Christians... why do you identify as Christian?

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

3. A modified/extended version of Pascal's wager.  In other words, it is safer to accept Jesus as the Son of God and be wrong than it is to reject Him and be wrong.  

Pascal's Wager doesn't really work in Christianity because it is a faith based religion, not a works based religion.

Most non-Protestant churches aren't Sola fide

[afleitch]

Not only that, Pascal’s Wager fails because there merely aren’t two belief systems of which one is correct (or both not correct to no net detriment to the believer), there are countless. It could well be that Zeus is pretty pissed with ALL of us right now. The idea that choosing to believe in one version of god will do you ‘good’ if it turns out there is a god, even if that avatar god is completely the opposite of what you believe is nothing more than wishful thinking. The real god might not want to be found. At which point atheists get rewarded.

In terms of those who have expressed a ‘need’ for Christianity to find beauty, structure, meaning etc, I’m intrigued on what basis have you determined that this provides/supports this as opposed to another faith or none (other than it being rhetorically effective)? Given that there are examples of individuals who demonstrate this to be the case. What prevents you from exploring these options? On what basis can you compare the ‘happiness’ from which you draw, with another state of ‘happiness’ which someone derives from some other reference?

I can understand why humans demonstrate a need for ‘validation’; the need for their actions to be recognised and appraised as individuals within our social groups, but to project that outwards asking for the personification of universe to validate you is one of the strangest avenues for the human mind to wander. Despite protestations to the contrary, there is a selfish (which is not my favourite word but I’ll use it here) component to following a ‘reward’ based faith.

If that is how faith is viewed; as a need to define oneself, to make one feel organised, synchronous, valued and motivated is it not then a dependency?. Given that a dependency/psychosis by definition may not have any basis in what is good, what is right or what is true, why should you be trusted? Why should you trust someone that says ‘I need this’ or ‘You need this because it did x for me’?

It’s not an analogy I would expect anyone to like and I am clearly not suggesting that religious belief is an addiction more than any other communal activity or personal philosophy. But not being able to even comprehend that you could see yourself or see the world through clear eyes and clear minds without it as a reference and feeling that you will somehow fall way from yourself is not to put it mildly, a healthy outlook.

And here’s the thing. When you stand on the street in front of a Christian preacher after spending a half hour discussing the New Testament and years of ‘Nathaning’ about religion and you whisper to yourself; ‘I don’t think God exists’ and then those words actually leave your mouth, it’s like a punch in the gut. And it smarts for a few days and then it’s fine. You still get up in the morning, you are still the same person. You don’t become ‘better’ but you don’t become ‘worse’ as an individual. Because you realise that who you are as a person has always been independent from what you believed. Your faith was never ‘informing the rest of you’.
You think you need something until you don’t. You don’t replace it with a need to be really really really really NOT believe in god, because the whole concept removes itself from your general list of priorities.

[Enduro]

Because He cares like no other.

[bore]

I came to belief in God, to put it pretentiously, through philosophy, not through ethics. I'm not convinced this is a particularly good thing, and I think that this type of belief is, like the  old joke about Mathematician's answers "completely true and utterly useless". It doesn't, in an of itself, really motivate you to change anything and it certainly doesn't prove any particular religion.

Simply put, the hypothesis of God as the Ground of all Being, the uncaused cause, is, to my mind, far and away the most logical, rational, intellectually appealing, way of looking at the universe. Nevertheless, the idea that has been drummed into me repeatedly throughout my course, that you can prove anything if you make the right assumptions and choose the correct definitions has stayed with me. I recognise that if you make different assumptions you can just as easily show that God does not exist. I happen to think those assumptions are less parsimonious, I don't think they comport as well with the world around us, but there is no way of arguing that logical. Every philosophical argument comes down to a set of first principles at which debate must stop. You pay your money and you make your choice.

The reasons I think that the God idea has better first principles are long and boring, but just to give you a flavour, they concern the question of existence (Why there is something rather than nothing), the consistency of scientific laws (why they exist in the first place), the elegance and beauty of mathematics and the ability of the human mind to understand the universe, albeit dimly, through a glass.

As mentioned above though, this gets you no further to Christianity than the idea that 4 is greater than 2 gets you to 2+2=4. So why do I make that leap?

In one sense the answer is obvious, because I'm born to Christian parents in a (nominally) Christian country. Therefore, at the very least I'm more familiar with Christianity than other religions. This is true, but kind of trivial. Greater knowledge of Christianity is just as likely to lead to rejection as it is to acceptance. Ultimately there are two main steps that took me to where I am today.

The first was, again, a sort of intellectual exercise. Christianity, more than most religions, stands and falls with a historical event, if the body of Jesus was discovered tomorrow than we may as well all go home. Anyway I'm not going to claim that I'm even a dilettante in the history of the New Testament era, but I did discover that the consensus among historians is that Jesus definitely existed and was crucified. The documentation is too limited to show anything else and it certainly can't prove the resurrection, but it can't disprove it either. Similarily, regarding the doctrines of the Church I found that I did not have to accept the things I could not accept (Universalism and homosexuality). Obviously in both cases the church has largely to almost unanimously been against them but I think it' (although particularly universalism was fairly common among the church fathers, gregory of nyssa, for example) possible to be a christian and affirm those things coherently without becoming the type of liberal christian who may as well not believe at all. When it comes to things that a Christian must affirm I've found gradually that they're things that I can intellectually accept, or at least not feel I have to reject. For instance with the trinity, while I can not comprehend it I'm willing to accept it.  If you're able to get around the fact that there are the same number of fractions as there are prime numbers the idea of 3 in 1 is no longer quite so hard.

