The Higher Points To God

 

Christianity says that God is perfect, and that He created the universe. I think it’s easier to believe that that is the profound reason reality is as it is than the naturalistic alternatives. It’s odd to think that the universe is naturalistic and infinite for no profound reason, or that it is finite but came into existence for no profound reason, or that we have a multiverse for no profound reason. And if we posit that there is a profound reason behind everything, it’s much more plausible that it’s God than some other profound reason – especially as there are so many strong reasons to believe that God has made Himself known in creation.

I also think that in terms of knowing God in creation, the following holds; the higher the excellence experienced (in truth, love, goodness, grace, justice, mercy, compassion, generosity, wisdom, and similar virtues) the more it reflects God revealing His nature to humanity, as these virtues are a reflection of His Divine perfection

Moral Conscience As An Argument For God

 

I’ve seen many arguments over the years for our moral conscience being a good argument for God (most recently by a blogger called Bentham’s Bulldog in this article). Let me start by what I think is wrong with the proposition, then I’ll turn to where I think it has strength. First, naturalistic explanations of moral conscience are more robust than theists often concede, and the underplaying of the evolutionarily utility of our moral conscience doesn’t help the argument. Evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and social psychology offer plausible accounts of how humans developed moral faculties and the survival utility of such traits. Traits like empathy, fairness, and cooperation have clear survival value in social species. For example, groups that fostered trust and punished cheating or foul play would have had a better chance of survival, passing those behavioural tendencies down. At an evolutionary level, I think it’s possible to conceive how moral intuitions could have developed without needing to be designed by God. The fact that such traits are evolutionarily advantageous somewhat explains both the strength and the universality of many moral intuitions from a Darwinian perspective without obvious recourse to Divine intervention.

But on the positive side, it is stretching it a lot to say that moral truths are mere evolutionary products of human agreements, emotions, or rational deliberation. If moral truths are human constructions, then it's no mystery why we believe them - we created them. But if you look at all the things we have created and all the things we have discovered, moral truths look a lot more like discoveries than creations – and we certainly don’t behave as though we merely created them.

Unlike social conventions or human inventions, which we recognise as malleable and negotiable, moral convictions are often experienced and acted upon as if they are binding, external, and independent of personal preference or societal agreement - especially the most consensual ones (like “do not torture innocent people”, “do not rape”, “do not murder”, and so forth). Even if we argue intellectually that morality is constructed, we do not live as though that is true. Consider how we respond to paradigmatic moral wrongs like genocide, child abuse, or slavery. These aren’t viewed as merely "wrong" according to our societal preferences or cultural norms - they are condemned as wrong regardless of whether a society endorses or permits them. That response carries the character of discovery rather than invention. We act as though we have recognised a set of moral truths that stand apart from us, not truths we simply consented to or designed.

Compare this with how we treat actual human inventions. Take the rules of chess or metric measuring systems - both human-made systems. While we may care deeply about these systems functioning well, we generally accept that they could have been otherwise, and we don’t treat them as morally binding in the same way. Violating a chess rule may invalidate a game, whereas violating a moral rule is often seen as a violation of something sacred or deeply true. If moral rules were on par with our other creations, we should feel the same latitude toward them as we do with design choices in technology, art, or law. Yet, even across cultures, people are willing to stand up, protest, and even sacrifice their lives for moral principles - far more than they would for invented systems like etiquette or bureaucracy.

Moreover, when we create things - technologies, institutions, customs - we usually acknowledge our authorship and our ability to revise or discard them. But when it comes to the deepest moral truths, we act as though we are accountable to something larger than ourselves. We behave not like authors, but like subjects.

Even though evolution, social consensus, and emotion contribute to how we perceive morality, they seem insufficient to account for the weight and authority we assign to the deepest moral truths (see here for more on this). No, we act as though morality is grounded in something deeper than human minds - as though it has its provenance in God Himself, or for unbelievers, in a standard ultimately so high that it simulates God.

At the heart of the “our moral conscience being a good argument for God” argument is the epistemic problem that if our beliefs weren’t shaped by transcendent moral truths, as per the above, then it seems coincidental - and hence epistemically dubious - that our deepest moral beliefs turn out to be correct at every fundamental level. With my economist hat on, I can see how one could make that assumption as one of mistaken causality - that they evolve so consensually precisely because they work well enough to help us survive in a social species, rather like how scientific realism is justified because it is at least approximately true. On top of this is the oft-cited objection that if our moral conscience is designed by God to reliably tap in to transcendent truths, we might expect moral knowledge to be more consistent, stable and universal.

Here I’ll tackle both those errors in one hit. Under normal circumstances, experiences justify beliefs when the belief is explained by the fact that makes it true. If you know you’re not doing well enough in the capacity of serving as a volunteer in church, then your self-induced dismissal doesn’t justify believing you are doing well enough if you’re not serving on any team. Similarly, if our moral beliefs weren’t formed because of the truth of moral facts, we find it harder to justify those beliefs, in terms of explaining how we came to form those true moral beliefs, and explaining how we are justified in holding them.

Not only do we justify them because we believe they are true, we also don’t really believe their truth value lacks consistency by virtue that some people either fall so short of them or haven’t learned of their truth and absorbed it strongly into their culture. To illustrate, we don’t think that scientific facts are unjustified just because some people choose to reject them in favour of self-serving, counterfactual views. And we don’t really believe that about moral truths. In fact, to take an extreme case, even if 80% of the world’s next generation went on to believe that rape is no longer wrong, there’d be a better case that the 20% are still in the right than the 80%, who’ve been victim to a gross perversion of moral truth.

Moral discovery is, of course, part of our evolutionary story. But God guided the creation story so humans would acquire the faculties for correct moral beliefs - making those beliefs truth-discerning – and endowed humans with a bottom-up liberty of moral intuition that genuinely connects with His top-down moral truths (like He has done with mathematics, as I outlined in the articles in this tab). If a belief is only justified when the experience itself contributes directly to its justification, then it is stretching it to accept the naturalist assumption that all beliefs, justifications and truths just happen to have been converged upon over a lengthy evolutionary percentage game, and yet retain such powerful persuasion at the deepest level.

