Well, this is it. Today was my last day at Cingular. I must admit I really enjoy the fact that after 1.5 years of consulting and development here I could clean up my office in 30 seconds and carry all my belongings (Coffee Cup, Headphones, 6 programming books) out under 1 arm. God I'm going to miss being a consultant! I love the detachmet that comes with it. You're never influenced by the tides of corporate take overs, layoffs, transfers, etc. I've seen folks cry when they leave their jobs or get canned. They are so desperately attached to their jobs it's sickening. They're fully imprinted with this fear that they can't get another job (which may be true in some cases) or they are so specialized in what they do that no one else will need them.
My next job is a permanent gig. I suppose it implies that I'll have to get involved in all the internal politics of the company. Plus, the postition and title inherently carry way more responsibility which I sort of like & dislike simultaneously. If I can truly have 100% control of the the design and architecture of the system then I know I can build something robust, modular, scalable, .... (I'm running out of buzz words here) .... , optimized, and bug-free. But if I end up having to make too many compromises to support flaws in the existing architecture of some of the internal apps & systems then it can become very painful very quickly. There's nothing worse than being held responsible for problems that you didn't create and/or can't solve.
But for the time being, to heck with all that. I'm SUUUUUUUPER stoked about my upcoming trip to Thailand. I'm back down to my fighting weight and can't wait to hit the scuba dives and jungle hikes. My brother climbed some waterfalls in Koh Samui which I missed last time I was there. It's going to be off the heeeeeeezeeeeee !!!! Matt's knee is still jacked so I'll have to win the v-ball tourney's alone (or lose them alone depending on how you look at it). In that spirit, and the news of the new job, I'll finish with 2 quotes from Vince Lombardi:
"To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price."
"It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men."
Adios Bitches!
Friday, February 24, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Gearing up for the big trip
Well, with the site done and my contained water scuba certification out of the way, I've got a about a week of working out and studying ahead of me. I'm shooting to finish the 1000 page C# book I bought by the end of the week. I tend to stop and play with the code a lot though so it's not going as fast but I'm definitely learning better this way. The Cingular firewall does not allow me to install a local version of the .net framework so I have to do some of the studying at night. Jen's not too stoked about that.
I'm playing with my new v-ball partner tonight. James moved here from Chicago and he's pretty decent. Hope I don't let him down. One more week left. Must .... stay .... focused .....
I'm playing with my new v-ball partner tonight. James moved here from Chicago and he's pretty decent. Hope I don't let him down. One more week left. Must .... stay .... focused .....
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Wooohooo! The Site's Done!
Finally finished MAXO Studio today. I put together the robots file and xml site map, tweaked some meta tags, submitted it to google, and that's that. Now I can just sit back and clock them G's. Not!
Seriously though, it's a nice relief. I'll be reviewing my study materials for my scuba certification dive this Saturday and after that I'll drown in a sea of C# for 10 days before heading off to Thailand. Yup yup.
MAXO's a livin' legend and I'll tell you why ...
Everybody wanna be MAX but MAX's still alive ...
Jay-Z
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Transition
Well, I'm almost done with MAXOStudio's main site. I should have the tutorials and the robots/indexing issues ironed out by the end of the week. I guess I've been feeling a bit sentimetal about this project since my next long term gig is going to be an ASP.NET project in C#. Saying goodbye to my old trusty friend, ColdFusion, will not be easy. Afterall, it was he who gave me my start and confidence in this industry over a decade ago. "Coldy" as I like to affectionately call him, has never let me down. No matter what clients ask for, Coldy's always there, with clean, concise solutions. "Don't worry Ardi.", he'd say. "Here's an easy and elegant way to get the job done." After the rollout of MX and the Mach-ii framework, ColdFusion beat the bad rap it had in the past of not being Object Oriented enough.
Conversely, I'm finding C# to be exremely non intuitive and code intensive. I find it ironic that C# tries to condense basic functionalites into meaninless symbols (i.e ! for NOT, ++ or += for increments, { for blocks, etc) and yet when it comes to the object oriented portion of the code (classes & objects) as well as the modular portion (methods, properties, overloading, etc.) it requires exponentially more lines of code just to create a basic object with a few properties and methods. Let's give credit where credit is due. C# does have great features and immense horse power. No doubt about it. But I think when it comes to be being concise, elegant, readable, and self-documenting it is sorely lacking. I really wish the project could have been in VB.NET. Even that seems to have an edge over C#. But sadly, I'm making my living in Microsofts back yard. They've been spreading the C# virus pretty heavily here in the Northwest. I've been fighting the deamons for 5 years now and refusing to give in to the dark side. But like most mortals, I had my price and eventually I was bought off with the rest of them. Having kids can do strange things to your principles.
Speaking of kids and principles .... I've been feeling a bit strange about my upcoming trip to Thailand with Matty "Matso" & Mack "Diesel". I'm a good dad, I provide for and take care of my kids. I manage to keep their mom happy too. But no matter how hard I look, I don't see any other dads taking a few weeks off to travel the globe, scuba dive, surf, hike, etc. I sway back and forth between feeling like a fortunate renaissance man who's really got his shit together and an immature selfish dad who refuses to grow and change and be a "real" father (whatever that means). Regardless, these doubts and feelings of guilt often creep up at the most unfortunate times and manage to ruin the brief episodes of fun and freedom that I do manage to eek out for myself.
My volleyball partner couldn't show up for our game last night so he called an old-school legend had him sub in for him. This guy used to be an amazing player. But now he's 30 pounds over weight and fairly out of shape (he still played 10 times better than I did). Although he lamented his diminished skills and fitness, he was prefectly content to blame it on his 3 kids. As if that made it OK and natural.
I don't think I need therapy. I think what I really need is a role model or at least a peer. I need to see another dad having some fun and being responsible at the same time. Just to show me that it is at least "theoretically" possible even if realistically rare and difficult.
Conversely, I'm finding C# to be exremely non intuitive and code intensive. I find it ironic that C# tries to condense basic functionalites into meaninless symbols (i.e ! for NOT, ++ or += for increments, { for blocks, etc) and yet when it comes to the object oriented portion of the code (classes & objects) as well as the modular portion (methods, properties, overloading, etc.) it requires exponentially more lines of code just to create a basic object with a few properties and methods. Let's give credit where credit is due. C# does have great features and immense horse power. No doubt about it. But I think when it comes to be being concise, elegant, readable, and self-documenting it is sorely lacking. I really wish the project could have been in VB.NET. Even that seems to have an edge over C#. But sadly, I'm making my living in Microsofts back yard. They've been spreading the C# virus pretty heavily here in the Northwest. I've been fighting the deamons for 5 years now and refusing to give in to the dark side. But like most mortals, I had my price and eventually I was bought off with the rest of them. Having kids can do strange things to your principles.
Speaking of kids and principles .... I've been feeling a bit strange about my upcoming trip to Thailand with Matty "Matso" & Mack "Diesel". I'm a good dad, I provide for and take care of my kids. I manage to keep their mom happy too. But no matter how hard I look, I don't see any other dads taking a few weeks off to travel the globe, scuba dive, surf, hike, etc. I sway back and forth between feeling like a fortunate renaissance man who's really got his shit together and an immature selfish dad who refuses to grow and change and be a "real" father (whatever that means). Regardless, these doubts and feelings of guilt often creep up at the most unfortunate times and manage to ruin the brief episodes of fun and freedom that I do manage to eek out for myself.
My volleyball partner couldn't show up for our game last night so he called an old-school legend had him sub in for him. This guy used to be an amazing player. But now he's 30 pounds over weight and fairly out of shape (he still played 10 times better than I did). Although he lamented his diminished skills and fitness, he was prefectly content to blame it on his 3 kids. As if that made it OK and natural.
I don't think I need therapy. I think what I really need is a role model or at least a peer. I need to see another dad having some fun and being responsible at the same time. Just to show me that it is at least "theoretically" possible even if realistically rare and difficult.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
End of Religion and Demise of Faith ... blah ... blah ... blah
A while ago I was privy to some e-mail correspondence between friends which I felt compelled to organize and save due it's depth and comical duality. I figured now that I've got a blog I should post it for all you deep thinkers as well you Republicans. The first thread is a summary of a Sam Harris speech written by Stewart Brand. It's basically the article that started this whole thread. The dialogue after that is between some friends of mine. These are some pretty deep dudes and I'm glad they even included me in the dialogue. Some of the most entertaining thoughts are from a fellow who got his law degree as well a theological one (yes, he is an ordained Pasteur), and is now practicing law in Oregon. This is great food for thought. I enjoyed reading it. I hope you do too.
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With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response?Harris began with Christianity. In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS.
"This is genocidal stupidity," Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it's likely. The good news of Christ's return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. "End time thinking," Harris said, "is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future."Harris was particularly critical of religious moderates who give cover to the fundamentalists by not challenging them. The moderates say that all is justified because religion gives people meaning in their life. "But what would they say to a guy who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard? The guy digs out there every Sunday with his family, cherishing the meaning the quest gives them."
"I've read the books," Harris said. "God is not a moderate." The Bible gives strict instructions to kill various kinds of sinners, and their relatives, and on occasion their entire towns. Yet slavery is challenged nowhere in the New or Old Testaments; slave holders in the old south used the Bible to defend their practice. The religious texts have power because they are old, but they are also hopelessly out of date because they are old.