Admittedly at the moment I've just sketched out that I could say the creed without contradiction, not given any reasons why I do say it without contradiction, which is where the second step comes in. I take the view that reasons for Christianity are like hardcore pornography they are known in being seen, they are not obvious to define. And I have spent, over the last few years, many hours with a group of nuns who by their lives and by their service have given a more convincing demonstration of the central truths of the Gospel than any apologetics. Similarly reading the gospels I've found Jesus to be an utterly captivating figure, who I am unable to see as anything other than Lord and God. This may not satisfy hardcore rationalists (As a maths student I've always been something of an incorrigible mystic) but I am OK with that. Ultimately, once I've convinced myself that the necessary groundwork has been laid, I side with Stepan Trofimovich from Dostoevsky's Demons, after The Sermon on the Mount was read to him "Enough, enough, my child, enough........You can't think that that is not enough!".

[Antonio the Sixth]

In terms of those who have expressed a ‘need’ for Christianity to find beauty, structure, meaning etc, I’m intrigued on what basis have you determined that this provides/supports this as opposed to another faith or none (other than it being rhetorically effective)? Given that there are examples of individuals who demonstrate this to be the case. What prevents you from exploring these options? On what basis can you compare the ‘happiness’ from which you draw, with another state of ‘happiness’ which someone derives from some other reference?

Well, for starters, Nathan has extensive knowledge of the beliefs and practices of a multitude of religions, so I really don't see where you think you're going with this.


Anyway, to your broader point, I see where you're coming from, because I used to think more or less along the same lines when I was 15 to 17 (though obviously I wasn't as articulate). The idea that religion is "a dependency" or otherwise pathological and that people could "free themselves" through reason and critical thinking is very seductive, especially when it's sustained by the broader construct of Enlightenment values. And obviously, anything that makes you feel better or smarter than most people is good to take.

This is the only major aspect of my worldview that has really evolved over time. And the reason it's changed is that I've come to realize just how limited and inadequate materialistic rationality is in guiding the human mind. The truth is that we are, at heart, emotional beings. That's something I've come to realize both through my personal experience and in my academic studies. No matter how hard we try to think of ourselves with a coolheaded, clinical, analytical approach (and believe me, I do that a lot - I'm almost pathologically prone to introspection), this will never be enough to live a fulfilling existence.

At the end of the day, we all end up adopting some kind of mental structure, a framework that allows us to make sense of all the cognitive information we receive and translate it into emotions. Rationality can't help us with that. It can answer the questions "How does the world work? What are the consequences of my actions?", but it will never tell you what this all means. You too have a frame of mind of some kind that allows you to come to at least a tentative answer in this regard. I hope you are aware of it, and if you're not, you should look more carefully. What I've come to realize is that progressivism (that is, the belief in humanity's capacity to continually improve itself) tends to play that role for me. There are other aspects, but getting into them would make things too personal, so let's leave it here.

So yeah, in the end, religion is one of the forms (by far the most common) that these frameworks can take. It certainly can be a lot more rigid than the alternatives, and I'm the first to lament that. But the fact it's been so successful throughout human history is an indication that it also does the job far better than a non-religious ethos. Partly because, as per its etymology, it links people together in a community. Again, this as good and bad sides to it, but the good side is a pretty big deal. Partly, it's also because it provides a rigorous moral standard. It's not just about "reward", as many (and I myself once) thought. I think the purest moral implication of, at least, Christianity, is that there is someone who knows what good is and can guide you as you try to become a better person. And, when you fail in that, that someone can see it, and is ready to forgive you if you genuinely want to do better. That's a powerful and beautiful idea. Again I won't get too personal, but I found myself desperately wishing I could believe in it at some point recently.

The point is, people have valid reasons for believing, and dismissing it as an "addiction" or something of the like means missing out on all the crucial needs religion fulfills in people's lives. And again, those are needs we all try to fulfill somehow. So don't be too sure that your solution is necessarily any better than someone else's.

[afleitch]

In fairness, I was never actually arguing religion was a 'dependency'; I was arguing why people 'depend' on it to define the centre of themselves when in many ways it hasn't actually informed them or their attributes. That their core, their centre would still be there with it, without it, or with another.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In fairness, I was never actually arguing religion was a 'dependency'; I was arguing why people 'depend' on it to define the centre of themselves when in many ways it hasn't actually informed them or their attributes. That their core, their centre would still be there with it, without it, or with another.

What do you mean exactly by core or center? A person's identity is a very complex construct, and religion can be a bigger or smaller part of it (or no part at all). If people say their religion plays a big part in how they see themselves, I'll be inclined to believe it unless there's any reason to doubt their word.

[afleitch]

In fairness, I was never actually arguing religion was a 'dependency'; I was arguing why people 'depend' on it to define the centre of themselves when in many ways it hasn't actually informed them or their attributes. That their core, their centre would still be there with it, without it, or with another.

What do you mean exactly by core or center? A person's identity is a very complex construct, and religion can be a bigger or smaller part of it (or no part at all). If people say their religion plays a big part in how they see themselves, I'll be inclined to believe it unless there's any reason to doubt their word.

What I mean is say, does a good person's 'goodness' cease if they no longer believe in the source of that good being external? That their goodness was there all along and had pretty much nothing to do with from where they believed it 'flowed'?

[Antonio the Sixth]

In fairness, I was never actually arguing religion was a 'dependency'; I was arguing why people 'depend' on it to define the centre of themselves when in many ways it hasn't actually informed them or their attributes. That their core, their centre would still be there with it, without it, or with another.

What do you mean exactly by core or center? A person's identity is a very complex construct, and religion can be a bigger or smaller part of it (or no part at all). If people say their religion plays a big part in how they see themselves, I'll be inclined to believe it unless there's any reason to doubt their word.

What I mean is say, does a good person's 'goodness' cease if they no longer believe in the source of that good being external? That their goodness was there all along and had pretty much nothing to do with from where they believed it 'flowed'?

The thing is that religion, while not the only source, certainly contributes to defining what "goodness" means to a person. Not necessarily how one ought to act in every situation, but at least the one or two defining principles by which one can evaluate their own behavior. Of course nobody would suddenly be left without any moral compass of any kind if they lost their faith, but in most people there would be a lot of doubt and soul-searching required to reconstruct a satisfactory moral framework.

Also please, please, please tell me you don't adhere to the Rousseauist nonsense about humans being "naturally good". You're better than that.

