Trade Makes Us Better People

You may have come across a social experiment called The Ultimatum Game. In this game player A (Jack) is given some money, say £50, and asked how much, if any, he proposes to offer to player B (Jill). Jill can accept or reject Jack's offer - but if she rejects it, neither of them gets anything. If Jack and Jill were rational income-maximisers, Jack would offer just £1 and Jill would accept it, because 1 free pound is better than nothing. But this very rarely happens, because humans are not rational income-maximisers.

Having a voracious appetite for fairness, the Jills of this world often reject free money from the Jacks of this world if the offers are not perceived to be an equitable distribution of the £50. Such sensibilities play out more broadly in society, which is why there is a correlation between trade and fairness. This was demonstrated in an interesting study from Herb Gintis that I read about in Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist:

"People in fifteen mostly small-scale tribal societies were enticed to play the Ultimatum Game. Those societies with the least experience of dealing with outsiders were the most hard-hearted, ungenerous and narrowly ‘rational’. Machiguenga slash-and-burn farmers from the Amazon most often offered just 15 per cent of the sum to their co-subjects, and in all but one cases, the second player accepted. Likewise, a Hadza hunter-gatherer from Tanzania usually makes a very small offer and experiences few rejections.

On the other hand, players from those societies that are most integrated into modern markets, such as the Orma nomads of Kenya or the Achuar subsistence gardeners of Ecuador, will usually offer half the money just as a Western undergraduate would. The whale-hunting Lamalera of the island of Lembata in Indonesia, who need to coordinate large teams of strangers on hunts, offer on average 58 per cent – as if investing the windfall in acquiring new obligations. Much the same happens in two New Guinea tribes, the Au and Gnau, whose members often make ‘hyper-fair’ offers and yet see them rejected: in such cultures, gifts can be a burden to the receiver because they carry an obligation to reciprocate.”

“The lesson of this study is that, on the whole, having to deal with strangers teaches you to be polite to them, and that in order for such generosity to emerge, costly punishment of selfishness may be necessary. Rejecting the offer is costly for the second player, but he reckons it is worth it to teach the first player a lesson. The argument is not that exchange teaches people to be kind; it is that exchange teaches people to recognise their enlightened self-interest lies in seeking cooperation. Here, then, lies a clue to the unique human attribute of being able to deal with strangers, to extend the division of labour to include even your enemies.”

As well as the progression-explosion of individual well-being and higher standard of living that capitalism has bestowed upon us, it's also essential to note how good capitalism has been and continues to be for the collective benefits of human society, not just in more than material gains, but in corporate kindness too. A society that relies on trade relies on cooperation, respect, fairness, justice and mutual toleration - the whole edifice depends on it. The free exchange of goods, services and ideas does not just make us materially better off, it makes us nicer, more respectful, more tolerant people to be around too - and those collective benefits play out in our living in all-round better societies.

And the kinds of society we have created through increased trade are uniquely human too. In the animal kingdom there are all kinds of cooperation and collaboration within a species - between other primates, between ants, between lions, between wolves, between elephants, between bees, between birds - you name it. But as a rule, cooperation and collaboration between unrelated strangers seems to not occur very often in the rest of the animal kingdom - there are almost no cases of unconnected animals involved in mutually beneficial transactions in the humans are when we trade. There is even a ratchet-type pattern of trade occurring with the development of farming in various countries independently at different times in history when the right conditions were met - Peru first, then China, then Mexico, then North America and Africa, and then Europe.

Perhaps my favourite example of the joy of trade is when I buy an Indian takeaway. People with whom I have little in common cook incredibly tasty food that I value much more than the money I pay to consume it. At the same time, I help the people that sell to me to make a living, and both agents are made better off. In feeding me, the proprietors get to feed their family too. And this extends right across the marketplace.

We are all making each other better off by trade. We are contributing to a nicer, safer, more respectful, more tolerant society, in which our own personal pursuits are helping enrich total strangers too - and when aggregated, it is sufficient to make everyone in that society richer and more prosperous.

Commerce has done more to combat racism, sexism, and unfair discrimination of any kind, and the alleviation of poverty for billions, than any government program. How bizarre then that we live in an age in which trade has done more than anything else to tackle poverty, hardship, injustice, corruption, prejudice, bigotry and disunity, yet the generation that has been the biggest beneficiaries are the most vociferous opponents of it in history.

Counting the Colours of Prime Ministers

A friend once pointed out to me that there has never been a black Prime Minister in the UK (this was pre-Rishi Sunak), and he asked how I can be sure that that it isn't down to institutional racism. I wouldn't say we can be sure, but I'd say we can be confident. I'm confident because the sample space as a ratio of the population is too minuscule to infer such a dubious causality. A single role, like a Prime Minister, constitutes about 0.000001% of the population, and there are only a few every decade. The set of preconditions required to be a Prime Minister are complex, and there’s no reason to believe that colour of skin is a direct factor.

