The Resurrection and Bayesian Reasoning

 

A friend asked me, in terms of Bayesian probability, what are the chances that Jesus actually rose from the dead? My response:

I'll write this in the most accessible way I can. Bayesian probability helps us update our beliefs based on new evidence - so the more supporting evidence we have, the more rational it becomes to believe a claim. We have to apply some caution when using Bayesian probability in relation to God, because Bayesian probability typically requires a prior probability (P(H)) that is determined independently of the specific evidence being evaluated (this is known as a common prior) - and this is tricky without a clear statistical or empirical basis to quantify it (it's not like calculating the probability of rolling a 12 with two dice). But as long as we keep the above caveats in mind, we can have a go. So we are considering four primary things:

P(H | E) = Probability of the hypothesis (resurrection) given the evidence
P(E | H) = Probability of the evidence if the resurrection happened
P(H) = Prior probability of the resurrection (before considering the evidence)
P(E) = Probability of the evidence occurring in general

P is probability, H is hypothesis and E is evidence - and obviously from a naturalistic perspective, if there is no God, the probability that anyone would rise from the dead is near-zero. But Bayesian probability from a scientific perspective changes radically as/if we know there is a God who loves us, and was willing to suffer and die for us, and rise from the dead to give us eternal life. Therefore, this won't be easily measurable in terms of the Bayesian ratio of favourable cases to total possible cases. The P(H) (prior probability of resurrection) is extremely low in naturalistic terms, but high if we believe Jesus is who He says He is; and the P(E | H) (likelihood of the evidence if resurrection happened) is high, because if it happened it would be the most remarkable, earth-shattering, life changing event in world history (and it is).

I'd also add that, if there is a God, we’d expect Him to make Himself known – which is what Christianity claims. It’s the only religion which claims with any justification that God Himself has made Himself known in person (in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit). And we know from 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrected Christ appeared to over 500 people. It's not easily conceivable that Christianity would have been the biggest and most important alteration of human history if Christ had not died and risen, especially under the conditions and culture of the time, where it was very much not in people's interest to promote Christianity, and in many cases, doing so presented a danger to their own life. In fact, from the impression I get from reading New Testament history over the years, I think I would be bold enough to state it even more stridently - not only did Christianity spread, but in worldly terms it did so among people who had little to gain and so much to lose - domestically, socially, politically, physically, you name it. Unlike other movements that thrived through military conquest or political weight, Christianity grew in the most remarkable way - through self-sacrifice and love, radically defying the patterns of history that went before or since.

Moreover, in terms of the credibility of what Jesus actually said and did, many leaders and cult figures have deceived many willing adherents over the years, but Jesus demonstrated all the opposite traits of typical false leaders. False leaders usually seek power, status, and control in a way that serves themselves. Jesus showed His humility and power by serving others, giving up His life for us. False leaders use lies, manipulation and falsehoods to maintain their power and influence, but Jesus spoke only the truth. False leaders operate through promoting division, separateness and fear, but Jesus preached love, inclusivity and togetherness. Jesus spoke the wisest and truest words ever spoken about God, because He is God. He is unique in history and in personally revealing God's love to humankind, and that is why Christianity changed the world in the way that it did, in a way that's unparalleled in human history. Not only is there nothing like it, there is nothing that can even be spoke of using the same type of language. It's as different from the false religions as the sun is different to a candle.

So, in summary, Christians have confidence that God exists, that He has revealed Himself in history, that He loves us, that He was willing to die for us, and that when all the evidence for His resurrection is considered in light of that (namely, the sheer weight of historical testimony, the transformation of Jesus’ followers, and the unparalleled impact of Christianity), Bayesian reasoning points to the resurrection being a historical event, not a made up one. And, of course, this logic works in reverse too - if it was merely made up, it would be far more improbable, contrived, historically unexplainable and philosophically unsatisfying than if it really happened.

The Damning Irony of Creationist Parody

 

When it comes to the science, evolution-denying creationists are not just unaware of the errors of the bogus concept of “creation-science”, they are unaware of the broader problem of misunderstanding science itself, especially the nature of Bayesian probability, which is a statistical method where accumulated evidence keeps adding to the overall probability of a hypothesis being true. They are so unapprised of how the whole body of science (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc) provides multiplicative validations that they are not aware of just how absurd it is to reject most of mainstream science in favour of their creationist pseudoscience (as you’ll see in a moment, in a preposterous act of intellectually self-sabotaging parody they don’t even know how they are actually rejecting most mainstream science). It’s very easy to apply Bayesian probability to evolution and an old universe regarding how accumulating evidence affects our confidence in the theory. Fossils showing transitional forms, comparative anatomy, nested hierarchies in the phylogenetic tree of life, the coancestry coefficient (genetic relatedness), endogenous retroviruses, vestigial traits and atavisms, embryology, radiometric dating (of the moon rocks as well as the earth), cosmology, light travel and distant galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the expanding universe and Hubble’s Law, stars in different life stages, nuclear fusion in our sun, spiral galaxies, and so forth. All of these combined demonstrate comprehensively that the universe is billions of years old, and/or that life has been evolving on our planet for several billion years.

Now, not that creation science does proper science, but let’s pretend for a moment that it did. If creationism was true and the universe and earth were only about 6 thousand years old, we would have accumulated a similarly impressive array of evidence like the above. The scientific consensus would show that the Earth’s geological layers are only thousands of years old with no indication of millions or billions of years of sedimentation, radiometric dating would consistently yield ages of thousands of years for rocks, fossils, and meteorites instead of millions or billions, ice cores would show only a few thousand years of accumulation, the fossil record would lack any indication of gradual transitions, with all species appearing suddenly and remaining unchanged, DNA comparisons would not show nested hierarchies or molecular clocks consistent with deep time but would instead suggest all species were created independently, human and dinosaur fossils would probably be found in the same rock layers, light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away would have reached us instantly or the universe would be demonstrably much smaller, the cosmic microwave background radiation would not exist as a remnant of a Big Bang billions of years ago, stars in different life stages would be absent, with all stars appearing to be of the same young age, no supernova remnants older than a few thousand years would be observable, the Earth’s magnetic field would show no signs of past reversals or gradual decay over millions of years, comets and planetary rings would show no evidence of replenishment mechanisms, radioactive isotopes in the Earth’s crust would be consistent with a young age rather than billions of years of decay, genetic diversity in species, including humans, would indicate a severe genetic bottleneck only a few thousand years ago without the expected mutational load of much longer timescales, and nobody alive would laugh at the claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses a barrier to the formation of complex biological systems.

