Category Archives: Ethics

Atheism, Culture, Ethics, History, Philosophy, Postmodernism, Rant, theology

Is it really beautiful?

One of the problems I’ve tended to have with materialism is how it seems to place into my own (subjective) mind (actually brain… and hence render them largely delusional as it relate to the universe itself). This isn’t only the case with my religious ideas, but also the ideas I have of good and evil, and even the idea of me.

How do I get there? After all, I don’t doubt that some materialists have every bit as high a moral code that they live by as I do, and even arch-materialists can work to do great things in the social sphere based on what they seem to think is a call to justice that is demanded of all of us. Heck, when Christopher Hitchens subtitles his book “How Religion Poisons Everything”, I think he is claiming that religion is, objectively and independent of subjective opinions on the matter, a bad thing.

The problem is, ironically, best exemplified by the use of Occam’s razor in materialism to deny the supernatural. Occam’s razor (which nicely trims Plato’s beard) is the principle that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is most likely the correct one. The result is that since science is more than capable of coming up with material explanations for most things, that it is rational to assume that science will come up with material explanations for all things.

What then of ideas and concepts that do not seem to be solely material, such as the existence of subjects other than me, or transcendent morality, aesthetics, or even the idea of “me”? Materialism would claim that all of these are simply the result of material processes in the brain reacting to external stimuli. ie. whatever these things are, they exist only in brains, and any seeming transcendence is simply the commonality of human experience.

This means that a painting is not itself beautiful, but instead makes me feel good (whatever “me” is). It means that torture is not independently wrong, but simply something that I find abhorrent. It also means that my most directly experienced object, since it cannot be materially experienced (namely the “I”), is simply something “I” mistake for a person when in fact it is noting more than the collocation of atoms. (at this point, if “you’re” following me, you might be giggling, as “I” am…”I”‘m guessing most people rightly find this silly).

In any case, not taking it all the way, and assuming “I” exist, which is a properly basic idea if ever there was one. The

materialist conception seems to eliminate transcendent morality and beauty because those concepts exist only in human brains.

and were human minds to cease to be, so would those concepts. The result is that nothing is evil in itself, and nothing is in itself beautiful. There is no contrast in reality between the beautiful and the ugly (just personal psychology) or between the good and the evil (just personal taste).

Thus we come to a statement someone recently used on me to try to claim the rationality of his belief structure:

“Can’t we just say the garden is beautiful, without attributing faeries to it?”

He apparently wanted to mean that there was no need to credit a ground to the beauty of the garden, just the bare fact of it. But my response is that he has already appealed to “faeries” in claiming that beauty is a proper descriptor of the garden rather than simply his experiences of the garden. That I choose to think about that ground, and indeed have a name for it (God), has already been assumed in the statement.

Of course, no one needs to take my route. Maybe morality, beauty, subjectivity (and if you think about it, logic, mathematics, reason and even knowledge itself) really are just modes of human thought that are not true of the universe itself, but only categories we humans find useful. Maybe Occam’s razor really should be used as a law of reason, rather

than simply a priciple. Humanity has had large groups already in that camp (many forms of Zen Budddhism for example).

Such a route seems unlikely to further science or society, however, since the simplest explanation of the universe is still (as it was in first year philosophy) solipsism. In this case Occam’s razor seems to be instead a guillotine.

In the end, I think that our experiences should only be attributed wholly to delusion with evidence that it is, in fact, delusional.

It is for that reason that I would say that Handel’s “Messiah” really is beautiful, that evil really is fundamentally wrong, that reason really talks about the universe and not simply the categories of data that enters my sense receptors, and that there is real good in the world (not just things that are good on opinion).

Standard
Culture, Ethics, Nature, Rant

Theories, Facts, and Truth

“Yeah, well, evolution is only a theory”

“Yeah, well, so is gravity”

I’m sure many people have heard an exchange similar to this one at some point in the past. It is one of the most common, and most misleading exchanges possible in debates about scientific ideas.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t have a dog in this fight. There are conservative Christians I agree with on many things who also support some form of evolutionary theory, and Christians who I agree with on many other issues who are opposed to any form of evolutionary theory. To be honest, my background is not in the biological sciences, so I simply do not have enough understanding of the raw data.

My problem with the above exchange is that it is at best misleading, and at worst betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of theories.