Last time I checked the UK demographic a few years ago, I found that for every 100 people, there would be 82 white people, 9 Asians, 4 black people and 5 others. If 82% of the population is white, and being a PM requires a set of skills that are rare in the population as a whole, then even purely on arithmetic, it’s not surprising to me that until recently we hadn't yet had a black Prime Minister.

Moreover, even if we had had a series of black Prime Ministers, that wouldn’t show that we are not a racist society. Consider Society A, which is very racist, and Society B, which is not. Because people in Society A know they live in a racist society, and because they feel that black people need a helping hand, 4 of the last 9 Prime Ministers have been black. Because people in Society B know they do not live in a racist society, and prefer to select on merit, they feel that black people do not need a helping hand, and none of the last 9 Prime Ministers have been black. Purely on number of black Prime Ministers, Society B could seem like it’s the most racist one, not Society A, when in fact the opposite is true.

There may, of course, be other non-racist factors that are contributing to fewer black people being candidates for the role of Prime Minister, where ‘racist’, lest we forget, means unfairly discriminating against someone purely on the grounds of skin colour or ethnicity. Think of Easter as an illustration. Bank Holiday Friday and chocolate eggs occur in the same weekend, without either causing the other. The cause is Easter. So it may be that in the scenario above, other things are playing the Easter role, making the society appear more racist than it is.

My own view is that we don’t live in an overtly racist society, because the vast majority of people don’t unfairly treat people based on skin colour and ethnicity. There are many people who perceive our society as racist, but that’s mostly because they miss the likelihood that apparent overt discrimination is usually based on Easter-type factors other than skin colour and ethnicity (see my Blogs on Discrimination on the side bar).

Here’s another factor to consider: humans are built for survival in the Savannah, where other tribes could have alerted us to threats or insecurity, so we are evolutionarily primed to be a little bit discriminatory against other tribes, and be alert to differences in other humans. When tested, the amygdala, which plays a key role in processing fear and aggression, reacts to different racial groups, even when we are not being consciously racist.

I can recall reading studies where people were put in a brain scanner and shown brief flashes of emotionally neutral faces, and the amygdala was activated more prominently if the face was of someone with a different skin colour or ethnicity. I also remember reading about car salesmen who offered better prices to white people than black people. I also recall an experiment where volunteers played a video game showing people holding either a gun or a mobile phone, and were instructed to shoot only those with guns. When white participants were shown black people on screen, they tended to shoot faster and were more likely to mistake a mobile phone for a gun when a black person was holding it.

However, the good news is that studies also show that it’s fairly easy to snap out of prejudices, and treat people like valuable human beings with a unique individual identity, and thereby not lazily categorising them according to skin colour and ethnicity. It’s no surprise that experiments show that people brought up in more racially diverse settings are less likely to be racist, less likely to mistake a mobile phone for a gun when a black person is holding it, and much more likely to be tolerant and accepting if they have a broad exposure to a diverse range of people.

In summary, if we define racism correctly - as unfairly treating people based on skin colour and ethnicity - then I don't think UK racism is anything like as rife as many people think - and it's highly unlikely that racism is the reason we'd never had a black Prime Minister until Rishi Sunak.

The Rule of Distributed Stupidity

 

Groups like Answers in Genesis and a lot of climate groups and social justice groups conform to the principle of what I call the distributed stupidity model. One con artist starts it off, influences a second person, then a third, and so on, until the racket has gained enough traction to distribute its stupidity more widely - a bit like vectors acting to spread the cult's influence. The distributed stupidity model is one of the most effective for influencers at the top to get what they want and grow their own platform (financial and status) by pulling the strings of those at the bottom. Ken Ham is raking it in while folk like you do most of his bidding for him, and blindly dance to his tune. 

But at some point, once a group like that starts to grow, and its blood has trickled for enough time, it inevitably bleeds into haemorrhage, and at this point it becomes externally pervasive and internally overwhelming. The only distributed stupidity groups that can survive this are the ones where the emotional appeal of their indoctrination strategies are such that the members feel the emotional duress of leaving or questioning it, for fear of heretic-hunting.

A good rule of thumb with the majority of the members of these groups is, always assume blithe cowardice, weak-mindedness, lazy indifference or wilful individual ignorance before you assume a thought out collective philosophy, because they are a lot rarer than you think.

Character & Operation Types of Thinking

 

I started pondering the “character and operation” model I write about in two of my books, and how it is in some way to do with the left and right brain elements of cognition. Broadly speaking; the left is the logical and analytical, and the right is intuitive and relationship-based - but not only is there overlap, there is also distinction in how those outputs manifest themselves. So, propositions about belief in God, attitudes about the economy, politics, the climate, even love with a beloved, are nested in a duality of cognition based on reason and intuition. I know my wife loves me (operation) and I sense she loves me (character); I know capitalism works better than socialism (operation) but I know we have a responsibility towards the underdog (character). But it works in reverse too; socialist Jack reasons that capitalism works better than socialism (operation) yet still becomes emotionally attached to socialist policies (character) even if they do not yield to reason and evidence. Ditto climate change - Jill believes that climate change is a problem that is too complex to solve with simple off-the-peg solutions (operation), but she gets a sense of belonging from gluing herself to the road (character), so this instinct supervenes on her rational ones, that sort of thing.

