I'm reading de Incarnatione by Athanasius of Alexandria, and it's brought to light a question that never really came up during my Anglican upbringing: what is the relation between sin, sinfulness, and salvation?
By sinfulness, or what Athanasius refers to as corruption, I mean the tendency towards sin. A standard Anglican view would be that our history of sinning means that we are generally unable to be with God - that is, to enter heaven. However, Jesus sacrificed himself to bear the punishment for our sins, with the result that by accepting this sacrifice we can be free from our sins and so enter heaven. Corruption, if it even enters the picture, is something that may be reduced through the work of the Holy Spirit, and which will be eviscerated entirely before we enter heaven, but it has no bearing upon the fact of our salvation. (Nor, for that matter, is there any discussion of precisely how we will cease to be corrupt: it will simply happen).
A Catholic view, as I understand it, pays more attention to this issue. Corruption cannot eternally prevent entry into heaven in the way that sin does, but it can delay it. Although Christ's death on the cross paid for our sins, we must also be purged of our corruption before ascending to heaven - hence Purgatory, in which through chastisement we are gradually purified. Eventually we emerge as the perfected visions of Christ, ready to enter heaven free of both sin and corruption. Or something. This is probably innaccurate, I am neither a Catholic nor a trained theologian.
Athanasius has a third and even more different view. There are two crucial building blocks to his view. The first, which I imagine both Anglicans and Catholics would in general be willing to accept or at least to be persuaded of, is that corruption comes as a consequence of sinning. The second, I think, would prove far more controversial.
There is danger in imputing views to historical figures, but it seems to me that Athanasius sees corruption as the primary force keeping us away from God. "Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough." (p16) Sin itself is covered by our repentance, our acknowledgement of it, with no need for Christ's death on the cross.
What, then, did Jesus come to save us from? "The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death... For this reason, he assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection." (p17-18) (Apparently not even Paul himself could compete with Athanasius for overly long sentences).
Let me be blunt: I have no idea how Athanasius' model of salvation fits together. The Christ-died-for-sins is quite clear: death is a punishment, we deserved this punishment, Christ suffered it instead. The debt was paid. ("How did he in three days bear the weight of the sins from billions of entire lives?" "Shut up, that's how.") It is much harder to see how a death could remove corruption.
But perhaps it will become clear from further reading. And perhaps it provides perspective on the theological debates of today, to see that at least we agree on what the founding event of our religion meant - so ething that, it seems, cannot be taken for granted.
A Persian Cafe, Edward Lord Weeks
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 August 2017
Tuesday, 13 June 2017
Hey, Remember When I Used To Do Regular Links Posts? Neither Do I!
In the spirit of cleaning out my "links" folder, a dump of things I found interesting at the time and hopefully you will too:
Perhaps you have plenty of time to get where you want to go, but are tired of dull and ugly routes. Look no further than this tool for identifying not the quickest, but the most beautiful route between two places! The only catch: it's for Yahoo rather than Google, so no-one will ever use it.
An 88-year-old man has found the ultimate trick for getting to sleep with young women under hegemonic capitalism: market yourself as a commodity! "Grandfather Busted For Prostituting Himself To Young Women".
An article about one of my favourite albums of recent years, The Lyre Ensemble's The Flood. The Flood is an attempt at recreating, or at least composing in the spirit of, ancient Babylonian music; more about the album can be found here and the album is on iTunes, my personal favourite songs are "Enkidu Curses the Harlot" and "Ishtar's Descent".
Staying on the topic of music, "Towards a 21st century orchestral music canon". Various enthusiasts chip in with their thoughts on modenr long-from orchestral music and why there's relatively little of it.
The collection of Wellcome Library, Euston Road, includes an impressive selection of calling cards for London prostitutes. Fascinating both because sex and as a reflection of the social history of London. "Until the mid-190s, the typical tart was of apparently English stock. From around 1994 onwards, we see Oriental beauties, busty Amazons and Jamaican Dominatrices. Raunchy photographs become common at this point, but are often cribbed from magazines and bear little resemblance to the goods on offer. The production values improve as well. One lady poses next to an inset that shows her recent endorsement by the News of the World."
Another library I'd have been interested to visit: that of the IRA prisoners. People are often surprised at how well-educated and middle-class most terrorists are, but you have to remember that terrorism is a fundamentally political act, which means that it is most popular among the political classes. In this light, the greater surprise is not that the prisoners were so interested in Marxism, but that they were able to establish such a remarkable compendium of works in the tradition.
Only the true Messiah denies his divinity! (via this 2009 Marginal Revolution post)
Stewart Lee defends the German sense of humour. Incidentally, a dirty Hungarian joke I heard last night about Transylvanians, but which could be about many other nationalities too:
A young Transylvanian man is getting married, and asks his father for advice concerning the wedding night. The father tells him: "First, you must pick up your new wife, to show that Transylvanians are strong. Then you throw her on the bed, to show that Transylvanians are masculine. Then you remove your clothes, to show that Transylvanians are beautiful. And I'm sure you can work out what to do from there."
After the newlyweds return from their honeymoon, and the delighted son checks in with his father. "It was just like you said! I picked her up, to show that Transylvanians are strong. I threw her on the bed, to show that we are masculine. I removed our clothes, to show that we are beautiful. And then I stood next to the bed and masturbated, to show that Transylvanians are independent and autonomous!"
Robert Wiblin has one of the most interesting Facebook feeds I know, and this is a particular highlight: a discussion of "What's the strongest argument against a political position you hold dear?"
Everyone likes to joke about homoerotic readings of the relationship between Batman and Robin, but this is an impressively thorough history.
The complaint that English people only know England, and have no idea of how the world works or of how they are perceived beyond their borders, is a familiar one: I hear it all the time from Scots and Northern Irish. If I had any Welsh friends they'd probably say the same thing, the British-but-not-English countries are all basically the same anyway. In any case, an expat skewers this mentality from a more international perspective, with regard to our beloved "athlete" Eddie the Eagle.
Braess' Paradox: adding capacity to a road network can increase congestion, without changing the volume of traffic!
Edward Feser explains a particular view of the nature of heaven and hell, according to which people choose to go to hell. Warning: relies on kooky metaphysics (though nonetheless fascinating if you have an interest in theology).
A defence of Napoleon, portraying him as a great reformer who sought to avoid war, at least following his return to power in the Hundred Days. In a similarly revisionist but less hot-takey, more plausible vein, various instances of private violence being taken over by the government as a way to restrain and control it. "Many southern states tightened "Jim Crow" racial codes between the World Wars as part of an attempt to stop lynchings"!
Since I may have just defended governments, better even it out with a reminder that many of them are literally evil: as famine is declared in two counties of South Sudan, the government increases the fee for work permits for foreign aid workers from $100 to $10,000.
Some people just hate progress: an argument against colonising Mars. That said, perhaps the problem is that Mars is the wrong target and we should aim for Venus first.
A takedown of certain elite views that war with China is inevitable. Convincing as an explainer, I particularly enjoyed the section suggesting that the same argument imply inevitable war between the US and Europe.
Perhaps you have plenty of time to get where you want to go, but are tired of dull and ugly routes. Look no further than this tool for identifying not the quickest, but the most beautiful route between two places! The only catch: it's for Yahoo rather than Google, so no-one will ever use it.
An 88-year-old man has found the ultimate trick for getting to sleep with young women under hegemonic capitalism: market yourself as a commodity! "Grandfather Busted For Prostituting Himself To Young Women".
An article about one of my favourite albums of recent years, The Lyre Ensemble's The Flood. The Flood is an attempt at recreating, or at least composing in the spirit of, ancient Babylonian music; more about the album can be found here and the album is on iTunes, my personal favourite songs are "Enkidu Curses the Harlot" and "Ishtar's Descent".
Staying on the topic of music, "Towards a 21st century orchestral music canon". Various enthusiasts chip in with their thoughts on modenr long-from orchestral music and why there's relatively little of it.
The collection of Wellcome Library, Euston Road, includes an impressive selection of calling cards for London prostitutes. Fascinating both because sex and as a reflection of the social history of London. "Until the mid-190s, the typical tart was of apparently English stock. From around 1994 onwards, we see Oriental beauties, busty Amazons and Jamaican Dominatrices. Raunchy photographs become common at this point, but are often cribbed from magazines and bear little resemblance to the goods on offer. The production values improve as well. One lady poses next to an inset that shows her recent endorsement by the News of the World."
Another library I'd have been interested to visit: that of the IRA prisoners. People are often surprised at how well-educated and middle-class most terrorists are, but you have to remember that terrorism is a fundamentally political act, which means that it is most popular among the political classes. In this light, the greater surprise is not that the prisoners were so interested in Marxism, but that they were able to establish such a remarkable compendium of works in the tradition.
Only the true Messiah denies his divinity! (via this 2009 Marginal Revolution post)
Stewart Lee defends the German sense of humour. Incidentally, a dirty Hungarian joke I heard last night about Transylvanians, but which could be about many other nationalities too:
A young Transylvanian man is getting married, and asks his father for advice concerning the wedding night. The father tells him: "First, you must pick up your new wife, to show that Transylvanians are strong. Then you throw her on the bed, to show that Transylvanians are masculine. Then you remove your clothes, to show that Transylvanians are beautiful. And I'm sure you can work out what to do from there."
After the newlyweds return from their honeymoon, and the delighted son checks in with his father. "It was just like you said! I picked her up, to show that Transylvanians are strong. I threw her on the bed, to show that we are masculine. I removed our clothes, to show that we are beautiful. And then I stood next to the bed and masturbated, to show that Transylvanians are independent and autonomous!"
Robert Wiblin has one of the most interesting Facebook feeds I know, and this is a particular highlight: a discussion of "What's the strongest argument against a political position you hold dear?"
Everyone likes to joke about homoerotic readings of the relationship between Batman and Robin, but this is an impressively thorough history.
The complaint that English people only know England, and have no idea of how the world works or of how they are perceived beyond their borders, is a familiar one: I hear it all the time from Scots and Northern Irish. If I had any Welsh friends they'd probably say the same thing, the British-but-not-English countries are all basically the same anyway. In any case, an expat skewers this mentality from a more international perspective, with regard to our beloved "athlete" Eddie the Eagle.
Braess' Paradox: adding capacity to a road network can increase congestion, without changing the volume of traffic!
Edward Feser explains a particular view of the nature of heaven and hell, according to which people choose to go to hell. Warning: relies on kooky metaphysics (though nonetheless fascinating if you have an interest in theology).
A defence of Napoleon, portraying him as a great reformer who sought to avoid war, at least following his return to power in the Hundred Days. In a similarly revisionist but less hot-takey, more plausible vein, various instances of private violence being taken over by the government as a way to restrain and control it. "Many southern states tightened "Jim Crow" racial codes between the World Wars as part of an attempt to stop lynchings"!
