Can Evolutionary Biology and Naturalism Provide a Foundation for Morality?

From Tom Stoppard’s play “The Hard Problem”

Naturalism, physicalism, and materialism are synonyms. They are names for a truncated metaphysics that omits any notion of transcendence and divinity. Someone might try to take dualism seriously without God; a dualism that posits material reality, and consciousness as a separate substance with its own substantial reality. But this would mean recognizing that there is something nonphysical and invisible that cannot be explained by science and operates in independence from purely physical forces. In other words, a spiritual reality. Most materialists recognize this and have been leery of even using the word “consciousness.” At the present moment, for some reason, some percentage of analytic philosophers are willing to use David Chalmers’ phrase “the hard problem” to refer to the puzzle of how subjective awareness could arise from the lump of meat in a sentient creature’s head. Positing a giant mystery at the center of human existence is a dangerous game for a materialist. They will find the hard problem to be an indigestible lump that spells the death knell for their physicalist complacency. By accepting that it is a problem at all, they are effectively admitting defeat. If the hard problem were a gift, they would be wise to return to sender. Daniel Dennett puts it thus: “I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way that dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up.”[1]

A menace not of heresy but of apostasy and its attraction

Bruce Charlton writes

I see this A Lot in discussions online, and sometimes in real life. Secular liberal apostasy (i.e. the stepwise process of losing faith and leaving Christianity) presents itself as heresy (i.e. an unorthodox type of Christianity).

Traditionalists fall into the trap because they are unwilling to judge the true motivations of the liberalisers. Instead they try to resist apostasy legalistically – by more tightly defining and enforcing theological doctrines and rules of church order. They do this because it seems more ‘objective’.

But the more tightly they define and enforce the ‘objective’ rules and practices of their denomination or church; the more they separate themselves from other Traditionalist Christians.

and

But the real problem is not heresy but apostasy – the Fake Christians may be orthodox in narrowly defined legalistic terms, they are usually prepared to stand up and make strict oaths and promises in which they do not believe and have zero intention of living-by; but they are Obviously Not Christian in terms of not being followers of Jesus and/ or not believing in the divinity of Jesus.

He’s absolutely right.  The point is central to the mission of the Orthosphere, and it connects to what I see as several weaknesses of traditionalist Christians.

The Wonderful Horrible Integrity of the World

Horror: … from Latin horror, “dread, veneration, religious awe” …

What is true at any time and place is true at all others. Truth is non-local, instantaneous, ubiquitous.

This is obvious in respect to the eternal and a priori truths, as of mathematics, metaphysics, and so forth.

But it is as so for a posteriori truths as for a priori.

To the Alt Right (and Everyone Else): Jesus Christ is a Strong God, and You Need Him

As a rightist, you know we live in Clown World. In religious terms, a foretaste of Hell. But Hell is real and you’re in danger of going there permanently. The only escape is via Christianity. Read on:

Non- and anti-Christian rightists have, I think, two basic grudges against Christianity. One, the Christian institutions have mostly been converged, with a motley crew of liberal pseudo-Christians, “Christcucks,” “Gay Christians,” and so on turning most of Christendom into just another enabler of multiculturalism, LGBTQ, leftism, and on and on. If Christianity looks just like the rest of the nation, in thrall to the left, why respect Christianity?

But the more important objection is that real Christians appear weak and powerless. It makes their God look weak and powerless.

But according to the Bible (the real definer of Christianity), the real God is a mighty Being who in eternity past chose and predestined a group of people yet to be born to be saved and sanctified, and to live forever in resurrected bodies in paradise. And yet the mark of your being predestined is that you freely choose to repent and believe. God is powerful enough to predestinate and to give you free choice. God is not a weakling who sits around hoping that somebody would choose to join his team; according to Scripture God acts to save His people and to keep them saved. And if right now God’s people are having their behinds kicked big time, that’s because it’s part of his plan. God has good reasons for everything that happens; we just don’t know what they are. And at the end of the world, when God brings the current world order to an end and judges mankind, God’s team is the winning team.