[RI]

I don't think Pascal's Wager really matters that much, or at least not for me. Framing faith in a game theoretic schema leaves a quite bitter taste in my mouth. I think being a Christian to be rewarded is a fairly terrible reason to be one, or at least not one that resonates with me. The more and more I learn about Christian theology, the more I long for it to be true, but paradoxically, the less I worry about whether it is or not. If it's not true, I don't really care, to be honest. I'm not a Christian because I want to escape death. Death doesn't scare me. The potential of non-existence doesn't scare me.

I suppose I'm a Christian because I find the Christian metanarrative easily the most beautiful and powerful of any religious or secular narrative. About the connectedness of the cosmic and the intimate, the eternal and the temporal, the marriage of heaven and earth, the intimacy of God becoming man, the romance of Christus Victor, the victory in sacrifice and suffering, the love that conquers all things. And all for my sake, for the sake of a sinful, bitter, selfish, hateful soul who stumbles every time he tries to stand.

It's a bit of a strange thing, but when I was baptized six years ago, I didn't really know what I was getting into. Not really. It's a bit like getting married or having a child; you can't really know what it's like, what it really feels like, until it happens. You can't see beyond your perceptual event horizon no matter how hard you try until you pass it. I don't feel now like I did then. Back then, it was all intellectual. It was solid. It was something you could hold in your hands. I became a Catholic because it made sense to me logically. As time passes, it's changed into something different. Something more. I've felt it building for years now, this great need in me bubbling up from inside. It mixes with everything else, but it eclipses them as well. I feel this calling, this longing, this drive to climb upward, toward some far off light. It compels me onward. I want to go deeper, further, higher. Like the giants in C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, I want to journey ever deeper into the mountains. Ever nearer to God. In this light, the world seems heightened in a way; if God created everything, then everything tells of Him.

If we must frame things with Pascal's wager, I'd say this: If God doesn't exist, I'll die in hope none the wiser, a life lived in a world full of meaning and beauty. If some other vengeful god exists, then I'll probably suffer what my sins might rightfully earn me. If God exists, then I'll seek Him as long as I can. But I'll follow Him to whatever end, because the end doesn't matter-- in God, there is no end, not really-- only the journey matters. That journey forward, traveling from light into light.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

3. A modified/extended version of Pascal's wager.  In other words, it is safer to accept Jesus as the Son of God and be wrong than it is to reject Him and be wrong.  

Pascal's Wager doesn't really work in Christianity because it is a faith based religion, not a works based religion.

Most non-Protestant churches aren't Sola fide

That's a matter of emphasis more than anything else. Indeed, quite a few Protestants really need to read James 2:14-26. Faith without works is dead. Luther was reacting to the deviation from the proper balance between faith and works that had gone too far in the direction of works in the Roman Church, but it really ought to be prima fide, not sola fide.

[afleitch]

Also please, please, please tell me you don't adhere to the Rousseauist nonsense about humans being "naturally good". You're better than that.

As opposed to….? Augustine? Hobbes? No. I think that sort of masochism is best left to the bedroom

As human beings exhibit all behaviour that we would define as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ we are essentially neutral. Or in other words we accord to ourselves.

We do this in part because we have ‘volition’ rather than free will. Your will can never be uninfluenced by anything other than your own experiences so can never truly be ‘free’. Your brain makes decisions based on it’s physical condition at the time you make the decision. It’s current physical condition is determined by it’s previous states.  You have the control that evolution and life experiences have afforded you but you can never have 100% responsibility for every moral, immoral or amoral action that you may undertake. Not surprisingly, in most systems of justice, including simple communal or even family accords, we seem to take this into account when rewarding or punishing without being prompted.

In terms of trying to give actions an objective moral value the idea it’s ‘God or nothing’ is horribly western (and as I mentioned in a previous reply, based on a presupposed ontology). There are a number of theories, whether secular or philosophical or even religious that don’t invoke a deity.

Theistic morality for example is entirely subjectivist. If things are ‘good’ because god says that they are good then morals are arbitrary. Indeed, they are more arbitrary from a subjectivist perspective than our definition of morality because god (if it is in any way god like) is entirely unbounded by anything that would otherwise constrain us when making decisions.

So it robs ‘good’ from any definition. ‘Good’ is simply what something powerful mandates. If god mandates it, then ‘good’ means nothing. As I’ve discussed before, saying ‘god is good’ is simply saying ‘god is god’. It says nothing meaningful about its actions because god would be ‘good’ no matter what it does. So that definition robs not only ‘good of its goodness’, but ‘god of its glory’. Why should there be praise for god if it would be equally praised even if it did the complete opposite? If what is arbitrary replaces what is just or reasonable, then all justice is, if anything, is what is pleasing to god.

So if things have to be ‘good’ (and humans are so far the only entity asking this), then they must be good for another reason, if goodness needs to have value, then it can no more come from god that it can from us.

Saying that morality is actually grounded in god’s nature and expressed in its commands doesn’t avoid this problem. Whatever it was god’s nature to prefer would still be right by definition and still diminish the significance of moral terms. So saying god is good would just be saying that god also accords to its own nature which isn’t really an accomplishment. If it’s nature were different it would still be good. The wider issue is that theistic ethics are essentially ethically subjective; moral statements being made true by the attitude of certain people.

Which, to take us back to the start, places god essentially in the same position as us. It makes god essentially neutral. Which means it ceases to be god-like. Though in fairness that position is perfectly compatible with deism, which makes no demands of god.

‘Good’ as a concept is irreducible precisely because of human subjectivity; there is no other ‘subject’ by which it can ever be viewed, there is no other ‘self’ to whom it could apply. Therefore while the study (or, more correctly I should think, the experience of ethics) is plausible, because we face ethical choices constantly because we are human, it cannot exist outside the human experience and therefore is always going to be subjective. It's supposed to be.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is a very oddly worded question. Hazel eyed people... why do you identify as Hazel eyed?

Christianity isn't a physical trait you're born with.

It's a belief system, a value system, and a way of life.

