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.

Untrustworthy Selective Prejudices

 

People post a lot on social media, and readers have to discern who they can trust. It’s a lot easier to see who you can’t trust than who you can, because people who can’t be trusted telegraph it more carelessly over a consistent period of time. The primary one to look out for also happens to be the most common, and it is that over a period of time, those you can’t trust demonstrate their untrustworthiness by selectively focusing on things that accord with their prejudices, while ignoring anything that doesn’t. They will even be oblivious to or dismissive of greater evils or more serious problems just to keep the path clear for their virtue-signalling.

They’ll frequently come down on atrocities they see as far right, but ignore ones that are far left. They won’t be critical of certain kinds of Muslim but they will target certain Jews (especially Israel, while ignoring Hamas/Hezbollah/Iranian atrocities). They’ll say nothing when a Pakistani Muslim rape gang scandal breaks out, but if the same scandal involved white British males committing gang rape against young vulnerable black girls, they’d be all over it. They’ll be silent on terrorist attacks generally when the perpetrator is of a religion or ideology they are not brave enough to criticise, but noisy about the ones that play into their agenda. They’ll disregard the mistakes, scandals and policy flaws of their own party, but come down hard on equivalent incidences when it’s a rival party. They will tell influential figures not to interfere in our politics when they disagree, but praise influential figures who interfere in our politics in ways of which they approve. They’ll defend free speech when it concerns ideas they agree with, but demand censorship or cancelation when opposing viewpoints are expressed. They’ll only preach tolerance, diversity and inclusivity when they view it as the right kind. The list goes on and on.

It’s so obvious that people like that are not to be trusted, and it’s astonishing that people like this are rarely called out for the selective application of their prejudices and biases. Their behaviour is so transparently lacking in credibility, yet within their echo chambers, there is little chance they will be exposed for what they truly serve - not truth or justice, but their own agendas.

But rest assured, you can definitely trust me, of course – I am balanced and consistent in being nearly equally mortified by all political parties and extremists of every persuasion. 😅

Motherly & Fatherly Love

 

In psychologist Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, he posits what he calls a "motherly" and "fatherly" conscience, which are the two types of positive influence we attain from nurturing by each parent. The "motherly" aspect of conscience is grounded in unconditional love, care, and acceptance. It reflects the nurturing, protective, and compassionate nature traditionally associated with motherhood. The "fatherly" conscience complements the motherly aspect by emphasising responsibility, discipline, and the development of independence. It is often associated with the rational, guiding, and boundary-setting side of love. These two types of conscience represent different but complementary ways of navigating our way through life.

Fromm’s theory is that true love and personal growth arise optimally from balancing these two types of conscience. They enable us to love in a mature and fulfilling way, because we harness the care and compassion required in love, while fostering growth, independence, and personal strength. This balance allows us to love others genuinely while helping them develop their full potential, much like a good parent who both nurtures and challenges their child. These combined consciences are essential for the cultivation of mature love - with the harmony of care and discipline, acceptance and responsibility – where, in marriage, two beloveds are joined to become 1, yet each pursuing their connected journey towards individual self-fulfilment. Naturally, for adults, any prior parental experience that departed from this ideal diminishes the positive effect, but awareness of the qualities of each conscience can help an individual learn to cultivate the qualities through a period of gradual maturation, where they compensate for the absent parent with mindfulness, self-awareness, intentional personal growth and meaningful relationships.

Fromm also connects the development of a motherly and fatherly conscience to the concepts of mental health, where the right balance of these consciences enhances good mental health and mitigating the risk of poor mental health. A lack of motherly love can lead to feelings of unworthiness, insecurity, and loneliness, whereas an overemphasis on the motherly conscience can lead to overprotection, resulting in dependency and a lack of independence. A lack of the fatherly conscience can lead to an absence of healthy boundaries and discipline, resulting in increased disorder, irresponsibility, and an inability to manage one’s emotions and actions effectively, whereas if the fatherly conscience is overly strict or authoritarian, it can engender feelings of fear, inadequacy, and rebellion, inhibiting emotional expression and creating an environment where individuals feel judged or unworthy, which further impacts mental health.