It's taboo among religious moderates to compare religions, said Harris, but we must. "Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers?For that matter, where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers--- they're as Arab and aggrieved as anyone." The fundamental beliefs of Islam really are a problem. "Martyrdom in jihad is not a fringe doctrine; it is believed by millions of Muslims." It's not a question of ignorance--- two-thirds of al Qaeda operatives are college educated."We have no reason to expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Faith is intrinsically divisive. We have a choice between conversation and war." It was conversation that ended slavery, not faith. "Faith is a declaration of immunity to conversation. To make religious war unthinkable, we have to undermine the dogma of faith. The continuance of civilization requires not moderation, but reason."Harris ended by lauding meditation and mysticism as a form of experiential science, and observed, "The wisdom of contemplative life is not evenly distributed. The East has more than the West."
-- SB
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I think it's easy to let this issue slide and leave it to the professional "worry warts" to wonder about the implications of close to 50% of the US population hoping for (and possibly helping to expedite?) the end of the world in the next 50 yrs. However, because the ramifications of this widely held hope/belief are so grave and permanent, this issue demands attention from even non-pro worry warts like us.I think Harris's taking to task the "moderately religious" for in essence providing blanket cover for the fringe who would very much like to prevent progress (e.g., stem cell research) and see the whole world come to an end is an issue worthy of serious contemplation. I myself find there is much to like about a lot of religion. But I wonder about the larger impact of endorsing institutions so potentially lethally dangerous to the existence of our species?It seems to me that for religions to stay relevant they must evolve significantly. That would mean reversing some long standing positions embedded in scripture, the "word of God". But how much change can thousand year old texts and institutions withstand without collapsing completely?
There is precedent that at least some significant change is possible via the various branches of central religions that have sprouted off over time. I'm no expert in this area, but I know Episcopalians for instance have broken with the radical Evangelicals, Catholics, etc. and opened up their faith to homosexuals. Based on that I imagine that, unlike the Catholics, the Episcopalians have renounced other Bible endorsed, but out of date practices, such as slavery. But have the Episcopalians (or any other branch of Christianity?) thrown out Revelations, an entire chapter of the Bible?
- GH
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The guy has a good point. If a co-worker at a business meeting professed his belief in Santa Claus or The Easter Bunny we would treat him with derision and outright disrespect, but if someone professes that they believe in an equally far-fetched, mythical, supernatural being under the guise of "religion" we grant that person special deference and respect. Really, this is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty.
I mean, we are saying on the one hand that it is absurd that a guy can deliver millions of presents in a single night by flying around the world in a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, but that a guy who walks on water, raises the dead with a magic touch, and turns two fish into thousands is a completely rational belief? There's no rational distinction between the two, they're both superstitious, primitive fables, but for those of us who were raised in the Christian tradition, our years of indoctrination makes it extremely difficult to see the distinction.
Also, for those of us brought up in the Christian tradition, giving up on the idea of a God, soul and afterlife is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Even if all the empirical evidence around us suggests otherwise, it goes against our basic human nature, to give up on the idea of a personal god. The reason why is simple: we have no greater impulse in life than our own survival; by erecting an intellectual facade of immortality, we are convincing ourselves that we can live on, even through death. If you've ever come close to drowning, freezing, being shot, etc., or seen someone up close in their final moments of life, you can see just how profoundly strong, determined, and resilient the impulse to live is. When push comes to shove, human beings are capable of extraordinary feats of strength, endurance and determination--acts that would be impossible, even by professional athletes, in the ordinary circumstances of daily life. That's why it should come as no surprise that the intellectual equivalent, giving up in a belief in God, is just as difficult and tortuous a process.
Having said that, what I think is really interesting is the case of Christianity in America in particular. If you look at the number of folks who are religiously observant in Europe vs. America, the numbers are astounding. I operated for years on the assumption that Europeans were equally as religious if not more so. Turns out that while 50% or better of Americans are religiously observant, most European countries have numbers that run from the low double digits to the high single digits. (Which really blows my theory that strict Catholicism was why so many beautiful Spanish and Italian girls would never give me the time of day. :-)
Anyway, what's curious about Christianity particularly, is how fervent belief is in America despite the fact that most believers are fairly ignorant of the religion's primary text and its doctrinal implications. Judaism/Islam/Christianity all derive from the same pool of Old Testament source material and differ from other world religions in that they are so doctrinally and textually based. That is, you have one book that is the definitive source of truth on matters of faith and philosophy, and a set of rules that must be strictly abided by. Most people around the world live by faiths that are much looser in terms of moral codes and philosophical beliefs--they have some important teachers and beliefs, but things aren't generally set in stone. Judaism/Islam/Christianity, on the other hand, have a right way/wrong way of doing things and presumptively, a belief system that has one "true" interpretation. The result is, religious beliefs that are generally intolerant of outsiders and create enormous inter-faith disputes. So, it shouldn't be surprising then when we read about Sunnis murdering Shiites in Baghdad or Catholics and Protestants going tooth and nail in Northern Ireland. If you have a central book in your religion that outlines the way to live, you either abide by it or you don't--you are either living the right way or the wrong way (setting aside for a moment the important question of just how to interpret that central text). My point is, all religions are not equal, Judaism/Islam/Christianity demand a more rigid and exclusive brand of faith, which at least from the point of outsiders, makes them more of a threat--and history seems to bear this out--there is no Taoist Inquisition or Buddhist Fundamentalist Terrorism.
It is not fair though, to lump Christianity in with Judaism and Islam for one important reason: while both Muslims and Jews practice extensive scrutiny of their core religious texts (in the original languages) most Christians have never read the bible cover to cover. So what you have, is a religion that follows a strict moral code and lays down rigid philosophical beliefs in the form of a central text, but few of its followers devote much study to that text. Sure, there are pastors and theologians who read the bible fully, but for the most part, Christianity is a religion based on a central text, that goes largely unstudied but its followers.
If you look at this with a critical eye, you may get some sense of what I mean. For example, if you read the Koran or the Torah, you are pretty much getting word-for-word the stuff that the author originally said. However, if you read the New Testament, you are getting a translation of a translation of a translation from (at best) a second-hand oral account. That is, you are getting an English translation of a Latin translation of first or second-century Greek. And the guys who actually wrote the stuff down in Greek were getting it from guys who spoke Aramaic. Now you may argue, what if one of the disciples or apostles actually spoke and wrote Greek? But this isn't remotely realistic. Jesus came from, recruited his apostles from, and preached in, Galilee, an outlying province of Palestine with no town larger than 5,000 people. The practical importance of that, is that no one who could write Greek would be found in that area, because there would be no call for (or money for) a scribe in a remote agricultural area like that. Galilee, in other words, was an area of very poor, illiterate peasants.
Why is that significant? It means that the New Testament is based on a translation of an oral account from Aramaic to Greek that occurred years after the words were spoken by Jesus. A good example of this is the Sermon on the Mount. There are far, far too many themes in this lengthy passage to be even remotely attributable to one spoken lesson. Clearly, this is an amalgamation of remembered teachings, combined in a single frame story in the written account (the Gospels). After all, let's say you were a disciple who followed Jesus around for three years and you were yourself illiterate; how much could you accurately recount? Likely, you could remember the best, most memorable bits with some precision, you would be more hazy on others, and you would forget significant portions of what was said. And of course, you would pass on the portions of the message that you thought were most significant to you.
Also, of some significance, is the fact that Aramaic has no verb tenses, no plurals and no definite articles. Of course, Greek has all these things. So when you make a translation, from an oral account in Aramaic to Greek you have an awful lot of room for interpretation by the interpreter. And when you are talking about something as nuanced as Jesus' teachings this is rather significant. And that's not the only place where you run into interpretation problems. Translation from Greek to Latin to English is hardly free of problems. For example, Caesar's words when crossing the Rubicon are commonly translated into English as, "The die is cast." Sounds like the meaning is fairly straightforward doesn't it--something like, "I've made my decision." In fact, Caesar's words when crossing the Rubicon were him quoting his favorite Greek poet, Menander, "Anneriphtho ho kybos", which more accurately means, "Let the dice fly high". Yet, a mediocre translation years later by Suetonius comes out in Latin as, "Iacta alea est"-- "The dice (die) is (are) thrown." And then in English as, "The die is cast." (note the translation of "alea" as "cast" rather than "thrown") So, in one translation the meaning is one of inevitably--my actions are already determined. In the other translation, it's Caesar saying, "F--- it! I'm ready to risk everything!"
A good case in point: the Aramaic word for carpenter is naggar -- a person who makes things with wood; but it also had the colloquial meaning of a wise man, one who makes things with words. Modern scholars know this, a Greek translator in the first century very well might not have. Now, which translation makes more sense about Jesus? That he was a carpenter or a wise man?
Compound these translation problems by thousands and thousands of lines in the Gospels and you get a sense of the translation issue: You are finely parsing words to gain philosophical and metaphysical insight, in order to argue for your version of proper church doctrine, and you are making moral judgments of others, as well as political decisions (in areas like abortion, stem cell research, and the Iraq War) based on your 17th-century English translation of a Latin book translated from a Greek book translated from some guys who spoke a language with a limited grammatical structure who were trying to remember what someone else had said years before.
Of course, this all puts aside the more fundamental question of whether or not Jesus was a historical person. Our first written accounts of Jesus don't appear until around 100 A.D. (unless you count the Hindu scrolls from the Hemis Monastery in Kashimir which were lost or stolen around 1939), so the question looms as to whether or not such a man actually existed or whether the accounts surrounding his name were a political maneuver by clever Jewish leaders who wished to form a Messiah cult around a Jewish figure that would counter the powerful cults of Caesar and Nero that existed in Palestine at the time and attracted many Jews. I tend to favor the argument put forward by historian Will Durant, that although we have no historical record for Jesus, the depth of the accounts that arises in the first century seem more likely to have come from a historical figure rather than a fabricated figure. Nonetheless, it remains an interesting question from a rationalist standpoint: To what extent does the historical evidence for Jesus exist? When you realize that almost all the mythological or supernatural aspects of the Jesus story, from Virgin birth in a manger on December 25th, to the listed miracles, down to the resurrection are lifted directly from the then competing Roman cult of Mithras, you do have to approach the topic with some skepticism.