Isn't that (the second sentence, the first one isn't relevant frankly) precisely why the question as worded is odd? Admittedly to a lot of people religion is simply a matter of wearing a badge, but...

[RINO Tom]

I came to belief in God, to put it pretentiously, through philosophy, not through ethics. I'm not convinced this is a particularly good thing, and I think that this type of belief is, like the  old joke about Mathematician's answers "completely true and utterly useless". It doesn't, in an of itself, really motivate you to change anything and it certainly doesn't prove any particular religion.

Simply put, the hypothesis of God as the Ground of all Being, the uncaused cause, is, to my mind, far and away the most logical, rational, intellectually appealing, way of looking at the universe. Nevertheless, the idea that has been drummed into me repeatedly throughout my course, that you can prove anything if you make the right assumptions and choose the correct definitions has stayed with me. I recognise that if you make different assumptions you can just as easily show that God does not exist. I happen to think those assumptions are less parsimonious, I don't think they comport as well with the world around us, but there is no way of arguing that logical. Every philosophical argument comes down to a set of first principles at which debate must stop. You pay your money and you make your choice.

The reasons I think that the God idea has better first principles are long and boring, but just to give you a flavour, they concern the question of existence (Why there is something rather than nothing), the consistency of scientific laws (why they exist in the first place), the elegance and beauty of mathematics and the ability of the human mind to understand the universe, albeit dimly, through a glass.

As mentioned above though, this gets you no further to Christianity than the idea that 4 is greater than 2 gets you to 2+2=4. So why do I make that leap?

In one sense the answer is obvious, because I'm born to Christian parents in a (nominally) Christian country. Therefore, at the very least I'm more familiar with Christianity than other religions. This is true, but kind of trivial. Greater knowledge of Christianity is just as likely to lead to rejection as it is to acceptance. Ultimately there are two main steps that took me to where I am today.

The first was, again, a sort of intellectual exercise. Christianity, more than most religions, stands and falls with a historical event, if the body of Jesus was discovered tomorrow than we may as well all go home. Anyway I'm not going to claim that I'm even a dilettante in the history of the New Testament era, but I did discover that the consensus among historians is that Jesus definitely existed and was crucified. The documentation is too limited to show anything else and it certainly can't prove the resurrection, but it can't disprove it either. Similarily, regarding the doctrines of the Church I found that I did not have to accept the things I could not accept (Universalism and homosexuality). Obviously in both cases the church has largely to almost unanimously been against them but I think it' (although particularly universalism was fairly common among the church fathers, gregory of nyssa, for example) possible to be a christian and affirm those things coherently without becoming the type of liberal christian who may as well not believe at all. When it comes to things that a Christian must affirm I've found gradually that they're things that I can intellectually accept, or at least not feel I have to reject. For instance with the trinity, while I can not comprehend it I'm willing to accept it.  If you're able to get around the fact that there are the same number of fractions as there are prime numbers the idea of 3 in 1 is no longer quite so hard.

Admittedly at the moment I've just sketched out that I could say the creed without contradiction, not given any reasons why I do say it without contradiction, which is where the second step comes in. I take the view that reasons for Christianity are like hardcore pornography they are known in being seen, they are not obvious to define. And I have spent, over the last few years, many hours with a group of nuns who by their lives and by their service have given a more convincing demonstration of the central truths of the Gospel than any apologetics. Similarly reading the gospels I've found Jesus to be an utterly captivating figure, who I am unable to see as anything other than Lord and God. This may not satisfy hardcore rationalists (As a maths student I've always been something of an incorrigible mystic) but I am OK with that. Ultimately, once I've convinced myself that the necessary groundwork has been laid, I side with Stepan Trofimovich from Dostoevsky's Demons, after The Sermon on the Mount was read to him "Enough, enough, my child, enough........You can't think that that is not enough!".

This was a very cool post.  Thank you.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As human beings exhibit all behaviour that we would define as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ we are essentially neutral. Or in other words we accord to ourselves.

We do this in part because we have ‘volition’ rather than free will. Your will can never be uninfluenced by anything other than your own experiences so can never truly be ‘free’. Your brain makes decisions based on it’s physical condition at the time you make the decision. It’s current physical condition is determined by it’s previous states.  You have the control that evolution and life experiences have afforded you but you can never have 100% responsibility for every moral, immoral or amoral action that you may undertake. Not surprisingly, in most systems of justice, including simple communal or even family accords, we seem to take this into account when rewarding or punishing without being prompted.

If you're willing to make this argument, why not push it to its logical conclusion? In purely materialistic terms, there is no free will at all. Each and any of our actions is determined by chemical reactions in our brain, which, like any chemical reactions, are determined by interactions between particles. Every single one of those interactions is determined by a prior interaction, from before the particles were even part of our bodies. Literally, "everything happens for a reason" and, with infinite knowledge, we could infer the entire history of the universe from the very first instant of its existence.

This view is actually almost a good argument for the existence of God, since, as Bore said, none of this would make any sense without a primal cause, a cause that isn't the consequence of a prior cause (where this argument fails, of course, is that such primal cause could take any possible form, including one that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the idea of deity). Still, that's where extreme materialism and Calvinism meet: from before we were even born, every second of our lives was already set in stone.

The only escape from this horrifying conclusion is to assert that there is something that transcends material reality. It can take any form you like (personally I'm fine with the concept of soul, for all its hand-wavyness), but it has to involve a faith of some kind. Any attempt to defend the existence of free will through rational arguments will become an argument for determinism (I think it's Bergson who said something like that). The only alternative is to have faith in free will. Otherwise existence becomes meaningless.

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Well duh, that's exactly what I said a few posts ago. I'm a secular agnostic who at least likes to believe he's trying to do good. Obviously you won't see me argue that religion is the only source of morality.

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Most Christians thankfully don't think in these terms, though. For sure, there are many - and since they're found so often in America, it's easy to lose sight of the multiplicity of theological reflections on morality. I'm not familiar enough with these debates to really say anything interesting about that, but many other posters are, so you can ask them. In short though, the idea isn't that "it is good because God says so", but that (for example) the overarching story that emerges from religious texts says something about the nature of the world, and that in turn has moral implications. Or alternatively, religious rites can ingrain certain behaviors in the human mind (here I have to pay some tribute to my ongoing education in social psychology) that in turn have moral implications. Of course the ultimate conclusion is that God wants us to act a certain way, but the road you take to get there isn't as basic as you assume.

