Saturday, September 20, 2014

Some Christians show their true colors

Apparently, some Christians really can't stand religious freedom.

It's a beautiful piece by Hrafnkell Haraldsson (sic -- I cut-and-pasted the name from the original.  I gotta wonder how it's pronounced).  Here's my best shot at extracting a pithy quote:
Just the mere fact of somebody else practicing their religious beliefs is hateful to fake Christians to the extent that they insist those practices must be banned. And it isn’t just Satanism. You remember Bryan Fischer’s horrified objection to the Obamas letting actual Hindus into the White House to celebrate the Festival of Lights.
Well worth reading the whole thing.  And actually, the piece linked to in this quote is worth reading too.  It's one thing to know that there are hypocrites out there seeking to establish a Christian theocracy in the U.S. in the name of "religious freedom", quite another to witness it with your own eyes.  It is a horrifying spectacle indeed.

88 comments:

Luke said...

It is offensive for you not to qualify "Christians". Try this with "Blacks show their true colors". If you wouldn't dare saying that, why dare you say the other version?

Luke said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ron said...

Your point is well taken. I've fixed it.

Luke said...

Thanks! For a hilarious, insightful treatment of a similar set of phenomena, I suggest Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity.

This whole thing reminds me of the story of the guy who captured a Leprechaun and forced him to point out where his pot of gold was hidden, in a corn field. The guy told the Leprechaun to swear he wouldn't remove the handkerchief that he had tied on the appropriate corn stalk, and then went off to get a shovel. When he returned, his particular kind of handkerchief was tied to all of the corn stalks.

Ron said...

> “Christianity,” writes [Jacques ] Ellul, “never carries the day decisively against Christ.”

And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

Luke said...

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Could you, for example, give me a definition of 'science' that works from BC 1000 → AD 2000? You do seem to have this idea that every word should have one definition. Do you believe that this 'should' is regularly manifested in the the spacetime occupied by communicating homo sapiens? If not, I'd like to hear more about your idea. I did read that bit of David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality, by the way. I didn't fully get your point; I could only really get fragments of it.

Ron said...

> I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.

That makes two of us. Can you explain the bit with the leprechaun? Seriously, I didn't get that at all.

> Could you, for example, give me a definition of 'science' that works from BC 1000 → AD 2000?

I have no idea what you mean by "works from BC 1000 -> AD 2000" (and I also have no idea what that could possibly have to do with the matter at hand). Science is the proposition that experiment, evidence and rational argument should be the ultimate arbiters of truth. But what matters is not the label "science", what matters is the *idea* that experiment, evidence and rational argument should be the ultimate arbiters of truth. That *idea* -- the Platonic concept behind those English words -- has power independent of the language in which it is expressed.

> You do seem to have this idea that every word should have one definition.

I do? That's news to me. Where did you get this impression?

I do have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about employing the Humpty Dumpty theory of language, but that is not at all the same thing as refusing to acknowledge that natural languages are often ambiguous, and that words can have multiple meanings.

But let me explain why I brought up the no-true-scotsman fallacy (perhaps this will cut the Gordian knot). You took me to task for leaving open in the original title of this post the possibility that I might be making a sweeping generalization about all Christians. When I edited the post to make it unambiguous, you responded with a cryptic story about leprechauns and corn fields, and a reference to a book whose thesis (according to the blurb on Amazon) is that there are "contradictions between the Bible and the practice of the church" and "what we today call Christianity is actually far removed from the revelation of God." In other words, those who call themselves Christians today are not *true* Christians, because True Christians (like True Scotsmen) would never do X for some value of X. And, of course, the whole point of the No True Scotsman fallacy is that it doesn't matter what X is because you're simply redefining the term "Scotsman". Or, in this case, Christian. (And so I can validly make this point without having read the book.)

IMO, the only reasonable definition of "Christian" is "Someone who self-identifies as Christian" (just as the only reasonable definition of the term "Muslim" is "someone who self-identifies as Muslim" -- c.f. http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/04/for-record-re-sam-harris.html) Anything else leads unavoidably to sectarian squabbles (at best). In the entire 2000 year history of Christianity there has never been a time when (self-identified) Christians weren't arguing with (or torturing or killing) each other over what it means to be a Christian. Ellul's book only serves to demonstrate that (unsurprisingly) nothing has changed in this regard.

Luke said...

> Can you explain the bit with the leprechaun? Seriously, I didn't get that at all.

One way to poison an idea is to introduce many simulacra. History and the present show many people who want to destroy Christianity. The Leprechaun approach is one way to do so. And then you can complain about "No True Scotsman", and have that complaint sound completely reasonable.

> I have no idea what you mean by "works from BC 1000 -> AD 2000"

I meant a definition that would properly classify the scientists who lived during that time period as scientists.

> Science is the proposition that experiment, evidence and rational argument should be the ultimate arbiters of truth.

From my reading, you would actually be ignoring critical contributors to the scientific endeavor, if you were to define it this way. Have you looked into historians of the philosophy of science, to see their attempts to define the word 'science'? It is my understanding that they agree with me: no single definition will cover all spacetime.

> But what matters is not the label "science", what matters is the *idea* that experiment, evidence and rational argument should be the ultimate arbiters of truth.

As far as I understand, this is not considered a valid argument by the people who study this stuff for their jobs. You cannot give a bad definition, and then merely wave your hands saying that any errors are unimportant. My own opinion, which I have not [yet, hopefully] tested against the scholars, is that the only actual definition that works is teleological, and incorporates a phrase such as "that which is best at helping us match our beliefs to reality". However, there are many atheists I have encountered who would not like such a definition. Requiring teleology is just too much for some folks.

> I do? That's news to me. Where did you get this impression?

From here, see "if you lock down the meanings of words too much", and your response. I took this as hinting at "every word should have one definition". It appears I was wrong. Apologies.

> In other words, those who call themselves Christians today are not *true* Christians, because True Christians (like True Scotsmen) would never do X for some value of X.

But this is not what Ellul does. You have caricatured him. Instead, I propose the following toy example, which may not be complex enough for actual reality. Suppose there are three general purposes of people:

(1) stability of society
(2) encouraging infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness
(3) gaining increasing power over the many

Any given Christianity could be seen as a linear combination of the above teloi, the above final purposes. Ellul argues that to the extent the group of people aren't doing (2), what they're doing is not following Jesus, regardless of what they call themselves. Where's the No True Scotsman in this?

> IMO, the only reasonable definition of "Christian" is "Someone who self-identifies as Christian"

Do so if you want; I will simply note that this makes the term "Christian" absolutely meaningless, and when I attempt to communicate with you, I will define a new term, perhaps "J-Christian". We can do that, if you would like. A J-Christian is someone who, while perhaps doing some of each of (1), (2), and (3), is attempting to do ever-more (2), and ever less of the others. Shall we use this term, when talking to each other? Would you call this "No True Scotsman"?

Ron said...

Luke, just FYI, I am planning to respond, but I'm in transit with very limited internet access so it might be another day or two.

Ron said...

OK, just enough time to get out a short reply between flights.

> One way to poison an idea is to introduce many simulacra.

So... what you're saying is that there are not-true-Christians who are "poisoning" True Christianity. And I presume that the "True Christians" are the ones who base their beliefs on what is written in the Bible. Is that right? (Can someone who is not a young earth creationist be a True Christian?)

> I meant a definition that would properly classify the scientists who lived during that time period as scientists.

Ah. What you really mean here is: is there a definition that will include all of the people that *others* consider to be "scientists" and exclude all those that others do not consider to be scientists. No, there is no such definition. But so what?

> As far as I understand, this is not considered a valid argument by the people who study this stuff for their jobs.

This is not just an Argument from Authority, is an Argument from Nameless Authority. Not that it matters (because arguments from authority are still bogus even when you know who the authorities are) but who exactly are these people who "study this stuff for their jobs"?

> this makes the term "Christian" absolutely meaningless

No, it doesn't, it makes it a shorthand way of talking about people who self-identify as Christians, which is a useful distinction to make because some people do and some people don't. It may not correspond with what *you* mean by "Christian", but that doesn't make it meaningless.

I'm happy to use some other working definition of the word for the purposes of this discussion, but you'll have to state the definition you want to use more straightforwardly, i.e. your definition should start with the words, "A Christian is..." and not the word "Suppose".

Then, if we need to, we can distinguish between your definition and mine by distinguishing between an L-Christian and an R-Christian (or an SI-Christian, SI for self-identified. Why make things harder to keep track of by choosing an arbitrary prefix like J?)

Luke said...

> And I presume that the "True Christians" are the ones who base their beliefs on what is written in the Bible. Is that right?

I thought my (1)–(3) was pretty clear?

> Ah. What you really mean here is: is there a definition that will include all of the people that *others* consider to be "scientists" and exclude all those that others do not consider to be scientists. No, there is no such definition. But so what?

I would replace "*others*" with "a rational person"; I don't know the function of "*others*". My point is that you ought to be careful of wanting a single definition for 'Christian' if you cannot find a single definition for 'scientist'. That being said, I suspect there is such a single definition for 'scientist'; it just happens to be teleological, which is kinda ugly for those who don't want to allow matter–energy to have any teleology.

> This is not just an Argument from Authority, is an Argument from Nameless Authority.

So talking about the state of the art in the history of the philosophy of science is an Argument from Nameless Authority? I mean, these folks really want to have a single definition of 'scientist' which works across all spacetime. At least, this is what I'm led to believe. I should have thought that the context would limit that to "history of the philosophy of science"; apologies for not being explicit. Actually, maybe that 4096 character count (which is wrong; fewer than that are actually allowed) made me snip my comment.

> No, it doesn't, it makes it a shorthand way of talking about people who self-identify as Christians, which is a useful distinction to make because some people do and some people don't.

Given the extreme variety of what has gone under the label of "Christianity", what does that label tell you except whether a person decides he/she wants to have that label? I was exaggerating just the tiniest bit when I said "absolutely meaningless". So ok, someone tells you he/she is a Christian. What do you know about him/her, except that he/she likes the word and wants to be identified by it?

> I'm happy to use some other working definition of the word for the purposes of this discussion, but you'll have to state the definition you want to use more straightforwardly, i.e. your definition should start with the words, "A Christian is..." and not the word "Suppose".

My working definition is a person who pursues (2) over and above (1), (3), and probably anything else. Can you see how many who self-identify as "Christian" prefer (1) and/or (3) to (2)? Does that "linear combination" bit make any sense to you? The 'J', by the way, stands for 'Jesus'. I was thinking of passages like Mt 20:20–28 and Jn 13:1–20.

Ron said...

> I thought my (1)–(3) was pretty clear?

Not to me, sorry. And even if they were, like I said, a definition needs to start with the words, "A Christian is..." and not the word "Suppose." Sorry if I'm being dense here.

In any case, your "definition" seems to have nothing to do with Christ or the Bible, which is a very peculiar way to define "Christian."

> So talking about the state of the art in the history of the philosophy of science is an Argument from Nameless Authority?

Of course not. But saying that someone's argument is wrong because of something that some nameless person said is an argument from nameless authority, and that's what you did: "this is not considered a valid argument by the people who study this stuff for their jobs,"

> My working definition is a person who pursues (2) over and above (1), (3), and probably anything else.

So a person can be a Christian without believing in Christ? Or God? Or the Bible?

Luke said...

> In any case, your "definition" seems to have nothing to do with Christ or the Bible, which is a very peculiar way to define "Christian."

That is because you started off extremely antagonistically with your "And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.", which set me on guard and careful to lay out necessary conditions, which can be built toward sufficient conditions. If you cannot see (2) ∧ ¬(1) ∧ ¬(3) as necessary conditions of Christianity, I suggest we talk about it. But surely you can at least see how asserting (2), over and against (1) ∧ (3), is not "No True Scotsman"? There is ambiguity in (2), but I doubt you can give your own version (of e.g. "human thriving" or idea-ism) that is 100% non-ambiguous. If you want, I can attempt my best philosophical analysis for your counterpart to (2), to see if I'm right. But it might be more interesting for you to grant me the point, take a charitable interpretation of (2), and move on...

> So a person can be a Christian without believing in Christ? Or God? Or the Bible?

Please tell me precisely what it means to "believe in Christ". For example, does one have to vocalize his name properly? What if one gets a small detail wrong? What constitutes the tipping point, between believing and not believing? Perhaps you have a nice, cut & dried answer; I myself have not found one. Many people have found many ways to twist the person of Jesus Christ into someone who would support (1) and/or (3). Natural simply is extremely malleable, for better and for worse.

Ron said...

> antagonistically

Sorry, I didn't mean that to be antagonistic. My intent was simply to point out that the quote I found in the blurb for Jacque's book is an instance of the no-true-scotsman fallacy.

> If you cannot see (2) ∧ ¬(1) ∧ ¬(3) as necessary conditions of Christianity

It seems exceptionally weird to me. For starters, I don't really know what "infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness" means. And then it further strikes me as extremely odd to use the label "Christianity" to describe that concept. There's a reason the word "Christianity" has the word "Christ" embedded within it, and any definition of Christianity that doesn't refer to Christ seems really weird to me. Why call this concept you're defining "Christianity?" Why not call it awesome-anity or something like that?

> Please tell me precisely what it means to "believe in Christ".

What an odd request to make of an atheist. I have no idea. But the overwhelming majority of SI-Christians will tell you that to be a Christian you have to do it, whatever it is. But you really need to go ask them what it means, not me.

But I'll give you another condition that is very strongly associated with SI-Christianity, and that is the attribution of some special *epistemological* status to the New Testament that distinguishes it from pure mythology. In the extreme, many SI-Christians believe that the Bible in general, and the New Testament in particular, are the inerrant Word of God, the all-powerful all-knowing all-loving Creator of the universe. (Jacques Ellul seems to subscribe to some version of this based on what I see in the blurb for his book.) Maybe that will be easier for us to get a common handle on.

Luke said...

> My intent was simply to point out that the quote I found in the blurb for Jacque's book is an instance of the no-true-scotsman fallacy.

Still, you take a small blurb about a famous sociologist's work and immediately conclude he has made a basic logic error. That really is antagonistic. It is evidence of failure to read charitably. And it sets me on guard; I have been read uncharitably so many times in the past by atheists on the internet that I can do a pretty good job of protecting myself from it. But the result will be a bit obnoxious to you—perhaps necessarily so, perhaps only because I have not found an even better way to describe my views.

> For starters, I don't really know what "infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness" means.

Can you make no sense whatsoever of it? I mean, I can spell it out if you would like, but I should think that you could at least appreciate it with (1) ∧ (3) as a foil? Can you at least match up (1) ∨ (3) with much that goes by the label 'Christianity'?

> There's a reason the word "Christianity" has the word "Christ" embedded within it, and any definition of Christianity that doesn't refer to Christ seems really weird to me. Why call this concept you're defining "Christianity?"

I'm actually attempting to start with common ground. You've said below that you "have no idea" what it means to "believe in Christ". So, starting there would be an absolutely terrible way for us to attempt mutual understanding, it seems to me. Is this an erroneous judgment?

> What an odd request to make of an atheist. I have no idea.

Can you see how this is like a layman being utterly unable to differentiate between science and pseudoscience? Philosophers of science know that drawing a hard-and-fast line distinguishing the two is probably impossible. But that doesn't mean you can't establish a pretty clear spectrum and place a great many people at pretty obvious spots on it. Well, might the same be the case with Christianity, if one has the requisite resources to distinguish between pseudo- and real-?

> But I'll give you another condition that is very strongly associated with SI-Christianity, and that is the attribution of some special *epistemological* status to the New Testament that distinguishes it from pure mythology.

Sure. But suppose that Jesus did lots of miracles, died, was raised three days later. Just grant me that. Now what? All of a sudden, I must now assent to a list of propositions, with them perhaps not connecting to reality in any way? That seems insane to me, especially with Jesus himself (for example) challenging folks to judge trees by their fruits. No, what I say (for example) is that there must be power available, now, of which 2 Tim 3:1–5 presents a negative example.

In other words, I claim there need to be causal chains which trace back to the particular events of the NT, and that these chains can be investigated there, in the middle, and here. If the Bible merely contains "timeless, eternal, abstract truths", then the history is irrelevant. On the other hand, if it's something more/different, something particular (vs. universals), that should be testable now, right?

Ron said...

> Still, you take a small blurb about a famous sociologist's work and immediately conclude he has made a basic logic error.

That's right. Because there is *evidence* that he has made a basic logic error. This evidence is not conclusive, but it is evidence nonetheless. And while I'm on the road, and the book is not available on Kindle, basing my assessment on the data I have at my disposal is the best I can do. (And BTW, what difference does it make if he's famous? Famous people make mistakes too.)

> That really is antagonistic. It is evidence of failure to read charitably. And it sets me on guard; I have been read uncharitably so many times in the past by atheists on the internet that I can do a pretty good job of protecting myself from it.

But dude, it's not *you* I was reading uncharitably, it was Jacques Ellul! (And it wasn't even Ellul, it was his blurb writier!) I've actually been bending over backwards to read what you write in the most favorable light possible and not make any unwarranted assumptions. (I may not have always succeeded in this, but I have tried.) I don't even know if you're a (SI-)Christian because you haven't told me (though I have my suspicions).

> I can spell it out if you would like

Yes, please do. That would greatly decrease the potential for misunderstanding.

> You've said below that you "have no idea" what it means to "believe in Christ".

No, that's not what I said. What I said is that I have no idea how to define *precisely* what it means to believe in Christ (go back and re-read the text you wrote that I was responding to). I certainly have a vague idea of what it means to believe in Christ. (And AFAICT it means different things to different people. This is part of the problem.)

> Can you see how this is like a layman being utterly unable to differentiate between science and pseudoscience?

Sure, but the difference is that it's pretty easy to explain the difference between science and pseudo-science to someone who doesn't understand it. Getting a handle on what it means to "believe in Christ" seems to be considerably more difficult.

> Philosophers of science know that drawing a hard-and-fast line distinguishing the two is probably impossible.

Then philosophers of science are wrong. It is easy to draw a line between science and psuedo-science: if it's based on evidence, experiment and reason, then it's science. If it's not, then it isn't. (The Mythbusters, for example, do real science despite the fact that they are entertainers, not scientists.)

