

If moral principles are not absolute, then what are they relative to? If they are relative to something which differs among potential observers, then in what sense are they objective?

Do we accept that emotions are a valid way to perceive reality? If so, do we only include "positive" emotional states like empathy, or also "negative" emotions like anger or hatred?

Why do people fail to act morally? Is moral failure primarily intellectual, emotional, or volitional? And how can it be prevented/corrected?

Is there a unique solution which globally maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering? Or are there multiple local maxima which maximize the happiness of one particular population at the expense of others?

Is it it our moral duty to choose an Operative Depiction of Reality that maximizes our motivation to do good, even if that conflicts with an ODoR that better fits the available evidence? Or is it possible -- within our existing paradigm -- to prove that no such conflict exists?

I am going to answer these from the perspective of Desire Utilitarianism (DU), as I understand it. According to DU, desires that promote other desires are good and desires that thwart other desires are bad. Actions can be evaluated in the same way. Also, desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

So, to answer (a), moral principles are relative to (the interconnected network of ) desires that exist. They are also relative to environmental factors which affects how some desires and actions affect other desires. For instance, gaining the technological capability to prevent some undesired consequences can affect the moral evaluation of desires and actions that might otherwise lead to those consequences. The moral evaluation of pouring CO₂ into the atmosphere would change if a cheap and effective method for later capture and sequestration of CO₂ were found.

Since we have experiences of emotion (and these experiences are real), we are perceiving a small part of reality when we experience emotion. This is true regardless of whether the emotions are "positive" or "negative"; labeling them as such is irrelevant to their reality. The reality of emotional experience is relevant to DU both we have desires to experience some emotions and not others. They are also relevant because they may cause, reflect or amplify desires to promote or thwart the desires of others.

Why do people fail to act morally? Alonzo suggests the following "formula":

Desires + Beliefs -> Intentions -> Intentional Actions

So, immoral actions can result from either immoral desires (desires that tend to thwart other desires) or false beliefs. Of course, in some cases moral actions can result from immoral desires combined with false beliefs, but only by accident, as it were. Similarly, moral desires and false beliefs can still lead to moral actions. However, moral actions will result most reliably when one has good desires and true beliefs.

How one prevents or corrects failure to act morally depends on whether the failure was rooted in bad desires or false beliefs (or both). If rooted in false beliefs, the beliefs need to be corrected (replaced with true beliefs). If rooted in bad desires, either the desires must be modified (if possible) or the action must be physically prevented. Alonzo argues that reason is ineffective at modifying desires, and that other tools like praise, condemnation, reward and punishment are needed.

Your question (d) is an interesting one, one that I have thought about. Under DU, the question would be stated a bit differently, but the same general flavor to the question would remain. I do not know what the answer is. It seems possible that either a single global maximum could exist, or multiple local maxima. Possibly, the existence of multiple local maxima might be reason to adjust the metric we use. Or, it may simply be a feature of reality.

Question (e) is also interesting. Before I answer, please recall the formula relating desires and beliefs to actions above and the subsequent discussion. The process by which desires get translated into intentions and then to actions is mediated by beliefs about how those desires will be fulfilled by various actions. An ODoR that conflicts with available evidence may change our expectations about the outcomes of various actions (and so, in effect, increase our motivation to do good), but the false beliefs (or at least probably false beliefs given the evidence) could corrupt our understanding of what is in fact good. Additionally, the false beliefs may interfere with our ability to bring about the good we desire.

Suppose my ODoR contains the notion that that Christianity is true and that we are all going to spend eternity either in heaven or hell. Because I desire happiness and lack of suffering both for myself and others, my desires and my beliefs would combine to create a strong motivation to do whatever is required to reach heaven and avoid hell, both for me and others, even if it meant enduring net suffering in this life. If this ODoR is false, this suffering will never be countered by eternal happiness, and what was thought to be good (and what would have been good if the ODoR was true) was in reality evil.

The issue is more complicated than that, but I hope you can see that motivation alone is not the only important factor.

Here is another way to look at the question. I have various desires with varying strengths. These desires will combine in various ways according to the expected outcomes of various actions, which I evaluate according to my beliefs. One of my desires is to know the truth, and this particular desire is strong, strong enough that I am not able to choose an ODoR that conflicts with my understanding of truth. Even if the desire were not quite so strong as that, promoting a desire for holding this ODoR would thwart my desire to believe truth (making it morally objectionable under DU). While not quite a proof that no conflict of the sort you describe exists, I think this hints at the approach such a proof might take.

I hope those answers are sufficient to help you understand where I am coming from.

Alan

The ODoR of Howard Van Till

2007-01-29T21:14:00.000-06:00

Over at The Secular Outpost, Taner Edis passed along a bit of information about Howard Van Till, formerly a physics professor at Calvin College. He links to the written version of a talk given by Van Till last May to the Freethought Association of West Michigan in which he describes his journey from Calvanist dogmatism to (still Christian?) free-thought. Central to his talk/paper is the concept of one's Operative Depiction of Reality (ODoR), somewhat similar to a worldview but perhaps even larger in scope.

He touches on a number of points that reflect my own experience and observations. For instance, I have asserted that beliefs can produce positive effects without the subject of the belief being true. Van Till writes "The fact that one’s ODoR exhibits many utilitarian values does not ensure that any particular portion of it is true."

The paper is only ten pages long, and well worth reading.

What's Anger Got to Do With It?

2007-01-26T21:59:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Of Anger, Hatred, and Love.

Ernie,

I can appreciate that you are trying to introduce a new subtopic in our discussion that might help to illuminate the difference between the moral obligations we might have under your deistic hypothesis (or even Christianity specifically) versus any non-deistic or non-theistic alternative I might offer. As you know, just last night I wrote that the propositions under consideration were insufficient to provide this illumination. I had already seen your later post by the time I finished writing, but I was not prepared to respond to it yet, for reasons that I will now attempt to make clear.

As I read your post, I was a bit surprised to see you propose anger as a key topic that might open the way to greater understanding. Anger is primarily an emotional response to various kinds of provocation, and while I agree that (some) emotions are relevant to discussions of ethics and morality, I think this is primarily by way of the emotional states that are provoked by one's actions and whether we desire those states or not. Your focus on anger, on the other hand, appears to be aimed at how we express our anger or what we do in response to feelings of anger.

Since anger can be provoked and expressed in a variety of ways, and since anger can result from false beliefs as well as true ones, it seems like a pretty slippery concept to be an anchor for this discussion.

Now, you do propose a different definition of anger to use for purposes of this discussion: "the desire to punish those we believe did (or will) mistreat those we love" -- including, but not limited to, ourselves." This definition is a little better suited as a basis for discussion, but I dislike adopting specialized definitions that differ significantly from normal usage because we consciously have to substitute an unusual meaning for the word whenever we encounter it, and this creates "friction" that inhibits understanding as well as the possibility of (unintentional) equivocation.

In this case, I am confused by the conflation of "anger" (even in your limited sense) with "our moral obligation towards those who mistreat others". Certainly we often feel angry when somebody mistreats us or somebody else, and we might discuss whether we "ought" to feel anger in such circumstances. But it seems to me that the more central issue is how we should treat those that mistreat us or others, and how we deal with feelings of anger is just one part of the larger issue. This larger issue is dealt with (in various ways, with various degrees of success) by various "atheistic" systems of ethics. While the subject of anger specifically may not be addressed, I am not sure that it warrants specific treatment. This is not denial so much as comparative irrelevance.

Your focus, on the other hand, really does seem to be on anger -- except when it's not. Your sections on denial and dispassion focus almost entirely on anger and very little on the target of that anger and our related ethical obligations. The section on hatred, on the one hand, and forgiveness and love on the other, focus more on other mental states that might follow anger, with secondary consideration to how that plays out in action.

But there is another level at which I find your approach confusing. In your conclusion you say:

As far as I know, Christianity is the only moral system that commands us to love and forgive our enemies...

and then,

That said, I firmly believe that (III) is the option best able to satisfy our UU metric of "maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering."

There is something of a contradiction here. UU is (or defines) a moral system, and it does not depend on or equate to Christianity. If (III) were the option best able to satisfy the UU metric, then UU would demand (III). The best you could say (if this is even true) is that Christianity was the first to recognize or promote (III). If so, it was a valuable contribution of Christianity, but not otherwise significant. (Let me be careful to state that I am not sufficiently familiar with the various religious and philosophical movements to state that Christianity was in fact the first or only moral system to command forgiveness and love towards our enemies.)

On the other hand, I am not so convinced as you that (III) is the best possible alternative, or that there are only four alternatives. But that depends on how much you are focusing on "anger" versus "moral obligation towards those who mistreat others", and whether you are viewing (III) as sufficient or only necessary.

You wanted to know how I would deal with anger, hatred and enemies, if I do at all. Please do not be angry, but I will defer my answer to those questions until a later post. ;-)

Alan

Obviously Not A Reply

2007-01-25T23:29:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Obviously (Not).

Ernie,

I apologize if I have confused the discussion by qualifying my support for the statement "The goal is maximize actual and potential Happiness while minimizing actual and potential Suffering." I was concerned about the effect that would have, and it was for that reason that I volunteered to continue using the statement as is, despite my reservations. As I hope to make clear (or at least clearer), I see that statement as a simplified, intuitively straightforward approximation to a more deeply grounded theory of ethics.

I had referred you to a particular post by Alonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist, in which he provided a criticism of happiness as the sole criterion by which to assign moral value. He does this by describing a hypothetical situation in which perfect happiness is guaranteed, but one which at least some people would intuitively regard as immoral. His claim is that Desire Utilitarianism can account for these cases where happiness is outweighed by other, well, desires. This in no way contradicts the suggestion that in very many cases, happiness is the strongest desire, which is why I could still view total happiness as an approximation of a more complete theory of ethics.

Desire utilitarianism, as described by Alonzo, is much more subtle and powerful than theories built on total happiness alone. (I should note, by the way, that Alonzo's critique was not of utilitarianism generally, but only a specific measure of value that is frequently advanced by atheists, just as I had done.) While I am not sure if I can explain why that is succinctly, I think its explanatory power derives primarily from recognizing that desires are the sole reasons for action, and from the positive and negative feedbacks applied to good and bad desires.

You said were confused because Alonzo appeared to you to be "specifically critiquing Utilitarian metrics for failing to adequately explain our desire" for love and truth, and further, that he would disagree that statements II and III from our MSSB "are potentially testable truth claims given the [Utilitarian] definition of moral value." First, let me repeat that Alonzo was addressing only a particular definition of moral value, not all types of utilitarianism. He is defending a different definition of moral value, but still under the broader umbrella of utilitarianism. Second, let me repeat that the point of the counter-example was not to show that happiness is not a factor in determining moral value, only that it cannot be the sole factor.

I suspect that Alonzo would agree that statements (II) and (III) are potentially testable truth claims given (X) as a metric. His claim, I believe, would be that (X) is not the best metric, and that the definition incorporated into desire utilitarianism is superior. I am almost entirely certain that Alonzo would view (II) and (III) as potentially testable truth claims under desire utilitarianism. (By the way, I am taking your version of (III), "Truth is better than Falsehood" to mean "Belief in truth is better than belief in falsehood".)

Does that help?

Moving on to my criticism of your deistic hypothesis, I apologize as well for creating more confusion there, though in this case, the seeds were planted when you wrote:

I believe that:

We need a set of assumptions comparable to the MSSB in order to support meaningful "social inquiry."

Using a deistic hypothesis -- that "the various systems encompassing humanity are the result of a benevolent Purpose" (one sympathetic to human Reason, Virtue, and Happiness) --- we can derive the MSSB assumptions as theorems, rather than needing to state them as axioms

In science, a discrete list of facts is less powerful than a theory which explains them

[Emphasis mine.] I should have recognized that you did not mean "assumptions" so much as simply "statements" or "facts" or "propositions", since in (B) you spoke of deriving them. In fact, I described them in my response as "statements", but I probably put too much weight on your usage of the term "assumptions". Still, I stand by my claim that only (X) is necessary to support "meaningful social inquiry" (so that I disagree with (A)) and that the statements (I) - (IX) do not need to be stated as axioms (so that I disagree with (B), specifically the final clause, but read on).

Now in your last post you said:

I get that you "do not believe we need to treat (I) through (IX) as assumptions or axioms that could instead by derivable from a deistic hypothesis." [emphasis mine] My question was instead whether you agreed that we could derive something comparable to the MSSB starting from the deistic hypothesis; the last paragraph of your comment hints that you might, but I'd like to know for sure.

