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.

Journeys & Destinations

 

“What we call the beginning is often the end;
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
T. S. Eliot

I was thinking about our pursuits towards achievement in life, and how it is a cycle of journeys and destinations. The journeys of striving lead to destinations of success, but those destinations beget further journeys towards other successes. We know that Camus suggested the struggle is part of the prize, but I think T.S. Eliot is the best writer we encounter at revealing how beginnings and endings fold into one another. Every time something ends - a stage of life, a relationship, a project - something new is beginning, often imperceptibly, because the “end” is not a terminus, it’s a threshold (and highest of all, in Christ’s “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”, Matthew 16:25, where the “end” of the self is the “beginning” of spiritual rebirth).

So, when I think about something like my writing journey over the past 35 years < or insert your own equivalent here >, I find that the gain from striving for a good end is probably at least as formative as the end itself. In other words, any successes I’ve had that contribute to my well-being should be embraced at least as much as the end of the successes, because if “to make an end is to make a beginning”, then in most cases the journey is more valuable than the destination, because each journey encompasses every end, and every end encapsulates each part of the journey - and also because the journeys make up far more of the adventure than the destinations.

Consequently, the value of success in writing lies not primarily in the moment of achievement, but in the vitality and meaning it gives to the act of striving itself, just like the anticipation of a luxury meal often nourishes the soul’s appreciation of fine dining more than the sensation of having eaten the meal. You know what I mean, I think; like how, for those inclined, the seasonal tending of a garden can bring more joy than the brief periods of bloom; or how, if you’re a lark, the fresh dawn often feels more wondrous than the day it foretells. And it’s almost always the case that the effort of learning shapes us more deeply than the end knowledge itself.

All that constitutes the sense in which the striving for good things in general ensures that creation itself is part of the principal reward, where the primary gift of success is not the success, but who you became in pursuit of it. And those who have been disenchanted by a false source of fulfilment will be the first to tell us how pursuing anything valuable merely for its own sake proves to be a hollow endeavour that merely leaves us yearning for more.

Help! My Children Aren’t Christians!

Or alternatively: “Help! My Children Aren’t Christ-centred!” I’m sure we all know many Christian parents of young people who are not in an active relationship with Christ, who show little interest in coming to church, and who currently show no sign of wishing to fully engage with the Christian faith. Let’s analyse some possible reasons why. First, let me draw your attention to this Bana article Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church - which is over ten years old now - but indications from my searches online today suggest the same multifactorial pattern is still prevalent in 2025. The six reasons are, in summary: 

1 – Churches seem overprotective

2 – Teens’ experience of Christianity is shallow

3 – Churches appear antagonistic to science

4 – Church teaching on sexuality feels simplistic, judgmental

5 – They wrestle with Christianity’s exclusivity

6 – Church feels unfriendly to doubt

Now, if you see the world in the way I do, you might already sense that this is quite a mixed bag, and that it evokes the Nietzschean problem (it’s not always easy to tell vice from virtue, and virtue from vice), in that from the perspective of many of those outside the church, some of these I think are virtues being confused with vices; and from the perspective of many of those of us inside the church, some of them are vices being confused with virtues. Let’s take each in turn, where I’ll elaborate on what the findings are, then make a comment:

Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective
“Today’s teens have unprecedented access to ideas and culture. They want faith to connect with the world, yet experience Christianity as stifling, fear-based, risk-averse. One-quarter say “Christians demonize everything outside the church” (23%). Others feel the church “ignores the problems of the real world” (22%) or is too worried about “movies, music, and video games” (18%).”