There's some stuff in my books about this in relation to belief in God. Christians tend to believe in God because of a weight of empirical justification and rational consideration (operation) but also because of the functional fulfilment of deeper needs related to relationship, belonging and responsibility in the world (character). It's analogous to love, with it being a set of propositions that yield to reason and evidence - if my wife didn't love me, she wouldn't do x, y, and z (operation); and it being a set of deep sensations associated with relationship, belonging and responsibility (character). 

Consequently, when we are talking about God with unbelievers, we have to be alert to the ways that the mind oscillates between character and operation outputs, and steer them back on track when they criss-cross (a bit like how we have to when politicians disingenuously oscillate between two different types of fairness - the Marxist type and the Aristotelian type - at their own convenience).

How To Define And Identify The Supernatural

 

I've been having a brief online exchange with atheist Richard Carrier regarding his rejection of the supernatural. I've previously written about similar errors he's made (see here, and more generally here), but after he sent me five or six articles arguing why he believes supernaturalism is false, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why I believe most atheists begin with a flawed assumption about the supernatural - an error they continue to repeat, no matter how many articles they write to expand on it. Before proceeding, I’d first encourage you to read (or re-read) my previous blog post on How Economics Can Solve The Supernatural Problem, because it has key passages that will supplement the below.

I think most atheists agree with me that science studies the natural world using empirical methods, but what they often miss is that a proper definition of ‘supernatural’ means it won’t conform to those same constraints. Their argument assumes that if a natural explanation exists, it must be the correct explanation – but the problem is, the term ‘natural explanation’ is the initial error, especially when they use it to conclude that “the observed base rate of the supernatural is zero”, as Carrier does in one of his articles. If the whole thing is supernatural – that is, created by God – then the category distinction won’t manifest in a way that is scientifically testable, making it impossible to determine a true base rate in the way Carrier is attempting. His base rate is faulty from the start, which undermines a large proportion of his work on this. For many, "supernatural" is typically thought to be something outside of or breaking the normal laws of nature, but it’s more accurate to state that everything within creation is inherently supernatural because it originates from God. There are, of course, embedded narratives within the grand narrative – that we can justifiably refer to as miraculous events – but ‘embedded narratives’ is a better way to discern them rather than making false distinctions between natural or supernatural (as we’ll see in a moment).

Carrier thinks that the idea that "we should have found at least one verified supernatural event by now" assumes that the supernatural, if real, must behave in a way that is detectable and repeatable under controlled conditions. But my response to him was; it’s akin to fish looking for wetness – it’s an embedded narrative in their ocean life. I will expand on this analogy here, because what we need to understand about the supernatural is that it is a qualitative categorisation, not a quantitative one. This realisation also undermines the general atheistic mistake that because science has explained many past mysteries naturally, we should see the world as entirely natural – which is mistaken logic. 

Richard Carrier seems to have arrived at a figure he plucked out of the air – that the probability of supernatural claims is "billions to one against". Erm…you can see from the Blog link above that I’ve had issues with his grasp of probability before, but this is to ignore the necessity of probability assessments requiring a well-defined sample space and clear methodology, neither of which Carrier provides. Carrier is misassigning probabilities without a valid methodology or an established framework for measuring supernatural events. It’s a bit like a fish saying the probability that this ocean is wet is a billion to one because it can only perceive the ocean. It assumes its limited perspective is the whole of reality. In other words, the fish is trapped in a mistaken local perspective that it confuses with absolute reality, because the ocean is both water and wet, depending on how it is being defined.

Similarly, nature is created by God, so it is all supernatural for those who know God is the Creator, whereas those who call it natural are just stating it as a proxy for not knowing it is actually supernatural. If the fish could see the full picture, they’d understand that ocean, water and wet are three ways to describe the same properties of their environment. Similarly, calling everything ‘natural’ doesn’t refute the supernatural - it just assumes, without justification, that what we call ‘natural’ isn’t ultimately part of or defined as a supernatural reality created by God. If natural means not created by God (i.e. God doesn't exist) then a creation created by God must be called supernatural, because it is more than just natural - it is fundamentally contingent on and sustained by the Divine. Under these superior definitions, natural can only mean not Divinely created, so a reality that is wholly dependent on God cannot be natural - it must be supernatural by necessity. It is ‘super’ because it is created by God and ‘natural’ because it is not God, therefore it is supernatural.