Since I may have just defended governments, better even it out with a reminder that many of them are literally evil: as famine is declared in two counties of South Sudan, the government increases the fee for work permits for foreign aid workers from $100 to $10,000.
Some people just hate progress: an argument against colonising Mars. That said, perhaps the problem is that Mars is the wrong target and we should aim for Venus first.
A takedown of certain elite views that war with China is inevitable. Convincing as an explainer, I particularly enjoyed the section suggesting that the same argument imply inevitable war between the US and Europe.
Wednesday, 10 May 2017
The Scientology-Shaped Hole in our Hearts
There's an argument sometimes made for the existence of God, known as the "God-shaped Hole" argument. The basic idea is that our lives are often unfulfilling, that this un-fulfilling-ness ceases to be for those who place their trust in God, and that this constitutes evidence for the existence of said God.
This argument is most commonly advanced by Christians. However, I feel that taking this argument seriously entails taking it not just as evidence for a God in general, but more specifically for the God - or broadly religious doctrine - who is most effective at giving our lives meaning and satisfaction. If YHWH is the most fulfilling deity to worship, then this is evidence for Allah. If the Hindu pantheon is most fulfilling, then the argument supports Hinduism. And so on.
So - what is the most fulfilling religion? Empirical measurement will be very difficult, because adherents of every religion wish to claim that their particular faith is the most fulfilling, so direct testimony will be unreliable.
An alternative would be to ask adherents of each religion how happy they are, without letting on that this has anythng to do with religion, and seeing which religion has the highest average. But religion co-varies with all sorts of other things - income, social class, education - that also affect happiness. Any such survey will be horrendously biased in favour of the religions chosen by people who are already doing well.
Perhaps, then, we could attempt to correct for these other influences by only looking at people from similar backgrounds who follow different religions. But this introduces its own bias - adopting a religion other than your native one often comes with its own set of costs, and moreover the people who convert will tend to already be psychologically different from those who do not. The average middle-class white British Muslim convert will be very different from the average middle-class white British Christian or atheist!
What we should do, then, is look at which religions most effectively use the tools of which we are aware for creating meaning and satisfaction in people's lives. If we were truly created by some deity, presumably we were designed with the true religion in mind (or vice versa); either way, the religious practice ought to be well-tuned to our usual psychology.
There are two particular psychological phenomena that come to mind as relevant: sunk costs, and the hedonic treadmill. First, sunk costs. People are extraordinarily reticent to abandon past investment, and so even when the rational thing is to cut and run, many people will throw bad money after good. Following the true religion, then, should be expected to involve significant cost to disciples. Given the multiplicity of human desires, we expect these costs to exist in a variety of areas - there should be financial costs, social and reputational costs, and (for the truth-seekers among us) intellectual costs in terms of blatantly stupid beliefs which one is nonetheless required to hold. ("Hath God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?")
Second, the true religion should pay attention to the hedonic treadmill. It is well-established that people are not fulfilled by what we may call "objective success", but rather become inured to their present situation. In order to be happy, it is less important that one achieve a high standard of living that that one's standard of living should improve over time. Similarly, the true religion should not present all doctrine and revelation at once, but rather should reveal it over time as one becomes more accustomed to the religion. Perhaps there is a progression of levels, each granting new deep truths, but each of which requires greater commitment and investment in the religion.
There is one religion which fits both of these criteria beautifully: the Church of Scientology. People who join end up paying vast amounts of money, being mocked horribly by outsiders and face being rejected as a credulous fool, and has to proclaim remarkable stories about the alien king Xenu. Greater payments of money grant access to deeper levels of doctrine, the details of which the Church at least tries to keep from outsiders.
In conclusion, there is a deep longing in all of our breasts for the comforting truth of Scientology. Dianetics is the true path to nirvana, and I urge you, brethren, to sign up today.
This argument is most commonly advanced by Christians. However, I feel that taking this argument seriously entails taking it not just as evidence for a God in general, but more specifically for the God - or broadly religious doctrine - who is most effective at giving our lives meaning and satisfaction. If YHWH is the most fulfilling deity to worship, then this is evidence for Allah. If the Hindu pantheon is most fulfilling, then the argument supports Hinduism. And so on.
So - what is the most fulfilling religion? Empirical measurement will be very difficult, because adherents of every religion wish to claim that their particular faith is the most fulfilling, so direct testimony will be unreliable.
An alternative would be to ask adherents of each religion how happy they are, without letting on that this has anythng to do with religion, and seeing which religion has the highest average. But religion co-varies with all sorts of other things - income, social class, education - that also affect happiness. Any such survey will be horrendously biased in favour of the religions chosen by people who are already doing well.
Perhaps, then, we could attempt to correct for these other influences by only looking at people from similar backgrounds who follow different religions. But this introduces its own bias - adopting a religion other than your native one often comes with its own set of costs, and moreover the people who convert will tend to already be psychologically different from those who do not. The average middle-class white British Muslim convert will be very different from the average middle-class white British Christian or atheist!
What we should do, then, is look at which religions most effectively use the tools of which we are aware for creating meaning and satisfaction in people's lives. If we were truly created by some deity, presumably we were designed with the true religion in mind (or vice versa); either way, the religious practice ought to be well-tuned to our usual psychology.
There are two particular psychological phenomena that come to mind as relevant: sunk costs, and the hedonic treadmill. First, sunk costs. People are extraordinarily reticent to abandon past investment, and so even when the rational thing is to cut and run, many people will throw bad money after good. Following the true religion, then, should be expected to involve significant cost to disciples. Given the multiplicity of human desires, we expect these costs to exist in a variety of areas - there should be financial costs, social and reputational costs, and (for the truth-seekers among us) intellectual costs in terms of blatantly stupid beliefs which one is nonetheless required to hold. ("Hath God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?")
Second, the true religion should pay attention to the hedonic treadmill. It is well-established that people are not fulfilled by what we may call "objective success", but rather become inured to their present situation. In order to be happy, it is less important that one achieve a high standard of living that that one's standard of living should improve over time. Similarly, the true religion should not present all doctrine and revelation at once, but rather should reveal it over time as one becomes more accustomed to the religion. Perhaps there is a progression of levels, each granting new deep truths, but each of which requires greater commitment and investment in the religion.
There is one religion which fits both of these criteria beautifully: the Church of Scientology. People who join end up paying vast amounts of money, being mocked horribly by outsiders and face being rejected as a credulous fool, and has to proclaim remarkable stories about the alien king Xenu. Greater payments of money grant access to deeper levels of doctrine, the details of which the Church at least tries to keep from outsiders.
In conclusion, there is a deep longing in all of our breasts for the comforting truth of Scientology. Dianetics is the true path to nirvana, and I urge you, brethren, to sign up today.
Wednesday, 18 January 2017
Christian Ethics and Sexbots
Sex robots are com... approaching rapidly. You can already get bespoke sex dolls. The normal response to this prospect is a mixture of titillation, disgust, and mockery of the people likely to need them. I'm interested in this from a theological perspective, though: is sex with a robot, strictly speaking, forbidden to Christians?
It seems useful to compare such acts to masturbation. Masturbation is generally disapproved of within Christianity, but there is not universal agreement on the rationale for this prohibition. This opacity has a lot to do with the Bible saying almost nothing about masturbation. Wikipedia mentions the story of Onan in Genesis 38, but the relevance of this passage (in which Onan is pressed by his father to sleep with his brother's widow, but refuses to impregnate her) seems dubious.
Leviticus 15 discusses the way a person may be made ceremonially unclean due to discharges of semen. However, I would presume that this no more applies to Christians than the Old Testament regulations concerning women's periods. Jesus' death removed the need for this kind of ceremonial purity, substituting his purity in the place of men.
So much for attempting to get an answer directly out of scripture. I am aware of four arguments as to why masturbation is usually or always sinful, which we shall refer to as the Purity, Radically Pro-Life, Teleological and Lust arguments. Note that accepting one does not entail the rejection of the others, and masturbation might be sinful for multiple reasons. There are, though, good reasons for rejecting at least the first two of these arguments.
Purity Argument
This is broadly the argument I suggested referring to Leviticus. The claim would be that masturbation in some way defiles or profanes the body. The Christian's body being a temple to the Holy Spirit and all, masturbation is therefore wrong.
Why, however, would we think that masturbation is profane in this way? As Paul writes in Romans 15:14:
Radical Pro-Life Argument
Life, many Christians claim, begins at conception. (I think a better way to put this would be that "the distinctively valuable feature of life - i.e. being part of God's plan - begins at conception", but that's a debate for another time). Why not go further, then? Why not argue that not merely a fetus, but even a sperm, has moral importance and should be treated with the same reverence as a person?
The first thing to note is that this would only establish a prohibition on masturbation by men. (And indeed, men would be perfectly entitled to masturbate so long as they did not ejaculate), Female masturbation is hardly going to kill an egg.
But even with that restriction, the argument seems dubious. An embryo will, in the right conditions, grow into a person: it is, one might well believe, a person who has yet to fully develop. A sperm is not like this, however, since it needs not only the right nourishment and protection to become a person, but also to be united with an egg.
Moreover, even when an act of sex does lead to procreation, there are hundreds of millions of sperm which do not fertilize the egg but instead die within a few days. If God had imbued sperm with intrinsic moral value, would He really allow 99.999999% of them to die even in the best case?
Teleological Argument
This was for a long time - perhaps still is, I don't know - the official view of the Catholic Church. According to this view, the purpose of sex is procreation within marriage. All acts of sex which do not aim towards this purpose are sinful.
I'm not going to challenge this as an argument, given that it has been developed and defended over hundreds of years by minds greater than my own. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it does not, and it would be the height of arrogance to think that I can refute its strongest form without ever having looked into it before now.
Two things are worth noting, however. First: if you accept this argument you should also oppose a wide range of other sexual acts, including not only familiar sins such as sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex but also sex using contraception, ejaculation into any orifice other than the vagina, sex between couples in which the woman is post-menopausal or already pregnant, etc.
Second, one can reject this argument while maintaining that sex has a particular purpose of procreation within marriage. It is mainstream doctrine in many denominations that sex is intended not only for procreation but also for pleasure, just as food is intended both for our pleasure and for our sustenance. Moreover, unless one thinks that whatever serves God's purposes is mandatory and whatever does not serve His purposes is forbidden, there remains work to be done in the move from "sex is intended by God for procreation by married couples" to "all sexual acts which cannot lead to procreation are forbidden."
Lust Argument
This, I think, is by far the most plausible argument against masturbation. Consider Matthew 5:27-28:
What does this mean for sex with robots?
The Purity argument would presumably apply to robots as well as masturbation. But as we saw, this will make you impure only if you think it does and decide to go ahead anyway.
The Radical Pro-Life argument would establish a prohibition upon men ejaculating as a result of sexual relations with robots. We might think that for men to engage in sex with robots at all is therefore spiritually unhelpful and conducive to sinning, even if not sinful in itself. But as noted, this argument seems highly dubious and could not in any case establish an objection to women making use of sex robots.