If creationism had got it right about a universe of only a few thousand years old, the majority of the scientific community for the past few hundred years up to the present day would be in full agreement that creationism is correct. Of course, a creationist would just dismiss all that with some ridiculous platitude like “Scientists are just interpreting the evidence through their secular, evolutionary worldview instead of accepting the truth of God's creation.", or “No amount of so-called ‘evidence’ can disprove what the Bible clearly teaches.", or “God's ways are higher than our ways, and scientists are always changing their minds, but the Bible never changes”, completely side-stepping the facts – but I’m sad to say from years of experience that there is little hope of a rational conversation with someone like that.

But for anyone who wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, or who rightly has doubts about the integrity of so-called “creation science”, we might be able to appeal by remembering that creationists do actually know what it’s like to be part of the consensus for mainstream science – they are part of the mainstream in many more ways than they are not. In keeping with the above lists, I assume all (or nearly all) creationists believe that the Earth is spherical, and accept Newton’s laws of motion, the atmosphere protects us from harmful space radiation, water boils at 100°C at sea level, bacteria and viruses cause disease, antibiotics can kill bacterial infections but not viruses, the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second, the laws of thermodynamics govern energy transfer, metals conduct electricity, the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system, photosynthesis allows plants to convert sunlight into energy, earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, sound travels faster through solids than through air, combustion requires oxygen, the moon orbits the Earth, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of mass, the freezing point of water is 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure, the established principles of aerodynamics, and that friction generates heat when two surfaces rub together. I assume that most of them also accept that Maxwell’s equations accurately describe electromagnetism, quantum theory explains the behaviour of particles at the smallest scales, Einstein’s theory of relativity describes how time and space are interconnected, sound waves require a medium to travel, and that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

So, creationists do mainstream science – they do most mainstream science – they just happen to revert to pseudoscience when it conflicts with their narrow interpretation of the Bible. And if they suggest that the above scientific facts belong in a different category of science to evolution over millions of years, then they are engaging in special pleading - applying one standard of evidence to mainstream science they accept while demanding an entirely different, unreasonable standard for evolution and an old universe. To understand the fabric of the universe properly is to understand that the category distinction is bogus; that there is no separating the scientific facts on the creationist shopping list from all the others – they all nest together in one integrated, consistent, mutually complementary set of laws and facts about the universe that confirm evolution and an old universe, and undermine their own creationist pseudoscience.

For example, they trust Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which describe not only how objects move on Earth but also how planets, stars, and galaxies formed over billions of years. The same gravity that keeps us grounded explains the orbits of celestial bodies and the gradual formation of planetary systems from collapsing gas clouds - processes that undeniably take way longer than thousands of years. They also accept the laws of thermodynamics, which govern energy transfer and decay, yet reject radiometric dating - even though radioactive decay follows the same thermodynamic principles. The predictable decay of isotopes is used in everything from nuclear power to medical treatments, and those same decay rates allow us to measure the Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, as well as confirm that the Sun has been burning through nuclear fusion for a little bit longer than the earth. Creationists accept Maxwell’s equations, which describe electromagnetism and light, when they utilise electricity, yet they reject one of the strongest confirmations of the Big Bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This comprehensively attested residual radiation is electromagnetic in nature, precisely what Maxwell’s equations describe, and it serves as incontrovertible evidence that the universe originated approximately 14 billion years ago. Similarly, creationists acknowledge that the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second, but reject the clear implications of this fact – whereby if light has been traveling at this constant speed, then the existence of galaxies billions of light-years away means their light has been traveling for billions of years, proving an old universe beyond dispute.

In the field of biology, creationists accept that DNA carries genetic information, but deny the molecular clocks that prove common ancestry among species. The same DNA comparisons that confirm paternity in courtrooms or evidence in crime scenes also demonstrate our evolutionary relationship to other primates, with shared genetic markers that could only exist through common descent. They trust the conservation of energy - the principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed - but ignore how this same law governs nuclear fusion in stars, leading to observable stellar lifecycles that unfold over billions of years. We can actually directly observe stars in different life stages, proving that they age and evolve over millions and billions of years, not merely thousands.

And in geology, a subject in which I’m not so well-studied – but I do know that creationists seem to have no issue with the fact that plate tectonics cause earthquakes, yet they reject the undeniable evidence that continents have been drifting for hundreds of millions of years. As any creationist could learn on the fabulous Life On Our Planet series on Netflix, the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean is measurable today at just a few centimetres per year - and basic mathematical calculations confirm that Pangaea, the vast landmass that predates separate continents, existed hundreds of millions of years ago - far beyond the 6,000 year timeline creationists propose. Moreover, I think creationists would acknowledge that radioactive isotopes decay at measurable rates when used in medicine or industrial applications, but they deny those same decay rates when conveniently applied to radiometric dating – which, as it happens, independently confirms an old earth. When they go on their holidays, creationists gleefully accept aerodynamics to explain how planes fly, but fail to apply the same physics to the equivalent laws in space travel and orbital mechanics, which prove the vast distances and timescales of the universe.

From all this, you can see that creationists are participants in mainstream science - they accept most of it and rely on all of it for daily living. Which leads to the inevitably damning question; surely any self-respecting creationist, when faced with the proposition that the only elements of science they happen to reject also happen to be the few that they have been told conflict with a literal interpretation of Genesis, must eventually summon up enough honesty and integrity to admit that they have succumbed to the most absurd selective rejection, and that their unwillingness to reflect on their own Biblical interpretation smacks of gross arrogance, wilful ignorance and the most ridiculous surrender of the mind to indoctrination. In fact, we can go further – the willingness to cling to such a deeply flawed and selectively applied stance, in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines (a perverse avoidance of the very principles they otherwise embrace and rely upon in every other area of life, we saw earlier), exposes such a profound intellectual cowardice and satisfaction with foolishness that it ceases to be mere ignorance and becomes an act of pitiful wilful self-deception - a stubborn defiance of reason so extreme that it borders on parody.

A Great TV Show To Cherish

 

Humanity has been blessed with many fine art forms, four of the most commercially influential being visual art, music, literature, and film. At its best, TV drama deserves to be the contemporary equivalent of high art, as it seamlessly weaves together the essence of visual art, music, literature, and film – potentially elevating storytelling to new heights.