My comment: This is the one I find most ambiguous. Christianity has always been, in one sense, radically protective of its truths and virtues, especially in the sense that it has the power to expose and diminish falsehoods. And when the faith is put into proper practice, as per scriptural teachings, it guards the soul against idols that masquerade as freedom but quietly enslave too – so there is probably a lot of virtue being confused with vice here in Reason #1, especially in a world full of people wanting to be gods of their own lives. Yet, on the other hand, when young people in church experience what they deem overprotectiveness, it’s often their particular church’s defensive crouch, in which the leadership behaves as though culture is primarily a contaminant rather than a mission field, so there is mileage in the concern too. But I think a profound truth that always abounds – and especially in the modern era, with floods of competing falsehoods and distractions, more prevalent than ever before - is that a Christian faith that cannot trust its own truths and robustness in the open air of any society and culture will struggle to retain those not rooted in relationship with Christ.

Reason #2 – Teens’ experience of Christianity is shallow
“Many feel something is lacking in church. One-third say “church is boring” (31%). A quarter say faith isn’t relevant to their careers or interests (24%), or that “the Bible is not taught clearly or often enough” (23%). One-fifth say “God seems missing from my experience of church” (20%).”

My comment: Hmmm, okay, but remember that boredom is rarely about a lack of stimulation; it is almost always about a lack of depth within a mind not fully pursuing the adventure of truthseeking. When young people say church feels shallow, I believe that what they are really coveting - often inarticulately - is a faith so much more truthful, powerful and transformative than anything that the weight of life alternatives can hope to offer them. Acquire a relationship with God of such depth and growth that it transforms your heart and mind, reorders your desires, and draws you into the gravitational pull of ultimate meaning, and do all this with the consistently devoted mindset required, and the chances of it appearing boring or shallow are zero. If young people do not encounter this level of exhilaration, it is not surprising that it seems absent in many typical church services or congregations. The places I’ve visited where God appears to be somewhat absent or diluted is often because, for the members, He has been reduced to a comforting abstraction rather than proclaimed as the living centre of reality.

Reason #3 – Churches appear antagonistic to science
“Young adults feel tension between Christianity and science. Many say “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%) or that churches are “out of step with the scientific world” (29%). Some see Christianity as “anti-science” (25%) or were “turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate” (23%). Science-minded believers struggle to stay faithful in science careers.”

My comment: Yeah, well I’m sure my views on this are crystal clear by now. Christianity has nothing to fear from science, and science says very little about the most important questions that belong in Christianity’s domain. When both are apprehended properly, they are no more in conflict than T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is in conflict with Watson and Crick’s The Double Helix. Yet when the church speaks as though faith were threatened by honest empirical inquiry, it inadvertently implies that truth it is trying to defend is fragile. And in cases when religious fundamentalism distorts empirical facts, it actually cannot tolerate external questions because it knows deep down in the recesses of the conscience that it may not survive them. The bogus, humanly-constructed conflict between faith and science has undoubtedly been one of the most damaging things to the Christian faith – it’s all such a shame, and so entirely unnecessary.

Reason #4 – Church teaching on sexuality feels simplistic, judgmental
“In a hyper-sexualized culture, young believers struggle with chastity and delayed marriage. Research shows many are as sexually active as peers. One-sixth feel judged for their “mistakes” (17%). Among Catholics, two-fifths say church teachings on sexuality and birth control are “out of date” (40%).”

My comment: This is often a case of virtue being confused with vice. Christian sexual ethics are costly, demanding, and countercultural, but entirely necessary and beneficial - and one can easily see the mass harms caused by their abandonment, which is what has happened in much of modern culture has largely abandoned. On the other hand, judgemental Christianity is also a malady, especially when mercy is low. In a world already saturated with shame, anxiety and identity crises, young people who come smack against the church’s failure to accompany them patiently through failure and mistakes, are likely to see even Christianity’s most profound truths and virtues as vehicles of condemnation. If that happens to you, please do find a more loving and gracious church - there are plenty out there.

Reason #5 – They wrestle with Christianity’s exclusivity
“Shaped by values of openness and diversity, young adults want common ground. Three in ten say “churches are afraid of other faiths” (29%) and feel “forced to choose between my faith and my friends” (29%). One-fifth say church feels like a “country club, only for insiders” (22%).”