The Teleological argument would presumably establish a prohibition on the use of sex robots, except where such usage is conducive to procreation. Again, though, the argument seems dubious.
What of the Lust argument? Does lust towards a robot constitute adultery? If the robot is intended to represent a particular person to whom one is not attracted, then it seems that it should: one would not be excused lusting over a pornographic actress merely because technically one lusted over a picture of her on a screen, so it should hardly be different if we replace the screen with a 3D representation.
Following this, I think it makes sense to think that any sexual act with a robot in which the act is reliant upon the robot's being representational of a person to whom one is not married should be considered sinful. Sex with a stranger is adultery just as much as sex with a known person. That said, a robot which is representational of one's spouse does not seem to fall foul of this rule: if sexting and sending of naked selfies between married couples is permissible, then masturbation to 3D representations of each other ought also to be permissible. Additionally, robots which produce sexual pleasure without being representational of any person would not fall foul of the lust argument.
In conclusion
I'm not here to set your doctrine for you. Perhaps you think I am wrong to reject the Teleological argument, in which case sex robots can be almost completely ruled out. Even the Lust argument that I think succeeds sets some strong limits on what kinds of sex robots can be used without sin. But it seems mistaken to argue that Christians should accept a blanket prohibition upon all such uses of robots.
It seems useful to compare such acts to masturbation. Masturbation is generally disapproved of within Christianity, but there is not universal agreement on the rationale for this prohibition. This opacity has a lot to do with the Bible saying almost nothing about masturbation. Wikipedia mentions the story of Onan in Genesis 38, but the relevance of this passage (in which Onan is pressed by his father to sleep with his brother's widow, but refuses to impregnate her) seems dubious.
Leviticus 15 discusses the way a person may be made ceremonially unclean due to discharges of semen. However, I would presume that this no more applies to Christians than the Old Testament regulations concerning women's periods. Jesus' death removed the need for this kind of ceremonial purity, substituting his purity in the place of men.
So much for attempting to get an answer directly out of scripture. I am aware of four arguments as to why masturbation is usually or always sinful, which we shall refer to as the Purity, Radically Pro-Life, Teleological and Lust arguments. Note that accepting one does not entail the rejection of the others, and masturbation might be sinful for multiple reasons. There are, though, good reasons for rejecting at least the first two of these arguments.
Purity Argument
This is broadly the argument I suggested referring to Leviticus. The claim would be that masturbation in some way defiles or profanes the body. The Christian's body being a temple to the Holy Spirit and all, masturbation is therefore wrong.
Why, however, would we think that masturbation is profane in this way? As Paul writes in Romans 15:14:
I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.Masturbation might on this view be wrong for some people. But there's nothing here to justify a blanket prohibition.
Radical Pro-Life Argument
Life, many Christians claim, begins at conception. (I think a better way to put this would be that "the distinctively valuable feature of life - i.e. being part of God's plan - begins at conception", but that's a debate for another time). Why not go further, then? Why not argue that not merely a fetus, but even a sperm, has moral importance and should be treated with the same reverence as a person?
The first thing to note is that this would only establish a prohibition on masturbation by men. (And indeed, men would be perfectly entitled to masturbate so long as they did not ejaculate), Female masturbation is hardly going to kill an egg.
But even with that restriction, the argument seems dubious. An embryo will, in the right conditions, grow into a person: it is, one might well believe, a person who has yet to fully develop. A sperm is not like this, however, since it needs not only the right nourishment and protection to become a person, but also to be united with an egg.
Moreover, even when an act of sex does lead to procreation, there are hundreds of millions of sperm which do not fertilize the egg but instead die within a few days. If God had imbued sperm with intrinsic moral value, would He really allow 99.999999% of them to die even in the best case?
Teleological Argument
This was for a long time - perhaps still is, I don't know - the official view of the Catholic Church. According to this view, the purpose of sex is procreation within marriage. All acts of sex which do not aim towards this purpose are sinful.
I'm not going to challenge this as an argument, given that it has been developed and defended over hundreds of years by minds greater than my own. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it does not, and it would be the height of arrogance to think that I can refute its strongest form without ever having looked into it before now.
Two things are worth noting, however. First: if you accept this argument you should also oppose a wide range of other sexual acts, including not only familiar sins such as sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex but also sex using contraception, ejaculation into any orifice other than the vagina, sex between couples in which the woman is post-menopausal or already pregnant, etc.
Second, one can reject this argument while maintaining that sex has a particular purpose of procreation within marriage. It is mainstream doctrine in many denominations that sex is intended not only for procreation but also for pleasure, just as food is intended both for our pleasure and for our sustenance. Moreover, unless one thinks that whatever serves God's purposes is mandatory and whatever does not serve His purposes is forbidden, there remains work to be done in the move from "sex is intended by God for procreation by married couples" to "all sexual acts which cannot lead to procreation are forbidden."
Lust Argument
This, I think, is by far the most plausible argument against masturbation. Consider Matthew 5:27-28:
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.Masturbation is not in itself sinful. However, it is usually predicated upon, or at the very least assisted by, a sinful lust. Masturbating to thoughts of someone to whom you are not married is a violation of the Seventh Commandment. If one is able to masturbate without thinking of anyone, then sure, go ahead; if one masturbates thinking of one's spouse, then again go ahead (although procreative sex is perhaps better!).
What does this mean for sex with robots?
The Purity argument would presumably apply to robots as well as masturbation. But as we saw, this will make you impure only if you think it does and decide to go ahead anyway.
The Radical Pro-Life argument would establish a prohibition upon men ejaculating as a result of sexual relations with robots. We might think that for men to engage in sex with robots at all is therefore spiritually unhelpful and conducive to sinning, even if not sinful in itself. But as noted, this argument seems highly dubious and could not in any case establish an objection to women making use of sex robots.
The Teleological argument would presumably establish a prohibition on the use of sex robots, except where such usage is conducive to procreation. Again, though, the argument seems dubious.
What of the Lust argument? Does lust towards a robot constitute adultery? If the robot is intended to represent a particular person to whom one is not attracted, then it seems that it should: one would not be excused lusting over a pornographic actress merely because technically one lusted over a picture of her on a screen, so it should hardly be different if we replace the screen with a 3D representation.
Following this, I think it makes sense to think that any sexual act with a robot in which the act is reliant upon the robot's being representational of a person to whom one is not married should be considered sinful. Sex with a stranger is adultery just as much as sex with a known person. That said, a robot which is representational of one's spouse does not seem to fall foul of this rule: if sexting and sending of naked selfies between married couples is permissible, then masturbation to 3D representations of each other ought also to be permissible. Additionally, robots which produce sexual pleasure without being representational of any person would not fall foul of the lust argument.
In conclusion
I'm not here to set your doctrine for you. Perhaps you think I am wrong to reject the Teleological argument, in which case sex robots can be almost completely ruled out. Even the Lust argument that I think succeeds sets some strong limits on what kinds of sex robots can be used without sin. But it seems mistaken to argue that Christians should accept a blanket prohibition upon all such uses of robots.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
Combating Socialistic Tendencies in Old Testament Interpretation
Having written a pro-Christianity post earlier in the month, and given the vast unlikelihood of Christianity being true, I'd better write a few trillion anti-Christianity posts to balance out the religious tone of my blog. To get started, let's just have a couple of brief riffs on a passage of text introducing the book of Isaiah:
Secondly, it is complained that "justice was... bought and sold." Going all Brennan/Jaworsky: what, precisely is wrong with that? My suspicion is that the complaint refers to situations such as the following scenario: Aaron wrongs Bathsheba, so Bathsheba takes Aaron to court. However, the judge, Caleb, accepts a bribe from Aaron to pronounce wrongly, so that justice is not done.
But attributing the problem to "the buying and selling of justice" is misdiagnosing the problem. Rather, the issue is one of misallocation of rights. Let us suppose that Aaron's wrongdoing created a right of restitution, R. We would tend to assume that R is owned by Bathsheba. For Bathsheba to have the right to sell R is very useful: exercising the right may well require time or money that she does not have. Instead she might sell the case on to someone more able to pursue it, and take the proceeds of the sale as her restitution. The buying and selling of justice is not only morally acceptable, but serves a valuable purpose.
The problem, in our case, is that the right of restitution did not in practice reside with Bathsheba: it went to Caleb. Note that Aaron still ended up paying for his crime (though perhaps less than he otherwise would have had to): the problem lies less with a failure to punish Aaron than with a failure to make Bathsheba whole.
[Isaiah] had to contend with many difficulties, for the moral and spiritual condition of the people was corrupt. The rich oppressed the poor, and revelled in wanton luxury; justice was shamelessly bought and sold.First, I'll take note with the phrase "the rich oppressed the poor". Part of my complaint is that it is so generic: every moral and political programme that has ever existed has had a complaint of this kind (even Objectivism!), regardless of whether the poor were even literate enough to record their complaints for themselves. But more than that, it gives a misleading impression of the nature and cause of the oppression. It was definitely the case in hierarchical societies, such as that of Uzziah's monarchy in ancient Israel, that there tended to be significant oppression of the peasantry by the elite. It was also the case that the oppressors were in general much richer than the people they were oppressing. But the text I quoted gives the misleading impression that it was because of their riches that people were able to exercise oppression, rather than the oppression being the source of their wealth.
Secondly, it is complained that "justice was... bought and sold." Going all Brennan/Jaworsky: what, precisely is wrong with that? My suspicion is that the complaint refers to situations such as the following scenario: Aaron wrongs Bathsheba, so Bathsheba takes Aaron to court. However, the judge, Caleb, accepts a bribe from Aaron to pronounce wrongly, so that justice is not done.
But attributing the problem to "the buying and selling of justice" is misdiagnosing the problem. Rather, the issue is one of misallocation of rights. Let us suppose that Aaron's wrongdoing created a right of restitution, R. We would tend to assume that R is owned by Bathsheba. For Bathsheba to have the right to sell R is very useful: exercising the right may well require time or money that she does not have. Instead she might sell the case on to someone more able to pursue it, and take the proceeds of the sale as her restitution. The buying and selling of justice is not only morally acceptable, but serves a valuable purpose.
The problem, in our case, is that the right of restitution did not in practice reside with Bathsheba: it went to Caleb. Note that Aaron still ended up paying for his crime (though perhaps less than he otherwise would have had to): the problem lies less with a failure to punish Aaron than with a failure to make Bathsheba whole.
Monday, 18 July 2016
Christian and Secular Mercy
Christians frequently define "mercy" as failing to deliver something (bad) to someone when they deserve it. This is contrasted with "grace", giving a person something (good) when they don't deserve it.
I want to make two points here: first, that this kind of mercy - "God's mercy", if you will - is of a fundamentally different kind to the more human kind of mercy we all understand, and secondly that this conception of mercy is fundamentally at odds with modernity.