I think, at their best, TV dramas (and some sitcoms for that matter) are some of the finest creative achievements in human history, and I think Netflix’s Hannibal could be a contender for being one of the best of them all. I don’t always watch or read things when they first come out, but I’ve just finished all three seasons of Hannibal, and I’ve been utterly gripped and monumentally impressed with how it brilliantly fuses those four great artistic disciplines; the visual grandeur of its cinematography, the emotional depth of its music, the literary brilliance of the dialogue, and the immersive storytelling of film - into a singular evolving narrative that absolutely captivates both intellect and emotion.

It’s a psychological labyrinth of a crime thriller, plated with the most exquisite and unsettling human drama, and underwritten by one of the richest scripts ever brought to the screen Like Kubrick’s best work, it submerges the audience in a world of manipulation, fantasy, morality, and yearning – an unrelenting game of cat and mouse, and a disturbing yet compelling distorted love story built on understanding the darkest corners of the human psyche.

What I also liked about the writing is that I don’t recall a single word of bad language in it. Sure, in places it’s visually dark and sinister, but the writing has an impeccable, unsettling, literary sophistication without resorting to demeaning itself with expletives. I’m not sure it’s the best TV drama ever – I’m reluctant to claim that there is such a thing. But it’s certainly the most satisfying psychologically slow-burning, operatically nightmarish, and erudite literary masterpiece I’ve seen in a long time.

On Social Care

 

The crisis in UK social care has intensified in recent years, affecting thousands, including my own family. I have lived through this personally during my father's health decline and eventual death with dementia. The most transparent problem if you’re not either very rich or very poor seems to be that the government gets the best of both worlds and the consumer gets the worst of both worlds, in that we are taxed all our working life to fund issues to do with health, but we still have to pay for social care-related issues when we eventually need them (with money, you may note, that has already been taxed several times already). This nearly always produces the problem that consumers are too detached from the finances of public services to enjoy effective value in terms of subjective preferences and optimally priced solutions in accordance with supply and demand.

The next most transparent problem is that none of the favoured political proposals seem to me to be ideal. If pensioners have enough savings to pay for their care or have assets that can be liquidated to pay for it, the taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay on their behalf. On the other hand, having entirely private social care is difficult for those with no savings or assets, and it’s more difficult to incentivise people to save for future care when they don’t know how long they will live, or what care (if any) they will need. Insurance models are also tricky because insurers have the same asymmetry of information that the consumer does – in fact, even more so, because they don’t know our lifestyle choices and many other things about us. Means testing based on savings and assets is also problematic because it disincentives saving and encourages consumption, which if undertaken with skewed incentives, yields inefficiency of resource allocation. Out of those solutions, an insurance-based one is probably the least problematical, but it’s still a difficult system to get right.

One of the reasons that so many people have family members who are paying thousands of pounds a month for social care is because the industry is over-regulated with not enough competition for viable alternatives. One of the golden rules of economics is that if a company is earning excess profits this should create an opportunity for potential competitors to enter the market and charge less while still making a profit. When this occurs in a free market, competition drives prices down to the level of the costs of the most efficient supplier (where costs include the cost of capital). Therefore, if a business can sustain what many are calling "excess profits" then something must be preventing other suppliers from competing within the care market, and that is a lot to do with regulatory burdens and government inefficiencies. There is a shortage of affordable high quality social care because of a number of complex reasons (underfunding, staff shortages, rising demand, to name but three) - which I think we all understand, and I have blogged about before - but what really needs addressing is how the qualities of the market system can be brought to bear on some of these supply and demand issues that are affecting consumer value and patient quality. 

Here's how the free market works ordinarily for consumers of goods and services. If any particular supplier seems too expensive, we look to switch to other suppliers. If all suppliers seem expensive, then either entry into the industry is blocked by regulatory constraints, or if it isn't blocked then the activity probably just has an expense to justify such prices. Some people argue that this matter can be helped with price fixing. But it isn’t true; imposing a price control would be the wrong approach, because if the government did impose a price cap, the cap will almost certainly be too low (a cap too high would have no effect, because to be too high it must exceed current prices, otherwise no one would notice as current prices would be under the cap). By imposing a price cap that will inevitably be too low, the government will only succeed in reducing supply, and thereby harm consumers of care services.

One possible solution that may trump all of the above could be the idea of a health savings account, a bit like the one in Singapore, but purely for social care, where instead of the state taking money through taxes and letting you have it back in the form of free social care, you get to keep more of your money to put into a social care savings account. That money is used to pay for your social care where you or your family can negotiate doctor-patient contracts in a market system, much like you would now with insurance and banking, where if we require care in old age our savings pay for it, but if we don’t need care the money goes to our children (or to a named beneficiary of our choice). Naturally, there would still need to be state involvement for those whose savings fell short of their care costs, and this could be bootstrapped by an efficient insurance-based system that captures a diverse range of subjective preferences, but this is a reform that could be gradually introduced to reach its full potential.

But it could get even better, because with your savings you can spend it on whichever type of social care you like. Because the best solution to goods and services is market-based solutions based on competition and consumer demand, companies could compete for your custom by offering a wide range of choices for your care. I have in mind the development of many different types of care facility to cater for diverse needs; care homes that specialise in different types of illness, more bespoke home visits, secure high quality care villages with accommodation, leisure facilities and care provision – where we, the consumer, get to choose how we want to live (or someone chooses on our behalf if we are unable) and the kind of social care support that best serves our needs.

Even without this policy, as things stand many older people who paid off their mortgage long ago are in a position to make some provision for if they need care. Many even find themselves in houses too big and expensive for their needs. If it's not fundamentally wrong for them to use their equity to downsize, sell up, or for their care costs to be claimed back after they die, then it seems even less wrong for a health savings account to be set up for the provision of such care.

All that said, as an economist, I believe the market solves a lot of the problems a lot of the time, but not all of the problems all of the time. In my book Benevolent Libertarianism, one of the central theses is an attempt to find a way to incorporate the qualities of a kind of socialist-individualist-libertarian triumvirate at the personal level with the qualities of the free market and its concomitant mechanism for price theory to efficiently balance supply and demand.

This means understanding that the wisdom of central intelligence sometimes serves some of the system best, and would do too in the health account model. We couldn’t (and wouldn’t) be able to collectively get together to organise something centrally complex like a social care system without some centralised intelligence working top-down. I think human health is a problem that needs a significant layer of top-down centralised information processing, because it doesn't have the foresight required to capture the diverse range of human needs. A society that successfully cares for the complex needs of human health and well-being cannot be solely at the mercy of market-driven supply and demand computation, which is subject to chaotic instability and power law distributions that would be inimical to comprehensive health and social care provision if left unchecked.