Belief vs Knowledge and Plato’s Tripartite Soul

Plato suggested that if a person were to be cut open a homunculus,[1] a lion and a many-headed beast would be revealed. These creatures represent the three different kinds of soul (psyche) out of which someone is composed. In Greek they are Logos, Thumos, and Epithumia.

 

 

 

Logos (reason) is symbolized by a little person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If God’s Plan Is For Us To Determine Our Own Plan, Why Do We Need God? The Bullet-Point Version

Either God, the divine, the supernatural, and the transcendent exist or they do not. If they do not, then what is left is alternatively called “naturalism, physicalism, or materialism.” These are all synonyms and they imply that all that really ultimately exists are atoms and molecules. A naturalistic universe is one that can be fully described by science, at least in principle. If something cannot be measured and quantified, it is not objectively true and should be eliminated from one’s ontology, in this view.

• Naturalism is irretrievably nihilistic. If naturalism is true, then value does not exist. Value cannot be measured. And neither can beauty, love, or goodness. None of those things can be measured or even clearly defined. Quotation from Anna Karenina, Part 4, Chapter 10:

‘But,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling subtly, and addressing Karenin, ‘one must allow that to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of classical and scientific studies is a difficult task, and the question which form of education was to be preferred would not have been so quickly and conclusively decided if there had not been in favour of classical education, as you expressed it just now, its moral—disons le mot—anti-nihilist influence.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘If it had not been for the distinctive property of antinihilistic influence on the side of classical studies, we should have considered the subject more, have weighed the arguments on both sides,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch with a subtle smile, ‘we should have given elbow-room to both tendencies. But now we know that these little pills of classical learning possess the medicinal property of anti-nihilism, and we boldly prescribe them to our patients.… But what if they had no such medicinal property?’ he wound up humorously.

Tit for Tat

No matter which class I am teaching, for quite some time the first reading assigned has been an article on Goedel’s Theorem. The reason is to emphasize that any attempt to make an axiomatic system of any moderate complexity consistent and complete (able to determine whether any statement within the system is either true or false) will fail. This is because, at least when it comes to mathematics, Goedelian propositions will be generated by the system that are true, can be seen to be true, but are not provable. Goedel’s stand-in for all such propositions is the statement “this statement is not provable within this axiomatic system.” If this statement is true, then it is not provable. If it were to be false, and was provable, then it would again be proved that it is not provable, since you would have just proved a statement that says it is unprovable! I add to this that the axioms upon which axiomatic systems are based are by definition, not provable, their truth being self-evident. So, axiomatic systems contain unprovable truths coming and going.

When teaching ethics, after covering Gödel, the first thing I do is to point out our intuitive understanding of the truth and validity of reciprocity/justice/fairness. If someone were to give you a cup of your favorite coffee at the appropriate time and you were to punch them in the face, barring some convoluted back story, this would be grossly unjust. The truth of reciprocity is captured by phrases like “one good turn deserves another” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In practice, no normal person doubts the truth of that notion.

Fairness and reciprocity are axiomatically true. Their truth is self-evident. If anyone claims to doubt their truth, this person is almost certainly a liar and a hypocrite, at least on this topic. When this hypothetical person approaches another in a spirit of friendliness and politeness, only to be greeted with unbridled rudeness and hostility, he is likely to feel offended or at least to question the mental stability of the other person.

Ludwig Wittgenstein had some sensible things to say on topics like these.  He spends a few pages of his aphoristic writings wondering what it would mean to be mistaken that one was speaking or writing in English. There is not really a standard of certainty that goes beyond knowing such a thing. Part of his point is to throw a monkey wrench into the useless, theoretical musings of his analytic philosophy contemporaries.

