Knowing The Price Of Sex And The Value Of Nothing

As I was cycling through the city earlier this evening, I felt my regular lament at the ugly sight of graffiti tagging that spoils so many buildings. As far as I’m concerned, graffiti tagging on private property is carried out by selfish young men who have no respect for the buildings they are defacing or the people who are associated with them. And sometimes I think, if only females looked down on graffiti tagging (or other acts of criminality or irresponsibility like that) with more ridicule and contempt, boys would eventually stop doing it.

I know that sounds like an outlandish thought, but it has truths that are supported by evolutionary history and psychology (especially in the work of psychologist Roy Baumeister) regarding the dynamics of sex and attraction, where we know that women are largely the "gatekeepers of sex," and influence the behaviours and ambitions of men accordingly. Baumeister posits that women determine the standards men must meet to access sex, which complements a long-standing evolutionary principle that women primarily do the choosing and men compete to be chosen.

Although it works both ways, of course - while women are the primary gatekeepers of sex, men are primarily the gatekeepers of commitment and long-term relationships. Women, due to higher reproductive costs (such as pregnancy and childcare), are typically more selective in choosing sexual partners. This selectivity drives men to compete and adapt to meet women’s standards, shaping behaviours such as ambition, status-seeking, and displays of loyalty. But men are often more selective when it comes to committing to long-term relationships or marriage. While casual sex may require fewer standards, commitment demands more from potential partners - such as trustworthiness, compatibility, shared values, and longevity. Men historically needed to ensure their investment (e.g., time, resources) would be directed toward raising their biological offspring, which meant they were more likely to commit to women they deemed faithful and emotionally supportive.

Here, then, we see how responsibility is shared between the sexes. Women can provide good quality control for male behaviour, and men can improve their conduct to make them more desirable in terms of selectability. In fact, I don’t just mean that as a fanciful whim where one or two minor improvements could make a bit of difference (although that is still true) – I mean that if there were radical societal changes in terms of improvements of attitude, conduct, and mutual accountability between the sexes, we could start to reverse a negative trend and be on the way to becoming a Christian country more than ever before.

In economic terms, this goes back to the price of sex within societal norms. In a Christian society, the price of sex is higher than in a society run ragged by promiscuity and hedonism. This aligns with the Christian ideal of chastity. The female beloved insists on not just commitment, but virtue, respect, patience and noble intentionality from their prospective beloveds. And with sexual intimacy being a sacred act reserved for marriage, males share the responsibility in taking the lead to ensure the relationship is built on friendship, trust, love, and shared Christian values that transcend fleeting physical desire. This higher "price" for sex necessitates a framework where males must rise to moral and ethical standards of Christianity, and chastity would function not as a limitation but as a transformative force. Relationships of such stability, integrity and self-discipline benefit not only the couples themselves but also their roles and influence in the broader community.

As the "price" of sex has decreased in the modern time of easy divorce, sexual liberation and the breakdown of family values, so too have the efforts some men make to meet higher standards and women to insist on them. If sex is too freely available, men won’t aim for higher standards and societal decay will continue. Remember too that there is strong evidence in psychology that delaying gratification to prioritise long-term rewards over short-term pleasures is one of the cornerstones of emotional and psychological maturity.

Take Power Back: The Latest Egoistic Juvenile Pantomime

Here’s the latest halfwit cult of narcissistic entitlement; little upstarts who call themselves Take Power Back - who have decided that the best way to “help the poor” is to march into Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and other supermarkets, steal food, and hand it to food banks, while claiming the moral high ground. As always, the problem with the half-brained ideas of entitled, embittered leftist extremists of this kind is that the world doesn’t work that way – you don’t just get to change the world for the better with a “throw toys out of prams if we don’t get what we want now” mentality. That’s what immature, uninformed children do, not people serious about doing good in the world.

Here are just a few things that these petty thieves don’t understand. The people who pay for the theft of these goods aren’t the CEOs or shareholders of these supermarkets. It’s the customers – the very people trying to make an honest living, feed their families, and get through the week without their grocery bill creeping up yet again. As I showed in a previous blog post (see here) supermarkets are actually a huge force of social good to consumers, not an enemy from whom one should feel entitled to steal. Not only do supermarkets help us shop in the most affordable and efficient way, they employ hundreds of thousands of people across the UK, they invest millions into local communities, and they donate huge quantities of food to charities and food banks every single week.

And to think that supermarkets are swimming in ludicrous profits is to express economic ignorance of the most absurd kind – most large corporations operate on tight margins (see my past blog posts on the nature of profit and margins), because profit totals are not the same as profit margins. These stores are not cartoon villains to be looted from by the latest puerile left wing buffoons - they are the backbone of the UK’s food supply chain that have huge operating costs. They make relatively small profits at the margin, and yet across the nation they keep customers fed, shelves stocked, prices competitive, and people employed.

So, when activists stroll in and help themselves to “free” food, they’re not helping to administer justice; they’re heaping injustice on the consumer, the checkout worker, the delivery driver, the hard working families doing their weekly shop, and the pensioner counting pennies – and ultimately, on food banks too. Every time these so-called activists fill their boxes and walk out, they’re not “helping the poor.” They’re making food more expensive for the very people they claim to care about. It’s economic illiteracy dressed up as moral heroism - performance activism designed to make the activists feel righteous while causing wider harm in society, just like all the similar groups that came before them.

Moreover, do these selfish brats really think that food banks wish to be associated with being on receipt of stolen goods? Food banks rely on trust, generosity, legality, good intentions, and partnership with retailers. If these activists want to help the poor, they should get a job, fundraise, volunteer at Food banks, give their own money to charities etc – things that actually require effort and good deeds, not narcissistic, virtue-signalling, selfish ones.

The Next Ten Years Are Going to Be Ridiculous

Scientific and technological progress is accelerating so quickly that I regularly reassure my readers that the coming decades will bring unprecedented scientific, technological and economic progression on a scale so prodigious that they won’t be able to believe it. The trouble is, given that most people who most urgently need to hear this don’t read my blog - on account that statistically most people in the world don’t read my blog - the message of encouragement isn’t getting out there fast enough.

According to research I’ve read, current trends even in just AI show capacity growing more than 25× per year, vastly outpacing human research growth. Even if these rates slowed by a factor of 100, the combined cognitive labour of humans and AIs would still expand far faster than anything in history, potentially delivering hundreds of years of innovation within a single decade. Rapid gains in computational capacity, algorithmic efficiency, model scaling, and inference costs all contribute to the next phase of what I call the progression explosion, which will trigger a corresponding unprecedented surge in technological development, robotics, and industrial output.

There may, of course, be fresh things to contend with, with such acceleration - like misaligned AI, power concentration, entrenched authoritarianism (which is, alas, already happening), and other challenges posed by advanced digital minds. But they will probably be a spit in the ocean compared with the huge potential benefits - especially extreme abundance, medical breakthroughs, and rapid scientific and material progress.