Ron said...


> But suppose that Jesus did lots of miracles, died, was raised three days later. Just grant me that.

Which miracles? All of the miracles of the NT or just some in particular? Did he do them by trickery? Did he employ some advanced technology? Or did he actually suspend the laws of physics by some sort of magic? (BTW, if you want the hypothetical to include ALL of the miracles of the NT, the Jesus being raised is unremarkable. Lots of people were raised from the dead in the NT (e.g. Mat27:52-53, John 11:14,17,43-44).

Are you sure you want to go down this rabbit hole?

> In other words, I claim there need to be causal chains which trace back to the particular events of the NT

OK, but you have to keep in mind that you're talking to someone who believes that the NT is fiction. So it's impossible for me to take seriously the idea of "causal chains which trace back to the particular events" of a work of fiction. If you want me to take this idea seriously you need to start by convincing me that the NT is not fiction, and the only way you'll be able to do that is to present me with evidence that it's not fiction, because my core belief is that evidence, experiment and reason are the ultimate arbiters of truth. And I doubt very much that you'll be able to do that, but you are welcome to try.

BTW, it would help a lot if you would tell me a little more about your own beliefs so I can stop having to make assumptions about them. Are you an SI-Christian? Do you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God? (And if the answers are "yes" and "no" then what is your core belief? If the Bible is not the inerrant Word of God, how do you decide which parts to believe and which to reject?)

Luke said...

> Because there is *evidence* that he has made a basic logic error.

And this is evidence of a style of interpretation which is quite uncharitable. But I could be entirely wrong, and let me explain. I did some UG work at Caltech, and ended up having a long-time CS professor be my best man. He explains that there is a style of critique whereby if there is ANYTHING wrong in a presentation, Caltech folks will call it "all wrong", "stupid", "you don't know what you're talking about", etc. But it might be that there was just a little technical error. Perhaps this is what you were actually doing?

> (And BTW, what difference does it make if he's famous? Famous people make mistakes too.)

He has (had) a reputation to protect, in academia. Surely you know how much academicians love to prove each other wrong? Imagine how shameful it would be to have published an entire book which falls prey to No True Scotsman!

> But dude, it's not *you* I was reading uncharitably, it was Jacques Ellul!

Ehh, you criticized me by proxy. "This dude is so naive, that he would approve of a book that is transparently No True Scotsman." Now, perhaps I am being overly sensitive. What I will say is that I've tended to have very bad experiences with those whose first response is a sarcastically phrased, biting, condemnatory criticism. The statistics for such encounters are not good.

> Yes, please do. That would greatly decrease the potential for misunderstanding.

I'd like to do this gradually, as every single word is packed with meaning. So first, are you aware of the tendency in philosophic thought and literature to describe humans as having insatiable desires? For example, in The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer sees the "insatiable will to life" as responsible for tremendous suffering. Can you appreciate the idea that maybe there is a healthy way to satisfy this "will to life"? Many pitfalls would have to be avoided in order to allow a potentially infinite striving; it is my experience that the general tendency in humanity is to simply restrict how much is actually possible—to put a de facto ceiling in place, which perhaps only the occasional hero or businessman can pierce.

> No, that's not what I said. What I said is that I have no idea how to define *precisely* what it means to believe in Christ (go back and re-read the text you wrote that I was responding to). I certainly have a vague idea of what it means to believe in Christ. (And AFAICT it means different things to different people. This is part of the problem.)

I stand corrected. Perhaps you could explain, instead of what it means to do this fuzzily and perhaps contradictorily defined thing, what it means not to do it. What does nobody who claims to "believe in Christ" do/say? If nothing is actually denied when you attempt to describe everyone who uses the name "Christian", then the term is meaningless unless it is further defined, such that it excludes some who pick the name for themselves.

> Sure, but the difference is that it's pretty easy to explain the difference between science and pseudo-science to someone who doesn't understand it. Getting a handle on what it means to "believe in Christ" seems to be considerably more difficult.

Well, considering that the purview of science is fantastically smaller than the purview of religion, this isn't surprising. Cue mockery of those "soft sciences". obligatory XKCD

Luke said...

> Then philosophers of science are wrong. It is easy to draw a line between science and psuedo-science: if it's based on evidence, experiment and reason, then it's science. If it's not, then it isn't. (The Mythbusters, for example, do real science despite the fact that they are entertainers, not scientists.)

You may just provoke me to do the research required to demonstrate my point—it's been on my list. As a starter, there's this Scientific American blog post, Drawing the line between science and pseudo-science. Curiously enough, I've just started reading Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, which is arguing that the line isn't so sharp between fact/value in economics as many are wont to believe. This line-drawing business is really tricky; the Logical Positivists found that out to their deep chagrin.

> Which miracles?

All of them.

> Are you sure you want to go down this rabbit hole?

Sure. There is always the question of what precisely a given miracle is evidence of. 2 Thess 2:1–12 and Mt 24:23–25 are interesting in this respect.

> Or did he actually suspend the laws of physics by some sort of magic?

I'm of the opinion that reality is infinitely rational, in the sense that a computer program with recursively enumerable axioms would be insufficient to describe it. And so, all a miracle is, is the use of more of the lawfulness of reality than the observers of that miracle currently understand. For a more formal version of this, see Leibniz's theistic case against Humean miracles plus the author's work-in-progress, A Leibnizian Theory of Miracles. I'm friends with the author; he recently got his PhD in philosophy from USC.

> OK, but you have to keep in mind that you're talking to someone who believes that the NT is fiction. So it's impossible for me to take seriously the idea of "causal chains which trace back to the particular events" of a work of fiction.

Then we should not talk about this matter. I claim it's reasonable to investigate any subset of a causal chain; if you do not, and are not willing to suspend disbelief, then this tangent would be fruitless.

Luke said...

> BTW, it would help a lot if you would tell me a little more about your own beliefs so I can stop having to make assumptions about them. Are you an SI-Christian? Do you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God?

I'm not yet ready to give the kind of response I think you want; I suggest you ask me in person. You'll probably find me a bit of an odd duck; I've spent 10,000+ years over 15+ years talking about Christianity and related issues (e.g. philosophy) with folks on the internet, predominantly atheists. I've done my best to take them seriously, which sadly, is not something I frequently see Christians do. Another who does do this is Charles Taylor, and his short The Malaise of Modernity shows it. Anyhow, the result of this is that the way I think about Christianity seems quite different from many Christians with whom I've interacted, from many Christians I've read, and from many Christians I've read about.

Actually, I can say this much. I hold that the potential of humanity is truly infinite, which poses a problem if the universe is finite. And so, I subscribe to something like the growing block universe, and hold that there is a person—God—who exists outside of any closed system. Causal closure is, BTW, a necessary part of physicalism. Furthermore, there has to be causal interaction between the infinite source and humanity. We need the sun for physical energy, but I think a different kind of unit is required for our infinite potential, a unit which can only come from an infinite person actually building into our lives. I hold the the fundamental mode of interaction between persons is dialogue, whereby each maintains his/her freedom. And thus, Jesus as the Logos, the Word, makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. That fuzziness in language which I claim exists when it comes to drawing a precise line between e.g. science and pseudoscience, is the stuff of freedom.

Furthermore, I hold that being a person is necessarily to have a position on 'the good', an orientation if you will. Indeed, I would connect this 'orientation' to teleology, and say that each person has a telos. Jesus himself is called "telos of the law" in Rom 10:4. A fundamental question is opened up here: how can the teloi of multiple people interact? Does each try to subsume the rest? Or can there be a kind of growing unity among them, with each continuing to also progress in an individual way? I claim that the truest unity is modeled by there being non-complete overlap between folks teloi, with the overlapping telos approximating Jesus more and more as more and more interact in the right ways, for more and more time. I claim that this can only actually happen if Jesus is real and is drawing people to him, sorta-kinda like Plato thought Ideas can exert causal forces on matter.

I admit that the above is tremendously abstract. It may surprise you that I'm actually a very practical person, and subscribe to Feynman's "What I cannot create, I cannot understand." I came up with the above (and more) in an attempt to really make sense of things. Much if not all of the above, I can connect to day-to-day life particulars.

Ron said...

> I've tended to have very bad experiences with those whose first response is a sarcastically phrased, biting, condemnatory criticism. The statistics for such encounters are not good.

Understood. I'll try to tone down the sarcasm, though it's pretty deeply woven into my nature so I will no doubt have lapses. Please bear with me.

So let me rephrase my position as non-sarcastically as I can: we're talking about a group of SI-Christians who oppose religious freedom for (at least some) non-(SI-)Christians. You took issue with my implicitly lumping these SI-Christians in with all Christians, a point which I immediately conceded and corrected, to which you responded with a reference to Ellul and the leprechaun story. To which I responded, with one oblique offhand comment, that this looked, based on the information I had at my disposal at the time, like the no-true-scotsman fallacy to me.

I have since returned from my travels and the information I have at my disposal is no longer nearly as sparse as it was before. I've read your comments, and I've read the excerpts of Ellul's book available on Google books. This includes the entire first chapter, and a lot of the rest of the book, and I see no evidence at all that my initial judgement was actually wrong. Indeed, I think it is telling that you have not actually argued that my judgement was wrong, merely that it was "uncharitable" and disrespectful of a dead man's academic reputation. (You know, I used to be an academic too. Should I expect deference from you on account of that?)

> I claim it's reasonable to investigate any subset of a causal chain; if you do not, and are not willing to suspend disbelief, then this tangent would be fruitless.

I'm happy to suspend disbelief, but you have to tell me which beliefs you want me to suspend. What does it *mean* to "follow a causal chain" in a fictional world? In the real world I can follow causal chains because I can do experiments and develop explanatory theories based on the results. I can then test the predictions of those theories against further experiments, and continue that process to get a very powerful explanatory theory with high predictive power. I don't see how that is possible in a fictional world where you can't do experiments.

For example: I grant that Jesus performed miracles. On this assumption alone, it seems to me we cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus performed his miracles with the assistance of Loki or, indeed, that Jesus *was* Loki in disguise. In fact, starting a religion as chaotic as Christianity is just the sort of thing Loki would do. But I'm pretty sure this line of reasoning is not what you had in mind.

Ron said...

> I hold that the potential of humanity is truly infinite, which poses a problem if the universe is finite.

Not really. The universe may be finite, but the multiverse is may not be. (You really should read TBoI.)

> I subscribe to something like the growing block universe,

OK, I'm still with you...

> and hold that there is a person—God—who exists outside of any closed system

Ah, there's where you lose me. What do you mean by "person"? You can't possibly mean a literal flesh-and-blood human, so what do you mean? And do you have any *evidence* for the existence of this hypothetical person? Or is this just something you believe because the prospect if its not being true scares you (or something like that)?

> I think a different kind of unit is required for our infinite potential, a unit which can only come from an infinite person actually building into our lives. I hold the the fundamental mode of interaction between persons is dialogue, whereby each maintains his/her freedom. And thus, Jesus as the Logos, the Word, makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.

Funny, we have actually gotten to where we are by very similar paths. You really, really, really need to read TBoI.

Publius said...

Various Commentary

Ron>And I presume that the "True Christians" are the ones who base their beliefs on what is written in the Bible. Is that right? (Can someone who is not a young earth creationist be a True Christian?)

Sola Scriptura is a relatively recent doctrine (~ 1517). The Catholic faith is based on the Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Catholics have no problem with the age of the earth, evolution, natural seletion, or science. Literal interpretation of the Bible leaves one with an incomplete understanding, as one misses the metaphors.

If you want to define Christianity, a good starting point is the Nicene Creed.

Luke>(2) encouraging infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness
Ron> > For starters, I don't really know what "infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness" means.

I'm with you here Ron. Although if one takes the revelation of Christ, then extrapolates it, abstracts it, and generalizes it, you could arrive at that statement. That perhaps is getting close to the heresy of gnosticism.

>It is easy to draw a line between science and psuedo-science: if it's based on evidence, experiment and reason, then it's science. If it's not, then it isn't.

This is the demarcation problem.

As for the sciences, they do not have equal rigor - and are often ranked from hard sciences to soft sciences.
Thermodynamics, Physics, and Chemistry are all hard sciences.
Biology is in the middle, along with Entomology and Zoology - they do not always seek to generate testable hypothesis.
Some soft sciences are Psychology, Sociology, Medicine, and Epidemiology.
What are we to make of Archeology? Astronomy?
Cosmology? If cosmic inflation is not falsifiable, have cosmologists been engaging in pseudo-science for 30 years?

Ron>I'm happy to suspend disbelief, but you have to tell me which beliefs you want me to suspend

Perhaps a predicate question would be helpful here:
Given current understanding of the physical sciences, can one conclude that God is impossible in the universe? Or is God possible, but unproven?

>Luke> and hold that there is a person—God—who exists outside of any closed system
>
>Ron>Ah, there's where you lose me. What do you mean by "person"? You can't possibly mean a literal flesh-and-blood human, so what do you mean?

Ron, you're not familiar with the terminology here in the context of Christianity. In the Christian context, When we say that God is a personal being we mean that He is intelligent and free and distinct from the created universe. He is not a magnified human. More detail via the link.

>Leprechaun
-brilliant!

Ron said...

> This is the demarcation problem.

Yes. The demarcation problem is a solved problem. Karl Popper solved it.

> If cosmic inflation is not falsifiable, have cosmologists been engaging in pseudo-science for 30 years?

Yes, and so have the string theorists. (Note, however, that it is not clear whether these theories are in fact unfalsifiable.)

> Ron, you're not familiar with the terminology here in the context of Christianity.

Actually, I am. I am not as poorly read in Christian theology as you think. In fact, I actually understand Christian theology better than most Christians I meet (though you seem to be one of the notable exceptions). But the problem is that there is not one Christian theology, there are many, many Christian theologies. Some have names (Catholic, Calvinist, Arminian, Baptist, Pentacostal, Eastern Orthodox, dominionist, prosperity gospel... I could go on and on) and some don't. Some SI-Christians explicitly eschew all of these labels and simply insist that they are otherwise undifferentiated "Christians" who simply "believe in the Bible" or something like that. (I even know a few SI-Christians who are actually atheists, that is, they don't believe Jesus was a deity. But they nonetheless go to church and insist that they are Christians. Who am I to deny it?) So whenever I engage a SI-Christian in a discussion about religion my first task is always to find out what they actually believe so I'm not knocking down straw men.

So when I asked Luke what he meant by "person" I really wanted to know what *he* meant, not what Christians in general mean (I already know that).

(Note, BTW, that Luke has not yet self-identified as a Christian, and neither have you. Why do the two of you feel the need to be so cagey? Am I really that intimidating?)

> Given current understanding of the physical sciences, can one conclude that God is impossible in the universe? Or is God possible, but unproven?

Which God? And by "universe" do you mean the multiverse, or just our branch of the multiverse? It is a logical tautology that science will never be able to rule out the God of the Gaps. But there are at least two epistemological claims of Christian theology that can be ruled out by our current understanding of science:

1. An afterlife. There is overwhelming evidence that consciousness is a physical phenomenon, that it is produced by the brain, and that when the brain dies, the consciousness it produced vanishes. (It might be possible some day to extract the information content of the brain and download one's consciousness into another medium, but there is no evidence that this happens spontaneously.

2. Miracles, i.e. a deity who can suspend the laws of physics at will. All the evidence is that the universe operates at all times and in all places according to relatively simple mathematical laws, and that all accounts of deviations from this are either mistakes or deliberate attempts by humans to deceive.

Luke said...

I'd like to return to the following:

> > I thought my (1)–(3) was pretty clear?

> Not to me, sorry. And even if they were, like I said, a definition needs to start with the words, "A Christian is..." and not the word "Suppose." Sorry if I'm being dense here.

To remind you:

> (1) stability of society
> (2) encouraging infinite, harmonious growth in complexity and awesomeness
> (3) gaining increasing power over the many

Before I attempt to further articulate (2), can you see how (1) and (3) can be bad, and how there might be a third option—whether it is (2), or something else? In particular, I'd like to emphasize what has traditionally happened when (1) was emphasized; my impression it has routinely been used to thwart the growth of life. To use a metaphor, it would be like continually pruning a tree back to the same size, instead of merely keeping it pruned as it grows.

I am operating under the assumption that reality is infinitely complex, either in fact or in potential (e.g. growing block universe). That means that the "right course" to take through reality may only ultimately defined by something like the via negativa. For example, in The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware speaks of the Ecumenical Councils not so much defining what is true, such as "drawing a fence around the mystery". I forget my Popper specifics, but some of how he defines science may actually be quite similar; I recall one formulation of scientific law as being "that which does not happen".

So, let's see if we can nail down (1) and (3) a bit, before doing too much with (2). And let's see if we need a (4), (5), ...

Publius said...

>Yes. The demarcation problem is a solved problem. Karl Popper solved it.

Or has he?

>(Note, BTW, that Luke has not yet self-identified as a Christian, and neither have you. Why do the two of you feel the need to be so cagey? Am I really that intimidating?)

Prefer to be unlabeled.

> Given current understanding of the physical sciences, can one conclude that God is impossible in the universe? Or is God possible, but unproven?

>Which God?

Any god.*

And by "universe" do you mean the multiverse, or just our branch of the multiverse?

The "observable universe" will suffice.

>It is a logical tautology that science will never be able to rule out the God of the Gaps.

At this point, I realized I asked an ill-formed question.

Instead of trying to reform it as a sentence, let me list a series of statements.

If one accepts that:
1. "Science" is a successful and useful framework for undrestanding the world and the universe (and the phenomena of everyday life are completely undrestood).
2. Scientific knowledge is accumulated via scientific method(s).
3. No deity is needed to explain anything.
4. The existance of a deity cannot be proven using scientific method(s).

Then
A. Can one conclude that a deity is impossible?

Some correlaries to the above:
i) Can something be True in this universe, but scientifically unproveable? [Godel's incompleteness theorem is perhaps a jumping off point here]
ii) Are there some Truths that cannot be discovered via the scientific method? [Not the same as i) - focus here is on the limitations of the method. Some are strictly practical - we can't wait for 300 million years to complete an experiment, we can't trigger supernovas, etc. Perhaps, though, the method is also unsuitable for the discovery of certain truths.]
iii) Can an individual know something to be True, but be unable to prove it to another person? [zero knowledge proofs are perhaps a fruitful direction here]
iv) If a deity were proveable with science, would religion work? What would the world be like?