I don’t wholly endorse the sentiment that declares “naturalism is epistemically self-undermining because it cannot justify the very cognitive tools it relies on to claim knowledge”. Because justification only needs to be good enough, not absolute – and we have evolved plenty of traits that have been good enough to determine our survival. But I do believe it is the case that if our intuitions about moral truths aren’t caused by the truth of those moral propositions, then they can’t justify our evident certainty in the absolute nature of those moral beliefs. The only way out of that conundrum is to deny we have such certainty, but that would be to merely replace one untruth with another.

The weak theistic argument - such as that advanced by Bentham’s Bulldog - claims that if those deep moral truths do not originate with God, then the appearance of such truths is not more likely given their truth than given their falsity. But it’s a mistake to say that evolution makes it not much more likely that we believe moral truths if they are true than if they are false. Remember, evolution favours adaptive beliefs - but many moral truths (fairness, reciprocity, harm avoidance, and so forth) are adaptive, so there is a strong overlap between what’s deemed to be morally true and what’s evolutionarily helpful.

No, the stronger theistic argument would be to say that if the sets of moral truths are independent of God and happen to be right, then evolution through naturalism seems an unlikely route to such strong, certain conviction in their truth. The depth and certainty with which we hold these moral truths is more plausibly explained by theism than by naturalism. This is not a matter of statistical likelihood but of explanatory depth - a qualitative, not quantitative, argument.

Ideal Conscience

 

We have a sense of morality through our conscience, and we have a sense of God because we are made in His image. Our sense of morality depends on our individual experiences, and our individual experiences condition how consistent we are and how well equipped we are at making ethical decisions and doing the right thing. A man brought up by drug-dealing criminal parents would probably have different moral successes than a man brought up by two Christian charity workers. A homeless lady has to make different daily decisions to a lady who is the chief executive of a large finance company.

This is important, because every individual is aware of a kind of ideal self they aspire to be, but the conception of the ideal self varies within individuals according to our experience - especially our experience of family, our role-models in our life, our experience of diversity, our education of moral thinkers, our social development, and so forth. Just as tall and short people can reach different heights on the apple tree, and just as fit and unfit people can run different speeds in a race, so too can different levels of moral experience affect how high our moral ideals can be conceived at an individual level. In other words, people have varying conceptions of an ideal, and varying levels of effort to reach those ideals, which means they judge their own conduct differently, let themselves off with different levels of ease, and act or fail to act based on a number of other factors and considerations.

We assess our own thoughts and deeds through our conscience, and we examine ourselves through that conscience. Our conscience is a bit like a sergeant who we try to stay on the right side of, and try to satisfy ethically, but different people have stricter and not-so-strict sergeants, depending on the accumulation of their experience, where, to make matters even more complex, the strictness also varies according to which particular thought or action is being assessed. So our conscience is perhaps more like an entire police force, where a different officer deals with your financial dishonesty compared to the one who deals with your speeding or the one who deals with your bad temper, and so forth.

The point is, we build our considerations of both morality and God from different perspectives with different experiences. Even with our personal sense of an ideal, we are going to judge ourselves a lot less truthfully and a lot less honestly than God will (and probably with a lot more leniency than we deserve). Our conscience is only as competent as we are, just as our beliefs are only as good as our reasoning and evidential scrutiny has permitted, and both are therefore not fit to serve as the commander in chief at the police station of our conscience. Furthermore, our conceptions of God and of the Bible are only as good as our own weight of experience and intellectual considerations, so the likelihood that there is a lack of fitness in this area too is incredibly high. 

The Art of Negotiation

 

From my book The Divine Truths of Love:

"There’s a great piece of wisdom in Ephesians 4:26 about not letting the sun go down while we are still angry. It’s not a verse we should take absolutely literally in every instance – sometimes after an argument a couple needs some time out to absorb, reflect and come back to the table in a renewed place. But the instruction, alongside Jesus’ other concomitant instruction in Matthew 5:24 – that if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift – serves as a wise template for negotiating conflict early before it enlarges into something more serious and toxic. In marriage, there are going to be some things to negotiate, and some of them are likely to reveal a conflict of preferences, or personal improvements that each beloved needs to make. Negotiating these situations as early as possible will be of great benefit in the marriage, because anything that gets suppressed is not going to go away, it’s going to fester and multiply deep in the recesses of the belly, and come back with even bigger bite.

Early on in the marriage, keep a close eye on this in terms of domestic living, because living together is going to involve lots of repeated behaviour regarding routines. Develop an understanding of one another as honestly, as eagerly and as gently as possible. Be transparent about what is going well and what is not, and how your personality profiles differ, and work together to negotiate those differences. Even two well-matched beloveds are bringing different personalities, different perspectives and different experiences to the marriage - and it is because you each have a diverse range of skills and preferences to bring to the table that there’ll inevitably be conflicts to negotiate. If you tackle them early, keep them small and negotiable, and seek the truth together, you can become stronger and wiser together by navigating through them on your journey. But both of you must be courageous; don’t deflect and repress in hankering for the spurious notion of peaceful avoidance; be determined and truthful together, and learn to be honest as you master negotiation."

On So-Called 'Generational Curses'

 

Some Christians believe in generational curses; that some bad things have spiritual roots that go back generations - like if my great great great grandfather was into the Freemasons, it might negatively affect me. The idea is that the spiritual consequences of the sins or practices of your ancestors (like idolatry, occult involvement, or secret societies like Freemasonry) can somehow "pass down" through bloodlines, affecting future generations with things like recurring patterns of sin, illness, or misfortune. This idea comes from verses like Exodus 20:5, "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation..." and Lamentations 5:7, "Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment."

As you might expect, Christians interpret these verses differently. I know quite a few Christians who believe very strongly in ancestral curses, and some even have ministries devoted to praying against generational curses and breaking the link, so those currently affected by the curse can be set free.