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What can it come from, then? The rest of your post seems to go all out on moral relativism, but surely you realize it's just as much of a dead end as the worldviews you criticized? Sure, morality is subjective in the sense that we all hold different beliefs on what is right and wrong, but if we abandon any ambition to come to a common understanding of that, then what? Anybody can feel morally entitled to act based on their own subjectivity? This is tantamount to abandoning morality altogether. We all have unconscious biases and prejudices that cloud our moral judgment in self-serving ways, and it's hard enough to fight those biases in themselves. If we actually start legitimizing these biases, giving them the status of actual moral beliefs, then morality stops meaning anything at all. Then, really, "nothing is true and everything is permitted".

[afleitch]

In purely materialistic terms there is no 'free will'

It was a useful tool when trying to advance or explain paradoxes within a theistic universe. If humans can voluntarily choose to be evil (which makes us worse than god because it isn't evil) because we have such a thing as a ‘free will’, then it no longer becomes a problem with god but with mankind. We've elevated this concept and we talk about it when discussing 'choice' that we tend to forget that it has lost it's place if you will. Indeed, it was always intellectually dishonest to try and get around theological problems by inventing a theological framework (in saying that there is morality in nature and people have free will etc) by which to then excuse the original theological problem

But I did discuss the concept of volition, which you have perhaps unintentionally skipped over.

You say that 'extreme materialism says that before we were born every second of our lives was already set in stone'. That's not really what materialism argues. Evidently you arrive on this earth as the product of circumstance, the sum of what has gone before but materialism does not argue that this determines every action you take. You can learn. You can unlearn. You take one action and it then informs the next. You might cross the road at the wrong point and suffer consequences. Those consequences were not predestined from the start (and indeed the act of crossing the road and being hit by a car are amoral actions in themselves)

Also bear in mind that classical determinism is in many ways upended by what is called 'quantum indeterminancy' but I won't muddy the discussion with that. Essentially it's very difficult when talking about, as you say, particle interaction to determine that action 1 leads to 2 to 3 and so on. Particle interaction pays no attention to time. 1 could easily lead to 7 or lead to cat. So you can't quite be as reductive as you have suggested in your example. Likewise you can't really say 'everything happens for a reason.' We are the ones who infer reason; the universe has no vested interest in what we do.

What you have is volition. The 'you' part of your consciousness is created by the brain to facilitate social interaction with the rest of your species, and with your surroundings and with your cat, but that doesn't mean that you're not making the decisions.

You are your brain. Your brain is you. There's nothing external making or informing decisions. You make them. It's just that while this is going on your conscious mind (the part of you that's not currently regulating your blood flow, opening and close your pupils, judging distances and depth etc) is not aware of the decisions until all the work has already been done. And then ponders them.

You can theorise a soul, if helps, as a sort of spiritual facsimile of your conscious being that isn’t subject to entropic demise, or even if you don't care about that aspect of things, as a 'higher' part of yourself. Given that no human being has exactly the same cognitive and physical abilities as the next person and therefore no human is ‘fully informed’ of all choices that are available, then surely the soul would be something 'bigger' than this. Something that transcends it. If the soul was truly ‘free’ (yet still somehow ‘you’), it would allow you to experience cognitive processes that you would not otherwise be able to experience. If it was making its presence known then it should, at least occasionally be able to ‘burst out’ of your physical and cognitive confines rather than hide behind it. Yet this doesn’t happen. If the soul is acting behind the scenes, then it’s following exactly the same processes as your body and isn’t guiding you any more or any less than your consciousness is in making moral choices. If that is what it's doing, then it's been 'incapacitated.' And if souls 'flow' from god wrapped in the concept of 'free will' to excuse gods theodicy then it doesn't end up excusing it at all and the paradox is still there.

So how can you say that a soul exists independently or even co-dependently of your consciousness? How can you say that it exists at all?

You've also said; 'The idea isn't that "it is good because God says so", but that (for example) the overarching story that emerges from religious texts says something about the nature of the world...' but then conclude with 'of course the ultimate conclusion is that God wants us to act a certain way, but the road you take to get there isn't as basic as you assume.'

You've contradicted yourself there. Which one is it? Are religious texts metaphorical examinations of the nature of the world or are they instructions for how god wants us to act? Because the second point has implications. On the first point, there aren't really specific 'rules' in nature. You don't sit back and say 'I want to do x but nature will be mad at me.' Nature isn't moral. We cannot take a moral position that the spider that eats it’s mate to assist in propagating the species, by doing something that we would find abhorrent, is doing anything other than what is beneficial for them. We cannot argue it as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It exists outside our ability to experience it.

Now if it's the second, then as I said it has implications. It suggests that god has intent. And that is pure theology, not deism. And this intent is something you must learn or at least come to understand rather than see as self evident. And that can mean your experience may count for nothing. Your interaction with nature may count for nothing. Your knowledge for nothing, your empathy for nothing your reason for nothing (e.g who cares what you know, who you know, what you feel, what they feel, what nature demonstrates, what the sciences say, whether or not people are happy and psychologically sound - men shouldn't partner with men)

If god is determining the 'rules', whether they are in the form of mathematics and fractals or in the form of stone tablets or edicts about who you can sink your dick into they are still subjective rules because they are determined not by themselves but by one cause determining them.

And that problem only comes about because we 'project' human understandings of 'good' and 'bad' and what flows from that such as systems of punishment, reward, forgiveness etc onto a universe that is amoral.

'Anybody can feel morally entitled to act based on their own subjectivity?'

Some sociopaths perhaps. But for the rest of us, can they? Do they? Try it. Try and do anything you want based on your own subjectivity. Decide you're going to drink water rather than coffee. Decide you're going to cross the road when it's not clear for you to. Decide you're going to steal something. Decide you're going to mow down cinema goers with a gun. What do you think the collective response to each of these decisions would be? What do you think the effect on you will be?