Let me explain how what you wrote gave a different impression. In your statement (B) you not only said "we can derive the MSSB assumptions as theorems" [emphasis mine] but also "rather than needing to state them as axioms". To me, this established a (false) dichotomy. If you had simply left off the final clause, I think your intention would have been more clear. I do see that you could have been merely contrasting one approach with another without claiming that the two together exhausted the possibilities. But then again, as I stated in the comments after my last post, the version of the goalpost statement that you were defending was that "belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is ... essential ...". So again, I hope you can understand why I might have understood you to be making an exlusivist claim.

So now we return to the goalpost statement itself. You have suggested replacing the original statement with this one:

"Does the deistic hypothesis B provide a better explanation for the MSSB than an ethical metric such as X?"

The problem I have with this is that I do not think the statements in the MSSB are that difficult to explain under either the deistic hypothesis or an ethical metric like X. (I am not quite sure why the statements specifically about Christianity are particularly relevant to the deciding between a deistic hypothesis and X.) Additionally, it seems possible to me that a deistic hypothesis could in some sense include X, so that anything X explains, DHX would also explain. (Since you originally included X as a statement that DH could explain, this possibility appears somewhat likely.) In short, stated this way, I think the goalpost statement lacks discriminatory power.

I am of course open to reasons why you would disagree with this assessment. My basic position, though, is that there just is not enough meat on that bone.

Here is another perspective. Suppose we agreed on an ethical metric like X, where you consider it as part of a larger deistic hypothesis, and I considerate it the basis of a "standalone" theory of ethics. We also both agree that belief in truth is important to ethical behavior. The major relevant difference between us is what we believe to be true.

Way back in September, you advanced two propositions you would be willing to defend. We have spent the past four months on the first one, and in my view we have more or less agreed that your deistic hypothesis is consistent some core agreed-upon statements, but not necessary. Whether the DH is "more necessary" is as yet an open question, but in my view not a particularly interesting one, not unless the basis for discrimination can be strengthened.

I have always been more interested in the second proposition:

Belief in the Biblical narrative regarding God's role in shaping religious faith is as central and well-justified as belief in the scientific narrative regarding evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans.

Or, as you later stated it:

Epistemic dependence on received Scripture as a reliable indicator of divine will.

So, can I suggest we put the subject of ethics on the back burner for awhile and move on? And, while we have ethics simmering, can I suggest that you read Alonzo Fyfe's book, "A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism"? As I said, I think DU provides a more sophisticated and well-developed theory of ethics than UU, and so might address some of the issues you find lacking in other systems you have looked into. I would be happy to send you a copy.

What do you think?

Alan

Axioms, Hypotheses and Facts, Oh My!

2007-01-13T00:04:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to A Minimal Set of Shared Beliefs.

Ernie,

With perhaps one exception, which I will discuss momentarily, the statements you list as being a Minimal Set of Shared Beliefs (MSSB) are agreeable to me, though as I mentioned before, agreement on the first few is not that earthshaking. Let me repeat them here for easy reference:

Happiness is better than Suffering

Love is better than Hate

Truth is better than Falsehood

Truth is compatible with both Love and Happiness

Love and Happiness are compatible with each other

There are some good things about Christianity

There are many things wrong with Christianity

It is both necessary and possible to improve upon Christianity

Reason and Empirical Observation are both key to improving upon Christianity

The goal is maximize actual and potential Happiness while minimizing actual and potential Suffering

The one item that I need to qualify, surprisingly enough, is the last one. As you note, this reflects what I have described as the metric of Universal Utilitarianism, which I brought into this discussion as being very near to my own thinking on the nature of morality. Participating in this discussion has, quite naturally, led me to further reflection and study. I have, for instance, described universal utilitarianism (or at least my understanding of it) as being incomplete since it "does not reflect our intuitions about how to treat those who mistreat others."

For the past month or so, I have been reading the blog Atheist Ethicist. The author, Alonzo Fyfe, is a philosopher who advocates "Desire Utilitarianism". By this he does not mean simply that whatever you desire is good or right, or that we should do whatever anyone else desires of us. Instead, desires and actions are judged to be morally good or evil based on whether they promote or thwart the desires of others. According to Alonzo (and I tend to agree so far) this provides a better foundation for making moral judgements than happiness and suffering alone. For instance, he argues that sometimes we desire other things more than happiness, so that merely bringing about happiness would produce a morally inferior result.

I may write more about Desire Utilitarianism later after I have better digested how it all plays out. My purpose in bringing it up here is that statement (X) represents an ethical theory that reflected well my thoughts at the time I brought it up, but which may be superceded by a better theory (one with more explanatory power) later. For now, I remain happy to continue using it. As you said:

For purposes of this discussion, let us both stipulate that this moral imperative is at least "proximately true" -- that is, any ethical theory we propose has to either incorporate or address this truth to be considered valid.

However, there is another reason that this statement needs attention, a reason more directly relevent to your argument.

You suggest that the deistic hypothesis allows us to derive all of the statements in the MSSB as theorems, rather than stating them as axioms, and further that a theory that explains a set of facts is more powerful than the set of facts themselves. From this you conclude that your goalpost statement is supported.

I think there are several flaws in this argument, and the most important problem is that (X) is a very different statement from (I) through (IX). The first nine statements, possibly excluding (IV) and (V), are all statements about the value of various things: happiness, suffering, love, hate, truth, falsehood, Christianity, reason and empirical observation. Statement (X) is different because it establishes the grounds for valuing one thing above another.

I submit that (X) is sufficient as a theory of ethical value (subject to the caveat above) and further that by itself it is sufficient to support meaningful social inquiry. The remaining statements are not assumptions nor axioms. They are statements that can be evaluated logically and empirically. Statement (I) follows trivially from statement (X). Statements (II) through (V) can be supported on both theoretical and empirical grounds, once (X) establishes the basis of comparison. Likewise, statements (VI) through (VIII) can be evaluated on empirical grounds. Statement (IX) is a bit out-of-place: reason and empirical observation are part of the methodology we adopt in evaluating not just Christianity but other purported statements of fact. Still, we can use meta-reasoning and meta-observations to evaluate the usefulness of reason and empirical observation in improving Christianity (or other evaluations of value) and so place value on them directly.

In this view, we do not need "a set of assumptions comparable to the MSSB" in order to support meaningful social inquiry. We need only the single (perhaps axiomatic) definition of moral value provided by (X). The remaining statements are not assumptions or axioms; they are potentially testable truth claims given the definition of moral value. So I disagree with your statements A and B because I do not believe we need to treat (I) through (IX) as assumptions or axioms that could instead by derivable from a deistic hypothesis.

The discussion above also hints at another problem. While I agree that a discrete list of facts is less powerful than a theory which explains them, we do not have just these two alternatives. That is, it is possible that other theories could explain those same facts. In such cases, we must look for other facts over which the proposed theories differ or apply heuristics like Occam's Razor and prefer simpler theories to more complex ones. I would suggest that introducing a deity or other Benevolent Purpose to explain the value of love and truth in promoting happiness is unnecessary, and so should be discarded unless we have other compelling reasons for retaining such an element in our theories.

I hope that gives you something to work with.

Alan

Responding to Provocation

2007-01-05T00:58:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Ernie,

I apologize for dropping my end of the conversation for over a month now. As I said in my post several days ago, there have been a number of factors contributing to my delay. It is not that I have not been thinking about it. In fact, I have been reviewing and clarifying my thinking on various issues including some that we have discussed over the past fourteen months. No earth-shattering changes, but some changes nonetheless.

Let me first respond to the post in which you enumerated a number of things we seem to agree on. I do not have any serious disagreement with your list. I was, however, a little disappointed that agreement on some of the items, particularly (a) - (c) and even (d) was unusual enough to warrant mentioning. I imagine you did so more for completeness and emphasis than because agreement on those items was surprising; at least, I hope so. It did leave me wondering if I have been communicating my views so poorly that there had ever been a question about my stance on those statements.

In your latest oblique and provocative post, you wonder if my primary goal is "truth" or "love" and if I really believe the two are compatible. Let me state categorically that they are compatible. Truth is instrumental (to use your word, thank you very much) to love. Knowledge of the truth helps us to align the consequences of our actions with our intentions.

That does not mean that knowledge leads inexorably to love. Knowledge of the truth can be used for love or for hate, for good or for evil. I do believe, however, that knowledge can lead to a recognition of the interconnectedness of human communities and that we can all lead happier lives by working with each other rather than against; that is, that love is better than hate.

One of the things that confused me about your last post was how you linked to my post on Wisconsin's Marriage Protection Amendment. Now I suppose you might read that and get a fairly negative vibe from me about the authors of the flyer. Was my post lovingly written? Well, I think it was, in this sense: I wrote out of a genuine and strongly felt concern (love) for people that will be impacted by this amendment. Was it unloving for people to denounce racial bigotry? Was it unloving for people to speak out against the debacle that has unfolded in Iraq? Is it unloving for a parent to speak against the destructive behavior or a child? Was it unloving for Jesus to denounce the hypocrisy of the Pharisees?

So having stated clearly that love and truth are compatible, let me try to answer your question about which is my primary goal. I am unsure if you mean my goal in this dialog specifically or in life generally. Generally, I do not see either of those as being the goal: both play a role in reaching other goals, especially the welfare and happiness of myself and others, both present and future. In this dialog specifically, it seems to me there is greater disagreement about what is true than about love. As well, I believe that some of the harm done by Christianity is caused by people who want to do good but their actions are based on false beliefs, and this disconnect between belief and truth causes unintended harm. In these cases, it is the beliefs that should change. So, as a tactical choice, I think it would be fair to say that my writing has been more concerned with truth.

Finally, you asked about my basis for throwing the first stone and what I could offer in place of Christianity. Why am I the one throwing the first stone? From my point of view, the course of my life has been substantially affected by the beliefs that I held for thirty-plus years of my life, including a variety of (what I perceive to be) harmful effects. Those were the first stones. Perhaps my responses have been less than ideal. Certainly they have. But even so, my concern is for the truth, for the harm caused by Christian beliefs, and for the benefits to mankind that I believe will become possible when the obstacles raised by false beliefs are removed. (Christian and other religious beliefs are not the only false beliefs to be found, but due to personal history and circumstance, they are some of the most significant to me.)

I am sorry if you have been expecting me to be presenting an alternative to Christianity. I do believe better alternatives exist and can be described. For instance, I have previously referred to A Secular Humanist Declaration seven months ago. A recent version of the Humanist Manifesto, Humanism and Its Aspirations is also on the right track. I will try to include more content describing and advocating such alternatives.

Alan

A Belated Examination of the Christmas Accounts

2007-01-03T00:30:00.000-06:00

Blogging has been on hold for a month, partly for lack of inspiration and partly for busy-ness. Worse, the subject of this post is over a week past (or over fifty weeks in the future). Better late than never, I guess.

Have you ever noticed how different are the stories of Jesus' birth as told in the books of Matthew and Luke? Last year I examined one important difference, that Joseph, Mary and Jesus travel to Egypt in Matthew but to Jerusalem in Luke, but this is not the only difference. In fact, the points of commonality are far fewer than the differences, some of which are contradictory.

What are the common elements in each account? King Herod, Joseph, a virgin Mary, Jesus, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and part of Jesus' genealogy. That is all.

Elements that are unique to each story but not actually contradictory include the census (Luke 2:1-3), an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 1:20), an angel appearing to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), the magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20), stable (Luke 2:7,12,16), a house (Matthew 2:11), slaughter of male children (Matthew 2:13-18)), Zacharias and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-25,57-80), and Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38). There are some interesting things that could be said about these events, and I will mention two of them again in a moment.

First, though, let us examine some of the contradictions.

Where did Joseph and Mary live before Jesus was born? Luke makes it pretty clear that their home was Nazareth because he tells us that they had to travel to Bethlehem for the census. In Matthew, on the other hand, there is no mention of Nazareth until the family is returning from Egypt. In Matthew 2:21-23 it is fairly clear that when they went to Nazareth, they were not returning to their prior home but that they chose a new home where they would be safer from the reign of Archelaus in Israel.

