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.

God, science and the epistemic distance.

It’s still March. Technically. I’ve been thinking about how to do this for a while. I’ve read this idea of few times recently, and I wanted to address it a little. There is an idea that you should be able to empirically test the existence of God. It’s a rather attractive idea, which is why I feel the need to actually address it.

Before we start, I feel it’s best to tell you right now that I’m a theist. If you want to ignore anything I’ll say on the basis that I’m clearly biased thanks to my evil religiosity*, that’s fine. There are plenty of people who’d do exactly the same if I’d said I was an atheist.

Are they gone? Yes? Good. I hated those people. They weren’t witty, intelligent and devastatingly handsome like you are. OK then, onto my actual argument. The way I’ve seen people use to try and test the existence of God are varied, but the most common are probably prayer and near death experiences. Let’s be clear here, I won’t necessarily defend either prayer or near death experiences even under theistic worldview. There are some pretty serious problems with the idea of both of those things. I’ll do a dialogue on prayer one of these days, actually. But that’s irrelevant to the point I’m gonna try to make. I don’t want to prove that specific tests of God’s existence don’t work, I want to prove that trying to do the test using the scientific method is inherently unworkable.

Let us examine the nature of God for a moment**. Assume that He exists. In such a case, there exist four possibilities: He wants us to know that He exists, He wants us not to know whether He exists or not, He wants us to think that He doesn’t exist. Let us examine these possibilities in turn. The first is clearly ridiculous – if God wishes to convince people of His existence, he’s probably gonna be able to do it. If nothing else, the actual discovery of Russell’s teapot would probably convince even Dawkins, especially if it had ‘yes, Dawkins, I do exist’ written on the side. The second and third are functionally identical for the argument I’m about to make, and I’ll be arguing that one of them must be true, so I won’t try to refute them here. Which leaves the fourth. I… actually can’t deal with that one using pure definitions. Yeah, it seems somewhat silly that an omniscient, omnibenevolent God should genuinely not care, but He is ineffable, so it would be premature to rule it out. However, it doesn’t’ fit either with my argument, or with any traditional conception of God. It’s just weird. So let’s assume that the omnibenevolent, loving, caring God actually cares. Probably not too much of an assumption

So we’ve concluded that if a God does exist, He must either want us not to know whether or not he exists, or want us to think he doesn’t. Any empirical test, therefore, that He knows you’re running to test whether or not He exists, he’s going to make sure that you don’t get any evidence suggesting that He exists, isn’t He now. And since He’s omniscient, you’re probably not going to get around Him – if He doesn’t want you to know He exists, you’re probably not going to find a way around that one.

So if God exists, He either doesn’t want us to know whether he exists or not, or He actively wants us to think He doesn’t exist. One question remains: Why? Why on earth would an extant God randomly decide to hide His existence? Isn’t it simpler just to assume that He doesn’t exist at all? Well, now seems a good time to introduce you to the concept of epistemic distance, an idea belonging to, in my opinion, one of the greatest philosophers ever, John Hick. Let’s look at the nature of God, shall we? Almost everyone, no matter how sociopathic they might be, follows the law when they know that a policeman is looking directly at them. You can make a pretty good argument that anyone who doesn’t is totally insane, since they’re quite obviously acting against their own self-interest****. Now let’s assume that God exists, and you know it. Obviously, you’re going to do everything humanly possible to please Him – anything else would be seriously against your own self-interest. It’s similar to the ‘religious believers are in some way less good, since they can’t divorce their thinking from the idea that by doing good they’ll be rewarded later on’ argument. If you know God exists, your free will is reduced, and you can’t  really do good, since you can’t really choose to do other than as you do – in the words of Kant, ought implies can.

So if God exists, He has a good reason to keep his existence from becoming a matter of fact, to preserve epistemic distance and thus preserve free will. The Universe is entirely consistent with a God who does this, and any testing is pretty much gonna be pointless for proving either way. I’m not expecting anyone to convert from this argument – I’m not arguing that God exists (I’m a theist for completely different reasons), I’m arguing that He doesn’t necessarily not exist, and that science and religion really shouldn’t interfere with each other.

*Apparently, that actually is a word. Huh.

**I am here assuming the traditional omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God. As you’ll see, my arguments don’t really work for other kinds of God***.

***Which handily deals with the ‘we are both atheists...’ argument. What luck.

****Or they think that they’ll be able to escape, but…

The morality of serial-genocide

OK, I don’t normally respond to particular people. I’ll respond to a general sentiment I’ve heard from a few people, but this will be the first time I’ve gone to something I can point to, and here’s the link. Actually, there are a few things on that blog I disagree with, but for now let’s look at what’s written under ‘Irony meter goes off the scale’

Actually, before I start, let me just say, I’m doing this because I respect the author, at least somewhat. I’m doing this because I love you, so I’m going to do as I do with everything I love - dismantle you in a clinical manner, and then laugh at everything that's wrong with you.

OK then; let’s start with a quote from the text: “One of the most common pieces of bigotry aimed at atheism is that it doesn’t provide any basis for morality. It’s widely assumed that without religion — without moral teachings from religious traditions, and without fear of eternal punishment and desire for eternal reward — people would behave entirely selfishly, with no concern for others.” Did you notice what was wrong with that statement? It makes two statements, and tries to pass it off as just one. To say that atheism doesn’t provide a basis for morality doesn’t really mean that it means that people will act immorally if they’re atheist. It means that there is no reason for them to act morally. Now, I could probably accept this was just an unfortunate term. But the author absolutely and continually conflates the two points. She talks about the ‘clearest moral principles imaginable’. Really? Why? What, in short, is the source of these ‘clearest moral principles’, which apparently exist by which to condemn people?