No need to respond to any of the correlaries; they will perhaps be illucidated over time.

* At times, I think you seek definitions too often. We're educated people and the common definitions are usually sufficient in moving the discussion forward. Asking for a precise definition is a "STOP" sign in the discussion; I think we could use "Yield" more often (which is: stop if you need to, otherwise proceed with caution). If I write "soap," don't stop to clarify, "Do you mean 'soap' or 'detergent'? Does it contain sodium lauryl sulfate? Is it used for cleaning people, floors, or as an engine degreaseer?".

Ron said...

@Luke:

> can you see how (1) and (3) can be bad

You lost me before you even got to (1) because in your recap you left out your original preamble: "Suppose there are three general purposes of people..." You may as well have said, "Suppose there are unicorns." Because there simply aren't "three general purposes of people", and even if there were, your list wouldn't be it. If there is such a thing as a "general purpose of people" at all it is to reproduce.

(BTW, IMO societal stability can be a good thing. I'm a big fan of civilization, and that depends on a certain amount of stability.)

@publius:

> Or has he?

Yes, he has. The counter-argument you point to is easily debunked:

"Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets."

The idea of "observing an entity *directly*" is a straw man. We don't observe *anything* directly, not even our immediate surroundings. And any entity whose existence cannot be demonstrated experimentally, even in principle, cannot possibly "play a crucial role in how the world works."

> Prefer to be unlabeled.

As you wish :-)

> Any god.*

> The "observable universe" will suffice.

There is no evidence for the existence of gods in the observable universe, though we can't definitively rule out the existence of advanced alien civilizations that our forebears would have considered gods (c.g. the original Star Trek series episode Who Mourns for Adonais?)

> A. Can one conclude that a deity is impossible?

Of course not. It is possible the laws of physics will change tomorrow. But I'll give you long odds against.

> Can something be True in this universe, but scientifically unproveable?

This is a straw man, because science never *proves* anything. It only provides increasingly more powerful *explanations*.

> Are there some Truths that cannot be discovered via the scientific method?

There are almost certainly some practical limitations because the observable universe is finite. But in principle, all Truths can be discovered via observation, experiment, and reason. If it can't be discovered by observation, experiment, and reason, even in principle, then it is not a Truth.

If you wish to dispute this, then here's a question for you: consider any non-falsifiable proposition P. You claim P, and I claim NOT P. We can't both be right. How could we possibly resolve our dispute? And if we can't, then on what basis could we possibly say that P or NOT P is a Truth?

> If a deity were proveable with science, would religion work? What would the world be like?

I have no idea what you mean by "work". Would it still provide the emotional comfort that (I believe) is the function of religion? I have no idea. You'd have to ask someone who currently relies on that emotional comfort. I don't, so I have no way of knowing if having scientific proof of my god would make that emotional comfort suddenly evaporate. It might.

> No need to respond to any of the correlaries

Meh, these aren't even hard questions.

Luke said...

> You lost me before you even got to (1) because in your recap you left out your original preamble: "Suppose there are three general purposes of people..." You may as well have said, "Suppose there are unicorns." Because there simply aren't "three general purposes of people", and even if there were, your list wouldn't be it. If there is such a thing as a "general purpose of people" at all it is to reproduce.

I'm sorry, I should perhaps have said that these purposes can be well-used to model society. Have you read any sociology? (1) is pretty obviously the case; see Peter Berger's Facing Up to Modernity:

>> The left, by and large, understands that all societal order is precarious. It generally failed to understand that, just because of this precariousness, societies will react with almost instinctive violence to any fundamental or long-lasting threat to their order. (xv)

Does this make sense to you? Completely aside from any No True Scotsman issues that may exist in Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity, he spends a lot of time talking about what was done to preserve societal order. Indeed, he sees that as one way Christianity was subverted. But until I can show you (1) is a real thing that is quite relevant, I'm not sure we can push this conversation forward.

As to (3), I would ask if you can make sense of the following, from Subversion:

>> And what about another concept that seems to be essential in the life of Jesus Christ, that of weakness, which is linked with anti politics? What can be more the opposite of what we are? Is not the spirit of power at the heart of all our actions? I concede that it may not exist among some so-called primitive people in tribes that know no violence and seek no domination. But these are such an exception that we certainly cannot take them as a natural example of what humanity is in general—if there is such a thing as "humanity in general." (164–5)

>> One might truly say that the desire to dominate, to crush, to use others, is a general one and admits of hardly any exceptions. (166)

Now, you may disagree with this claim of Ellul's, where he is trying to draw a stark contrast between how people traditionally deal with power, and Jesus, as exemplified by Mt 20:20–28 and Jn 13:1–20. But I want to see first if you can merely make sense of what he's saying.

> (BTW, IMO societal stability can be a good thing. I'm a big fan of civilization, and that depends on a certain amount of stability.)

Agreed. The question is one of priorities. What is allowed to threaten societal stability, and what does the value of societal stability squash? An instance of the latter, according to a teacher friend, is that there is some great research on how to teach children better which is not allowed to pierce the politics of public education. I am sure there are many others. We could discuss the optimal way for Jesus' followers to undermine the institution of slavery without causing another Servile War, and compare that to what was done.

Luke said...

@Ron,

> Yes. The demarcation problem is a solved problem. Karl Popper solved it.

What do you think of the folks at Wikipedia's demarcation problem who disagree, like Feyerabend who argued:

>> within the history of scientific practice, no rule or method can be found that has not been violated or circumvented at some point in order to advance scientific knowledge.

? Suppose, for example, that some flavor of M-theory succeeds. Do we really want to say that it was only math for a while, and then became science? This seems dangerous: the more and more complicated science gets, the less time scientists may be spending in "science land". And yet, it strikes me we would be in want of a term which explains all parts of the process of learning more about how reality works; 'science' has traditionally served as that term. I've actually gotten a taste of this myself, with my wife doing more and more computer modeling with her postdoc biophysics work. At what point does Popper's definition of 'science' refuse to call all of my wife's work, 'science'?

By the way, I have Popper's The Myth of the Framework checked out from the library but due in a few days; do you suggest I read any particular bits, re: this matter?

> > If cosmic inflation is not falsifiable, have cosmologists been engaging in pseudo-science for 30 years?

> Yes, and so have the string theorists. (Note, however, that it is not clear whether these theories are in fact unfalsifiable.)

FYI: Physics.SE What experiment would disprove string theory?, especially Luboš Motl's huge answer, plus all the discussion about it. I have no dogs in the string theory game, but I do like watching it from time to time.

Ron said...

> I should perhaps have said that these purposes can be well-used to model society.

Ah. Well, that is an altogether different thing. But then there are way more than three possibilities. First, you can choose to prefer stability or change, and then you can choose various places to draw the boundary between "us" and "them" (the individual, the family, the clan, the city-state, the species, the phylum, the biosphere...). But all of these dynamics can be understood in terms of evolution and game theory.

> Have you read any sociology?

Nope.

> Does this make sense to you?

Sure, but it doesn't seem like a particularly deep observation. Of course there's tension between stability and change. How could it be otherwise?

> I would ask if you can make sense of the following, from Subversion:

Yes, that makes sense, but again, not a particularly deep observation. Of course some people want to dominate other people. Again, that is an elementary result from evolution and game theory. (This is one of the reasons I don't read sociology, because most of them appear to be blissfully unaware that all of the problems in their field were solved decades ago by the biologists and computer scientists.)

> One might truly say that the desire to dominate, to crush, to use others, is a general one and admits of hardly any exceptions.

The variable is how you define "others" (see above about the various places to draw the boundary between "us" and "them"). Even a pacifist vegetarian has a desire to dominate, crush and use carrots.

> We could discuss the optimal way for Jesus' followers to undermine the institution of slavery without causing another Servile War,

What??? The last Servile War ended in 71 BC, so no "follower of Jesus" could possibly have been involved.

BTW, the whole idea that "followers of Jesus" have any particular standing with respect to undermining the institution of slavery is offensive. There is clear support for maintaining slavery as an institution in both the old and new testaments (Lev25:45, Exo21:7,21, Luke 12:47-48, I could go on and on) and self-identified followers of Jesus were instrumental in the establishment and maintenance of slavery in the American South. Even today there are self-identified followers of Jesus who defend slavery.

>> within the history of scientific practice, no rule or method can be found that has not been violated or circumvented at some point in order to advance scientific knowledge.

> Do we really want to say that it was only math for a while, and then became science?

If a football player is off-sides, thus violating the rules of football, does that mean that we can longer call the activity he is engaged in "playing football"?

Luke said...

> Ah. Well, that is an altogether different thing. But then there are way more than three possibilities. First, you can choose to prefer stability or change, and then you can choose various places to draw the boundary between "us" and "them" (the individual, the family, the clan, the city-state, the species, the phylum, the biosphere...). But all of these dynamics can be understood in terms of evolution and game theory.

Ok, are you taking into account how much individual citizens care to be involved in decision-making and how much they simply want things done for them? I'm thinking of stuff like the following, from Charles Taylor's The Malaise of Modernity:

>>     But there is another kind of loss of freedom, which has also been widely discussed, most memorably by Alexis de Tocqueville. A society in which people end up as the kind of individuals who are "enclosed in their own hearts" is one where few will want to participate actively in self-government. They will prefer to stay at home and enjoy the satisfactions of private life, as long as the government of the day produces the means to these satisfactions and distributes them widely.
>>     This opens the danger of a new, specifically modern form of despotism, which Tocqueville calls "soft" despotism. It will not be a tyranny of terror and oppression as in the old days. The government will be mild and paternalistic. It may even keep democratic forms, with periodic elections. But in fact, everything will be run by an "immense tutelary power,"[9] over which people will have little control. The only defence against this, Tocqueville thinks, is a vigorous political culture in which participation is valued, at several levels of government and in voluntary associations as well. But the atomism of the self-absorbed individual militates against this. (9)

The term often used for [some of] the above is "nanny state", but it seems to be vastly less descriptive and too open to misinterpretation and "just-so story"-status. One of Ellul's points in Subversion is that people want the illusion of freedom without the actual responsibilities of freedom. Does this concept make sense to you—does it map onto any observed reality? If so, I think it's important to ask what happens when you dial up/down the number of people who don't want actual freedom. This becomes quite relevant to [biblical] Christianity: it focuses heavily on freedom and responsibilities of freedom.

> Nope.

Ahh, well, I can say that a lot of sociology is polluted by a bad model of human nature; Donald Polkinghorne illustrates this in Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences; F.A. Hayek does as well in Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason. That being said, I think there's a lot to understand in the distribution and change of power in society, and I think understanding this is crucial to dispelling your No True Scotsman claim. Oh, to what extent does your "evolution and game theory" rely on "economic man"? Hayek has a lot of criticisms for that conception, so I'm curious how you deviate from the classical model.

Luke said...

> Sure, but it doesn't seem like a particularly deep observation. Of course there's tension between stability and change. How could it be otherwise?

I get that this isn't "a particularly deep observation", but when you respond to statements of mine with "I have no idea what you're talking about", that drives me to start at a vastly simpler place and then build up. Surely you know that the stability dynamics of systems can be incredibly complex? What might seem like vanishingly small tweaks can have nontrivial repercussions. Therefore, understanding different formulations of "Christianity" may require diving into these dynamics. I claim this is especially so, because Christianity is inherently relational. To omit this aspect would be to try to take the mass of a proton by only summing the masses of the quarks.

> Of course some people want to dominate other people.

Ok, but how does one effectively deal with this fact? I'll throw in a bit from Bent Flyvbjerg's Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice:

>> The empirical study is summed up in a number of propositions about the relationship between rationality and power, concluding that power has a rationality that rationality does not know, whereas rationality does not have a power that power does not know. (2)

Jesus had something very specific to say about power, exemplified by Mt 20:20–28 and Jn 13:1–20. What I wonder is whether you can see how at odds these conceptions of the use of power are, from what tends to happen to accumulation of power in society. Furthermore, merely changing one's behavior to align with those passages is likely to fail unless other factors—factors I claim exist in Christianity—are also included. Going beyond this, I think we need to deal with e.g. Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity, some of which I claim are failure modes of Christianity, and not Christianity proper.

> (This is one of the reasons I don't read sociology, because most of them appear to be blissfully unaware that all of the problems in their field were solved decades ago by the biologists and computer scientists.)

Would you point me to a few summarizing resources on this issue? I do know a bit about what you're talking about, but your "all of the problems" is a very, very bold claim. Among other things, I am very interested in whether "biologists and computer scientists" pay any attention to the qualitative experience in life and how it impacts decision making, compared to mere quantitative aspects of life.

Luke said...

> What??? The last Servile War ended in 71 BC, so no "follower of Jesus" could possibly have been involved.

Yes, I said "another Servile War". You see, many atheists I encounter strongly criticize the NT for not coming out harshly against the institution of slavery. My response is that this would likely not have been a good thing, for reasons aforementioned. Instead, I claim, one needs to undermine the reasons for its existence. This, I claim the NT does.

> BTW, the whole idea that "followers of Jesus" have any particular standing with respect to undermining the institution of slavery is offensive.

Heh, here we go again. My brother-in-law is an ardent atheist, a computer scientist and machine learning expert who just got his PhD from MIT and is now doing his postdoc at Harvard, and I convinced him that Christianity played a pivotal role in the abolition of slavery in America. So I'm willing to attempt a similar argument with you, if you'd like.

> Even today there are self-identified followers of Jesus who defend slavery.

Well, if you allow the term "Christianity" to be anything people want it to be, this claim is both unsurprising and meaningless. History is littered with people who clearly manipulate philosophy/religion to suit their predetermined ends. Without any effort to see whether this is being done in this case, to stake out any claim whatsoever is foolish.

But let's take a look at an example from history, the Cornerstone Speech, by VP Alexander H. Stephens:

>> The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

>> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Contrast this Eph 2:20, which clearly has Jesus being the "chief cornerstone". Do you really want to let the label "Christian" be so liberally applied? You are merely reinforcing the idea that SI-Christian is a meaningless term. Yes, meaningless. If Alexander H. Stephens is allowed to call himself "Christian", that is an utter destruction of the term, Leprechaun-style.

> If a football player is off-sides, thus violating the rules of football, does that mean that we can longer call the activity he is engaged in "playing football"?

Given that football is artificial, I see this as a bad analogy.

Ron said...

> when you respond to statements of mine with "I have no idea what you're talking about", that drives me to start at a vastly simpler place and then build up

Fair enough.

> how does one effectively deal with this fact?

What makes you think that this fact needs to be "dealt with"?

> Would you point me to a few summarizing resources on this issue?

I already have: David Deutsch, "The Beginning of Infinity."

Also, Robert Axelrod, "The Evolution of Cooperation." (And if you really want to round out the list, "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.)

> football is artificial

So is science.

Ron said...

> Christianity played a pivotal role in the abolition of slavery in America.

Of course it did. It also played a pivotal role in the establishment of slavery in America. (SI-)Christianity is almost infinitely malleable.

> Eph 2:20

That refers to the church, not the secular government. If you recall, Jesus drew a sharp line between the two (Mat22:21).

> if you allow the term "Christianity" to be anything people want it to be

I'm still waiting for you to propose an alternative.

Luke said...

> What makes you think that this fact needs to be "dealt with"?

Don't you think it important to properly thwart those who have strong desires to dominate other people? Hell, I'm aware of a prof whose desire to dominate her students is hurting the very progress of science. I know it isn't rare, but mightn't it be useful to explore the foundations of why that happens, and what changes might reduce that nonsense? We'd have to stick to what I call "psychologically tenable" stuff, which means e.g. respecting what Bent Flyvbjerg says about power subverting rationality, unless you reject his empirical claims (and yes, he might be wrong).

> I already have: David Deutsch, "The Beginning of Infinity."

I do own the book, and did read the chapter on how to allocate federal representatives to states. Do you really think he makes a sound case for the very ambitious statement you made, "all of the problems in their field were solved decades ago by the biologists and computer scientists"? I own The Selfish Gene; I've only read some of it. I will request The Evolution of Cooperation from the library; thanks for that recommendation.

> > football is artificial

> So is science.

Football does not have a potentially infinite-in-description referent: nature. Science does. Or whatever: I don't understand how your response is a defeater to the question of what % of my wife's biophysics work can be rigorously classified as 'science' by Popperian epistemology. You're speaking like the rules of science don't evolve—or at least, that the falsification criterion hasn't evolved. And yet, were M-theory to be validated by finding the configuration in the 10^500 available, would you really want to deny that it was "science" all along? Should you be happy to deny this, then the criticism: "You're not doing science!" starts being irrelevant, because some forms of not-science would be recognized as necessary for doing science.

Luke said...

> Of course it did. It also played a pivotal role in the establishment of slavery in America. (SI-)Christianity is almost infinitely malleable.

Yep, and so I say we need a way to cluster them, without you whipping out the No True Scotsman objection on a moment's notice. Or rather, if you choose to, then perhaps the word "Christian" will remain meaning, well, whatever the hell it means, in your mind. (I fail to see how it has any meaning, as I refuse to acknowledge that the mere self-labeling with a word has any meaning > ϵ.)

> That refers to the church, not the secular government. If you recall, Jesus drew a sharp line between the two (Mat22:21).

True. That doesn't change the fact that the thing they† are defending is antithetical to explicit bits in the Bible, hinting that maybe they don't give a flying fuck about what the Bible has to say, except for where it can be twisted and contorted to serve their purposes—two of which are social stability and current power distribution. Surely we can omit at least these people from any sensible definition of "Christian"?

To put it another way: calling Stephens a "Christian" is like calling Michael J. Behe a "scientist". Are you 100% happy with calling Behe a "scientist"? After all, surely you admit there are people who call themselves "scientist" who you think aren't scientists? Well, it's easiest to start pointing out such pseudoscientists by noting the extreme cases. Other cases get tricky. You seem really certain that Popperian falsification is enough; have you actually gotten in the thick of science to be able to say this experientially, instead of in a distanced fashion?