I have already mentioned that in Luke, the family travels from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Nazareth, while in Matthew they travel from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth. When did they leave Bethlehem? In Luke it is clear that leave as soon as the days of Mary's purification were complete (about forty days, apparently). The timing in Matthew is far less certain. We do know that Herod asks the magi when the star appeared and that he subsequently orders all male children under the age of two killed "according to the time which he had determined from the magi." Also, as mentioned above, Matthew says the magi visit Jesus and Mary in "the house", without further qualification. Without Luke's account to tell anyone differently, anyone reading that phrase would understand it to be Joseph and Mary's house where they normally lived. So, reading Matthew by itself seems to suggest that Jesus and his family remained in Bethlehem for as long as two years, since in this account Bethlehem was their home and they had no reason to leave until the threat from Herod materialized. But while this is the plainest reading, one could attempt to reconcile the timing in several ways. First, one might say that the star appeared two years before Jesus was born in order to give the magi time to travel. Second, one might say Herod may simply "playing it safe" by killing children up to two years old. In either case, while I believe a reading of Matthew alone argues for a longer delay than Luke alone, I also suspect very few Christians will be persuaded on this point.

A third contradiction can be found in the genealogies that Matthew and Luke give for Jesus. Matthew lists the genealogy from Abraham forward to Jesus, while Luke lists the genealogy from Jesus backwards all the way to Adam (and God before him). These differences are clearly not important. What is more significant is that the genealogies are different between David and Joseph. Matthew lists 26 men between David and Jesus, while Luke lists 40. Of those, only two names are shared, Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, near the middle of each list. (Interestingly, a footnote in my study Bible says that these names do not refer to same people!)

How can the lists be reconciled? I am aware of two strategies used by apologists, though perhaps there are others; this not an issue that I have examined carefully. One suggestion is that one of the genealogies records Joseph's ancestry (since Joseph was his legal but not natural father) and the other Mary (who was his only natural parent). This appears to violate the plain reading of both Luke and Matthew, both of which explicitly list Joseph as the penultimate person in the genealogy.

The other approach has been to claim that both genealogies are Joseph's, but that Matthew skipped some generations. I am not sure how those who hold this view resolve the fact that each list of names is so different. It is not enough to suggest that in each list two different names are used to refer to the same person since, particularly near David's end of each list, the names listed are known to refer to different people. Allowing Matthew to skip generations creates other problems, because Matthew is careful to point out that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus. What meaning can this symmetry have if it is attained simply by skipping over generations whenever it is convenient?

(It is also not feasible to assume that Luke also skipped generations so that between the two we get a complete list. Not only would such a careful mismatch strain credibility by itself, it would require 66 generations between David and Jesus, so that, on average, each son would need to be born when his father was fifteen years old. Let me be clear that I am not aware of anyone who actually claims this is the resolution to the contradiction. Just sayin'.)

So there are as many as four contradictions between the two stories, some more certain than others. Now, let's return to the story elements that are neither shared nor contradictory. Of these, we have no separate basis for knowing anything about the angelic encounters, or the place where Jesus was born, or the shepherds. Conceivably, the various characters mentioned only by Luke (Zacharias, Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna) or even the magi in Matthew could have been mentioned in some kind of contemporaneous records, though I am not aware of any. (Josephus does mention John the Baptist, but I do not know if that includes his parents.) In any case, history's silence in those cases would not be surprising so it is hardly a basis for comment.

In the case of Herod ordering the slaughter of all of the male children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem, that would have been an event worthy of comment. As Richard Carrier notes, due to the life expectancy at the time, this would have represented approximately 10% of the population in the area. Nobody who wrote about Herod mentions this, even though it would be highly noteworthy, so the lack of mention makes the actual historicity of the slaughter questionable.

The other historically significant event mentioned was the census. Here the problems are more substantial. Luke claims the census took place while Herod was alive and while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Herod died in 4 B.C. Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until 6 A.D. (If Luke is referring to Herod Archelaus instead of Herod the Great then this is another contradiction between Luke and Matthew, since Matthew is clearly referring to Herod the Great.) Caesar Augustus did order a census of Judea, which was conducted by Quirinius, but this was not a census of the entire Roman empire or the entire inhabited earth. (An interpretation of Luke 2:1 consistent with this fact is not particularly unreasonable.) Some skeptics have questioned the need for Joseph to return to his ancestral home for the census, but apparently this was not so uncommon. More troublesome is why he would bring Mary along for the journey when she was expecting to give birth at any time. Why not leave her in the care of friends and family in Nazareth?

The answer to that question is, I think, the answer to many of the questions raised by the contradictions and other features of both accounts. Both Matthew and Luke needed to provide an explanation for Jesus being born in Bethlehem (as required by prophecy) while being raised in Nazareth. Matthew chose to represent Bethlehem as their original home and then manufactured a reason to leave and eventually settle somewhere else. Luke chose to represent Nazareth as their original home, so he needed to manufacture a reason for Mary to travel to Bethlehem to give birth, at which point they could return home to Nazareth.

Matthew's solution to the problem allowed him incorporate two (supposed) fulfillments of prophecy, one regarding the murdered children and one regarding God calling his son out of Egypt, though in neither case do the "prophecies" appear to be prophecies at all. He also is able to incorporate the "dangerous child" motif into the story, a theme that is very common in literature and mythology. But this solution required the introduction of a significant ahistorical event in addition to Matthew's tendency to manufacture prophetic fulfillments where no prophecy was intended.

Luke's solution, on the other hand, is far more plausible. There are some questions about the timing of the events he describes, and the inclusion of Mary on an unnecessary journey while in the final days of her pregnancy is rather suspicious, but so long as one is willing to accept that Jesus was born in 6 A.D. the difficulties are far smaller with Luke than with Matthew.

The Christmas story as told in Matthew contradicts the story as told in Luke in almost as many points as they agree. On the whole, Luke's version is more plausible. I consider it most probable that both accounts are almost entirely fabricated, but the account in Luke is sufficiently consistent internally and externally that I would not expect to convince anyone of that on the basis of the story itself, but only as part of a much larger evaluation of the trustworthiness of Luke.

Richard Carrier has written a far more detailed examination of the dating issues The Date of the Nativity in Luke, which also touches briefly on the other points of contradiction between Matthew and Luke. Mostly, though, he examines various suggestions that have been put forward for reconciling the dates implied by Matthew and Luke.

Experiments and Brute Facts

2006-12-03T23:35:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

In my previous post, my goal was to answer Ernie's question about what I was willing to bet my life on, as well as to challenge him to consider the possibility that those things that he values most highly might be better served by leaving behind beliefs that inhibit the successful expression of those values. There were, however, other issues that I left unaddressed so as not to distract from that main point. Answering those issues is my purpose here.

The issues of which I speak relate both to Ernie's previous post in this dialog as well as to the Five Empirical Tests of Theism that he suggested in the context of another discussion. While this latter post was not strictly intended to be part of this discussion, I believe that its intended purpose is relevant to the point Ernie is trying to establish, that theism and particularly Christianity represent a uniquely powerful force for good in this world.

Regarding his five empirical tests, let me first point out the importance of his title, which is accurate and significant. The title is not "Five Empirical Tests of God's Existence" but "Five Empirical Tests of Theism". Theism is belief about the existence of a god or gods. I have said previously that our beliefs have significant impacts on our actions, and it is quite possible that belief in God (or gods) can have positive results without that belief actually being true. To be sure, if it could be shown both that the belief was more beneficial than disbelief, yet false, that would leave me in a bit of a bind, since I could not choose to believe just for the benefits. Since I hold an essentially utilitarian view of ethics, I would also have to view correction of these false beliefs in others as unethical, an unattractive position to be in. But since we have not yet arrived at the point where belief in God has been demonstrated to be both maximally beneficial yet false, that difficulty can remain unsolved.

Having said that, the outcomes of some of the experiments would be illuminating.

While I am not familiar with any studies related to drug and alcohol addiction, a somewhat related topic is that of recidivism among those released from prison. Prison ministries are fairly common, particularly those affiliated with Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries, and in 2003 a study was published in which the "InnerChange Freedom Initiative", a program developed by PFM, was found to dramatically reduce recidivism rates, a result which has of course been trumpeted by various Christian groups across the country. But like so many such studies, it was deeply flawed. In particular, this particular study compared recidivism rates of those prisoners who completed the InnerChange program with the rates of those prisoners who entered secular programs. This introduces a substantial selection bias, since it had already been shown that failing to complete such programs was a strong predictor of recidivism. When this bias was corrected for, those prisoners that completed the InnerChange program were found to have the same or slightly higher recidivism rates than those in the secular program.

I first read about this in Slate. Its author, Mark Kleiman, correctly points out that these results only reflect the effectiveness of particular programs, not all possible Christian (or secular) programs, a complication that must be taken into account in Ernie's various experiments. Media Transparency also examines the InnerChange program, more from the angle of the government funding religious programs, but it also refers to the Slate article as well as the original University of Pennsylvania study, which, despite being so widely applauded by Christian groups, was never published and is no longer available on the University of Pennsylvania website. Finally, this news article from Florida State University discusses a meta-analysis by Dan Mears of studies examining the effectiveness of faith-based programs. While the whole (short) article is worth reading, this statement is significant: "What we did find was weak support for a religion-crime relationship, inconsistent measurements of 'faith' and 'religion,' few methodologically rigorous studies, and significant questions about program implementation and the theoretical foundations of faith-based initiatives."

Ernie's third suggested experiment relates to the viability of a community, indeed a whole society, inhabited by non-religious people. He demands that this society borrow nothing from Christianity, which strikes me as an interesting qualification. Christianity itself and Judaism before it have borrowed extensively from other religious and philosophical traditions, and as I have tried to make clear, that there might be some overlap between the moral tenets of Christianity and those of a secular humanist society would not be at all surprising. So I think the experiment as stated is unfair, both by giving Christianity the benefit of what it has taken from others while denying the secular society the option to do the same.

As an example on the theist side of the third proposal, Ernie suggests the Pilgrims. This example is instructive in several ways, indirectly. First, the survival of the Pilgrims depended on the native Indians several times over. The site where they eventually settled had already been cleared, having been previously occupied by the Patuxet Indians, who abandoned the site after all the inhabitants died in a smallpox epidemic (a disease brought to the New World by Europeans). Such epidemics were estimated to have killed over ninety percent of the native population, clearing the way for easy European colonization. In fact,

John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, called the plague "miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England: "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection." (source)

Additionally, the Indians helped provide the Pilgrims with food, both voluntarily and otherwise. Now, these facets of what it took to survive do not really address the kinds of issues that Ernie is emphasizing (governance, education, legal systems, etc.), but they do introduce some ideas that I will return to later.

There is, however, another way in which this story touches on Ernie's experiment. We are so used to looking at the story from the point of view of the Pilgrims arriving in the New World that we tend not to think so much about how the Native Indians arrived there to begin with. Christianity has been in the Americas for just over 500 years. People have been here for at least 13,000 years, arriving in one or more small groups across the Bering Strait during the last ice age. In a very real sense, they were the first colonists. While I do not pretend to know what kind of religious beliefs those people had, they were almost certainly not monotheists and they surely did not borrow anything from Christianity, as was true of the entire world for thousands and thousands of years. In short, I think there is entirely adequate evidence that mere viability after ten years is unlikely to tell us very much. In fact, ten years is entirely too short a time to develop the kind of complex societal functions that have developed far more slowly everywhere else.

Going back to Ernie's Wanna Bet, I must take exception to something Ernie wrote there:

Atheists and secularists can whine all they want about superstition and luck, but the "brute fact" is that Western civilization -- including the very prosperity and security that enables the survival of freethinking skeptics -- was built on a foundation of Christian theism.

This is not remotely a brute fact. Western civilization was influenced by any number of philosophical, religious and political traditions, as well as by various environmental factors. Western civilization has significant roots in Greek thought that pre-date Christianity. When Christianity became the official religion of the (decaying) Roman Empire, it oversaw a decline that was reversed only after nearly a millennium, and then with significant intellectual help from Arabic (yes, even Muslim) intellectuals that had preserved the writings of Roman and Greek philosophers that Christian scribes had destroyed (oftentimes if only to re-use the parchment). Democracy was (as far as I know) first developed by the Greeks and its introduction to the United States was part (or a result) of the Enlightenment, a movement that sought to divorce society from much of what it had inherited from its earlier (Christian) heritage. Ernie himself alluded to the significance of this contribution months ago:

To be sure, the Enlightenment rebels were quite right in their critique of medieval authoritarianism. And their noble accomplishments in the field of social justice, civil liberties, education, and science are nothing short of heroic, and proved (quite literally) revolutionary.

Many of these heroes of the Enlightenment were Christians. Many were not, though some would still have called themselves theists, and perhaps the rest deists. For the most part, however, the Enlightenment did not grow out of historical Christianity so much as respond to it, react to it, and sometimes oppose it.