My comment: Here again, the vice–virtue confusion is acute. While exclusivity without humility or invitation is prohibitive to community, Christianity is exclusive in the same way that truth is exclusive: not because it wishes to exclude, but because it cannot be two contradictory things at once. To say that Christ is the way, truth and life is a claim about reality. Truth precludes falsehood in a healthy and beneficial way, a bit like how medicine deals with our sickness in order to heal. So one cannot come to a full life in Christ except on His terms, which also happen to be the best terms we will ever encounter.

Reason #6 – Church feels unfriendly to doubt
“Young adults say church isn’t a safe place for doubts. They feel unable “to ask my most pressing life questions” (36%) and many have “significant intellectual doubts” (23%). One in six say their faith “does not help with depression or emotional problems” (18%).”

My comment: Yes, this is a big problem – and runs counter to Tennyson’s great observation that “There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds”. One of the best lessons to be learned is that doubt is not the opposite of faith; indifference is. As we see in so many Biblical figures, doubt is often the sign that faith is alive enough to contemplate, to wrestle with, and to pursue God with even greater depth. When churches treat doubt as a moral failure rather than an intellectual and spiritual journey, they unintentionally teach young people to either pretend or leave – which probably engenders a near 100% hit rate because churches that treat doubt as a moral failure are places one would be advised to leave anyway. If the church cannot be a place where questioning, uncertainty, and intellectual struggle are spoken aloud, young people will seek other spaces that at least allow them to tell the truth as they see it, even if it takes them off course for a while.

In closing, I will mention something from a previous blog post that might be useful as an adjunct to the above. A friend of a friend, a researcher called Dave Fenton, did some research on young people who had fallen away from the church at a young age and were no longer following Jesus or on a close walk with Him. The researcher found that the most common reason given was that they felt their parents weren’t living a very Christian life at home, outside of the church – and that their outside conduct didn’t live up to the messages being preached in the church.

So, if the title “Help! My Children Aren’t Christians!” is relatable (and similarly for other young people you know, not just your own children), then I think this taps into one of the all-time most important questions about Christianity – one that never goes away: What kind of faith are people being invited into? Because one thing we can always say with confidence is that young people are exquisitely sensitive to what is real. They may not always be quite ready to give their life to Christ (I know that feeling when I was on the cusp of becoming a Christian), but they can usually embrace authenticity, honesty, mystery, difficulty, and cost that offers genuine transformation. But they rarely forgive boredom, fear, inauthenticity, dishonesty, false humility, false confidence, exaggerated certainty, judgementalism, artifice or pretence.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hard balance for Christianity to strike, because too much cultural compromise or cultural insulation creates barriers. But Christianity can truly flourish when it is lived as a truthful, honest, life-changing, exhilarating encounter with the living God, and parents and elders who manufacture relevance or dilute conviction will only end up dissuading in the long run. They need only to embody a faith worth exploring and acquiring - one that trusts truth, welcomes honest struggle, and radiates a joy proportionate to the transformative reality it proclaims. If we get back to that, then all the signs are that, for young people, Christianity can be irresistibly caught and sustained.

 

Job Vacancy: Low Skill, High Pay

 

The value of labour is conditioned primarily by two things; the knowledge, skills and experience required to do a job - and related to that, how easy it would be for the next person in line to come in and fill a vacancy. That is why lawyers don't earn £19,000 a year and waiters don't earn £70,000 a year. That is also why you are unlikely to obtain a job with a £70,000 a year salary without the skills and experienced required.

There are, however, one or two exceptions to this near-ineluctable law - the most obvious one is being a Member of Parliament, where you can be ludicrously uninformed, with no real skills or experience in anything that equips you to do your job competently, and yet still find yourself earning an annual salary of £93,904.

