Ideas Vs. Characters

The two main divisions in the world are to do with perceived ideas and perceived characters. Most of the issues people debate are battles of ideas, but quite often they become battles of perceived character too, which militates against concord. If you think the person you're debating comes from a group you think is morally repugnant, then you are less likely to give proper consideration to their arguments. But quite often, the opponent you think is of bad character just simply disagrees with you in terms of ideas. Therefore, it's good to focus on battles of ideas, and leave out character judgements as much as possible, because it's a lot easier to make a proper character assessment when you've treated your opponent as an individual first, and jointly run the full gamut of exchanges in a battle of ideas together.

For example, on the subject of economics, I think Owen Jones has a lot of bad ideas, and is simply wrong, but I don't think he's morally repugnant. He's just ill-informed (and very biased). One could argue that it's unethical to remain that confused when he has plenty of opportunity to apply better reasoning and correct his mistakes, but that's a hard judgement to make. Perhaps Owen Jones is doing the best he can with the set of life experiences he's undergone so far - I'm not sure, having never met him.

On the subject of theology, I think Richard Dawkins has a lot of bad ideas, and is simply wrong, but I don't think he's morally repugnant either, just ill-informed (and very biased).

On the subject of climate change, I think Greta Thunberg has a lot of bad ideas, and hasn't got a proper perspective on the subject, but again, I don't think she's morally repugnant, just ill-informed (and very biased).

Consequently, with the above individuals, I am challenging them in a battle of ideas, where I just think they haven't thought things through well enough - I do not believe that I'm on the side that represents good and they are on the side who represents evil. But that might not be true in all possible scenarios. Owen Jones might think of capitalism an unjust and morally questionable force in the world, and believe that in the battle of ideas between socialism and capitalism, he is partaking in a battle of right vs. wrong (or good vs. evil). A young earth creationist like Ken Ham might think of Richard Dawkins as a leading spokesperson in enemy territory, and consider fundamentalist Christianity vs. fundamentalist atheism to also be a battle of good vs. evil. And if Greta Thunberg thinks climate change means doom for future generations, she also probably sees the battle of ideas in terms of good vs. evil too.

Here is where it's essential to recognise these conflicts as being mostly battles of ideas, not matters of good and evil. Firstly, in the large set of all beliefs held, Owen Jones, Richard Dawkins, Greta Thunberg and I agree on most things - the places where we disagree make up only a tiny fraction of the whole set of beliefs we hold. Secondly, in our own way, we all want to get to the truth of these matters, and we largely agree on the desired final outcomes - it's the 'how we get there' part we disagree on. Owen Jones and I both agree that lifting people out of extreme poverty is a good thing, even though we champion different economic processes as a means of achieving that aim. When it comes to Richard Dawkins' atheism, I too am an atheist regarding the caricatured, strawman god (with a small g) in which Richard Dawkins claims not to believe. And in terms of climate action, Greta and I would agree that if climate change is going to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in the next few decades, then we probably need to act urgently. I just don't agree with her assessment of the facts.

If Owen Jones could see the free market the way I see it, I doubt he'd be so resistant to its outcomes. If Richard Dawkins understood the God I believe in, he would see his atheism differently. If Ken Ham understood biological evolution as well as Richard Dawkins, he probably wouldn't be a young earth creationist. If Greta Thunberg had more knowledge and confidence, she perhaps would not see me as an enemy on the subject of climate change.

It's difficult to know whether your opponent is an enemy or a friend until you have both mastered the ideas that are being put forward from each side. In a recent debate about my blog posts on gender (see here and here), a challenger of mine thought I was morally wrong to suggest the word 'gender' serves no real utility. I saw my blogs as pushing the conversation forward into better territory, and bringing about more clarity on a matter that has become so muddied in recent years. It emerged that a strong influencer in her resistance was having a family member who believes they are transgender. But having a family member who believes they are transgender does nothing to address the definitional problems put forward in my blog posts - which means that, even if my challenger sees this in terms of friends and enemies, she hasn't scrutinised the ideas strongly enough to know whether I'm her enemy or not. Similarly, a socialist who genuinely cares about helping the poor out of poverty usually thinks of the capitalist as their enemy - when, the reality is, if they knew as much as the capitalist, they'd probably find them more of an ally than most of their fellow socialists.