In politics
Not only is it healthy for a mind to be equipped with the mental and emotional artillery of both perspectives, it’s also helpful to be apprised of how this distinction plays out more broadly in the country in which you live. For example, the interplay of fatherly and motherly qualities in the context of UK society can be observed through the lens of wider cultural and societal influences, particularly the contrast between left-wing and right-wing politics. Left-wing principles like social equality, community, welfare, and compassion, echo the nurturing qualities associated with the motherly conscience. And the increased influence of women in the workplace, in leadership roles and in decision-making processes outside of the home have brought these values to the forefront, which have many positive influences around the wider distribution of emotional intelligence and relational dynamics. But virtually all good qualities become unwelcome distortions in excess, and that has certainly happened to the UK in the past 20-30 years, where important qualities related to the fatherly conscience – like reason, discipline, personal responsibility, liberty, tradition, strength of character and bottom up self-determination – have been sidelined in favour of an overemphasis on top-down control, big state over-regulation, censorship, political correctness, identity politics, wokeism, cancel culture, that stifle genuine discourse and create divisions rather than promote unity, and marginalise the very nature of truth, facts and rational discourse.  

These values of the fatherly conscience are crucial for maintaining social order and encouraging individual initiative, and are sorely lacking in a country that has been overrun with excessive left-wing policies that have created a culture of dependency, entitlement, fear and the gradual destruction of a structured societal framework. A balanced society that respects individual freedoms and promotes social responsibility can draw on the strengths of both the fatherly and motherly consciences, while fostering a more holistic understanding of complex individual and societal needs. But we have a very imbalanced society these days, where the nurturing qualities of the motherly conscience have been perverted by the creation of over-dependence on the state, a struggling economy, overprotection, infantilisation, and an aversion to personal accountability.

In religious faith
Finally, in religious faith, as we know from the Bible, we see the perfect expression of the fatherly and motherly consciences in God. God’s Fatherly love embodies a protective, authoritative figure who offers guidance, structure, and discipline. He provides commandments and principles that encourage Christians to pursue a life of responsibility, integrity, and service to others, reflecting God's own commitment to justice and righteousness. And in the person of Christ, we see all those things still, but also the fulfilment of the motherly conscience too. With His compassionate and nurturing spirit, He offers unconditional love, deep empathy and acceptance where, in the Incarnation, He demonstrated God’s nurturing love by healing the sick, caring for the poor, comforting of the downtrodden, healing division, challenging religious and political authoritarianism, and welcoming the marginalised. Just as the harmony of the fatherly and motherly consciences engenders the best combination for a thriving personal mental well-being, the Christian journey facilitates a healthy balance between these fatherly and motherly qualities, in reflecting God's commandments and the unconditional love of Christ.

The Doomsday Dealers: Fear, Fraud & Fanaticism

It seemed like Just Stop Oil had toned down their acts of vandalism and civil disobedience in the latter part of 2024. But I've just read that two dippy bints from this dreadful cult have vandalised the grave of Charles Darwin. In case you haven’t delved into it yet, let me tell you how internally corrupt movements like Just Stop Oil, Black Lives Matter, wokeism are manipulating the masses right before our eyes. Cults like Just Stop Oil can capitalise on the perverse narrative because it is driven by the most powerful institutions – the academia, the media, big tech, crony capitalism, and the political establishment. The skewed message is already steered by these forces, meaning members of the public already caught in the snare of the liberal-left are easy bait for the crooks, liars and manipulators at the heart of organisations like Just Stop Oil. Just tell people they can be a ‘social justice warrior’ and that humanity is going to hell without their 'heroism', and it’s easy to ensnare them into the cult’s orbit of deceit and control.

Through relentless propaganda, they cultivate a doomsday mindset, priming followers for manipulation through fear, guilt, and alarmism. On top of the financial backing from the easily co-opted faction of the powerful institutions, they’ll regularly be asked to donate financially to the cause, they’ll be pressured into absurd anti-social acts that will get them arrested, sacrificing their dignity as they look like complete fools on the news – while all the time those who pull the strings are raking it in. These pawns in a cynical and corrupt game are marketing their cult, helping to enlist more and more delusional (often already scared, confused, vulnerable people with identity issues and mental health problems), and making intellectual, financial and ethical sacrifices to the cult leadership. Some are even getting themselves locked up in prison to ensure the high priests of Gaia get ever-fatter from suckling on their frantic, bewildered followers’ teets. 