Consequently, I thought I’d devote a blog post to considering whether I think there are generational curses inherited spiritually, or whether it’s an over-interpretation (or even just plain wrong). I have my doubts about the efficacy of the ‘generational curses’ hypothesis, and I’ll explain why. The best way to start an enquiry like this is to start with what we know for sure and try to work outwards from that. We know for sure that genetics influences heritability by passing down traits from parents to offspring through DNA, with certain genes increasing the likelihood of inheriting physical, behavioural, or health-related characteristics. We also know that adverse family legacies exist - such as poverty, substance abuse, unemployment, and limited access to education - and that these can be transmitted across generations through social and cultural mechanisms. Behavioural norms, expectations, and environmental limitations – both positive and negative ones - shape young people’s opportunities and life trajectories. This much we know for sure.

The burning question is, are the adverse social, cultural and family legacies sufficient to explain what is meant in Exodus 20:5 and Lamentations 5:7, or is there an extra level of spiritual inheritance that occurs on top of the genetic, social, cultural and family – one that presumably belongs in the realms of spiritual warfare that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6:12?:

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

The issue I have is that I can’t make much sense of the notion of these spiritual inheritances that need breaking – why would God not simply institute a system whereby every individual starts with a spiritually clean slate, where they are born with sin already forgiven (because of the cross) and get judged on their own life choices, not through some proxy that extends back way before they were born, and in which they had no say? Consequently, I can make more sense of “Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment” in that my ancestors social, cultural and family legacies might go on to impact my life in terms of my own raw material and life opportunities (although I think these are generally overstated too), than I can “Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment” meaning that because Jack’s great great grandfather was into the occult that Jack still bears some of the spiritual punishment, and needs to break free from the curse.

Ezekiel 18:20 says that "The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.", and we know from 2 Corinthians 5:17 that “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” If "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law” as per Galatians 3:13, then I would have thought each individual is redeemed from the curses of their forebears. The cross surely nullifies any notion that we would carry spiritual curses due to our ancestors' actions – otherwise we start getting into tricky territory where we attempt to determine what the cross covers and what it doesn’t – when I believe it covers everything. If “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, as per Romans 8:1, then condemnation due to the sins of our forebears makes no sense to me.

Hebrews 10:14 confirms that "For by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." My faith is centred on the belief that Jesus' sacrifice is sufficient to break all chains of sin and spiritual inheritance, where the focus is on the power of Christ’s sacrifice rather than the persistence of generational issues. And in one of the most famous instances in John’s gospel, Jesus saw a man blind from birth, and His disciples asked Him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' and Jesus replied 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him’.

At this stage, I’m finding it hard to accept the idea of generational spiritual curses - it seems like an example of over-interpretation, where extra meaning is added to scripture to create a belief system or ministry that uses the concept of spiritual bondage as a tool for fostering dependency or creating a sense of ongoing spiritual struggle, on which they can capitalise - either, in many cases, through the innocent desire to feel needed, or, in worse cases, as a tool for outright manipulation.

To be fair to the other side of the argument, if those who believe in generational spiritual curses are onto something, we should not want to overlook any profound Biblical truths and be on the wrong side of this matter. Perhaps it’s the case that while the cross does cover every human sin for the individual who accepts grace, the spiritual warfare that’s going on is powerful enough to impute curses on generations, and that some of these need breaking, as per Ephesians 6:12. Perhaps in true Screwtape style, Satan wants us to not believe in spiritual generational curses so we remain enchained in their bondage. Sinful strongholds or patterns may still exist as a consequence of spiritual oppression or the ongoing influence of demonic forces. I suppose this would mean that ancestral involvement in things like Freemasonry or the occult could open doors for demonic influence, and therefore need to be specifically addressed through spiritual warfare – and this may be what Paul warns against in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 when he says;

"The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

But being as balanced as I can, does "generational curse" theology truly hold up in light of the New Testament's message of individual responsibility and freedom in Christ? I have severe doubts, and I’ve heard no argument that convinces me they are anything other than an over-interpretation of scripture. I’m aware that spiritual realities are often subtle, mysterious, and not easily reducible to logic or observation – and that just because this kind of behaviour is rife, and just because something has been misused or overstated, doesn’t automatically mean there’s no truth in it. But whenever I face situations like this, I tend to apply a speculative probability-estimate to see which history shows is more likely. In this case, we know when we look at common human behaviour and incentives that people repeatedly behave in this way – they make a kind of tiny subset universe out of some doctrinal or theological element and make it part of their ‘thing’ - and are found wanting when called to justify their beliefs.

Readers are welcome to have a crack at a counter-argument – but thus far, I see no reason to accept ‘generational curses’ as anything other than an embroidered myth or narrative distortion that overlooks the complete way in which Jesus has broken all curses already on the cross. And you’re going to need to present a compelling argument to convince me otherwise.

1000th Blog Post Reflection

According to the blogger.com dashboard, this is my 1000^th Philosophical Muser blog post, so I thought I’d mark the occasion. Since 2012, I’ve been blessed to build this moderately successful blog. On a bad day, I get a several hundred hits, and a good day, one or two thousand – and I’m grateful for every viewer who checks in. In contrast, My Twitter/X has gained no traction at all, due to the vicious cycle where I hardly ever post because I have hardly any followers, and I have hardly any followers because I hardly ever post. And I have big plans and high hopes for my YouTube channel - but despite having some famous and interesting guests on my show, it hasn’t yet gained significant traction.

I’ve just created a Substack account too, if you'd like to get in with an early subscription, on which I plan to post lots of interesting material, and hope to attract subscribers and donors to help me pursue my desired vocation.

As well as thanking everyone who has contributed to the many current successes I’ve had, I want to share two things while I’m still a relative unknown. The first is that although the growth of my online content is slow, it has enabled me to appreciate every small gain and every new achievement (see how we can appreciate The Slow Burn of Success). I’m not perturbed by the time this is taking to grow, because the journey is a key part of the reward, and because there are no real destinations in this life, as every new arrival presents further successes to attain and further goals to pursue.

And the second is to make a promise; to say that, if I ever do make it big and become a mainstream name with prosperity – either as a successfully published big-selling author, or through an exploding online presence, or a speaking ministry, or whatever grace and favour befalls me – I will never forget any support, input or encouragement I’ve received along the way; and I will do my very best to ensure that your grace and contributions won’t go unrecognised or unrewarded, and that my gratitude and appreciation will be reflected back reciprocally in every way possible. 