Even with a more market-based model outlined above, there would still be further matters to negotiate and problems to solve. Regulation would need to guard against prioritising profit over quality (although competition is also a good regulator), the transition from the current system to a better one would take time and careful planning, and a system that measures optimal contributions would need to be established. 

But I believe that a gradually implemented health savings account model could be the least problematic solution to provide a more sustainable and efficient alternative to our failing system, ensuring individuals retain control over their care, and remain supported by better a regulatory balance alongside market-qualities that are not so hampered by the inefficiencies of the state. 

God's Higher Probability

 

Some philosophers claim that an omniscient God has a lower probability than just a supremely knowledgeable but not omniscient God, because it is harder to know everything than just know very much. The same can be said for omnipotence (it’s harder to be all-powerful than just very powerful), omnibenevolence (it’s harder to be all-good than very good), and perfect (it’s harder to be perfect than close to perfect). But I think this gets the probability estimate wrong. It’s true that, in the world, harder to achieve things are less probable than easier things. An amateur throwing his first 3 darts is unlikely to get 180; a man playing his first snooker match is unlikely to make a 147 break; and a woman throwing a coin off the Empire States Building is unlikely to find that it landed perfectly on its edge in the crack of the pavement.

But I don’t think that’s the case when we talk about God’s supreme properties. Consider this question. Which do you think is more probable; that a historian knows who all of the Roman emperors in the first century were, or all bar one? Or which do you think is more probable; that the world’s biggest Beatles fan knows the lyrics to all their songs, or all except one? I think in both cases, the former is more probable. It would be stranger if, respectively, those individuals knew all of the Roman emperors and all the Beatles songs bar one, than knowing them all, because it’s more difficult to explain why they don’t know the exception when they know the rest.

With God, having the power to create a universe, I think it would be stranger if He knew 99% of all things than 100% of all things (ditto the other Omni properties). Even though there are astronomically more ways that God could know 99% of all things, and only one way that He could know 100% of all things, it feels much more probable that He knows everything than nearly everything – because if He knows nearly everything, it’s harder to explain why He doesn’t know the relatively few things He doesn’t know.

 

All this is to say, it may be a hard thing to conceive of omniscience, omnipotence, omni-benevolence and perfect as God’s primary properties, but that level of hard still seems more conceivable than what might seem, in probabilistic terms, more probable in terms of the ratio of favourable cases to total possible cases being smaller. Here, it’s likely that making a proposition less complex makes it less probable too.

Why Christians Disagree So Much

 

At a recent men's breakfast, someone asked me the following; If Christianity is true, why are there such a varied set of Christians who disagree and squabble about so much?

My response, which might be worth sharing here:

If all Christians sought the full truth without compromise, we would not see the ecclesia so full of division and disagreement. The Biblical template certainly goes against this. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, St. Paul says:

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought."

He doesn’t hold back; we are to be “perfectly united in mind and thought”, and in Philippians 2:2 Paul tells us we are to be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.". Consequently, Christian disagreement is a solecism against the credibility, harmony and reputation of the faith, and it is disagreement – both in factual propositions and ethical aberrations – that continues of be one of the biggest impediments to the spreading of the good news.

That raises the question, if the Bible, when correctly interpreted, provides clear guidance on how we should live, and if Christians have the Holy Spirit to offer deeper direction, why is it so difficult for those in relationship with the Creator of the universe to agree on a consistent and truthful understanding of reality? I think the primary factor here is that when we judge anything based on God, we often assume that our understanding reflects God's own qualities. However, this is a two-way mirror. God provides us with principles to live by, but we also interpret those principles through our own proprietary perspectives. We put ourselves at the mercy of God’s judgement, and at the same time make judgements about the teachings in accordance with our own understanding and experience. 

Sadly, religious people – Christians and the adherents to the false religions – are also susceptible to the sway of shaping their religion in accordance with their own incentives, needs and agendas. That's why those very varied personal trajectories throw up all sorts of religious personality: the pious Catholic genius, the evolution-denying religious huckster, the repressed priest, the Islamic scholar, the Al Qaeda suicide bomber, the Jewish Messianists, the worshipful self-mutilators, the monks, the crusaders, the missionaries, and all manner of literary talents, brilliant theologians, cult-founders and propagandists.

Ultimately, the way we perceive God and present ourselves to the world is shaped by a number of essential qualities; the depth of our intellectual and emotional engagement, the honesty and integrity we bring in to our relationship, our willingness to seek truth over comfort, our openness to correction and growth, our humility in recognising the limits of our own understanding, and our willingness to put Christ first and make Him Lord of our life.

EDIT TO ADD: On this subject, I wrote this in reply to an antagonist, this week: 

“I invite you to think about it more carefully – surely you have enough confidence in yourself to at least conceive of how Christians might disagree about all manner of things – especially as many of these matters are highly complex, connected to complex ranges of subjective experience, and shaped by human flaws, incentives, biases and limitations. Given the state of humanity, I’d no more expect Christians to agree on everything than I would mathematicians to agree about politics, or opera singers to agree about economics. But, I do wish they would – and as I often argue – Christians SHOULD agree more, especially on objective things – and two Christians of any sex, ethnicity, denomination, should converge on more and more consensus if they were to sit by the fire, Aumann’s Agreement-style, and honestly, rigorously seek the truth together, like people who care about what is true."

 

The Best Christianity Gets Everything Right

The reason Christianity defeats every other competing explanation for realty is because at its purest (by which I mean what we’d have if it was in accordance with God’s will) Christianity gets everything right. This is the distinction between Christians, who get a lot wrong, and Christianity as God would intend as ideal, which gets everything right. It takes a lot of thinking and experience to be so assured that Christianity gets everything right, but I’m confident that it’s the right conclusion.

What Christianity has over, let’s call it non-Christianity (naturalism, other religions, or anything that departs from Christian truths), is that Christianity always has a better explanation for everything than non-Christianity -  the biggest philosophical questions, the physical world, love, goodness, morality, metaphysical qualities, the psychology of human nature, the purpose of life, overcoming suffering, what’s wrong with society, you name it. 