Let's begin by getting to grips with what it means to deserve something. These Christian notions clearly presuppose some conception of desert, and furthermore that humans are beings which are capable of deserving particular kinds of treatment. Can a dog, however, deserve a particular kind of treatment? The answer, I think we will generally agree, is no: a dog lacks (in Christian terms) a soul or (in more secular terms) the kind of reflective cognitive capacity that is necessary to understand moral rules.
This does not mean that it is not worth rewarding and punishing dogs, but it means that the choice of treatment is dictated by something other than desert: most obviously, the desire to encourage certain kinds of behaviour and to discourage others. How far does this extend to humanity? Many philosophers, including all utilitarians, will aver that dissuasion of crime and other wrongdoing is the sole purpose of punishment. To speak of "desert", one makes a controversial commitment to the truth of a moral system sufficiently fine-grained to take into account such features as the intention of the agent.
To bring out the difference, consider the two following archetypes of "mercy". The first is the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who blew up a plane killing 259 people on board as well as 11 poor unfortunates who happened to be hit by falling parts of the plane. For this he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but eight years later was released as he was thought to be within a couple of months of death.
We can debate the utilitarian merit of al-Megrahi's release, but fundamentally we can at least make sense of it in these terms. His release allowed him and his family great relief, and probably didn't do to much to incentivise terrorism. (On the other hand, it caused a lot of anger among the British and American publics). The Christian notion of mercy can explain this, but it can also explain the ultimate piece of Christian mercy - the fact that Christians, though deserving of hell, will not taste it. This saving is not conditional upon better behaviour - indeed, it is given in the full knowledge that Christians will continue to sin and sin and sin. From the utilitarian perspective of modernity, this is utterly alien.
I want to make two points here: first, that this kind of mercy - "God's mercy", if you will - is of a fundamentally different kind to the more human kind of mercy we all understand, and secondly that this conception of mercy is fundamentally at odds with modernity.
Let's begin by getting to grips with what it means to deserve something. These Christian notions clearly presuppose some conception of desert, and furthermore that humans are beings which are capable of deserving particular kinds of treatment. Can a dog, however, deserve a particular kind of treatment? The answer, I think we will generally agree, is no: a dog lacks (in Christian terms) a soul or (in more secular terms) the kind of reflective cognitive capacity that is necessary to understand moral rules.
This does not mean that it is not worth rewarding and punishing dogs, but it means that the choice of treatment is dictated by something other than desert: most obviously, the desire to encourage certain kinds of behaviour and to discourage others. How far does this extend to humanity? Many philosophers, including all utilitarians, will aver that dissuasion of crime and other wrongdoing is the sole purpose of punishment. To speak of "desert", one makes a controversial commitment to the truth of a moral system sufficiently fine-grained to take into account such features as the intention of the agent.
To bring out the difference, consider the two following archetypes of "mercy". The first is the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who blew up a plane killing 259 people on board as well as 11 poor unfortunates who happened to be hit by falling parts of the plane. For this he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but eight years later was released as he was thought to be within a couple of months of death.
We can debate the utilitarian merit of al-Megrahi's release, but fundamentally we can at least make sense of it in these terms. His release allowed him and his family great relief, and probably didn't do to much to incentivise terrorism. (On the other hand, it caused a lot of anger among the British and American publics). The Christian notion of mercy can explain this, but it can also explain the ultimate piece of Christian mercy - the fact that Christians, though deserving of hell, will not taste it. This saving is not conditional upon better behaviour - indeed, it is given in the full knowledge that Christians will continue to sin and sin and sin. From the utilitarian perspective of modernity, this is utterly alien.
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Can Christians have compassion?
It has sometimes been pointed out that the desire of many on the left to blame high crime rates and other bad behaviour by poor people on the environment in which they grow up is rather at odds with a liberal conception of people as free and rational agents. It occurred to me today that this is an even greater problem for those who take the bible to be the word of God:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
The Christian believes that, with two exceptions (and one of them was also a deity) every person who has ever lived has sinned, and grievously so. Despite this ridiculously strong evidence that living without sinning is basically impossible given the human condition, people are still taken to be morally responsible for having sinned.
I can see two ways in which a Christian might push back against this, but both seem to have very severe problems. The first is to argue that going to hell for one's sin does not necessarily imply a moral judgement against one for having sinned; merely, that one is not absolutely pure and therefore cannot be with God who is himself absolutely pure. This is perhaps the easier bullet to bite, but it still means that Divine Command theories of morality are rendered incoherent. This is a serious problem, not only because many Christians would like to identify morality with God's law but also because one of the most popular arguments for God's existence is that it gives us a grounding for objective morality.
The other counter-argument would be that while we cannot realistically go without sinning, we can generally sin less than we actually do. But this makes it difficult to resist the argument that especially virtuous people. who sin but do so at rates for lower than other humans, ought to be (in a sense) justified by their own efforts. "Yes, it's true that I sinned, but it would have been nigh-impossible for me to have sinned less considering that I am, ultimately, only human." This flat-out contradicts crucial Christian doctrine:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
The Christian believes that, with two exceptions (and one of them was also a deity) every person who has ever lived has sinned, and grievously so. Despite this ridiculously strong evidence that living without sinning is basically impossible given the human condition, people are still taken to be morally responsible for having sinned.
I can see two ways in which a Christian might push back against this, but both seem to have very severe problems. The first is to argue that going to hell for one's sin does not necessarily imply a moral judgement against one for having sinned; merely, that one is not absolutely pure and therefore cannot be with God who is himself absolutely pure. This is perhaps the easier bullet to bite, but it still means that Divine Command theories of morality are rendered incoherent. This is a serious problem, not only because many Christians would like to identify morality with God's law but also because one of the most popular arguments for God's existence is that it gives us a grounding for objective morality.
The other counter-argument would be that while we cannot realistically go without sinning, we can generally sin less than we actually do. But this makes it difficult to resist the argument that especially virtuous people. who sin but do so at rates for lower than other humans, ought to be (in a sense) justified by their own efforts. "Yes, it's true that I sinned, but it would have been nigh-impossible for me to have sinned less considering that I am, ultimately, only human." This flat-out contradicts crucial Christian doctrine:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
Tuesday, 5 August 2014
The Liberal Defence of Thought Police
Today while cooking I was listening to a Libertarianism.org podcast on the relationship between Christianity and Libertarianism. Doug Bandow was being interviewed on this topic, and he suggested that Christianity does not directly imply any particular political position, but that it does imply a certain set of values. He, of course, believes that libertarian policies would best promote these values. His argument was that there is very little in the Bible about politics*, and that rather than imposing Christian morality** upon others we are called to live our lives according to it and show its superiority to other lifestyles. He noted that salvation operates on an individual level, rather than at the level of the nation. He was highly sceptical of any attempt to force others to accept our views or morality.
Later on, I met with various other of the student-age members of my home church. We chatted for a while over tea and coffee, and then listened to a recording of a talk by the famously evangelical preacher Rico Tice. Tice is kind of like a public schoolboy evangelical Christian version of Peter Singer. One tidbit from the talk which particularly struck me was his interpretation of Romans 1:18-19 : "18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them." I had always assumed that this was aimed at unbelievers, being part of the "Christianity is obvious" schtick which I find deeply implausible; instead, Tice levelled this at Christians, charging that by failing to evangelise at every opportunity they are removing chances for people to repent and so avoid eternal hellfire. The structure of this is, providing you take the Bible to be true, remarkably similar to the drowning child analogy: replace "starving person in the third world" with "person who does not believe and trust in salvation through Jesus Christ and is therefore headed for eternal torment in hell", "giving up £200" with "facing intense social awkwardness", and you're basically there. Given that a Christian theocracy is unlikely to be achieved in the UK any time soon but that open atheists are increasingly politically prominent, Tice might perhaps agree with Bandow on prudential grounds that allowing the government to legislate religion is a bad idea in modern Britain; however, were that theocracy a real possibility, I doubt Tice would object to it. If more souls are being saved, he might argue, that outweighs any earthly considerations.
This leads me to wonder: suppose Christianity is true. Should liberals then object to people being compelled to believe it or act according to it? My suspicion is that while there would be a principled objection to compelling people to behave in a Christian fashion, this would not be the case for belief. Let me explain.
The basic message of Christianity, to be clear, is as follows:
God created the world and the people in it. These people sinned (that is, went against God's will). God cannot abide by this (as in, literally cannot - it is not just that He is unwilling) and so the punishment is to be cut off from God for all eternity after we die. But Jesus, the only son of God, came to this earth to teach God's word but more importantly to die as a sacrifice to bear the weight of the sin of all who believe. He died and was cut off from God - hence his final words, "Father, father, why have you forsaken me?" but returned after three days (I'm not entirely certain how the whole bearing-an-eternity-of-suffering-in-three-days thing works, but given that God is supposed to be timeless this is not something I see as a serious problem for Christianity) and went to heaven, and all who acknowledge that (a) they have sinned and (b) they can receive forgiveness through Christ, will indeed be forgiven and go to heaven - although not before an epic sky battle involving many-headed beasts and a star crashing into the earth and somehow only destroying a third of it. In heaven, the followers of Christ will experience eternal joy and perfect obedience to the word of God. There is also the Holy Spirit, a third part of God who will enter Christians while they are still on earth and will guide and strengthen them to be more like Jesus.
The key part of this is that salvation is completely binary. There is no "you almost made it into heaven, but you weren't quite good enough", there is only the simple question of whether you believed in Jesus and accepted him as your Lord. That alone determines your salvation.
This, then, gives no reason why people may (from a liberal perspective) be compelled to act in a Christian fashion. However, suppose it were possible to compel a person to genuinely believe. If this were done, then they would be saved eternal torment. And while liberalism is opposed to paternalism - in the words of John Stuart Mill, "The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over a member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others," - this is less like paternalism and more like Mill's Bridge case:
If either a public officer or any one else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. (On Liberty, chapter 5)
If a person believed that the Bible was basically true and decided to oppose this God for whatever reason, then a liberal would indeed be compelled to let them continue with this. But when the issue is one of having false beliefs which lead one to hell, liberals would not generally regard this as any kind of coercion - it would, in fact, be a rescue of sorts.
This does not mean, necessarily, that in the actual world Christians should be willing to brainwash people into believing. Quite apart from the potential for this to drive non-brainwashed people out of the church, in real life Christians should account for the possibility that they are wrong. But it ought perhaps to affect the way we think about freedom of religion. If we are truly confident, due to epistemologically rational processes, in the truth of a particular religion (for the record, I'm not and I suspect that 99%+ of people who think they are, aren't), then it is far from clear that we should shy away from attempting to convince people by any means necessary. The most obvious ways of doing this would be through control of schools and through censorship of alternative viewpoints.
(For that matter, is this strictly relevant only to religious beliefs? One could by this doctrine defend forcible medical operations upon people with silly opinions about medicine, forcible taxation of people who mistakenly advocate political anarchism, attaching chastity belts to teenagers who are being pressured to have sex by their peers and boyfriends/girlfriends.)