But back to your point about the Book of Revelations; what is really ironic about folks hoping to hasten the Apocalypse, is that it was a text clearly about things as they existed in first or second century Palestine--a Beast in a city with seven hills--Rome; whose number is 666--which in Jewish gemmatria, a well-known Kabbalistic way of translating names, comes out to "Nero Caesar" in Greek. (Interestingly, the earliest copies of Revelations actually list the number as 616, which just so happens to be the equivalent of "Neron Caesar", an alternate Greek spelling). Of course, modern Christians often confuse "the Beast" mentioned in Revelations, with "satan" in the Old Testament (which in Hebrew translates as "obstacle", not a personal name), but that's a whole other story...
I guess to sum up, we are living in a society that is becoming increasingly divided between rationalist and anti-rationalist ideologies. The GOP has done a tactically brilliant job in the past decade of increasing its base along religious rather than economic lines. Is religion dangerous? It always has been in the West. Is it more dangerous today? Perhaps--the Islamic fanatics have access to more dangerous technology, and the fanatics in our own country have access to more political power than in many decades. But the real question is, what sort of society do you have without the restriction of moralizing religious dogmatism? The answer is, something that has the ethical tone of the Soviet Union--and that's not necessarily a comforting alternative.
Religion is the opiate of the people, but do you want the common knucklehead in a democracy acting in an unrestrained and possibly monstrous way, or living docilely like sheep? Maybe all we need is a different shepherd? ;-)
- MV
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I mostly agree with everything you say. I do, however, have some commentary and questions, to which I would be interested to hear your response.
You make a good point that there is no rational distinction between a belief in Santa Claus and a belief in some omnipotent god. The guy giving this talk also mentioned something along those lines, pointing out how irrational it would seem to blame the destruction of New Orleans on an angry Poseidon. However, while I am not fully versed in the history of world religions, and I could be wrong about this, my first question would be why it is that certain "mythologies" have largely stood the test of time as being "religions", while others were relatively quickly discarded?
Of course, even if it is true that certain beliefs are statistically more resilient over time, mass appeal doesn't prove anything, except maybe that we are all genetically wired the same way, and that history/communication finally flushed out the mythologies that were the most appealing to the most people, given how we are wired. In this light, the mythologies/religions that survived due to shared genetic heritage is really just a corollary to MV's point about the survival instinct - people grasping for intellectual immortality using a construct that makes the most sense to us given our other genetic traits. In other words, we all want to believe in something, and in very general terms, we have agreed what it is we want to believe in (a higher power, Santa Claus doesn't cut it, yada yada).
However, I do slightly disagree with MV as to *why* people want to believe at all. MV makes a good case that the survival instinct is the primary reason that people want to believe, and I am sure that this is at least partially true. However, in terms of eternal survival, the belief structure of the Western religions (for example) isn't all upside - a bottle of 151 and a few loose women, coupled with an untimely demise before you can repent, and you could have eternal survival ... in hell. As is seen with the suicide impulse (overriding the survival instinct due to extreme pain), it doesn't seem that people's quest for immortality would cause them to believe in the chance of eternal punishment (versus no afterlife at all). The Eastern religions also don't really fully satisfy the survival quest - as an example, potential reincarnation as a cockroach is not a super selling point for that belief structure.
Instead, I think that people want to believe in a religion in order to give their life meaning. I think it is this quest for meaning - a higher purpose, or order to the universe, rather than immortality - that is the important common element in the religions/mythologies that survive the test of time.
In the absence of some sort of non-quantifiable belief (i.e. faith) in a "soul", one is left with our sense of "self" as just a neural network, based on an initial build (genetics) and subsequent modifications (experiences). Within some probabilistic range, our every action and thought at any given point in time is deterministic and predictable, based on the state of the neural net at that point, and the outside influences on the neural net at that point. This definitely puts a crimp in everything from love to justice, except as these things are just labels for commonly-shared neural states. In fact, given this rationalistic viewpoint, where would one draw the line between a homo-sapien neural net, and the neural net of what we call an animal, not deserving of "human" considerations? If a machine were developed that exactly simulated a human neural net, would it be privy to all of the same rights and responsibilities as a "person" (which is just an organic form of the same thing)?
Similar to the Catholic Church not being too happy with Galileo suggesting that the world is not actually the center of the solar system, I think most people are not too happy with a purely rationalist approach to human existence, since this would imply that there really isn't a "reason" for our existence; there is not a non-quantifiable "soul" that makes humans any different from other animals, or non-organic versions of the same structure. I must admit, I am not too happy with this conclusion, either, but *rationally* it does make sense.
- DB
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I think you are right to point out that a need for meaning is a central facet in the popularity of religion. From Nietzsche and Dostoevsky down to Sartre and Camus, the whole Existentialist line of philosophy has addressed this question: In a rationalist world devoid of ultimate meaning, where does man find purpose, meaning and fulfillment? Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Heidegger and most of the modern folks to address this question have come down with secular answers, although Kierkegaard came up with a scheme that sort of reverts back to religious faith.
I think the will to live and the desire for meaning are just two, among many reasons, people are attracted by religion. I think another primary reason for the popularity of religion is that it is a very comfortable and easy framework for people: it doesn't require a lot of thought, and it is much more comforting than a world without a personal god. Given a choice between weighing difficult, ponderous questions in an indifferent universe and taking pleasant answers on faith, most people will opt for the easy path. The same is true of politics and most organizations, most people prefer being told what to do by someone who takes care of them, rather than being truly free but having the responsibility and work of having to manage themselves. It's just a facet of human nature that separates the few from the many.
I like your points about a soul, and also think the answer has to lie in the negative: man isn't fundamentally different from animals. Humans are highly adaptable and intelligent animals, but we often fall victim to the conceit that humans represent the "top of the evolutionary pyramid" rather than a branch in the evolutionary tree. Just about every behavior or trait in the past that we considered comprising "our humanity" has been shown in the past 50 years (many just recently) to be shared with one or more species. Or put another way, the gap between the smartest human and dumbest human appears to be broader than the gap between the dumbest human and the smartest chimp.
I always thought one of the great paradoxical questions for Christianity was this: Do pets have a soul? For example, if your dog has no soul, he doesn't go to heaven (or hell) when he dies, his existence just extinguishes. Therefore, "life" isn't dependent on a soul. Life is merely a biomechanical process. Alternatively, if pets do have a soul, then presumably that soul "goes somewhere" upon the cessation of bodily activity. So, if your pet has a soul it goes to heaven. But if the distinction for people as to who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell is based on volitional acts, then where does that leave dogs or cats, who can't make informed rational choices? How about mentally disabled people, infants, or the insane? Are they exempt from the requirement of moral judgment in determining whether they spend an eternity of delight or suffering? And if you draw a distinction somewhere between the imbeciles and the rational beings, where do you draw that distinction? And of course, if these folks can't help being grossly ignorant, what about folks who are slightly ignorant? Does being born "dumb" mean you have unfortunately been born to a position in the world where you face a higher probability of eternal damnation based on poor moral choices (either due to lack of education or proper thoughtfulness)? Finally, if you are "lucky" enough to be born as an intelligent human being, your soul has a disproportionally higher chance of being condemned to hell (let's say 50/50 just to pick a number), than a being born with (or dying with) an "idiot soul" that has a 0% chance of eternal damnation. Doesn't seem very fair coming from an all-powerful and loving supreme being does it? Of course, you could suggest there is no hell--but that sort of undermines all the ethical imperatives of the Bible, doesn't it?
So which is it? Life isn't based on a soul, or souls exist, but in a cruelly rigged game?
(Hey, I'm an atheist attorney, I'm allowed to play Devil's Advocate.) ;-)
- MV
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Let me preface this by saying: "You can't sway the faithful through intellect, and a man of intellect does not bow to faith." I'm not sure who said that originally, but my old man said it last week.
Anyway, your preacher or priest buddy structures his argument in the form of an ad hominem attack (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) mixed with distortions of what I actually said. In other words, he believes he can make his point by attacking me, misquoting me, and dwelling on minute details of my email rather than debating the truth of the premises and logic of the conclusions I offered.