The Altar of Love

Recently, I found my wife crying, and I went to console her and ask her what was wrong. For context, my wife has been suffering from chronic fatigue for two and a half years as a result of Long Covid, and it has brought about significant suffering in our marital life as she admirably battles this dreadful illness. When I put my arms around her, she told me she was crying because it upset her thinking about how hard her illness had been on me, and the suffering it has caused me for so long. After reassuring her of how much I love her, that I’m glad to be able to support her, that marriage is ‘for better or for worse’, that I’m fully devoted to her, and that we’ll get through this and stand victorious in God, I reflected on what she had shared with me, on the impact her suffering has had on both of us, and on what I wanted her to know from my heart to hers. So, I put it in a letter.

My Dearest Zosia,

I want to begin by telling you how loved and cherished you are, and share this with you to encourage you and give you more peace. Yes, I’ve had it hard too, but by far the worst part of this season has been watching the one I love endure so many health struggles, and the physical and emotional challenges that come with it. I pray for healing for you several times a day, and I have faith and hope that you will get through this, and emerge stronger, wiser and with a great testimony at the end that will go on to inspire others facing similar challenges. Of course, I will continue to do everything I can to support you, comfort you and care for you through these struggles – and everything that is outside my power I will keep taking to God and ask for His help and provision.

But now I want to focus on your discomfort at the perception of my pain, and reassure you that it’s all worth it, and that, for me, it may not be quite like you think. My love, if there is one thing right now my heart yearns for, it is that you shed no more tears thinking of my pain. I’ll try to explain why, by sharing the last two and a half years from my perspective.

Throughout this struggle, I have grown profoundly, I have drawn ever-closer to God, felt His love more deeply, and I have found so much grace in the harder road. Duty and devotion are two wings of the same bird, and the hardship and uncertainty became the very place God met me most intimately. Walking alongside you, my precious wife, hasn't been a detour from life; it has been life – not the one we chose of our own volition, but one that has uncovered a rich depth of love through voluntary commitment, sacrifice and responsibility. God sees all the hidden hours, the quiet heartbreaks, and the exhausted prayers whispered in the middle of the night - and He has used this journey to slowly transform me into a wiser disciple of Christ; someone who has learned to lean on Him more wholeheartedly and love Him and you even more deeply through our vulnerabilities. It has also made me even more grateful for the small pockets of joy and favour we still get to experience, and to be more present and content in His simple, faithful presence.

In the giving, I have received. In laying down more of my life to sacrifice, I have found even more of it in Him. There are few things more spiritually rewarding, enlightening and character-building than willing, sacrificial responsibility in the small, seen and unseen acts of care. Christ continues to meet me there - in persistence, in humility and in greater reliance on Him: His strength has become my own.

As you know, this journey of love and loss is not new to me. I watched my mother care for my father through 11 long years of dementia. Every day, she served him with quiet dignity in order to preserve his dignity and enhance his quality of life in sacrifice of hers, even when he no longer remembered her name. I saw her heart and mine gradually break as we lost more and more of my father over time, but I also saw my mother deepen into a kind of resilience and grace that only love can produce. And it culminated in a miracle, as my mother came to faith near the end of that long season. It was as though the fire of suffering refined her, burning away everything unnecessary until only truth remained – and she could then understand how loved she is, and how much God has been present through her hardship. In a sense, her faith was born out of love in the trenches. She encountered Christ at her husband’s bedside. Sacrifice and responsibility uncover deeper truths, without which we would miss the deepest parts of love.

So please, my treasured wife, I would dearly love for you to focus all the energy you have left on getting better and being kind to yourself – and not shed another tear for my struggles in this. Struggles are part of the learning, the growth and the transformation - and as your devoted husband who tries to put you first in everything, your story is so intimately part of mine that what you live, I live. And this is part of the gospel lived out in sacrificial love, just as Christ did the same for us. A life poured out for another, in sacrificial service to their betterment, is not a chore or a burden, nor is it wasted; it is part of worship.

So let your heart be at peace, my love. If my suffering has become a mirror that reflects your own, then let it now reflect something else too - joy. Because I do consider it ‘pure joy’ as St. James says – not joy that you’re in pain – I’d take all the pain from you if I could. But joy that I get to walk this road with you; joy that I get to take my responsibilities seriously, and joy that both the good and the bad in life enables me to deepen my faith and my relationship with the One who went through the worst of all suffering to demonstrate His love for us. It’s an amazing thing that I get to love you, not only when it’s easy, but especially when it’s hard. It’s an honour, in fact, because to love and serve your beloved as God desires is to serve Him too. Please believe me, as I write this with a sincerity of heart - nothing is wasted – for I believe that the love that endures through the valley is the kind that shines brightest on the mountain. And we will reach that horizon, and as the prophet Isaiah says, “the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you”.

Love you forever,

From your devoted husband,

James xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I shared this in the hope that others going through hard times might be encouraged. Suffering together is part of the call to “carry each other’s burdens”, to fight beside each other when strength fades, and to hold hands through every storm. When you walk the road of sacrificial love, God walks closest with you. He doesn’t always remove the suffering, but He redeems it, and if we let Him, He transforms us in the process. When I’m giving and serving most fervently, it’s as though I hear His voice: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And that is more than enough.

On The 'Evil God Challenge'

 

A philosophy student was discussing philosopher Stephen Law’s ‘Evil God Challenge’, and I chipped in on his thread with this comment, which I made before on my own page:

“Stephen Law's ‘Evil God Challenge’ seems popular and well regarded in many atheistic circles – but while it’s a neat tool for exploring a contentious matter, I don’t think it’s a convincing philosophical device in the end. I think an evil God would not have the genius to create the kind of love, grace, kindness, forgiveness or laughter we see in the world. But a good God might quite conceivably create a world in which the absence of the best qualities produce hate, bitterness, unkindness, resentment and despair.”

The philosophy student asked a good question in response:

“But if omniscience is built into the hypothesis, why wouldn’t evil god have the know-how to create those things?”