As I quoted above, Ernie also claimed that "the very prosperity and security" that we enjoy traces back to Christian influences. Again, the causal linkage here is highly questionable. Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel describes a variety of factors that affected the comparative success of various societies around the world. His conclusion is that various geographic and biological factors, particularly the availability of domesticatible plants and animals in combination with certain geographical features, lead to the ascendancy of Western civilization. (The diseases that wiped out so many Native Americans derive from the urbanization that was made possible by highly productive agricultural practices that were in turn made possible by the aforementioned plants and animals.) While his conclusions are debated among experts, it does not appear that Christianity is considered by any of them to be the true source of that ascendancy, nor do the suggested alternatives appear to derive directly from Christianity. While Ernie may argue that Christianity was the foundation for what occurred, he cannot claim it as a brute fact.

Seeking a Better Way

2006-12-02T21:59:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Wanna Bet?.

Ernie,

Thanks for continuing to take the time to try to explain yourself. While I am sorry that I have not satisfied your desire for a "solid, bullet-pointed position", this post may not be the answer to all your desires either. I will, however, endeavor to improve in this regard.

We agree, you and I, that some things are better than others. Love is better than hate, truth is better than falsehood, and much more. And I appreciate that you take seriously the failings of Christianity (as we know it) and seek to improve it, even while defending it.

The primary empirical evidence on which you rest your belief, it seems, is the beneficial effect that Christianity has had on our world and on individuals, both now and throughout history (or at least the past two thousand years). While acknowledging that Christians have at times been culpable for great evil, the balance sheet in your estimation is very definitely in the black, enough so that Christianity must really be on to something.

You have said that you believe the Bible because "it explains the divinity [you] observe" and you have attributed to divinity the moral purpose (or nature) of the universe. Similarly, you have stated several times that you believe in Love. So I feel fairly comfortable in concluding that you place high importance on how people treat each other and that some things really are better than others in this regard. And toward the end of your last post you said:

Sure, "Love thy neighbor" and "forgive your enemies" may not have the "accuracy and precision" of E = mc², but whoever said that was the ultimate test of truth? The ultimate test -- at least for me -- is whether something works. It may not work perfectly (does anything?), but at least it works better than whatever has come before. And anyone who wants to improve upon it (and believe me, I do!) needs to understand both why it worked and why it failed if they hope to do better. And be willing to bet their life on finding a better way.

I wonder if you might consider some possibilities. Perhaps loving your neighbor and forgiving your enemies and many other moral precepts advanced by Christianity really are good things, even while a number of its other propositions are false. Perhaps Christianity has encouraged those things more than other religions and so has been more successful, even while those false propositions have led people to commit evil in its name and limited its success. Perhaps the way to improve Christianity is to keep the good stuff and drop the bad stuff, the false stuff. Sure, it might not be Christianity any more when you are done, but what results may be that thing that you are looking for, a still better way of living.

You wanted to know what I believe, what I am willing to bet my life on, to bet all of Western civilization on (and I'll throw in the rest of the world). That's it. There is a better way, and the most important thing we can do to find it is to let go of the things that are holding us back, while holding on to the good we already have.

Alan

NTOBM: Still Kicking

2006-11-23T21:28:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

I have, for the most part, avoided addressing Ernie directly as if I were writing letters to him, though he was adopted that style. I am going to try it for awhile to see how it works out. So...

Ernie,

I am glad you liked the ideas about morality that Sam Harris expressed in his article, and I am not surprised that you find in them parallels to what you are trying to express. But I think you have still failed to adequately support your first goalpost statement.

First, some confusion. Back in Ratioanalizing Virtue, you listed four statements (1-4) and then said:

However, I would argue that believing in (1-4) is tantamount to believing:

5. The present System exists as the result of a benevolent Purpose

When you said "tantamount to believing", I initially inferred that (5) was equivalent to or derivable from (1-4). That is, someone who assented to (1-4) would, logically, have to assent to (5) as well. Your later statements in that same post gave a slightly different picture, since you said "this is not the only possible assumption, but I assert that it is the simplest and most comprehensive explanation for everything above". Now in your last post you described (5) as pre-paradigmatic, unjustified, non-contingent and not susceptible to rational proof, disproof or derivation. Based on this more detailed description it seems pretty clear you are not deriving (5) from (1-4), but you are asserting that (1-4) are best explained by (5).

Now, the goalpost statement you are currently defending is this:

I. Belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry.

I am a little confused now about the relationship between (5) above and (I), which seem to be pointed in the same direction, but in (I) you say the belief is well-justified while you described (5) as unjustified. So I am concerned that I am missing something. My guess is that you are using "justified" in different senses, but I am not sure exactly how you would make that differentiation.

Despite that, let me press on. You have stated that, given (5), the four statements with which you summarized Harris' NTOBM (Non-Theistic Objective Basis for Morality, for those just joining us) can be derived. But I must first call attention to several differences between Harris' description and your summary of them, as well as differences between those statements and (I). These differences, I think, serve to highlight reasons why I continue to disagree with your path to (I).

First, Harris said "if there are psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being". He does not claim that we know what these laws are in any detail, or even that we know that they exist (though he suspects they do). The possibility and even apparent likelihood that they exist is sufficient to justify further investigation, but this is very different than saying that belief in their existence is as well-justified as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe.

(By the way, it would be helpful if you could elaborate on what you mean by "transcendent" here. It occurs to me that what you mean by "transcendent mathematical nature" could be sufficiently different than my understanding that your statement (I) would be true, but only because neither belief was particularly well justified!)

That math is tremendously useful for describing and indeed accurately predicting the behavior of physical systems is, I trust, not under dispute here. What psychophysical laws can you elaborate that have the predictive power (accuracy and precision) of the laws of physics and other sciences that have been discovered in the past four hundred years? Belief in the so-called mathematical nature of the universe is warranted because of the astounding success of science in describing the operation of various physical, chemical and biological systems using mathematics. Without corresponding success of elaborated psychophysical moral laws, belief in their existence is not as well-justified as a belief in the mathematical nature of the universe.

Second, and related to my previous post that you have not really addressed, both Harris and I are describing an objective basis for morality grounded in and limited to human well-being. On the other hand, your statement (I) as well as your previous post defending it seem to be making a much broader claim, that the universe as a whole has a moral purpose. (I'll mention in passing once again that there is a difference between a moral nature and a moral purpose.) If that is your meaning, I do not believe you have defended it successfully.

Given a non-theistic, non-deistic paradigm, is it not reasonable to suppose that there may be objective descriptions of what makes people happy and prevents suffering, descriptions that are based on the evolutionary pathways that brought us to this point? If not, why not? And if there is a moral purpose for the universe as a whole, one grounded in benevolence, why is there so much unhappiness and suffering?

And in that way, we arrive at another problem. You have stated that your statement (5) is powerful, that it can explain numerous phenomena, just as a good scientific theory should. But you also know that it is not sufficient for theories to offer explanations: they also must not be contradicted by observations. While (5) is not specific enough to allow me to bring the problem of hell back into the discussion, I submit that (5) at least appears to be contradicted by the existence of both natural and moral evil. Since you are equating (5) with a sort of deism, would we call these problems "deodicies" instead of theodicies? This issue is, I think, something that you must address in your defense of (I), especially since these sorts of problems do not contradict alternative (naturalistic) theories.

Finally, you have claimed that (5) explains a wide range of phenomena without describing what those might be, and you have also claimed that without (5) we would have "a complex welter of unjustified beliefs in its place" without describing what those other beliefs might be or why they are unjustified. Without knowing what you are referring to in either case, I can hardly respond to either of these claims.

There are, then, a number of things that remain to be addressed, and it may take some time to address them all, unless you would like to give up now. :-)

Alan

The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos

2006-11-15T22:29:00.000-06:00

A couple months have passed since Ernie and I found some statements (goalposts) we were each willing to defend. Most of the intervening time we have spent looking at his first statement: "Belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry." On the other hand, I claimed that "a theory built on naturalism ... can provide a more reliable foundation for morality than supposed divine authority."

I have not explicitly been defending that claim, though naturally there has been some relevant discussion as I have responded to Ernie's position. I did recently come across an article by Sam Harris, The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos that briefly addresses this topic, specifically under his third point:

If religion really provided the only conceivable objective basis for morality, it should be impossible to posit a nontheistic objective basis for morality. But it is not impossible; it is rather easy.

Clearly, we can think of objective sources of moral order that do not require the existence of a law-giving God. In The End of Faith, I argued that questions of morality are really questions about happiness and suffering. If there are objectively better and worse ways to live so as to maximize happiness in this world, these would be objective moral truths worth knowing. Whether we will ever be in a position to discover these truths and agree about them cannot be known in advance (and this is the case for all questions of scientific fact). But if there are psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being—and why wouldn’t there be?—then these laws are potentially discoverable. Knowledge of these laws would provide an enduring basis for an objective morality. In the meantime, everything about human experience suggests that love is better than hate for the purposes of living happily in this world. This is an objective claim about the human mind, the dynamics of social relations, and the moral order of our world. While we do not have anything like a final, scientific approach to maximizing human happiness, it seems safe to say that raping and killing children will not be one of its primary constituents.

One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns—about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering—in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. The idea that there is a necessary link between religious faith and morality is one of the principal myths keeping religion in good standing among otherwise reasonable men and women. And yet, it is a myth that is easily dispelled.

Score One for Deism?

2006-11-12T01:16:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

After a brief hiatus, Ernie returned to our diablogue with Ratioanalizing Virtue, the title of which involves either a typo or a pun that went over my head. While Ernie had initially introduced the subject of ethics with his ethical trilemma, most of the intervening posts have revolved around my answer to the trilemma, not his. With this latest contribution, Ernie has begun to elaborate on the answer to which he hinted originally: that there is an underlying ethical nature, even an underlying ethical purpose, to the universe that causes self-interest, other-interest and belief in truth to be aligned, always. Ernie asserted this, and now finally begins to defend it.

Ernie begins by referencing a statement I had made in another context about the role of pure chance in evolution. I had said "Evolution does not operate by pure chance on inanimate objects, but on replicating lifeforms under selective pressure." Ernie suggests rephrasing this as "Evolution acts by selectively rewarding organisms that best conform to the Laws of Survival." Unfortunately, contrary to Ernie's expectations, I will not "allow" such a rephrasing.

First, saying that evolution rewards organisms is problematic, since evolution operates on populations of individuals sharing a common genetics. The survival of the genome is the important thing, not the survival of the individual. When a male of one of various species is eaten by the female after copulation, this promotes the survival of the genome but not the individual (male). Likewise, a man who sacrifices himself to ensure that others survive is not rewarded, but yet this behavior benefits his species.

Second, and more importantly, the idea of conformance to a "Law of Survival" is more-or-less meaningless, other than the requirement that a sufficient fraction of organisms (of a species) survive long enough to reproduce. To speak of a "Law of Survival" hints rather strongly (to me anyway) at a static set of requirements for what organisms must do to survive (either as individuals or as a species). But the variety of strategies that are employed by different kinds of creatures is really pretty astounding, and their relative success waxes and wanes according to changes in the environment, their competitors, their predators and their prey or other food sources.

While it may be possible to interpret "The Law of Survival" in such generic terms that is is not inaccurate (though not particularly helpful either), Ernie proceeds in a manner that involves something far more specific. For he says:

Let me go one step further and assert that evolution:

Selects for cognitive systems that are capable [in principle] of apprehending Truth

Selects for emotional systems that reward conformance with the Laws of Survival

Here again there is some ambiguity. Certainly such cognitive and emotional systems are sometimes selected for, but they are not necessarily or always selected for. As I mentioned before, these facilities come at a cost, and many species, indeed entire kingdoms, forego these costly complexities and take entirely different approaches. (Think bacteria or fungi.) The solution space in which evolution operates is huge with vastly different solutions possible. Only species that occupy particular regions of this space will have the necessary precursors to developing cognitive and emotional facilities such as described by Ernie, and even so not all of them will, depending on the cost/benefit ratio of those facilities in their environments.

So while humans do occupy such a region of evolutionary space and selective pressures have selected for those cognitive and emotional systems in humans, this is by no means the eventual state of every evolutionary lineage nor was it a necessary course of evolution applied to our ancestors. Neither do these systems guarantee the long term viability of species in possession of such facilities. Neanderthals, for instance, occupied a nearby branch of the "tree of life", presumably sharing some significant degree of our cognitive and emotional facilities, yet they died out.

So Ernie's assertions about selection of cognitive and emotional systems are not universally true, since they apply only within small regions of the overall solution space, and even within those small regions where they are accessible, they are not guarantees of reproductive success, neither for individuals (of course) nor for larger populations.