There are quite a few answers I can give to this question, all of which I will now enumerate:

1: The amoralist’s answer: There’s no such thing as morality

2: The truly relativist answer: morality is individual to the person doing it. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ exist only within the context of the individual.

3: The slightly less relativist answer: morality is individual to the society of the person doing it. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ exist only within the context of a particular society or social group.

4: The humanist absolutist answer (also known as ‘the utterly idiotic for many and varied reasons’ answer): Morality is created by the human race as a whole, but is timeless and unchanging within that context. Morality is a human construct, but still exists eternally and unchangeably.

5: The divine command answer: Morality is created by God. His laws are always right; one has a moral duty to follow him.

6: The true absolutist answer: Morality is inherent and timeless truth. Right exists. Wrong exists. Anyone or anything can be judged by this standard, God as much as any human being.

Seriously. There is, as far as I'm aware, absolutely no other explanation.

So what answer can we have that will make these ‘clearest moral principles’ consistent? Clearly, the first three don’t work, as under those we can’t say that genocide is wrong if it’s perfectly acceptable in some cultures, or to some people. We can’t take five, because the author of the blog admits elsewhere in this post that under divine command ethics it’s possible to defend exactly what the author’s condemning. Also, the author’s an atheist. That leaves four and six.

OK, I called four ‘the utterly idiotic for many and varied reasons’ answer. Why? So. Many. Reasons. Because it’s literally impossible for us to know what this morality actually is. Since it’s eternal and manmade, it has to take account of not only everyone who has ever lived, but everyone who will ever live. Not only do we have no way of knowing what is ultimately right or wrong, so we can’t criticise anything, we can’t really blame anyone for anything since they had no way of knowing what was right and wrong. Can you really be blamed for doing something that was wrong if you didn’t know that it was wrong? That’s fascinating. I don’t think I even need to explain why. Also, nothing, nothing works that way. There is nothing else which is considered both human made and universal and unchanging at the same time.

That leaves us with only option six that the author of this blog can use to be even remotely consistent. A morality that exists entirely separate of any part of humanity, that simply is in the universe. OK then. That’s an interesting idea. But it’s rather incredibly far from clear that such a thing really exists*. So the author’s raging about how defending genocide is utterly wrong is rather less obviously true than one might think.

But unfortunately, I agree with the existence of a Universal morality. There are a lot of philosophers who’d say ‘if it was right for their culture, it was right for their culture, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ Incidentally, I’m pretty sure they’re all atheists, but that’s a side point. Lets accept the idea of there existing an independent, universal, unchanging morality. What does that imply? Well, for a start, it implies the existence of a realm beyond the physical, of the kind that Dawkins would probably get a little upset by. It requires the very ‘untestable belief in undetectable [things]’ that the author of this post complains religion does. ‘It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry’. You’re affirming your belief that certain thing are utterly wrong, others are absolutely, ‘obviously’ morally right, and that others are absolutely ‘obviously’ morally wrong, and there’s really no way to continue that discussion. It’s not something you can prove or disprove. It’s just a faith statement, at least as much as ‘I believe in God’.

I’m not actually criticising that – like I said, I believe in absolute morality too. And to get anywhere in the moral debate you have to make some brute assumptions. To get anywhere in anything requires that you make some brute assumptions – ‘murdering people is bad’, ‘freedom is good’, ‘our senses are accurate’ etc. What I object to is the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of making all these complaints about religion, without actually examining their own alternative.

Don’t get me wrong. William Lane Craig is a bloody moron. What he wrote was one of the worst things a human has ever written. I understand why he said it, but it still makes me feel dirty to even read it. But you don’t need me to tell you that, any more than you need me to tell you the same thing about Mein Kampf**. The author of this blog*** has some good, convincing ideas, that it would be very easy to believe – who’s going to object to ‘genocide is bad’? I criticise it because it’s good – not nearly as bad as I’ve made out. If it were the blatant idiocy of some of those of all faiths****, I wouldn’t have bothered with it.

This was a little heavier than I like, so allow me to tell you that I have no more evidence to believe that my senses are accurate than to believe that bananas track down lone travellers in the rainforest and devour them. I will therefore be advising that innocent smoothies be taken along on every journey through the rainforest, to warn them off. Also, I spent part of last weekend dressed in a leather trenchcoat and a fez.

For those of you who survived the ridiculousness of that mental image, I’ll see if I can get something a bit less controversial than calling people who criticise genocide hypocrites up soon.

*It’s also not clear what’s in it if it does. That’s another thing that annoys me about this blog. The author complains about how religious people say that theirs is the true religion, because they’ve thought about it, and they feel it in their hearts, when other people have thought just as hard, and feel it just as much in their hearts, but come to the opposite conclusion. Fair enough point. Then the author does exactly the same thing themselves. I guarantee, absolutely guarantee that there is at least one person who has thought about this, probably a lot harder than the author of this blog post, and has come to the conclusion that children should be systematically slaughtered. Actually, I can name him. He was called Plato, and he said it in The Republic. I don’t think there’s a single logically coherent moral system that doesn’t violate some kind of common sense rule of morality.

**I really hope so, anyway.

***Who, for the record, I’ve purposefully depersonified**** her throughout, since it’s the ideas I’m trying to criticise, not the person. That the author is Greta Christina is totally irrelevant.

****Shut up Microsoft. That’s totally a word now.

*****And for the moment, atheism is a faith statement – ‘I believe that there is no God’. I’m not getting into the agnosticism debate right now.