The Word of... meh.

One thing that I find… difficult about writing this blog is not giving completely the wrong impression of my actual viewpoint. Let me give feminism as an example. If I’m just going to talk about what I would naturally talk about, I’d probably end up being a lot more likely to be speaking against feminism than for it. Not because I am, but because most of what feminism says is entirely reasonable, and talking about it seems somewhat pointless. Let’s say someone is raped. This does not seem like something I can spend that much time on. Rape is terrible. Right to ownership of one’s own body is the second most important right, if you agree with the concept of rights. Or rape is treating someone as a means, rather than an end, if you’re a Kantian. If you’re a utilitarian, it’s a little lower pleasure at the cost of a lot of higher pain. What… what else am I going to say about that? Is there disagreement on this one? There is really nothing much to say. Say someone is found guilty of rape and is given a shorter jail term than if they’d been caught jaywalking? Well, I can tell you that that’s awful, and that that is a really skewed sense of priorities. But, again, I don’t have much else to say about it. There are no complex issues involved, it’s just wrong. I also don’t feel the need to mention that I disagree with the Chinese treatment of Tibet, or that I am broadly in favour of women getting the vote. I’m a lot more likely to mention it if I disagree with the feminist movement on something, since that’s actually a lot more interesting to talk about, and likely to require more explaining. Dog bites man is not news* – man bites dog is. That I don’t like rape is not something that’s worth your time to read about, or that I feel the need to explain – that I hate freedom and apple pie is. That’s one reason I try and avoid current events, since if I’m not talking about one particular issue I don’t end up expounding only those of my views that make me look even more like an evil bastard than I actually am***. Also for other reasons, but that’s one of them.

Now, in a normal blog, one written by someone with skills such as ‘planning’ and ‘vague coherence’, this would be when I’d come to the ‘but’ part of the post. But, sadly, you are not reading a blog by a member of that exalted company (and if anyone is still reading this blog under that false impression, I would direct them to the ‘next blog’ button at the top of the page, which random chance dictates shall lead you to greener pastures****). Thus, the preceding paragraphs have little or nothing to do with… anything, really, but are merely the insane product of my deranged imaginings. As, I suppose, will be the succeeding ones, so maybe they’re more connected than I thought.

Anyway, I’m a Christian. As you can of course tell from my unfailing love and kindness, my dedication to humanity, and my habit of burning at the stake those with whom I have minor theological disagreements. But I am also what is known as an apatheist. That rather rare word means that I don’t think it matters whether or not God exists. Now, many people would say that it’s quite important if an omnipotent being rules over the entire universe. Some would say that the existence of Heaven and Hell is a question that might concern people somewhat. I, however, disagree.

Let me start with the idea of the idea of the Irenaean theodicy. Which you’ve probably heard in a more basic form – but I’m going to explain it again in order to give myself a false sense of self-worth, and to try and justify to myself all the time I’ve spent studying the bloody thing. Also, my conception of it is mixed up with Hicks, meaning that it’s not quite the same as the traditional theodicy (not that that actually matters too much in this case). So, here’s the basic version: Ought implies can, you can’t say someone is wrong for doing something if they couldn’t have done anything else. I cannot really be blamed for the crusades, because even if that might be the kind of thing I would do, Christian that I am, there remains the minor fact that I hadn’t been born back then, which would make blaming me pretty unreasonable.

The extension of ‘ought implies can’ is that ‘ought implies can not’. If you can’t say someone is wrong for not doing something unless they could have done it, then you can’t say someone is right for not doing something unless they could have done otherwise. And if you can’t say that someone was right for not doing other than as they did, it follows that you can’t say that they were right for doing as they did. So morality implies freedom of choice – cliché as it is, a gun cannot be good or evil.

Which means that people without the opportunity to be evil cannot be good.  So, the argument goes, there is no point in God creating a world in which we do not have free will. The only way people can be good, is if they have the chance to be evil. Furthermore, one is only truly good if one is tempted to do evil – if one simply does the right thing because one might as well, that’s not really good.  Only a truly evil person does evil when it provides no advantage to them over doing good. By which I mean that I don’t think anyone does that, actually.

So you need natural evil, to provide temptation towards evil. And you need the ability to commit moral evil. Furthermore, you need not to know whether or not God exists. Because if you did know that there was an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient being judging your every action, who would reward or punish you depending on if you’d been good or bad, if His presence were inescapable… you wouldn’t really be doing good. You’d be doing literally the only thing that was the least bit sane to be entirely altruistic the whole time. What’s more, it would be almost impossible to do good even if you wanted to – even if you would do something based entirely on the fact that it is good, the fact that you will be rewarded for it is pretty much impossible to forget. So without some kind of epistemic distance***** good becomes impossible, and freewill non-existent.