In conclusion, my advice would be along the following three lines. One, if you're thinking too much in terms of good vs. evil or them vs. us, you're probably not paying enough regard for the ideas being debated. Two, if you're not paying enough regard to the ideas being debated, you're probably not well positioned to know if the person challenging you is your opponent or your ally on this matter. And Three, the first two points ought to be considered alongside the notion that if one of the participants in the debate could see the situation as clearly as the other one, and vice-versa, with some kind of hypothetically ideal perspective, then it would be clear to both that that would have been a useful aspiration to have endeavoured from the start.

New-New-Wave-Atheism: The Rise of Promethean Ego Apostates

 

The incompetencies of the so-called new-wave atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens exposed them as being intellectual lightweights in the subjects of faith, theology and philosophy, where only the desperate special-pleaders took the arguments in their anti-God books seriously. In recent years, there has been an emergence of what I'm calling the new-new-wave atheists - folk like Graham Oppy, Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier and John Loftus (with whom I met up for a YouTube discussion) - who purport to be making more sophisticated contributions to the debate than their forerunners.

Even if they've raised the bar slightly, at most it looks to have gone up from ankle height to knee height - not because these aren't fairly bright individuals, but because the case against Christianity only ever emanates from these faithless vainglorians by severely under-representing the quality of what the faith has to offer.

Perhaps one of the great unrealised pieces of wisdom or most neglected truths in the world is that the reason there are no defeaters for Christianity - intellectually, emotionally, morally, philosophically, psychologically - is because you can only attempt to defeat Christianity by not understanding it sufficiently; and to begin to understand it sufficiently is to begin to see that it is the truth, and the right path to the one true God. By analogy, it's rather like trying to undermine the virtues of generosity, honesty and kindness - you can only do so with an ungenerous, dishonest, unkind attempt to subvert them.

The main defect of the new-wave-atheists, the new-new-wave-atheists, and the countless sanctimonious unbelievers who flaunt their cognitive ineptitude on their online comments pages (avoid engaging with them – it is almost always a waste of time), is that they are so thoroughly and confidently satisfied with their own sub-standard grasp of the subjects, and that they pay such scant regard to the real complexity and gravitas of the matters on which they so frivolously wax lyrical.

On top of that, there is an even subtler observation I've made about these folk, of a more psychological nature - it's that almost all of these sceptics would refer to themselves as ex-Christian (or from a church background), and I think that has real relevance in how they conduct themselves, and on how they yearn to be perceived by outsiders. Reading between the lines - and John Loftus is a classic case of this, I would say - what these new-new-wave atheists are really expressing is emotional disappointment in how their church life played out, disenchantment in their experience of other Christians, dissatisfaction that they didn't have the attention, status and prestige they craved, and in many cases an anti-fundamentalist resistance in the teeth of mainstream empirical human achievements to which their former religious affiliates would have no assent.

And I think if we drilled down deeper, we'd find at the root that the emotional disappointment in how their church life played out, and the disenchantment in their experience of other Christians, were both the result of their deepfelt dissatisfaction that they didn't have the attention, status and prestige they craved. This condition is a phenomenon I've called Promethean Ego Apostasy (or PEA for short). PEA is the turning away from the disappointment of not having their ego stroked enough by the Christian faith, and its honest appraisal of our true humanly flawed and fallen state, and rebelling against it with a desire for personal empowerment and ego enhancement. Just like Prometheus, who defied the gods to steal fire to bring to humanity, PEA syndrome is an act of defiance against the Christian faith in an attempt to court attention, status and reputation by placing oneself as the head of one's life, overrule God, and attempt to enjoy all the perceived transitory perks that come from an egocentric, narcissistic dissent.