And as I’ve blogged about before, these advances will create unprecedented possibilities for solving long-standing “future problems” like climate change. If AI-driven research acceleration really does condense centuries of innovation into years, then technologies we are still working on - ultra-efficient batteries, carbon-negative industrial processes, fusion breakthroughs, and advanced materials for energy storage - will arrive with prodigious application far sooner than most people imagine. Rapid scientific iteration, combined with autonomous experimentation, would allow AI systems to explore billions of design possibilities for catalysts, solar materials, carbon-capture membranes, and so forth, before you can say “Greta Thunberg hates cheeseburgers served at BP Garages”.

 

On Negative and Positive Desert

 

I think Jimmy McGovern’s The Street is one of the best British TV dramas ever. One of the many memorable episodes, like the one I rewatched recently, involves a racist called Kieran getting credit for saving a 7-year-old Polish girl, Anna, from a house fire, when, in fact, it was actually his friend Duffy who committed the heroic act. But Duffy dares not claim credit for his heroism because he fears it will jeopardise the invalidity benefit he’s claiming. Huge tension ensues when Kieran willingly accepts all the adulation while Duffy begrudgingly laments his lack of recognition.

During the episode, this got me thinking about something else; whether an act is still heroic if the person had no memory or awareness of it - and acted it out in a trance-like state, where they did not consciously undertake the deed through any sense of bravery or moral duty. Probably not, or at least, much less so. Put it this way, if the person claimed no memory or awareness of the good act, it seems inappropriate to reward them. But that being so, does the reverse also apply - that if someone acted out a wicked deed in a trance-like state, with no memory or awareness of it, should they go unpunished?

In one sense, I can understand the temptation to argue that if a lack memory or awareness negates positive desert, it similarly negates negative desert. But that can’t be wholly satisfactory for one key reason. Negated positive desert means that the hero is merely not afforded deserved recognition and adulation. But negated negative desert means the general public are not protected from a criminal who has not only harmed at least one victim, but may go on to harm others - so should be incarcerated on that basis.

On What Humility Really Is

 

“God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.”
(Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5)

From my experience, humility is one of the most misunderstood of all human qualities. So often, people consider humility to be things like timidity, circumspection, or a lack of self-confidence regarding a viewpoint. But that is not right; humility is best thought of as accurate self-assessment. That is, humility is not thinking less of yourself than you ought, it is thinking accurately about yourself. 

To be in true humility means you don’t inflate or diminish your worth, abilities, or moral standing. Humble people are willing to see themselves as they truly are - capable of love and goodness, but also deeply fallible - which is why God calls us to live a life full of humility.

The opposite of humility isn’t self-confidence, as many think - because self-confidence is justified alongside competence. The real opposite of humility is narcissism - which is the refusal to acknowledge one’s own faults, limits, and responsibility for the bad things one is doing or contributing to. That is why humility is much rarer than many imagine, and narcissism is more common. Humility threatens the ego’s carefully constructed narrative, whereas narcissism reinforces it.

And that is why revelation begins with humility: only the humble can hear God clearly, because only the humble are willing to know themselves truthfully before Him.

Weaponised Compassion

 

I had a conversation once with someone who is pro-abortion, that had a middle that went something like this:

Pro-abortion person: But what about in cases where the pregnant women has been raped by her father, should she be compelled to keep it?

Me: Ah, but are you actually just advocating for abortion under conditions where the pregnant women has been raped by her father?

Pro-abortion person: No, I believe the right number of abortions should be 1 for every woman that wants one.

Me: I thought as much - so the whole ‘cases where the pregnant woman has been raped by her father’ angle was just a Trojan horse, wasn’t it? A plea meant to mask an outright push for abortion under any circumstances.

While the topic was different, the conversation above brings to mind a similar issue that’s going on in the so-called trans debate. If the push was simply the call for more compassion and understanding for the relatively few Intersex people who are born with ambiguous genitalia (especially Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Ovotesticular DSD), and clearly have to contend with a lot of suffering and identity issues, then I think all but the most insensitive people would be on board.

But as expected, that is not what has happened. If anything, the Intersex people – the real victims in this - have had their sufferings hijacked by a combination of bad-faith actors trying to push a far broader and ideologically driven agenda around so-called gender identity to serve their own ends, and advocates who have been swept up in support without being mindful enough of the harm.

For years, few have been willing to speak up against this – just as too few women have been brave enough to speak out against biological males using their toilets, entering their sports and occupying their prisons (and for complex reason which I won’t go into here, it really has to be primarily women taking the biggest stand against this). Consequently, the public has been ideologically nudged into accepting sweeping, harmful claims, that only now (thankfully) seem to be being resisted with a bit more rigour.

All this follows a familiar story. When compassion is weaponised into false, enforced ideological conformity, everyone suffers. The only way to fight back and speak up for those who need defending is to speak the truth, and hope enough people join you.

Further reading on this: See all the articles in my Sex and Gender tab Here

Everything At Once Part 2

 

If you’ve dipped into ancient Christian philosophy, you might have come across Boethius’ idea of how eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life, and how that means for us, as creatures created to spend eternity with God (should we choose to accept the gift), that there is a sense in which our state of being encompasses all of life at once (see an earlier blog post Everything At Once that conveys something similar).

I think there is a sense in which that’s true - and to see why, we only need to think of what it’s like being ourselves in the present moment. Our ‘now’ sensation encompasses our history, where we can recall to mind the time we had a burger and chips with our chum in secondary school, and the time we grazed our knee when falling off our skateboards, our first day at work, and so forth. Our whole remembered life is in us in the present moment, even though we’ve forgotten much of it. What is remembered is there.

God doesn’t have the problem of forgetting things; His perfect Mind persists through endless time by being both part of time and outside time altogether. He sees all events - past, present, future - in a single, timeless now. But while we don’t have perfect minds, we are made in His image, and we do, in one sense, possess the fullness or potential fullness of life all at once, in that everything we are, everything we’ve done, and everything we could be, are all part of a single, unfolding reality. A kind of unified experience of being in which there always exists the potential tapping into the ever-present totality of life - a bit like how a tree contains its whole life in a single moment: rings of the past, leaves and branches of the present, and all the future growth contained within, all existing together in the living organism.

Consider what this means for you and for your potential if you think about it in the right way. Imagine that your life is like a film reel composed of countless frames. Each frame shows a single moment of your experience - a snapshot of what you think, feel, and perceive at that instant. If your life is everlasting (this life and the afterlife), then the film reel simply stretches on forever. Frame follows frame, moment follows moment - the story continues indefinitely, but always one scene at a time. Now imagine something stranger. Suppose that instead of a film reel, your entire life is encoded in a holographic plate - a two-dimensional interference pattern that contains, within every microscopic region, the information for the entire three-dimensional image. In a hologram, the whole is present in every part: each tiny patch of the plate can reconstruct the whole scene, though with varying degrees of clarity. In this “holographic” version of your life, every point of time contains the fullness of your whole existence - not just a slice of it.