† "Even today there are self-identified followers of Jesus who defend slavery."

> I'm still waiting for you to propose an alternative.

If you don't recognize me attempting to slowly build a case, with someone who responded to an advanced version with "I have no idea what you're talking about"—that is, refusing to admit that there was any sense whatsoever in what I said—then I propose I give up, right now.

Ron said...

> Don't you think it important to properly thwart those who have strong desires to dominate other people?

That is way too open-ended a question to answer with a simple yes or no. Dominate how? Thwart how? (What constitutes "proper" thwarting?) Most CEOs have a strong desire to dominate other people, I don't necessarily think they need to be "thwarted". (Taxed, yes. But thwarted?)

Notwithstanding, in the interests of seeing where you want to go with this, I'll concede the point: those who have strong desires to dominate other people must be thwarted.

> Do you really think he makes a sound case for the very ambitious statement you made, "all of the problems in their field were solved decades ago by the biologists and computer scientists"?

Well, I was being a little bit glib about it. But I do believe that Dawkins and Axelrod inform sociology more than most sociologists realize (though, of course, I could be wrong about that since I don't read much sociology).

> what % of my wife's biophysics work can be rigorously classified as 'science' by Popperian epistemology

Exactly the percentage that is based on evidence, experiment and reason (not that it matters -- why are you so hung up on nomenclature?)

> You're speaking like the rules of science don't evolve—or at least, that the falsification criterion hasn't evolved.

It hasn't. The falsification criterion has always been there, just as relativity has always been there even though people weren't aware of it before 1905. Falsification was not *invented* by Popper, it was *discovered* by him. The reason a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific is that if it is not falsifiable then its truth cannot be decided by evidence, experiment and reason, and so it cannot be scientific.

You are getting too hung up on nomenclature. It doesn't matter whether you call it "science" or not. What matters is that you can choose to use evidence, experiment and reason as the arbiters of truth, or you can choose not to. It turns out that if you do, you acquire the power to predict the outcome of events with odds much greater than chance. This is an awesome power. Many people are jealous of it and try to claim it as their own. But the power does not derive from the word "science", the power derives from evidence, experiment and reason. The label is irrelevant.

> Yep, and so I say we need a way to cluster them

Sure. That's why we have lots of existing sub-catergories of Christian: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Calvinist, Arminian, Mormon... and if none of those are suitable for your purposes I'm happy to adopt a new category. But the burden is on you to describe its characteristics.

> To put it another way: calling Stephens a "Christian" is like calling Michael J. Behe a "scientist". Are you 100% happy with calling Behe a "scientist"?

It really makes no difference what you call him. What matters in science is not the people or the labels, it's the *ideas*, and whether or not they can stand up to scrutiny and criticism. (Re-)Read TBoI chapter 12.

> If you don't recognize me attempting to slowly build a case, with someone who responded to an advanced version with "I have no idea what you're talking about"—that is, refusing to admit that there was any sense whatsoever in what I said—then I propose I give up, right now.

Before you give up, try formulating it as a sentence that starts with the words, "A Christian is..."

(BTW, I'm not the only one who didn't get your "advanced version." Publius didn't get it either.)

Luke said...

> Notwithstanding, in the interests of seeing where you want to go with this, I'll concede the point: those who have strong desires to dominate other people must be thwarted.

There seem to be two options at this point: (1) dull everyone's "will to power" or "will to life" or whatever it is that has been noted throughout the ages; (2) find a way where everyone can exert this "will" in a way that nobody gets stomped on. I would describe (2) as the "democratization of power", and I would note that it has a number of prerequisites. For an enemy to this process of democratization, see the Malaise of Modernity quotation I included, above (search for "de Tocqueville"). Also see the bit about "illusion of freedom". Are we agreed that these thwart the democratization of power? That is, either a person wields responsibility, society crumbles, or someone else wields that responsibility for him/her.

What I'm getting at here is that life, where the few don't dominate the many, places requirements on "the many" which they frequently do not wish to bear. For example, in America I think many do not wish to bear those burdens, today. This is of course complicated by the general unawareness of the existence of such burdens. Christianity, as Ellul and I envision it, requires that people take responsibility. One way to look at a good deal of his Subversion of Christianity is that when people are forced into the faith and don't vow to accept said responsibility, Christianity itself is diluted. Does it make sense that this would happen, and have the effect of slowly changing the church and leading to the centralization of power?

> Well, I was being a little bit glib about it. But I do believe that Dawkins and Axelrod inform sociology more than most sociologists realize (though, of course, I could be wrong about that since I don't read much sociology).

I have no doubt about that. What I see is possibly a failure on your part to pay due diligence to the qualitative aspects of life—those which do not reduce to numbers. For example, there is a sociologist studying my wife's lab, to see (i) how research is done; (ii) how interdisciplinary research is done. Not all the information he is gathering can be reduced to numbers, and therefore it is difficult to see how evolution & game theory would come even close to the understanding he is working towards.

There is a tendency among Enlightenment thinkers to discard the qualitative as "subjective nonsense", whether in word or deed. F.A. Hayek criticizes this in The Abuse and Decline of Reason; Donald Polkinghorne cites it as part of the failure of the "human sciences" (including psychology and sociology) in the mid 1900's. Charles Taylor claims a person's "orientation toward the good" is critical to his/her identity in Sources of the Self, and argues that "strong qualitative evaluation" is a necessary part of one's conception of "the good". He could be wrong of course, but I've seen more reason/evidence on his side than against.

> Exactly the percentage that is based on evidence, experiment and reason (not that it matters -- why are you so hung up on nomenclature?)

I have been burned many a time by subtle or not-so-subtle differences in the meanings of terms. As I mentioned earlier, I am happy to make up new terms if the current ones are too polluted. In the case of 'science' here, I would question whether you can precisely state the meanings of 'evidence' and 'reason', given their interdependence and the lack of an objective, known-to-be-best universal Bayesian prior probability. One of my hypotheses is that subtle differences in one's universal prior (or whatever you want to call it) can lead to vastly different outworkings. And yet, failing to investigate that universal prior allows people to stack the deck in their favor.

Luke said...

> Before you give up, try formulating it as a sentence that starts with the words, "A Christian is..."

A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ. Entailed by this are:

1. Belief in Jesus as "the way, the truth, and the life".
2. Trust in Jesus.
3. Putting Jesus in first priority, over family, friends, things, etc.

These are straight from the NT. One caveat is that #1-#3 don't happen instantaneously; indeed they are lifelong projects. And so, I think it is much more useful to measure the derivative of them than their absolute values. C.S. Lewis put it nicely: "I would rather be one step from hell, headed toward heaven, than one step from heaven, headed toward hell."

This being said, there are still free variables in the above formulation that may well let Christianity be just about anything. For example, set "Jesus" = "myself", and [I think] you get some forms of liberal Christianity. I have yet to see what folks in the antebellum South thought of Jesus, although Mark Noll's Civil War as a Theological Crisis may shed some light, when I get around to reading it.

But perhaps the above still constitutes something falsifiable, even with the free variables as it currently stands? Perhaps "falsifiable" isn't the right word; what I mean to wonder about is whether it definitely excludes some people, no matter what meaning you put behind "Jesus".

Can you see why this is not the easiest of tasks? I was just reading about a phase of philosophy where folks tried to rigorously define various words; they found it to be tremendously difficult.

Ron said...

> in America I think many do not wish to bear those burdens

Yes. This is one of the reasons that it is far from clear that people who want to dominate others need (or even ought) to be thwarted. In fact, by taking steps to free people from domination, are you not yourself seeking to dominate them, or at least impose upon them your will that they be free from other forms of domination? If someone wants to trade freedom for (say) security, who are you to stop them?

> it is difficult to see how evolution & game theory would come even close to the understanding he is working towards

Of course it's difficult. But that's because you don't yet fully understand evolution and game theory. If it were easy we wouldn't be having this conversation.

> I would question whether you can precisely state the meanings of 'evidence' and 'reason'

It can be done, but it gets complicated. You have to take a deep dive into information theory, the theory of computation, statistics, formal logic... But even if this were not possible (and it has only recently become possible) it doesn't matter. Languages are theories subject to criticism and revision just like any other theories. That doesn't diminish their power in any way. People were able to do science long before they understood the details of what it is they were actually doing. And even today people are able to do science without such understanding. (And it is even possible to give a scientific account of why this is possible :-)

> A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ.

There, see, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Your definition raises a number of questions:

1. What does it mean to "follow Jesus Christ"? Does that mean that one lives one's life according to the words that Jesus spoke as recorded in the Gospels? Do the writings of Paul carry any weight? The rest of the NT? The OT? What about the Apocrypha? The Book of Mormon? Is an FJC-Christian rape victim obligated to marry her attacker if her father orders her to (Exodus 22, Matthew 5:18)?

2. What is the intersection of SI-Christians and FJC-Christians? I'm pretty sure that most SI-Christians (including the ones referred to in the OP) would insist that they are FJC-Christians. Are they wrong? How can you tell? Is there any commonly-identifiable subset of SI-Christians (Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, etc.) that coincides well with FJC-Christian?

3. Some of the themes you've brought up here seem to me to be very much at odds with what Jesus actually said (according to the Gospels). For example, you have strongly implied (though not explicitly said) that you believe that those who seek to dominate other should be thwarted. But Jesus said the exact opposite, that one should submit to earthly secular authority ("Render therefore unto Caesar..."). So are *you* an FJC-Christian?

4. You took offense at my original title, which implied that you disagreed with the position that the tutilar SI-Christians were taking with respect to religious freedom. But what exactly is wrong with their position? If Jesus really is *the* Way and the Truth and the Life (and not merely *a* way...) , then is it not a good thing to oppose other (false) religions that would take people away from Jesus if they were allowed to proliferate?

Luke said...

> Yes. This is one of the reasons that it is far from clear that people who want to dominate others need (or even ought) to be thwarted.

I am tempted to agree, although I have not thought through this very rigorously.

> If someone wants to trade freedom for (say) security, who are you to stop them?

I do not so much wish to stop them, as argue that such people are at odds with a plain reading of the Bible. Such people are like those Israelites in the Exodus who wished to return to Egypt where they were taken care of, even if life had its sucky aspects.

> Of course it's difficult. But that's because you don't yet fully understand evolution and game theory.

This still seems to express a faith that the qualitative ultimately reduces to the quantitative, no?

> It can be done, but it gets complicated.

If at the core, you deny ontic significance to the qualitative, then it is not clear to me that the qualitative can ever emerge in a logically rigorous way. It is my current suspicion that denial of ontic significance to the qualitative has severe repercussions for lived life, how we view other humans, and perhaps even how we do science. That being said, the significance of this matter has only just started to emerge in my mind. I'm pretty sure this relates to the longstanding primary/secondary quality distinction in philosophy, but it also seems to arise in very practical areas, like F.A. Hayek's Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason.

> There, see, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Actually, it was, because I worried that my definition as such didn't actually deny anything. That is, it smelled unfalsifiable as such. I am generally reticent to think in these terms, for reasons I think you can understand.

1. I don't think the answer is finitely-stateable, because I think the true nature of God is "infinite in description", such that no effectively generated formal system could accurately describe him. I think humans are similar in nature, in potentia. So, your question threatens to turn into something like: "What are the true laws of nature?"

2. I think that understanding the power and freedom dynamics I have been describing is a way to cluster Christians. Is power being democratized or centralized, on average? The democratization of power requires people to bear the corresponding responsibility. I don't mean this to be the only way to cluster various kinds of Christianity, but it seems to be a potent one that (i) Ellul uses; (ii) doesn't seem to fall prey to No True Scotsman.

3. Submitting to secular authorities is a way to subtly influence culture without attempting a bloody revolution which will probably end very badly, as history has shown us time and again. Indeed, one can even compare the Genesis creation myth with contemporary myths and see how subversive it was. Moving back to obeying Caesar, I suggest a gander at Empire Criticism and NT Wright.

4. If I only see through a glass darkly, that must factor into how I deal with people who think differently than I do. Furthermore, if I believe that coercing people is wrong, that will also impact my political philosophy. And that just scratches the surface.

Ron said...

> I worried that my definition as such didn't actually deny anything.

Did you mean "exclude" rather than "deny"? Definitions are never falsifiable. At worst, they are merely useless. But I'm pretty sure your definition excludes a great many people. For starters, I'm pretty sure it excludes me, though it's a little hard to tell because of your equivocation on things like:

>> 1. What does it mean to "follow Jesus Christ"?
> 1. I don't think the answer is finitely-stateable, because I think the true nature of God is "infinite in description"

Is it necessary to know the true nature of God in order to follow Jesus? Or to give a full description of the true nature of god in order to describe what it means to follow Jesus? If so, then that leave us poor finite humans in a bit of bind, doesn't it? Presuming that following Jesus is actually a desirable thing to do (you haven't actually said so, but I presume you believe it to be the case) then surely it is important to have some means of figuring what one should do and if one is making progress? And yet we live finite lives, and information flows in and out of our brains at a finite rate. So I see only two possibilities: 1) either it's possible to formulate a finite description of what it means to follow Jesus that is a good-enough approximation to the truth (by whatever quality metric you choose to apply), or 2) it's not possible, and hence attempting to follow Jesus is completely hopeless because there's no way for a human to even know approximately what "following Jesus" even means.

Which is it? Or is there a third possibility that I have overlooked?

Luke said...

> Did you mean "exclude" rather than "deny"? Definitions are never falsifiable.

Yes, I was searching for "deny".

> Is it necessary to know the true nature of God in order to follow Jesus?

Let's approximate following Jesus to "heading toward a specific point 5000 light-years from Earth". As long as your distance to that point is decreasing, you are following. But unless you're truly heading toward that point, at some time t you will no longer be heading toward that point; you will be heading away. And so, it is only marginally useful to talk about single points in time when talking about "follow Jesus".

> If so, then that leave us poor finite humans in a bit of bind, doesn't it?

Only if Jesus is not actively communicating to us, to help us change course to be more closely aimed at him.

> Which is it? Or is there a third possibility that I have overlooked?

I think you've overlooked the "successive approximation" approach which has no determinate end, no final "finite approximation" which is "good enough". Indeed, I think the search for a permanently acceptable "finite approximation" is a great theological and philosophical evil. And so, I see the possibility for, generation after generation, to gain better and better understandings of who Jesus is, such that each generation is following him ever-more-closely than the one before. In reality, the point is not 5000 light-years away, but infinitely away. Again, that's just an approximation, but I think it's a useful one and hell, I just got finished arguing that we have to rely on successive approximations!

Ron said...

> > Did you mean "exclude" rather than "deny"? Definitions are never falsifiable.

> Yes, I was searching for "deny".

You cannot answer a question of the form, "Did you mean X?" with "Yes, I meant Z." and remain logically coherent. The logically coherent answers available to you are, "Yes, I meant to say 'exclude'" or "No, I really did mean 'deny'." (I'm going to assume the former.)

> Only if Jesus is not actively communicating to us

OK. So... is he? What form does this communication take?

> I think you've overlooked the "successive approximation" approach

OK, but even a successive approximation has to start *somewhere*. What are the first few terms in the Taylor series approximation? Can *you* tell the difference between a real FJC-Christian and a fake one? If you can, how do you do it? And if you can't, then how can you possibly know (as you claim to know) that Christianity has been corrupted by (metaphorical) leprechauns?

Luke said...

> You cannot answer a question of the form, "Did you mean X?" with "Yes, I meant Z." and remain logically coherent. The logically coherent answers available to you are, "Yes, I meant to say 'exclude'" or "No, I really did mean 'deny'." (I'm going to assume the former.)

Or you could see something implied: "Yes, you are correct, I was searching for "deny"."

> OK. So... is he? What form does this communication take?

Well, most Christians I know think that at least the Bible constitutes communication from God to us, with at least the "red letters" being what Jesus said, whether explicitly or sufficiently close (I ignore the Jesus Seminar for now). Opinion greatly diverges if one asks whether God communicates further propositional content to us, which cannot be completely derived from the contents of the Bible. One way to model the "closed canon+" people is that they seem to think all one needs to do is come up with ever-more-consistent interpretations of the Bible.

My personal stance is that we suck at obeying the very, very basics of the Bible, and that this hinders any possibility of anything remotely constituting "communication" with God. It's like believing completely wrong things about another person: that can stunt or destroy your ability to communicate. I want to find out what happens if we obey more and more of the Bible; I frequently list the following triads as a place from which to start:

     • Mt 5:43–48, Jn 13:34–35, Jn 17:20–23
     • Mt 5:23–24, Mt 18:15–20, Eph 4:25–27
     • Mt 7:1–5, Mt 23:1–4, Gal 6:1–5
     • Mt 7:15–23, Mt 13:24–30, Mt 25:31–46

The first triad provides ambitious goals (especially if you insist on unity without uniformity, which is the obvious gist of Mt 5:43-48), while the next three I claim are required steps toward realizing those goals. In essence, this treats parts of the NT as describing the rules required to build certain kinds of society. Compare this to the rules required to build negative-index metamaterials. You don't have to follow them, and indeed if you never do, you can remain skeptical that following them would actually result in such a metamaterial.

> OK, but even a successive approximation has to start *somewhere*. What are the first few terms in the Taylor series approximation? Can *you* tell the difference between a real FJC-Christian and a fake one? If you can, how do you do it? And if you can't, then how can you possibly know (as you claim to know) that Christianity has been corrupted by (metaphorical) leprechauns?

Heh, I wrote the above before reading what you asked here. My response to fake vs. real is this: I, personally, want to become more like Christ. Crudely speaking, he is my role model. I will choose to spend more time with those people also interested in becoming more like Christ, at least as long as we believe the others are helping us do this. If there are actually different Christs (or conceptions of Christ) to which various groups are being conformed, then ultimately you'll see divergences and splits.

As to corruption: I have to believe whatever corruption has happened is [with sufficiently high probability,] not fatal. Otherwise, the whole enterprise is futile.

Ron said...

> most Christians I know

I'm not asking about most Christians you know. I want to know what *you* think.

> we suck at obeying the very, very basics of the Bible

How do you decide which parts are the basics? In most books, the basics come first. So Leviticus is more basic than Matthew, right?