Perhaps the most transparent case of PEA syndrome I've seen is with the ex-pastor and now atheist writer John Loftus, who I spoke with on my show for over 2 hours, and whose Facebook posts I see on a regular basis. I quite liked John, but he is perhaps the epitome of new-new-wave atheist PEA syndrome: what I discerned through the subtext of our conversation was a man for whom his life in the Christian church had not brought him the admiration and recognition he desired. Whenever I tried to gently probe into his past life, he clammed up and wouldn't go there. Perhaps the past is too painful or embarrassing for him - but I suspect the real reason he clammed up is because he feared that a more open and honest discussion would have exposed the weaknesses and insecurities he tries so hard to hide - especially around the regard he has so fervently sought, and that he believes he can acquire from his atheist apologetics.

On top of that, perhaps he faced shame in his pastoral position, and found the only psychological resource was to claim the whole belief system to be false rather than seek forgiveness and reconciliation with God. His wiki page says "In light of an extramarital affair, Loftus had a crisis of faith and eventually rejected Christianity" - and I don't know if it's true, but if it's false, surely Loftus would have had it taken down by now. If it's true, Loftus no doubt felt feelings of guilt and shame, probably leading him to question his worthiness within his church community, to feel hypocritical and lack the moral authority to lead others in matters of spirituality and ethics, and to feel isolated and therefore distance himself from the faith and his pastoral responsibilities. And given the foregoing, a likely comfort blanket would have been to repudiate the belief system itself, in an attempt to relinquish responsibility and let himself off more lightly.

Even if the extramarital affair wiki entry is false, those same temptations probably would have come to the fore if the matter was egocentric conciliation and the hankering for admiration and esteem. John Loftus' current atheistic apologetics, his book sales, and his following on Facebook give him the much longed for approval and validation that the call to humility and servility in pastoral ministry never provided, because in the Christian faith, the primary praise, worship and sovereignty goes to God, not us.

More than most other groups of people, John Loftus, Richard Carrier, and the majority of their fellow new-new-wave-atheists I've observed, desperately seek praise and endorsement from every post they share - the kind of self-absorbed praise and endorsement they never could have found in the Christian life, because Christian living won't stroke their ego enough, or provide the psychological comfort, or the ethical flexibility, or the lax responsibility they think they get with their Promethean Ego Apostasy.

I do not, of course, mean to evoke PEA as a character assassination - for in many ways, it is one of the more modest conceits of humanity; not being secure enough in oneself that one has to solicit it in the consent of others by turning upside down the noble Christian virtues like humility, grace, sacrifice and responsibility in knowing oneself truthfully in relation to God's power, His love and His goodness. But, then again, we shouldn't be surprised; the primary sin has always been the one in which we choose self ahead of God, and deny Him the place in our lives as Lord, Creator and Saviour.  

Remember, Paradise is a Walled Garden

 

"Isn't Christianity just a lot of rules?", I was asked recently. "No", I said, "It has some rules; but those rules are given so that we might understand something even greater - just as a map, if followed carefully, will lead us to our desired destination."

In considering rules, let's start with what I call the triangle of wrongdoing. There are generally three kinds of wrongdoing in the world - there is the kind that we willingly do in spite of knowing the wrongness; there is the kind that ensnares us despite our often futile attempts at resistance; and there is the kind that we convince ourselves is actually not wrongdoing at all. An example of the first kind would be breaking the speed limit because we want to get somewhere quicker. An example of the second kind would be failing to control our bad temper in an argument despite a hearty effort. And an example of the third kind would be believing that our extreme causes for social justice justifies an attack on a rival group because it is thought to be for the greater good.

In all of those cases, there is a notable commonality - our conscience, beliefs and reasoning help us manage our ethics, but they are no guarantee of our swerving wrongdoing. Because we change our ethics to accord with our behaviour, we can easily make up rules to suit ourselves and create justification for breaking them whenever we choose, or forgive ourselves very easily when we fail at keeping our own rules. This is the big failing of a rule-based system that has no other mechanism other than rules to sustain it.

Some groups even respond to this problem by creating systems of dogma containing rules within rules. For example, Islam has a set of rules to live by in order to justify the status of being a Muslim, but some tenets of Islam also have rules about not following rules - some of which can lead to loss of Muslim status (a term they call 'apostasy').