So, I must reiterate this essential point that underpins most errors people are making when they talk about natural and supernatural – it’s not the right way to think of creation. As God is the Creator of all that exists, then what we call nature is, in reality, the supernatural at work - it is simply creation operating in a consistent and orderly manner. Calling something natural or supernatural ultimately depends on how one defines the entire structure of created reality. It’s similar to how Jack might call Everest a mountain, while Jill refers to it as a big rock - both descriptions are acknowledging the same thing, just from different perspectives. But if Bob, viewing it from a great distance where it appears no larger than his index finger, calls it a stone, that doesn’t change the fundamental nature of Everest as a mountain. It simply means Bob isn’t perceiving its full scale and gravitas. In the same way, calling creation ‘natural’ doesn’t negate its Divine origin; it just reflects a limited perspective on a much grander reality to which we become accustomed once we have the Holy Spirit.

Those who recognise God as the source of all things understand that nothing is truly natural in the sense of being independent from the Divine creation. If there are only two categories – God and creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) – then everything that isn’t God belongs in the same category (created). The only real category division is between God and His creation, not between natural and supernatural within creation – which becomes clearer once we get to grips with the idea of creation being one grand narrative with embedded subset narratives – which is also where we get to understand the fact that reality is interfaced with through varying lenses of apprehension (with science being only one lens). Those who refer to the world as natural are merely using the term as a placeholder for their lack of awareness or recognition that what they observe is, in fact, the ongoing work of God. If you don’t know God, then everything in creation might look natural, just as if you remain distant from mountains, they may all look like small stones.

 

The Resurrection and Bayesian Reasoning

 

A friend asked me, in terms of Bayesian probability, what are the chances that Jesus actually rose from the dead? My response:

I'll write this in the most accessible way I can. Bayesian probability helps us update our beliefs based on new evidence - so the more supporting evidence we have, the more rational it becomes to believe a claim. We have to apply some caution when using Bayesian probability in relation to God, because Bayesian probability typically requires a prior probability (P(H)) that is determined independently of the specific evidence being evaluated (this is known as a common prior) - and this is tricky without a clear statistical or empirical basis to quantify it (it's not like calculating the probability of rolling a 12 with two dice). But as long as we keep the above caveats in mind, we can have a go. So we are considering four primary things:

P(H | E) = Probability of the hypothesis (resurrection) given the evidence
P(E | H) = Probability of the evidence if the resurrection happened
P(H) = Prior probability of the resurrection (before considering the evidence)
P(E) = Probability of the evidence occurring in general

P is probability, H is hypothesis and E is evidence - and obviously from a naturalistic perspective, if there is no God, the probability that anyone would rise from the dead is near-zero. But Bayesian probability from a scientific perspective changes radically as/if we know there is a God who loves us, and was willing to suffer and die for us, and rise from the dead to give us eternal life. Therefore, this won't be easily measurable in terms of the Bayesian ratio of favourable cases to total possible cases. The P(H) (prior probability of resurrection) is extremely low in naturalistic terms, but high if we believe Jesus is who He says He is; and the P(E | H) (likelihood of the evidence if resurrection happened) is high, because if it happened it would be the most remarkable, earth-shattering, life changing event in world history (and it is).

I'd also add that, if there is a God, we’d expect Him to make Himself known – which is what Christianity claims. It’s the only religion which claims with any justification that God Himself has made Himself known in person (in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit). And we know from 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrected Christ appeared to over 500 people. It's not easily conceivable that Christianity would have been the biggest and most important alteration of human history if Christ had not died and risen, especially under the conditions and culture of the time, where it was very much not in people's interest to promote Christianity, and in many cases, doing so presented a danger to their own life. In fact, from the impression I get from reading New Testament history over the years, I think I would be bold enough to state it even more stridently - not only did Christianity spread, but in worldly terms it did so among people who had little to gain and so much to lose - domestically, socially, politically, physically, you name it. Unlike other movements that thrived through military conquest or political weight, Christianity grew in the most remarkable way - through self-sacrifice and love, radically defying the patterns of history that went before or since.

Moreover, in terms of the credibility of what Jesus actually said and did, many leaders and cult figures have deceived many willing adherents over the years, but Jesus demonstrated all the opposite traits of typical false leaders. False leaders usually seek power, status, and control in a way that serves themselves. Jesus showed His humility and power by serving others, giving up His life for us. False leaders use lies, manipulation and falsehoods to maintain their power and influence, but Jesus spoke only the truth. False leaders operate through promoting division, separateness and fear, but Jesus preached love, inclusivity and togetherness. Jesus spoke the wisest and truest words ever spoken about God, because He is God. He is unique in history and in personally revealing God's love to humankind, and that is why Christianity changed the world in the way that it did, in a way that's unparalleled in human history. Not only is there nothing like it, there is nothing that can even be spoke of using the same type of language. It's as different from the false religions as the sun is different to a candle.

So, in summary, Christians have confidence that God exists, that He has revealed Himself in history, that He loves us, that He was willing to die for us, and that when all the evidence for His resurrection is considered in light of that (namely, the sheer weight of historical testimony, the transformation of Jesus’ followers, and the unparalleled impact of Christianity), Bayesian reasoning points to the resurrection being a historical event, not a made up one. And, of course, this logic works in reverse too - if it was merely made up, it would be far more improbable, contrived, historically unexplainable and philosophically unsatisfying than if it really happened.