> I want to find out what happens if we obey more and more of the Bible

Well, I can give you a data point: Leviticus 20:13 says that engaging in homosexual sex should be a capital crime, and Jesus reaffirms the OT law in Matthew 5:18. Saudi Arabia actually implements this in their civil law, so one of the things that happens when you obey more and more of the Bible is that you become more like Saudi Arabia (at least in this regard). Do you think that's what we ought to be aspiring to?

Luke said...

> I'm not asking about most Christians you know. I want to know what *you* think.

Which I explained in the very next paragraph. Was it so wrong to give some context?

> How do you decide which parts are the basics? In most books, the basics come first. So Leviticus is more basic than Matthew, right?

The Bible makes it pretty clear that agape is very basic ("God is love.", "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.", etc.). But if you really want to, we can go all the way back to Genesis and the imago dei.

Aside from that textual analysis, most people understand how hard it is to have unity among radically diverse people, and there were no more radically diverse people than Jews and non-Jews at the time. So the idea that one could have unity without uniformity (first triad)? That's crazy talk! And yet if you look around the world today and see the problems, well the lack of unity is a pretty big one. The Bible makes a lot of claims in this area, so focusing in on those scriptures required to promote the right kind of unity seems like a pretty good place to start.

I wouldn't say that those are the only basics, by the way. Frequently, there are multiple different approaches to teaching a complex topic.

> Well, I can give you a data point: Leviticus 20:13 says that engaging in homosexual sex should be a capital crime, and Jesus reaffirms the OT law in Matthew 5:18. Saudi Arabia actually implements this in their civil law, so one of the things that happens when you obey more and more of the Bible is that you become more like Saudi Arabia (at least in this regard). Do you think that's what we ought to be aspiring to?

It's always with the homosexuality matter. I'm not the one who brings it up, but it always comes up. Well, here goes: I can only surmise that capital punishment was more important in a more fragile society which often experienced famine, outside conquering forces, etc. This is but a guess, reinforced by some knowledge of politics in regimes when there is no political freedom and/or scarce resources. To attempt to apply the kind of moral framework which would apply well there, to a situation like ours today, seems insane. It treats morality as if there's one-size-fits-all, instead of a progression. It treats morality differently than the successive approximation that is so critical to science.

Putting aside the homosexuality matter, please explain to me the existence of nobles and commoners in Saudi Arabia, given that in contrast to the Code of Hammurabi, there was no such distinction in the OT law codes. Or, tell me how Saudi Arabia exemplifies Mt 20:20–28 and Jn 13:1–20. Or, tell me how it exemplifies Col 3:11 and Gal 3:28. You made a claim that obeying the Bible more and more would make a nation more and more like Saudi Arabia: I say that even without what I said about homosexuality, that view is false. The falsity is hidden when you restrict yourself to the bits of biblical morality which seem the worst to you. I seriously hope that you don't also treat people this way—by pointing first and most and most strongly to the worst bits.

Ron said...

> It treats morality as if there's one-size-fits-all, instead of a progression

No, it takes (some) Christians at their word when they claim that the Bible has some special epistemological status, like, for example, that it is the inerrant Word of God. I don't know whether you believe that or not, but you have strongly implied at this point that the Bible has *some* sort of special status, that it is more than just another work of literature. But regardless, there are only two possibilities: either the Bible is inerrant, or it is not. If it contains errors then it would behoove us to find some way of figuring out what those errors are, and for that we obviously cannot expect any help from the Bible.

I am 100% in favor of the idea that morality is a progression. But that is very much at odds with standard Christian doctrine.

> It's always with the homosexuality matter

I could pick a different example if you prefer. The Bible is chock-full of this sort of thing, at least in the OT. (I already pointed out the one about rape victims having to marry their attackers above, but you ignored that). The details don't matter. What matters is that there are things in the Bible that I personally find repugnant, and many other people do too (including many SI-Christians). Logically, there are only two possibilities:

1. The stuff that looks bad is actually good, but we can't tell because our moral intuition is faulty, which is exactly why we need God to set us straight.

2. The stuff that looks bad actually is bad (and hence we need some extra-Biblical standard to decide that -- see above)

Most SI-Christians choose option 2, and they cherry-pick the Bible for the good parts. What do FJC-Christians do?

> please explain to me the existence of nobles and commoners in Saudi Arabia

You'll have to ask the Saudis to do that. All I know is that when you seek to structure a society according to a holy text (the Quran in this case, but the Quran claims to embrace-and-extend the Bible) you end up with something that looks like Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Afghanistan under the Taliban or Spain under the Inquisition. Whether you choose to start or end with it, sooner or later any quest to "obey more and more of the Bible" will inevitably lead you to Leviticus.

Luke said...

> No, it takes (some) Christians at their word when they claim that the Bible has some special epistemological status, like, for example, that it is the inerrant Word of God.

"inerrant Word of God" ⇒ "all OT laws apply today"

You have to add additional conditions to make the implication valid. I reject all sets of sufficient conditions of which I am aware. I expect the march to understanding absolute morality to involve successive approximations, as can be seen in the scientific march to understanding absolute matter–energy reality.

> I am 100% in favor of the idea that morality is a progression. But that is very much at odds with standard Christian doctrine.

Not all Christian doctrine. Look at what Jesus said: "You have heard it said ____, but I say to you ____."

> (I already pointed out the one about rape victims having to marry their attackers above, but you ignored that)

To really argue this, I would need to look at the historical evidence and see whether there was a better moral law which would have been psychologically and sociologically tenable. Furthermore, I would ask you to take into account Ex 22:16–17, which allows the father to abort any such marriage. Indeed, it uses the term "seduces", in comparison to "seizes" in Deut 22:28–29. Do we really need to do an in-depth study of this to satisfy your curiosity? I'm a bit worried about playing Whac-A-Mole with you.

> 2. The stuff that looks bad actually is bad (and hence we need some extra-Biblical standard to decide that -- see above)

Or a later-in-the-Bible standard, like the stuff in the NT that looks awfully like a scientific method for moral progress.

> All I know is that when you seek to structure a society according to a holy text (the Quran in this case, but the Quran claims to embrace-and-extend the Bible) you end up with something that looks like Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Afghanistan under the Taliban or Spain under the Inquisition.

Heh @ the Microsoft allusion. It is useless to look at absolute values; you must compare to surrounding cultures at around the same time. So for example, we could look at David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies and notice that while there were witch-burnings in Europe, the Christians frequently stemmed murders being conducted by secular authorities. Or we could investigate whether the Thirty Years War was really religious, given the blatant cuius regio, eius religio. And if you really want to, we can more noisily compare the Inquisition to the Stalinist Purges.

Can you explain how the Jews obeyed Torah for so long without being as you described? It seems like they went over a millennium without being well-described by the pattern you lay out, as if it is not universal and does indeed admit major exceptions.

Luke said...

Oops,

> "inerrant Word of God" ⇒ "all OT laws apply today"

should have been

> "inerrant Word of God" ⇏ "all OT laws apply today"

Silly me and my symbols.

Ron said...

> "inerrant Word of God" ⇒ "all OT laws apply today"

Actually, I'm pretty sure that most people who subscribe to Biblical inerrancy believe that this implication does hold. But I suppose you'd have to ask them. Again, I'm not really interested in what they believe, I want to know what *you* believe (and why).

> Look at what Jesus said: "You have heard it said ____, but I say to you ____."

Every single one of those is Jesus *strengthening* the original sense of the words. Anger==Murder (Mat 5:22), lust=adultery (Mat 5:28). And then of course there is Mat 5:28: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law". So I see no basis there for believing that Leviticus is not still in full effect.

> Or a later-in-the-Bible standard, like the stuff in the NT that looks awfully like a scientific method for moral progress.

Sorry, I don't see it. And Mat 5:28 seems to specifically preclude the possibility.

> Can you explain how the Jews obeyed Torah for so long without being as you described?

Judaism has a long history of dissent and secularism (reflected in, e.g. Exodus 32:10-14 where Moses argues with God and wins. See also http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/352329/jewish/The-Walls-of-the-Study-Hall.htm for another classic example). But among the tiny minority of fundamentalist Jews who really take the Torah seriously (e.g. Hassidic Jews) life is every bit as medieval (though not quite as barbaric) as it is in Saudi Arabia.

Luke said...

> Every single one of those is Jesus *strengthening* the original sense of the words. Anger==Murder (Mat 5:22), lust=adultery (Mat 5:28). And then of course there is Mat 5:28: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law". So I see no basis there for believing that Leviticus is not still in full effect.

The "anger" = "murder in your heart" (different from murder in the flesh) bit is, as far as I can tell, simply an obvious truth: if you want to avoid violating the letter of the law, you need to take care of the causal factors: what goes on inside of you. Think a lot about how much you hate someone, act out little bits here and there of it, and you are, statistically, on your way to murder. Isn't this just psychologically obvious, these days? Now, from my reading of Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self, this "inward turn" took place largely around Augustine's time, making Jesus perhaps on the bleeding edge of human psychology during his time.

As to "one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law", do you simply consider that a contradiction with "man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath for the man"? If not, then how you interpret the jot/tittle has to be a bit more nuanced than I think you're doing.

Finally, the move from "lex talionis" → "turn the other cheek" is definitely a change, and I'm not sure I'd call it a "*strengthening*" as such. Or if I were, I'd want to characterize what that means, and see if it gets pretty damn close to "moral progress".

> Sorry, I don't see it.

Do you find Mt 20:20–28 and Jn 13:1–20 to be 100% consistent with your take on the OT? How about the refusal of Jesus to condemn as recorded in John 3:17–21? What about Peter's abolishing of the dietary laws—was that anti-Jesus? And how does rending of the veil to the Holy of Holies match perfectly with the vast distance between God and man in the OT, a distance spawned/greatly enhanced by Deut 5 and 1 Sam 8?

You seem to be taking an interpretive approach which lets the apparent contradictions absolutely explode. It'd be like saying, "Whelp, GR and QFT can't be perfectly combined; fuck it, let's go have a beer."

> But among the tiny minority of fundamentalist Jews who really take the Torah seriously (e.g. Hassidic Jews) life is every bit as medieval (though not quite as barbaric) as it is in Saudi Arabia.

Who is deciding what qualifies as "really take the Torah seriously"? It seems very easy to define this conveniently, such that "people of the book" come off looking absolutely terrible. It depends on utter disregard for passages like Isaiah 58. Really, it's hard not to see you as trying to paint the worst picture you can. I don't want to believe you are doing this, but I've seen this model be satisfied by atheists on the internet again, and again, and again, and again. It almost seems like an utter failure to understand that those who are first progressive can turn conservative and can then turn absolutely bigoted (this is accounted in Keith Ward's Is Religion Dangerous?). In other words: people are only capable of so much moral improvement per unit time, and often 'movements' get 'stuck'.

Ron said...

> Finally, the move from "lex talionis" → "turn the other cheek" is definitely a change

Fair enough.

Do you think the NT itself is subject to revision? By what process would that happen? Or is the NT the Last Word?

> "Whelp, GR and QFT can't be perfectly combined; fuck it, let's go have a beer."

The actual response to that very real problem is not, "Fuck it, let's go have a beer" but rather, "Oh, cool, a real problem! Let's see if we can figure out possible solutions, and then an experiment we can do that would determine which of those explanations (if any) is correct!" Scientists are absolutely *thrilled* when someone points out a legitimate problem because that's how progress gets made. (We're a little less-than-thrilled when people point out the same non-problems over and over, like if-we-evolved-from-monkeys-why-are-there-still-monkeys and related nonsense.)

> Who is deciding what qualifies as "really take the Torah seriously"?

The ones who take it seriously of course.

> It depends on utter disregard for passages like Isaiah 58.

You'll have to take that up with a Hassidic rabbi. But I absolutely assure you that they have read Isaiah 58 and have an answer.

BTW, if you do manage to find a Hassidic rabbi who will grant you an audience, I would really love to know what he says.

> Really, it's hard not to see you as trying to paint the worst picture you can.

I'm not trying to paint a picture at all, I'm trying to understand what an FJC-Christian is. You're being very cagey about it, so I have to poke and prod, and that necessarily involves inquiring about edge cases. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. We can table this and take it up again over coffee if you like.

BTW, if you genuinely think that I have been trying to "paint the worst picture [I] can" then you've been living a very sheltered rhetorical life. Believe me, if my goal were to cut you down I could do much, much worse (or better depending on how you look at it). That's really not my intent. In fact, I have written in opposition to atheists who do that, e.g.:

http://blog.rongarret.info/2007/09/more-irony-from-pharisees-of-reason.html
http://blog.rongarret.info/2011/03/bumpy-ride-through-moral-landscape.html
http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/09/why-do-smart-people-do-stupid-things.html
http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/04/for-record-re-sam-harris.html

Luke said...

> Do you think the NT itself is subject to revision? By what process would that happen? Or is the NT the Last Word?

Well, you already have passages that indicate progress past what is indicated: 1 Thess 4:1–2, 9–10. And you have passages which indicate that what is contained in the NT is fairly basic stuff: 1 Cor 3:1–4, Heb 5:11–6:3. My best way of explaining further progress would be that the current content would be subsumed, like GR subsumed F = ma. What we found with GR is that in certain conditions, F = ma is true to the theoretical noise level. The analogy for morality would be that in certain socio-economic-political conditions, some morality has the highest probability for improving the moral standards of a people-group.

I don't really want to limit how moral improvement past the NT could happen. There's a great bit in a theologian I just read about the Holy Spirit being the antithesis to theo–logy. My gloss on this is that theology is typically a finite formal system, and one of the things the Holy Spirit does is blow up small systems so we can replace them with bigger ones, ad infinitum. But how, precisely, does one transition from one rigorous, logical system to the next? Well, it might just appear irrational. Indeed, I think we know that creativity likely has necessarily irrational components.

That being said, I can give you the tiniest of examples. James 1:2–4 is a favorite verse of many Christians, as life involves trials and tribulations. I was walking with my wife one night, and suddenly got struck with the inspiration: different people manage the Ja 1:2–4 thing in different ways and it's important to find out how they do it, before the trials and tribulations. This isn't contained in the text. I'm not sure it's logically derivable from any biblical text. Now, I'm not going to call it canon, but it seems like a candidate for something new—a very tiny one, albeit.

> The actual response to that very real problem is not, [...]

Yes, I know that. :-)

> The ones who take it seriously of course.

This threatens to establish non-natural kind clustering.

> BTW, if you do manage to find a Hassidic rabbi who will grant you an audience, I would really love to know what he says.

I am on the lookout for one; my wife and I have been looking into Judaism more and more, as we know that Christians often grossly misrepresent it.

> I'm not trying to paint a picture at all, [...]

That is why I worded what I did, as I did. You're focusing on the bad bits first, instead of seeing if there is some sort of "island of sensibility" which can be grown outward, perhaps indefinitely, with hope of resolving any and all contradictions.

> BTW, if you genuinely think that I have been trying to "paint the worst picture [I] can" then you've been living a very sheltered rhetorical life.

If you know anything about the Something Awful forums, then know that I developed a rigorous conception of my faith there, being frequently one of a few or the only Christian in a thread talking about Christianity. So... you would find it hard to surprise me. :-p

Publius said...

>> Can something be True in this universe, but scientifically unproveable?

>This is a straw man, because science never *proves* anything. It only provides increasingly more powerful *explanations*.

Not trying to build a straw man, nor troll you (if I want to troll someone, I always have Yahoo Answers). Certainly there are many properties of the world we can agree are true: the periodic table; an atom has protons and neutrons in the nucleus surrounded by electrons; water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen; the specific heat of a material depends on the material composition; gravity is an attractive force. Now, we have two different models for gravity - both which are useful in their proper domains. One could always hedge and say that atomic theory, atomic structure, chemistry, thermodynamics, and physics are all about bulding explanitory models. A shortcut is to say, yeah, we agree it's true that the index of refraction of air is different than that of water.

So the issue here is: what are the limitations of the scientific method?

> Are there some Truths that cannot be discovered via the scientific method?

>There are almost certainly some practical limitations because the observable universe is finite. But in principle, all Truths can be discovered via observation, experiment, and reason. If it can't be discovered by observation, experiment, and reason, even in principle, then it is not a Truth.

Here, if we can find 1 true thing that cannot be proven by the scientific method, then we know that the method is not universal.

It turns out there is a trivial example.

What if I said to you, "I was recently thinking about elephants."

Let's say I truly was recently thinking about elephants -- it is a true statement.

No scientific method can reliabilty discover that. So now you're proably thinking of fMRI and PET scans, or perhaps careful dissection. Won't work. First, I could make a statement instead such as, "Last week I spent some time thinking of nothing at all." Second, the brain is changeable and I can change my brain - so by the time you get me in the scanner, I could have changed it. Third, I could strap a nuclear bomb on my back and jump into a volcano before you get me into the scanner.


>> If a deity were proveable with science, would religion work? What would the world be like?
>
>I have no idea what you mean by "work".

Yeah, it was shorthand and I really wasn't expecting you to consider it. But here goes.

Say that it was unquestionable that God existed. Everyone knew it, and it could be proven. Say God was a bright light in the sky that shone day and night - and you could communicate to God, and God would communicate back to you. God might even flash your name in morse code if you asked nicely. In short, 100%, bet-the-rent, mortal-lock that God exists.

Could you have religion in the world in that situation?

I assert, no, you could not - as faith is an essential part of religion. If there is not doubt, there can be no faith.

Contrast that to the world we live on. The existence of God cannot be proven using scientifc methods.
Hence, one only believes in the existence of God due to faith.

However, if scientific methods are unable to discover all truths, then God could exist.
God could also potentially prove his existence to you, but you would be unable to convince anyone else of that proof.
To quote Fr. John Corapi, "Faith comes first. Then you get the proof."

>Meh, these aren't even hard questions.

Well, sure, if you don't answer them.

Luke said...

I'm not Ron, but:

> So the issue here is: what are the limitations of the scientific method?

The scientific method is limited via its rejection of teleology and dismissing of the qualitative portion of human consciousness as 'subjective'. The first guts morality according to Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue; the latter guts personal identity, according to Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. I also wonder whether the Primary/secondary quality distinction is at play, here. Can moral responsibility even be grounded without these two concepts? Not clear!