Rules do have a part to play in our Christian faith, of course - Jesus gave us plenty of commandments to follow (the sermon on the mount is full of them). But rules need something more primary above them in order to bootstrap their utility, otherwise they fall foul of a kind of variation of Munchausen's trilemma, where:

1) Rules are merely circular - the rules are right because they are necessary, and they are necessary because they are the right rules.

2) Rules regress infinitely - rule 1 is supported by rule 2, which is supported by rule 3, and so on

3) Rules are axiomatic - rules are supported without further explanation because they are the rules.

The upshot here is that rules exist not as ends in themselves, but as means to achieve some other aim. Rules of a board game do not exist to see who is good at following rules, they exist to create level boundaries in which one player can show themselves to be the winner. Rules of law do not exist to make us better at following laws - they exist as a substrate in order that society can flourish within a stable legal framework.

What strikes me most about Jesus' commandments is that He gave us many instructions that were impossible to live up to - the obvious one being 'Be perfect'. But they are given, not to set us up to fail, but to set us up to succeed. It’s a very profound thing we are contemplating here – that God gives us an impossible task because it’s the only way we can ultimately succeed. All the time, those laws, ethics and moral instructions are, by themselves, inadequate to the task of giving us what God really want to give us; He wants to give us the freedom to enjoy more of Himself, and more of His love and grace.

The commandments are given to liberate us into a full life, not to restrict us. Sensible laws can inhibit us, but they benefit us more. A law that makes it difficult for you to drink and drive also makes it less likely that a drunk driver will harm you. A law that means you can be sued for a breach of contract also frees you up to do things like get a mortgage or obtain a credit card. A bank would have no incentive to undertake financial exchanges with you without the legal power to obligate you. Similarly, the laws in the Bible are designed to take God's people from a penury state to a more prosperous one.

This point is illustrated wonderfully by G.K. Chesterton is his great work Orthodoxy, about how a wall of safety makes children freer, not less free:

“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

Similarly, Christ's laws and commandments are given to us to help us do the will of the Father, to help us prosper on our journey with Christ, and to help us conduct ourselves in a way that will bring us more intimately closer to Divine love and grace. There’s a good reason why the origin of the word paradise is a ‘walled garden’. A state of true peace, protection, purity and harmony would be such, not just by what it lets in, but by what it keeps out.

Oscars: Going Woke, Going Broke

I’m a big fan of movies, but it’s been quite a few years since I’ve given two hoots about who won which Oscar. I believe this feeling has gradually crept up on me, as the Oscars has lost more and more of its credibility with every passing year and decade. I largely attribute it to one thing; the ever-increasing wokeness that infests every Oscars ceremony. Because the sure fire way to deplete the credibility of the academy, and of art in general, is to stop caring as much about excellence in cinematic achievements, and instead use the ceremony as a platform to dole out awards based as much on diversity, inclusivity, virtue signalling and political posturing as on quality of moviemaking.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the world of film, television, writing, art and music has such a diverse array of cultures, ethnicities, talent, perspectives and expressions. But once you start to award and commend based on secondary factors outside of merit and artistic achievement, as the Oscars clearly has for quite a few years now, the whole edifice is undermined, and credibility erodes away, leaving only a confluence of woke attention-seeking and unattractive self-righteousness, glitzed up to the hilt. 

 

Christian Corner Solutions

 

It’s been a long term venture of mine, trying to understand why people believe so many crazy things, especially in religion and politics. Bear with me, and I’ll suggest something fascinating about things that unbalance Christians and cause them to adopt strange beliefs, and why.

If you have studied economics, you may have come across corner solutions. Corner solutions are extreme choices where a constraint limits options to a single point, not along an indifference curve (i.e. not conforming to the typical trade-off between goods based on preferences). An indifference curve is a graph representing combinations of goods providing equal satisfaction, outlining preferences, and optimising consumption analysis. If you got your child to draw it in relation to their desires in a toy shop, they would draw a line showing different options that make them equally happy, helping them decide what to ask you to buy for them.