Apart from perhaps the paid social commentators who earn their living writing similar guff to what most politicians come out with (and most of them aren't on such a high salary), being an MP really is one of those ultra-rare cases where you can earn a reasonably large salary without having much of a clue about what you're talking about.

And if you happen to find yourself fortunate enough to be in a safe seat, whereby enough of the electorate in your particular constituency are pliable enough to keep voting you in, it's a well-paid job in which you can get away with riding on your public-funded gravy train of confusion for decades.

Only in jobs whereby the salary of such incompetent people is forcibly funded by people with no choice in the matter could such highly paid low skill workers earn over three times the average UK wage and get away with being so confused about so many basic principles related to their roles in society.

Ways Not To Believe Part II

Having argued that non-belief is probably the best term to describe people who are not Christians (see here), it’s probably worth considering whether disbelief is just belief in the negation or a distinct cognitive standpoint. If we think that to not believe q = to believe not-q, then we contend that If Jack believes p, then he automatically believes not-(not-p), which is equivalent to believing p again.

But if not believing is a distinct cognitive standpoint, in at least some way independent of belief in negation, then it’s more akin, say, to how distrust is not identical to belief that someone is untrustworthy, or how dislike is not identical to belief that something is bad. On this view, one can believe p without actively disbelieving not-p. Under this condition the distinction of not believing constitutes a more robust, attentive, or attitude-laden response than simply believing the negation.

Logically: belief(p) → disbelief(not-p) – but whether in the case of rejecting Christianity that feels to the sceptic like it applies may be a matter open for debate with the beholder.

I think if I were to probe the sceptic and take it to its natural course, I’d conclude that whether disbelief is really just shorthand for “belief in the negation,” or whether it is a distinct cognitive standpoint in its own right, depends a lot on whether we are dealing with professed disbelief, unbelief or non-belief. And I wonder, if you asked most non-Christians, would they instinctively know straight way which of the three applies to them? For many, under the terms above, they may not have given it much thought.

If disbelief is simply the flip side of belief - nothing more than affirming not-p when one denies p - then the distinction I’ve drawn collapses neatly into classical logic. On that account, to believe Christianity is false just is to disbelieve it, and the psychological texture of that rejection is irrelevant. But I have argued before that disbelief is more like a worldview in itself, and is a more intentional state than mere logical complement, and far more than most sceptics would like to acknowledge.

Taken with my part one article, it seems quite a compelling case that disbelief occupies a firmer, more deliberate space than either unbelief or non-belief - not because logic requires it, but because lived cognition and behavioural values exhibit it. It’s not quite the same for, say socialists vs. capitalists, because in that case, once we understand human minds as packages of values, economic assumptions, moral priorities, and social aims, socialists are actually capitalists pretending not to be (see here). 

 

Ways Not To Believe

 

I was thinking about how one should express a lack of belief in Christianity’s truth, in terms of the difference between disbelief, unbelief and non-belief. I don’t know if my definitions accord with yours - and please do say if you interpret your lack of belief differently to this - but I take disbelief to be the firmest and most deliberate form of not being a Christian, where a person with disbelief thinks Christian doctrines are not true and responds with a kind of cognitive rejection. In other words, the person has considered Christian teachings and rejects them.

I take unbelief and non-belief to be softer form of not being a Christian, and the distinction between the two is subtler than the distinction between either one of them and disbelief. I take unbelief to be a lack of belief, without specifying whether it's due to rejection, doubt, indifference, lack of exposure, and so forth. We can therefore think of unbelief as a broader term used to mean anyone who does not believe in Christianity’s truth, and non-belief as simply a purely descriptive distinction of lacking belief. So, in summary, as I see it, it’s roughly this:

Disbelief = “I believe Christianity is false.”

Unbelief = “I do not believe in Christianity’s truth” (but reasons vary).

Non-belief = “I lack the belief in Christianity’s truth” (pure description).