This can be nicely summed by the Google Books preface of Donald E. Polkinghorne's Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, which exposes the utter failure of building the human sciences (economics, psychology, sociology) on (a) the rejection of teleology; (b) the rejection/diminuation of the qualitative. One could also reference F.A. Hayek's Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason.

Furthermore, one can attack the idea that isought via recognizing that the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, promoted as rigid by the Logical Positivists, isn't nearly so rigid. This leads to a breakdown of the rigid fact/value dichotomy, at least per Hilary Putnam in The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy.

Oh, and for fun: Back From the Future, which explores some weird results of quantum physics: reverse causality, courtesy of Jeff Tollaksen and Yakir Aharonov, via weak measurement. I smell possible "weak teleology", but I'm sure there's an efficient-cause-only way to look at it.

Book quotations and/or argument paraphrases available on request. I might want to be convinced it's worth my time, via e.g. a statement of what's at stake if I'm right vs. wrong. I have less worry of Whac-A-Mole here, but still some worry. If my establishing my point doesn't accomplish anything interesting, why work hard for it?

Luke said...

> To quote Fr. John Corapi, "Faith comes first. Then you get the proof."

You might like Grossberg 1999 The Link between Brain Learning, Attention, and Consciousness. It's not ultra-verified science, but it could be construed to support precisely what you have said here—which was of course shamelessly stolen from Augustine, if not from before him. :-)

A better question would seem to be: can consciousness exist without faith? Muahahaha.

Publius said...

>What does it mean to "follow Jesus Christ"?

You can know the answer to this question. It will take the rest of your life, and when you die, you still won't be certain what it means, but you'll know more than you know now.

>Is an FJC-Christian rape victim obligated to marry her attacker if her father orders her to (Exodus 22, Matthew 5:18)?
>
>Leviticus 20:13 says that engaging in homosexual sex should be a capital crime, and Jesus reaffirms the OT law in Matthew 5:18.
>
>I could pick a different example if you prefer. The Bible is chock-full of this sort of thing, at least in the OT.

Yawn. These atheist "gotchas!" are easily dispensed with. Do atheists really think that they're going to find the 1 illogical thing in the Bible, or one unsavory statement, that will cause a sudden epiphany in a christain - "My God! He's right - it is all bullshit!"

First, the Bible is the most studied book in human history. Every word has been studied, counted, and cross-referenced to every other occurance - in multiple languages. Theologins are smart people and they know all about the problems with the texts (translation, date of writing, who wrote it, poor geographic knowledge of Israel, etc, etc). There are no surprises you can find, no irreduciable illogical conundrum, no unsavory moral teaching that has not already been studied, dissected, interpretted, and re-interpretted.

Sceond, these little gems are always based on Sola Scriptura and a strict literal interpretation, or ignorance of the Bible, or a deliberate intent to deceive by taking passages out of context, or failing to explain them fully. A bumper sticker and nothing more. Not all Christain faiths subscribe to Sola Scriptura - reference, for example, the Catechism of the Cathoic Church.

To dispense with your little crutch of Mat 5:18 - Mosaic Law ended when Jesus died on the cross.

>What is the intersection of SI-Christians and FJC-Christians? I'm pretty sure that most SI-Christians (including the ones referred to in the OP) would insist that they are FJC-Christians. Are they wrong? How can you tell? Is there any commonly-identifiable subset of SI-Christians (Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, etc.) that coincides well with FJC-Christian?

What version of science do you practice? Is it Lamarckism (or perhaps Lysenkoism), Miasma theory of disease, Phlogiston, Luminiferous aether, phrenology, immovable continents, stress theory of ulcers, cold fusion, communication via quantum entanglement, N-rays, behavorism, sociobiology, chiropracty, homeoapthy, abiotic petroleum origin, or the one in which most published research findings are false? Have you seen the new journal article on the discovery of a constant cosmological clock? Refer to Matt 7:3-5

Now I'm all depressed because there is no ice cream - the existence of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors denies its existence.

Ron said...

@publius:

> No scientific method can reliabilty discover that

Of course it can. Your claim to have been thinking about elephants is evidence that you were in fact thinking about elephants. If you are trustworthy, then your report could even by *reliable* evidence that you were thinking about elephants. If there is corroborating evidence (like maybe a witness heard you say something about elephants) then one could show with very high confidence that you were in fact thinking about elephants.

There are, of course, particular facts that can be concealed from all observers (like if you think about elephants and don't tell anyone). But this is not a limitation of the scientific method.

> faith is an essential part of religion

I'm happy to hear you say that. A lot of SI-Christians won't concede that, and believe that there is evidence to support the claim that God exists.

So... if faith is essential, how should I decide which god to have faith in? There are so many to choose from.

> what are the limitations of the scientific method?

Whatever they are, you're not going to fix them by just deciding to believe in something you've invented out of whole cloth.

BTW, I'm going to give you the same recommendation I gave Luke: read David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity." There is actually good reason to believe (which is to say, there is evidence) that the scientific method really doesn't have any limitations except those imposed by the laws of physics themselves.

@Luke:

> The scientific method is limited via its rejection of teleology and dismissing of the qualitative portion of human consciousness as 'subjective'.

The scientific method does no such thing. Some *people* might reach those conclusions through *applying* the scientific method, but the method itself doesn't reject teleology. If you can present evidence and a plausible argument for teleology, then science will accept it.

> can consciousness exist without faith?

Mine does.

Ron said...

> Do atheists really think that they're going to find the 1 illogical thing in the Bible, or one unsavory statement, that will cause a sudden epiphany in a christain - "My God! He's right - it is all bullshit!"

A lot of atheists do think this yes, but I generally know better (though I have met a lot of SI-Christians who have not read the Bible and who really squirm when they find out that I know more about it than they do).

Like I said, my goal in bringing these things up was just to try to suss out what Luke meant by FJC-Christian.

> Not all Christain faiths subscribe to Sola Scriptura

I know that, but some do. I'm trying to figure out if FJC-Christianity is one of them.

> Mosaic Law ended when Jesus died on the cross.

Says you. The Bible specifically warns against people saying this sort of thing (Deuteronomy 13).

> What version of science do you practice?

I already told you: I am a Popperian epistemologist. BTW, all those straw-man examples you gave are not examples of different kinds of science, they are examples of (discredited) scientific theories. There are a few different kinds of approaches to science, but the list is pretty short: Bayesian vs frequentist, Popperian vs. inductivist. There might be one or two others. But they all agree on the fundamental "Nicene creed" of science: evidence, experiment and reason (not faith) are the ultimate arbiters of truth.

Ron said...

Oh, one more thing:

> Mosaic Law ended when Jesus died on the cross.

@Luke, do you believe this? If so, why didn't you say so before? You could have saved us both a lot of trouble.

@Publius: if Mosaic law ended when Jesus died on the cross, why are there so many SI-Christians who still cite Leviticus in support of denying equal rights for gays? Are they all wrong?

Publius said...

>Of course it can. Your claim to have been thinking about elephants is evidence that you were in fact thinking about elephants. If you are trustworthy, then your report could even by *reliable* evidence that you were thinking about elephants. If there is corroborating evidence (like maybe a witness heard you say something about elephants) then one could show with very high confidence that you were in fact thinking about elephants.

Well, then, did I tell you about the invisible pink unicorn I saw on Saturday?

Kirk Cameron is a fine upstanding citizen, and he knows in his heart that God exists. So you should believe in God too.

Because, you know, the thing with me is, I generally tell the truth. But I lie sometimes - you just never know when. I can also hold two conflicting feelings in my head at the same time (ambivalent). I'm also influenced by all sorts of advertising techniques; I may tell you that the Corvette is a great car, but I could have been influenced by the attractive models standing next to it at the auto show. No wait, I can't lie - it's a great car.

But let's say I got through a vigorous program of cognitive training and eliminate all of my cognitive errors and biases. I achieve the goal of becoming a perfectly accurate reasoner.

Then I say this: "I will never believe this statement."

Damn, so close.

>So... if faith is essential, how should I decide which god to have faith in? There are so many to choose from.

The Lottery paradox.

If you play the multi-state PowerBall, your probability of winning is less than the probability that you'll be killed by a meteor. Yet people win the PowerBall frequently.

So just because their are multiple gods to choose from, doesn't mean that they're all false.

@Luke:
One can say that science is concerned with the domain of physics, and religion the domain of meta-physics.

Luke said...

> To dispense with your little crutch of Mat 5:18 - Mosaic Law ended when Jesus died on the cross.

This avoids the question of whether one can defend Mosaic Law as the probable output of an omniscient, omnipotent deity. I would argue that there is enough uncertainty about socio-economic-political conditions 2200+ years ago in a geography on the other side of the earth, to merit laughter at any quick-and-dirty answer. The moderate analysis I have done has established that, e.g., there is a good chance that the slavery system in the Bible was a very good system for helping people out in a frequent-famine society of the type which existed.

It also avoids the question of just why Jesus' death on the cross magically ended the Mosaic Law. For example, we generally believe that some bits of the law still apply. Indeed, it seems that all Words of the Decalogue are still valid, albeit with the Sabbath command transformed (e.g. Rom 14:5–6). So why did some moral bits stay valid, while others poofed into irrelevance?

The start of an answer is that Jesus' death tore down the distinguishing wall between Jew and Gentile, as described in Eph 2:11–22. One could argue that the dietary laws were intended to both keep the Israelites separate from other nations, and keep distinctions arising within the Israelites coming from some food being for the wealthy only. I think good arguments can be made for building up a stable national identity.

So, I want to give Ron a bit more credit for asking a legit question, but not actually hand him anything like a victory. Indeed, the notions one explores in addressing [what I imagine to be] his objections turn out to be important in life today. For example, the insider–outsider dynamic exists all over the place. The reticence of the Israelites to stay away from the pots of meat in Egypt? That pattern shows up today. The desire to be ruled by a king? That most definitely shows up (see, for example, the process of centralization in France, at least as described by Jacques Ellul in The Political Illusion).

Am I making sense, here? A much more extended response could examine the various prophecies in the OT, look at possible resolutions to them, and then ask what kind of resolution Jesus is alleged to have provided.

> @Luke, do you believe this? If so, why didn't you say so before? You could have saved us both a lot of trouble.

The above is why I didn't say so.

> @Publius: if Mosaic law ended when Jesus died on the cross, why are there so many SI-Christians who still cite Leviticus in support of denying equal rights for gays? Are they all wrong?

Shall we do an analysis of which verses such SI-Christians really want obeyed, and which ones they really wish didn't exist? That is, I claim that certain modes of 'interpretation' of the Bible can be established to be rationalizations for non-biblical points of view with high confidence. This can be seen by showing their beliefs and behaviors to be quite the ill fit to the Bible, unless you do a lot of twisting and contorting. To ward off one statistically common objection that comes at this point: if some interpretations of Shakespeare are wrong, then some interpretations of the Bible are wrong. To deny this is to deny language having the possibility of carrying truth-value.

Luke said...

@Ron,

> So... if faith is essential, how should I decide which god to have faith in? There are so many to choose from.

How do you choose to have a telos and what telos do you pick? Rom 10:4 has: "For Christ is the telos of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." So it seems to me that one could compute some sort of distance function—noisily, of course—between the telos which best describes the trajectory of one's life, and Jesus, or at least some 'projection' of Jesus.

If you don't think that your identity is centered around some orientation to the good (Charles Taylor), an orientation which can be approximated with a telos, I would be interested in cross-examining on the matter.

> Whatever they are, you're not going to fix them by just deciding to believe in something you've invented out of whole cloth.

How is this not making an error between modeling reality and thinking about how to shape reality? Science does the former, no doubt about it. But what about the latter? What is the process for doing it, for thinking about it, for arguing about it? Could it possibly be that much of what goes under the label of 'religion' is involved in this matter?

> The scientific method does no such thing. Some *people* might reach those conclusions through *applying* the scientific method, but the method itself doesn't reject teleology. If you can present evidence and a plausible argument for teleology, then science will accept it.

Do you refuse to accept that the rejection of teleology could be at the epistemological foundations of science? That is, if it is teleologically defined as "modeling reality", then could it be possible that this restricts it from dealing with teleology?

> Mine does.

Bald assertions get bald dismissals. :-p Seriously, I'd love your thoughts on Grossberg 1999 The Link between Brain Learning, Attention, and Consciousness; I think it could stir some very interesting discussion.

> But they all agree on the fundamental "Nicene creed" of science: evidence, experiment and reason (not faith) are the ultimate arbiters of truth.

How rigorously can you define "reason"? It strikes me that it starts with presuppositions it does not critique, just like some formulations of 'faith' do. If you want to talk Bayesian inference, then you've got a universal prior which didn't come from any evidence, by definition. So it seems like you're merely sweeping your presuppositions under the rug, while calling one the Christian's presuppositions because he/she's not ashamed to be clear that he/she makes them!

Publius said...

>> Mosaic Law ended when Jesus died on the cross.

>Says you. The Bible specifically warns against people saying this sort of thing (Deuteronomy 13).

Jesus is divine. Deuteronomy 13 doesn't apply. Whac-A-Mole

>if Mosaic law ended when Jesus died on the cross, why are there so many SI-Christians who still cite Leviticus in support of denying equal rights for gays? Are they all wrong?

You would have to ask them.
In general, they are wrong - the intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

>I already told you: I am a Popperian epistemologist.

>What is the intersection of Popperian epistemologists and an inductivist? Wouldn't inductivists say they have the correct method for science? How can you tell? Is there any commonly-identifiable subset of Popperian epistemologists that coincides well with inductivists?

> BTW, all those straw-man examples you gave are not examples of different kinds of science, they are examples of (discredited) scientific theories.

Oh, so no true scientist would believe those things.

Luke said...

> Oh, so no true scientist would believe those things.

I suggest trying to see Ron's definition as inherently teleological, requiring a mind to compute (note that he got frustrated when I tried to iron out definitions with him). This changes the form of No True Scotsman. I think it is really important that you're making this point; to it I would add that hindsight is 20/20 but this is not available in the heat of the moment, needing to decide on whether some project is science or not (e.g. Drawing the line between science and pseudo-science).

We need to be really careful in dealing with fuzziness properly: if Ron is allowed to judge a piece of work twenty years ago as 'science' or 'not-science', then you and I need to be given the same leeway in judging Christianhood. Or, Ron must give us a system for judging in the heat of the moment, as I attempted to do for judging Christianhood. Without playing fair here, then equivocation destroys the validity of the comparison.

I would further add that a non-scientist would have a much harder time discerning certain bleeding-edge science from pseuodoscience. Likewise, it should not be surprising that a non-Christian also have a hard time in some cases. This is not a defeater for there being natural kind clustering for Christians, unless it is also a defeater for there being natural kind clustering for what constitutes 'science'. As it turns out, that tacit knowledge Michael Polanyi identified is really important in bleeding-edge situations. Whipping out No True Scotsman on a moment's notice is... not so productive, shall we say?

Ron said...

@Publius:

> >What does it mean to "follow Jesus Christ"?

> You can know the answer to this question. It will take the rest of your life, and when you die, you still won't be certain what it means, but you'll know more than you know now.

Did you meant to say that you CAN'T know the answer to this question? Because that's what it sounds like when you say that even if I study for the rest of my life I still won't be certain.

@Luke: Do you agree with publius, that it is not possible to know what it means to "follow Jesus"? Because if you do then that's a serious problem for your definition of FJC-Christian. You are essentially conceding that it is not possible to tell whether someone is an FJC-Christian or not.

@publius:

> Well, then, did I tell you about the invisible pink unicorn I saw on Saturday?

No, you didn't. Did you in fact see an invisible pink unicorn?

> Kirk Cameron is a fine upstanding citizen, and he knows in his heart that God exists. So you should believe in God too.

The point of the elephant example was to support your claim that there are truths forever beyond the reach of the scientific process, and my pointing out that your testimony is evidence was meant to refute *that* claim. I have no idea whether or not you were in fact thinking about elephants, but if it were important, there is no reason to believe that I could not use the scientific process to find out. But now you are making a very different kind of claim, that because Kirk Cameron believes in God that this is evidence that there is in fact a god (and not just that, but that the god that exists is the God that Kirk Cameron believes in). Do you understand why that does not follow? I'm happy to explain it to you, but it's too long for a comment.

> So just because their are multiple gods to choose from, doesn't mean that they're all false.

True, but if they make epistemological claims that are logically mutually exclusive with each other then at least some of them *must* be false. Leviticus is either still in force today or it is not; it can't be both. Is there a way I can improve my odds of picking the right one?

Ron said...


@Luke:

> So, I want to give Ron a bit more credit for asking a legit question,

Thank you.

> but not actually hand him anything like a victory.

I would like to think that this exchange is not a competition, but rather a cooperative effort towards a common goal of seeking the truth.

> certain modes of 'interpretation' of the Bible can be established to be rationalizations for non-biblical points of view with high confidence

Boy, am I glad you said that! Because I absolutely believe that to be true, but usually when I say it the person I'm talking to takes offense. :-)

It is very rare for me to encounter an SI-Christian who really takes these things seriously.

> How do you choose to have a telos and what telos do you pick?

I don't. My telos is hard-wired into me by evolution:

http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/05/can-morality-exist-without-god.html

(Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing, by "telos" I mean my sub-conscious intuitions or instincts about what is "good" or "moral".)

> How is this not making an error between modeling reality and thinking about how to shape reality? Science does the former, no doubt about it. But what about the latter? What is the process for doing it, for thinking about it, for arguing about it? Could it possibly be that much of what goes under the label of 'religion' is involved in this matter?

Those are EXCELLENT questions! I'll answer them in a separate post. This comment thread is already WAY too long.

> Do you refuse to accept that the rejection of teleology could be at the epistemological foundations of science?

Of course it *could* be. But it's not :-) The only thing that is at the foundation of science is the assumption that evidence, experiment and reason are the ultimate arbiters of truth. It is possible that teleology is out of reach, but it turns out that it's not.

> > Mine does.

> Bald assertions get bald dismissals.

What sort of evidence would you accept to support my bald claim that my consciousness exists even though I have no faith?

> How rigorously can you define "reason"?

Quite rigorously as it turns out, but that's a red herring. It is not necessary to rigorously define reason in order to apply it. Read TFOR chapter 7.