How often are you faced with the choice of what you're going to have to drink? How often do you think you might save time by nipping across traffic? How often does mass slaughter cross your mind as a solution on a daily basis? What about every one else's mind given that it's an option out there for us to choose?

Let's take that last one just as an example. Why aren't we wrestling with that issue regularly. Why do we actually consider it morally wrong to kill (with caveats, as in everything) Do you think it helps us bond and function as a human society? Do you think it ensures you don't have to always watch your back. Because we socialise. Mammals don't commit mass slaughter against their own kind. They kill others of their own kind as we do; for territory, for competition over resources, for self defense, for the defense of infants and over ‘property’ including sexual mates. But spiders 'slaughter' away.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fair point regarding quantum physics, though if I understand currently the notion of indeterminacy isn't as strong as it was initially presented as and a situation like Schrödinger's cat could never actually occur even if the technology for it existed. So, basically, it means that the state of particles is probabilistic rather than either/or. In any case it's still not compatible with free will.

There are two problems with your concept of volition. The first is that the line between conscious and unconscious decisions is awfully hard to draw. Most of what goes on in the human mind has both conscious and unconscious aspects to it, in different proportions of course (ranging from automatic functions like breathing to the most carefully-thought decision). Generally, the tendency in Western thought has been to overestimate the rationality of our thought process, and sweep under the rug the importance of instinctive or socially conditioned behaviors. This certainly gives a flattering image of the human mind, but is unfortunately highly misleading.

Either way, even if you could somehow isolate the decisions that the human brain consciously makes and call it "volition", how can you justify making it a morally relevant concept without any reference to a broader interpretive framework? Who says that "your brain is you" if your brain, as you say, does so many other things you have no control over? What's the fundamental difference if, at the end of the day, both processes are caused by chemical reactions, which also occur in different forms outside the human brain and even the human body? You can't possibly defend the idea that your concept of "volition" logically flow from a rational observation of the material reality. Volition is as much of a metaphysical construct as the soul, in fact I have a hard time seeing any difference (your attempted deconstruction of the soul is based on a whole slew of assumptions I never made, although someone else could, and mixes up the material and metaphysical realms in ways that get us nowhere).

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I can't speak for religious people, but my understanding is that, for most of them, those things are not mutually exclusive. The point is that religion (as do secular philosophies, of course - I don't care about that distinction as much as a religious person might) provides a lens through which one can give meaning to a word that, otherwise, is just a mechanic concatenation of causes and effect. This meaning, in turn, informs us about the nature of good and evil. In the context of Abrahamic religions, it is generally understood that God wills the good of humanity and thus wants humans to be good. Thus, yes, by living according to the principles that derive from that understanding of the world, we end up doing God's will, but that doesn't mean that the moral framework provided by religion can be summed up to "do that because God wants you to".

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This part of your post seems pretty confused. At first it seemed you were restating Glaucon's argument in Book 2 of Plato's Republic (which is a very serious issue and might take our conversation in an interesting direction), but then what it devolves in basically another Rousseauist appeal to nature. So human morality derives entirely from evolutionary imperatives and the way our genetics are programmed? Well, in that case, that means a lot of things we consider immoral are in fact perfectly OK. That's not quite the same as your earlier point about morality being based on a social contract to ensure peaceful coexistence. I'd much rather discuss that one instead of some naturalistic nonsense.

[Blue3]

This is a very oddly worded question. Hazel eyed people... why do you identify as Hazel eyed?

Christianity isn't a physical trait you're born with.

It's a belief system, a value system, and a way of life.

Isn't that (the second sentence, the first one isn't relevant frankly) precisely why the question as worded is odd? Admittedly to a lot of people religion is simply a matter of wearing a badge, but...

No, it's the same as asking Republicans why they identify as Republicans, or liberals why they identify as liberals.

[afleitch]

I’ve lost where you’re going with this. This will be my last effort post because I don’t think it’s wise to keep arguing over this in this particular thread

I argued that I don’t believe in ‘free will’ because firstly it’s the wrong premise; it’s a theological construction to help explain theodicy in a god centred universe and secondly, the idea of a free will  relies on the concept that there is some extra entity not related to the rest of the universe and it’s laws, and not subject to casuality therefore fitting the requirements of a genuinely ‘free’ will that is uninfluenced by anything other than itself.

So I put forward the concept of ‘volition’ (which I won’t further explain at this point)

Earlier, you took issue with what you called the logical conclusion of extreme materialism/determinism a ‘horrifying conclusion’. You then assert the existance of something that transcended material reality (and that you were fine with the concept of a soul, which in answer to another point is why I discussed the idea of a ‘soul’ like appendage to the human consciousness) Now in response to the points I raised on the topic of volition, you’re calling it as ‘metaphysical’ as the soul because because of the fine line between conscious and unconcious decisions is hard to draw and that you cannot isolate conscious decisions.

That is true. ‘Volition’ doesn’t argue otherwise. I even said that your ‘conscious mind is not aware of the decisions until all the work has already been done’. It’s free will that makes this argument. Free will has two facets; firstly it rests on the assumation of determinism; the idea that you can do something other than what you’re going to do. Which you don’t really have (sorry). I don’t think we are disagreeing there (are we?) The second is that you have the ability to do something that no one else can predict, which makes you the decision maker. This you do have. Actions flow from your decisions, which may in turn affect another. So you still have decision making, in respect to the effect that you can do something that another can’t predict, even if you don’t have free will do something other than what you’re going to do. That respects the fact that as far as you are concerned and as far as a human observer is concerned you’re making decisions. Whether that’s actually the case at a particle level is neither here nor there. We have the choice that we are afforded; volition. It seems to work pretty well for us as a species.