 

The Slow Burn of Success: Finding Joy In The Journey

The things we pursue that are of most value to us are going to be hard and take time. Very few things that are worth having come easy, and most of the best things worth attaining require hard graft - either physical, mental, or both.

With some of those things we’ll get more of the gains in the early periods, where gains then diminish over time (like weight training, fitness, DIY). But many, if not the majority, of our valuable pursuits work the other way; the initial gains start off small, only to grow and accumulate over time, where the initial investment yields the largest rewards after the groundwork has been put in (friendships, networking, acquiring knowledge, playing a musical instrument).

I mention this in the hope of encouraging those of us who are trying to become an established name in our field or passion, or who are hungry to gain more momentum to break into the mainstream  – whether that’s in writing, music, art, starting a small business, building a successful blog, podcast or video channel. There are many pursuits that could reap greater rewards for our efforts and abilities, and I think that the reality of compounding progress – from baby steps to bigger strides - is something we can expect to experience on our journey. I've read of many cases where a blog or podcast reaches a key point of critical mass and experiences more growth in one month (and beyond) than in the previous two or three years. Perseverance can lay the groundwork for transformative breakthroughs. 

And remember too, for further encouragement - material published now that is only making a small impression and getting relatively few hits will still be there for people to see and revisit if you do make it big - so nothing will go to waste, and every effort can contribute to your future success, and make an impact henceforward. 

For those blessed enough to eventually make a significant impact in their craft, the early wins may feel slow and gradual. But we can be buoyed by the fact that most success stories begin that way, where the greater the gains, the more they can become even greater. And while the explosive results may come later, I think it’s vital to enjoy and value those incremental advances along the way – they are a rewarding and necessary part of the adventure. 

 

The Vice of Virtue-Signalling

2024 was probably the peak year so far for virtue-signalling. It's easy to see through the grim spectacle of this widespread halo-polishing that has infested our society. People virtue-signal as a sign of righteous posturing in an effort to seem morally superior. But, psychologically, why do people want to feel morally superior? It's primarily to fulfil their own needs and establish their own identity, which is, sadly, usually built on validating their individual worth in the mirror of their own insecurities and adequacies.

We should want much better for them, because these are people to be pitied. They are desperate to acquire a sense of belonging and acceptance, and they have deep-seated psychological and social needs that sit in conflict with genuine virtue, courage and truth. Because virtue-signallers have little confidence in their own intellect, their ethics and their over-simplistic grasp on complex situations - they know deep down that they are fraudulent, inauthentic moral peacocks - they use their self-righteous parading as a way to deflect from their own guilt and shame. 

All this is easy to understand when you remember that virtue-signalling is not being virtuous; it's a near opposite, like how prurient indulgence in flattery is a near opposite of sincere praise, or like how a wolf in sheep's clothing is a near opposite of a shepherd. That is the big cheat of virtue-signalling - it's telling lies about virtue to conceal vice. 

The Wisest Things I’ve Learned

 

I thought a new year might be a good time for this little reflection. Setting matters of religious faith aside for this post, I’ve learned a lot of very valuable things over the years – from parents, friends, writers and thinkers – which got me thinking about the wisest and most valuable things I think are worth knowing and have been most enriching. Given the possibilities, it’s challenging to narrow it down to a small list – but if compelled to choose, I think these would definitely make the cut: 

1} There is no better life than one spent seeking the truth at all times. 

2} Taking responsibility is the primary path to contentment, freedom, and self-liberation. 

3} Humility precedes wisdom.   

4} Wisdom is the only quality we can’t have too much of. 

5} Kindness and gratitude are like superpowers in the external lives they touch and the inward satisfaction they elicit. 

6} Suffering, hardship and challenge are necessary sources of growth. 

7} Courage is one of the most noble and beneficial qualities we should consistently cultivate. 

8} Having a balanced mind is the only way to be truly intellectually and emotionally stimulated. 

9} A few key people will meet most of your needs, but if you don’t have those key people you’re in trouble. 

10} We are always a work in progress, constantly in the process of becoming. 

11} Delaying gratification to prioritise long-term rewards over short-term pleasures is one of the cornerstones of emotional and psychological maturity. 

12} Forgive easily, because people are going through a lot more than you could ever know. 