Both statements are, however, true (as far as they go).

A theory (at least as I understand it), is a useful (often predictive) reasoned explanation for the factual data which can be observed in the world. That is to say, the theory is a method of interpretation of experience. While such things ARE open to debate, the way to disabuse a theory is to provide a competing theory that deals with observable data (facts) in a better way.

An example is the copernican model of the universe. Some said that the earth was the centre of the universe, Copernicus said the sun was. Copernicus had a simpler theoretical model to deal with the data, and so his theory was seen to be closer to the truth. Unfortunately, neither theory is true, as thanks to further observation, we now believe that our entire solar system (including both sun and earth) to be on the outer edge of a galaxy speeding away from a central point that was “the big bang”. The facts that were observed at the time, though, led to the conclusions Copernicus made.

The problem with the statement “well, it’s only a theory” is that it is often used to say that it’s okay to attack the theory in its entirety simply because it’s a theory. It’s as if the speaker believes that a theory is nothing more than an opinion, rather like the preference for classical music over jazz. That is not what any scientific theory is, and so the statement that it is “just a theory” is misleading.

One would think that the main question is to get to truth. We want to know if the theory accords to reality; we want to know if the theory is true.

So the best response would be something akin to “yeah, it is. So what? Is it true?”

However, misunderstanding in the popular imagination is often compounded by the response, “yeah, so is gravity.” The intended implication here being that disagreeing with evolutionary theory is somehow akin to denying that things fall down.  In case I miss the point, one person I was speaking to added the phrase “things still fall down”.

We would all say, “of course”. The problem is that the fact that things fall down is not technically the theory of gravity. Stuff falling down(or rather, bodies of mass tending towards one another) is a FACT . Gravity is the theory used to explain that fact.

When applied to evolution, we see how this parallel is misleading. Evolutionary theory is a theory designed to deal with the fact that we presently have many species of life that to greater or lesser extents, resemble one another. Given that that resemblance is aided by similar evidences in the fossil record of species of apparently increasing complexity over time, and that extinctions seem to follow a pattern, the theory (or theories) of evolution get proposed to account for the facts we have. Evolution is, I am told, a very good theory that has a mass of predictive power. That said, the theory of common descent of species diversified mainly through the engine of natural selection is a theory, it is not a fact. It is an interpretation of the observed data, not the observation itself.

Again the question is one of truth, not of fact. Does the theory resemble reality? Does the theory make sense of the facts?

The person who advocates for evolution is not necessarily claiming a simple opinion, nor is the person questioning evolution necessarily questioning facts.

Standard
Church Planting, Culture, Ethics, evangelism, repentance, theology

Despair and Sin

After some discussion, I’m finding that I have to explain what I mean when I say that the rarer form of unprepared heart for the Gospel is despairing sin.

Recall that my central understanding of the Gospel is that is at heart about the glory of Jesus Christ and the reign of His kingdom (Matt. 4:23). Jesus Christ rules over all things (Rev. 11:15), and that rule is evidenced both in wrath for sinners, and just mercy on some that was purchased on the cros (Rom. 9:22-23).

The problem for the exceedingly rare despairing sinner is not the conviction that they are sinners. They already have that. The problem for the despairing sinner is that the rule of a just omniscient God comes as bad news to this person. They are in rebellion to such a God, and know that they are, and so upon learning that there is such a God, despair because they cannot hope to measure up.

Unless their hearts are prepared, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for their sins is going to simply be too good to be true. They will prefer to have some mediating priesthood or action, or something, so that they can be sure that God is actually for them and not against them.

Biblically, this is the group Jesus and the apostles had the most success with at the get go. The only thing that the Spirit needs to convince such people is the love of God and the objective truth of Christ’s death and resurrection for their sins. In societies with a strong basis in an objective morality, the preaching of God’s love through the cross will be effective.

However, this group is very rare in modern culture. In fact, I’ve only ever met a handful of this group. In order to be in this group you have to have enough of a background that would convince you both of the reality of objective morality and that you are in transgression of that. Since the first step is openly denied in modern western culture, it is going to be rare to find people who are convinced that they are in transgression of it. What few that do get past that step, run up against the modern imperial I, and the belief that the objective morality is personally defined (thus everyone is always completely moral, since they define morality).