I like what that implies about our potential - and the fact that we are never all we could be. Through this model, every thought, every stage, every experience is co-present within the single timeless structure of your being, and you can tap into the entirety of your life simultaneously, as the hologram possesses the entire image for us to navigate at once. It gives a real sense of what you might call a totality waiting to be awakened step by step with each new improvement, every fresh edification from experience, and every new unfolding – that all that we could be is, in some sense, already here in potentia - shimmering beneath the surface of our awareness, waiting to be drawn into the light of our becoming. Life is a journey, of course, and a continual invitation to open ourselves up to the infinite depth that already dwells within.

The Economics of Exaggerated Victimhood

 

We keep hearing about increased anxiety in young people, and an increase in perceived victimhood. This might not be so strange except for the fact that there’s a good argument to be made that, negative social media influences aside, young Brits have been brought up in one of, if not the most, privileged, safest, most prosperous, most peaceable societies that’s ever been created. So, on the surface, you might think it strange that there is increased anxiety in young people, and an increase in perceived victimhood. But I have a theory that probably explains at least some of it.

This current society is one in which material risk and genuine adversity are relatively scarce - so in economic terms, you could say that the demand for meaningful challenges has begun to exceed the available supply. This imbalance creates a kind of market distortion in which individuals, unable to compete effectively in the constrained market for competence, shift toward the effectively more elastic market for perceived victimhood. In other words, because competence is constrained by reality (inelastic) while victimhood claims are effectively limitless (elastic) – the dynamic creates an effect whereby, because claims of harm can be produced at near‑zero marginal cost and yield high and often unjustified social returns in the form of various signalling effects, the result is inflation.

On top of that, there is another tactic employed to expand the supply of available victimhood claims – just keep broadening the definition of a problem until it applies to you. For example, in a society where racism, sexism or other forms of unfair discrimination become less frequent, the incentive emerges to stretch those categories to capture ever‑smaller offences or affronts, effectively increasing the pool of actions or events that can be framed as unfair discrimination.

It’s perhaps to be expected, therefore, that when genuine crises are diminished, synthetic ones emerge to satisfy unmet demand, allowing individuals to capitalise, and help create a market supply that caters for needs that have been exaggerated or fabricated. 

I say all this, not because I’m insensitive to genuine need, victimhood, and harm – because I’m really not. I’m actually highly sensitive and attuned to other people’s pain and suffering. No, I’m saying it because cultivated or courted victimhood is actually a malady for people’s well-being, because it makes them easy to manipulate. In a hyper-connected world, there is no shortage of bad actors who are looking to invoke your outrage, provocation and disharmony – and in the many exaggerated or fabricated cases, this not only diminishes your well-being, it also distracts you from primary responsibilities, and is highly likely to keep you perennially anxious, unsettled, ungrateful and resentful.

On Feminism

 

A feminist asked me what I think of feminism, so I told her a joke:

Why was the fraction nervous about marrying the decimal?

Standard Answer: Because he would have to convert. 

Feminist Answer: Because marriage is an oppressive tool of the patriarchy designed to trade and hold women like property. 😅

I then shared a profound truth that only a minority discern, but I hope you will. You don't need to be a feminist; you only need to be an egalitarian. If you're a feminist instead of an egalitarian, you're probably putting ideology before equality of opportunity – drawing battle lines in a fight that should have no sides.

If you’re still unsure why, think of it in terms of set theory. Egalitarianism is the broad set of beliefs that uphold equality of rights and opportunities for all people. Feminism is, at best, a skewed subset within it, and at worst, a narrow, reverse-sexist agenda that actually pushes against egalitarianism. Everything feminism purports to seek already falls inside the larger egalitarian set - so the fact that it’s promoted under the banner of feminism rather than egalitarianism suggests that it is really pushing against egalitarianism.

Valentine's Special: Is Your Partner Much Of A Catch?

 

Sometimes with beloveds I wonder, through an economist’s lens, what kind of a find he/she is in terms of numbers? 😃 That is to say, what kind of 1 in an n have I got? - where one always hopes n is a large number.  Is he/she a one in a hundred thousand, one in a million, one in a hundred (lol)? Naturally, you could say about any unique individual that they are 1 in n, where n is the number of (wo)men in the world today (or, as a subset, number of viable prospective partners). But we are not really asking that question; we are asking what kind of a catch our beloved is, in terms of the dating equivalent of price systems, matching markets and implicit valuation of preferences.

If you want to play along in your head, start by considering what you think your partner is in terms of catchiness – where someone highly desirable by many scores high in catchiness, and someone less desirable scores low in catchiness. Perhaps, like my wife is, you are with one of those one in a million male beloveds – one of those astounding finds that you almost can’t believe he came along at all 😃. Or maybe you’re with someone who was on the shelf for years, and you had to pull them off to save them from more decades of singleness and tracksuit-bottomed repeats on UK Gold 😃

I guess, suffice to say, the approximate 1 in an n value you assigned in your head definitely comes from an intuitive and rational calculation, because it’s the same kind of mental calculation we make when deciding how much we value fruit, cheese and trousers. That’s what the price system is for.

Similarly, a prospective partner can be viewed as a scarce resource in a two-sided matching market. Each individual possesses a set of attributes - physical, intellectual, emotional - that confer utility to potential matches. The rarity of certain combinations of attributes increases their “market value,” analogous to goods with limited supply but high demand.

What we know intuitively and rationally in terms of our specific partner is that they are part of the equation whereby the probability of encountering a partner with a specific combination of desirable attributes is a function of the distribution of those attributes in the population, alongside the selectivity of other agents in the market. Thus, in contemplating a partner’s “catchiness,” you are implicitly assessing their expected utility relative to the available alternatives and the opportunity cost of forgoing other potential matches.

Do with all that what you wish 😃

 

Cutting The Psychological Root Of False Beliefs

It’s strange that so many people believe so many obviously false things (which includes excessive over-interpretations). Let me offer you a hopefully useful way to think about the nature of false beliefs in a more expansive way. When people believe so many false things, you’ll find that those individual false beliefs are often trojan horses for other beliefs, which at their root are usually rationalisations for self-serving interests. If false belief x is really a proxy for false belief y, which is really a justification for self-serving interest z, then you can expect that when people try to justify false belief x they will produce all kinds of auxiliary defences which support x, y, and z.

Let’s take …. I don’t know……rent controls as an example. Rent controls are often defended as a straightforward way to make housing affordable. Yet this surface belief clearly functions as a proxy for a deeper socialist mindset that wants to believe markets are morally suspect and cannot be trusted to allocate essential goods. Beneath that, in turn, lies a self-serving interest in expanding political control over prices while virtue-signalling compassion at low personal cost.

Another example - climate alarmism commonly presents itself as genuine concern for the planet (also ticking the box for virtue-signalling), but in its more extreme forms it also often operates as a vehicle for the belief that only centralised governance can manage society’s problems. That belief then serves an interest in enlarging the scope, budget, and moral authority of the state, while fostering a sense of belonging for those involved in the cause.