The Damning Irony of Creationist Parody

 

When it comes to the science, evolution-denying creationists are not just unaware of the errors of the bogus concept of “creation-science”, they are unaware of the broader problem of misunderstanding science itself, especially the nature of Bayesian probability, which is a statistical method where accumulated evidence keeps adding to the overall probability of a hypothesis being true. They are so unapprised of how the whole body of science (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc) provides multiplicative validations that they are not aware of just how absurd it is to reject most of mainstream science in favour of their creationist pseudoscience (as you’ll see in a moment, in a preposterous act of intellectually self-sabotaging parody they don’t even know how they are actually rejecting most mainstream science). It’s very easy to apply Bayesian probability to evolution and an old universe regarding how accumulating evidence affects our confidence in the theory. Fossils showing transitional forms, comparative anatomy, nested hierarchies in the phylogenetic tree of life, the coancestry coefficient (genetic relatedness), endogenous retroviruses, vestigial traits and atavisms, embryology, radiometric dating (of the moon rocks as well as the earth), cosmology, light travel and distant galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the expanding universe and Hubble’s Law, stars in different life stages, nuclear fusion in our sun, spiral galaxies, and so forth. All of these combined demonstrate comprehensively that the universe is billions of years old, and/or that life has been evolving on our planet for several billion years.

Now, not that creation science does proper science, but let’s pretend for a moment that it did. If creationism was true and the universe and earth were only about 6 thousand years old, we would have accumulated a similarly impressive array of evidence like the above. The scientific consensus would show that the Earth’s geological layers are only thousands of years old with no indication of millions or billions of years of sedimentation, radiometric dating would consistently yield ages of thousands of years for rocks, fossils, and meteorites instead of millions or billions, ice cores would show only a few thousand years of accumulation, the fossil record would lack any indication of gradual transitions, with all species appearing suddenly and remaining unchanged, DNA comparisons would not show nested hierarchies or molecular clocks consistent with deep time but would instead suggest all species were created independently, human and dinosaur fossils would probably be found in the same rock layers, light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away would have reached us instantly or the universe would be demonstrably much smaller, the cosmic microwave background radiation would not exist as a remnant of a Big Bang billions of years ago, stars in different life stages would be absent, with all stars appearing to be of the same young age, no supernova remnants older than a few thousand years would be observable, the Earth’s magnetic field would show no signs of past reversals or gradual decay over millions of years, comets and planetary rings would show no evidence of replenishment mechanisms, radioactive isotopes in the Earth’s crust would be consistent with a young age rather than billions of years of decay, genetic diversity in species, including humans, would indicate a severe genetic bottleneck only a few thousand years ago without the expected mutational load of much longer timescales, and nobody alive would laugh at the claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses a barrier to the formation of complex biological systems.

If creationism had got it right about a universe of only a few thousand years old, the majority of the scientific community for the past few hundred years up to the present day would be in full agreement that creationism is correct. Of course, a creationist would just dismiss all that with some ridiculous platitude like “Scientists are just interpreting the evidence through their secular, evolutionary worldview instead of accepting the truth of God's creation.", or “No amount of so-called ‘evidence’ can disprove what the Bible clearly teaches.", or “God's ways are higher than our ways, and scientists are always changing their minds, but the Bible never changes”, completely side-stepping the facts – but I’m sad to say from years of experience that there is little hope of a rational conversation with someone like that.

But for anyone who wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, or who rightly has doubts about the integrity of so-called “creation science”, we might be able to appeal by remembering that creationists do actually know what it’s like to be part of the consensus for mainstream science – they are part of the mainstream in many more ways than they are not. In keeping with the above lists, I assume all (or nearly all) creationists believe that the Earth is spherical, and accept Newton’s laws of motion, the atmosphere protects us from harmful space radiation, water boils at 100°C at sea level, bacteria and viruses cause disease, antibiotics can kill bacterial infections but not viruses, the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second, the laws of thermodynamics govern energy transfer, metals conduct electricity, the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system, photosynthesis allows plants to convert sunlight into energy, earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, sound travels faster through solids than through air, combustion requires oxygen, the moon orbits the Earth, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of mass, the freezing point of water is 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure, the established principles of aerodynamics, and that friction generates heat when two surfaces rub together. I assume that most of them also accept that Maxwell’s equations accurately describe electromagnetism, quantum theory explains the behaviour of particles at the smallest scales, Einstein’s theory of relativity describes how time and space are interconnected, sound waves require a medium to travel, and that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

So, creationists do mainstream science – they do most mainstream science – they just happen to revert to pseudoscience when it conflicts with their narrow interpretation of the Bible. And if they suggest that the above scientific facts belong in a different category of science to evolution over millions of years, then they are engaging in special pleading - applying one standard of evidence to mainstream science they accept while demanding an entirely different, unreasonable standard for evolution and an old universe. To understand the fabric of the universe properly is to understand that the category distinction is bogus; that there is no separating the scientific facts on the creationist shopping list from all the others – they all nest together in one integrated, consistent, mutually complementary set of laws and facts about the universe that confirm evolution and an old universe, and undermine their own creationist pseudoscience.