* I don't know that I agree, by the way. There are many passages with obvious political implications - not only the obvious ones like "Render unto Caesar" but also the origin of the Israeli monarchy, which was directly contrary to God's will; various passages in Proverbs (10:4 : "Being lazy will make you poor, but hard work will make you rich"; 10:22 : "It is the Lord's blessing that makes you wealthy. Hard work can make you no richer" ; 16:12 : "Kings cannot tolerate evil, because justice is what makes a government strong."); the behaviour of Daniel and his companions while in the service of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon is a clear example of civil disobedience; and the entire book of Nehemiah, which was written by the governor of the Jews while under Persian occupation and discusses his travails in getting the city of Jerusalem rebuilt.
** I suspect this phrase, "Christian morality", to be at best a flawed way of describing what we mean, for reasons which should be explained in an upcoming post, but it will do well enough for now as a way of communicating the idea of living according to the precepts laid down in the Bible.
Later on, I met with various other of the student-age members of my home church. We chatted for a while over tea and coffee, and then listened to a recording of a talk by the famously evangelical preacher Rico Tice. Tice is kind of like a public schoolboy evangelical Christian version of Peter Singer. One tidbit from the talk which particularly struck me was his interpretation of Romans 1:18-19 : "18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them." I had always assumed that this was aimed at unbelievers, being part of the "Christianity is obvious" schtick which I find deeply implausible; instead, Tice levelled this at Christians, charging that by failing to evangelise at every opportunity they are removing chances for people to repent and so avoid eternal hellfire. The structure of this is, providing you take the Bible to be true, remarkably similar to the drowning child analogy: replace "starving person in the third world" with "person who does not believe and trust in salvation through Jesus Christ and is therefore headed for eternal torment in hell", "giving up £200" with "facing intense social awkwardness", and you're basically there. Given that a Christian theocracy is unlikely to be achieved in the UK any time soon but that open atheists are increasingly politically prominent, Tice might perhaps agree with Bandow on prudential grounds that allowing the government to legislate religion is a bad idea in modern Britain; however, were that theocracy a real possibility, I doubt Tice would object to it. If more souls are being saved, he might argue, that outweighs any earthly considerations.
This leads me to wonder: suppose Christianity is true. Should liberals then object to people being compelled to believe it or act according to it? My suspicion is that while there would be a principled objection to compelling people to behave in a Christian fashion, this would not be the case for belief. Let me explain.
The basic message of Christianity, to be clear, is as follows:
God created the world and the people in it. These people sinned (that is, went against God's will). God cannot abide by this (as in, literally cannot - it is not just that He is unwilling) and so the punishment is to be cut off from God for all eternity after we die. But Jesus, the only son of God, came to this earth to teach God's word but more importantly to die as a sacrifice to bear the weight of the sin of all who believe. He died and was cut off from God - hence his final words, "Father, father, why have you forsaken me?" but returned after three days (I'm not entirely certain how the whole bearing-an-eternity-of-suffering-in-three-days thing works, but given that God is supposed to be timeless this is not something I see as a serious problem for Christianity) and went to heaven, and all who acknowledge that (a) they have sinned and (b) they can receive forgiveness through Christ, will indeed be forgiven and go to heaven - although not before an epic sky battle involving many-headed beasts and a star crashing into the earth and somehow only destroying a third of it. In heaven, the followers of Christ will experience eternal joy and perfect obedience to the word of God. There is also the Holy Spirit, a third part of God who will enter Christians while they are still on earth and will guide and strengthen them to be more like Jesus.
The key part of this is that salvation is completely binary. There is no "you almost made it into heaven, but you weren't quite good enough", there is only the simple question of whether you believed in Jesus and accepted him as your Lord. That alone determines your salvation.
This, then, gives no reason why people may (from a liberal perspective) be compelled to act in a Christian fashion. However, suppose it were possible to compel a person to genuinely believe. If this were done, then they would be saved eternal torment. And while liberalism is opposed to paternalism - in the words of John Stuart Mill, "The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over a member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others," - this is less like paternalism and more like Mill's Bridge case:
If either a public officer or any one else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. (On Liberty, chapter 5)
If a person believed that the Bible was basically true and decided to oppose this God for whatever reason, then a liberal would indeed be compelled to let them continue with this. But when the issue is one of having false beliefs which lead one to hell, liberals would not generally regard this as any kind of coercion - it would, in fact, be a rescue of sorts.
This does not mean, necessarily, that in the actual world Christians should be willing to brainwash people into believing. Quite apart from the potential for this to drive non-brainwashed people out of the church, in real life Christians should account for the possibility that they are wrong. But it ought perhaps to affect the way we think about freedom of religion. If we are truly confident, due to epistemologically rational processes, in the truth of a particular religion (for the record, I'm not and I suspect that 99%+ of people who think they are, aren't), then it is far from clear that we should shy away from attempting to convince people by any means necessary. The most obvious ways of doing this would be through control of schools and through censorship of alternative viewpoints.
(For that matter, is this strictly relevant only to religious beliefs? One could by this doctrine defend forcible medical operations upon people with silly opinions about medicine, forcible taxation of people who mistakenly advocate political anarchism, attaching chastity belts to teenagers who are being pressured to have sex by their peers and boyfriends/girlfriends.)
* I don't know that I agree, by the way. There are many passages with obvious political implications - not only the obvious ones like "Render unto Caesar" but also the origin of the Israeli monarchy, which was directly contrary to God's will; various passages in Proverbs (10:4 : "Being lazy will make you poor, but hard work will make you rich"; 10:22 : "It is the Lord's blessing that makes you wealthy. Hard work can make you no richer" ; 16:12 : "Kings cannot tolerate evil, because justice is what makes a government strong."); the behaviour of Daniel and his companions while in the service of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon is a clear example of civil disobedience; and the entire book of Nehemiah, which was written by the governor of the Jews while under Persian occupation and discusses his travails in getting the city of Jerusalem rebuilt.
** I suspect this phrase, "Christian morality", to be at best a flawed way of describing what we mean, for reasons which should be explained in an upcoming post, but it will do well enough for now as a way of communicating the idea of living according to the precepts laid down in the Bible.
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
My doubts regarding Christianity
If this blog had followers, then they might have noticed a change in the "about me" side bar, such that I no longer describe myself as a Christian and instead say that "I am from a Christian background, but am unsure of how much of it I believe." In this post, one that I have been meaning to write for several months, I shall explain my key problems regarding Christianity. I'm not going to be presenting much to defend Christianity here, but it will be an honest presentation of the evidence as I am aware of it.
The historical unreliability of the Old Testament
No-one (that I have met, at least) seriously believes in seven-day creationism. We are quite willing to take this as an allegorical account of creation. But this is far from the extent of the departure of the Old Testament from the historical record. Most obviously, there is the whole story of the Exodus, which has no mention (that we know of) in Egyptian writings, and suffers from a distinct lack of archaeological evidence. A tribe of many thousands of people spending forty years in a desert should be expected to leave remains, yet there are none to be found.
A perhaps more worrying problem is that Judaism as a religion did not develop until well after the Jews had settled in Canaan. The OT presents an account in which God gives his laws to the Jews on Mount Sinai, and they take this law with them to Canaan as their dominant belief, but the fact is that at the time they moved into Canaan there were many different beliefs floating around - Judaism was merely a crystallisation of certain of these beliefs.
I'm willing to accept that not all of the Old Testament is meant to be taken literally, but one would expect there to be a clearer division between the sections intended to be literally true (e.g. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles) and the sections intended to be allegorical (e.g. most or all of Genesis and Exodus).
(Over the summer I intend to read The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, in order to find out more about the historical record here).
The problem of evil
The classic anti-theist argument. I would express it roughly as follows:
(1) There is a God who is omnipotent and loving.
(2) Evil exists.
(3) God could get rid of evil (from God's omnipotence, in (1))
(4) God wants to get rid of evil (from God being loving, in (1))
(5) So why does evil exist?
This challenge to Christianity might perhaps be evaded by certain views of the nature of evil, so instead of evil let's use "suffering". Suffering is something I believe we can all agree is bad but exists. I'm not convinced by the Free Will defence, largely because I'm not convinced that the concept of free will makes a great deal of sense - or rather, I'm willing to endorse a certain compatibalist view of free will, but this does not give us moral responsibility, which is what I believe we actually care about.
(Over the summer I intend to read Be Still, My Soul, a collection of essays about suffering written by various Christians and edited by Nancy Guthrie).
Reasonable non-Christianity
Romans 1:20
This passage becomes even worse in context. It accuses unbelievers of refusing to worship God even though "they knew God". Is it really impossible that someone should honestly not believe in God?
Moral irrealism
One of the major arguments for Christianity is that it gives us a grounding for moral realism. The argument would run something like the following:
(1) If Christianity is false, then we cannot have objective moral truths.
(2) But we have objective moral truths.
(3) Hence Christianity is true.
I think I'm willing to accept (1): I'm not convinced by any of the secular arguments for moral realism. The problems are (a) that I'm unconvinced of (2) - I'd be quite willing to accept morality as no more than a useful fiction, and (b) I don't really see how Christianity succeeds in providing a ground for objective moral truths. What is it about God that gives His commands the force of morality? Robert Merrihew Adams has suggested that it is His loving nature, but this seems far from sufficient. I love my brother, but this does not give me any kind of authority over him.
The historical unreliability of the Old Testament
No-one (that I have met, at least) seriously believes in seven-day creationism. We are quite willing to take this as an allegorical account of creation. But this is far from the extent of the departure of the Old Testament from the historical record. Most obviously, there is the whole story of the Exodus, which has no mention (that we know of) in Egyptian writings, and suffers from a distinct lack of archaeological evidence. A tribe of many thousands of people spending forty years in a desert should be expected to leave remains, yet there are none to be found.
A perhaps more worrying problem is that Judaism as a religion did not develop until well after the Jews had settled in Canaan. The OT presents an account in which God gives his laws to the Jews on Mount Sinai, and they take this law with them to Canaan as their dominant belief, but the fact is that at the time they moved into Canaan there were many different beliefs floating around - Judaism was merely a crystallisation of certain of these beliefs.
I'm willing to accept that not all of the Old Testament is meant to be taken literally, but one would expect there to be a clearer division between the sections intended to be literally true (e.g. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles) and the sections intended to be allegorical (e.g. most or all of Genesis and Exodus).
(Over the summer I intend to read The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, in order to find out more about the historical record here).
The problem of evil
The classic anti-theist argument. I would express it roughly as follows:
(1) There is a God who is omnipotent and loving.
(2) Evil exists.
(3) God could get rid of evil (from God's omnipotence, in (1))
(4) God wants to get rid of evil (from God being loving, in (1))
(5) So why does evil exist?