Ernie continues by suggesting that successful emotional systems imply that we are happy when we "achieve personal utility... fulfill antipathy towards those we perceive as threats... [and] manifest empathy towards those we identify with". And again I must respond by saying that these are only a set of possible outcomes, one set among many, and contingent on other characteristics of the species and its environments. The first is likely most common, the third the least. Ernie himself acknowledges this (partially) when he notes that these apply only to animals and that the third applies only to social animals. But he goes too far when he says these are essential for survival. Very little is essential for survival; these just happen to be strategies that have been acquired by humans and some other animals to various degrees.

None of this implies that these statements are not an accurate description of human evolution. Evolution has produced cognitive and emotional systems in humans (and to various degrees in other animals). Without the cognitive systems, we would not be having this conversation. Without the emotional systems, the basis of ethics in promotion of happiness and prevention of suffering would be gone or substantially altered. The fact that other possibilities exist does not imply that we cannot apply a metric like Universal Utilitarianism to the possibility that has been realized in man.

However, these other possibilities (realized in the vast majority of species, animal and otherwise) do undermine Ernie's assertion that the existence of such cognitive and emotional systems reflect an underlying "Law of Survival" in any way similar to the laws of physics, which are universal. (Let us ignore for a moment all of the ways that the laws of physics as we currently understand them may in fact not be truly universal. It is enough to know that the laws of physics apply equally to all creatures on Earth.) The foundation of Ernie's position is therefore unreliable.

Still, we can proceed with some minimal alterations to Ernie's further statements and perhaps make some additional progress. Let me reduce the scope of Ernie's statements (A)-(C):

Ethics are meaningful in the context of societies (human systems)
Virtue is acting to promote the health and happiness of the society
Virtue is rational when society supports my own health and happiness

So, without pretending that these must be true of any general system, are they true of human systems (societies)? I think we have more or less agreed to (A) already. (B) is a definition of virtue, and this definition is acceptable under the metric of UU. (C) is more interesting. What does it mean for virtue to be rational? The implication seems to be that if virtuous actions advance my self-interest then virtue is rational; if I must sacrifice my self-interest to act virtuously, then virtue would be irrational. Further, the presence of (C) seems to imply that virtue should be rational.

This formulation is troublesome for two reasons. First, some virtuous actions are not self-interested. A soldier falling on a grenade to protect those around him is acting virtuously (according to B!) but irrationally (according to C). If we require virtue to be rational in this sense, we have a problem.

The second problem is that (C) conflates rationality and self-interest needlessly. A rational choice is a choice based on reason, so virtue is rational when ethical decisions are amenable to reason, regardless of the degree of self-interest involved. Ethical decisions are amenable to reason when we have a well-defined basis for evaluating them, perhaps because we have a useful metric and a sufficient understanding of the likely consequences of our actions.

Previously Ernie has pointed out that in at least some ethical systems, virtue may not be self-interested and he has characterized this as a problem since it implies a motivation to cheat. He has also asserted that, with sufficient understanding, we would see that self-interest and other-interest are ultimately aligned and any appearances to the contrary are illusory. So I feel fairly comfortable concluding that the point of (C) is not so much whether virtue is rational, but under what circumstances a rational, self-interested person would choose to act virtuously. If self-interest and other-interest are not always aligned, a rational, virtuous person may make different choices than a rational, self-interested person. If self-interest and other-interest are always aligned (which I do not believe), then virtue and self-interest are equivalent.

Ernie continues by asking six questions and giving four answers. His answers are:

There exists a meaningful higher-order System encompassing social, natural, and logical systems

It is always Virtuous to act in accordance with this System

Support for this System is entirely, necessarily, and always consistent with belief in Truth

The most trustworthy and virtuous people are those who believe (1-3), and devote themselves to both understanding and supporting that System

He asserts that these answers represent the "simplest and most powerful way to answer" the six questions. Ernie's inclusion of social systems in the "higher-order System" was intended to be supported by the existence of the "Laws of Survival", but as I demonstrated above, the reasons Ernie offers in support of these laws fall short, and the actual vast variety of survival mechanisms actually tends to disconfirm the existence of a higher-order system of the type Ernie is describing. Since the existence of this system is foundational to (2), (3) and (4), Ernie's answers fail to convince. Still, as above, we can make some appropriate substitutions and get something less objectionable.

There exist meaningful ethical metrics based upon the actual cognitive and emotional systems present in humans.
By definition, it is virtuous to act in such a way as to increase the value of these metrics.
Belief in truth is necessary (instrumental) for reliably making virtuous choices.

(I dropped (4) because I have not thought of an appropriate replacement that I can state with conviction, especially not in light of my waning clarity of thought. I'll update the post with an appropriate (4) if I figure one out.)

My three statements are nothing extraordinary and are certainly compatible with what I and many others have said before.

Ernie continues by arguing that believing his (1)-(4) is equivalent to believing:

5. The present System exists as the result of a benevolent Purpose

Oh dear. In direct parallel to a point I made previously, (1-4) describe a particular state of affairs: the nature of our universe. While a benevolent purpose (from some unknown source of purpose) is sufficient to explain such a nature, it is not necessary. That nature could still be a brute fact. So (5) is not equivalent to (1-4), and (1-4) were already insufficiently supported. So I do not agree that we can (yet) conclude there exists a moral purpose behind the universe and I therefore disagree that Ernie has satisfied his first goalpost.

Ernie does state that his is only "the simplest and most comprehensive explanation for everything above, and that to deny (5) leaves a complex welter of unjustified beliefs in its place." So far, (5) is also unjustified. Since I do not know which particular beliefs Ernie is referring to a being unjustified, I cannot respond to that.

Back to you, Ernie.

Wisconsin's Marriage Protection Amendment

2006-10-29T15:45:00.000-06:00

Here in Wisconsin, we will be voting in nine days on an amendment to the state constitution. As you may have heard or might guess, the intent of this amendment is to ensure that gay marriage cannot be recognized here. In support of this amendment, a flyer was recently left at our front door, produced by an organization named Vote Yes for Marriage.

Before examining the flyer itself, let me first quote the statement that will be on the ballot regarding the proposed amendment:

Shall section 13 of article XIII of the constitution be created to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state?

The front half of the flyer says this:

Don't be deceived by proponents of homosexual marriage
Wisconsin's Marriage Protection Amendment is not about benefits.
It's not about relationships.
Wisconsin's Marriage Protection Amendment is about preserving traditional marriage between ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN.
It is about making sure Wisconsin citizens determine the definition of marriage in our state, not a judge with an agenda.
DON'T BUY THE LIES!

Since the amendment was clearly written by opponents of homosexual marriage, it may very well be true that, in the sense of its purported purpose, it is not about benefits or relationships. They can assert that it is only about the definition of marriage. But there are several problems with these claims. First, the text of the amendment goes beyond establishing a definition by additionally forbidding any other comparable legal status among same-sex partners. If the amendment were only about the definition of a word, this additional clause would be unnecessary. Its presence is a clear indication that this amendment is not intended to be just a definition.

Second, benefits are an important consideration for those that support homosexual marriage. For proponents of homosexual marriage to address the issue of benefits, an issue clearly affected by the actual wording of the proposed amendment, they need not be deceptive. (Of course, they still could be, but that is not the implication here.) Proponents of same-sex marriages are addressing a very real and important implication of the wording of the amendment.

Third, at least one other state (Michigan) has passed a similar amendment where the proponents of the amendment, even the very authors of the amendment, have stated prior to its passage that benefits were not in question, only for those very same people to turn around and file lawsuits against the state for providing benefits to same-sex partners based on that very amendment once it passed. We cannot, of course, be sure of what will happen here, but when the wording of the amendment provides for exactly this kind of outcome, being distrustful of these claims is not unreasonable.

The front side of the flyer also includes the common claim that the amendment (and others like it) protect traditional marriage. But nobody has yet explained exactly how any existing heterosexual marriage will be negatively affected by the legal union of two homosexuals, not in any way that justifies discrimination against those homosexuals that wish to be married. In fact, Massachusetts has one of the lowest, if not the lowest divorce rate in the country, and in Scandinavian countries that have recognized same-sex unions for nearly twenty years, divorce rates have gone down during that time. While a causal connection between gay marriage and divorce rate (or other similar societal ill) has not been demonstrated, it is difficult to conclude that gay marriage has hurt so-called traditional marriage when only positive changes have occurred.

I do agree with one line though -- the last one. Don't buy the lies.

On the back side of the flyer are a number of bullet points intended to drive their point home.

Homosexual activists shouldn't get to redefine marriage because they want easier access to healthcare benefits. [emphasis original]

As should already be clear, the amendment is not merely about redefining marriage. The fact that some benefits available to married couples are also available to unmarried couples does not negate the fact that those benefits are automatic for married couples while they have to be separately established by unmarried couples, often at great cost. Additionally, there are benefits that are available only to married couples. In either case, whether simply more difficult or denied altogether, homosexual couples face discrimination under the law.

Changing the definition of marriage would intentionally create motherless or fatherless children. [emphasis original]

This is silly. Changing the definition of marriage creates no children at all. Neither does it change the status of any children that already exist. For those children of gay couples, merely changing or not changing the definition or marriage has no effect whatsoever. But these children could be affected by the benefits and protections that could be given to their parents. When I hear opponents of same-sex marriage claiming to be pro-family, I think instead that they are actually anti-family, because they are only willing to support some families, the ones that have a particular type of family. Likewise, when we are asked to "think of the children", I would respond that I am thinking of the children.

Wisconsin's current law does not clearly define husband as a man and wife as a woman. [emphasis original]

That may be true. I have not seen what the current law actually states, but the implication here is that the law states that marriage (in Wisconsin) is between a husband and a wife, not between a man and a woman. What legal effect this might have, I do not know. But this is only an argument for the amendment only if there are other grounds for denying the legal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples; it is those other grounds that are lacking.

We are one lawsuite and one judicial vote away from becoming a Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal. [emphasis original]

Again, this is not an argument against gay marriage itself. It merely plays on the prejudice of those that are against such marriages to begin with. (The whole "judicial activism" thing is too big to get into here, other than to say that it usually boils down to a description for judicial decisions that one disagrees with.)

Kentucky adopted the exact same language in 2004, and there have been no legal challenges based on benefits. [emphasis original]

The implication here is that if benefits were the real issue at stake, such lawsuits would have been brought. Since there have not (if that is indeed true), that must not be the real issue. Keep in mind, though, that what is being done here is to amend the constitution, the ultimate authority on issues of law. Once the constitution is amended in such a way, it may be that any such challenge would be doomed to failure. Not knowing anything about what has actually transpired in Kentucky, and knowing that benefits are very much the issue for gay and lesbian couples, I strongly suspect the reasons are not what is implied here.

The majority of people in Wisconsin believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman. [emphasis original]

Perhaps so, but the proposed amendment goes farther than that by preventing any other legal relationship substantially similar to marriage from being recognized. Someone could agree that marriage is by definition heterosexual while still being in favor of civil unions that provide the same legal benefits. Additionally, as an argument in support of the amendment, this is no more than asking people to go along with the crowd.

Twenty states have already adopted amendments to protect one-man/one-woman marriage, with an average of over 70% approval. [emphasis original]

Here again we have the argument that "everybody is doing it" and here again we have the claim that these amendments protect heterosexual marriage without any explanation of how heterosexual marriages are actually affected by homosexual marriages. The concept of marriage is just that, a concept. It exists in people's heads, and cannot be harmed and need not be protected legally. It is people that need protection, and same-sex couples can and should be protected (legally) in the same ways that heterosexual marriages are.

Finally, the back side of the flyer concludes by quoting the ballot question, the same question I included at the beginning of this post:

Shall section 13 of article XIII of the constitution be created to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state? [emphasis original]

Notice how the emphasis is again on the definitional aspect of the amendment. The more harmful part is the latter part, wherein civil unions, domestic partnerships or other legally equivalent statuses are rejected. Should this amendment pass, it will be interesting to see how quickly the second half of the amendment begins to be emphasized by those who are now emphasizing the first part. The amendment does clearly go beyond merely a definitional change, no matter how much Vote Yes for Marriage claims otherwise.

According to recent polls, the outcome of this vote is very much in doubt. A "No" vote merely maintains the status quo. A "Yes" vote not only establishes a particular definition of marriage but also actively enforces discrimination against same-sex couples. We can do better than that. I hope we will.