A third example - cancel culture is often justified by the claim that certain speech causes direct harm and therefore must be curtailed. But this claim frequently masks a broader belief that some ideas are illegitimate and should not be heard at all, which itself supports a self-serving interest in status and power through moral gatekeeping. Hence the rapid escalation of rhetoric in which disagreement becomes “hate speech”, offence becomes “harm”, and enforcement is applied selectively to protect the gatekeepers’ own norms.

In all the above cases, you’ll notice too that justifications are offered by depicting challenges as unvirtuous, and they treat the economic and social costs of intervention as negligible or non-existent. At the same time, the short-term psychological benefits (but longer term psychological harm) are that these beliefs and causes stabilise identity, elevates status, and legitimise control to lessen anxiety - while allowing all of this to be experienced as perceived moral virtue. And it should be blindingly obvious now why most politicians jump on board with this – it serves the majority of their interests and conveniently aligns with what much of the electorate believes and seeks comfort in.

It’s much the same with protectionism too (political, economic and intellectual protectionism) - it is commonly defended as a way of saving domestic jobs, and protecting belief systems, yet this belief frequently substitutes for the assumption that exchange of goods, services and ideas is zero-sum and that external gain must imply internal loss. And, of course, that assumption conveniently serves political interests and intellectual grifters tied to protected industries or organisations. And you’ll probably notice too that political, economic and intellectual protectionism all present competition (of goods, services or ideas) as predation rather than cooperation.

You can see this too, of course, in young earth creationism - which is usually expressed as a claim about the age of the Earth based on the hyper literal interpretation of Genesis – but, of course, it frequently acts as a trojan horse for a deeper need for worldly things to remain subordinate to their particular theological reading to assuage fear and insecurity (see here). That, in turn, serves the preservation of group identity, perceived moral and spiritual superiority, and theological and communal authority.

Naturally, we could go on and on with further examples, but suffice to say, I think all the above is an important thing to understand in critical thinking. In each case of false beliefs, the surface belief attracts intense defensive pleading against all reason and evidence because it is psychologically, socially and culturally load-bearing. To abandon it would not merely concede an error; it would threaten the deeper beliefs, identity and interests it surreptitiously supports.

And consequently, to be rescued from false beliefs in the x and y category really means addressing the deeper interests in z that they protect. It requires more than correcting facts or pointing out errors of reasoning or interpretation; it requires lowering the psychological, social, and moral costs of abandoning those beliefs, and offering alternative ways for people to secure identity, meaning, and status without having to defend what is demonstrably false. Because the reality is, until the need for status, power, identity, belonging or moral superiority is met by the proper means - that of truth, competence and authentic virtue - and until the underlying psychological and social payoffs are removed or replaced, the false beliefs that pervade our society will continue to be defended with ever-greater ingenuity, precisely because so much else depends on them.

Why We Cannot Hold God Accountable

 

For years, I held the view that God is morally responsible for the creation story He chose to create. Given presumably an infinite number of possible creation stories He could have chosen, I wondered why He chose one with quite so much suffering in it. I guess, in a C.S. Lewis-esque ‘God in the Dock’ kind of way, I tended to put God “on trial” by judging His creation story by my mere human standards. But about twenty five years ago, I had an epiphany, where I started to develop the kernel of an idea about how absurd it is to even think of our perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God in terms of humanly discerned responsibility and accountability. So much so, that I came to realise that it’s preposterous to hold God morally responsible for anything, but that the reason why is far from obvious.

When we think of human responsibility in terms of right and wrong, and better or worse, we assign value judgements based on various possible scenarios - and if we have high standards, a hypothetical ideal that we bring to bear on the metric. When writing an essay, dealing with a noisy neighbour, or fixing something in the house, we can do a good or bad job, and make the results better or worse according to our efforts and conduct. But that is because everything we do is measured against a standard higher than ourselves, where however well we do, we always fall short of perfection. And the more complex the task, the further from the ideal we end up - a bit like how the bigger the circle we try to draw with a pencil, the less like a perfect circle it looks.

Now, to be clear, I’m not of the school that thinks all genuine value reduces to intrinsic value, and extrinsic value is wholly derivative. Some philosophers subscribe to this - they contend that greatness is identical to, and exhausted by, intrinsic value. That is, there is no greatness in itself apart from such value, and what is called extrinsic value is merely value derived from intrinsic value. But I reject this, because as far as humans are concerned, it’s clearly not true that an item has extrinsic value only insofar as it contributes to, or realises, something possessing intrinsic value. Some values are fundamentally relational - like, say, loyalty, fairness, courage, responsibility, artistic expression, comedy, hospitality, solidarity, and so forth - and not merely instrumental. To put it in formal mathematical language, even if intrinsic value exists, “greatness” is a multi-dimensional evaluative space rather than a single axis.

I can show further why it’s wrong by applying this to God, but with a caveat that, in actual fact, the proposition that genuine value reduces to intrinsic value, and extrinsic value is wholly derivative, is much truer of God than it is us. In fact, it’s nearly entirely true of God, but not quite wholly true. To say that God is the greatest possible being is to say that God possesses intrinsic value to the maximal degree permitted by possibility. In other words, God instantiates intrinsic greatness at its logically maximal extent by being the I AM under consideration (Exodus 3:14, John 5:58) - there can be nothing greater than God. But even God, about whom there is no possible increased greatness, has a greatness that is not maximally contained intrinsically; and we can surmise this because we know He desired to create - that is, to express His perfection extrinsically in creation - in order that He could have a loving relationship with His creation. God couldn’t have been maximally manifest or wholly fulfilled in His intrinsic perfection because He desired extrinsic value in terms of loving relationships. Don’t get me wrong, I do think God’s desire to create is itself part of His perfection, and His relationality is not a limitation but an expression of maximal perfection. But it must be true that God + creation is superior to God alone; otherwise, God would have had no reason to create anything at all.

An analogy from physics might help. We could think of intrinsic value like a rest mass: a property something has in itself, independent of external reference frames; and extrinsic value as being like kinetic energy - it exists only relative to interactions or relations; it is not a fundamental property but one that arises from a system’s relation to something else (a frame of reference, a field, a transformation). On this analogy, claiming that a being’s value is entirely intrinsic is like claiming that a particle’s rest mass is its fundamental property, while any additional energies - such as kinetic or potential energy - are purely relational and therefore derivative. And when applied to God, the analogy suggests that calling God the greatest possible Being is akin to saying that, if a particle possessed the highest rest mass permitted by physical law, that intrinsic property would define its fundamental status, with all other forms of energy remaining secondary and relational.

Perhaps now you can see what I mean by saying that it’s preposterous to hold God morally responsible for anything. Jack is morally responsible if he chooses to commit a bad act instead of a good one, or does a bad job rewiring the house because he chose to get drunk, because he had better options available to him, and better versions of himself that could have conducted those decisions. But our perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God cannot do anything better, and has no higher intrinsic or extrinsic state He can manifest. So, therefore, He cannot be responsible for something He cannot possibly be or enact, and He cannot possibly be or enact anything that is not good or perfect. 