This challenge to Christianity might perhaps be evaded by certain views of the nature of evil, so instead of evil let's use "suffering". Suffering is something I believe we can all agree is bad but exists. I'm not convinced by the Free Will defence, largely because I'm not convinced that the concept of free will makes a great deal of sense - or rather, I'm willing to endorse a certain compatibalist view of free will, but this does not give us moral responsibility, which is what I believe we actually care about.
(Over the summer I intend to read Be Still, My Soul, a collection of essays about suffering written by various Christians and edited by Nancy Guthrie).
Reasonable non-Christianity
Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.Surely Christianity should be more obvious if this is true? I would love to be able to believe in the truth of the Bible, but so far as I can tell the evidence weighs heavily against it.
This passage becomes even worse in context. It accuses unbelievers of refusing to worship God even though "they knew God". Is it really impossible that someone should honestly not believe in God?
Moral irrealism
One of the major arguments for Christianity is that it gives us a grounding for moral realism. The argument would run something like the following:
(1) If Christianity is false, then we cannot have objective moral truths.
(2) But we have objective moral truths.
(3) Hence Christianity is true.
I think I'm willing to accept (1): I'm not convinced by any of the secular arguments for moral realism. The problems are (a) that I'm unconvinced of (2) - I'd be quite willing to accept morality as no more than a useful fiction, and (b) I don't really see how Christianity succeeds in providing a ground for objective moral truths. What is it about God that gives His commands the force of morality? Robert Merrihew Adams has suggested that it is His loving nature, but this seems far from sufficient. I love my brother, but this does not give me any kind of authority over him.
Monday, 10 February 2014
An apologetic disappointment
This week is the university Christian Union's Mission Week, in which various evangelistic events are held and we are all to invite friends to come to the events. Tonight there was an event focused around a talk on the compatibility or otherwise of science and Christianity. As a Christian whose faith has been on the rocks for several months (I don't tend to talk or write about it, for a variety of reasons) I went along to see what evidence was to be presented. Most of the problems of I have with Christianity are philosophical, to do with ethics and meta-ethics; however, I'm interested in the scientific evidence also and the talk was to be given by a scientist from Oxford, so I was hoping that there would some serious evidence presented. I was to be bitterly disappointed.
The talk was in fact remarkably devoid of evidence - indeed, none of it could really be described as science, per se, it fell very much under the umbrella of philosophy - which left me wondering why the talk was given by a scientist. (A cynical view would be that an actual philosopher talking about science and its general irrelevance to questions of theology could be easily dismissed as "She doesn't know what she's talking about," whereas a scientist is much harder to dismiss in that fashion).
The first part of the talk was part of her testimony, of how she had grown up nominally an atheist, loved science, gone to university to study Biochemistry and encountered some incredibly persuasive Christian ideas, done a PhD and spent seven years in scientific research before changing to work in apologetics.
Next came a collection of quotes from various atheist scientists affirming that religion was a reasonable viewpoint. (I somewhat doubt the veracity of one quote from Stephen Jay Gould, but then again I wouldn't be too concerned with what he said anyway. {And while this statement is arguably an ad hominem against Gould, I think that ad hominem is perfectly valid when the original claim was based entirely upon an appeal to authority.}) Note that it was all individual quotes with an absence of context. There were no statistics as to how representative these statements were of science as a whole.
Following on from this, the speaker argued that religion has often inspired science. She presented a list of notable scientists, present and historical, who where Christians. Again, there was a lack of statistics; there was also a failure to account for the fact that until relatively recently, atheism was unthinkable or was cause for severe discrimination. David Hume, who in my opinion was quite possibly the greatest philosopher ever to have lived, is generally thought to have been an atheist; however, he was rather coy about this in his lifetime for fear of persecution. (The same could be said for Hegel, who is quite possibly the most overrated philosopher ever). I also had to admire her gall in claiming Galileo as being inspired by faith, given how the Church treated him in his time.
After this came an argument that the very fact of human rationality, that we are able to use science and reason, is evidence for God's existence. If we have come about by random processes, the argument runs, it is ridiculously unlikely that our cognitive processes will come to resemble a reliable truth-finding process. An interesting argument, with two key problems. Firstly that it erroneously assumes that our cognitive processes are a reliable truth-finding process (which is understandable, cognitive bias is not all that well-known-about) and secondly that it ignores the whole point of natural selection. If greater epistemic rationality is useful for passing on one's genes - for example, because it allows better assessment of threats and opportunities - then ceteris paribus evolution will tend to promote greater epistemic rationality.
The rest of the talk was a discussion of "the limits of science" and of the dangers of scientism. Scientism in this case was logical positivism by another name, and so the attack on scientism was nothing more than an attack on an important but crucially flawed project which was discarded more than half a century ago. There was no attempt to engage with more recent and advanced versions of the idea that, wherever possible, we should look towards empirical evidence.
The speaker discussed the fact that science cannot tell us about morality, referencing David Hume's famous observation that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is". Thus, of course, we need something beyond science to tell us what morality is and where it comes from. This is of course true, but a) it's not clear that morality really exists, and b) there are numerous non-religious explanations as to the nature of morality. (As it happens I don't find them very plausible, but at least one-third of philosophers do - in the PhilPapers survey of philosophers' views, 56.4% endorsed moral realism while only 14.6% endorsed theism).
The talk was in fact remarkably devoid of evidence - indeed, none of it could really be described as science, per se, it fell very much under the umbrella of philosophy - which left me wondering why the talk was given by a scientist. (A cynical view would be that an actual philosopher talking about science and its general irrelevance to questions of theology could be easily dismissed as "She doesn't know what she's talking about," whereas a scientist is much harder to dismiss in that fashion).
The first part of the talk was part of her testimony, of how she had grown up nominally an atheist, loved science, gone to university to study Biochemistry and encountered some incredibly persuasive Christian ideas, done a PhD and spent seven years in scientific research before changing to work in apologetics.
Next came a collection of quotes from various atheist scientists affirming that religion was a reasonable viewpoint. (I somewhat doubt the veracity of one quote from Stephen Jay Gould, but then again I wouldn't be too concerned with what he said anyway. {And while this statement is arguably an ad hominem against Gould, I think that ad hominem is perfectly valid when the original claim was based entirely upon an appeal to authority.}) Note that it was all individual quotes with an absence of context. There were no statistics as to how representative these statements were of science as a whole.
Following on from this, the speaker argued that religion has often inspired science. She presented a list of notable scientists, present and historical, who where Christians. Again, there was a lack of statistics; there was also a failure to account for the fact that until relatively recently, atheism was unthinkable or was cause for severe discrimination. David Hume, who in my opinion was quite possibly the greatest philosopher ever to have lived, is generally thought to have been an atheist; however, he was rather coy about this in his lifetime for fear of persecution. (The same could be said for Hegel, who is quite possibly the most overrated philosopher ever). I also had to admire her gall in claiming Galileo as being inspired by faith, given how the Church treated him in his time.
After this came an argument that the very fact of human rationality, that we are able to use science and reason, is evidence for God's existence. If we have come about by random processes, the argument runs, it is ridiculously unlikely that our cognitive processes will come to resemble a reliable truth-finding process. An interesting argument, with two key problems. Firstly that it erroneously assumes that our cognitive processes are a reliable truth-finding process (which is understandable, cognitive bias is not all that well-known-about) and secondly that it ignores the whole point of natural selection. If greater epistemic rationality is useful for passing on one's genes - for example, because it allows better assessment of threats and opportunities - then ceteris paribus evolution will tend to promote greater epistemic rationality.
The rest of the talk was a discussion of "the limits of science" and of the dangers of scientism. Scientism in this case was logical positivism by another name, and so the attack on scientism was nothing more than an attack on an important but crucially flawed project which was discarded more than half a century ago. There was no attempt to engage with more recent and advanced versions of the idea that, wherever possible, we should look towards empirical evidence.
The speaker discussed the fact that science cannot tell us about morality, referencing David Hume's famous observation that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is". Thus, of course, we need something beyond science to tell us what morality is and where it comes from. This is of course true, but a) it's not clear that morality really exists, and b) there are numerous non-religious explanations as to the nature of morality. (As it happens I don't find them very plausible, but at least one-third of philosophers do - in the PhilPapers survey of philosophers' views, 56.4% endorsed moral realism while only 14.6% endorsed theism).
Thursday, 6 February 2014
A Tithe of Time
It seems to be pretty much universally agreed among Christians that we ought to tithe 10% of our income. (I was attempting to find a biblical reference for why this is, and it turns out to be complicated). But our income represents the fruits of only a small portion of our lives - in developed countries, most people work between 1500 and 2000 hours per annum, or an average of about 3-4.5 hours each day. If we allow for eight hours being spent sleeping, and working for two-thirds of one's life (which is a pretty large overestimate - many people spend barely half their lives in paid employment) then this represents a tithe on about one-sixth of our waking lives.
I propose that we ought to be tithing from the rest of our time too. If we have twelve hours a day (on average) when we are not in work or sleeping, then this suggests a tithe of eight or nine hours per week. Allow three-and-a-half hours for church and a midweek bible study/fellowship group, and we ought to to be spending roughly forty-five minutes to an hour each day praying, reading the bible, and directly worshipping God in other ways.
Of course this shouldn't be taken as "45 minutes, that's my duty done!" - God loves a cheerful giver - and it doesn't mean that we can't do all things in our lives to the glory of God. But it doesn't seem like a difficult target - 20 minutes of praying, which can be spread throughout the day into two or more sessions; 10-15 minutes each of reading the bible and reflecting upon it.
I propose that we ought to be tithing from the rest of our time too. If we have twelve hours a day (on average) when we are not in work or sleeping, then this suggests a tithe of eight or nine hours per week. Allow three-and-a-half hours for church and a midweek bible study/fellowship group, and we ought to to be spending roughly forty-five minutes to an hour each day praying, reading the bible, and directly worshipping God in other ways.
Of course this shouldn't be taken as "45 minutes, that's my duty done!" - God loves a cheerful giver - and it doesn't mean that we can't do all things in our lives to the glory of God. But it doesn't seem like a difficult target - 20 minutes of praying, which can be spread throughout the day into two or more sessions; 10-15 minutes each of reading the bible and reflecting upon it.
Saturday, 1 February 2014
A few notes on Freedom, as a concept and in practice
Two notes. The first comes from The Great Escape but has nothing to do with religion, the second is entirely about religion but is from the most recent Student Bible Study I went to, on Thursday.
I
There are many senses in which political philosophers down the years have used the words 'freedom' and 'liberty'. Some of these can be ignored - for example, Hegel's use of the word (roughly, "acting in accordance with reason,") seems rather abusive of the intuitive meaning we attach to it - but there are at least three meanings worth considering.
First, Negative Liberty, or the absence of oppression. If someone threatens to hurt you if you carry out an action of which they disapprove, they are violating your negative liberty.
