What's Anger Got to Do With It?

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

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:

1. We need a set of assumptions comparable to the MSSB in order to support meaningful "social inquiry."
2. 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
3. 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!

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:

1. Happiness is better than Suffering
2. Love is better than Hate
3. Truth is better than Falsehood
4. Truth is compatible with both Love and Happiness
5. Love and Happiness are compatible with each other
6. There are some good things about Christianity
7. There are many things wrong with Christianity
8. It is both necessary and possible to improve upon Christianity
9. Reason and Empirical Observation are both key to improving upon Christianity
10. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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:

1. Selects for cognitive systems that are capable [in principle] of apprehending Truth
2. 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):

1. Ethics are meaningful in the context of societies (human systems)
2. Virtue is acting to promote the health and happiness of the society
3. 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:

1. There exists a meaningful higher-order System encompassing social, natural, and logical systems
2. It is always Virtuous to act in accordance with this System
3. Support for this System is entirely, necessarily, and always consistent with belief in Truth
4. 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.

1. There exist meaningful ethical metrics based upon the actual cognitive and emotional systems present in humans.
2. By definition, it is virtuous to act in such a way as to increase the value of these metrics.
3. 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.