Metric, Not Imperial

2006-10-19T23:38:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

For the past couple of weeks, Ernie and I have been looking at the subject of ethics, more or less begun when Ernie posed his Ethical Trilemma. After a bit of a false start, it appears we may now be making progress. At least Ernie thinks so. In Metric [vs] System?, he describes what he sees as a bit of misunderstanding that needs to be cleared away, as well as posing some additional questions for further clarification.

Ernie listed three ways that the definition of Universal Utilitarianism (as given by the Ebon Muse) could be interpreted:

Metric to a posteori evaluate either actions or alternative ethical systems

Heuristic to rationally deduce potentially ethical actions

Dogmatic a priori statement of the sole "true" definition of virtue

Ernie guesses that I have been defending (I) while he has been critiquing (III). I imagine he knows best what he was critiquing. I think UU addresses both (I) and (II), but regarding (I) I was envisioning that it evaluates actions, not ethical systems, at least not directly. As a metric, it is useful both before and after action. Before because it provides a basis for judging the expected outcomes of our actions, and after because (of course) it can be used to judge the actual outcomes. Actually measuring the total effect of our actions is difficult, and estimating them before hand even more so; as I have said several times, other ethical theories (like preference utilitarianism) can be used as heuristics within the framework of UU.

That appears to be cleared up, then. Ernie then suggests three additional statements for consideration here. (I'll skip the commentary between them and just list the statements here.)

In practice, we need some system of ethics to make effective decisions

Most ethical systems would claim to optimally fulfill UU as a metric

UU can itself also be formulated (and critiqued) as just such a system

Under (A), Ernie lists seven questions to illustrate what a system of ethics should address. I will return to those in a moment. As far as (B) is concerned, that may be true, given (as Ernie notes) various assumptions about reality. We would agree, then, that getting our assumptions right is instrumental to making ethical decisions. Belief in truth formed one leg of Ernie's trilemma, and we can see here why alignment between that leg and the others (self-interest and other-interest, both included in UU) is not surprising. Further, (B) is compatible with the "universal" part of Universal Utilitarianism. Part of the point of introducing UU was to establish a universal, objective basis for morality that is not grounded in theism. Finally, I agree with (C) as well.

Since I pretty much agree with all three statements, then, Ernie wants to know how I would address the seven questions that he believes a system of ethics must address:

Why should we act ethically?

Why don't we act ethically?

How can we know what is ethical?

What are the consequences of unethical behavior?

What is our overriding ethical obligation at any point in time?

What is the role (if any) for reason, emotion, and duty in ethical behavior?

How ought I to balance/tradeoff my personal happiness with the good of others and a commitment to truth?

We should act ethically because (under UU) that provides the greatest overall benefits to everyone, and usually to the individual. A sustainable system of ethics will scale: the more people that comply, the better everyone will be. We do not always act ethically because it is difficult to know what actions will produce the desired results, even when we want to make good choices, and especially because our natures have a selfish component that emphasizes self-interest over other-interest. That is, while perfectly rational and knowledgeable individuals might understand that cooperation provides better results than self-interested competition (over the long term), defection can result in better self-results at the expense of other-results, especially over smaller time scales and as transparency is reduced.

How can we know what is ethical? By learning how our actions affect ourselves and others. That is basically true by definition, since UU is primarily a consequentialist theory of ethics. Similarly, since ethical behavior under UU is defined as that which decreases potential and actual suffering and increases potential and actual happiness, unethical behavior increases sufferering and decreasing happiness. Nothing surprising there.

The question of ethical obligation is more interesting. In my view, obligations are incurred only by agreement or contract. So, UU by itself can impose no true obligations. However, some obligations may derive from more or less implicit agreements bound up in the fabric of society: caring for one's children comes to mind.

Reason plays its role both in determining the actual contribution of our (past) actions to ethically interesting outcomes, as well as helping us to predict the likely future consequences of choices we make now. Reason is also useful for understanding what is real, a vital component of looking at both past and future consequences. For instance, reason is crucial for determining whether or not eternal consequences of the nature described by Christian theology (in addition to the normal temporal consequences) are likely.

Emotion has its place too. Both suffering and happiness have emotional aspects, so emotional consequences are ethically interesting. In addition, the human capacity of empathy has an emotional component, and this capacity is useful in considering the likely consequences of our actions on others. Likewise, fear serves as a powerful indication of likely personal consequences. Of course, these faculties are imperfect (phobias) or sometimes absent (sociopaths).

Duty is a sort of obligation. Its role in ethical behavior is determined by what obligations we accept.

Regarding balance between personal happiness and others' happiness, the Ebon Muse addressed this via some more or less axiomatic assertions, which are reasonable but as far as I can tell unproveable. His suggestion to prevent suffering before increasing happiness, while helpful for situations involving people choosing to act ethically, does not reflect our intuitions about how to treat those who mistreat others. That is, causing some amount of suffering to those that act unethically (whether as punishment, deterrent or simply protection from future harm) is not allowed under the simplest reading of the definition of UU, and I do not recall this being addressed in anything that Ebon Muse has written (that I have read). In this respect, UU as formulated may be incomplete.

Is Universal Utilitarianism dogmatic? I can see where Ernie might get that impression from The Ineffable Carrot and the Infinite Stick. Mostly due to what I wrote in the previous paragraph, my own view is perhaps less dogmatic than that of the Ebon Muse, if in fact his view is dogmatic. In practice, there is enough uncertainty about the actual effects of our actions (or at least some of them) that I am not too worried about the precise balance.

Hopefully those answers do not throw Ernie for a loop, because I would really like him to tell us a little more about his solution to his trilemma. Over to you, Ernie.

A Musing Response

2006-10-17T22:38:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Since I had referenced The Ineffable Carrot and the Infinite Stick from Ebon Musings in an attempt to move this discussion forward, and since Ernie had offered some criticisms of Universal Utilitarianism in his response, I thought I would bring this portion of our conversation to the attention of the author of that article and to invite him to provide feedback of his own. He was kind enough to reply and to allow me to post his response here.

I thank you for bringing this discussion to my attention - I'm glad to see that my ideas have inspired a productive philosophical debate. I read your response to your friend and I think it excellently sums up what I would say. However, if you request, I'll provide a response of my own to his criticisms:

"What is the error? That he fails to see the value of hypocrisy. Yes, I absolutely want to live in a world where everyone else seeks maximize the happiness of the whole. But, rationally speaking, it is better for me if [within that context] I can find a way to maximize my own happiness [at the expense of others] -- as long as I don't get caught! That is, as long as I can maintain the appearance of civic-mindedness, I can enjoy the benefits of such a society without having to pay the price."

Yes, one could choose to be selfish - but it would violate the precepts of universal utilitarianism to do so. As I wrote in my essay, UU "asks us to consider the moral value of our actions as if all relevant parties were fully aware of them". A person who acts selfishly and tries to conceal it from others, therefore, is going completely against the spirit of this moral system. If your act would decrease the happiness of the person affected by it if they knew about it, then UU condemns that act, regardless of whether or not they actually do know.

Other than that, I'm not sure what the basis of your correspondent's complaint is. Is he saying that UU is not the best moral system because it is possible for people to violate it? If he expects the one true moral system to be intrinsically impossible to disobey, he's in for disappointment. Or is he saying that UU has no good way to deal with people who do choose to act in this way? If so, that criticism is incorrect. UU advises dealing with hypocrisy the same way anyone deals with it: insist on accountability from the people you interact with, take steps to ensure that they are doing as they promised, and if they refuse to provide this accountability or show evidence of going back on their promises, then it is right to cease interacting with them and even in some cases to punish them. How else would any moral system deal with this kind of behavior?

"Now, I suppose you might reply (as Ebon Muse seems to have done at one point) that people should always value each other's happiness as if it were their own 'just because it is the right thing to do.'... Is that true? If so, then let me me ask again: Why?"

I advise valuing other people's happiness because it is the right thing to do, and the reason it is the right thing to do is that it produces the greatest benefits for everyone concerned, yourself included. I give additional reasons to believe this in my supplementary essay on Daylight Atheism:

http://www.daylightatheism.org/2006/09/the-roots-of-morality-ii.html.

I think that aligns pretty well with my response.

Ernie, I'll respond to your latest post separately, possibly as early as tomorrow.

The Utility of Universal Utilitarianism

2006-10-12T22:54:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Thankfully, The Ineffable Carrot and the Infinite Stick appears to have been helpful to Ernie, so I will again thank the Ebon Muse for putting that together. Ernie has replied with his thoughts on Universal Utilitarianism. While it is not our normal practice, Ernie and I have exchanged a few emails about this topic and I believe that will help us move a bit more quickly in our discussion.

While Ernie appreciated the general thrust of UU, his major complaint seems to be that it does not properly recognize the problem of hypocrisy, that in a society characterized by adherence to UU, a rational actor seeking to maximize his personal welfare can cheat, thereby gaining the advantages of UU as well as of selfishness. He even goes so far as to say "However, I would claim that any theory of ethics that fails to recognize this problem is demonstrably incomplete, and wholy useless in the real world." And in an email he asked,

Yes, [in] an ideal world we'd all cooperate. But in an imperfect world, it is optimal to defect. I just don't see why (or even "if") he thinks virtue is the optimal response in the "real" world. Is this just a thought experiment, or a practical definition of virtue?

In my mind, the thrust of these comments and questions misses the point. It is not necessary for a theory of ethics to ensure that a rational actor who chooses to maximize his own personal happiness will not do so at the expense of others. The ethical theory may simply state that such actions are unethical. If it turns out in practice that there is always a choice that maximizes happiness for both self and others (as Ernie appears to be driving toward), that is well and good and according to UU such a choice is the most ethical. If such an alignment is not always possible, UU still provides guidance on what characterizes an ethical choice. This is not at all useless, especially since it is not at all obvious that we live a world where that alignment always occurs.

Naturally the problems of hypocrisy and selfishness are real and they must be taken into account in any practical societal system. UU does not ignore this as Ernie claims. It simply says that some actions chosen due to selfishness are unethical. (Some selfish actions are still ethical because some selfish actions benefit others, or at least do not harm them, even when that is not the motivation.)

Another way to look at Ernie's position is that he seems to be demanding that the most purely selfish choices (those that maximize personal happiness) will necessarily be those that also maximize the personal happiness of others, so that true selfishness becomes, in effect, a virtue or at least indistinguishable from virtue. Ernie may like this to be true -- who wouldn't? -- but an ethical theory that depends on this being true is rather fragile. UU, on the other hand, is compatible with this state of affairs, but is still useful when reality does not cooperate in this way, which frankly seems more likely.

Ernie's final response in our post-post exchange was the last comment found at the end of his post, where he wrote:

Okay, let us concede that UU is the ideal state if "consistently practiced" by everyone. But that merely raises the question:

Do you have any rational basis for believing that a large group of humans could "consistently practice" those principles?

Do you have any empirical data regarding the actions necessary to achieve such a state?

If by "consistently practice" Ernie means that everyone in the group could live according to UU all the time, then I would say "No." At least, we typically do not have enough information to accurately predict all of the consequences of our actions, particularly related to the subjective happiness (or suffering) that will be experienced by others (or even ourselves). But any kind of consequentialist ethics suffers from this problem, even if we had some theoretical or empirical basis for believing that there is no necessary tension between self and others. Even with this limitation, UU is useful because it both defines a standard and a goal. We may not be able to build an internal combustion engine that attains the theoretical maximum possible efficiency, but knowing what that limit is is still useful. In a similar way, even if we cannot attain the maximum possible welfare we can still benefit from knowing in which direction it lies.

As far as the actions necessary to achieve such a state, this is where we have a lot to learn. It is a difficult problem for which we have no complete solution. I previously described using different ethical theories to inform my decisions, and this is the reason why. In some science and engineering problems, we can find equations that describe idealized versions of the problems, but even then, actually solving the equations may be too difficult, so we make simplifying assumptions that are valid in different regions of the problem domain. In those parts of the domain we may be able to get accurate solutions, while in other parts of the domain, the simplifying assumptions break down and our solutions degrade. In the same way, I think there are some situations in which we can make relatively unambiguous statements about what is or is not ethical under an ethical theory like UU, while in other cases this will be much more difficult.

Of course, having some agreement among the members of the group that such a state is the goal is likely to be important. Members who derive their ethics from substantially different sources (like religious fundamentalists or moral relativists) will make achieving such a state difficult.

I hope that adequately explains why I do not believe that Ernie's criticism of UU is well-founded. I do not claim Univeral Utilitarianism is perfect or even complete, but it does qualify as objective and universal and is far from useless, even if the steps necessary to achieve a state where a large group of people consistently practice it are presently difficult to discern.