Luke said...

> @Luke: Do you agree with publius, that it is not possible to know what it means to "follow Jesus"? Because if you do then that's a serious problem for your definition of FJC-Christian. You are essentially conceding that it is not possible to tell whether someone is an FJC-Christian or not.

There's a difference between having finite approximations and having direct access to the ontology. Do you, Ron, "know reality", or do you merely have access to an approximation? This is Kant's 'thing-in-itself'. My guess is that @Publicus is making this distinction. Remember, I already argued that FJC simpliciter says very little: my [possibly wrong] take on some liberal Christians is that this really means "follow my true desires". This flexibility decimates any natural kind distinctions based on the simpliciter form; this is why I called for clustering.

> Thank you.

:-) This is one of the benefits of having debated with [mostly] atheists on the internet for 15+ years and 10,000+ hours. This isn't to say that answers like @Publicus' weren't a good approximation, but I was always one of those people who wanted to know where the approximation breaks down. I respect that, as long as it's acknowledged that the true ontology is not accessible—we see through a glass darkly—and thus the fact that an approximation isn't perfect is no reason to reject it.

> I would like to think that this exchange is not a competition, but rather a cooperative effort towards a common goal of seeking the truth.

No, sorry, this is a fight to the DEATH. :-p

> It is very rare for me to encounter an SI-Christian who really takes these things seriously.

Curiously, many atheists I've encountered and talked to about this seem to prefer the "infinite-interpretations hypothesis". When I try to argue with them (via e.g. saying something stupid about a Shakespeare play), the conversation goes eerily quiet. Perhaps the ones who agree with me simply didn't make a big deal about it.

> I don't. My telos is hard-wired into me by evolution:

I'll work with your definition of telos. I'm fine with you getting some sort of telos by default; I've just been reading Harry Frankfurt's Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting it Right; he possibly agrees with you up to this point, but then claims that we can consciously align ourselves with some motivations which well up within us and reject others. This would appear to be a telos-shaping activity; would you agree, or disagree? There are, by the way, some very curious similarities between rejecting some of those motivations and the 'genetic' form of original sin. I don't think I agree with it, but I need to read more on how people think the 'self' is formed before I say too much more.

> Those are EXCELLENT questions! I'll answer them in a separate post. This comment thread is already WAY too long.

Bahaha, I love exploding comment threads. And we seem to actually be getting somewhere remarkably quickly in comparison to past experiences.

Luke said...

> Of course it *could* be. But it's not :-) The only thing that is at the foundation of science is the assumption that evidence, experiment and reason are the ultimate arbiters of truth. It is possible that teleology is out of reach, but it turns out that it's not.

1. Why not just strike the "evidence, experiment, and reason" and say that science is anything which allows us to increasingly well-model and predict reality? What would be lost in so-doing?

2. What are your thoughts on teleonomy, which could be read as a huge attempt to rid science of ontic teleology (we'll allow the intentional stance)? That is, there are some scientists who are violently anti-teleology. I wonder if you have thoughts on this?

> What sort of evidence would you accept to support my bald claim that my consciousness exists even though I have no faith?

I would want to discuss those principles with which you use to judge reality, which cannot be used on themselves on pain of circular reasoning. A rough way to get at this is: why is one universal Bayesian prior probability better than another? One way to view 'faith', if we allow pistis to be better translated 'trust', is that it is an active realignment of telos. One might think about it as re-writing our own BIOSes.

Fun fact: according to cognitive scientist Mark Turner in The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, it could be that certain kinds of narratives are pre-linguistic in our brains. Some bits from Literary Mind. Add to this the observation by Donald E. Polkinghorne in Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (Google Books preface) that "narrative knowing" is important to the human sciences and one starts to suspect that a way to re-program ourselves at the most fundamental levels could be through narrative. Another viewpoint on the centrality of narrative to personal identity comes from Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self:

>> Here we connect up with another inescapable feature of human life. I have been arguing that in order to make minimal sense of our lives, in order to have an identity, we need an orientation to the good, which means some sense of qualitative discrimination, of the incomparably higher. Now we see that this sense of the good has to be woven into my understanding of my life as an unfolding story. But this is to state another basic condition of making sense of ourselves, that we grasp our lives in a narrative. This has been much discussed recently, and very insightfully.[24] It has often been remarked[25] that making sense of one's life as a story is also, like orientation to the good, not an optional extra; that our lives exist also in this space of questions, which only a coherent narrative can answer. In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going. (47)

I'll stop with a question: are you aware of the results of comparing & contrasting the Genesis creation myth (narrative) and those myths of surrounding cultures? That, plus the parables Jesus uses, might get very interesting in the light of the above. The idea that we have a choice whether to change which narratives run in our BIOSes would then become less crazy than it originally sounded.

Luke said...

> Quite rigorously as it turns out, but that's a red herring. It is not necessary to rigorously define reason in order to apply it. Read TFOR chapter 7.

I want you to meet the Caltech prof who was my best man. He absolutely delights in showing people all sorts of errors in the mathematics which undergirds a lot of science. I don't have a list handy, but my general understanding is that it's like the development of Fourier analysis: the guy who invented it didn't form any sort of rigorous mathematical foundation, but instead simply took advantage of the fact that in the domain of heat transfer, they work well. That is, he didn't venture to those places where the foundation becomes iffy. He didn't venture toward where "there be dragons".

Up until now, I was fine merely accepting that the foundations aren't as rigorous as many seem to think. However, perhaps it is time that I learn more about the details. I have to be vague, but it is possible that failure of many to see a huge contradiction in the math may lead to a Nobel Prize. If this actually happens, I think your statement of "Quite rigorously" will take a hit—perhaps a serious hit. Then again, given your lack of disdain for teleology (this is actually somewhat new territory to me; most atheists I encounter seem to greatly dislike it), perhaps it won't be.

There is another matter: Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Having a consistent mathematical system is indeed possible. But then there is the danger, if we need basic arithmetical truths, that the mathematical system won't be able to prove certain truths. If that mathematical system is judge and jury, does this mean we permanently close ourselves off to those truths? If the answer is "no", then does there exist any [effectively generated] formal system which can explain how we move from one formal system to the next? I have come across several people who think that the GITs don't apply here, but I've never figured out why: either human reasoning ain't a formal system, in which case we ought't pretend it is, or it is a formal system, in which case the GITs would seem to apply.

So, it would appear that either reality is permanently bounded in complexity, such that some big enough, mentally attainable formal system captures all observable phenomena, or we must move from formal system to bigger formal system, according to... not a formal system which can be described†. But this damages the attempt to formally define 'reason' such that science has a finitely-stateable definition. From what I can tell, this reduces you to teleological definitions or No True Scotsman.

† This seems to be quite an important point. Merely appealing to the existence of some effectively generated formal system to which we do not have epistemic access seems to be quite the leap of faith. Likewise, arguing about scientific theories which could in theory lead to others (e.g. discover chemistry from physics) but not within the time of the universe, seems fruitless to me. Deviating too much from how we can actually think, and predicating arguments on that, seems like a very iffy proposition to me. So far, I don't see you doing this, but I just wanted to offer up this point in case you have tendencies in that direction.

———

It sounds like I should read TFOR and TBOF, to make the most out of our interactions. Perhaps we can meet up and see if it looks like we might want to interact a bunch in the future (I would guess fairly confidently "yes"); if so, I'll go ahead and read both books.

Ron said...

> I want you to meet the Caltech prof who was my best man.

So why don't you introduce me?

> He absolutely delights in showing people all sorts of errors in the mathematics which undergirds a lot of science.

That is an odd thing to take delight in. Of course there are errors. So what? The claim of science is not that we have it all figured out, the claim is that over time errors get eliminated and we slowly converge on the truth. In this regard, your worldview and mine are the same. (But you are a rare bird: most SI-Christians that I have met insist that the Bible is the last word and not subject to revision.)



> I want you to meet the Caltech prof who was my best man. He absolutely delights in showing people all sorts of errors in the mathematics which undergirds a lot of science.

Like I said, rigor is a red herring. Science doesn't have to be rigorous. The Mythbusters aren't particularly rigorous, but they are nonetheless doing real science because they pursue truth through evidence, experiment, and reason. Sometimes they get things wrong. That is to be expected.

> If that mathematical system is judge and jury, does this mean we permanently close ourselves off to those truths?

I reject the premise. The mathematical system is not judge and jury. Evidence, experiment and reason are the judge and jury. Math is a kind of reason, but it is not the only kind and we know this *because* of Godel's theorems. This is one of the beautiful things about reason: we can use it to discover its own limits.

> does this mean we permanently close ourselves off to those truths?

Of course not. It just means that Peano arithmetic is not enough. This is why getting hung up on rigor is a mistake. Rigor is not a bad thing, but focusing on rigor to the exclusion of all else is.

> either human reasoning ain't a formal system, in which case we ought't pretend it is, or it is a formal system, in which case the GITs would seem to apply.

Heck, you don't need GIT. Just appeal to the finiteness of the universe an the fact that there are an infinite number of truths. So not only are there truths we can't access, there are an infinite number of them. So what? Just because I can never learn (say) the factorizations of all possible RSA keys doesn't make my life any less meaningful.

Ron said...


> Fourier analysis: the guy who invented it

Joseph Fourier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier

And a better example is quantum theory. Quantum theory started out as a complete hack. It was a desperate attempt by Planck to force-fit a mathematical function to the observed data for blackbody radiation. And it took decades before the underlying truth was really understood. To this day many physicists don't understand it. My attention was just recently drawn to a peer-reviewed QM paper that was published just last year that contains an error so elementary that I was able to spot it in less than two minutes. None of this casts any aspersions on the idea that evidence, experiment and reason should be the ultimate arbiters of truth.

> From what I can tell, this reduces you to teleological definitions or No True Scotsman.

No. The core disagreement is not about reason, but about *evidence*. For example, recall what publius wrote:

"The existence of God cannot be proven using scientifc methods. Hence, one only believes in the existence of God due to faith."

And, of course, this is not just publius's view, a lot of religious people subscribe to this. So the reason publius isn't doing science (or at least not applying science to the question of whether or not there is a god) is not that he rejects reason, but that he rejects *evidence*. And he even has an *argument* as to *why* one should reject evidence, namely, that faith is a *necessary condition* for religion to "work" (whatever that means). He and I are actually in complete agreement about this.

BTW, I can't *prove* to you that evidence is a reliable guide to truth. The best I can do is demonstrate empirically that relying on evidence produces certain kinds of results more reliably than not relying on evidence. And I can also show that not relying on evidence leads to certain hard-to-answer questions, like how to choose which god to put your faith in. But I can't logically prove that publius's view is wrong. I can't even give a slam-dunk argument as to why one should not adopt it. The best I can do is to demonstrate that it is not necessary to resort to faith to live a happy, fulfilled life free from existential despair.

Luke said...

> So why don't you introduce me?

He lives in Pasadena, and doesn't come up here too often. I go down there more often. Maybe if we meet up and get along, we could take a day trip down to LA sometime, flying out of SJC or OAK. Or, I could invite him up to SF; he doesn't teach in the Fall IIRC.

> That is an odd thing to take delight in. Of course there are errors. So what?

Many people assume that mathematics provides a firmer foundation than it actually does. Such a belief actively hinders the progress of science. I really want his research to progress, so that if he shows what he thinks he'll show, you will see how important this actually is. Sadly, I cannot say more than this!

> Like I said, rigor is a red herring.

It is, if pretended rigor is applied, as such, to religion. And you know what? My intuition is that precisely this is done, frequently, by those who think they are operating off of a firm foundation. You appear to not be one of these people.

> I reject the premise. The mathematical system is not judge and jury. Evidence, experiment and reason are the judge and jury.

Ok, but the less well you can formally describe "evidence, experiment, and reason", the more I can question whether you are e.g. special-pleading by accepting certain senses and evaluative bits of the brain as "truth-seeking" and others as "spurious spandrels from evolution". For example, what of the sensus divinitatis? I asked a Phil.SE question that gets at this matter, although less articulately than I have, now: “I trust my senses” — Why does this tend to be restricted to the external senses? Many are wont to call our evaluation of beauty 'subjective', but (a) is there a perfect barrier between the 'subjective' and the 'objective'; (b) what of In Search of Beauty?

If science is allowed to work with predicting the inputs of all senses and the tuning of all evaluative functions (including the "similarity between mental models and observations of the external senses"), that opens of the field for what qualifies as "evidence"—and yet, many atheists I encounter do not wish to do this. They wish "evidence" to mean something quite precise. The idea that humans could get arbitrarily good at affective forecasting seems... distant from what they would consider 'science'. And yet, I wouldn't be surprised if a nontrivial amount of religion is focused on improving affective forecasting abilities!

> Heck, you don't need GIT. Just appeal to the finiteness of the universe an the fact that there are an infinite number of truths. So not only are there truths we can't access, there are an infinite number of them. So what? Just because I can never learn (say) the factorizations of all possible RSA keys doesn't make my life any less meaningful.

The reason I don't like this formulation is that it makes the truths we cannot access quite distant, threatening to make them irrelevant, and thus destroy the thrust behind my point. If I say that you could have a fantastic, active relationship with God if only you were to change how you fundamentally interpret reality, that could be a 'truth' which your reasoning does not allow you to access, permanently locking you out of such a relationship unless you can somehow "get behind" reason, unless you can find some way to evaluate your most fundamental presuppositions—your metaphysics.

Luke said...

> None of this casts any aspersions on the idea that evidence, experiment and reason should be the ultimate arbiters of truth.

Let's see what happens as I continue to dig into what 'evidence' could possibly mean. I do understand that we cannot always be as precise as we'd like, but can we also agree that fuzziness can hide contradictions, special pleading, etc.?

> And, of course, this is not just publius's view, a lot of religious people subscribe to this.

Hold on. The problem of other minds cannot be adjudicated solely by evidence. Whether or not other minds exist to you depends on your chosen metaphysic. Why might it not be the case that whether God exists to you depends on a similar choice? That is, the evidence under-determines whether God exists. You might find my answer to the Phil.SE question Could there ever be evidence for an infinite being? interesting in this regard. As I hinted at before, merely judging by looking backward can result in a radically different way of looking at reality, than also looking forward. If you only measure success via hindsight, that's not a good way to pursue success in the future.

> The best I can do is demonstrate empirically that relying on evidence produces certain kinds of results more reliably than not relying on evidence.

I suspect, however, that increased happiness from certain natural kinds of religion would not fall into "certain kinds of results", as judged by you. That is, would increased human thriving constitute evidence of the sort that would indicate that e.g. God is present and active among a group of people? What I have generally found among atheists is that this is not valid evidence, that what they mean by 'evidence' is somehow restricted. How is it restricted? There we get back into fuzziness, fuzziness which could just be their unarticulated background, but could also hide contradictions.

> And I can also show that not relying on evidence leads to certain hard-to-answer questions, like how to choose which god to put your faith in.

Let's first talk about if and how you adjust your gene/society-given telos. If you do, let's talk about the lever you use and the fulcrum you use. If you don't, then I don't understand what you mean by "chose which god to put your faith in".

Ron said...

> can we also agree that fuzziness can hide contradictions, special pleading, etc.?

Yes. of course. And if you really think that there's serious disagreement about what evidence is then we can clarify it. But if you're just raising this issue to be pedantic then life is too short for that.

> The problem of other minds cannot be adjudicated solely by evidence.

What do you mean by "adjudicated"? There is evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of brains (specific brain regions can be shown to be associated with specific mental functions, brain activity changes during sleep, anesthetics work by operating on the brain, no entity without a brain has ever shown evidence of being conscious, etc. etc. etc.) and there is evidence that other entities have brains, and so it is reasonable to conclude that they are conscious despite the fact that you don't have direct access to anyone's consciousness but your own.

> I suspect, however, that increased happiness from certain natural kinds of religion would not fall into "certain kinds of results", as judged by you.

The "certain kinds of results" I was referring to was, e.g. the ability to build bridges and iPhones. Science is much more effective than, say, prayer in those situations.

> would increased human thriving constitute evidence of the sort that would indicate that e.g. God is present and active among a group of people?

I presume you mean "would increased human thriving *in religious societies* (as compared to areligious or irreligious societies) constitute evidence that God is present and active?" Sure. But there are two important caveats:

1. All the data I see indicate the effects of religion are exactly the opposite. If you look at countries, the ones with the happiest, healthiest, least violent populations are the least religious: Japan, Norway, Sweden. The U.S. is a notable outlier, and even within the U.S. the most religious areas are the ones with the greatest poverty, the lowest life expectancy, etc.

2. Even if it were true that belief in God was associated with "increased human thriving" that would still leave open the question about which way the causality ran (does belief in God result in thriving, or does thriving result in belief in God?). And even if you could establish causality that would leave open the question whether the causal agent was God or the (false) belief. See:

http://blog.rongarret.info/2009/04/hooked-on-god-religion-as-drug.html

> I don't understand what you mean by "chose which god to put your faith in".

I mean exactly that. If, as publius says, God is not accessible by evidence and requires faith, then how do I choose from among the many gods available? Should I believe in Jesus? Allah? Thor? And I'm not looking for a direct answer to that question (because your answer is obviously: Jesus). I'm looking for an answer to the question: by what process should I make that choice? If I can't decide on the basis of evidence, on what basis should I decide?

Publius said...

@Luke

>It also avoids the question of just why Jesus' death on the cross magically ended the Mosaic Law. For example, we generally believe that some bits of the law still apply. Indeed, it seems that all Words of the Decalogue are still valid, albeit with the Sabbath command transformed (e.g. Rom 14:5–6). So why did some moral bits stay valid, while others poofed into irrelevance?

Wouldn't you expect that most of the new covenant would be similar to the old?

>Bahaha, I love exploding comment threads. And we seem to actually be getting somewhere remarkably quickly in comparison to past experiences.

Yeah, we're awesome. We should start a Wiki. 78+ comments and still haven't hit Godwin's law.

>> >What does it mean to "follow Jesus Christ"?

>> You can know the answer to this question. It will take the rest of your life, and when you die, you still won't be certain what it means, but you'll know more than you know now.

>Did you meant to say that you CAN'T know the answer to this question? Because that's what it sounds like when you say that even if I study for the rest of my life I still won't be certain.