That is why I believe that Phariseeism is the far more common opposition to the Gospel in modern hearts, and why I believe that the current focus on the truth of God’s love to the exclusion of God’s wrath is probably doomed in modern society.

Standard
Calvinism, Ethics, theology

Depraved

anthony_hopkins_hannibal_lecterOftentimes I find myself having to explain my understanding of Christianity. This is mainly because my theology doesn’t quite fit most of what I see operating here in Newfoundland. It’s quite common in some parts of the world, just not here.

Last weekend was one such instance. Somebody asked me after Church to explain “calvinism”, which for me means an explanation of the doctrines of grace. When I explain these ideas, some people hear it with joy, others respond as I did when I first heard it (what an evil understanding of salvation).

For the sake of clarity, though, I’m going to go through the five points, why i believe them and what that means practically.

The first point is that I believe people are depraved. I am included in that “people”.

This means that i think people do not in themselves seek to do the right thing, and even when they do the “right thing” as seen by outsiders, it’s for the wrong reasons. This means that while I think people stumble into “good” acts from time to time. people cannot be good in and of themselves. 

Of course, I see that the Bible teaches this. Just 2 examples:

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  (Romans 3:10b-3:13).

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)

More importantly, with very little reflection on my own motivations at any given moment, even as people praise me for doing something good (and even as I do things that are seen as good), I can tell that my heart is not really aiming for the good of others, much less the glory of God. In and of myself I am really not a good person.

So what does this mean?

1) Christians are not in themselves more righteous than unbelievers, or even people who openly embrace their sin. We are in ourselves on an equal footing. This means that when we tell others who do not believe that they are evil and going to hell, we need to be careful that we don’t get (or give) the idea that because we are saved we are any less evil in ourselves. We could not embrace God any more than the unbeliever could, and we were saved by God while we were still enemies of His. 

2) Christians need to pray for unbelievers that we talk to, as much as preach to them. Conversion is an act of God, not of ourselves. This means that the goal in evangelism is to make the Gospel clear, not to make them believe it (we can’t do that). they are depraced and incapable of coming to Christ unless God leads them.

3) Christians need to be thankful to God for our salvation. Not in a lip-service kind of way, but because we actually are completely dependent on God for our salvation, not on our superior intellects, reasoning skills, superior faith ability, or indeed anything else. In ourselves we are depraved. We are saved by Jesus at all levels.

4) Finally, Christians should be freed from the silliness of pretending that we are righteous. We should not embrace sinful behaviour, but since we are depraved, we shouldn’t be surprised when once in a while sin creeps up in ourselves or others, and we shouldn’t be shaming when it does. We simply need to call one another to repentance and act in grace, not because we are better than those we call to repentance, but because we are saved by Christ.

In the end, the realization that we are in ourselves not good, and incapable of coming to God on our own is not simply a downer, but a fact that once remembered avoids the pride that so easily ensnares Christians, and reminds us that in Our faith we do not ask people to look at us for the ultimate value of our faith, but to Jesus Christ.

soli Deo gloria

Standard
Culture, Ethics, theology, Worship

Something Seriously Wrong, and the Promise of Christmas

One of my more thoughtful co-workers was talking about the advantage of the world ending by a zombie outbreak. The reason that he thought it a good way for the world to end was that he thought that the world would do a heck of a lot better without us humans, and there’s something poetic about our civilization ending as it’s destroyed by us going insane ourselves and destroying it. Heck, as zombies we’d only be going quicker than we are now.

Pretty bleak point really, but not one without merit. Watching the news doesn’t really engender a lot of hope in our race, and when I look in the mirror, I realize that in many ways I’m not much better. There is something seriously wrong with the world, and we humans seem to be at the centre of it. While people blame politics (liberal or conservative), religion, ideology, technology, or even stupidity, I really think the problem goes deeper, perhaps to our very core.

So what does that have to do with Christmas? A lot.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”  

Matthew 1:20-21

joseph

Joseph, facing the soon birth of a child to his fiancee (despite his not having had relations with her), is told by God that this apparent example of something going wrong in the world, was actually the beginning of an answer to that problem at the centre of the universe, we humans and our sin.

So as we watch a world in failing economics, and with wars and rumours of wars, may we see hope, not in the coming extinction of humanity, but in the salvation God works through unlikely methods. 

Happy Advent dear readers.

Standard