For example, they trust Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which describe not only how objects move on Earth but also how planets, stars, and galaxies formed over billions of years. The same gravity that keeps us grounded explains the orbits of celestial bodies and the gradual formation of planetary systems from collapsing gas clouds - processes that undeniably take way longer than thousands of years. They also accept the laws of thermodynamics, which govern energy transfer and decay, yet reject radiometric dating - even though radioactive decay follows the same thermodynamic principles. The predictable decay of isotopes is used in everything from nuclear power to medical treatments, and those same decay rates allow us to measure the Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, as well as confirm that the Sun has been burning through nuclear fusion for a little bit longer than the earth. Creationists accept Maxwell’s equations, which describe electromagnetism and light, when they utilise electricity, yet they reject one of the strongest confirmations of the Big Bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This comprehensively attested residual radiation is electromagnetic in nature, precisely what Maxwell’s equations describe, and it serves as incontrovertible evidence that the universe originated approximately 14 billion years ago. Similarly, creationists acknowledge that the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second, but reject the clear implications of this fact – whereby if light has been traveling at this constant speed, then the existence of galaxies billions of light-years away means their light has been traveling for billions of years, proving an old universe beyond dispute.

In the field of biology, creationists accept that DNA carries genetic information, but deny the molecular clocks that prove common ancestry among species. The same DNA comparisons that confirm paternity in courtrooms or evidence in crime scenes also demonstrate our evolutionary relationship to other primates, with shared genetic markers that could only exist through common descent. They trust the conservation of energy - the principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed - but ignore how this same law governs nuclear fusion in stars, leading to observable stellar lifecycles that unfold over billions of years. We can actually directly observe stars in different life stages, proving that they age and evolve over millions and billions of years, not merely thousands.

And in geology, a subject in which I’m not so well-studied – but I do know that creationists seem to have no issue with the fact that plate tectonics cause earthquakes, yet they reject the undeniable evidence that continents have been drifting for hundreds of millions of years. As any creationist could learn on the fabulous Life On Our Planet series on Netflix, the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean is measurable today at just a few centimetres per year - and basic mathematical calculations confirm that Pangaea, the vast landmass that predates separate continents, existed hundreds of millions of years ago - far beyond the 6,000 year timeline creationists propose. Moreover, I think creationists would acknowledge that radioactive isotopes decay at measurable rates when used in medicine or industrial applications, but they deny those same decay rates when conveniently applied to radiometric dating – which, as it happens, independently confirms an old earth. When they go on their holidays, creationists gleefully accept aerodynamics to explain how planes fly, but fail to apply the same physics to the equivalent laws in space travel and orbital mechanics, which prove the vast distances and timescales of the universe.

From all this, you can see that creationists are participants in mainstream science - they accept most of it and rely on all of it for daily living. Which leads to the inevitably damning question; surely any self-respecting creationist, when faced with the proposition that the only elements of science they happen to reject also happen to be the few that they have been told conflict with a literal interpretation of Genesis, must eventually summon up enough honesty and integrity to admit that they have succumbed to the most absurd selective rejection, and that their unwillingness to reflect on their own Biblical interpretation smacks of gross arrogance, wilful ignorance and the most ridiculous surrender of the mind to indoctrination. In fact, we can go further – the willingness to cling to such a deeply flawed and selectively applied stance, in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines (a perverse avoidance of the very principles they otherwise embrace and rely upon in every other area of life, we saw earlier), exposes such a profound intellectual cowardice and satisfaction with foolishness that it ceases to be mere ignorance and becomes an act of pitiful wilful self-deception - a stubborn defiance of reason so extreme that it borders on parody.

A Great TV Show To Cherish

 

Humanity has been blessed with many fine art forms, four of the most commercially influential being visual art, music, literature, and film. At its best, TV drama deserves to be the contemporary equivalent of high art, as it seamlessly weaves together the essence of visual art, music, literature, and film – potentially elevating storytelling to new heights.

I think, at their best, TV dramas (and some sitcoms for that matter) are some of the finest creative achievements in human history, and I think Netflix’s Hannibal could be a contender for being one of the best of them all. I don’t always watch or read things when they first come out, but I’ve just finished all three seasons of Hannibal, and I’ve been utterly gripped and monumentally impressed with how it brilliantly fuses those four great artistic disciplines; the visual grandeur of its cinematography, the emotional depth of its music, the literary brilliance of the dialogue, and the immersive storytelling of film - into a singular evolving narrative that absolutely captivates both intellect and emotion.