13} Physical, mental, intellectual and emotional well-being underpin everything else you want to achieve. 

14} Work, hobbies and passions should be servants, not masters; they stop being demons only when they cease to be gods. 

15} Our ultimate internal fulfilment and external impact are measured by how well we loved.

33 Blind Mice and Eternity

 

With the rise of digital connectivity, attempted arguments for and against theism are more widespread than ever before, and frequently conducted with philosophical sophistication, confidence and enthusiasm. But while it's good to embark upon such ontological ventures of the mind, one should proceed with prudent caution. Imagine, if it were possible, 33 blind mice formed a symposium to discuss the nature of human civilisation. We might be impressed with their efforts to understand us through their mouse-like limitations, but we’d know the size of gulf between what we know and experience and what they could possibly understand.

I think this is the kind of humility (and more) we ought to employ when we try to comprehend things that belong to God’s realm, beyond creation. Things related to the first cause, the nature of possible creations, or the very essence of existence itself in relation to God’s eternal power and wisdom, are interesting topics on which to speculate - but the gulf between what we humans can comprehend and the actual reality of God's existence and Divine workings is unimaginably vast. We may only reasonably approach such matters with a humble curiosity and utmost reverence, recognising that our insights can only ever be, at best, mere shadows of the truths and causes beyond our comprehension.

The Cult's Loyalty Snare

One of the strangest things about humans is the phenomenon whereby cults often grow stronger, not weaker, after their beliefs, predictions, assumptions, and leaders all turn out to be wrong. We can justifiably hope to live in a world in which the opposite is true, but evidence shows we do not*. The primary reasons are the threefold old favourites of cognitive dissonance, sunk costs, and in-group tribal identity and association. 

Cognitive dissonance is well studied, and we know that people experience mental discomfort when confronted with evidence that contradicts their deeply held beliefs. In a cult, members invest a lot of emotional, social, and sometimes financial energy in their beliefs. So, when cults fail, they experience strong cognitive dissonance. People also feel more committed to beliefs and decisions as they invest more into them - whether it’s time, money, relationships, or personal identity – and after sinking those costs into the group, rejecting it and admitting they were wrong may feel like losing a heavy investment. To avoid this sense of loss, members might double down on their beliefs, and even intensify their involvement in the group, reinforcing their commitment and loyalty. 

Cults often provide a powerful sense of community and identity, which can be especially important for people who felt isolated before joining. When faced with a crisis of belief, members may cling to their group even more strongly to preserve their sense of belonging and identity. Leaving the group could mean losing this social support system and experiencing isolation, which many members would rather avoid.

You have to remember too, that whichever cult you’re in – Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, Just Stop Oil, Answers in Genesis (to name but four) - the golden rule of cult deception is that you don’t know you’re in a cult. Cults often operate by encouraging members to distance themselves from non-believers, which limits access to outside opinions and evidence that might otherwise challenge their beliefs. This isolation makes it easier to control information and, in turn, to reinterpret or ignore contradictory evidence. Leaders can reinforce the idea that doubting or leaving the group would mean betrayal, disloyalty, or even punishment, which keeps members aligned even when beliefs are under strain.

And don’t forget too that, at this stage, cult members are riddled with confirmation bias - where members are so heavily primed to seek or interpret information in a way that confirms their existing beliefs, that they habitually interpret events in a way that upholds the underlying narrative, even if the outside world has consistently showed it to be wrong. I’ve actually seen documentaries where failures and refutations are enthusiastically reinterpreted as steps toward a grander, impending moment, which heightens members' commitment to prepare or sacrifice even more.

The paradoxical nature of belief reinforcement through disconfirmation – driven by these toxic combinations of cognitive dissonance, sunk cost fallacy, social isolation, and commitment to a group identity - must qualify as one of the strangest of all human phenomena.

And, alas, one of the most stultifying things about being in a cult is that cults manipulate from the top down in a way that starves the members of the freedom to fulfil their potential. Membership of a cult is predicated on the understanding that none of its members are freely encouraged to be the best they can be in life – instead they are merely encouraged to serve the cult’s agenda; a dynamic that can only usually occur through repression and indoctrination.

*See the studies of Festinger, Riecken, Schachter, Stark, Weber and Landes for further reading (and Asch’s infamous conformity experiments are interesting in the above context too).