So if volition is as metaphysical to you as the ‘soul-free will’ then essentially you’ve found yourself backhandedly defending ‘extreme materialism’; that everything is just the sum of what has gone before and there is absolutely no choice, no decision making in the matter, even though you found it a horrifying conclusion (which by your own admission you wished to mitigate somehow)

Volition isn’t a metaphysical premise. Volition argues that you have limited choice; at least as much choice as you are afforded. It’s an understanding of the choices we have, not the choices we necessarily want. Therefore we exercise volition limited only by causality and physics to the extent that is both necessary and beneficial to us. And the reason we must assume this, is that we should not assume the universe has a moral framework or provides, as you postulated (considering this to be a need) a, ‘broader interpretative framework’. We are one of countless processes that are happening in the universe. We also happen to be sentient. Hooray for us.

As a result of our sentience means we are grappling with the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. We are asking the universe a question.

We ask ‘why’ because we seek to know the reason behind an action. It’s part of our innate curiousity. The only being that can ‘reason’; that can initiate something on purpose and for a purpose is us. So ‘why’ is a human concept that doesn’t make sense without a mind to make the references. We are the only ones that can do it.

All observable interactions in the universe are processes. They do what they do and are not aware why they are doing it or what they are doing it ‘for’. The only processes that can observe these other processes occurring and then determining, for our purpose whyhappen to be us, and we popped into existence very recently.  We are also a process, but we are a process that is self aware.

So we are self aware. And we happen to be living on a planet were the first things we saw, the very first things we understood were cognitive organic processes. Sun and water will grow this plant for me, that wolf is defensive and will attack me, but could turn out to be useful. We understood this before we understood the weather and the sun. We used to imply agency to non cognitive organic and inorganic purposes.

Now we have the ability to observe the universe as it is and most curiously as it was. And so far? All we can observe are inorganic, non sentient processes. It is highly likely therefore, that if are able to peek behind the Big Bang and see more, we won’t see sentience. We will see another non organic process and the question of ‘why’? (which is the wrong question to ask) will still be unanswered. There is no ‘teleology’ to the universe as it has no goal or direction beyond the costraints of both physics and entropy.

We are inferring reason because we can reason. We are inferring purpose, because we see structure in our lives. We infer intelligence, because we are intelligent. We perceive time as linear bounded by starts and finishes because we lead finite linear lives. If the universe is infinite, multiple and unbounding then there is always ‘something’ and there can never be nothing. If it actually has a ‘start’ then we should not rush to infer agents and actors in such processes and deify them.

Now even all of this is anthropocentric. And that concerns me. What if there is another sentient race out there, with their own volition, with their own choices. With different choices? They might be asking the universe; ‘Blarp’. They might be pondering something completely beyond our own cognition. They might be, like our own little spiders, be doing something so fundamentally advantageous, so fundamentally ingrained, so fundamentally ‘blarp’ to them that would for us be one of the worst things you could do to a human. If humans could do such things. How can the universe have a moral foundation, if it allows for every possibility? For every cognitive process?

Where then is the ‘broad interpretative framework‘? Why not say, that morality is ‘afforded’ to each sentient process by the universe which it has no say in arbitration rather than say that it must accord to anthropocentric  absolutes. That is what volition is.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

3. A modified/extended version of Pascal's wager.  In other words, it is safer to accept Jesus as the Son of God and be wrong than it is to reject Him and be wrong. 

Pascal's Wager doesn't really work in Christianity because it is a faith based religion, not a works based religion.

Read the post again.  I wasn't applying Pascal's wager to the existence of God; I was applying it to the belief in Jesus as the Son of God.  I realize this wasn't the way it was originally used, but it still applies.

And why would it only apply to works-based religions?  Believing that God exists requires as much faith as believing that Jesus is His Son.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I’ve lost where you’re going with this. This will be my last effort post because I don’t think it’s wise to keep arguing over this in this particular thread

Well, yeah, it's probably not fair for us to hijack a thread explicitly addressed to Christians. That said, I'm very interested in pursuing this conversation elsewhere if you'd like.


I'm OK with defining volition as "the ability to make decisions that cannot be predicted", but you have to be aware that this makes volition increasingly fragile. Human decisions are not inherently unpredictable: to the extent that they are unpredictable, they are due to a lack of knowledge. And indeed, advances in neurosciences, psychology, anthropology and sociology (just to cite a few) have allowed us to predict a whole range of human behaviors that previously seemed unpredictable. Sure, these predictions are probabilistic rather than deterministic, but I don't think that distinction is enough to shrug off the problem. If, based on my scientific expertise, I can predict with 80% probability that you will do something, can you still say you're doing it of your own volition? And if so, where do you draw the line in a way that makes sense from a strictly materialistic framework? If not, does that mean that progress in human knowledge has reduced the extent of our volition, even though the process through which we make decisions remains the same?


I don't really disagree with anything you say regarding the material universe being amoral and morality deriving from our self-awareness. In fact, in some way, it proves my point. If the material universe is amoral, then simply studying it will tell us nothing about what's right and what's wrong. Materialism can't help us with morality, and that's exactly why we need metaphysics. Otherwise, if you decide to reject any form of metaphysically-based morality whatsoever, what's left? A purely subjective, self-centered, and inevitably hedonistic intuition? A Hobbesian or Lockean social contract to keep us from killing each other? A Rousseauist "natural goodness" ingrained in our genes? Or can you see another alternative that doesn't require metaphysics? I've been trying to ask you that for a while and you repeatedly seem to dodge the question.

[afleitch]

Materialism can't help us with morality, and that's exactly why we need metaphysics. Otherwise, if you decide to reject any form of metaphysically-based morality whatsoever, what's left? A purely subjective, self-centered, and inevitably hedonistic intuition? A Hobbesian or Lockean social contract to keep us from killing each other? A Rousseauist "natural goodness" ingrained in our genes? Or can you see another alternative that doesn't require metaphysics? I've been trying to ask you that for a while and you repeatedly seem to dodge the question.

I'm answering the question. I've made it pretty clear in the last few posts why morality doesn't need to invoke metaphysics.

Studying the universe isn't going to tell us anything about what is right and wrong because firstly it's not a question we should be asking the universe and secondly in observing the universe we observe inorganic, non-sentient processes. There is no teleology to the universe.

