Christians... why do you identify as Christian?

[afleitch]

When I was a Christian even then, the honest answer was I was raised Christian in a Christian household in a nominally Christian country. Of course I was going to have a Christian ontological outlook. The odds of me therefore being Christian and understanding Christian concepts that in turn influenced a sort of conformation bias were therefore high. I was a Christian for the same reason my Muslim friends were Muslim.

[afleitch]

I have come to the conclusion that the most likely explanation for the Universe as we know it is that it was created/designed by a higher entity/consciousness of some kind that exists beyond the four dimensions we can perceive, and Christianity offers the most believable and unique description of such a being, IMO.  I also give the Bible the benefit of the doubt as a somewhat accurate historical text just like any other (certainly not all of it, especially many Old Testament stories), and I have a hard time believing that the disciples would have behaved in the way they did under persecution if they hadn't truly witnessed something miraculous (the Resurrection).  Beyond that, the obvious answers of it was what I grew up with, it makes me feel fulfilled inside and I just have an odd gut feeling/spiritual attraction that I don't expect or necessarily want anyone else to understand.

Happy Easter!

So you consider that the most believable and unique description of the creator of the entire universe and everything in it, is that which was forwarded by a small part of a tribe in the middle east of the planet Earth some 2000 year ago? That if there is any any sentient life in this vast universe it's not worth them looking for evidence or inspiration from their own world and their own experiences because you're pretty sure that Roman Judea nailed it?

In terms of the disciples, do people only suffer and die for beliefs that are true? Why should strong belief correlate in any way to truth? People 'martyred' themselves for Jim Jones. People blow themselves up for 70 virgins. People do all sorts of extraordinary things for what they believe to be truth. But it doesn't by extension make that true.

Christianity's own 'creation myth' is not an adequate representation of what actually happened.

Christianity spread (and this is meant to be a very quick rundown) through the Roman Empire through missionaries at first with strong evidence it was adopted by soldiers (for the same reasons that Mithraism was popular amongst soldiers) when it was an interesting new cult which helped ‘prime’ some areas of the Empire before missionaries actually got there.

Incidentally it also went east by virtue of the silk road and survived in fluctuating pockets (before 500 ad, 1/3rd of the world’s Christians were in what we would now consider Asia).

Then of course it became mandated by the Empire itself to the point at which laws forbade the practice of all other faiths for the first time in the entire history of the Roman Republic/Empire until such a point that it became integrated within the imperial government, leading to a form of 'caesaropapism' that ended up surviving the collapse of the Empire itself. At the time of Constantine’s conversion it was estimated that a small minority of the population of the Roman Empire were Christian and we can say than in the loosest sense of the word because there were numerous competing Christian sects. Not only did Constantine prompt the beginning of the Empire’s general edict against paganism, he was also the first Roman Emperor to specifically target unwanted Christian sects. That in turn affected early Christian thinkers like Augustine of Hippo to find ‘merit’ in using violence against heretics which they had previously argued against.

Then followed periods of forced conversion and by the early 400’s the first instances of genuine political/state action taken against ‘heretics’ (literally eradicating them) Christianity then had to fight its way into Europe which wasn’t necessarily ‘completely’ Christianised until the 1000’s-1100’s. While Europe was busy bludgeoning itself over whether Jesus liked ruffs or puritan buckles, Europe managed to export Christianity to the New World in ways and means that are genuinely barbarous. Same in Africa too.

[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.

[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.

[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'?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.