You may say that in attributing goodness and perfection to God through my human-centric lens I am making a value judgement and assigning some kind of positive responsibility, but only insofar as I am projecting human standards onto a Being for whom such standards simply do not apply in quite the way a human can understand. It’s perhaps a bit like how a dog can discern a happy marriage from an unhappy one, but could only import crude canine speculation about the nature of deep love between beloveds.

God cannot be morally responsible for who He is, and who He is, is perfection, under which He has maximal compulsion to do the greatest things, even if by our human standards we might foolishly dwell in the illusion that we are equipped to act as judge. The accused stands above indictment, and the plaintiff lacks standing to bring a case.

On Alton Towers & Neurodivergent Queues

 

On this news item making the headlines - depending on the scenario, allowing/disallowing people with invisible disabilities to jump/not jump the queue has an obvious information problem in economics, namely: 

1)         Those who don’t really need to jump the queue but will do so anyway.

2)         Those who do really need to jump the queue but now can’t.

Even if we overlook a further issue – that there are people who potentially suffer more in queues that don’t get to skip the queue – this is still a classic economics problem of how to allocate scarce resources optimally when demand exceeds supply. As regular readers will know, there is nothing better than the market price system to allocate resources efficiently – so here we’d need a price system mechanism that also enables fairness and transparency alongside efficiency.

In a previous post some years ago, I warned of the dangers of demand inflation with increased blue badge allocation - that is, when more people qualify or apply than the system (in this case, parking spaces) can efficiently serve. What’s strange about demand inflation problems is that they are so obvious, easy to understand, and so predictable that it’s strange that the policymakers either totally ignore the trade offs, or act as though the problem won’t materialise. The man with a chronic lung condition who can’t find a parking space in the town centre because the eligibility increased criteria prioritised a less severe need has reasonable grounds to be aggrieved. Similarly, a policy like the above means that priority queues become overcrowded, and wait times rise for disabled guests themselves, thereby increasing the chances that more severely disabled people wait even longer. Because the system doesn’t price in different disabilities (as far as I know), the problems that arise become a predictable outcome of non-priced allocation under rising demand, just as they would if the items in question were bananas, coffee or laptops.

Given that any market-based mechanism would ideally balance three goals for this case: efficiency (optimal waiting times), equity (prioritising greatest need), and legitimacy (public perception of fairness), I’ve thought of three potential solutions, but they are all likely to disappoint one group. 

1)         Differential pricing for priority access: that is, a sliding-scale pricing depending on demand levels, which depends on severity of disability. Prices would act as signals that encourage only those who truly need or value priority access to use it at peak times.

2)         Market-compatible subsidies, such as means-tested disability credits.

3)         Time slots in queues: that is, instead of unlimited queue access, visitors could select ride time slots. When time slots are scarce, small tradeable allocations could allow flexibility and reduce congestion in peak queue times.

I think, given this is a difficult problem, those 3 options are probably the best I can come up with. But….there are significant issues with all 3. The main issue with differential pricing is that tying queue access to prices or severity risks appearing to monetise disability, and may disadvantage genuinely vulnerable people who are less able or willing to pay. The main issue with the market-compatible subsidies is that means-testing and credit systems introduce administrative complexity, and someone has to pick up the cost of that. And the main issue with time-slot allocations is that they impose spillover costs on non-disabled customers and on the business owners who cannot offer the same level of service as broadly or equitably.

No, I think no solution truly satisfies, because this is a complex Hayekian knowledge problem to solve – and probably impossible to resolve in a Pareto efficient manner (by making no other party worse off) without one or more groups feeling hard done by.

Further reading: The Economics Of Queuing, Booking & Paying

On Adults Engaging With Children

Many adults seem generally comfortable around children, but I observe other adults who look very self-conscious trying to relate to and converse with children. Some of those adults may find it equally difficult conversing with other adults, but some probably find children uniquely difficult to relate to, due to the gulf in age and understanding.

For those people, the writer Rebecca West makes an eloquent observation about children that might help. In one of her novels, she says that children have their adult qualities within them but are handicapped by a humiliating disguise. I wouldn’t take it hyper literally, of course, but it’s a sharp observation about how children’s core temperament contains adult qualities in seed form, and as they grow, their real interior perspective develops at a rate that is constrained by their childlike frame.

This kind of ideation might counsel against patronising children based on what we see on the surface rather than the continuity between who they are and who they are becoming. The essence of the adult is already present, certainly in nascent form; it’s just trapped in a body and social position that can’t express itself fully yet. But children are already equipped with the seeds of adult flaws and the seeds of adult virtues. Perhaps this is why experience tells me that children grow in confidence more quickly, and mature emotionally more steadily, when adults speak to them respectfully and sincerely, as fellow persons rather than caricatures of childhood.

Answered Prayer & Probability

 

A lot of people don't believe that God answers prayers. I will show you why we can be reasonably sure He does. God answering prayers is basically this; a Christian prays for x, x happens, therefore x happened because God answered the prayer. That happens a lot, but this apparent pattern is complicated by two common exceptions: times when a Christian prays for x, and x does not occur; and times when x occurs without anyone praying for it at all.

It is easy to understand why both exceptions occur, though; when a Christian prays for x, and x does not occur, we ought to conclude that x was the wrong prayer or not aligned with God's will. And x occurring without anyone praying for it at all does not tell us anything much about whether God answers prayers, any more than a fair coin landing heads tells us whether coins in general are biased.

A more appropriate way to affirm that God answers prayers is to look at what is being prayed for, and ask what the likelihood of the event is anyway without the prayer. For example, suppose Jack has a deck of cards, and prays that, after shuffling them, he will draw the king of diamonds. Since there are 52 cards in the deck, there is a 1 in 52 probability of this happening by chance alone. If 52 independent people were each to pray that they would draw the king of diamonds from their shuffled deck, probability suggests that, on average, one of them would succeed and might therefore conclude that their prayer had been answered.

What we are therefore looking for, in order to justify belief in answered prayer, is to consider events that occur where there is an astronomically low probability that it would happen by chance, but which are specifically and unambiguously prayed for in advance. This requirement precludes cases in which low-probability events are later interpreted as answers to prayer simply because they happened to occur, and excludes low-probability events that do in fact occur by chance, but lack any prior, specific prayer corresponding to them.

At this point, the sheer weight of Christian testimony should be ample evidence that God answers prayers - the kind of prayers which significantly undermine objections such as 'it is only anecdotal testimony' or 'there is no medical verification'. I have been instantly healed a few times immediately after prayer - from a pulled muscle in my leg, and from a chronic tooth pain - and I have witnessed a blind person given their sight back immediately after prayer, a severely deformed leg twist around, grow and be restored immediately after prayer, and a lady crippled and confined to a wheelchair all her adult life stand up and walk immediately after prayer. And they are merely a few experiential drops in a sea of miraculous testimony amassed worldwide.