Consequently, the set of disbelief is contained within the set of unbelief, and both sets, disbelief and unbelief, are contained within the set non-belief. That is, the terms can be understood as nested sets: disbelief is a subset of unbelief, because anyone who rejects Christianity (disbelief) also lacks belief (unbelief), and both of these are subsets of non-belief, the broadest category describing anyone who simply does not hold Christian belief for any reason.

I have brought this consideration to bear on my editing of books I’m going to send to publishers, because I have been deliberating on the best term to use when describing non-Christians. It may vary in some contexts, but in broad application, non-belief/non-believer, therefore, appears to be the best option. 

Creationism Is Rooted In Fear

A chap I know has started sharing some daily posts on the subject of creation. It became apparent right away that he is a creationist whose posts contained frequent scientific errors and faulty interpretation of scripture. So, being the dutiful and well-meaning citizen that I am, I left some comments (which, in a cowardly, dishonest and, as we'll see below, fearful manner, he deleted from public viewing), then offered him some further gentle encouragement and advice after he sent me a private message. But I also expressed concern that his errors would mislead the very people he said he hopes will get saved. He said science isn't really his thing, so I even offered to look at his drafts prior to posting, and advise on any suggested adjustments beforehand, to help him produce accurate posts. Alas, after a few more messages between us, it became clear that my creationist acquaintance has inadequate interest in ensuring what he is posting is correct, and has proceeded to carry on posting inaccurate and misleading information on his daily offerings. 

What strikes me most about conversations like this with creationists is how they are so rigidly closed, lacking humility and curiosity, and how they maintain an unhealthy indifference to whether their beliefs are true or not. Which is why I want to say that there are lots of factors at play in creationism (evolution-deniers) - closed-mindedness, dogmatism, confirmation bias, misinformation, etc - but the two primary traits that both underpin the others and run through them are, I believe, ignorance and fear (unless they are a Hawk, see my Hawks, Pigeons & Sparrows blog here - in which case it's usually power and control). Fear because they are beset by religious fundamentalism that threatens their black and white identity, and ignorance because it’s the safest place to remain to assuage their fears. Like in many other walks of life, fear is utterly crippling to an individual’s ability to be liberated by truth, free enquiry, critical thinking, relationships, adventure, travel, personal development, self-awareness and intellectual curiosity.

And if you’re a creationist reading this thinking “Huh, I don’t feel particularly fearful about my creationism”, well that probably just means that your fear has been so deeply ingrained and normalised that you don’t even recognise it as fear - it falsely masquerades as confidence or denial to keep the fear in check.

The above shows why classic psychological literature says that the opposite of most fear is knowledge and understanding. Some elements of fear, of course, have their initial opposite in courage (courage to step out of your comfort zone and dare to try something) but it is the knowledge and understanding of that pursuit that brings it to fruition. For example, if you’re socially anxious and require courage to go to a social gathering, courage might get you there, but it’s the familiarity brought with knowledge and understanding (repeated experience) that will assuage your fears in the longer term.

Most people who have not been ensnared by creationism understand that the opposite of the fear that drives their creationism is knowledge and understanding; of why there is nothing to be fearful of accepting evolution as consistent with their Christian faith; of why smarter scriptural interpretation would expend their theological comprehension; of why embracing reality leads to a deeper, more meaningful engagement with both the natural world and their spiritual journey, and so on. The opposite of being afraid is embracing knowledge and understanding, because courage leads to curiosity, which leads to learning, and ultimately, to wisdom and liberation.

We could even apply this to one of the most important Biblical truths, but perhaps in reverse; "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). Remember, “fear of the Lord” here means deep reverence, awe, and respect for God's greatness, standards goodness and truth – so it is a healthy fear that is likely to increase with the pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. In other words, seeking God is a healthy fear and desire to be everything you can be, and rejecting God is an unhealthy fear of what you could be if you were courageous enough to seek. That’s why the unhealthy fear that underpins the creationists’ mindset is also stopping them being the Christians they have the potential to be in places they can't yet realise.