Reason, Morality and Evolution

2006-10-07T16:34:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

While not part of this dialog, Ernie posted to his blog links to various points in a discussion in which he participated on the FoRK mailing list. I read through the various posts and wanted to comment briefly on something that I think is relevant to where Ernie appears to be heading in this dialog.

In this post, Ernie is discussing whether emotion and reason can be "absolutized" or whether they are contingent on something else. He writes:

The problem, as I see it, is that the human brain (and thus mind) is *also* a product of evolutionary forces. In particular, we are notoriously over-efficient pattern matchers who can easily see structure where none exists. If feelings are intrinsically unreliable due to evolution, are not thoughts then equally so?

To me, the really interesting question is then: what are evolutionary processes contingent on?

If the answer is really just 'pure chance', then I fail to see why absolutizing intelligence is any more valid than absolutizing emotion; correspondence with reality is just a random coincidence, and extrapolation is just a bad (or lucky) habit.

I want to stop there for a moment, even though Ernie continues on; I will get to his continuation later.

The first paragraph I quoted is an important point with which I agree, and is one of the reasons I consider a skeptical mental stance to be important. It is a means of protection against our tendency to make unwarranted inferences (pattern matches).

The third paragraph, though, is misleading. Ernie is setting up a transition to an alternative to pure chance, and he may very well be aware of what I am about to say, but for those others reading I want to clarify something. Evolution is often mischaracterized by evolution deniers as operating on pure chance. Pure chance, we hear, could never have produced the complexity that we see in life. We never find watches lying on the ground, assembled by pure chance. We never observe tornados ripping through junkyards and assemblying a 747 by pure chance. These are two common examples that have been given by creationists since William Paley in the early 1800's, and probably even longer. But these examples are not analogous to the process of evolution. Evolution does not operate by pure chance on inanimate objects, but on replicating lifeforms under selective pressure. Watches do not reproduce; there is no mechanism whereby changes in watches can accumulate to produce more complicated watches, not without the intervention of human designers and manufacturers. Living, replicating organisms, on the other hand, do reproduce and they do compete with each other for resources. And their reproduction does not result in identical offspring, especially not for organisms that reproduce sexually. Under these circumstances, it is a near mathematical uncertainty that changes over time will occur, and these changes will include an increase in complexity so long as the survival benefits of the complexity outweight the costs.

The pattern matching that Ernie mentioned is a survival mechanism. Being able to predict the outcomes of our actions, the actions of others and of other events in the natural world is beneficial. It is also costly. The metabolic load caused by our big brains is substantial, and the necessity of our heads full of brains passing through the birth canal also limits the size of our brains. It is not surprising, then, that our ability to understand the world is limited and subject to errors. But it is also misleading to say that the process by which we arrived at this state was pure chance.

Now, as I said, Ernie was leading up to a different point. He used those couple of paragraphs to frame his introduction of General Systems Theory, from which he takes "one finding: that both inorganic (e.g., atomic) and organic (e.g., living) systems are governed by the same general laws regarding interaction, evolution, and positive and negative feedback." This appears to be heading in the direction that he alluded to a few posts back in our dialog when he said:

This third option (iii) is aesthetically the most attractive, but it is an enormously strong statement. It basically asserts that the multitude of biological, psychological, and evolutionary forces responsible for humanity are fundamentally compatible with the scientific, philosophical, and intellectual investigation of the ultimate nature of reality -- even when there appears to be strong evidence for conflict!

I hope Ernie will elaborate on this, because I find nothing particularly surprising or noteworthy in the idea that inorganic and organic processes are governed by the same general laws. The differentiation between organic and inorganic is useful in many contexts, but in the end both are describing physical entities of various kinds. As far as the alignment between the three legs of the trilemma (which was the (iii) statement the above quote referenced), the more I think about this, the less I am impressed by its significance. I've already stated that belief in truth (one leg of the trilemma) is instrumental for good, and the article I mentioned at Ebon Musings made a decent case for the alignment between personal happiness and happiness of others based on the example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. This same alignment can be approached from a different direction: the neurological and evolutionary bases for empathy, whereby the happiness of one man affects the happiness of those around him. (See, for example, this recent post at Dangerous Intersection discussing morality in humans and its precursors in other primates.) While I still question the strength with which Ernie made his assertion, that there should be some significant alignment between my happiness and the happiness of others and that belief in truth furthers both of these is less significant than Ernie might have us believe.

On Carrots and Sticks

2006-10-01T10:23:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

I had intended my next post in our diablogue to explain, as best I could, what I believe about ethics and morality, and I had also intended to wait until Ernie had replied to my last post. However, I think I have something better.

One blog that I read with some irregularity is Daylight Atheism. About a month ago there was a series of posts titled "The Roots of Morality". I only came across it last week, and in fact I have only begun to read it. But the posts are, apparently, a further development of an earlier article written by the same author on his website Ebon Musings, titled The Ineffable Carrot and the Infinite Stick. This latter article at least is quite relevant to the last few posts that Ernie and I have exchanged.

In this article, the author ("Ebonmuse") builds up to a universal and objective morality that lacks any reference to a divine reference point. He (~~or she~~) addresses the three legs of Ernie's ethical trilemma along the lines that I have suggested: by making belief in truth instrumentally but not inherently good and then seeking resolution to the apparent tension between self and others.

I am unlikely to write anything of remotely comparable quality. Ebonmuse has included at least the vast majority of my thoughts on the subject and developed them far more completely than I have. So I commend this article to your attention, and I thank Ebonmuse for writing it.

Clarifications, Hopefully

2006-09-27T21:48:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

My brother-in-law once asked me what the point of this dialog with Ernie is, since we "have been going it at for months with little or no progress." Sometimes I feel like that too, but for the most part I find that it has been a helpful exercise for me to clarify my thinking and to force me to address questions from new directions. Just the act of writing is good practice as well; as I have noted before I am a dreadfully slow writer and the results still do not always communicate what I intend. In his latest brief post, Ernie is still trying to get a handle on what I am saying (or trying to say) about ethics, but I fear I still have not been sufficiently clear. In trying to clarify one point, I seem to have confused another. Let me try to clarify what appears to be the current confusion.

First, remember that ethics can be objective without being universal; that is, we can agree on a particular theory of ethics and within that theory we can make objective statements about what is ethical and what is not. We can only say that goodness is an objective attribute of an action after agreeing on the ethical theory under which the description is meaningful. Goodness is therefore not an objective attribute of the action itself isolated from ethical theories. Only if we can show that there is in fact a unique valid theory of ethics would it make sense to say that goodness is an objective attribute of an action.

Now, in responding to Ernie's questions about whether belief in truth is inherently good, and how that compares to other candidates for inherently good actions, I said basically that belief in truth is instrumentally good (thanks, Ernie) but not inherently good, as might be said of pursuit of happiness and love of others, which I said "reflect the true ends of ethics." That last phrase was misleading and I must apologize for being so unclear. Those two things are certainly examples of what might qualify as the "true ends" under some theories of ethics, but I did not intend to state categorically that they must be so.

Despite my efforts to the contrary, I may also have given the impression that an ethical "theory of everything" will be found when I said "... the hypothetical ethical theory of everything will have a place for [belief in truth]." I am not confident that such unified theory can be constructed, and I only meant that if there were such a thing, belief in truth would play a part in it. Where Ernie appears to see not only a moral nature but a moral purpose in the universe, I see only abstractions that people use to describe their actions, according to a variety of criteria. While it might be simpler and even more meaningful if one particular theory were found to be uniquely true and all-encompassing, we have both good foundations and plenty of room for progress without such a thing even being possible.

I hope that, having said all that, it will not be suprising that I do not believe all of Ernie's latest statements (I-VI), not as stated. (I) is only true within a particular theory of ethics. (II) and (III) are similarly dependent. (IV) is a claim that Ernie has made; depending on exactly what he means I may or may not agree, but that agreement would be based on my intuitive sense more so than being deeply rooted in a particular ethical theory so I would not claim this belief is justified. (V) and (VI) are mostly accurate. I might add a (V'): "It is both possible and important to pursue better practice of ethics."

In the end, I realize that I have left you, the reader, with entirely too little concrete description of what I believe about ethics and morality. I suppose I can try to correct that deficiency in my next post. I hope, however, that Ernie will develop his position more fully as well.

The Ethical Universe (No, Not That Kind)

2006-09-21T07:20:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

As I suspected, my last post, An Earnest Trilemma, was less than a model of clarity, leading to a number of questions by Ernie in "Good" and "True". The core of the last couple of posts and of his questions relate to ethics and morality (two terms which I have been treating more or less interchangeably). I will try to explain a bit more fully my current thoughts on the subject; after that description, I will also answer Ernie's specific questions.

Let me start with the idea of moral law, analagous to the physical laws that describe the regularities we observe in our universe. The thing about physical laws, as Chesterton was so kind to point out, is that they cannot be broken (at least, barring supernatural intervention). The laws, as descriptions of reality, may be incorrect, but to the degree that they are correct they describe constraints on the way things work. According to the simplest translation to the realm of moral action, we can see that moral laws do not work that way. That is, we are not prevented by nature from anti-moral action. So if there is a real moral law, its existence would impact us in some other way. The possibility that makes the most sense to me, and which I believe is at least roughly in line with what Ernie described a few months ago, is that such a moral law would make itself known through some sort of personal consequences beyond those implied by mathematical and physical considerations. Of course, those consequences that are only observable after death are hidden from us, and those consequences that are observable now must be disentangled from physical causality. Ernie may think we can extract that signal from the noise, while I think that "normal" causation can account for what we observe.

So what makes something "good" versus "evil"? First, as ethical or moral descriptors, I would use those terms primarily as descriptive of actions, and secondarily as descriptive of actors according to their capacity and tendency to engage in good and evil actions. If there are moral laws and if we knew what they were, we would be able to identify specific actions as being good or evil (possibly to some degree of goodness or evilness) according to the agreement between law and action. But if there are no moral laws (in the sense of otherwise-unexplainable consequences), what would it mean to call something "good" or "evil"?

People give various answers to that question. Some people look at consequences, some people look at motivations Some people look for cultural or societal answers (descriptive ethics in the generally-used sense) wherein good and evil are defined simply in terms of what some group of people agree is good and evil.

Now, when Ernie first brought up his trilemma, he said:

Put another way, I can readily see why atheists might (and do) believe in such noble ethics as above, but I've never been quite clear why it is not equally possible for them to believe in something else.

Certainly people affirm a variety of systems of ethics, some of which strike me as, well, evil and others as merely misguided. Others strike me as well-intentioned and helpful, but incomplete. So I can agree with what Ernie wrote in the paragraph prior to the one I just quoted:

The short answer is that the atheistic ethics I've seen feel a bit to me like Aristotelian physics: useful and well-thought out as far as they go, but lacking the sort of deep grounding we've expected from physics since Newton established a coherent mathematical foundation for physical inquiry.

The answer to this current state of affairs is not to give up and conclude that secular ethics is a dead end, but rather to keep working on it, just as we did not give up physics.

In the universe of proposed ethical theories, preference utilitarianism probably comes closest to describing where I fall, but I find admirable ideas in a variety of places; the original position described by John Rawls is one such example. But these various theories do not presently compose a unified whole. Given this situation, I choose to use what I can from various theories to inform my decisions without finding it necessary to claim that any unified ethical theory presently exists.

As I said, I find preference utilitarianism to be a helpful way to frame many moral questions, wherein actions are judged according to the alignment between the consequences of an action and the preferences of those affected. Using this particular ethical theory as an example (though similar conclusions can be reached from a variety of starting points), belief in truth is important for several reasons. First, my own preferences will be affected by what I believe. I prefer those things that I think will make me happy, but false beliefs may result in preferences that in fact cause undesired pain. If somebody acts so as to satisfy my ill-reasoned preferences, I can hardly blame them for the pain I thus endure. My ability to act morally under this moral theory is also reduced by false beliefs both because I may not correctly know another's preferences and especially because I may not be able to predict accurately the effects of my actions on others.

So when I agreed that belief in truth is inherently good, I may not have characterized my views accurately. Or, more accurately, my thinking since then has clarified somewhat. Belief in truth is a sometimes critically important means to an ethical end, but to call it inherently good might be going too far. (Looking at morality as a characteristic of action and looking at belief as a state of being, we could not properly call beliefs themselves moral or immoral, but beliefs can lead quite directly to actions, so in practice the distinction may be more fine than is useful.)