Any proposition that includes “Christianity is the truth” explains the true depths and complexities of the proposition all the way to the top and bottom better than any competing or alternative “non-Christianity is the truth” hypothesis. And this is similarly true in reverse – no supreme act of God’s love, goodness, grace, justice or mercy in the world is enhanced by either tying to remove “Christianity is the truth” from the argument, or by trying to add “non-Christianity is the truth” to it either. Non-Christianity gets defeated and undermined every time it comes up against “Christianity gets everything right” – and any apparent cases where that doesn’t seem to hold just means that we haven’t gone to either the very top or the very bottom (or both) of the proposition, and tapped in to both its full complexity and full extended gravitas and ultimate goodness.

 

My Four Favourite Easy Ways To Spend Money

 

1) Avoiding unpleasant tasks like dirty household chores and time-zapping manual labour - anything that robs you of time to do better things. Pay someone else to do these things - it spreads the wealth and is a great example of utilising comparative advantage.

2) Buying some pleasant travel experiences - go on holiday and make some fantastic memories.

3) Paying to avoid extraneous travelling time. 45 minute walks, waiting for buses, etc are costly - you pay for it through lost time, and sometimes lost energy and less sleep. Get taxis or pay friends for lifts wherever possible.

4) Buying some enriching social interactions. Spending quality time with other quality people adds riches to your life. Pub nights, meals out, days to the coast are all great ways to spend money, because the social interactions add so many colours and flavours to your life. And bearing in mind number 3, it's probably a good idea to spend lots of time hosting stimulating events at your place.

The Dirty Cost of Cleaner Energy

In a perfectly competitive market, the price is typically set equal to marginal cost. This is the cost to the producer of producing one more unit of the good. When price equals marginal cost, economic efficiency is maximised. Consumer surplus is the difference between what consumers are willing to pay and what they actually pay. Producer surplus is the difference between what producers receive for a good and their cost of producing it. At a price equal to marginal cost, the sum of consumer and producer surplus is maximised, and the total gains from trade (economic surplus) are at their peak.

Any price above marginal cost reduces the consumer’s benefit from the transaction by more than it increases the producer’s benefit. This is because of how surplus is distributed between consumers and producers in a market. When the price is set above marginal cost, the producer is charging more than what it costs to produce the additional unit, which means consumer surplus decreases (consumers pay a higher price and fewer units are sold, reducing total surplus). When this happens, consumers derive less benefit from the transaction because they are paying a price higher than what would have been necessary to cover the production cost of the good. This extra price they pay above the marginal cost reduces their surplus. When the price of a toaster is set above marginal cost, such as £15 instead of £10, consumers experience a reduction in consumer surplus by paying more per unit, and the market experiences a deadweight loss because fewer toasters are sold than would be at the efficient price, resulting in a net loss of total surplus, and a misallocation of resources that could have otherwise increased economic utility.

Producers benefit from the higher price, as they receive more revenue per unit than the marginal cost. However, the gain for producers is typically smaller than the loss faced by consumers, because the producer's surplus increases by the price difference (£15 - £10 in our example) for each unit sold, but the number of units sold will likely decrease because consumers will buy less at the higher price. The producer’s surplus increases only on the remaining units sold (but the quantity sold likely decreases). This reduction in quantity sold reduces the potential for additional producer surplus that could have been earned if the price was lower (that is, closer to marginal cost). The portion of the total surplus (consumer plus producer) that disappears due to the higher price is called a deadweight loss.

The higher price discourages consumption, as fewer consumers are willing to pay the inflated price. Those consumers who would have bought the good at a price closer to the marginal cost do not get to purchase it, resulting in a loss of both consumer and producer surplus. The producer does not gain enough from the higher price to compensate for this loss, since fewer units are sold overall. Consumers lose more than producers gain because the reduction in consumer surplus (from paying the higher price and from fewer units being purchased) is greater than the increase in producer surplus from the higher price. Deadweight loss results from transactions that no longer occur due to the higher price, representing inefficiency, and amounting to a net loss to society.

What we’ve seen so far is that the economy as a whole would be better off if the price is equal to marginal cost, ensuring maximum benefit from trade for both consumers and producers. It should be clear at this point that when governments implement climate policies that artificially increase energy costs (e.g., through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade systems, or regulations that mandate the use of more expensive, cleaner energy sources), these policies create many economic inefficiencies similar to the ones caused by pricing above marginal cost. We can see why by applying the same economic reasoning as above. By introducing measures that increase the price of energy above its market-determined marginal cost, consumers end up paying more for energy than they would have in a free market. This leads to a reduction in consumer surplus because consumers have to pay a higher price for the same quantity of energy, reducing the benefit they derive from each unit of energy they consume. When energy costs rise, lower-income households and businesses with tight budgets may reduce their energy consumption or cut back on other spending to compensate, and some smaller businesses (and ultimately consumers) may be priced out of the market altogether.

Just as before with toasters, suppose the marginal cost of energy from fossil fuels is £50 per megawatt-hour, but due to carbon taxes or regulations requiring renewable energy usage, the price consumers pay rises to £70. This £20 price increase represents a loss of consumer surplus, as they are forced to pay more than the true cost of production. While most consumers and small businesses lose, producers of renewable energy benefit in what has become a rigged crony capitalist system, where more expensive cleaner technologies gain because the higher price of energy artificially incentivises their production methods, even though their marginal costs are typically higher than fossil fuels, and less efficient for the UK economy. 

These producers receive producer surplus because they are able to charge higher prices that reflect the environmental cost embedded in climate policies – but, alas, the net benefit for these producers is almost always not larger than the consumer losses, because the increase in energy prices causes a deadweight loss, similar to what happens when prices are set above marginal cost. Consumers purchase less energy due to the higher price, leading to a reduction in energy consumption that exceeds the socially optimal level if we ignore environmental externalities. As well as inflated prices harming business and consumers, some energy needs will remain unmet, or consumers may resort to less efficient alternatives (such as cutting down on important activities that rely on energy, like heating or transportation), reducing overall welfare. This deadweight loss represents a loss in total economic efficiency: the difference between the energy that would have been consumed at a price closer to marginal cost and what is actually consumed at the artificially higher price due to policy interventions.

They get away with this assault on our economy by peddling the lie that these artificially higher prices are necessary to internalise externalities by reflecting the cost of fossil fuel-based energy production, including its environmental harm. But this is one of the greatest sleight of hand tricks ever played by politicians on the electorate. This disgraceful crony capitalist arrangement results in a redistribution of wealth from consumers to producers (particularly clean energy producers) and the government (through taxes), while at the same time putting the UK industry at a disadvantage from other more competitive nations. 