Lest any of you think I completely fabricated my off-the-cuff email (which admittedly was done with the aid of a trukey sandwich as my only reference tool) here is my response:
He states: "It is too bad that all the points that he makes is based on fallacies." For a quick review of what a logical fallacy is, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy He states: "First he says that the current English translations of the New Testament are a translation of a translation of a translation. Incorrect!" Some are based on Greek, some on the Latin Vulgate. Generally, the Catholic versions rely more on the Latin translations. See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translationsThis ignores my underlying point that Christians are imposing moral judgments on others, and engaging very actively in politics on the basis of a philosophical text that relies on subtle shades of meaning and is at least two layers removed from its source language. He states: "Second he says that no one in first century Israel spoke Greek. Incorrect!" Actually, I said, Jesus spoke (i.e. conducted his ministry and delivered his sermons) in Aramaic. And, that it wasn't remotely realistic any of the peasants in Galilee who heard him first-hand could write in Greek. The language of the Roman Empire was Latin. The language in Galilee was Aramaic. Literacy in Latin was in the single digits. Ditto for literacy in Greek. Speaking a few words for mercantile activities is much different than being able to write in a language.I can order a burrito or a beer in Spanish, but that is not equivalent to me dictating "Don Quixote." Basing life decisions on the double or triple translations of others is risky. He states: "As far as the Aramaic word for wood being the same as wise sounds a little out there to me." See: Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan, copyright 1995.That's Dr. Elaine Pagels, PhD., Professor of Religion, Harvard University, wife of noted atomic physicist Heinz Pagels.She was on the team that translated the Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, a collection of first-century gospels of Jesus that paint a very different picture from the gospels included in current bibles.She is a recipient of the National Book Award and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He states: "Third, Jesus being an historical figure. Too long a debate. I will just say that anyone who says that Jesus was not a historical figure doesn’t knowhow to read history." The only existing historical accounts we have date from the late-first century and decsribe Jesus after-the-fact. As I pointed out, there is no direct historical evidence, no contemporary accounts, only later anecdotal evidence and this raises a question of fact. Perhaps I don't know "how to read history", but I fail to see how second-hand accounts written decades later demonstrates definitive proof that someone was a historical figure. Finally, he states in regards to my digression on Revelations: "This thing about 666. Every one knows that it matches Nero Caesar. But it was never 616. That doesn’t even make sensewith Biblical numerology."The earliest manuscript of Revelations reads, "616". This manuscript was found in Egypt in 1895. It is known as the Oxyrynchus Papyrii. See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast_(numerology)#Alternative_numbers
-MV
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Very thoughtful and provoking contributions. I've enjoyed reading them. A couple things came to mind as a read through your comments:
1. I agree with DB that the search for meaning is a big part of the motivation behind a person looking for (and sometimes finding) god. But I think that the baseline question that starts this search is, "where did I come from"? Could someone as brilliant and insightful as MV have simply evolved from a blob of murky single celled organisms? For many, this is a difficult proposition to accept. For those of us who know him, not so much.... This question is asked in big picture existential terms, as well as the more mundane questions about one's family tree. Understanding where we come from is the baseline for finding meaning for our lives. This is where most of the great religions start - with a story about how life began. Personally I don't think Science or Religion have offered very satisfying answers to this question. The bottom line is that we have a general idea and some experiential evidence that give us some rough ideas and general theories, but in historic terms, we are never going to really know who the proverbial mother and father of the human race are or were. Some are comfortable with this, many are not.
2. I tend to agree with a lot of what MV said, but I think you've cast very broad nets around modern western religious thoughts. There are a number of "Christian" movements (though no formal church is likely to recognize them) that focus their studies and principles on the life of Jesus, thus focusing on books in the bible that are accounts of Jesus' life and maybe the book of Acts. The fascinating thing about these movements is that if you were just to observe some of the people you might mistake them for Buddhists. There's a group of aged hippies in Chicago called the "Jesus People". Essentially they are just trying to live out that bumper sticker "what would Jesus do". They talk about the Kingdom of God (heaven) as being here on earth - which is something that Jesus said. And this is right up the Buddhist alley. I find this particularly interesting because the way these people behave is quite different from the way most "Christians" actually behave or even from how they would say you should behave. I realize this is a bit of a tangent, but to bring it back around, I think that after we've asked the question "where did we come from", the next question that is asked is "where do we go from here". As you both have pointed out, many people want to be told what to do. Others at least want some sort of a roadmap or barometer to know whether they are a "good" person or whether they are doing what is "right".
So, now I'm curious what you guys think about the concept of being "good" or "right". Absent a religious (for lack of a better word) framework, how does a society establish what is good or what is right?
-P
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It is interesting that you bring up the question of what is "good", or in general terms, ethics. This is what I briefly alluded to when I was saying that the absence of a non-quantifiable dimension to human actions (i.e soul) means that all of one's actions and thoughts are purely deterministic, based on their neural net's initial build (genetics) and subsequent modifications (environmental influences). Even if you get into quantum theory when discussing why neurons fire at certain times, it is still ultimately quantifiable and deterministic, within a range of probability.
So, one might ask, how can a person be punished by our legal system for a given act, when they were virtually guaranteed to do that act at that time? And, to your question, people often will ask why they need to worry about "ethics" at all, if there is no higher power or ultimate justice.
Unfortunately, while I do admit to trying to prove otherwise, and I would love to hear a counter-argument, neither of these questions in any way imply the existence of a higher power, nor, as a side note, do they prove some sort of contradiction between a civil society and a rationalist (deterministic) viewpoint.
To address the first question, of a legal system imposing various forms of restriction upon those that do not follow the legal system's rules, I think that the important distinction is how this restriction is viewed. We typically use the term "punishment" because this is a carryover from the religious viewpoint. Obviously, a morally-charged thing like "punishment" is not appropriate, if everyone's actions are deterministic. However, what is really happening is not a moral "punishment", but behavior modification via environmental influence (a fee, etc), or in the extreme, removal from society (jail) of the individual that is not conforming to what has been commonly agreed to be the rules, by the other participants in the group. The person not conforming is not "bad", they are just a digression from the behavior path of the average, that the average wishes to correct (or remove). This societal behavior is seen very plainly at the micro level when one disciplines (or rewards) a little child (or even an animal). No one thinks that a very small child (or dog) is ethically "bad", deserving of "punishment", they just think that their child (or dog) needs to learn how to follow the "rules" (which, despite common themes, are often pretty arbitrary, depending on time and place).
This leads to the second issue that I raised above - that people tend to use the initial conclusions of rationalist thought (that our behavior does not have a non-deterministic origin) to state that everyone can behave as they please, because there are no big-picture consequences (and besides, one is pre-determined to act that way anyway based on their genetics and environment). This is not a logical argument at all. Think of something simple like eating. You are genetically programmed to want to eat, and you are further programmed by genetics and environment to want to eat certain things at certain times, and even to have certain tastes, down to the level of preferring a certain variety of fermented grapes over another variety, as an example. While you might be able to perform the action of not-eating, depending on the genes that determine "willpower", your body is chemically rewarded for satisfying these urges. Over the long term, some initially rewarding urges (like alcohol consumption), are not rewarding, and so people perform actions that might seem self-restrictive, because these seemingly self-restrictive actions are ultimately rewarding. So, while each individual action is deterministic based on one's neural net at that point ("craving" chocolate; "thinking" healthy, "remembering" the last hangover, etc), the aggregate of actions is based on what is perceived as being rewarding over the long term (except, of course, for those who are programmed to think only in the short term). This behavior can be extrapolated out to all sorts of actions, including what we perceive as "ethics". Individuals who behave according to commonly agreed "ethical" rules (not lying, cheating, etc), tend to end up self-rewarding for these behaviors (sense of well being, beneficial actions from other individuals in the society, etc), and these rewards can in turn even have physical benefits (longer life, etc).
So, a rationalist (deterministic) perspective of humanity does not in any way negate what is commonly called "ethics", it just provides a different explanation for them.
-- DB
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As to point #1, science does not offer a comprehensive description of the origins of life or the universe. It is possible it never will. However, I think the key question in this regard is what sort of tools do you employ to answer this question--mystical speculation or measured, verifiable methods? Perhaps more importantly, given that many fundamental questions about life are unanswered, is it necessary to have the answers? For example, while it is quite interesting to know where I came from, I can live and die without this knowledge. The core of Buddhist teachings (and to an extent Hindu teachings) dwells on this--the futility of metaphysical speculation. However, as both you and DB have pointed out, questions of meaning and of ethics are both areas where arriving at some kind of answer is significantly more pressing.
Which brings me to point #2; you are correct in saying I have painted "Christianity" with a broad brush. My statements have been generalizations. And I definitely agree with you that Jesus' ethical teachings bear a great deal of resemblance to Buddha's ethical teachings. There are two explanations for this: 1. These are universal principles, that great thinkers have discovered and taught to others in different times, places, and cultures; or 2. That Jesus was influenced by Buddhism. (In my original email I made reference to the scrolls of the Hemis Monastery which disappeared around 1939. Whether one puts any credence in the accounts or not, the story basically goes like this: A scroll in a northern Indian monastery was encountered by a Russian explorer in the late 19th century and seen by various other individuals up until 1939 which purported to describe Jesus as having taught in India prior to returning to Palestine. Our gospel accounts have a gap in the narrative from age 12 to age 30 of Jesus' life, so this fuels speculation by those who find these accounts credible. I'm dubious myself, but it is an interesting concept.)
So, I agree that there is a difference between the ethical teachings of Jesus and Christianity, because Christianity also involves a claim of divinity, various supernatural powers, etc. Personally, I think Jesus probably was a real person in Palestine, that he did profoundly influence a lot of real people during his lifetime, that a good portion of his ethical teachings have come down to us intact, and that his life story had supernatural elements added to it as time went on, such as the assumption of the mythology of the Mithras cult, the connections with the Jewish Messiah, etc.
I also agree strongly, that the most meaningful philosophical question a person faces in life is: How should I live? What is the right way to act?--the fundamental question of what we call ethics. My own view is that good and evil are something of a false dichotomy--one man's good is another man's evil. The better way to phrase the question is to ask, "What is the most ethical way to act?" And this is a question that has to be answered largely in a social context and changes from situation to situation. I don't believe life is so simple that a universal set of rules can be applied to every situation, any more than the words "love" or "God" mean the same thing from one speaker to another. I am also very much in favor of a consequentialist ethics vs. a deontological set of ethics (i.e. consequences are more important than intentions). I think Aristotle hit it on the head 2,500 years when he wrote the Nichomachean Ethics--here's a good article summing up that work if you are not familiar with it: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/aristot.htm
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Well, we've hit on the subject of metaphysics, ontology, and ethics, so perhaps it is only fitting that you bring up free will.