Second, Positive Liberty, which is somewhat vague but refers to a general idea of autonomy and self-mastery. The key difference with Negative Liberty is that anything can count as a restraint on your liberty - while Negative Liberty focuses upon limitations emanating from other agents, Positive Liberty considers physical impossibility, absence of necessary materials, even lack of self-control.
As a side note, I do not personally think about either of these (at least directly) in terms of my value judgements, I tend to think more in terms of the inherent wrongness of imposing your will upon another person. Of course, then I have to explain precisely why I think that this is wrong, so I probably do attach some value to freedom.
These are the two main ones. The distinction was introduced by Isaiah Berlin in his speech "Two Concepts of Liberty" and there is a notable debate over which of the two better reflects the meaning we attach to the words 'freedom' and 'liberty'. However, there is also a third way in which the words may be used - that is, "Freedom as Non-domination" or "Republican Freedom", roughly defined as the absence of being subject to arbitrary power - the emphasis of that being on the word 'arbitrary'.
On the way back from The Great Escape, I listened to a podcast in which Philip Pettit was interviewed about a book he had written defending this interpretation of liberty. He made reference to a play by Henrik Ibsen - I can't remember which, but it was most likely A Doll's House - in which there is a woman, subject to a man (her husband?) who dotes upon her and will give her whatever she wants, but also holds complete power over her. He argued that she was not truly "free" because of the fact that her apparent freedom was entirely reliant upon the will of the man.
I personally find this unconvincing. I would say that she is free, and that perhaps there is an X such that we value X, X corresponds to non-domination, and we don't actually value freedom. This seems rather closer to the actual political and philosophical issue than merely arguing over precisely what we intuitively mean by "Freedom". As a somewhat rough analogy, we have distinct concepts of 'total utility', 'average utility', 'eudaemonia', and 'preference satisfaction'. When arguing about what is valuable, we do not argue about which of these is somehow a more authentic representation of what our intuitions conjure up when presented with phrases like 'utopia' and 'the good life' but instead argue about which is actually more valuable.
II
A second distinction in types of freedom: I shall refer to "metaphysical" freedom and "political freedom". By political freedom I mean the stuff I have just been talking about - a general notion of "not being enslaved". By metaphysical freedom I mean freedom of the will. I believe there to be a tendency for people to confuse the two - I don't blame them, most people are not trained to be absolutely clear in their language, there are several other words which can mean more than one thing (e.g. Libertarian and Libertarian).
In particular, there is one confusion which I have only just understood. The Bible often promises that we may have freedom through Christ. It is easy to see how this may be understood as political slavery - we were slaves to sin and death, but now are no longer subject to judgement.
Except that we don't become fully autonomous agents: we become servants of God. I'm not denying that this is an improvement in our condition (see, again with the "it's not precisely freedom which is valuable"!) but it doesn't really seem like an increase in our freedom. We go from one master to another master - a better master, to be sure, but at no point do we cease to be owned in some sense.
But take this passage, Romans 7:15-25 (taken from the NIV):
I
There are many senses in which political philosophers down the years have used the words 'freedom' and 'liberty'. Some of these can be ignored - for example, Hegel's use of the word (roughly, "acting in accordance with reason,") seems rather abusive of the intuitive meaning we attach to it - but there are at least three meanings worth considering.
First, Negative Liberty, or the absence of oppression. If someone threatens to hurt you if you carry out an action of which they disapprove, they are violating your negative liberty.
Second, Positive Liberty, which is somewhat vague but refers to a general idea of autonomy and self-mastery. The key difference with Negative Liberty is that anything can count as a restraint on your liberty - while Negative Liberty focuses upon limitations emanating from other agents, Positive Liberty considers physical impossibility, absence of necessary materials, even lack of self-control.
As a side note, I do not personally think about either of these (at least directly) in terms of my value judgements, I tend to think more in terms of the inherent wrongness of imposing your will upon another person. Of course, then I have to explain precisely why I think that this is wrong, so I probably do attach some value to freedom.
These are the two main ones. The distinction was introduced by Isaiah Berlin in his speech "Two Concepts of Liberty" and there is a notable debate over which of the two better reflects the meaning we attach to the words 'freedom' and 'liberty'. However, there is also a third way in which the words may be used - that is, "Freedom as Non-domination" or "Republican Freedom", roughly defined as the absence of being subject to arbitrary power - the emphasis of that being on the word 'arbitrary'.
On the way back from The Great Escape, I listened to a podcast in which Philip Pettit was interviewed about a book he had written defending this interpretation of liberty. He made reference to a play by Henrik Ibsen - I can't remember which, but it was most likely A Doll's House - in which there is a woman, subject to a man (her husband?) who dotes upon her and will give her whatever she wants, but also holds complete power over her. He argued that she was not truly "free" because of the fact that her apparent freedom was entirely reliant upon the will of the man.
I personally find this unconvincing. I would say that she is free, and that perhaps there is an X such that we value X, X corresponds to non-domination, and we don't actually value freedom. This seems rather closer to the actual political and philosophical issue than merely arguing over precisely what we intuitively mean by "Freedom". As a somewhat rough analogy, we have distinct concepts of 'total utility', 'average utility', 'eudaemonia', and 'preference satisfaction'. When arguing about what is valuable, we do not argue about which of these is somehow a more authentic representation of what our intuitions conjure up when presented with phrases like 'utopia' and 'the good life' but instead argue about which is actually more valuable.
II
A second distinction in types of freedom: I shall refer to "metaphysical" freedom and "political freedom". By political freedom I mean the stuff I have just been talking about - a general notion of "not being enslaved". By metaphysical freedom I mean freedom of the will. I believe there to be a tendency for people to confuse the two - I don't blame them, most people are not trained to be absolutely clear in their language, there are several other words which can mean more than one thing (e.g. Libertarian and Libertarian).
In particular, there is one confusion which I have only just understood. The Bible often promises that we may have freedom through Christ. It is easy to see how this may be understood as political slavery - we were slaves to sin and death, but now are no longer subject to judgement.
Except that we don't become fully autonomous agents: we become servants of God. I'm not denying that this is an improvement in our condition (see, again with the "it's not precisely freedom which is valuable"!) but it doesn't really seem like an increase in our freedom. We go from one master to another master - a better master, to be sure, but at no point do we cease to be owned in some sense.
But take this passage, Romans 7:15-25 (taken from the NIV):
Now it becomes clear that the freedom we achieve through Christ is metaphysical: we are unable to control ourselves and to avoid sin due to our sinful natures, but due to his intervention we are not controlled by sin and can do what we desire - that is, to love and worship our Lord God.15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[b] a slave to the law of sin.
Monday, 27 January 2014
My new favourite book of the Bible
One of the reasons I enjoyed The Great Escape was the specific passages we were studying. The first four sessions - Friday and Saturday evenings, plus two sessions Saturday morning - were looking at the opening chapters of the Book of Hebrews. After this the speaker left in order to preach at his home church on the Sunday morning, and so we had a talk looking at the implications of what is possibly my single favourite verse - Philippians 1:21, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain". The talks were very thought provoking - the suggestion that "we fear death because, deep down, we realise that it is not natural" brought to mind Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon Tyrant (animated version here). Now that I think back to it I'm also thinking of the naturalistic fallacy appeal to nature; then again, Fallacy Fallacy.
But I digress. Why did I enjoy reading from the book of Hebrews so much? Because it makes claims, and backs them up with evidence. I should clarify by this that I don't mean scientific or historical claims, but about points of doctrine. That said, every claim is backed up by at least one direct quotation from the Old Testament. I'd like to quote the entire first chapter, but I'm not certain how copyright applies to translations. A brief look at the NIV website suggests I'm not providing enough original comment on this post to be able to reprint a full chapter, so I'll just invite you to read it here.
I have frequently heard said things to the effect that the Christian merit of a church is identical to the extent to which it relies on the Bible. I think that this understates the role of critical reason - the Bible can be completely infallible, and yet we can still be prone to misunderstand it - but there is certainly a great deal of truth to that statement. So it is a delight to see theology being done by direct reference to scripture, as a divine example as to how we should do our own biblical analysis.
But I digress. Why did I enjoy reading from the book of Hebrews so much? Because it makes claims, and backs them up with evidence. I should clarify by this that I don't mean scientific or historical claims, but about points of doctrine. That said, every claim is backed up by at least one direct quotation from the Old Testament. I'd like to quote the entire first chapter, but I'm not certain how copyright applies to translations. A brief look at the NIV website suggests I'm not providing enough original comment on this post to be able to reprint a full chapter, so I'll just invite you to read it here.
I have frequently heard said things to the effect that the Christian merit of a church is identical to the extent to which it relies on the Bible. I think that this understates the role of critical reason - the Bible can be completely infallible, and yet we can still be prone to misunderstand it - but there is certainly a great deal of truth to that statement. So it is a delight to see theology being done by direct reference to scripture, as a divine example as to how we should do our own biblical analysis.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
I'm back!
Back both to the blog and in Manchester. I haven't been writing much here recently due to exams, and then with exams finished I spent this weekend on The Great Escape, the church students' weekend away. I enjoyed the weekend, there was lots of great teaching and I have a whole host of thoughts I intend to write down here over the next few days. It was also fun spending a whole weekend with a number of friends who I generally see only once or twice a week. The food was good, the walking path was disappointing but usable.
Sunday, 10 November 2013
By faith and not by sight?
There's a song called By Faith which we frequently sing at Church. It's a great fun song, with an upbeat tune and a very catchy chorus. You can see the original version here, although I'm personally more keen on the live version at church. The chorus goes:
We will stand as children of the promise,
We will fix our eyes on you our souls' reward,
'Til the race is finished and the work is done
We'll walk be faith and not by sight.
Not by sight? We're going to believe without evidence? That's ridiculous. Evidence is precisely what makes it reasonable to hold a belief. There is no virtue to be gained by holding specific beliefs unless they are true, and if they are true then there should be plenty of evidence for them. I highly recommend C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, and in particular this chapter to any Christian who thinks that "faith" is enough for a belief in our God.
What about the song? I've taken to singing "by faith, not just by sight." which is good enough for myself but I don't think it's good enough in general. People are going to be influenced by what they are singing with the Church's fervent endorsement, and if they're learning anti-epistemological habits from it then in the long run that's not good for either truth or for the church. The less Christians feel the need to justify our beliefs, the less effort we will put into investigating our beliefs. If we conclude that Christianity is probably false, then we should shrug, say "Any belief which can be destroyed by truth, should be." and move on. If we conclude that it is probably true, then hallelujah! Let's go out and convert everyone, surer and better-equipped than ever we were before!
We will stand as children of the promise,
We will fix our eyes on you our souls' reward,
'Til the race is finished and the work is done
We'll walk be faith and not by sight.
Not by sight? We're going to believe without evidence? That's ridiculous. Evidence is precisely what makes it reasonable to hold a belief. There is no virtue to be gained by holding specific beliefs unless they are true, and if they are true then there should be plenty of evidence for them. I highly recommend C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, and in particular this chapter to any Christian who thinks that "faith" is enough for a belief in our God.