Here was my reply, which I think touches something deep, and may be of wider interest, hence the re-posting here:

“I think this is a qualitative matter. Omniscience might grant the know-how of a good God or an evil God to create love or beauty, but we are really considering motivational plausibility here, not technical capability. Omniscience grants the possession of knowledge - not its application in any particular moral direction. Qualitatively, in the creation framework, it’s more plausible to believe bad things in creation can serve ultimately good ends than gratuitous joy, deep and selfless love, or acts of redemptive grace can go on to serve a darker end. That is, qualitatively, the good God and the evil God hypotheses do not seem equiprobable, even if we could grant that omniscience contains the knowledge for both.

There is also probably something even more profound in the notion of creational capacity, regarding know-how, which may be hard to get our heads around – but would be something like this. Even with omniscience, evil God might not have the know-how to create such profound beauty and goodness, because it takes a certain qualitative depth of goodness to be able to create goodness in creation. You might call it an ontological asymmetry between good and evil, one that transcends mere power or information – a kind of metaphysical limitation. Suppose we have two musical geniuses, a good one and a bad one – and they both know everything about the theory of music. The good genius can certainly create dissonance, tension, even moments of ugliness - but only because they understand harmony, tonality, and structure. They have the inner ear for beauty, and they can subvert it meaningfully. The bad one knows the theory, and can create dissonance, tension, even moments of ugliness, but if they have a deaf spot that prevents them from hearing beauty or harmony, they could not generate it on a piano. Technically, perhaps the bad genius could reproduce the notes, but I don’t think we would say they created beauty in the way that the good genius did. The art would ring hollow, because the very source from which it springs - an attunement to beauty - is absent.”

Woke Hurts The Brightest The Most

 

I recall George Bernard Shaw once remarked that when it comes to changing the world for the better, it’s unreasonable people who influence most, because reasonable people tend to just go along with the flow. I’ve said before that the woke, cancel culture, assault on our society is one of the worst assaults in modern times. It’s bad for all sorts of reasons I outline here, here, and here, but from an economist perspective, it’s worse because while it hurts everyone in a thinly spread array of personal costs (both directly and indirectly) it also hurts a select subsection of society in a more concentrated way, because the biggest influencers are more likely to be the ones who are censored or penalised by woke.

Just as rent controls, tariffs and minimum wage laws most negatively affect the people those policies purport to help, woke most negatively affects those who are likely to be the most positive influencers in society – the unreasonable people who can change the world for the better. 

Moreover, from the many cases I’ve seen of people being fired, threatened with dismissal or socially ostracised for a particular view, I find I’ve usually agreed with the person expressing the view under scrutiny rather than those who want them cancelled. To that end, it’s probable that cancel culture tends to disproportionately target those who speak the truth and who have the most important insights – especially given that those who wish to censor speech are almost always doing so to protect their own ideological agendas from challenge.

A Home As A Human Right

 

I was chatting to someone who said that having a place to live is a human right. I know what they mean, but as an economist, I also know it’s a problematic statement. There is a difference between making the statement “I want everyone to have a place to live” (on which we can hopefully all agree), to the statement “Having a place to live is a human right.” Here’s why. You could say that everyone has a right to a home - but what does that really mean to you? If we think of it as an absolute right, it suggests some troubling implications. For example, if someone fails to provide another person with a home, should they be forced to by law? If a landlord refuses to rent or a builder refuses to construct homes, should they be compelled to act against their will, because to fail to do so would be a breach of human rights? I don’t think so, and probably neither do you.

You can’t hope to live in a world where failure to deprive another of a home is punishable by law, because most people are not providing someone with a home who is not their immediate family. And it would be absurd to penalise those who are already providing some people with homes for not doing more when most of us are not providing anyone else with homes at all. “Why dost thou lash, strip thine own back” from King Lear springs to mind.

Of course, most human rights tend to be obligations on governments, not private individuals. But providing homes costs money, which means providing homes by governments is a de facto obligation on individuals. Somebody has to pay for it – and I don’t know that there is a morally binding agreement that says anyone should be forced to pay for someone else to have a home, especially as turning housing into an enforceable right creates unintended economic distortions and inefficiencies.

Consequently, we can’t just say that everyone has a right to be provided with a home by the government, because that only passes the problem sideways, as it’s still the public who pays for it. You could insist that a better right is that the government has a duty to ensure affordable housing exists for everyone, but that’s not going to work either. Who decides how much housing, at what quality, where, and at what cost? A government does not have the top-down information structure or central intelligence to ascertain those criteria, much less establish who bears the responsibility to provide the homes, and in a way that factors in a whole range of complex human needs, preferences, decisions, mistakes and lifestyle choices. If Jack cheats on Jill, and she throws him out, does Jack have an immediate human right to a home? If so, where, and of what quality, and provided by whom? Should there be homes sitting empty awaiting people like Jack who need them urgently?

No, as much as we should like to live in a world in which everyone has a home, the idea that having a place to live is a human right is a problematic one.

 

Your Unique Christian Faith

 

I read this passage I liked, from a theologian named Alan Jones: 

"One of our problems is that very few of us have developed any distinctive personal life. Everything about us seems secondhand, even our emotions. In many cases, we have to rely on secondhand information in order to function. I accept the word of a physician, a scientist, a farmer, on trust. I do not like to do this. I have to because they possess vital knowledge of living of which I am ignorant. Secondhand information concerning the state of my kidneys, the effects of cholesterol, and the raising of chickens, I can live with. But when it comes to questions of meaning, purpose, and death, secondhand information will not do. I cannot survive on a secondhand faith in a secondhand God. There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive."

Yes, so true. Our Christian faith has uniform truths to which we all adhere and aspire, but as individuals we are unique, formed by our own stories, experiences and relationships, and shaped by our personal connection with God through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, most of our Christian faith can’t be imposed top-down, or dispended like a teacher to a pupil; it must emerge bottom-up through our own unique growth and experience.

I think this would be one of my primary messages to fellow Christians; faith is not a mechanical script to be recited - it is more like a flame that must be continually stoked and kindled within. Only then is it truly alive, and wholly our own.