You are right DB, in a partial sense, that in hindsight, all our actions are deterministic, but if we accept quantum physics, the world is not deterministic, but probabilistic, and all future actions are expectations rather than guarantees. So, individual actions are not, by definition, deterministic.
But putting aside this Planck-length hair splitting, the philosopher John Locke also took the view that determinism was irrelevant. He believed the defining feature of free will was that we are free so long as we have the ability to postpone a decision long enough to reflect upon the consequences of a choice. And who would disagree that we are capable of doing that? In a more modern formulation: In order for a choice to be free in any sense that matters, it must be true that the actor could have done otherwise. Then again, this depends on what we mean by "could have" (free will) and "would have" (determinism). Are determinism and free will incompatible, opposite concepts, or do they involve slightly different concepts?
Where this all leads us I think, is into some very paradoxical positions about the ability to philosophize linguistically (for example, if words don't have a one-to-one correspondence with the "real" world, then they aren't very adequate for making precise determinations about the world--Wittgenstein called this "the bewitchment of language" problem); and scientifically speaking, it requires some definition of "time" and "cause and effect" which seem common sense, but as 20th-century experiments in physics demonstrate, are anything but commonsensical or easy to define.
My personal take is that "free will" represents a concept about how we think and is "wrapped up" in a sequential notion of "time." And that "determinism" represents a concept related to cause and effect that is "wrapped up" in a holistic notion of "time." (You may pass the bong to the left as you wish here...)
In any event, imagine for a moment a world where we don't hold people criminally liable for the consequences of their actions, even if their actions are "deterministic"; treating them as the consequences of "free will" is far more socially useful.
And since we started this thread out by talking about religion, here's a thought: If there is a God, and God is the prime mover, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, how can one sin? Your actions have been predetermined.
And for that matter, if you accept the three premises above regarding an all-powerful God, and assume a fourth premise, that he is good, then the logical conclusion is that evil cannot exist.
Just a thought...
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This reminds me of a debate I attended about 10 years ago between a UW professor and "touring" Christian scientist who traveled the country and tried to sell Christianity in new shiny scientific packaging.
The UW professor's overall premise was that God, in its Judeo-Christian definition, can not exist. The notion that God is omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), and omnibenevolent (all loving) conflicts with the real world we live in. Most notably, all the "evil" and suffering that we witness everyday. Surely a god with all 3 of those attributes could find a way around this mess. The rebuttal was that the evil and suffering were intentional in order to "teach" people something or provide contrast so that we may recognize goodness and joy in comparison. Of course, the thinking man's response to this would be, again, that a god with all 3 of those attributes could & would fine a way to teach those same lessons without mass suffering.
I haven't slept well the past 3 nights and I couldn't even remember my own address a few minutes ago so I'll keep this brief. Thanks for all the excellent thoughts and taking the time (for which I'm too lazy & dull) to write it all down. I don't get much intellectual stimulation these days. By the way, I'm documenting and organizing all these threads. Maybe I'll send them back out in a few years and start this dialogue all over again.
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With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response?Harris began with Christianity. In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS.
"This is genocidal stupidity," Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it's likely. The good news of Christ's return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. "End time thinking," Harris said, "is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future."Harris was particularly critical of religious moderates who give cover to the fundamentalists by not challenging them. The moderates say that all is justified because religion gives people meaning in their life. "But what would they say to a guy who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard? The guy digs out there every Sunday with his family, cherishing the meaning the quest gives them."
"I've read the books," Harris said. "God is not a moderate." The Bible gives strict instructions to kill various kinds of sinners, and their relatives, and on occasion their entire towns. Yet slavery is challenged nowhere in the New or Old Testaments; slave holders in the old south used the Bible to defend their practice. The religious texts have power because they are old, but they are also hopelessly out of date because they are old.
It's taboo among religious moderates to compare religions, said Harris, but we must. "Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers?For that matter, where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers--- they're as Arab and aggrieved as anyone." The fundamental beliefs of Islam really are a problem. "Martyrdom in jihad is not a fringe doctrine; it is believed by millions of Muslims." It's not a question of ignorance--- two-thirds of al Qaeda operatives are college educated."We have no reason to expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Faith is intrinsically divisive. We have a choice between conversation and war." It was conversation that ended slavery, not faith. "Faith is a declaration of immunity to conversation. To make religious war unthinkable, we have to undermine the dogma of faith. The continuance of civilization requires not moderation, but reason."Harris ended by lauding meditation and mysticism as a form of experiential science, and observed, "The wisdom of contemplative life is not evenly distributed. The East has more than the West."
-- SB
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I think it's easy to let this issue slide and leave it to the professional "worry warts" to wonder about the implications of close to 50% of the US population hoping for (and possibly helping to expedite?) the end of the world in the next 50 yrs. However, because the ramifications of this widely held hope/belief are so grave and permanent, this issue demands attention from even non-pro worry warts like us.I think Harris's taking to task the "moderately religious" for in essence providing blanket cover for the fringe who would very much like to prevent progress (e.g., stem cell research) and see the whole world come to an end is an issue worthy of serious contemplation. I myself find there is much to like about a lot of religion. But I wonder about the larger impact of endorsing institutions so potentially lethally dangerous to the existence of our species?It seems to me that for religions to stay relevant they must evolve significantly. That would mean reversing some long standing positions embedded in scripture, the "word of God". But how much change can thousand year old texts and institutions withstand without collapsing completely?
There is precedent that at least some significant change is possible via the various branches of central religions that have sprouted off over time. I'm no expert in this area, but I know Episcopalians for instance have broken with the radical Evangelicals, Catholics, etc. and opened up their faith to homosexuals. Based on that I imagine that, unlike the Catholics, the Episcopalians have renounced other Bible endorsed, but out of date practices, such as slavery. But have the Episcopalians (or any other branch of Christianity?) thrown out Revelations, an entire chapter of the Bible?
- GH
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The guy has a good point. If a co-worker at a business meeting professed his belief in Santa Claus or The Easter Bunny we would treat him with derision and outright disrespect, but if someone professes that they believe in an equally far-fetched, mythical, supernatural being under the guise of "religion" we grant that person special deference and respect. Really, this is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty.
I mean, we are saying on the one hand that it is absurd that a guy can deliver millions of presents in a single night by flying around the world in a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, but that a guy who walks on water, raises the dead with a magic touch, and turns two fish into thousands is a completely rational belief? There's no rational distinction between the two, they're both superstitious, primitive fables, but for those of us who were raised in the Christian tradition, our years of indoctrination makes it extremely difficult to see the distinction.
Also, for those of us brought up in the Christian tradition, giving up on the idea of a God, soul and afterlife is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Even if all the empirical evidence around us suggests otherwise, it goes against our basic human nature, to give up on the idea of a personal god. The reason why is simple: we have no greater impulse in life than our own survival; by erecting an intellectual facade of immortality, we are convincing ourselves that we can live on, even through death. If you've ever come close to drowning, freezing, being shot, etc., or seen someone up close in their final moments of life, you can see just how profoundly strong, determined, and resilient the impulse to live is. When push comes to shove, human beings are capable of extraordinary feats of strength, endurance and determination--acts that would be impossible, even by professional athletes, in the ordinary circumstances of daily life. That's why it should come as no surprise that the intellectual equivalent, giving up in a belief in God, is just as difficult and tortuous a process.
Having said that, what I think is really interesting is the case of Christianity in America in particular. If you look at the number of folks who are religiously observant in Europe vs. America, the numbers are astounding. I operated for years on the assumption that Europeans were equally as religious if not more so. Turns out that while 50% or better of Americans are religiously observant, most European countries have numbers that run from the low double digits to the high single digits. (Which really blows my theory that strict Catholicism was why so many beautiful Spanish and Italian girls would never give me the time of day. :-)
Anyway, what's curious about Christianity particularly, is how fervent belief is in America despite the fact that most believers are fairly ignorant of the religion's primary text and its doctrinal implications. Judaism/Islam/Christianity all derive from the same pool of Old Testament source material and differ from other world religions in that they are so doctrinally and textually based. That is, you have one book that is the definitive source of truth on matters of faith and philosophy, and a set of rules that must be strictly abided by. Most people around the world live by faiths that are much looser in terms of moral codes and philosophical beliefs--they have some important teachers and beliefs, but things aren't generally set in stone. Judaism/Islam/Christianity, on the other hand, have a right way/wrong way of doing things and presumptively, a belief system that has one "true" interpretation. The result is, religious beliefs that are generally intolerant of outsiders and create enormous inter-faith disputes. So, it shouldn't be surprising then when we read about Sunnis murdering Shiites in Baghdad or Catholics and Protestants going tooth and nail in Northern Ireland. If you have a central book in your religion that outlines the way to live, you either abide by it or you don't--you are either living the right way or the wrong way (setting aside for a moment the important question of just how to interpret that central text). My point is, all religions are not equal, Judaism/Islam/Christianity demand a more rigid and exclusive brand of faith, which at least from the point of outsiders, makes them more of a threat--and history seems to bear this out--there is no Taoist Inquisition or Buddhist Fundamentalist Terrorism.
It is not fair though, to lump Christianity in with Judaism and Islam for one important reason: while both Muslims and Jews practice extensive scrutiny of their core religious texts (in the original languages) most Christians have never read the bible cover to cover. So what you have, is a religion that follows a strict moral code and lays down rigid philosophical beliefs in the form of a central text, but few of its followers devote much study to that text. Sure, there are pastors and theologians who read the bible fully, but for the most part, Christianity is a religion based on a central text, that goes largely unstudied but its followers.