High College Costs, Low Student Achievement, Driven by Warmish Climate-Change Trend – Researchers Say

Opening Ceremony of Upstate Consolation University’s Conference on the Warmish Climate-Change Trend

In a conference convened by Upstate Consolation University, researchers from California State University, Van Nuys, and Central Michigan Teacher Pre-Preparation College, Farwell, claimed this week that the warmish climate-change trend is the primary cause of both the declining academic performance among North American college undergraduates and the rising costs associated with a baccalaureate degree.  The conference-goers revealed details of their three-week-long multiple-perspective study, carried out by a select committee recruited from the two schools.  The team systematically surveyed multiple self-evaluations and statistical-anecdotal probability memoranda culled from a wide variety of auto-probative and theosophical sources appearing in carefully vetted blogs posted on the Internet since February.  “This is one of the most exhaustive studies of its kind to be carried out by institutions of our accreditation-level, whether in California or Michigan, during the past seventeen and a half months,” said Dr. Michelle Mausse, a CSUVN Diverse Arts Practical Instructor, who is acting co-chair of the project and supervising gender-fairness editor of the semi-final quasi-executive summary of the project’s yet-to-be-published Full Report – the very same summary that has just been issued as a mass-email attachment.  Mausse also said that, when the Full Report appears, she expects a storm of hostility from commentators on the right.  She added that such commentary, obviously originating in structural racism, would itself exacerbate the warmish climate-change trend, thereby degrading student performance even further and raising the price of a college education even higher.

“Given the cutting-edge status of our conclusions and the transgressive methods employed during our strenuous three weeks of research,” Mausse said, “you can bet that President Trump, Fox News, and Chick-Fil-A will be working overtime to sap public confidence in our assertions.”  According to Mausse, the best way to undermine such bigoted resistance would be “to appoint Greta Thunberg to the Supreme Court, ban SUVs, and approach the Taliban with an ecologically friendly attitude.”  As stated in the semi-final quasi-executive summary, “Last year’s harsh winter in the Northeast and this summer’s record-breaking cool weather across the Upper Midwest prove incontrovertibly that the warmish up-trend is rising steeply.”  In an informative autobiographical aside in the summary, Dr. Mausse states that her consciousness about the warmish climate-change trend began in earnest in the late 1960s, when she had just entered high school, with the appearance of Dr. Anton Schmellij’s prophetic Heat-Death by 1970 – No Doubt about It.  Mausse attributes her conversion to environmentalism, not to her actually having read Schmellij’s book in its entirety, but to her having once perused the Utne Reader’s “condensed” version of the treatise while writing her Feminist Studies thesis at Mannless County Community College, near New Mytilene, Ohio, in 1994.

Autumnal Equinox

“Sorrow and Joy that interweave
The raven with the golden locks,
Fall brings to them who smile and grieve—
The soul’s Autumnal Equinox.”

George Shepard Burleigh, “The Autumnal Equinox” (1849)

SEX

I am writing to announce the Society for the Encouragement of Xenophobia, or SEX.  SEX promotes healthy insularity, combats the prejudice against provincialism, and celebrates the beauty of exclusivity.  SEX affirms that suspicion of strangers is natural and healthy, and that its free expression is the birthright of every man, woman and child.  SEX is necessary because xenophobia is nowadays repressed, persecuted and defamed by Cosmopolitan bigots.  These zealots have succeeded in criminalizing xenophobic behavior, and in planting morbid feelings of guilt and shame in the minds of many xenophobes.  Cosmopolitan propaganda has also taught far too many people to shun the xenophobes in their community, and to dread xenophobic feelings in themselves.  SEX fights back with educational programs that explode the dangerous myths about xenophobia, and that put a human face on the xenophobe community.  SEX stamps out the ugly lies and shows that xenophobes are no different than anyone else. They are your co-workers, your children, your friends.  But SEX mostly encourages xenophobes with the assurance that they have no cause for shame because God made them just this way.