It’s a psychological labyrinth of a crime thriller, plated with the most exquisite and unsettling human drama, and underwritten by one of the richest scripts ever brought to the screen Like Kubrick’s best work, it submerges the audience in a world of manipulation, fantasy, morality, and yearning – an unrelenting game of cat and mouse, and a disturbing yet compelling distorted love story built on understanding the darkest corners of the human psyche.

What I also liked about the writing is that I don’t recall a single word of bad language in it. Sure, in places it’s visually dark and sinister, but the writing has an impeccable, unsettling, literary sophistication without resorting to demeaning itself with expletives. I’m not sure it’s the best TV drama ever – I’m reluctant to claim that there is such a thing. But it’s certainly the most satisfying psychologically slow-burning, operatically nightmarish, and erudite literary masterpiece I’ve seen in a long time.

On Social Care

 

The crisis in UK social care has intensified in recent years, affecting thousands, including my own family. I have lived through this personally during my father's health decline and eventual death with dementia. The most transparent problem if you’re not either very rich or very poor seems to be that the government gets the best of both worlds and the consumer gets the worst of both worlds, in that we are taxed all our working life to fund issues to do with health, but we still have to pay for social care-related issues when we eventually need them (with money, you may note, that has already been taxed several times already). This nearly always produces the problem that consumers are too detached from the finances of public services to enjoy effective value in terms of subjective preferences and optimally priced solutions in accordance with supply and demand.

The next most transparent problem is that none of the favoured political proposals seem to me to be ideal. If pensioners have enough savings to pay for their care or have assets that can be liquidated to pay for it, the taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay on their behalf. On the other hand, having entirely private social care is difficult for those with no savings or assets, and it’s more difficult to incentivise people to save for future care when they don’t know how long they will live, or what care (if any) they will need. Insurance models are also tricky because insurers have the same asymmetry of information that the consumer does – in fact, even more so, because they don’t know our lifestyle choices and many other things about us. Means testing based on savings and assets is also problematic because it disincentives saving and encourages consumption, which if undertaken with skewed incentives, yields inefficiency of resource allocation. Out of those solutions, an insurance-based one is probably the least problematical, but it’s still a difficult system to get right.

One of the reasons that so many people have family members who are paying thousands of pounds a month for social care is because the industry is over-regulated with not enough competition for viable alternatives. One of the golden rules of economics is that if a company is earning excess profits this should create an opportunity for potential competitors to enter the market and charge less while still making a profit. When this occurs in a free market, competition drives prices down to the level of the costs of the most efficient supplier (where costs include the cost of capital). Therefore, if a business can sustain what many are calling "excess profits" then something must be preventing other suppliers from competing within the care market, and that is a lot to do with regulatory burdens and government inefficiencies. There is a shortage of affordable high quality social care because of a number of complex reasons (underfunding, staff shortages, rising demand, to name but three) - which I think we all understand, and I have blogged about before - but what really needs addressing is how the qualities of the market system can be brought to bear on some of these supply and demand issues that are affecting consumer value and patient quality. 

Here's how the free market works ordinarily for consumers of goods and services. If any particular supplier seems too expensive, we look to switch to other suppliers. If all suppliers seem expensive, then either entry into the industry is blocked by regulatory constraints, or if it isn't blocked then the activity probably just has an expense to justify such prices. Some people argue that this matter can be helped with price fixing. But it isn’t true; imposing a price control would be the wrong approach, because if the government did impose a price cap, the cap will almost certainly be too low (a cap too high would have no effect, because to be too high it must exceed current prices, otherwise no one would notice as current prices would be under the cap). By imposing a price cap that will inevitably be too low, the government will only succeed in reducing supply, and thereby harm consumers of care services.

One possible solution that may trump all of the above could be the idea of a health savings account, a bit like the one in Singapore, but purely for social care, where instead of the state taking money through taxes and letting you have it back in the form of free social care, you get to keep more of your money to put into a social care savings account. That money is used to pay for your social care where you or your family can negotiate doctor-patient contracts in a market system, much like you would now with insurance and banking, where if we require care in old age our savings pay for it, but if we don’t need care the money goes to our children (or to a named beneficiary of our choice). Naturally, there would still need to be state involvement for those whose savings fell short of their care costs, and this could be bootstrapped by an efficient insurance-based system that captures a diverse range of subjective preferences, but this is a reform that could be gradually introduced to reach its full potential.

But it could get even better, because with your savings you can spend it on whichever type of social care you like. Because the best solution to goods and services is market-based solutions based on competition and consumer demand, companies could compete for your custom by offering a wide range of choices for your care. I have in mind the development of many different types of care facility to cater for diverse needs; care homes that specialise in different types of illness, more bespoke home visits, secure high quality care villages with accommodation, leisure facilities and care provision – where we, the consumer, get to choose how we want to live (or someone chooses on our behalf if we are unable) and the kind of social care support that best serves our needs.

Even without this policy, as things stand many older people who paid off their mortgage long ago are in a position to make some provision for if they need care. Many even find themselves in houses too big and expensive for their needs. If it's not fundamentally wrong for them to use their equity to downsize, sell up, or for their care costs to be claimed back after they die, then it seems even less wrong for a health savings account to be set up for the provision of such care.