With my high tech post-it note and pen, I’ve drawn an illustration, where you’ll see that to have all the things in your ideal spending session (what’s called an optimal consumption bundle in economics) the tangency condition between the budget constraint and an indifference curve is indeed a necessary condition for an optimal consumption bundle (a tangency condition is the point where the budget constraint touches an indifference curve, indicating optimal consumption).

Last technical point– consequently, the optimal consumption bundle may occur at the aforementioned corner solution, where the indifference curve is not tangential to the budget constraint, but touches it at a bent or a flat portion. When this happens, the consumer is likely to choose to consume all of one good and none of the others.

Christian corner solutions
I think we can analogise a way in which the corner solution example in economics of consuming the maximum amount of one good within the budget constraint has parallels in Christian belief. Here budget constraints could refer to things like church or family pressures imposed upon your viewpoints, dogmatic cultural or denominational legacies, low intellectual competence, issues in one’s personal life that influence beliefs and viewpoints, or an insecure hankering for a black and white theology for self-preservation – things that sway a Christian’s ability or incentive to believe the right things or cause them to adopt very excessive positions against mainstream alternatives.  

Examples of views and beliefs that could be seen as a corner solution within various Christian individuals are Biblical inerrancy, opposition to second marriages, opposition to women in leadership, opposition to contraception, mistrust of medicine, denial of scientific facts to do with evolution and the age of the earth, to name a few. These corner solutions most frequently occur, I’d suggest, because of the following overlapping phenomena; 1) remaining ignorant is preferable as a ‘path of least resistance’ strategy to minimise stress and contention; 2) unease and insecurity regarding the perceived challenges of reconciling faith with empirical evidence, especially in light of family, church and peer pressures; 3) psychological and emotional relief in taking over-simplistic stances or interpretations at the extreme end due to the complexities of the issues at hand; and 4) strict adherence to denominations or theological traditions that have consistently enhanced individual utility through inculcation and conditioning even when empirically false or excessively extreme.

A full unpacking of these is beyond the scope of this article. But it’s clear to me that corner solutions are pervasive in Christian churches across the globe, and consideration of their impact on Christians can shed light on why so many absurd beliefs are adopted among the ecclesia (ditto the same kind of analysis in political spheres).

Finally, though, it doesn’t just mean that corner solutions amount to the extremist views that are driven by those susceptible to absurd thinking – corner solutions can also occur in those more noble but almost opposite extremes, like believing in and practicing chastity, traditional values around marriage and the family unit, forgiving the most evil people in the world, and the sanctity of life as an infinitely valuable proposition, to name but a few.  

Sunday Faith Series: Can You Do Good And Defy God?

 

Here's an intriguing thought experiment that's in my book The Ecstasy of a New Morality. If someone does a morally good act that is not part of God's will because it interferes with God's plan, is the act still good? Imagine a wise sage who lived around the time of Jesus' crucifixion. One day he has an epiphany that puts him years ahead of his contemporaries - he realises that the Roman civilisation is pretty barbaric, and he thinks he can do things to make it better. The next day he's walking along and he sees Christ getting whipped and beaten, about to go on the cross. Being a kind, decent and morally advanced sage, he steps in and tries to save Jesus from any more pain. After giving an epoch-changing talk of the barbaric nature of nailing human beings to crucifixes, the Romans see sense and the process is discontinued, and Jesus is not crucified.

Now, by any normal standards of morality, what our sage did could only be construed as good. He helped a relatively backward civilisation advance their morality, and tried to promote tolerance, respect and kindness over the more reactionary tribal barbarism of the day. But in saving the bruised and battered Jesus from death on the cross, what he also did was interfere with God's grand plan for the salvation of humankind.

I doubt that God, being omnipotent, would let any compromises occur that would impede the plan over which He has perfect control, but it does engender a quite interesting observation about an act that can be good on a human level yet thoroughly prohibitive in terms of God's will and His plan. Such an observation seems to confirm an important distinction between our will and God's will in terms of how our apprehension of morality reflects the goodness from which it emanates - rather like how the scent of a woodland is smelled by our being immersed in the forest.