It is disgraceful that politicians have the power to artificially increase energy costs energy and make production more expensive for businesses, leading to reduced output, job losses, and higher prices for goods and services, which get passed on disproportionately to the poorest people in society. Climate policies are pushed hardest by socialists, when they are actually (as is so often the case with socialism) worst of all for the poor. The reality is - as is surely plain for all to see in these awful economic times - energy prices have increased above marginal cost far too quickly, aimlessly and recklessly, and far too precipitously for alternative energy technologies to become competitive in price and efficiency, causing energy prices to rise significantly above the true marginal cost of clean energy production, and creating larger inefficiencies and more severe deadweight loss than necessary.

 

A Quick Back Of The Envelope Argument For The Christian God’s Existence

P1: Before creation, God, possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, would have an infinite number of possible creation stories available to Him.

P2: Given God’s omni-properties, He would necessarily create the best of all possible creation stories.

P3: Our current earthly existence, taken in isolation, does not appear to be the best of all possible creation stories (e.g., it includes suffering, evil, and imperfection).

C1: Therefore, the best of all possible creation stories must encompass more than our earthly existence - it must include the entire story, including the eternal narrative.

P4: A necessary component of the best possible creation story is the opportunity for creatures to experience the best of God within the context of their creation.

P5: The best way for creatures to experience God is to be in relationship with Him, as relationship reflects His nature (truth, love, grace, etc.).

P6: A relationship between finite, imperfect creatures and an infinite, perfect God requires that God initiate and provide the means for that relationship.

P7: Christianity teaches that God made relationship possible through Christ’s incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and the provision of the Holy Spirit.

C2: Therefore, Christianity uniquely offers the conditions for the best possible creation story, providing both the means to relate to God and the opportunity to live a virtuous, God-centred life.

P8: The best life a person can live is one where they prioritise God and His qualities and virtues (truth, love, grace, humility, kindness, generosity, etc.).

C3: Christianity provides the best evidence for God and the best framework for living a truthful, meaningful, virtuous life.

Romance and Divine Love

I was thinking about how God is love, and how human love is the greatest quality in the world because it both simulates Divine love, and is part of it. Like our Christian walk with God, love is both a blessing and a responsibility. It’s a blessing because it is a gift from God, and a responsibility because love involves the daily commitment to act in a manner worthy of God; seeking the truth, putting others before ourselves, making a continuous choice to act with kindness, patience, and forgiveness, and mirroring Christ’s sacrificial love in doing so.

And when you consider it, that is a lot like what happens in romantic love. In the beginning, what we call ‘falling in love’ seems to be bestowed upon us rather than being a conscious choice - it finds us before we can choose it (although our choices clearly enable it). It starts as a blessing that falls upon us, rather like a free gift of grace, but then comes the responsibility to work in relationship to turn it into something Divine, amazing and long-lasting. To that end, love between creature and Creator, and love between beloveds, reflect each other, in that both begin as gifts of grace but find their fullness in the daily choice to nurture, sacrifice, and reflect the Divine.

An Interpretation Of My Dreams

 

I have two recurring psychological motifs in my dreams. One is that when I’m trying to physically get to a place, the journey is slowed down by something, and I never get there. Either physically moving to a destination feels like wading through thick treacle, or there is some other impediment that thwarts the journey. And two is that when there is a specific, clear goal required – either having to speak to someone about something, solve a problem, put something away in a cupboard, or whatever – I become engaged in numerous tangential activities, never getting to the clear goal.

Now, I know what the initial psychoanalytic diagnosis would offer – that these dreams reflect struggles with progress in waking life, feeling held back from achieving my goals, anxiety about whether I will fulfil my potential, and so forth - but none of that consciously manifests in my thinking. I’m very satisfied with my life, while equally excited for the growth that is to come. I’m pleased with my achievements so far, but at the same time I’m exhilarated by the potential that is to come. And I’m thoroughly enjoying every step of the journey (even the suffering), knowing that each new destination offers further horizons I will aspire to reach.

So, it’s hard to reconcile the nature of the dreams with struggles related to progress, feeling held back from achieving my goals, and anxiety about whether I will fulfil my potential, because I’m genuinely enthralled and gratified with the journey I’m on. It’s possible – and perhaps probable, to some extent – that there are forces at work in my unconscious and subconscious that haven’t been brought to bear on the peaceful nature of my conscious experiences, but I might have an interpretation below that’s a more reasonable approximation to the truth.

If I had a stab at an interpretation of dreams, I’d discern it not a symbol of frustration, but rather a deep subconscious immersion in the nature of progress itself, wholly embracing the idea from Camus that the struggles are part of the heights. The complexity and richness of the journey is never going to be a straight, uncomplicated path. But part of the thrill of the journey is in recognising how progress often meanders, how it encounters resistance, and how it unfolds in unexpectedly exhilarating ways because of this.

That said, when I’m in the state of dreaming, the feeling of wading through treacle does not seem to represent a joyous acknowledgement of the sheer depth and viscosity of experience – it genuinely feels inhibiting. But perhaps that is exactly what we should expect, and even hope for, because mindful engagement with the process of ‘becoming’ ought to be demanding, as overcoming challenges is one of the fundamental rewards of the journey. In most cases, I don’t think the impediments are inhibitors, at least not in the medium to long-term – they are a key part of our immersive experiences, forcing deeper engagement with the reality of our past, present and future, and become fuller human beings on this daily adventure.

Connecting With The Mysteries of Creation

In Genesis 1:3, God's declaration, "Let there be light," is seen as bringing order to creation and illuminating the universe, symbolising the beginning of Divine revelation and the emergence of God’s presence in creation. This is fulfilled in Christ, who declares He is “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Theologically, light is synonymous with Divine revelation, and people have spent centuries grappling with the complex nature of this light, especially around how God speaks through creation, through scripture, through miracles, and through testimonies, and why there is so much mystery and ambiguity about God’s revelations. This formed the main body of a book I wrote in 2012 called The Genius of the Invisible God, in which I laid out why God’s apparent ‘invisibility’ in most of the creation story is not only for our own good, but also a fundamental and exciting part of the narrative’s continuous Holy Spirit revelation after the Incarnation. Like all worthwhile things, the revelation is commensurate with what we put in too – the transformation is commensurate with our willingness to be transformed.