The likelihood of any one of those events happening by chance is astronomically low, so the likelihood of any one of those events happening by chance immediately after prayer is even lower (for obvious reasons). Therefore, the most likely explanation is that these immediate healings were answers to prayer - especially when these events are considered cumulatively. If the likelihood of an instant healing is almost zero and it happens straight after prayer, the best explanation is the prayer caused it to happen. If the same thing repeats five times in just my experience, the best explanation being answered prayer becomes cumulatively stronger. When this pattern is multiplied across the experiences of Christians more broadly, answers to prayer become so much more plausible that it would be difficult to dismiss without adopting an unjustified scepticism.

 

EDIT TO ADD:

A friend asked about why miracles aren’t more attested to in terms of medical statistics.

My comment: Let me start with a question for you; even if we simply focus on the prayer examples I outlined - to keep it concrete and less abstract – I wonder why you focused not on them but on the proposition that if prayer worked like a predictable medical intervention that it would yield statistical differences in population health data. Please don’t misunderstand, I understand the appetite to broaden it to a wider empirical investigation, but if one is faced with gold standard evidence with 5 evident miracles, then a lack of consistent, predictable formal medical outcomes is not adequate to undermine it by itself.

I agree with your point that prayer and belief in God can enhance outcomes through psychological and community engagement – and given the truth of Christianity, one could reasonably expect that any behaviours that align with His truth can be expected to enhance well-being and utility.  But most Christians understand that prayer is about relationship with God Himself, and is therefore unlikely to be friendly to statistical analyses when treated too mechanically. God is not a God who likes to be tested as though He has something to prove – especially if one doesn’t approach Him with humility (not saying you lack humility). Once one is in a relationship with Him, and gets to experience the power of His love, grace and what He can do for us, those kinds of empirical probing can only fail to enchant. A bit like if a bodybuilder has shown us he can bench press 200kg, investigations about whether he can curl two 5kg pink dumbbells seem quite remiss.

Incidentally, I don’t think you’re being closed-minded or churlish at all - you’re attempting to apply a consistent standard of evidence, which is the very bedrock of empirical investigation. And it remains an interesting question about how some truthful phenomena manifest primarily through population-level statistics and how some operate more at the level of cumulative testimony. But as I’ve argued in other articles, the cumulative testimony in favour of Christianity is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for its truth. 

Where to Find Me - and What’s What

 

I’m now publishing across several platforms, and in case it’s helpful, here’s a brief guide to where to find what I write and record - and how each space is likely to develop going forward. As I think about building platforms alongside my books, there are three main places to connect with my work:

The Philosophical Muser (blog)
This is where I publish longer-form essays and reflections - public reasoning on faith, culture, economics, truth, and the ideas shaping our shared life. Over time, I expect to migrate some of my energy away from the blog and towards the two subscription-based platforms below. That said, The Philosophical Muser consistently receives between 30,000 and 50,000 views each month, so it will remain an important archive, alongside occasional new pieces to keep it alive.

Dear Treasured You (Substack)
This space is shorter, more personal, and more reflective - a sister project to my book of the same name. It takes the form of a series of letters offering wisdom, encouragement, and hard-won insights for the road ahead. My hope is that Dear Treasured You helps people feel more treasured, more loved, and more inspired to fulfil their potential, and this is the platform I’m especially keen to grow.

YouTube - The Philosophical Muser
This is where ideas are explored out loud: longer talks, short reflections, philosophical and theological musings, guest conversations, and discussions on psychology, culture, and the life of the mind. It’s a space for thinking in public and in company, and one I plan to develop further over time.

Wherever you choose to read or listen, thank you for being part of my adventure. 😊

Confusion or Deception

 

One of my long-standing lines of enquiry when it comes to people who habitually get things wrong for a living – whether that’s Ken Ham, Richard Carrier, Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Jones, or whomever – is to ask whether what’s at the heart of their folly is primarily confusion or deception. I say ‘primarily’ because it is invariably both, but I think the ratio differs depending on the individual in question. 

In the deepest sense, to ask whether figures like Richard Carrier or Ken Ham are deliberately deceptive or sincerely confused is framing it too simplistically – because it is actually a dynamical mix of the two, where, in practice, I’d say the psychology looks more like this:

Initial confusion → motivated reasoning → identity investment → strategic misrepresentation.

By the time someone is publicly entrenched, sincerity and deception coexist at a level beyond which it’s hard to shake off – but it’s clearly different for different individuals. Some have more of an innocent misunderstanding – like, say, Corbyn on economics – that leads them astray. Some have more of a sinister form of controlled deception – like Richard Carrier – that leads them astray. But for most of these individuals, what usually begins as more honest category mistakes (like misapplying tools, overgeneralising models, misunderstanding disciplinary norms, etc) soon become being wrong with more confidence (see the Dunning-Kruger effect) as motivated reasoning kicks in, and evidence is no longer evaluated fairly or honestly. At this stage, counter-evidence is reframed as bias, conspiracy, or incompetence; methodological choices start to track desired outcomes, and so forth. But, curiously, I think at this unconscious stage the perpetrators still feel honest - they are just selectively reasoning.

Then, once we get to the identity investment stage, we’re almost dealing with a different person – because at this stage confusion becomes directional in order to serve their own needs - and in many cases the beliefs are so inextricably bound up in the individual’s identity, reputation, self-image and income stream that you’ve got almost zero chance of them changing their ways. And I don’t think ‘almost zero’ is an exaggeration either, because remember, you have to a certain kind of person to dig yourself into such a hole in the first place.

What’s interesting is that by the time they get to the strategic misrepresentation stage, the more similar to each other they have become. Not in temperament, necessarily – but usually with hostility at getting found out, asymmetric standards (strict for opponents, lax for self), metric inflation (citations, lists, popularity), shifting definitions mid-argument, treating criticism as evidence of persecution – the whole range of bulls**t bingo I’m always going on about. At this stage, once this level of self-deception is in place, outward deception becomes seamlessly blended into their output. They’ve been lying to themselves for so long that tactical behaviour replaces honest integrity, and they’ve become largely inured to the cheat and to their own loss of integrity.

Of course, there are tangible indicators for how to tell confusion from deception in practice. One reliable diagnostic is how they behave when corrected by more qualified peers or better arguments. If you never see them pause for thought, honestly consider counter-evidence, or seriously engage with alternative propositions, it’s a dead giveaway that truth-seeking is not the governing norm for them.

In summary, this is the complex psychology of the grifter – it’s more than just ‘confusion or deception’ – it has to be a heavy mix of both, because confusion is a form of deception, and deception is a form of confusion, and it comes in degrees. What you see with them is an interesting trifecta; a mind that is simultaneously confident enough to feel righteous, confused enough to be wrong, and strategic enough to continually mislead. And they can be on complete opposite sides, yet be pretty much the same person when it comes to these psychological operations.

How The Bible Is True

Someone asked me what it means to say the Bible is true. I responded that it is true at different levels, and I alluded to the zooming in and out model I included in one of my books, which might interest some of you with a similar question of that nature.