And that’s the important bit. Because if that’s true, it means that looking for proof of God is pointless. And it means that a Universe with a God should look exactly like a Universe without God – at least as far as we can ever tell^††. So it’s not important in that way. And if you did know, how would it affect your behaviour? Well we’ve already established that doing good just because of Heaven isn’t really good at all^{†††††} – if you’re really going to do good, it has to be altruistic, it has to be done because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s in your own self-interest^‡.

So there you are then. There is no good reason why the existence of God should either be possible to determine, or should affect what you do. And I’ve mentioned before that any God who cares more about worship than about good and evil isn’t worth believing in.

That leaves only one thing: If a particular holy book is the source of morality. That would make God’s existence important, at least as far as it meant that the morality of a particular religion was right. Fortunately, I’m a Christian, and used to interpreting the word of God according to my whim. IT’s kinda how we do stuff – the bible is the word of God as written by man, so it’s not inerrant. People interpret it according to their conscience... And the point is, you can do that. The Bible is the word of God written by the hand of man, and written for the mind of man… but, actually, that’s not the point. Because even I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time. The point is that a good person can do nothing but evil deeds, and still be a good person – because being a good person is, by any reasonable definition, based on the person rather than the thing^‡‡‡. Which means that a person who works as hard as they can to do the right thing, even if they happen to be wrong about it, is a good person, regardless that they ended up with the death of millions. The point is the goodness of the person that matters. The other point is that if a holy book happens to be right in accordance with goodness, there is no way of knowing, so it affects little, and if it is true, it doesn’t matter if God wrote it – it matters what it says.

So… God doesn’t matter. His existence or non-existence doesn’t affect anything, nor does it affect anything in my behaviour. I am an apatheist. Not much else to say, really. Even though I’m sure I forgot something. So let me finish with a sonnet I wrote in Terza Rima. Because I’ve never done it before, and I heard it was really hard.

Lo! I can see, though ‘twas hid so well

Gleaming in darkness but hid from view,

Deep in the night time and lost in hell,

Devils and demons it’s wealth accrue.

Lo! I can see, that it’s holy still,

Rising from fire, and all made anew.

Should from its depths I now drink my fill?

Should I be careful of legends so old

Endlessly ancient, but perhaps, still,

Out of the ages, something of gold?

Beautiful flowers from knowledge grow,

Oh, How much more, from this thing extolled?

Just for few small pennies I’d know,

All of the things which can from it flow.

People were right. That is actually really hard… my congratulations to anyone who can figure out what I’m talking about. And yes, that actually is a sonnet. So there.

*Because those evil creatures will attack you the moment you let your guard down**.

**I am not a dog person.

***Heaven knows, I really don’t need help with that.

****I’d also direct you to Hitherby Dragons, because it’s been far too long since I blatantly plugged it.

*****Philosophers like feeling important, so they give things like ‘God not letting people know He exists’ fancy and complicated names like ‘epistemic distance’, hoping it will fill the emptiness inside^†

^†My love to any philosophers reading… though I would like them to explain why they’re reading this… just… why?

^††Although if you were to somehow compare the two , they would probably look completely different^†††.

^†††Although only as long as it’s impossible to do so – if they are possible to compare, they have to be the same^††††

^††††I’m pretty sure there is a clearer way of putting this.

^{†††††}If your name is Ayn Rand, you may want to ignore this entire post, by the way. Should probably have mentioned that earlier. Sorry Ayn.

^‡Unless, again your name is Ayn Rand^‡‡.

^‡‡You may think this doesn’t apply to you either, as a follower of Ayn Rand. But, unfortunately, the special treatment is just for people with that exact name. Come back when you’re on a stamp. And are called Ayn Rand.

^‡‡‡Virtue ethics away!... I make a distinction between ‘good person’ and ‘good deed’, and I make no claim here of which is more important, or of anything but the distinction between them. I simply ask that it be recognised that George Washington was a good person because of who he was, not simply because of what he did^‡‡‡‡. And that even though he was still a good person, his acceptance of slavery was kinda wrong, regardless of the perpetrator – and that he didn’t really do it because of a flaw in his character, as such^{‡‡‡‡‡}. Or if a man goes into a neighbour’s house, and lights a fire, so it will be warm when he comes home. But he accidentally lights the house, instead. The person is clearly a good person who tried to do something nice, even if they are unutterably stupid. The action (setting someone’s house on fire) is kinda an evil one.

^‡‡‡‡Which was, of course, to lead a totally unjustified terrorist revolt against the legitimate government of his people.

^{‡‡‡‡‡}Arguments about how flawed Washington was sound like things to avoid with a ten foot pole and a suit of armour. But ‘allowed slavery’ isn’t really one of them, I would say – in that time, and in that place, it was an absence of greatness, not a flaw. Incidentally, I have now surpassed my own record for number of footnotes, I think. Addiction to the things is one of my flaws.