'Good' is a physical concept. Metaphysics must be rooted in physics. There is nothing objectively 'real' about abstract philosophical concepts outside of the minds that infer them. Abstract concepts like ‘love’ are rooted in objects; physical things to show love to. Concepts such as ‘justice’ are bound to physical concepts like action, punishment and so on. These cannot be externally defined (and refined) by something external to the human experience, so who is it that defines them? We do.

It's also clear that given all we do with metaphysics is play about with it and input and impart into it, that we aren't getting anything meaningful out from that either!

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm answering the question. I've made it pretty clear in the last few posts why morality doesn't need to invoke metaphysics.

Studying the universe isn't going to tell us anything about what is right and wrong because firstly it's not a question we should be asking the universe and secondly in observing the universe we observe inorganic, non-sentient processes. There is no teleology to the universe.

'Good' is a physical concept. Metaphysics must be rooted in physics. There is nothing objectively 'real' about abstract philosophical concepts outside of the minds that infer them. Abstract concepts like ‘love’ are rooted in objects; physical things to show love to. Concepts such as ‘justice’ are bound to physical concepts like action, punishment and so on. These cannot be externally defined (and refined) by something external to the human experience, so who is it that defines them? We do.

Sorry, that's still not an answer. You say that morality is rooted in the physical reality, yet at the same time you say that morality doesn't apply to the physical reality because it isn't sentient. How do these two things go together?

And of course "we" are the ones who define moral concepts. That's completely missing the point of my question. How do we define them? On what basis can we legitimately say "this is good, this is bad"? Again, I ask you, can we derive this exclusively from the material reality? If so, how, since as you yourself say, the material universe is by definition amoral? If not, what's left?

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Metaphysics, similarly to other forms of theory (including scientific ones!) is about formulating a set of assumptions or axioms and deducing from them. The difference is that those deductions are not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific. If you think that unscientific = worthless, good for you, but thankfully most people would disagree.

[afleitch]

I'm answering the question. I've made it pretty clear in the last few posts why morality doesn't need to invoke metaphysics.

Studying the universe isn't going to tell us anything about what is right and wrong because firstly it's not a question we should be asking the universe and secondly in observing the universe we observe inorganic, non-sentient processes. There is no teleology to the universe.

'Good' is a physical concept. Metaphysics must be rooted in physics. There is nothing objectively 'real' about abstract philosophical concepts outside of the minds that infer them. Abstract concepts like ‘love’ are rooted in objects; physical things to show love to. Concepts such as ‘justice’ are bound to physical concepts like action, punishment and so on. These cannot be externally defined (and refined) by something external to the human experience, so who is it that defines them? We do.

Sorry, that's still not an answer. You say that morality is rooted in the physical reality, yet at the same time you say that morality doesn't apply to the physical reality because it isn't sentient. How do these two things go together?

And of course "we" are the ones who define moral concepts. That's completely missing the point of my question. How do we define them? On what basis can we legitimately say "this is good, this is bad"? Again, I ask you, can we derive this exclusively from the material reality? If so, how, since as you yourself say, the material universe is by definition amoral? If not, what's left?

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Metaphysics, similarly to other forms of theory (including scientific ones!) is about formulating a set of assumptions or axioms and deducing from them. The difference is that those deductions are not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific. If you think that unscientific = worthless, good for you, but thankfully most people would disagree.

I know you're a Sanders supporter but no need to be catty

Morality is rooted in physical reality as are we. There's nothing to suggest that morality exists beyond ourselves. I gave you the example of the spider and the alien. Morality is relative to those who are doing the moralising. We're doing the moralising because for whatever reason, that's what evolution has been afforded us.

How do we define moral concepts? We define them. End of. We define them in laws, we change them, we define moral concepts in smaller groupings, in family units there are 'house rules' and so on. On what basis do we legitimately say 'this is good, this is bad,? We legitimise those. Then we change our minds. Is there a single moral answer a moral good or moral bad in abortion? No. We can easily legitimise either outcome. If you have power you can coerce legitimacy. You can do it internally as an individual. Now you can try and legitimise your killing spree in a packed cinema but the chances are someone is going to detain you. Or shoot you.

If the universe is amoral and we are neutral because we do both 'good' and 'bad' things, as well as define them, then what else do you need? What other 'thing' do you need to be right and perfect and true and arbitrate all mankinds moral choices? What other thing do you need to have humanlike qualities yet not be human. Or physical. Or pay any attention to the universe it's in? If you're a deist you don't even need that. It's only when you start thinking god commands and has to be interested almost exclusive in nothing about it's creation other than humans, that you then assign these attributes to that god to overcome the paradoxes in a theistic universe.

What use is metaphysics if it can mean anything you want it to mean? If it cannot be falsifiable? Processes that have an effect in reality can be investigated in reality. Things that do not have an effect in reality can not be said to exist in any meaningful way. Metaphysics is a toy. Nothing more than that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How do we define moral concepts? We define them. End of. We define them in laws, we change them, we define moral concepts in smaller groupings, in family units there are 'house rules' and so on. On what basis do we legitimately say 'this is good, this is bad,? We legitimise those. Then we change our minds. Is there a single moral answer a moral good or moral bad in abortion? No. We can easily legitimise either outcome. If you have power you can coerce legitimacy. You can do it internally as an individual. Now you can try and legitimise your killing spree in a packed cinema but the chances are someone is going to detain you. Or shoot you.

Then the morality of the mass shooter is just as valid as the morality of the guy who throws himself in front of him in an effort to save the other people around. The morality of Eichmann is just as valid as the morality of the families who hosted Jews during the war. It's all subjective, isn't it? There's no higher principle to distinguish between them, other than each individual's opinion of them.

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Because reality is not a relevant concept in metaphysics. The idea that something has to be real to be meaningful is ludicrous. Metaphysics is meaningful because of its power in giving humanity a purpose, a moral framework and, indeed, a meaning. A metaphysical theory should be judged on the basis of how well it does these things, not on whether or not it's confirmed by evidence (which by definition it isn't).