Offensive By Proxy Offence

 

One of the biggest societal blots of the modern age is the act of choosing to be offended on behalf of other people who aren't themselves offended. It's what I call the societal blight of proxy offense. 

Here, I think, is the right way to think about offence. Offence isn't really given - it is taken by the person who chooses to take it - so if you personally choose to be offended at something, that's on you, and others are free to decide how they feel about you. Sometimes people may feel like your choice to be offended is a reasonable one - and on those occasions, your offence might improve their future behaviour and make them more mindful of their conduct. Sometimes they may find your choice of being offended pitiable, and tell you you're being unreasonable.

But…..none of this happens to the same extent when someone is offended on other people's behalf - they’ve simply chosen to be the kind of citizen that gets on most people’s nerves - and their only in-crowd consists of other people that are widely considered to be as equally annoying and victim-seeking. I'm not, of course, talking about those who courageously stand up for a good cause for the underdog. Proxy offence-seeking is different. In most cases (there are always exceptions), those who habitually choose to be offended on other people's behalf only serve to inflate the reality of what reasonable people are likely to personally find offensive; they distort behavioural signals about what balanced individuals ought to find acceptable; and they help create a society of people trapped in a gilded cage of self-imposed inadequacy, where the cage door is bolted shut from the inside, and where people become weaker and more and more over-sensitive, utterly unable to cope with other people's ideas, opinions, lifestyle choices, tastes and freedoms.

Science & Climate Change - Closing Thought: Myopic Fears, Transformative Solutions

 

These climate discussions we've been discussing this week are about a complex set of considerations involving assessing trade-offs, allocation of resources, forecasting, and so on – and one thing we know for sure from history is that present day analyses that fail to factor in this complex suite of considerations are always woefully sub-standard in their analysis, leaving their protagonists ill-equipped to make prudent decisions and sensible forecasting.

Here’s what else we know. We do know that virtually every time we’ve tried to solve problems without foresight for how we are growing in knowledge and enhancing our capabilities we make errors. For example, in the late 19th century, Manhattan faced a serious "horse problem." Horses were the primary means of transportation, pulling carriages, wagons, and streetcars, and their population created significant issues, like massive amounts of manure, filthy, smelly streets, a disposal of dead horses problem, and the spread of diseases due to the unsanitary conditions. What those concerned didn't foresee was the advent of a transformative technology: the automobile. By the early 20th century, motor vehicles began to replace horses, effectively solving the horse problem in a relatively short period. By the 1920s, cars had become the dominant mode of transportation, and horses were largely relegated to recreational or ceremonial roles.

Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation and societal collapse, due to insufficient food supply – being myopic about advances in agricultural technologies, including high-yield crops, synthetic fertilisers, and modern irrigation – and how they dramatically increased food production, and ensured sufficient food for growing populations in many parts of the world. And we all know about Malthus’s similarly miscalculated prophecies of doom in the late 18th century, inaccurately predicting that population growth would outpace food production, leading to global famine and societal collapse.

There are so many more examples of this kind. People have thought there was a potential wood crisis without understanding the transition to coal (and later coal and electricity). People have feared urban darkness by failing to see the transition from oil lamps or candles to gas and electric lighting. People have been concerned about a potential telecommunications saturation with increasing population, with not enough insight into how a digital telecommunications revolution made communication scalable on a global level. Early computer scientists worried that the memory storage and processing power of early computers could never scale to meet the needs of more complex tasks – overlooking the invention of transistors, followed by integrated circuits and modern semiconductor technology, that enabled exponential growth in computing power.

These examples, and countless more, reflect exactly what is inadequate about extreme environmentalism, which continues to spread unremittingly like an unhealthy social contagion. It’s not that we need speculative faith that the trajectory of technological and scientific innovation will just eliminate all problems that once seemed insurmountable. But the balance of analysis and reaction is way too far on the myopic side of failing to account for the transformative power of present breakthroughs and of potential of future breakthroughs – largely because the whole thing has been politicised and manipulated to pay scant regard to them. These truths don’t serve politicians’ interests well, they don’t make splashy headlines for the media, they don’t enable the narcissism of virtue-signalling, and they are thinly spread so they are harder to apprehend for people whose considerations and agendas lack sufficient balance, perspective, wisdom and historical knowledge.