“The interfacing between the physical and the metaphysical is merely a case of zooming in and zooming out, rather like how a photographer zooms in and out with a camera lens. Zooming in gives you a better perspective of local, select details, but on its own it would be too narrow a focus to see the wider picture. Zooming out gives you a comprehensive look at the wider picture, but on its own it lacks the finer details of the perspective of the local picture.”

For example, we can look at a painting and consider its effects in terms of aesthetics, and its investment of meaning, and its evocation of emotion. Or we can consider it in terms of its physical constitution, which can be reduced to paint particles, atoms and smaller sub-atomic constituents. The first is a zooming out with an artistic, creative lens, and the second is zooming in with a scientific, empirical lens (with opportunity for overlap in either). Similarly, the lenses through which we view nature as a whole are variable; we can see it as an object of empirical study but also as a wondrous creation and a grand narrative, choreographed by the Divine, of which we are a central part. A tsunami can be assessed in terms of plate tectonics and the Earth's crustal deformation, or it can be assessed in terms of human suffering and issues surrounding theodicy. The particular lens of reality is the one chosen by the beholder depending on what he or she is trying to describe. 

Similarly, you can think of the Bible as being true in terms of zooming in and zooming out, where it is true at different levels - at the level of the paragraph, the chapter, the book, and the whole, and how the more we zoom out to discern the complete, interconnected panorama of revelation, the truer it gets. The reason the Bible becomes truer the more we zoom out is because scripture can be understood as nested sets: the paragraph is a subset of the chapter, the chapter is a subset of the book, the book is a subset of the whole. This means that the set of truths at each level expands as we zoom out further, so each zoomed out set encapsulates the truths of the sets it contains, until we get to the whole, which encapsulates the entirety of Biblical truths.

This also means that at the most zoomed in level there may well be verses that come across as difficult to reconcile - even appearing inconsistent, contradictory or morally short-sighted at times, especially out of context. But the more we zoom out into the expanse of chapters, books, and ultimately the entire canon, these tensions will find their place within a larger Divine narrative, showing how individual statements contribute to a coherent, unified truth. In other words, because God entrusted the writing of scripture to flawed humans under the guidance of His Spirit, apparent difficulties in the texts at the micro-level dissolve into the broader, deeper narrative at the macro-level, where the richness, profundity, and interconnection of the whole Bible reveal the awesome love, grace, and sovereignty of Christ.

Think of it this way - as we zoom out, the set of truths expands, capturing not only the local truths of individual passages but also the patterns, themes, and overarching purposes that emerge across chapters, books, and ultimately the entire canon. At the level of the whole, the Bible’s truth is fullest, because all the smaller subsets - the paragraphs, chapters, and books - are integrated into a unified vision that reveals its deepest meaning and coherence.

 

Unifying Moral Philosophy

 

If you're new to philosophy, you'll get told that there are loads of moral theories to consider, and you'll end up entangled in a complex web of interrelated and competing propositions that take you far off course from fundamental principles. Here I’m going to show that you only really need the big four, and I'm going to radically simplify things by showing that the big four moral theories in philosophy are really just partial rational reconstructions of a unified moral reality whose fullness is revealed in Christ. In other words, the fundamental moral theories we engage with in moral philosophy are partial, distorted, or truncated apprehensions of a deeper moral reality that finds its unity in Christ.

First, I’ll briefly summarise the big four moral theories. Consequentialism judges actions by their outcomes: the right act is the one that produces the best overall result. Deontology is underwhelmed by outcome-based morality, insisting that some actions are inherently right or wrong because of moral duties and principles that must be followed regardless of consequences. Virtue ethics shifts the focus from isolated acts to the formation of character, arguing that morality is about becoming a good person whose habits naturally produce right action. Natural law provides the deeper foundation for all of this by asserting that morality is grounded in the purpose and structure of human nature, so the good is what fulfils the kind of creature we were created to be, and moral rules are practical guides to flourishing.

To see how the fundamental moral theories are embedded in a deeper Christ-centred reality, we must first recognise that Christ is the moral telos: the final purpose toward which all moral action is directed. Creation has a purpose - relationship with God - and moral norms are ordered toward that end. Outcomes matter in worldly terms, but they matter primarily because they shape us toward or away from that end. Likewise, God’s commandments are truthful expressions of the good life for creatures made in God’s image.

From this perspective, each of the four moral theories presents a genuine aspect of moral reality, but each is but a subset of the full picture - the moral perfection of God. Let me try to lay it out. Consequentialism correctly insists that the consequences of our actions matter; God cares about results, because results shape the moral formation of the world and the flourishing of individuals. But consequentialism becomes incomplete when it treats outcomes as the sole criterion of rightness, inadequately capturing the wrongness of actions even if they produce good effects.

Deontology corrects this by insisting that moral duties are binding, but it can become rigid when it divorces duties from the moral telos and the real effects of action, treating rules as if they are extricable from human flourishing, which scripture confirms is untrue. Virtue ethics rightly returns us to character, arguing that morality is about becoming a person who naturally loves well; but it can become incomplete if it fails to specify the objective good toward which virtue aims, or if it ignores the need for moral rules in a fallen world.

So, here we could say that natural law provides the missing foundation, in that it explains why moral norms bind, why virtues are ordered toward human flourishing, and why outcomes and duties are not ultimately mere human construct, but in fact rooted in the purpose God built into human nature.

Thus, when seen most truthfully, the “big four” are not competing systems, as many philosophers think - they are more like four lenses we use to view the same horizon. Consequentialism highlights the moral importance of results, deontology highlights the binding authority of duty, virtue ethics highlights the formation of character, and natural law supplies the metaphysical and theological grounding that makes all three intelligible. When they are properly understood, they complement each other, and they all point toward the same moral reality revealed in Christ.

We are nearly there, but while I think everything above is correct - it won’t quite do by itself, because we now have to frame this though God’s love (agape) as the inner power that explains why telos, duty, consequence, and virtue all cohere. Because at the very deepest level, the unity of these moral perspectives cannot be explained by abstract teleology alone, only by Divine love. To offer a musical analogy, the telos explains the intended harmony of the piece, but only love explains the Divine unity and expressiveness of the performance. In other words, one can play some of the correct notes and still miss the music; love is what binds the timing, tone, cohesion and emphasis into something intelligible as music rather than mere notes and chords.

Or to put it another way, the telos explains where the journey is going, but love explains the call to undertake it, persevere through it, and be united with fellow travellers along the way - because the whole journey and the final destination is all about love really. If we could peep behind the stage door and see the full production scenes for the grand cosmic narrative, we’d see that every human motive, aspiration, connection, desire and decision - from the clothes we wear, the career we pursue, the friendships we cultivate, the families we form, the sacrifices we make, the approval we seek, the meaning we chase - was really a reaching out for love rightly ordered and finally fulfilled in God.