If you look at this with a critical eye, you may get some sense of what I mean. For example, if you read the Koran or the Torah, you are pretty much getting word-for-word the stuff that the author originally said. However, if you read the New Testament, you are getting a translation of a translation of a translation from (at best) a second-hand oral account. That is, you are getting an English translation of a Latin translation of first or second-century Greek. And the guys who actually wrote the stuff down in Greek were getting it from guys who spoke Aramaic. Now you may argue, what if one of the disciples or apostles actually spoke and wrote Greek? But this isn't remotely realistic. Jesus came from, recruited his apostles from, and preached in, Galilee, an outlying province of Palestine with no town larger than 5,000 people. The practical importance of that, is that no one who could write Greek would be found in that area, because there would be no call for (or money for) a scribe in a remote agricultural area like that. Galilee, in other words, was an area of very poor, illiterate peasants.
Why is that significant? It means that the New Testament is based on a translation of an oral account from Aramaic to Greek that occurred years after the words were spoken by Jesus. A good example of this is the Sermon on the Mount. There are far, far too many themes in this lengthy passage to be even remotely attributable to one spoken lesson. Clearly, this is an amalgamation of remembered teachings, combined in a single frame story in the written account (the Gospels). After all, let's say you were a disciple who followed Jesus around for three years and you were yourself illiterate; how much could you accurately recount? Likely, you could remember the best, most memorable bits with some precision, you would be more hazy on others, and you would forget significant portions of what was said. And of course, you would pass on the portions of the message that you thought were most significant to you.
Also, of some significance, is the fact that Aramaic has no verb tenses, no plurals and no definite articles. Of course, Greek has all these things. So when you make a translation, from an oral account in Aramaic to Greek you have an awful lot of room for interpretation by the interpreter. And when you are talking about something as nuanced as Jesus' teachings this is rather significant. And that's not the only place where you run into interpretation problems. Translation from Greek to Latin to English is hardly free of problems. For example, Caesar's words when crossing the Rubicon are commonly translated into English as, "The die is cast." Sounds like the meaning is fairly straightforward doesn't it--something like, "I've made my decision." In fact, Caesar's words when crossing the Rubicon were him quoting his favorite Greek poet, Menander, "Anneriphtho ho kybos", which more accurately means, "Let the dice fly high". Yet, a mediocre translation years later by Suetonius comes out in Latin as, "Iacta alea est"-- "The dice (die) is (are) thrown." And then in English as, "The die is cast." (note the translation of "alea" as "cast" rather than "thrown") So, in one translation the meaning is one of inevitably--my actions are already determined. In the other translation, it's Caesar saying, "F--- it! I'm ready to risk everything!"
A good case in point: the Aramaic word for carpenter is naggar -- a person who makes things with wood; but it also had the colloquial meaning of a wise man, one who makes things with words. Modern scholars know this, a Greek translator in the first century very well might not have. Now, which translation makes more sense about Jesus? That he was a carpenter or a wise man?
Compound these translation problems by thousands and thousands of lines in the Gospels and you get a sense of the translation issue: You are finely parsing words to gain philosophical and metaphysical insight, in order to argue for your version of proper church doctrine, and you are making moral judgments of others, as well as political decisions (in areas like abortion, stem cell research, and the Iraq War) based on your 17th-century English translation of a Latin book translated from a Greek book translated from some guys who spoke a language with a limited grammatical structure who were trying to remember what someone else had said years before.
Of course, this all puts aside the more fundamental question of whether or not Jesus was a historical person. Our first written accounts of Jesus don't appear until around 100 A.D. (unless you count the Hindu scrolls from the Hemis Monastery in Kashimir which were lost or stolen around 1939), so the question looms as to whether or not such a man actually existed or whether the accounts surrounding his name were a political maneuver by clever Jewish leaders who wished to form a Messiah cult around a Jewish figure that would counter the powerful cults of Caesar and Nero that existed in Palestine at the time and attracted many Jews. I tend to favor the argument put forward by historian Will Durant, that although we have no historical record for Jesus, the depth of the accounts that arises in the first century seem more likely to have come from a historical figure rather than a fabricated figure. Nonetheless, it remains an interesting question from a rationalist standpoint: To what extent does the historical evidence for Jesus exist? When you realize that almost all the mythological or supernatural aspects of the Jesus story, from Virgin birth in a manger on December 25th, to the listed miracles, down to the resurrection are lifted directly from the then competing Roman cult of Mithras, you do have to approach the topic with some skepticism.
But back to your point about the Book of Revelations; what is really ironic about folks hoping to hasten the Apocalypse, is that it was a text clearly about things as they existed in first or second century Palestine--a Beast in a city with seven hills--Rome; whose number is 666--which in Jewish gemmatria, a well-known Kabbalistic way of translating names, comes out to "Nero Caesar" in Greek. (Interestingly, the earliest copies of Revelations actually list the number as 616, which just so happens to be the equivalent of "Neron Caesar", an alternate Greek spelling). Of course, modern Christians often confuse "the Beast" mentioned in Revelations, with "satan" in the Old Testament (which in Hebrew translates as "obstacle", not a personal name), but that's a whole other story...
I guess to sum up, we are living in a society that is becoming increasingly divided between rationalist and anti-rationalist ideologies. The GOP has done a tactically brilliant job in the past decade of increasing its base along religious rather than economic lines. Is religion dangerous? It always has been in the West. Is it more dangerous today? Perhaps--the Islamic fanatics have access to more dangerous technology, and the fanatics in our own country have access to more political power than in many decades. But the real question is, what sort of society do you have without the restriction of moralizing religious dogmatism? The answer is, something that has the ethical tone of the Soviet Union--and that's not necessarily a comforting alternative.
Religion is the opiate of the people, but do you want the common knucklehead in a democracy acting in an unrestrained and possibly monstrous way, or living docilely like sheep? Maybe all we need is a different shepherd? ;-)
- MV
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I mostly agree with everything you say. I do, however, have some commentary and questions, to which I would be interested to hear your response.
You make a good point that there is no rational distinction between a belief in Santa Claus and a belief in some omnipotent god. The guy giving this talk also mentioned something along those lines, pointing out how irrational it would seem to blame the destruction of New Orleans on an angry Poseidon. However, while I am not fully versed in the history of world religions, and I could be wrong about this, my first question would be why it is that certain "mythologies" have largely stood the test of time as being "religions", while others were relatively quickly discarded?
Of course, even if it is true that certain beliefs are statistically more resilient over time, mass appeal doesn't prove anything, except maybe that we are all genetically wired the same way, and that history/communication finally flushed out the mythologies that were the most appealing to the most people, given how we are wired. In this light, the mythologies/religions that survived due to shared genetic heritage is really just a corollary to MV's point about the survival instinct - people grasping for intellectual immortality using a construct that makes the most sense to us given our other genetic traits. In other words, we all want to believe in something, and in very general terms, we have agreed what it is we want to believe in (a higher power, Santa Claus doesn't cut it, yada yada).
However, I do slightly disagree with MV as to *why* people want to believe at all. MV makes a good case that the survival instinct is the primary reason that people want to believe, and I am sure that this is at least partially true. However, in terms of eternal survival, the belief structure of the Western religions (for example) isn't all upside - a bottle of 151 and a few loose women, coupled with an untimely demise before you can repent, and you could have eternal survival ... in hell. As is seen with the suicide impulse (overriding the survival instinct due to extreme pain), it doesn't seem that people's quest for immortality would cause them to believe in the chance of eternal punishment (versus no afterlife at all). The Eastern religions also don't really fully satisfy the survival quest - as an example, potential reincarnation as a cockroach is not a super selling point for that belief structure.
Instead, I think that people want to believe in a religion in order to give their life meaning. I think it is this quest for meaning - a higher purpose, or order to the universe, rather than immortality - that is the important common element in the religions/mythologies that survive the test of time.
In the absence of some sort of non-quantifiable belief (i.e. faith) in a "soul", one is left with our sense of "self" as just a neural network, based on an initial build (genetics) and subsequent modifications (experiences). Within some probabilistic range, our every action and thought at any given point in time is deterministic and predictable, based on the state of the neural net at that point, and the outside influences on the neural net at that point. This definitely puts a crimp in everything from love to justice, except as these things are just labels for commonly-shared neural states. In fact, given this rationalistic viewpoint, where would one draw the line between a homo-sapien neural net, and the neural net of what we call an animal, not deserving of "human" considerations? If a machine were developed that exactly simulated a human neural net, would it be privy to all of the same rights and responsibilities as a "person" (which is just an organic form of the same thing)?
Similar to the Catholic Church not being too happy with Galileo suggesting that the world is not actually the center of the solar system, I think most people are not too happy with a purely rationalist approach to human existence, since this would imply that there really isn't a "reason" for our existence; there is not a non-quantifiable "soul" that makes humans any different from other animals, or non-organic versions of the same structure. I must admit, I am not too happy with this conclusion, either, but *rationally* it does make sense.
- DB
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I think you are right to point out that a need for meaning is a central facet in the popularity of religion. From Nietzsche and Dostoevsky down to Sartre and Camus, the whole Existentialist line of philosophy has addressed this question: In a rationalist world devoid of ultimate meaning, where does man find purpose, meaning and fulfillment? Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Heidegger and most of the modern folks to address this question have come down with secular answers, although Kierkegaard came up with a scheme that sort of reverts back to religious faith.