And we shouldn’t find it surprising that metaphysical realities are so mysterious and exhilarating, because even nature’s physical domain is rich in the same qualities. Dig deep into some of nature’s most counterintuitive facts to date, and you’ll find it is similarly steeped in mystery and wonder. When a torch is shone from a moving train, the light travels at the same speed relative to both the train and the ground because the speed of light is constant and unaffected by the motion of its source or observer. Time slows down as we travel faster because, as per special relativity, moving clocks run slower relative to stationary observers to preserve the constant speed of light. Time runs slower the closer you are to a massive object (like the Earth), so time passes slightly faster at higher altitudes where gravity is weaker. Particles can exist in multiple states at once. It’s impossible to precisely measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. When two particles become entangled, the state of one particle instantly determines the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Particles can display behaviour characteristic of waves, even when they are observed as discrete particles. Most off the universe is made up of dark matter, which we can't see.

And we’ve found something equally stunning in the past 500 years of new scientific discoveries; the more we’ve discovered, the more the mystery and wonder has deepened further. Increased knowledge has made the universe more mysterious and wondrous, not less. The bigger our intellectual and epistemological landscape, the wider and broader the topological secrets reflect back. Creation has been deliberately partially veiled for now, to ensure that our path to wisdom is an exhilarating journey of faith, humility and discovery. In both the physics of nature and in God’s revelatory unfolding, mystery, awe and wonder are not obstacles, but doorways to deeper understanding and connection with the Creator.

On Subjectivity & Objectivity Within Christianity

 

The human engagement with the world is primarily one of subjective interpretations of objective reality. For the individual, subjectivity and objectivity are co-dependent, like two blades on a pair of scissors. So, when considering Christianity, we start down the same path of analysis; Christ being Lord and Saviour is an objective consideration, not merely a subjective one - because if it's true, it's objectively true, and it matters more than anything else in the world. The evidence for this lies in subjective interpretations of both subjective experiences and objective phenomena, reflecting the interplay between truthful propositions, personal faith and historical reality.

When considering evidence in the world, we want two things; we want to know what objective facts are, and we want to assess the probability of the propositions about those facts being true. Objective facts simply mean things that are true irrespective of subjective human opinions. You might think of it like this; if we were Omniscient and had access to all the information in the cosmos, then we would be able to answer any statistical question definitively, as the truth or falsity of any situation would in no way depend on the perceptual ability of any of the observers. In other words, the general term 'objective' in relation to most scepticism needs redressing, because the reason that God's objective evidence cannot yet be settled purely with recourse to external facts does not make it subjective with respect to the evidence provided, only subjective with respect to our own probabilistic epistemology.

Therefore, when we talk of Christianity's truths (and true propositions about them), objective facts are to do with things that are true irrespective of subjective human opinions, because, in Christ, God has provided objective evidence for His existence and His love for us. Of course, we may rightly contend that the evidence's standing with respect to our individual phenomenological perspective is the only sense that actually matters to us, but that is also the primary sense in which God has made Himself known in Christ - to engage with each of us at the deepest and most personal level - so we are adequately equipped with everything we need.

The Most Important Thing You Can Be

People often make the comment ‘be yourself’ - and while that comment can be casual, humorous or patronising, at its deepest it conveys one of the profoundest senses of true living and life-building. At a number of deep levels, it’s essential to be your most authentic, true self - and passing up being yourself is going to be perpetually damaging and limiting in the short term, and absolutely devastating in the long run.

The most important way to be yourself is to always seek and tell the truth, because that’s the only way the self in becoming can actualise the self it can become. Compromising the truth and lacking the courage to pursue it fully creates the gulf between what we could have been and what we do become.

The second reason is that it’s only by being your authentic, truthseeking self that others can relate to you, like you and value you for who you actually are, rather than the mask you’re wearing for the attention of others. Your mask-wearing self – the persona version of ‘you’ that exists for others at the detriment to your true self – feels none of the benefits of praise, because it’s unknowingly directed at your persona, not the authentic you. Similarly, your mask-wearing self rebels against most criticism or correction because you’re detached from your authentic self.

If your self is inauthentic and not in line with your truthseeking self you could be, you can’t be a fully integrated part of the achievements you appear to have, or have accountability for the areas in which you need improvement. The persona receives both these things on your behalf, and that is going to increase anxiety and decrease well-being, despite attempts to hide and repress it.

A significant part of people’s dissatisfaction and insecurity in life is the lack of their true self impeding what they could be becoming – and such is the trap of the mask that if it has been worn long enough you are detached from the provenance of many of your primary woes.

It certainly requires courage and discernment to be our most authentic, truthful selves – but there is no other way to live and thrive. We have one shot at life – and we must ensure we play the lead role, not outsource to an actor who has no chance of being a better version of ourselves than the best we that can emerge from authentic truthseeking.

And for further encouragement, the world will be so much more enriched for the appearance of our true selves, because nobody else in the world can achieve exactly the things we can achieve by being ourselves.

There are obvious costs to committed truthseeking and being yourself, and they will bring inconvenient challenges – but the cost of not becoming who you could be is the biggest cost of all. 

 

On Knowing God

 

I discovered something in my first months of being a Christian in the early 2000s that becomes clearer and clearer with further experience of God, but which I had to learn somewhat counterintuitively at the time. We discover God more by acting than by thinking. When I became convinced that Christianity offers the right and only path to the one true God, I still awaited revelation from the Holy Spirit for around 9 months. The distinction, I believe, is one of thinking truth and acting truth – and looking back, I believe I had to be ready to act in order to know the full truth. Thinking truth means accepting propositions that are true of reality; acting truth means taking those beliefs and living them out. We discover God by thinking truth (that is, believing in Christ as Lord) and by acting out truth (loving God and neighbour, and reflecting God’s love in the world).

From my experience, a lot of non-Christians are preoccupied with the question of how to know God - or in the opposite case, why they think God doesn’t exist - because they are focused mainly on thinking truths about God. But because God is so far beyond us, and so high above our comprehension, we are limited in thinking truths about Him; the real revelations come by acting out those truths. I don’t, of course, mean acting to earn our salvation, or earning favour with God – we are already offered salvation by grace, as a gift from God. I mean that the deepening of our relationship with God comes by acting out truth and love, not by merely thinking them.

It’s entirely possible to believe true things without knowing God, and it’s equally possible to know God and believe false things. The empirical sciences give us facts about the world, but they show that thinking truths will not necessarily lead us to God. The Christian faith gives us a relationship with God, but it shows that knowing God will not necessarily lead us to facts about the world.

A profound discovery for the Christian is the extent to which they can deepen their knowledge of God and their relationship with Him by action. A profound discovery for those who want to know God is to try to discover by action not just thought. It is tempting to prioritise seeking truth by thinking truth; but deeper truths and revelations come from action, because the Christian journey is one in which our relationship with God deepens as we step out in love and action. Knowing God is thought and action.