Political Physics

 

Much of the book I’ve written called Benevolent Libertarianism uses physics as a supporting lens through which to assess economics, markets and human behaviour in society, because there is a lot of overlap. For example, entropy and economic complexity overlap in that, in thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of disorder or the number of possible configurations of a system; and economically, societies tend toward more complex arrangements (akin to higher entropy), especially in free markets where countless agents interact. Just like in physics, where energy moves toward states of higher entropy, markets evolve toward more decentralised, diverse, and adaptive structures. In most cases, a centralised economy is like a low-entropy system - highly ordered but fragile. And in most cases, a decentralised market economy mirrors high entropy – untidy but resilient.

Another example, Newton’s First Law (inertia) states that objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon. You can think of institutions and social norms as having "inertia" – in that, once they are established, they tend to persist unless disrupted by significant forces (revolutions, economic crises, technological shifts, and so forth). This principle helps explain the resistance to change in economic systems. One of the catch 22s of libertarianism is that the idea of a libertarian reform is likely to come up against institutional inertia, requiring strong catalysing forces to shift public policy.

You can also observe in physics that phase transitions occur when a system hits a critical point. Similarly, in social systems, network effects (like viral trends, revolutions, or financial panics) behave similarly. A small trigger can cause a systemic shift once a critical mass is reached – and this shows similarities around tipping points in markets or social movements.

I’ve also been fascinated for many years in how power laws or trends in society mirror nature's laws, especially tail end distributions or severe deviations from the mean.  Zipf’s Law is an intriguing one (which I’ve written about before in my paper on parsimony and power laws) - it states that the frequency of an item is inversely proportional to its rank. This applies to language (most common words are used exponentially more often) and cities (a few mega-cities dominate, wealth distribution, online traction, etc). It mirrors distribution patterns in natural systems, such as the size distribution of solar flares or earthquakes – and once you delve into more and more examples of this, as I do in the book, it becomes more and more interesting.

The Pareto distribution (the 80/20 rule – although it’s not always exactly that, of course) crops up everywhere too - from income and productivity to software bugs - and resembles the power-law distribution seen in self-organised systems in physics. In Benevolent Libertarianism, I try to argue for outcomes that enable voluntary rebalancing or opportunity creation without coercive equalisation – what you might say (although I might ditch this if it proves too provocative for a publisher) a kind of capitalism with a heart and a socialism with a head.  We also find with consistency that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of its participants. This applies to markets, social networks, and economies of scale – and it’s similar to gravitational attraction increasing with mass - interconnectedness yields increased (sometimes exponential) utility. One of the fundamental principles that has seen this human progression-explosion in terms of material standard of living is that free markets, open communication platforms and mutual connectivity gain value as participation scales, encouraging more and more organic growth.

At this point, it might have occurred to you that we can also discern political manipulation through a similar heuristic. I believe one of the most interesting things happening right now is that, in greater numbers, the public suspect they are not being told the full truth, but it's hard to come together in a co-ordinated way to challenge it. Discerning political manipulation through the above heuristics is really to be seen as analogical and metaphorical, especially in regard to physics, but I try to make it compelling in the book because sometimes when you have a situation that’s hard to capture in your mind, an analogy or metaphor can help bring about a eureka moment. So, here’s one way you could think of it. In physics, massive objects bend space-time, creating gravitational fields that influence smaller bodies. I think that’s similarly what’s happening with powerful political actors (corporations, lobbyists, governments) – they generate a "field" of influence that bends public discourse, policy direction, and media focus – in fact, it has become its own heuristic for gaining more traction (like Wagner’s law predicts in economics) where there is a kind of "gravitational lensing" effect, where the narrative becomes distorted based on proximity to manipulative political or financial mass. It’s a reliable mechanism for sucking people in. There are, of course, many good and noble cases where that happens in a free market economy, where successful innovators enjoy well-deserved spoils – but here I’m taking specifically about the negative aspects of manipulation into perverse and distortionary narratives. 

I also think there are interesting parallels in societal behaviour and conservation of energy in physics. In physics, energy is never destroyed – it is only transformed or redirected. Similarly, I think in many cases, political pressure or dissent is rarely extinguished; it is redirected or channelled elsewhere. Firstly, this means that suppressing people’s free expressions or dismissing them won’t work if the dissent is strong enough – it will pop up elsewhere, manifested in different forms. You can see with the left, how populist social fervour has been co-opted by establishment figures to maintain power under a new guise of extreme environmentalism, for example. When a bottom-up movement is suddenly adopted by the mainstream, just pay attention and analyse where the original intent is being repurposed, and you’ll probably see the patterns I’m talking about. I suppose, also, if you’ll allow me the grace to push the analogy further, with thermodynamic information theory, the higher the signal-to-noise ratio, the clearer the message. And sadly, socio-political manipulation often gains traction by lowering this ratio by flooding the public with noise (misinformation, skewed reasoning, distractions, hyper-partisan content, galvanisation to an external cause that makes participants look good) to drown out clarity and critical thought.

I think in an age where 1) information is so readily available to nearly everyone, and 2) critical thinking is rarely practiced by the majority trying to process all this information, political discourse becomes more fragmented and unstable as political leaders push for polarisation – a bit like a societal equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics. And unless the energy of reason, logic and empiricism is applied to decrease the entropy, it’s likely to get worse. This feedback loop can be seen as analogous to a system of particles in a confined space. When one particle exerts force, the reaction may cause the system to shift, with some particles moving closer together (strengthening the political base) and others moving further apart (deepening polarisation). The interaction between these forces is not one-directional; it's a constant interplay that politicians and the media can navigate to maintain their position, much like how forces in the physical world create dynamic equilibrium.

It’s surely as plain as day at the moment that the official narratives provided by political leaders and the media is so veiled, biased, and intentionally misleading that we must be close to a tipping point. The system of information that is presented to the public is like a quantum system where the "true" state is elusive and constantly shifting, dependent on the perspective of those who observe it. If you sense the position, the momentum is abstracted, and if you sense the abstraction, you no longer pin it down to straightforward empirical justification – and even in cases when you might, the battleground is a morass of often justifiable resentment and partisans.