What about the song? I've taken to singing "by faith, not just by sight." which is good enough for myself but I don't think it's good enough in general. People are going to be influenced by what they are singing with the Church's fervent endorsement, and if they're learning anti-epistemological habits from it then in the long run that's not good for either truth or for the church. The less Christians feel the need to justify our beliefs, the less effort we will put into investigating our beliefs. If we conclude that Christianity is probably false, then we should shrug, say "Any belief which can be destroyed by truth, should be." and move on. If we conclude that it is probably true, then hallelujah! Let's go out and convert everyone, surer and better-equipped than ever we were before!
Friday, 11 October 2013
Gay marriage vs. Straight non-religious marriage
My position on state recognition for gay marriage was (and remains) roughly thus:
- The State should not be involved in marriage at all, whether for straight couples, gay couples, or polygamous groups.
- Thus, I opposed it being made legal, as this involved the state claiming the right to define marriage, This is as opposed to it merely being legal. I now oppose it being de-legalised for the same reason.
- From a religious perspective, I do not personally see a marriage between two people of the same sex as being valid.
- However, freedom of contract implies that two people who wish to have a contract between them which does not affect anyone else should be allowed to have that contract. If they wish to call it marriage, then that's their choice.
Th third point there is probably the most controversial. I see the fundamental purpose of marriage as being an illustration of the relationship between God and His people. God is an essential part of a marriage. This leads to a question which I'd never considered or even though of before it was asked on me on Tuesday by a housemate:
Do I see a straight marriage between two non-Christians as valid?
Since I see God as a fundamental part of a marriage, my instinct is not to recognise such as marriage as valid. This has important implications. Since I also believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, answering "No" implies that I should believe sex to always be wrong for any non-Christian, "married" or not. It would not require me to advocate banning non-Christians from getting married, as explained above, but it might well mean that people who do advocate a ban on gay marriages should also advocate a ban on non-religious marriages.
There are perhaps ways of escaping this. Perhaps there is another crucial difference. The most obvious attempt would be some kind of Natural Law argument - that non-Christian marriages still serve a natural purpose of bringing new children into the world. However, I find this unconvincing - perhaps new children are brought into the world, but if those children are not brought up to be Christians, then is this really fulfilling Natural Law?
Perhaps it is that a straight non-Christian marriage has the potential to become a Christian marriage if both partners pledge themselves to Jesus. This simply isn't the case with a gay marriage. However, why then not say that the marriage becomes valid only once the partners have both committed themselves to God, and was previously invalid?
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Ethics without free will?
Suppose an atheist advanced the following line of thought:
"The Universe must have a cause for its existence. The only thing capable of causing the Universe to exist is a deity of some kind. However, it is impossible to disprove the proposition that a deity of some kind exists. Hence, it is not a scientific theory and so I need not worry about it."
We would clearly see this as a silly way of thinking. (I do not intend this reasoning as a defence of the causal argument for God's existence, but rather as an illustration). And yet my own "thought" regarding determinism has been rather similar for a while. Something like:
"Assuming we accept that events cause other events, it seems obvious that pretty much any event can be traced backwards through time as the natural consequence of the previous state of the world. That is to say, given the exact positions and velocities of all particles in the universe at one point in time, you could in principle predict the exact future of the universe. Thus, everything that happens, has happened, and is yet to happen, was set in stone from the very beginning of the universe. However, it is impossible to disprove this, since one can always say of any experimental data 'Oh, that's how it must have been set to happen given the prior state of the universe,' regardless of the results. Thus determinism is not a scientific theory, which I may therefore avoid worrying about."
To be fair to myself, I don't think I was ever particularly happy with this. It entails a blatant ignorance of the difference between epistemological methods and metaphysical truth. I would happily admit that this "thinking" was motivated by a desire to believe in free will and therefore to preserve a notion of ethics, combined with an honest rejection of compatabilist views of determinism and free will. Indeed, it would be dishonest to pretend that I will believe pretty much anything if it allows me to preserve ethics. However, I'm moving towards the idea that perhaps ethics is possible without free will. I see two ways in which this might be true. There may well be more, which I have missed; indeed, neither truly satisfies me.
1: Moral identity
When put in identical situations, different people will make different choices. This is because they are different people. When we pass moral judgement, we judge not the action but the person doing the action; the action is simply evidence towards the moral nature of the agent.
2: "Non-judgemental Consequentialism"
The morality of an action may be judged entirely by its consequences. Since the sets of consequences may be ordered in terms of their preferability, so may the actions themselves. Note, however, that since the agent's actions were pre-determined, they cannot actually be judged for their actions; this is therefore a somewhat narrower theory than standard consequentialism.
What implications might these theories have? Moral identity as a system is heavily at odds with my Christian belief - after all, one of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity is that we are not and cannot be saved by our own works or goodness, but are entirely reliant upon Christ and his death for us. The phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" comes to mind as a principle in pretty much exact opposition to this theory. However, this may salvage a way of constructing ethics for those of a different background. One potential problem for the theory would be how to judge people doing wrong who genuinely believe themselves to be doing right. Let us assume that, in carrying out the Holocaust, Hitler genuinely believed himself to be doing what was morally good. Under a standard view of morality, we could say, "Yes, he believed himself to be doing right, but he was disastrously mistaken, and was in fact doing wrong." Under this "Moral Identity" theory, it becomes a lot harder to reconcile actions which seem obviously wrong with someone who genuinely believes themselves to be doing good.
What then of "non-judgemental consequentialism"? Well, this faces all the usual problems of consequentialist and utilitarian views of morality. But also, the idea of a world where actions are objectively good and bad, yet you cannot be praised for doing good nor criticised for doing bad seems completely alien. It would be like an action film in which the hero saved the entire world, everyone knew that he had done this (at great personal cost, no less!) and yet when he returned home, he did not receive the slightest bit of congratulations or thanks. This is not to say that it is wrong, merely that it would only make sense from a distinctly non-human perspective. Coming from a Christian background, the fact that the logic behind it is deeply counter-intuitive and requires a non-human set of intuitions seems like it should be evidence in its favour. The lack of moral judgement doesn't necessarily contradict Christian theology - after all, it is not our own morality which gets us into heaven. The key problem from a Christian perspective seems to be that the removal of any notion of moral judgement also seems to make thankfulness irrelevant, yet God is thanked many times, not only by fallible humans but by heavenly creatures and, of course, by Jesus himself.
So what then are my options?
1) Find a good reason to reject determinism, which leaves open the possibility of objective ethical judgement
2) Give up on objective ethical judgement
3) Adopt an extreme version of utilitarianism which precludes judgement of people
4) Find a new way in which determinism could be consistent with objective ethical judgement
The search for my chosen moral system continues...
"The Universe must have a cause for its existence. The only thing capable of causing the Universe to exist is a deity of some kind. However, it is impossible to disprove the proposition that a deity of some kind exists. Hence, it is not a scientific theory and so I need not worry about it."
We would clearly see this as a silly way of thinking. (I do not intend this reasoning as a defence of the causal argument for God's existence, but rather as an illustration). And yet my own "thought" regarding determinism has been rather similar for a while. Something like:
"Assuming we accept that events cause other events, it seems obvious that pretty much any event can be traced backwards through time as the natural consequence of the previous state of the world. That is to say, given the exact positions and velocities of all particles in the universe at one point in time, you could in principle predict the exact future of the universe. Thus, everything that happens, has happened, and is yet to happen, was set in stone from the very beginning of the universe. However, it is impossible to disprove this, since one can always say of any experimental data 'Oh, that's how it must have been set to happen given the prior state of the universe,' regardless of the results. Thus determinism is not a scientific theory, which I may therefore avoid worrying about."
To be fair to myself, I don't think I was ever particularly happy with this. It entails a blatant ignorance of the difference between epistemological methods and metaphysical truth. I would happily admit that this "thinking" was motivated by a desire to believe in free will and therefore to preserve a notion of ethics, combined with an honest rejection of compatabilist views of determinism and free will. Indeed, it would be dishonest to pretend that I will believe pretty much anything if it allows me to preserve ethics. However, I'm moving towards the idea that perhaps ethics is possible without free will. I see two ways in which this might be true. There may well be more, which I have missed; indeed, neither truly satisfies me.
1: Moral identity
When put in identical situations, different people will make different choices. This is because they are different people. When we pass moral judgement, we judge not the action but the person doing the action; the action is simply evidence towards the moral nature of the agent.
2: "Non-judgemental Consequentialism"
The morality of an action may be judged entirely by its consequences. Since the sets of consequences may be ordered in terms of their preferability, so may the actions themselves. Note, however, that since the agent's actions were pre-determined, they cannot actually be judged for their actions; this is therefore a somewhat narrower theory than standard consequentialism.
What implications might these theories have? Moral identity as a system is heavily at odds with my Christian belief - after all, one of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity is that we are not and cannot be saved by our own works or goodness, but are entirely reliant upon Christ and his death for us. The phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" comes to mind as a principle in pretty much exact opposition to this theory. However, this may salvage a way of constructing ethics for those of a different background. One potential problem for the theory would be how to judge people doing wrong who genuinely believe themselves to be doing right. Let us assume that, in carrying out the Holocaust, Hitler genuinely believed himself to be doing what was morally good. Under a standard view of morality, we could say, "Yes, he believed himself to be doing right, but he was disastrously mistaken, and was in fact doing wrong." Under this "Moral Identity" theory, it becomes a lot harder to reconcile actions which seem obviously wrong with someone who genuinely believes themselves to be doing good.
What then of "non-judgemental consequentialism"? Well, this faces all the usual problems of consequentialist and utilitarian views of morality. But also, the idea of a world where actions are objectively good and bad, yet you cannot be praised for doing good nor criticised for doing bad seems completely alien. It would be like an action film in which the hero saved the entire world, everyone knew that he had done this (at great personal cost, no less!) and yet when he returned home, he did not receive the slightest bit of congratulations or thanks. This is not to say that it is wrong, merely that it would only make sense from a distinctly non-human perspective. Coming from a Christian background, the fact that the logic behind it is deeply counter-intuitive and requires a non-human set of intuitions seems like it should be evidence in its favour. The lack of moral judgement doesn't necessarily contradict Christian theology - after all, it is not our own morality which gets us into heaven. The key problem from a Christian perspective seems to be that the removal of any notion of moral judgement also seems to make thankfulness irrelevant, yet God is thanked many times, not only by fallible humans but by heavenly creatures and, of course, by Jesus himself.
So what then are my options?
1) Find a good reason to reject determinism, which leaves open the possibility of objective ethical judgement
2) Give up on objective ethical judgement
3) Adopt an extreme version of utilitarianism which precludes judgement of people
4) Find a new way in which determinism could be consistent with objective ethical judgement
The search for my chosen moral system continues...
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