Why We Don't Want To Swap Selves

It’s interesting, I think, that we each have a profound sense of self, whereby, as far as I know, no human tends to look at someone else and wish they were them in totality, even if on the surface their life seems so much better. I mean, a guy may perhaps wish he had George Clooney’s looks, or Bill Gates’ money, or my brainpower 😃, or Kylian Mbappé’s football skills, but I doubt whether anyone would actually wish to swap places with someone else and actually be them, even if they appear to have a life that looks materially and socially more desirable.

Perhaps this would be more peculiar if we were *just* evolved animals shaped solely by evolutionary mechanisms – the idea of swapping personhood might not seem quite so anathema to us. Although, naturally, there are lots of experiential sunk costs in being oneself, connections established, fear of the other, and other reasons why we might be reluctant to abandon our current proprietary narrative.

But I suspect the strongest reason people don’t tend to desire a full swap of personhood is due to some even deeper truths about our human nature; that our profound sense of self is not just about possessing a unique identity, but about the inextricable intimacy we have with our own perspective. And in an even more primary sense, I believe that the irreplaceable narrative of individual, unique selfhood is attached to the fact that we are creatures made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) – and that the healthier and more attuned our heart and mind is to His truth and goodness, the more we cherish and value this profound gift of selfhood.

Politicians Lie More Than You Think

Here's why politicians lie way more than you think. There are generally two ways to lie. One type of lie is called "suggestio falsi", which is the suggestion of something which is untrue or deliberately telling an untruth - such as about where you were last night, about breaking something and blaming someone else, about not being at an event you claimed you attended, and so forth. The other type of lie is called a 'suppressio veri' type of lie, which is concealment of truth - such as failing to disclose conflicts of interest, ignoring information about negative consequences, not revealing the true costs of policies, and so forth.

Because suppressio veri lies are less blatant and slipperier due to the ambiguity of what they omit, they are harder to directly confront, more widespread, and therefore the most insidious and destructive kind of lies told in society. And they are mostly the kind of lies that underpin the political system - they are habitual tools of manipulation that erode trust and exploit people's assumptions, allowing politicians to shape narratives and control perceptions without outright fabricating facts. In the way that politicians craft the squalid art of omission and indirect duplicity, it could be argued that they, and the media that amplifies and legitimises their distortions, are society's biggest liars.

Back of the Envelope Economics of Cheating

 

There are lots of complex, interrelated reasons why people cheat on their partner. And I’m aware that this might be a sensitive subject for some, so here I make no comment about the whys and wherefores, nor any general moral comments, nor any invitations to accuse or find fault. I also acknowledge the numerous emotional, psychological and social factors involved in cheating, that are beyond the intention of this short post.

But with the foregoing acknowledgements, given that most things can be amenable to an economic analysis, in some sense cheating can be thought of in economic terms too in terms of perceived costs and incentives.

Suppose we hypothetically assign a value to relationships in terms of their overall quality (that’s a complex measurement in itself, but we can simply do so to illustrate). Take two couples; Jack and Jill, and Bob and Tracy. Jack and Jill are happily married, they own a home together, have 2 children, are actively involved in their church and community, and have been together for 15 years. Bob and Tracy have been dating for a year, they are unmarried, in a relationship, with no children, and they live in separate dwellings. 

Let’s say, for simplicity, we value Jack and Jill’s relationship at £500,000, and Bob and Tracy’s at £35,000. At first glance, it looks like the cost of cheating in Jack and Jill’s relationship is greater than in Bob and Tracy’s. Let’s illustrate with a simple calculation. Say in both cases the probability of getting caught is 20%, and the probability that the relationship will break down is 80%. Suppose saucy Sally is messaging both Jack and Bob, trying to entice one of them to a hotel room for a sexual encounter.

The cost of cheating for Jack is:

0.20 x 0.80 x £500,000 = £80,000

The cost of cheating for Bob is:

0.20 x 0.80 x £35,000 = £5,600

In this example, the cost of cheating for Jack is significantly higher than for Bob, due to the higher value assigned to Jack and Jill’s relationship. When people get caught up in the possibility of cheating, their mind undergoes a complex set of cost-benefit analyses, based on the approximate value assigned to the relationship, and the expected cost of cheating, and getting caught. Of course, the cost of cheating, and the cost of getting caught, are distinct but with overlap, because there is a cost of cheating even if you don’t get caught. Assigning a higher value to the relationship generally makes the cost of cheating more substantial, potentially deterring infidelity due to higher perceived risks – although humans are far from wholly rational calculators, and are prone to regrettable actions even when the costs are high and the benefits relatively low. What this does show, however, is that there are varying perceptions of relationship value and risk that influence behaviour, and cheating and potential cheating fall under this calculus too.

Relationships thrive not just on calculated gains, but on the investments we make in increasing their value through longer term commitment, trust, respect, and mutual understanding. There is certainly a general sense in which the higher the value of the relationship, the lower the likelihood of infidelity (there are always exceptions, of course) – and the corollary is that cheating is more likely to occur in relationships where there are issues and incompatibilities that have not been sufficiently addressed.

It's Easy To Count The Number Of Genders

 

On the question “How many genders are there?”, I think there are only three possible answers: 

1)    There are 2 genders, male and female

2)    There are n number of genders, where n equals 1 for every human that exists

3)    There are zero genders

If there are 2 genders, male and female, then sex is perfectly adequate to describe males and females, and the word gender is superfluous.

If there are n number of genders, where n equals 1 for every human that exists, then it doesn’t tell us anything empirically compelling, and the word gender is superfluous.

If there are zero genders, then gender is a term we’ve mistakenly constructed with no empirical validity, and the word gender is superfluous

I believe number 3 is right, but in all cases, we are forced to arrive at the same conclusion; that the word gender is superfluous.

If you object to this, and at the same time you understand that there is no empirical basis for one sex identifying as another sex, then you must think the number of genders is higher than 2 and lower than n. But there is no empirical method or anything remotely resembling an objective analysis that one can use to arrive at a number. There are no biological markers, no rigorous psychological tests, and no objective social criteria that can definitively quantify how many genders could possibly exist. And everything else that you can put forward as justification for the term gender is better defined under a broader category of maleness and femaleness.

Therefore, we are obliged to conclude that the word ‘gender’ has no empirical utility, and is rendered superfluous.

For a more comprehensive assessment of this, see here, here and here.