It should not be surprising that some knowledge domains are so large that you can never learn all of it. You will never know all of mathematics, science, World War II history, music, art, and more.

In addition, you change. You move though space - you may be living somewhere else in 5 years. You move through time - and as you do, you have the human experience, which involves joy, pain, love, grief, anger, happiness, sickness, wellness, hope, despair, and more. Each of these will inform, challenge, and change your understanding of faith.

>> Well, then, did I tell you about the invisible pink unicorn I saw on Saturday?

>No, you didn't. Did you in fact see an invisible pink unicorn?

I'm afraid this won't do, no, not at all. You must apply your reason and logic. A different follow-up question is called for. Let me help you: invisible pink unicorn.

>> So just because their are multiple gods to choose from, doesn't mean that they're all false.

>True, but if they make epistemological claims that are logically mutually exclusive with each other then at least some of them *must* be false. Leviticus is either still in force today or it is not; it can't be both. Is there a way I can improve my odds of picking the right one?

Start by deciding to pick one.
As the lottery commericals say - you can't win if you don't play.

Luke> If that mathematical system is judge and jury, does this mean we permanently close ourselves off to those truths?

Ron>I reject the premise. The mathematical system is not judge and jury. Evidence, experiment and reason are the judge and jury. Math is a kind of reason, but it is not the only kind and we know this *because* of Godel's theorems.

Indeed, the ultimate judge and jury is the physical world. We can't model air turbulence as well as we'd like - but we can observe it, and we can fly airplanes.

One can also ask: is mathematics "discovered" or "invented"? A good case can be made that it's "invented" - it's a set of tools, and we invent more tools as we need them.

Ron said...

> 78+ comments and still haven't hit Godwin's law.

I try to keep things cordial here on the Ramblings.

> Start by deciding to pick one.

Fine. I pick Loki.

http://blog.rongarret.info/2010/10/myth-for-skeptics.html

> you can't win if you don't play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

The rate of return of lotteries is negative, so in fact you do much better in the long run if you don't play.

> It should not be surprising that some knowledge domains are so large that you can never learn all of it.

Sure, but using this as an excuse to not even begin to explain it is a cop-out.

> A different follow-up question is called for.

Nope, sorry, I'm sticking with door #1.

> Indeed, the ultimate judge and jury is the physical world.

It surprises me to hear you say that in light of what you wrote earlier: "The existence of God cannot be proven using scientifc methods." Surely you're not conceding that God does not exist?

Publius said...

>> Start by deciding to pick one.

>Fine. I pick Loki.

Next, find out how Loki provides you with:
A explanation of your origin
A purpose in life
Acceptance and love for who you are
Forgiveness
Everlasting life

Then, look up the normative ethics of the Loki religion. You'll want to start practicing those. If their are any rituals that connect you with Loki, or remind you of his teachings, you'll want to participate. Connect with other followers of Loki so you can help each other stay true to your beliefs.

If none of the above is satisfying, look into another one.

>> It should not be surprising that some knowledge domains are so large that you can never learn all of it.

>Sure, but using this as an excuse to not even begin to explain it is a cop-out.

When you join, you are given the complete package. Understanding that will take about 6-8 months. Beyond that, there is self-study and life experience.

So you are given a large amount of knowledge to start. Then you are shown the path to follow to add to that knowledge.

There are other benefits. Christians throw joyous celebrations twice a year, decorating their homes, inviting family and close friends, with good food, and the exchange of gifts, giving thanks for the good events in their lives and comforting each other for the bad events.
Sounds much better than eating a bowl of granola and bitterly muttering about "Saturnalia! Spring fertility ritual!", doesn't it?
You can also cancel your subscription to Free Inquiry.

>> Indeed, the ultimate judge and jury is the physical world.

>It surprises me to hear you say that in light of what you wrote earlier: "The existence of God cannot be proven using scientific methods." Surely you're not conceding that God does not exist?

I think the two are consistent?
God is supernatural. He is not proven; He is revealed. He rarely intervenes in the natural world.

>The rate of return of lotteries is negative, so in fact you do much better in the long run if you don't play.

That is the expected rate of return. There is large variance.
If you win, the rate of return can be enormous.

Ron said...

> A explanation of your origin

Well, the fundamental lesson that Loki teaches is skepticism. Loki is not a benevolent god, he is the trickster. The best defense against Loki's trickery is to rely on evidence, experiment and reason as the ultimate arbiters of truth, because even Loki is subject to the laws of physics. So Loki leads me to the scientific explanation of my origin: the big bang, abiogenesis, and Darwinian evolution.

> A purpose in life

Same story. The purpose of life is to participate in this incredibly rich, complex, wonderful process that is life, including expanding our intuitive, provincial definition of life to include other forms of life, like memes. Hiking through the redwoods, looking at Jupiter through a telescope, coming to understand relativity and quantum mechanics, participating in discussions like the one we're having right now -- that is my purpose in life. I find it completely fulfilling.

> Acceptance and love for who you are

See above.

> Forgiveness

For what? If I've wronged someone, I seek forgiveness from them. Why should the gods have anything to do with it?

> Everlasting life

Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? But all the evidence indicates that my consciousness is an emergent property of my brain, and when my brain dies, I will die with it. That's just a fact I have to accept. And yeah, it kinda sucks. But it's the truth.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, some of the ideas that have passed through my head will outlive me. That is as close to immortality as I can reasonably hope to achieve, and it's enough for me. Maybe some day we'll figure out how to make backup copies of our brains and achieve true immortality, but I doubt that will happen in time for me to take advantage of it (if it's even possible at all -- that is far from clear).

> the normative ethics of the Loki religion

http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/05/can-morality-exist-without-god.html
http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/idea-ism-rational-basis-for-morality.html

> Sounds much better than eating a bowl of granola and bitterly muttering about "Saturnalia! Spring fertility ritual!", doesn't it?

Indeed. But that's not my life. My life is filled with joy every single day, in no small part because I know this is the only bite at the apple I'm going to get.

> You can also cancel your subscription to Free Inquiry.

Now *THAT* is an attractive offer! (Actually, I got fed up with FI and cancelled my subscription many years ago.)

> I think the two are consistent?

I would really like to understand that, because I don't get it. The evidence that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon produced by brains seems overwhelming to me. I don't see how, on the premise that "the physical world is judge and jury", eternal life can be anything but wishful thinking.

> If you win, the rate of return can be enormous.

> That is the expected rate of return. There is large variance.

Actually, there's not. There are *outliers*, but outliers don't actually have much impact on the variance (that's one of the reasons variance is an important statistic). If you do the math you will find that the variance on the lottery is actually quite small. In fact, the bigger the payout, the smaller the variance (because the bigger the payout the more likely you are to lose).

> If you win, the rate of return can be enormous.

Yes, that's true, but the odds of winning are vanishingly small. That is exactly the rhetoric that keeps suckers playing the lottery despite the fact that the vast majority of them will lose. The lottery is a splendid example of Loki's work.

Luke said...

> Wouldn't you expect that most of the new covenant would be similar to the old?

Not necessarily. I would hazard to guess that the top tier concern is healthy life, shalom-life, life where all relationships are healthy:

     (1) human–God
     (2) human–human
     (3) human–nature
     (4) human–self

Without the first, God → Nature → nature → machine, and humanity falls along with this (worshiping the creature rather than the creator). Fun fact: Fitch's Paradox makes it hard to get of (1), although if you want to go skeptical you can.

Any laws not absolutely required by shalom-life are relative. This is why to agape is to fulfill the law: to build others up is to enrich relationships. Errors occur when you constantly build some people up more than others. From Bent Flyvbjerg's Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice:

>> The empirical study is summed up in a number of propositions about the relationship between rationality and power, concluding that power has a rationality that rationality does not know, whereas rationality does not have a power that power does not know. (2)

> Yeah, we're awesome.

Nope, that happens when we hold a bonfire and dance around it naked.

> It should not be surprising that some knowledge domains are so large that you can never learn all of it.

Meh, this seems like a dodge: you'd still be able to sketch out what it's like to follow Jesus, even if you cannot formally define it. Your sketch, by the way, might only work for a given locale of spacetime. The same is true of mathematics and other things, at least unless someone knows his/her history sufficiently well. Then, he/she would be fascinated to see how science/math/following Jesus was done in an earlier age.

> Indeed, the ultimate judge and jury is the physical world.

Is it? You might like Back From the Future, as well as weak measurement and Hardy's paradox.

Luke said...

> Well, the fundamental lesson that Loki teaches is skepticism. Loki is not a benevolent god, he is the trickster. The best defense against Loki's trickery is to rely on evidence, experiment and reason as the ultimate arbiters of truth, because even Loki is subject to the laws of physics.

Do you have Bernard d'Espagnat's On Physics and Philosophy? He has a great section near the end on causality and agreement; I'd love to see your thoughts, both @Publius and @Ron. Of particular interest to me is that one might be able to swap the meanings of 'cause' and 'event', get entirely the same phenomenology, but with different ontology. If so, which one is correct? And maybe QM could do more with new metaphysics. You may enjoy my recent Phil.SE question, Philosophy on nonlocality outside of physics? (holism ≟ nonlocality?).

> The purpose of life is to participate in this incredibly rich, complex, wonderful process that is life, including expanding our intuitive, provincial definition of life to include other forms of life, like memes.

This is vastly underspecified. For example: when it's you vs. the other guy, who wins and who loses? Does power decide, does fear decide, or does some other rationale decide? For some fun, see American Scientist's Follow the Money, which shows how chance, alone, can create great wealth disparities. While a very simple scenario and thus artificial, it does beg the question of whether chance is a good judge. If chance is not, then who/what is?

By the way, where in the scheme of "the purpose of life" would you put the aphorism, "to give is better than to receive"? Furthermore, if "know thyself" is part of this purpose, I suggest Thomas Breuer's The Impossibility of Accurate State Self-Measurements (pdf). (no relation)

> The evidence that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon produced by brains seems overwhelming to me.

I would absolutely LOVE to hear your thoughts on d'Espagnat's Veiled Reality; I have not read it, but I have read bits and pieces of the aforementioned, On Physics and Philosophy. The excerpt I linked gets at these "two levels"; see the footnote. I think Veiled Reality is heavy on the math, which is why I haven't bought it. Perhaps after reading David Bohm's Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, I will be more amenable to the math. The switching between continuous and discrete is just jarring to me; I have to believe that there is a better way to think about things than being forced to adhere to an abstruse phenomenology.

Luke said...

> And if you really think that there's serious disagreement about what evidence is then we can clarify it.

It may not be so much 'evidence' that we disagree about, so much as whether there are epistemic values, the truth upon which science is founded. I can quote a bit from Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy if you'd like; he talks about the failure of the logical positivists, the resultant breakdown of the rigid demarcation between a priori and synthetic, issues of Hume's take on causation requiring the imagination (that is, non-sense-impression), and how this plays into whether [certain] values are as 'real' as 'evidence'.

> What do you mean by "adjudicated"?

I mean that one can be an entirely consistent solipsist. The metaphysics can "lock you in", such that no Bayesian update will ever convince you that there exists more than one mind in the universe, a mind in which you participate, or perhaps is you. It is not even clear that one must be a worse scientist while being a solipsist. An example of solipsism is the idea that everyone else is identical to you, modulo his/her history of sense-experiences. The way some people act can be well-modeled with this axiom, regardless of whether they self-identify as solipsists.

> There is evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of brains [...]

Furthermore, there are issues getting emergence of consciousness if it requires emergence of intentionality from non-intentionality. Are you aware of Daniel Dennett's eliminative materialism? I would love to chat about how you avoid the slide into eliminative materialism, if you actually avoid it.

> The "certain kinds of results" I was referring to was, e.g. the ability to build bridges and iPhones. Science is much more effective than, say, prayer in those situations.

Science also makes nuclear weapons, has led to the ability to threaten the environment of the planet, has allowed mass murder on unprecedented scales, the administration of vast bureaucracies which have murdered millions via forced starvation, etc. etc. Let's be even-handed, no? I think I would add propaganda to the list as well: psychological violence. Have you read/watched any Noam Chomsky on propaganda and democratic totalitarianism? If you want a concrete example of psychological manipulation, see the Facebook experiment.

> 2. Even if it were true that belief in God was associated with "increased human thriving" that would still leave open the question about which way the causality ran (does belief in God result in thriving, or does thriving result in belief in God?). And even if you could establish causality that would leave open the question whether the causal agent was God or the (false) belief.

Hehe, you've just established with your 1. that we have lots of evidence that "thriving" ⇒ "disbelieve in God". So, if we were to see pockets of thriving with strong belief in God, shouldn't we also respect the other data? If so, how would you take both data sets into account?

As to which way causality runs, surely you know that philosophically, causality is really freaking hard? I don't think we can yet rule out retrocausality, for example.

Luke said...

@Ron

> > I don't understand what you mean by "chose which god to put your faith in".

> I mean exactly that. If, as publius says, God is not accessible by evidence and requires faith, then how do I choose from among the many gods available? Should I believe in Jesus? Allah? Thor? And I'm not looking for a direct answer to that question (because your answer is obviously: Jesus). I'm looking for an answer to the question: by what process should I make that choice? If I can't decide on the basis of evidence, on what basis should I decide?

I had some trouble looking for what I thought I asked already, so I'm just going to ask [again]: have you ever changed your conception of 'the good'? If so, could you explain the change and the cause behind it?

Publius said...

@Luke

>Fitch's Paradox

"... if any truth can be known then every truth is in fact known." Way more logical algebra than I'll even be comfortable with. One question, though - how does time factor into the paradox? I.e., could it be that all truths are known only after an infinite time?

> It should not be surprising that some knowledge domains are so large that you can never learn all of it.

>Meh, this seems like a dodge: you'd still be able to sketch out what it's like to follow Jesus, even if you cannot formally define it.

More than sketches, there are entire encylopedias. Some things are only learned by doing. You can't read a calculus book and know calculus - you have to solve some calculus problems. Someone can demonstrate how to tie shoelaces, but you won't know how to do it until you practice it. A church can show you the path to follow Christ, but unless you start down that path, you will not know what it is to follow Christ.

>> Indeed, the ultimate judge and jury is the physical world.

>Is it?

I would restrict that to the domain of "building things." I was specifically thinking of Richard Feynman's quote, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Luke said...

> > Fitch's Paradox

> "... if any truth can be known then every truth is in fact known." Way more logical algebra than I'll even be comfortable with. One question, though - how does time factor into the paradox? I.e., could it be that all truths are known only after an infinite time?

I don't see any way for time to matter. If you accept Fitch's axioms (laid out in two forms by Xamuel), then you must accept that all increase in knowledge is is only transmitted, not increased: what is actually going on is transmission from knower to soon-to-be-knower. (Or you can find an error in Fitch's logic and probably get a very nice philosophy publication.) The only way I can see time being involved is if there is an infinite amount to be known and transmission per unit time is finite. Perhaps you could have guessed that I am generally predisposed to both of these premises. :-)

> Some things are only learned by doing.

A nice way to formalize this is with Michael Polanyi's tacit knowledge. One could say that the 'bleeding edge' of what would constitute 'research' in 'following Jesus' is always and forever tacit. I think an error in Ron's line of questioning is to forget that 'following Jesus' is tantamount to starting from some position P, and moving toward a particular point at infinity (call it J). Different people start at different positions, and so the only way you can reliably know they're all probably moving in the same direction is over enough measurements which help eliminate any temporary wandering/backtracking.

And, as discussed before, it is likely that there are indeed multiple J's. One might be tempted to define 'True Christian' as "those who are pursuing the right J", but that's an iffy proposition. Is String Theory engaged in pursuing the ideals of science? It's really hard to tell, right now. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I think there's a good reason for the parable of the tares!

> I would restrict that to the domain of "building things." I was specifically thinking of Richard Feynman's quote, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Ahhh. That seems to presume that all physical laws that will exist, do exist. From Evan Fales' Divine Intervention: Metaphysical and Epistemological Puzzles:

>>     So by Swinburne's lights, L would not be the law that governs this range of events. But that doesn't seem right. Surely the failure of some events (or event sequences)—perhaps only a few—to have occurred should not have the implication that the laws of nature have changed. Indeed, suppose one is a libertarian—as Swinburne is—concerning human freedom. Suppose the events under consideration are ones freely brought about by human beings. Then human beings would have it within their power freely to determine whether L or L* is a law of nature. But surely human beings do not have the power to control such a thing as that.

Surely they don't... or do they? Was perhaps the serpent right, that we will become gods? See: Theosis.

Publius said...

>Well, the fundamental lesson that Loki teaches is skepticism. Loki is not a benevolent god, he is the trickster. The best defense against Loki's trickery is to rely on evidence, experiment and reason as the ultimate arbiters of truth, because even Loki is subject to the laws of physics. So Loki leads me to the scientific explanation of my origin: the big bang, abiogenesis, and Darwinian evolution.

It doesn't seem you're following Loki; you are anti-following Loki [unless, of course, you are following Loki by deceptively spreading falsehoods - a model I will not pursue for the moment]

Yet Loki may have pulled the ultimate trick: evolution may have hard-wired your brain to have religious beliefs. Then to be an atheist, you have to deceive yourself.

>So Loki leads me to the scientific explanation of my origin: the big bang, abiogenesis, and Darwinian evolution.

Here we see what you are following: reason, specifically scientific reason

>> Forgiveness

>For what? If I've wronged someone, I seek forgiveness from them. Why should the gods have anything to do with it?

What if...
1) The person you wronged refuses to forgive you? Or does every person have a duty to forgive?
2) you have done something that is unforgivable?
3) you have harmed yourself?

>> A purpose in life

>... the purpose of life is to participate in this incredibly rich, complex, wonderful process that is life, including expanding our intuitive, provincial definition of life to include other forms of life, like memes. Hiking through the redwoods, looking at Jupiter through a telescope, coming to understand relativity and quantum mechanics, participating in discussions like the one we're having right now -- that is my purpose in life. I find it completely fulfilling.

The purpose in life, or meaning of life, is it proportional to the amount of reason one can exercise? The floor of life's meaning would be set by one's innate intelligence. An attractive quality, though, is that one could enrich and expand one's meaning of life through education - so their would be no ceiling.