Given all that, I can now try to answer Ernie's latest questions, which were:

a) Do you consider (I) a statement about objective reality, or of personal preference?

b) Why do you believe (I) is true?

c) How universally do you think this statement holds?

d) How strongly do you believe in (I)?

e) How does (I) relate to alternate statements, such as:

II. The Pursuit of Happiness is inherently Good

III. Helping Others is inherently Good

I interpret statement (I) to be a statement about objective reality; while I understand that somebody could use that same statement to express a personal preference, I understand it in this conversation to be a "real" not "imaginary" statement. Strictly speaking (as I clarified above), I do not believe that the statement is true, even while I believe that belief in truth is very important. I think this latter belief is, practically-speaking, pretty tightly wrapped up with the various ethical theories; I do not know if you would call that either non-contingent or empirically-motivated. (If true knowledge is characterized by making correct predictions, any kind of consequentialist ethics will depend on knowledge for making ethical decisions.)

Regarding universality, that is something of an open question for me for this reason: we are not perfectly rational, and it seems possible that unrecognized partial knowledge could lead to worse predictions, and therefore less ethical actions, than ignorance. At least, this is true under consequentialist ethics, but not necessarily of other ethical theories. So there are two ways that the statement might not be universal: it does not hold under some ethical theories (though it does in the ones I support most strongly) and it may not hold in some cases of partial knowledge. Unfortunately, the worst cases of partial knowledge are probably cases of "unknown unknowns" that, practically speaking, are very difficult to recognize. In these cases it is helpful to be able to look back on actions in the light of motivation and recognize that an action was well-intended based on the state of knowledge at the time (if that was in fact the case).

Would I bet my life on (I) holding? Well, since I have rejected the full meaning of the statement, I would say "no". Since I have refused to commit to a single theory of ethics, and since I have said that even a modified (I) would not hold in some theories, I would have to say "no" again. Still, I believe that belief in truth is a very important part of ethical living, and that the hypothetical ethical theory of everything will have place for it.

When compared to the other statements in your trilemma, as I mentioned in my last post, I think (I) is in a different category from (II) and (III), primarily because (II) and (III) reflect the true ends of ethics while (I) is a critical part of the path to get there. So, they are consistent, but not all peer alternatives in the trilemma.

I hope this was a helpful clarification. As always, Ernie, if you have more questions, fire away. But don't forget to work on your end of the field too...

An Earnest Trilemma

2006-09-17T21:35:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

In Looking for and Argument, Ernie stated two propositions that he was willing to defend, each corresponding to a core issue that differentiate our two positions. The first issue, in his words, is:

I. Ontological dependence on an omnipotent, benevolent Deity as the ultimate source of virtue and truth

Now, in The Ethical Trilemma Ernie begins his elaboration and defense of his corresponding proposition:

I. Belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry.

Ernie poses what he calls the Ethical Trilemma, which asks how we can reconcile three competing ethical claims related to belief in truth, the welfare of society and personal happiness. Which of them, or which set of them, constitute the greatest good? Then he suggests three possible resolutions: that there is no absolute greatest good (relativism), that only one or two of them is necessary, or that the three claims, despite appearances to the contrary, are in fact ultimately in alignment and thus can be satisfied simultaneously. His assertion is that the third resolution is the case, and that this ultimate alignment is equivalent to the existence of a "transcendent moral purpose for the universe".

I make no claim to be an ethicist, but as I understand things, there remains fairly diverse views on the nature of ethics. For instance, the Wikipedia article on ethics discusses among other things truth-aptitude (can ethical statements be true or false, or is the concept of truth orthogonal to ethics) and normative versus descriptive ethics. Ernie's three "categorical imperatives", for instance, would fall under the deontic branch of normative ethics. On the other hand, my personal view is more descriptive in nature (but not necessarily in the same sense as the descriptive ethics described by the Wikipedia article, unfortunately). That is, within an ethical system actions can be judged as good, bad or neutral. Different ethical systems may judge the same action differently. I suppose that within such an ethical system, calling an action "good" might be taken to mean that one ought to do it, but I see these judgements more as guidelines for action than true obligations (sort of like the Pirate's Code). Of course, "wrong" actions may involve "bad" consequences, including both natural consequences as well as those imposed by society.

Now, I said that different ethical systems may judge the same action differently. According to an Egoist, an action should be judged according to its impact on me. According to an Altruist, an action should be judged according to its impact on others. According to a Utilitarian, an action should be judged according to its total impact on everybody. According to Divine Command Theory, an action should be judged according to its alignment with divine commands. But can we say that one of these systems (or any other) is true and the others false, or even simply that one is preferable to all of the others?

It appears that Ernie may be claiming that it does not matter because ultimately all ethical systems (or at least the ones he lists) will be found to be in alignment. And he rightly admits that this is "an enormously strong statement" which he asserts to be true despite the appearance of "strong evidence for conflict." He compares this unification to the sought-after physical "theory of everything".

While such a unification could possibly exist, the mere assertion that it exists is hardly sufficient. The statement that Ernie is defending states that "Belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry.". In science, we have vast amounts of evidence that math can be used to accurately describe the universe, which is more or less what I understand Ernie to mean by "transcendent mathematical nature". And while we do not as yet have a "theory of everything", we have had a great deal of success so far in unifying what appeared to be separate phenomena under a small number of theoretical frameworks; to expect that a single theory may unify these few is not such a large leap. On the other hand, I am unaware of a comparable degree of support or development of any ethical theory, let alone that multiple such theories can be unified. Since Ernie admits that the evidence appears to suggest that these ethical theories are sometimes in conflict, he needs to provide strong evidence to the contrary. That is, for any real situation S with possible actions A₁-A_N, there exists a single A_opt which is the best choice under all of the ethical systems he claims can be unified. At least, that is what I understand such a unification to entail.

I must also point out what may be only a minor quibble, but I note that Ernie is comparing the "transcendent mathematical nature of the universe" to a "transcendent moral purpose for the universe". Why not the "transcendent moral nature"? Is it not possible for there to be a moral nature without a moral purpose? Or is it that Ernie thinks the evidence for a moral purpose is as strong as what exists for the mathematical nature of the universe? At this level of abstraction, it seems at least possible to me that a unified moral nature is possible without requiring a purpose (and therefore a source of purpose).

Ernie finished with a "deluge of questions":

Do you accept my formulation of the Trilemma as a meaningful question?

Might you phrase it differently, but still accept the fundamental tension between these three?

If so, how (if at all) do you resolve that tension?

If you choose (iii), do you have any rational basis for that belief?

Do you have any empirical evidence for the viability of your approach?

Do you see why I consider (iii) equivalent to asserting a "transcendent moral purpose for the universe"?

My answers:

Your trilemma provides a meaningful basis for clarifying our positions. I am not sure that your three competing ethical claims are the only possible competing claims; I can imagine others. I also tend to view the "belief in truth" leg as being in a different category from the others so I would be tempted to formulate a simple dilemma. On the other hand, I agree that belief in truth is important and is very likely to align with the others.
There is a tension at least between good for others and good for myself, though I agree that we should at least aim for the so-called "win-win" choice and that in many cases such a choice exists. I am unconvinced that in a community/ecosystem with finite resources such a choice always exists, thus giving rise to the tension.
I resolve the tension by not requiring a single answer, by allowing that different ethical systems may give different answers. While I have preferences for certain kinds of answers, I cannot claim that they are singularly right. This is closest to your option (i), though I would state it rather differently. I would not claim there is a unique (valid) metric of goodness that implies a single greatest good for each situation.
(Not applicable.)
In order to discuss viability, I think I would need to discuss a particular system of ethics (what is right, what is wrong, and especially for the question of viability, what is the right way to respond to right or wrong actions). I might argue, though, that some systems are inherently viable since actions which lead to mortality could be defined (in those systems) as "bad", so that all "good" actions would be viable by definition. Whether we can know ahead of time whether an action is good or bad under such a definition is another question. Without describing my thoughts on ethics in any detail, I can say that I have very little actual evidence for or against their viability though I have conservative intuitive reasons for believing they are viable. I am also unconvinced that human nature is conducive to their realization. That is, if everyone lived according to my idea of ethics, I believe such a community would be viable. How many "cheaters" can be supported is a more difficult question. Whether to blame the ethical system for failures under such circumstances is also a difficult question. In other words, I do not claim to have any certain answers here.
I can see why you might consider (iii) equivalent to asserting a "transcendent moral nature of the universe"; you would need to go further to establish a purpose. And, of course, you still need to defend your assertion.

If it is important (or if you are curious), I can try to elaborate on my views of ethics. I made the claim that a naturalistic theory "can provide more reliable foundation for morality than supposed divine authority." The difference between "divine authority" and "transcendent moral nature/purpose of the universe" may be large enough to render elaboration and support of my claim less worthwhile, but I am willing to do that as well. Since you said "this Trilemma has been bugging me for several months, and I'm dying to hear Alan's answers", I rather suspect that what I have said here will be insufficient to quench your curiosity, so in addition to defending your assertion, Ernie, let me know what I need to flesh out.

Update: As I reflect on what I wrote, I fear I may have given a wrong impression about the importance of ethical behavior. I do value such behavior highly; when I described ethical systems providing guidelines rather than obligations, my intent was to focus on how those systems can help me choose what to do to satisfy my values, as well as help me evaluate the choices of others. This distinction also recognizes that an "ought" is not a "can't help but"; that is, that alternative actions are possible, which is therefore consistent with allowing multiple ethical systems to inform decisions. Finally, and despite my use of the words "choose" and "choice" and the phrase "can't help but" in the last two sentences, I also value ethics in a descriptive sense because they remain useful even if free will is illusory. That is, even if we have no true choices, we can still describe actions as "good" or "bad", even if it no longer makes sense to speak of moral obligations. Since I remain open to the possibility that free will is an illusion, this property of my view of ethics is important.

Found: Two Goalposts

2006-09-09T00:10:00.000-06:00

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Obviously I have taken a bit of a break from blogging, my last post having been made one and a half months ago. My dialog with Ernie has been the major emphasis for awhile, and while he was traveling and moving, it was pretty easy to take a break. But now that Ernie is back, looking for an argument, I guess it's time to devote some time to writing again.

In his post, Ernie sets forth what he hopes might be a reasonable characterization of my foundational objections to Christianity. Has he succeeded? He certainly captures some important elements of my thinking. I will try to state them succinctly myself and then perhaps highlight what I think are important differences between his "Woodman" version and my version.

Using the word "theory" in the sense of an explanatory framework, I assert that a theory built on naturalism can provide a better explanation of the world and specifically of the history of Judaism and Christianity than a theory built around Christian monotheism (or any other theism). Such a theory can explain features of the Bible and its development that are inconsistent with divine inspiration and divine authority. Such a theory can provide a more reliable foundation for morality than supposed divine authority. Such a theory provides a better explanation for the existence of both natural and moral evil. Such a theory can better explain the variety of religious beliefs and experiences found throughout the world, and the variety of beliefs held by those who self-identify as Christians. In short, I believe a naturalistic (non-theistic) theory has greater explanatory power than Christianity-as-theory does.

There is, of course, a great deal of elaboration that might accompany those claims, but for my purpose here I hope it will be sufficient. How does that compare to Ernie's Woodman? Really pretty well, I think. Regarding "[e]pistemic dependence on received Scripture as a reliable indicator of divine will", I would go beyond calling such a belief merely unjustified and irrelevent; other beliefs, including belief in the existence of a Creator God, I would call unjustified epistemically and irrelevent morally.

I hope readers will find this consistent with this list of assertions I made three months ago, when I had intended to start detailing my reasons for disbelief.

Ernie also advanced two propositions that he is willing to defend:

Belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry.

Belief in the Biblical narrative regarding God's role in shaping religious faith is as central and well-justified as belief in the scientific narrative regarding evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans.

These are strong claims, as I am sure Ernie is aware. I look forward to seeing Ernie's elaboration and defense of them. While perhaps due to a misunderstanding of our mutual goal at the time, one of my frustrations in this "diablogue" has been the higher-than-helpful ratio of assertions to justifications and perhaps we have now arrived at the point where we can remedy that problem.

P.S. For those who might stumble by that question the evidence for evolution, the article I would recommend most highly is 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent by Dr. Douglas Theobold. This is not, however, specific to "evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans." As I am not actually sure of Ernie's particular position on the subject, I suppose it is possible that Ernie does not feel the standard he is suggesting for (II) is as high as I think it is, but considering the standard he presents for (I), I strongly suspect he intended the second standard to be high as well.