I think the will to live and the desire for meaning are just two, among many reasons, people are attracted by religion. I think another primary reason for the popularity of religion is that it is a very comfortable and easy framework for people: it doesn't require a lot of thought, and it is much more comforting than a world without a personal god. Given a choice between weighing difficult, ponderous questions in an indifferent universe and taking pleasant answers on faith, most people will opt for the easy path. The same is true of politics and most organizations, most people prefer being told what to do by someone who takes care of them, rather than being truly free but having the responsibility and work of having to manage themselves. It's just a facet of human nature that separates the few from the many.
I like your points about a soul, and also think the answer has to lie in the negative: man isn't fundamentally different from animals. Humans are highly adaptable and intelligent animals, but we often fall victim to the conceit that humans represent the "top of the evolutionary pyramid" rather than a branch in the evolutionary tree. Just about every behavior or trait in the past that we considered comprising "our humanity" has been shown in the past 50 years (many just recently) to be shared with one or more species. Or put another way, the gap between the smartest human and dumbest human appears to be broader than the gap between the dumbest human and the smartest chimp.
I always thought one of the great paradoxical questions for Christianity was this: Do pets have a soul? For example, if your dog has no soul, he doesn't go to heaven (or hell) when he dies, his existence just extinguishes. Therefore, "life" isn't dependent on a soul. Life is merely a biomechanical process. Alternatively, if pets do have a soul, then presumably that soul "goes somewhere" upon the cessation of bodily activity. So, if your pet has a soul it goes to heaven. But if the distinction for people as to who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell is based on volitional acts, then where does that leave dogs or cats, who can't make informed rational choices? How about mentally disabled people, infants, or the insane? Are they exempt from the requirement of moral judgment in determining whether they spend an eternity of delight or suffering? And if you draw a distinction somewhere between the imbeciles and the rational beings, where do you draw that distinction? And of course, if these folks can't help being grossly ignorant, what about folks who are slightly ignorant? Does being born "dumb" mean you have unfortunately been born to a position in the world where you face a higher probability of eternal damnation based on poor moral choices (either due to lack of education or proper thoughtfulness)? Finally, if you are "lucky" enough to be born as an intelligent human being, your soul has a disproportionally higher chance of being condemned to hell (let's say 50/50 just to pick a number), than a being born with (or dying with) an "idiot soul" that has a 0% chance of eternal damnation. Doesn't seem very fair coming from an all-powerful and loving supreme being does it? Of course, you could suggest there is no hell--but that sort of undermines all the ethical imperatives of the Bible, doesn't it?
So which is it? Life isn't based on a soul, or souls exist, but in a cruelly rigged game?
(Hey, I'm an atheist attorney, I'm allowed to play Devil's Advocate.) ;-)
- MV
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Let me preface this by saying: "You can't sway the faithful through intellect, and a man of intellect does not bow to faith." I'm not sure who said that originally, but my old man said it last week.
Anyway, your preacher or priest buddy structures his argument in the form of an ad hominem attack (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) mixed with distortions of what I actually said. In other words, he believes he can make his point by attacking me, misquoting me, and dwelling on minute details of my email rather than debating the truth of the premises and logic of the conclusions I offered.
Lest any of you think I completely fabricated my off-the-cuff email (which admittedly was done with the aid of a trukey sandwich as my only reference tool) here is my response:
He states: "It is too bad that all the points that he makes is based on fallacies." For a quick review of what a logical fallacy is, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy He states: "First he says that the current English translations of the New Testament are a translation of a translation of a translation. Incorrect!" Some are based on Greek, some on the Latin Vulgate. Generally, the Catholic versions rely more on the Latin translations. See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translationsThis ignores my underlying point that Christians are imposing moral judgments on others, and engaging very actively in politics on the basis of a philosophical text that relies on subtle shades of meaning and is at least two layers removed from its source language. He states: "Second he says that no one in first century Israel spoke Greek. Incorrect!" Actually, I said, Jesus spoke (i.e. conducted his ministry and delivered his sermons) in Aramaic. And, that it wasn't remotely realistic any of the peasants in Galilee who heard him first-hand could write in Greek. The language of the Roman Empire was Latin. The language in Galilee was Aramaic. Literacy in Latin was in the single digits. Ditto for literacy in Greek. Speaking a few words for mercantile activities is much different than being able to write in a language.I can order a burrito or a beer in Spanish, but that is not equivalent to me dictating "Don Quixote." Basing life decisions on the double or triple translations of others is risky. He states: "As far as the Aramaic word for wood being the same as wise sounds a little out there to me." See: Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan, copyright 1995.That's Dr. Elaine Pagels, PhD., Professor of Religion, Harvard University, wife of noted atomic physicist Heinz Pagels.She was on the team that translated the Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, a collection of first-century gospels of Jesus that paint a very different picture from the gospels included in current bibles.She is a recipient of the National Book Award and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He states: "Third, Jesus being an historical figure. Too long a debate. I will just say that anyone who says that Jesus was not a historical figure doesn’t knowhow to read history." The only existing historical accounts we have date from the late-first century and decsribe Jesus after-the-fact. As I pointed out, there is no direct historical evidence, no contemporary accounts, only later anecdotal evidence and this raises a question of fact. Perhaps I don't know "how to read history", but I fail to see how second-hand accounts written decades later demonstrates definitive proof that someone was a historical figure. Finally, he states in regards to my digression on Revelations: "This thing about 666. Every one knows that it matches Nero Caesar. But it was never 616. That doesn’t even make sensewith Biblical numerology."The earliest manuscript of Revelations reads, "616". This manuscript was found in Egypt in 1895. It is known as the Oxyrynchus Papyrii. See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast_(numerology)#Alternative_numbers
-MV
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Very thoughtful and provoking contributions. I've enjoyed reading them. A couple things came to mind as a read through your comments:
1. I agree with DB that the search for meaning is a big part of the motivation behind a person looking for (and sometimes finding) god. But I think that the baseline question that starts this search is, "where did I come from"? Could someone as brilliant and insightful as MV have simply evolved from a blob of murky single celled organisms? For many, this is a difficult proposition to accept. For those of us who know him, not so much.... This question is asked in big picture existential terms, as well as the more mundane questions about one's family tree. Understanding where we come from is the baseline for finding meaning for our lives. This is where most of the great religions start - with a story about how life began. Personally I don't think Science or Religion have offered very satisfying answers to this question. The bottom line is that we have a general idea and some experiential evidence that give us some rough ideas and general theories, but in historic terms, we are never going to really know who the proverbial mother and father of the human race are or were. Some are comfortable with this, many are not.
2. I tend to agree with a lot of what MV said, but I think you've cast very broad nets around modern western religious thoughts. There are a number of "Christian" movements (though no formal church is likely to recognize them) that focus their studies and principles on the life of Jesus, thus focusing on books in the bible that are accounts of Jesus' life and maybe the book of Acts. The fascinating thing about these movements is that if you were just to observe some of the people you might mistake them for Buddhists. There's a group of aged hippies in Chicago called the "Jesus People". Essentially they are just trying to live out that bumper sticker "what would Jesus do". They talk about the Kingdom of God (heaven) as being here on earth - which is something that Jesus said. And this is right up the Buddhist alley. I find this particularly interesting because the way these people behave is quite different from the way most "Christians" actually behave or even from how they would say you should behave. I realize this is a bit of a tangent, but to bring it back around, I think that after we've asked the question "where did we come from", the next question that is asked is "where do we go from here". As you both have pointed out, many people want to be told what to do. Others at least want some sort of a roadmap or barometer to know whether they are a "good" person or whether they are doing what is "right".
So, now I'm curious what you guys think about the concept of being "good" or "right". Absent a religious (for lack of a better word) framework, how does a society establish what is good or what is right?
-P
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It is interesting that you bring up the question of what is "good", or in general terms, ethics. This is what I briefly alluded to when I was saying that the absence of a non-quantifiable dimension to human actions (i.e soul) means that all of one's actions and thoughts are purely deterministic, based on their neural net's initial build (genetics) and subsequent modifications (environmental influences). Even if you get into quantum theory when discussing why neurons fire at certain times, it is still ultimately quantifiable and deterministic, within a range of probability.
So, one might ask, how can a person be punished by our legal system for a given act, when they were virtually guaranteed to do that act at that time? And, to your question, people often will ask why they need to worry about "ethics" at all, if there is no higher power or ultimate justice.
Unfortunately, while I do admit to trying to prove otherwise, and I would love to hear a counter-argument, neither of these questions in any way imply the existence of a higher power, nor, as a side note, do they prove some sort of contradiction between a civil society and a rationalist (deterministic) viewpoint.
To address the first question, of a legal system imposing various forms of restriction upon those that do not follow the legal system's rules, I think that the important distinction is how this restriction is viewed. We typically use the term "punishment" because this is a carryover from the religious viewpoint. Obviously, a morally-charged thing like "punishment" is not appropriate, if everyone's actions are deterministic. However, what is really happening is not a moral "punishment", but behavior modification via environmental influence (a fee, etc), or in the extreme, removal from society (jail) of the individual that is not conforming to what has been commonly agreed to be the rules, by the other participants in the group. The person not conforming is not "bad", they are just a digression from the behavior path of the average, that the average wishes to correct (or remove). This societal behavior is seen very plainly at the micro level when one disciplines (or rewards) a little child (or even an animal). No one thinks that a very small child (or dog) is ethically "bad", deserving of "punishment", they just think that their child (or dog) needs to learn how to follow the "rules" (which, despite common themes, are often pretty arbitrary, depending on time and place).