Just as the universe operates through immutable physical laws, the political landscape is shaped by forces, both seen and unseen, that guide the movement of ideas, policies, and public opinion – and in this day of technological connectivity, we are probably in the advent of a system of organic resistance and bottom-up networked intelligence that can mount a serious challenge to the hegemonies that have pervaded for so many decades. And while we’ll never get rid of top-down central intelligence – and in some cases, we shouldn’t wish to do so - we may be witnessing the birth of a decentralised, self-correcting force capable of at least challenging legacy power structures in a way that’s not been possible before.

Two Models

Here are two models, which, for simplicity, we’ll call the private model and state model. The private model undergoes the following test: if people are willing to pay for what you’re providing, then you must be serving them in providing value. If anyone has made a lot of money from this model, then they are likely to be serving society prodigiously. Alternatively, the state model takes our money in the form of taxation and purports to serve us on our behalf. Within the private model, consumers are spending their money as they choose, so inefficiencies will be few. Within the state model, there’ll be some cases where the government spends our money in a way that benefits us, but also, given the model, there’ll be many cases where the state spends our money poorly and in ways that give us bad value for money. Even if you’re someone who really values a big state, it’s still the case that due to top down information failure, and self-serving interests from within the political establishment, a lot of money will be spent on things that rob us of greater value elsewhere through the private spending model. This inefficiency gets exacerbated by the fact that the state keeps growing its sector to serve these interests, so the inefficiencies increase alongside it.

But it doesn’t end there. Politicians become incentivised to fatten up their state model, and to do this they have to constantly adapt to reflect the views of the people on whom they rely for their power. The popular views held in society are often of the most absurd and ridiculous nature, which means as they become more ubiquitous, they are inevitably going to be absorbed into the state mindset, and eventually, as the Overton window shifts, they become part of mainstream policy. At this point, sheer nonsense has become part of lazy political gesturing, and the voters have become so inured that neither the governors nor the governed call any of it into question.

I think this relationship is a bit like the relationship between the greyhound and the hare on the racetrack. Greyhound racing uses an electrically controlled and propelled mechanical hare that must stay far enough in front of the dogs to keep them chasing, but not be so ahead that they stop bothering to chase. Politicians do that; they impose a small enough thrall to keep the majority tolerant of their aims, but they are careful not to go so far that folk reject the political system altogether and bring about anarchy (although watch this space - there is a lot of unrest out there). That is, they keep the hare close enough so people are willing to chase, and ensure it’s not sufficiently out of reach that people go off and do their own thing. You’ll notice that people in abusive/coercive relationships often do this too; they provide enough allure to keep their partner emotionally conjoined, yet are not so awful that they run a mile. The awareness of this is often what causes the victim to eventually extricate themselves. There is an analogue here too in countries with dictators and oppressed citizens who flee the tyranny in order to begin a better life.

All that is to say, there is a sub-standard co-dependency going on between the general population and the people that they elect into power – which means that if absurd views begin to proliferate in society, they are likely to find representation in the establishment too – and that makes everyone worse off. The government takes shape by moulding itself around their own perception of their electoral popularity – and as a weighted average, it is generally about as good or bad, and as prudent and imprudent, as its perception of the people it claims to govern.

More On Critical Thinking

 

If you’ve found my previous blogs on critical thinking helpful (see here and here for previous entries), you might also like to consider a further piece of insight that will serve you well. Most of the incorrect beliefs or viewpoints in the world succeed in duping people by cunning sleight of hand omissions, or by omissions due to basic ignorance or misinformation. That’s why, if you want to detect the errors in bad ideas, look for what is being omitted, because if you were to put the omitted evidence or data back in, it would usually undermine the argument.

It’s like if someone predicts that you should invest in a particular stock in the stock market because it has been rising consistently over the past 10 years. The evidence omitted is that periods of growth are often followed by significant downturns which has to be factored into your risk. Or if someone declared that, as their father smoked all his life and lived until he was 89, perhaps smoking isn’t that bad for people. The evidence omitted is that large-scale studies consistently show that smoking increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, and early death, even if some individuals appear to be exceptions. Or they do it a lot with statistics by omitting the base rate; so they’ll say doing x increases y risk by 20%, so x is dangerous, even though the 20% increase is relative risk, not absolute, and the base rate is a fraction of a percent, and the absolute risk remains relatively low.

Practice the art of looking for what is being omitted, especially in politics and pseudoscience, and you’ll become attuned to seeing what’s wrong with all kinds of bad arguments, manipulation claims, and misinformation. Before long, instances of selective referencing, data-mining, half-baked reasoning, cherry-picking, false framing, and misleading narratives will be like second nature to you.

Beauty's Metaphysical Reality

 

In my book The Genius of the Invisible God, I have a chapter called The Genius of Beauty. Here are a couple of extra thoughts on the subject that didn't quite make it into the book. Our love of beauty is one of the most remarkable aspects of human experience, and beauty is one of the most stupendous features of the reality we inhabit - especially as there appears to be no evolutionary advantage to valuing beauty at such a deep metaphysical level when it comes to survival and reproduction. Some will try to have us believe that our value of beauty is a mere evolutionary spandrel (a trait that emerges as a by-product of other adaptations, rather than being directly selected for) - but I think this raises several problems, especially when considering beauty's deeper metaphysical significance. Under the spandrel hypothesis, beauty is not something valued as a Divine phenomenon rooted in objectivity, but merely a subjective set of preferences that have been riveted onto our evolutionary legacy without any deeper meaning. 

This is a view that is going to come to grief once we start to drill down into the deeper truths of objective reality. For there is every indication that once we start to think about this more profoundly, we understand a very powerful objectivity attached to beauty, one that seems to exist on a higher metaphysical level to mere personal preference (see my paper on this here). 

Don't get me wrong, the human aesthetic experience of beauty, awe and wonder is of course woven into our evolutionary legacy too, as a complex interplay of adaptive traits and spandrels. And that doesn't mean that, when it comes to apprehension of beauty, there are no goal-making advantages in our evolutionary selection processes - just that they are secondary not primary - just like how an embedded narrative is a subplot within the grand overarching plot. 

Beauty, like goodness and love, reflects something greater than its earthly existence - it bears a resemblance to the likeness or qualities of God. When we encounter beauty in this world, we are tapping into qualities in creation that imitate the Divine in nature; whether that be in truth, in mathematical elegance, in creativity, in love, in goodness, or other properties that have their origin in God.