That is why I think Christ names love of God and love of neighbour as the two great commandments, because in doing so He reveals love not merely as one moral value among others, but as the true form of all moral goodness. Love explains why consequences matter, because to love another is to seek their true good; it explains why duties bind, because love respects the dignity and inviolability of persons; it explains why virtue is central, because love must be learned, habituated, and embodied in character; and it explains why natural law has authority, because love is ordered toward the flourishing of the kinds of creatures God created us to be. Detached from love, consequentialism becomes a mere calculus of instrumental optimisation, deontology becomes mere legalism, virtue ethics becomes mere self-cultivation, and natural law becomes mere biology. Rooted in love, however, these are revealed as distinct but harmonious ways of articulating what it means to live rightly before God and with one another.

Why There Is No Such Thing As A 'Cultural Christian'

 

Strident atheist Richard Dawkins has made the headlines recently by referring to himself as a ‘cultural Christian’. In a recent social media post, I stated that there isn’t really such a thing as a cultural Christian – it’s just special pleading, to excuse a lack of real faith and obedience yet associate yourself with Christian virtues. And after a discussion ensued, I wrote a few more things, so thought I’d turn it into a blog post, in case it’s useful to any of my readers.

I went on to say that you either accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour and seek wholeheartedly to live in accordance with that belief, or like a branch cut from the vine, you bear no fruit and remain far from the source. Jesus is clear; discipleship is full commitment – and while genuine faith can be immature, inconsistent, or still forming, discipleship ultimately entails real allegiance to Jesus as Lord, expressed in repentance and a transformed direction of life. There is no ‘cultural’ middle way there.

One or two Christians took issue and said they do believe there is such a thing as a ‘cultural Christian’ – but I think much of the defence of ‘cultural Christian’ here rests on a category error. The proper definition of a Christian is somebody who has accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour – it’s a clear cut demarcation line (see 1 Corinthians 12:3, John 3:3, John 1:12, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthians 5:17). This isn’t to deny, as I said above, that genuine Christians may be immature, inconsistent, or still growing - but those are questions of discipleship, not definition. One cannot be a “Cultural somebody who has accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour” if they haven’t accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Similarly, one cannot be a ‘cultural Christian’ by virtue of merely living in a Christian country, any more than a man who is not legally qualified to offer advice about the law can call himself a lawyer, just because he mixes in circles in which lawyers mix. In using the lawyer illustration, I do not, of course, mean to imply that one has to be qualified to be a Christian. Quite the contrary.

Consequently, then, the two most vociferous arguments presented in support of there being such a thing as a ‘cultural Christian’ actually had it backwards, where the objection actually strengthen my case and weakens theirs. I’ll take them in turn:

1. The faulty ‘salt’ metaphor objection
One commenter claimed the ‘salt’ metaphor (from Matthew 5:13) argues in favour of a ‘cultural Christian’, although he has subsequently deleted that comment, so hopefully he now sees it is faulty. Here’s why. Let’s simplify it in set-theoretic terms. Let the set of Christians mean those who have accepted Christ as Lord, as per my proper definition. And let the set of people influenced by Christianity mean all those whose thinking, behaviour, or moral intuitions have been shaped by Christianity. It is obviously true that the set of Christians is contained within the larger set of people influenced by Christianity. But it is not true that the set of people influenced by Christianity is contained within the set of Christians. Being influenced by Christianity does not make someone a Christian. The “salt” metaphor describes how Christians affect those influenced by Christianity. It does not claim that those who are affected by this influence thereby become Christians themselves. So, to infer the existence of “cultural Christians” from the “salt” teaching is therefore a non sequitur - it illegitimately moves from the fact of influence to a claim about identity, without any logical justification. Salt seasons meat; it does not turn meat into salt.

The salt metaphor describes the effect Christians have on the world, not the definition of who is a Christian. One must comprehend that influence does not equal membership. In fact, we can take it further, when we see Jesus warn that “If the salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer good for anything” (Matthew 5:13). That is, salt that becomes indistinguishable from meat ceases to be salt. A “cultural Christian” category actually describes unsalty salt in Jesus’ terms - so the metaphor actually cuts against the commenter’s argument, and strengthens mine.

2. The faulty ‘connotational /notational’ objection
The second objection was that since natural language is connotational rather than notational "cultural Christianity" does have utility, and that in denying there is such a thing as a ‘cultural Christian’ I am attempting to use natural language as if it were notational alone. To which I say, it’s strange that the objector would use the connotational/notational language distinction on their side of the discussion, as this one also weakens the opposition’s case and strengths mine. Here’s why. Defining one’s terms and precision of language is the bedrock of a discussion, and that is why I reject the notion of a ‘cultural Christian. That is, connotational language is still not extricable from meaning - and because natural language is connotational, misleading connotations matter more, not less. So when the commenter said “The phrase has utility because natural language is connotational”, they are getting it backwards. I think the phase ‘cultural Christian has less utility because natural language is connotational – and whether one is a Christian or not belongs in a much more precise category of language, in that one either is a Christian or one isn’t. 

So, ironically, I think the objector’s comment is actually conceding my concern. The primary issue is about whether a term that grammatically predicates “Christian” of people or societies can do so without implying some form of Christian identity. That implication is not something I’m inventing; it’s carried by ordinary usage of the word “Christian” as a noun. So, because language carries connotations, attaching “Christian” to a person or culture inevitably suggests belonging, not merely influence. That is why the phrase does not remain neutral, even when someone hedges it with quotation marks.

In closing
Being ‘born again’ and having the Holy Spirit is a binary distinction (see 1 Corinthians 12:3). So, this is a discussion about semantic scope. I am not denying that Christianity has cultural effects, of course, or that people may identify with those effects. I am denying that the word ‘Christian’ can be detached from allegiance to Christ without losing its meaning. If all people mean is “culturally influenced by Christianity,” then that phrase already exists and is perfectly clear. Introducing the noun “Christian” does no additional explanatory work - so precision of language and definition is key here. Once we are talking about individuals, “Christian” is not a loose cultural or sociological descriptor. In both Scripture and ordinary language, it names allegiance to Christ, because that’s how Christ defines it. Therefore, culturally influenced by Christianity does not equate to 'cultural Christian' because, as I said clearly above, a Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour and has received the Holy Spirit as a result. If you accept that definition (and proposition) - and I can't see why you wouldn't - then one either is or is not a Christian. And therefore, the term 'cultural Christian' is a bogus distraction. A British Muslim who has lived in the UK all his life might be "culturally influenced by Christianity", but we wouldn't be helping matters of clarity much if we called him a 'cultural Christian'.

And this applies to Richard Dawkins too. However much one may admire aspects of Christianity or acknowledge its cultural influence, the New Testament uses the word Christian to describe those who have come to personal allegiance to Jesus Christ. That invitation remains open to everyone, at any stage of life, and Christianity has always insisted that becoming a Christian is not about heritage or admiration, but about response. And there’s always time for Richard – my dear mum became a Christian at the age of 79, and is now 80, and has been totally transformed by her new relationship with God. The invitation remains open to all.