This leads to the second issue that I raised above - that people tend to use the initial conclusions of rationalist thought (that our behavior does not have a non-deterministic origin) to state that everyone can behave as they please, because there are no big-picture consequences (and besides, one is pre-determined to act that way anyway based on their genetics and environment). This is not a logical argument at all. Think of something simple like eating. You are genetically programmed to want to eat, and you are further programmed by genetics and environment to want to eat certain things at certain times, and even to have certain tastes, down to the level of preferring a certain variety of fermented grapes over another variety, as an example. While you might be able to perform the action of not-eating, depending on the genes that determine "willpower", your body is chemically rewarded for satisfying these urges. Over the long term, some initially rewarding urges (like alcohol consumption), are not rewarding, and so people perform actions that might seem self-restrictive, because these seemingly self-restrictive actions are ultimately rewarding. So, while each individual action is deterministic based on one's neural net at that point ("craving" chocolate; "thinking" healthy, "remembering" the last hangover, etc), the aggregate of actions is based on what is perceived as being rewarding over the long term (except, of course, for those who are programmed to think only in the short term). This behavior can be extrapolated out to all sorts of actions, including what we perceive as "ethics". Individuals who behave according to commonly agreed "ethical" rules (not lying, cheating, etc), tend to end up self-rewarding for these behaviors (sense of well being, beneficial actions from other individuals in the society, etc), and these rewards can in turn even have physical benefits (longer life, etc).
So, a rationalist (deterministic) perspective of humanity does not in any way negate what is commonly called "ethics", it just provides a different explanation for them.
-- DB
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As to point #1, science does not offer a comprehensive description of the origins of life or the universe. It is possible it never will. However, I think the key question in this regard is what sort of tools do you employ to answer this question--mystical speculation or measured, verifiable methods? Perhaps more importantly, given that many fundamental questions about life are unanswered, is it necessary to have the answers? For example, while it is quite interesting to know where I came from, I can live and die without this knowledge. The core of Buddhist teachings (and to an extent Hindu teachings) dwells on this--the futility of metaphysical speculation. However, as both you and DB have pointed out, questions of meaning and of ethics are both areas where arriving at some kind of answer is significantly more pressing.
Which brings me to point #2; you are correct in saying I have painted "Christianity" with a broad brush. My statements have been generalizations. And I definitely agree with you that Jesus' ethical teachings bear a great deal of resemblance to Buddha's ethical teachings. There are two explanations for this: 1. These are universal principles, that great thinkers have discovered and taught to others in different times, places, and cultures; or 2. That Jesus was influenced by Buddhism. (In my original email I made reference to the scrolls of the Hemis Monastery which disappeared around 1939. Whether one puts any credence in the accounts or not, the story basically goes like this: A scroll in a northern Indian monastery was encountered by a Russian explorer in the late 19th century and seen by various other individuals up until 1939 which purported to describe Jesus as having taught in India prior to returning to Palestine. Our gospel accounts have a gap in the narrative from age 12 to age 30 of Jesus' life, so this fuels speculation by those who find these accounts credible. I'm dubious myself, but it is an interesting concept.)
So, I agree that there is a difference between the ethical teachings of Jesus and Christianity, because Christianity also involves a claim of divinity, various supernatural powers, etc. Personally, I think Jesus probably was a real person in Palestine, that he did profoundly influence a lot of real people during his lifetime, that a good portion of his ethical teachings have come down to us intact, and that his life story had supernatural elements added to it as time went on, such as the assumption of the mythology of the Mithras cult, the connections with the Jewish Messiah, etc.
I also agree strongly, that the most meaningful philosophical question a person faces in life is: How should I live? What is the right way to act?--the fundamental question of what we call ethics. My own view is that good and evil are something of a false dichotomy--one man's good is another man's evil. The better way to phrase the question is to ask, "What is the most ethical way to act?" And this is a question that has to be answered largely in a social context and changes from situation to situation. I don't believe life is so simple that a universal set of rules can be applied to every situation, any more than the words "love" or "God" mean the same thing from one speaker to another. I am also very much in favor of a consequentialist ethics vs. a deontological set of ethics (i.e. consequences are more important than intentions). I think Aristotle hit it on the head 2,500 years when he wrote the Nichomachean Ethics--here's a good article summing up that work if you are not familiar with it: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/aristot.htm
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Well, we've hit on the subject of metaphysics, ontology, and ethics, so perhaps it is only fitting that you bring up free will.
You are right DB, in a partial sense, that in hindsight, all our actions are deterministic, but if we accept quantum physics, the world is not deterministic, but probabilistic, and all future actions are expectations rather than guarantees. So, individual actions are not, by definition, deterministic.
But putting aside this Planck-length hair splitting, the philosopher John Locke also took the view that determinism was irrelevant. He believed the defining feature of free will was that we are free so long as we have the ability to postpone a decision long enough to reflect upon the consequences of a choice. And who would disagree that we are capable of doing that? In a more modern formulation: In order for a choice to be free in any sense that matters, it must be true that the actor could have done otherwise. Then again, this depends on what we mean by "could have" (free will) and "would have" (determinism). Are determinism and free will incompatible, opposite concepts, or do they involve slightly different concepts?
Where this all leads us I think, is into some very paradoxical positions about the ability to philosophize linguistically (for example, if words don't have a one-to-one correspondence with the "real" world, then they aren't very adequate for making precise determinations about the world--Wittgenstein called this "the bewitchment of language" problem); and scientifically speaking, it requires some definition of "time" and "cause and effect" which seem common sense, but as 20th-century experiments in physics demonstrate, are anything but commonsensical or easy to define.
My personal take is that "free will" represents a concept about how we think and is "wrapped up" in a sequential notion of "time." And that "determinism" represents a concept related to cause and effect that is "wrapped up" in a holistic notion of "time." (You may pass the bong to the left as you wish here...)
In any event, imagine for a moment a world where we don't hold people criminally liable for the consequences of their actions, even if their actions are "deterministic"; treating them as the consequences of "free will" is far more socially useful.
And since we started this thread out by talking about religion, here's a thought: If there is a God, and God is the prime mover, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, how can one sin? Your actions have been predetermined.
And for that matter, if you accept the three premises above regarding an all-powerful God, and assume a fourth premise, that he is good, then the logical conclusion is that evil cannot exist.
Just a thought...
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This reminds me of a debate I attended about 10 years ago between a UW professor and "touring" Christian scientist who traveled the country and tried to sell Christianity in new shiny scientific packaging.
The UW professor's overall premise was that God, in its Judeo-Christian definition, can not exist. The notion that God is omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), and omnibenevolent (all loving) conflicts with the real world we live in. Most notably, all the "evil" and suffering that we witness everyday. Surely a god with all 3 of those attributes could find a way around this mess. The rebuttal was that the evil and suffering were intentional in order to "teach" people something or provide contrast so that we may recognize goodness and joy in comparison. Of course, the thinking man's response to this would be, again, that a god with all 3 of those attributes could & would fine a way to teach those same lessons without mass suffering.
I haven't slept well the past 3 nights and I couldn't even remember my own address a few minutes ago so I'll keep this brief. Thanks for all the excellent thoughts and taking the time (for which I'm too lazy & dull) to write it all down. I don't get much intellectual stimulation these days. By the way, I'm documenting and organizing all these threads. Maybe I'll send them back out in a few years and start this dialogue all over again.
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Pittsburg STEALers
I've been accused of being a salty sore looser for complaining about the way the Seahawks lost the Superbowl last Sunday. Well, my answer is "you bet your ass I'm salty and sore!". I've been playing and watching this game for over 2 decades now. I've won AND lost games by the hundreds. However, this is the first time, EVER, that I actually started entertaining the notion that the refs were bought off.
Why? Well, the questionable calls are bad enough. But what makes it worse is the manner in which the calls came about. If you look at the 3 holding calls (the touchdown, the punt return, and the catch on the one) the flags didn't come out until the end of the play. You'd swear the refs were just saving their flags for the big plays. That right there is potentially 21 points they robbed the Hawks from.
What's really surprising about the "block-below-the-waist" call on Hasslebeck as he was making the tackle wasn't the fact that some ref threw that flag. It's the fact that no other refs actually pulled him over and told him to get off the pipe. They let it stand and went along with their bloated pockets.
Also, the catch at the end of the first half when the Hawks receiver got one foot in and hit the pylon with the other (which should have been ruled a touchdown) never got reviewed. Why? With 2 minutes left in the half, Holmgren couldn't challenge the play. So the refs got away with that one too.
Another lame ass call was giving the touchdown to B-Roth when he clearly didn't make the goal line. He even confessed to his coach that he didn't think he made it. Now some of you might say "hey it was only 3rd down, the Bus would have punched it in anyway." Well, if you were watching you'd know that the Bus had just got stuffed like crab cakes the last 2 plays. Cower would not have risked not putting points on the board with 2 minutes left and going in at halftime with a big goose egg.
Overall the refs accounted for at least a 28 point differential. Anyway, credit the Steelers for hanging in there 'til the refs pulled out the life savers. They're actually a good team with likeable personalities. But the Hawks kicked their ass. Everyone knows it. It's a shame, the refs not only robbed the Hawks of a champoinship, but the robbed all football fans (except the STEALers I suppose) of a chance to watch a close, untainted game.
First Post for MAXO Studio
Hello Hello,
Well, this is my first post for MAXO Studio. Please forgive me as I rush through. I'm working feverishly to finish the actual site and I'm mainly putting up this post to do some tests and tweaks with the blog style sheets. I'll be back with less boring posts soon.
Well, this is my first post for MAXO Studio. Please forgive me as I rush through. I'm working feverishly to finish the actual site and I'm mainly putting up this post to do some tests and tweaks with the blog style sheets. I'll be back with less boring posts soon.
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