On The Problem of Political Authority

 

Mike Huemer, in The Problem of Authority, argues that political authority - the state’s supposed moral right to command and coerce - is an illusion. Mike challenges two primary propositions, that of political legitimacy and political obligation: 

1.         The government is entitled to rule over the society, including doing things that would normally (if someone else did them) be considered rights-violations. This is called political legitimacy.

2.         The rest of us are obligated to obey the government’s commands simply because they come from the government. This is called political obligation.

(Mike's words)

One of his central beliefs here is that if ordinary individuals cannot justly coerce others, neither can the state. He concludes that government authority is an unjustified form of coercion, making anarchism - where voluntary cooperation replaces state control - the morally superior alternative. Mike's very impressive; he has been an influential and highly competent philosopher at seriously questioning long-standing assumptions about the legitimacy of state power, and advocates for a more voluntary libertarian society. He's also a jolly nice chap, and has been on my show for a very enjoyable discussion about God's existence (which you can access here).

What about his central beliefs in The Problem of Authority, though - is he onto something? I think he's onto a lot more than many people would countenance - and Mike and I are certainly similar in our advocacy of free market economics and the espousal of general human liberties. And, of course, on the inefficiencies and overreaching of the state, we also concur. But… I don't think I can go as far as Mike in his rejection of any moral authority of the state - I think it's too strong, and that there are conditions under which a central authority and/or top-down central intelligence are/is necessary to maintain social order.

In my book Benevolent Libertarianism, I lay out several ways in which some services and institutions require the kind of large-scale coordination that wouldn't be optimally performed by the market. It's not just the case that the practical challenges of implementing and sustaining a Huemer-esque stateless society are prohibitively complex and costly, I think the end result would be both unrealistic and sub-optimal too. Just because the state is inefficient at most things it does, that doesn’t mean we should abolish it.

Standard economics teaches that services should be provided by the most efficient agent. While the market often outperforms the state in delivering goods and services, that doesn’t mean the state has no role in the cases it provides unique value. Some functions are better handled by the state than the market. The key is not to eliminate the state, but to ensure it focuses on what it does best and leaves the rest to more efficient providers.

Moreover, I won't lay the whole thing out here, but I also argue in my book that abolition of state is a problematic idea on several other accounts, to do with hardwired human incentives, human will, and human nature in general when it comes to power struggles. To take the latter as a case in point, an attempted stateless society would soon see people forming new power structures in hierarchies that would not differ significantly from the state.

Consequently, I do think Mike Huemer makes a compelling partial (perhaps majority) case against the illusion of political authority. But I'd only go so far as to say that the fundamental problem isn’t the existence of a state but its inefficiencies and overreach. I think the purported problem of political authority is not an absolute, totalising problem, it can be ameliorated with a state that is restrained, accountable, and limited to those areas where it is the most efficient provider, allowing human liberty and voluntary cooperation to flourish wherever possible.

Faith Alongside Science

 

Here’s a really obvious statement that is surprisingly not accepted by a large number of people. The primary arguments for God’s existence are not threatened or undermined by scientific advances one jot. And not only that; there is no way an individual could be thinking logically and rationally and even get close to concluding that primary arguments for God’s existence could even be threatened let alone undermined by scientific advance however far science advanced. Its illogicality doesn’t make it sparse; many high-profile public intellectuals believe in it. But this belief is an embarrassing amateurish one to hold philosophically. The gulf between the obviousness of this statement - ‘It’s so self-evident that it’s absurd to think otherwise’ - and the reality that many still reject it, is one of the most absurd intellectual gulfs in human history.

Here’s a better way to look at the relationship between God as Creator and our scientific advancements. God has created a universe with enough uniformity for us to do science, but enough mystery that the more we discover the deeper the mysteries abound. In that created model, there is also a striking connection between beauty, mystery, psychology and scientific truth, which forms a dynamic and healthy relationship between discovery and humility. Just as a good housemaker wouldn’t need to constantly intervene to make the house not fall down, but would expect the owners to maintain things to preserve its quality, our perfect God is obviously clever enough to have created a smoothly functioning system that operates freely on its own mathematical and physical ordinances, but still leaves room for wonder, awe, and the continual pursuit of understanding, knowing that the more we explore, the more we are reminded of the limits of our own grasp, and the infinite wisdom of the Creator who designed it all.

What Will Just Stop Oil Do Next?

 

For a much-needed break from a day and half of book editing - now that Just Stop Oil have ceased active civil disobedience, here are 15 alternative equivalent socially useful things they could do to pass the time: 

1. Chase ducks around the park while making quacking noises to the theme tune of Mission Impossible. 

2. Form a competitive interpretive dance troupe that only performs routines based on melting ice caps. 

3. Start a YouTube channel where they whisper Greta Thunberg quotes to confused houseplants. 

4. Develop a board game based entirely on guessing the emotional state of bamboo flutes. 

5. Camp outside petrol stations and dramatically faint every time a car fills up. 

6. Descend to supermarket car parks, find all the abandoned trolleys, and insult them in a Glaswegian accent. 

7. Spend afternoons dramatically re-enacting scenes from The Crucible using only sock puppets and deep existential sighs, and charge men 11% more for a ticket than women. 

8. Take their grandparents shopping in IKEA and turn their noses up at the fossil-fuel-scented candles. 

9. Host silent discos in public libraries using imaginary headphones and extremely aggressive eye contact. 

10.  Stand on Westminster Bridge and coordinate group farts to the chimes of Big Ben, freshly recreated from the hiss and gurgle of a barista frothing oat milk. 

11.  Open a community art gallery featuring only finger paintings of emotions they’ve never personally felt. 

12.  Petition the government to make every Monday a Saturday and every Tuesday a Sunday, and apply for state funding to research the carbon footprint of pavement shadows made from tall buildings. 

13.  Perform spontaneous flash mobs to pigeons in UK seaside towns. 

14.  Walk backwards in remote Welsh villages for 30 days to undo the mistakes of society. 

15.  Run workshops teaching teaspoons how to embrace their individuality in a world full of forks, knives and tablespoons.