All that said, as an economist, I believe the market solves a lot of the problems a lot of the time, but not all of the problems all of the time. In my book Benevolent Libertarianism, one of the central theses is an attempt to find a way to incorporate the qualities of a kind of socialist-individualist-libertarian triumvirate at the personal level with the qualities of the free market and its concomitant mechanism for price theory to efficiently balance supply and demand.

This means understanding that the wisdom of central intelligence sometimes serves some of the system best, and would do too in the health account model. We couldn’t (and wouldn’t) be able to collectively get together to organise something centrally complex like a social care system without some centralised intelligence working top-down. I think human health is a problem that needs a significant layer of top-down centralised information processing, because it doesn't have the foresight required to capture the diverse range of human needs. A society that successfully cares for the complex needs of human health and well-being cannot be solely at the mercy of market-driven supply and demand computation, which is subject to chaotic instability and power law distributions that would be inimical to comprehensive health and social care provision if left unchecked.

Even with a more market-based model outlined above, there would still be further matters to negotiate and problems to solve. Regulation would need to guard against prioritising profit over quality (although competition is also a good regulator), the transition from the current system to a better one would take time and careful planning, and a system that measures optimal contributions would need to be established. 

But I believe that a gradually implemented health savings account model could be the least problematic solution to provide a more sustainable and efficient alternative to our failing system, ensuring individuals retain control over their care, and remain supported by better a regulatory balance alongside market-qualities that are not so hampered by the inefficiencies of the state. 

God's Higher Probability

 

Some philosophers claim that an omniscient God has a lower probability than just a supremely knowledgeable but not omniscient God, because it is harder to know everything than just know very much. The same can be said for omnipotence (it’s harder to be all-powerful than just very powerful), omnibenevolence (it’s harder to be all-good than very good), and perfect (it’s harder to be perfect than close to perfect). But I think this gets the probability estimate wrong. It’s true that, in the world, harder to achieve things are less probable than easier things. An amateur throwing his first 3 darts is unlikely to get 180; a man playing his first snooker match is unlikely to make a 147 break; and a woman throwing a coin off the Empire States Building is unlikely to find that it landed perfectly on its edge in the crack of the pavement.

But I don’t think that’s the case when we talk about God’s supreme properties. Consider this question. Which do you think is more probable; that a historian knows who all of the Roman emperors in the first century were, or all bar one? Or which do you think is more probable; that the world’s biggest Beatles fan knows the lyrics to all their songs, or all except one? I think in both cases, the former is more probable. It would be stranger if, respectively, those individuals knew all of the Roman emperors and all the Beatles songs bar one, than knowing them all, because it’s more difficult to explain why they don’t know the exception when they know the rest.

With God, having the power to create a universe, I think it would be stranger if He knew 99% of all things than 100% of all things (ditto the other Omni properties). Even though there are astronomically more ways that God could know 99% of all things, and only one way that He could know 100% of all things, it feels much more probable that He knows everything than nearly everything – because if He knows nearly everything, it’s harder to explain why He doesn’t know the relatively few things He doesn’t know.

 

All this is to say, it may be a hard thing to conceive of omniscience, omnipotence, omni-benevolence and perfect as God’s primary properties, but that level of hard still seems more conceivable than what might seem, in probabilistic terms, more probable in terms of the ratio of favourable cases to total possible cases being smaller. Here, it’s likely that making a proposition less complex makes it less probable too.

Why Christians Disagree So Much

 

At a recent men's breakfast, someone asked me the following; If Christianity is true, why are there such a varied set of Christians who disagree and squabble about so much?

My response, which might be worth sharing here:

If all Christians sought the full truth without compromise, we would not see the ecclesia so full of division and disagreement. The Biblical template certainly goes against this. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, St. Paul says:

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought."

He doesn’t hold back; we are to be “perfectly united in mind and thought”, and in Philippians 2:2 Paul tells us we are to be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.". Consequently, Christian disagreement is a solecism against the credibility, harmony and reputation of the faith, and it is disagreement – both in factual propositions and ethical aberrations – that continues of be one of the biggest impediments to the spreading of the good news.

That raises the question, if the Bible, when correctly interpreted, provides clear guidance on how we should live, and if Christians have the Holy Spirit to offer deeper direction, why is it so difficult for those in relationship with the Creator of the universe to agree on a consistent and truthful understanding of reality? I think the primary factor here is that when we judge anything based on God, we often assume that our understanding reflects God's own qualities. However, this is a two-way mirror. God provides us with principles to live by, but we also interpret those principles through our own proprietary perspectives. We put ourselves at the mercy of God’s judgement, and at the same time make judgements about the teachings in accordance with our own understanding and experience. 

Sadly, religious people – Christians and the adherents to the false religions – are also susceptible to the sway of shaping their religion in accordance with their own incentives, needs and agendas. That's why those very varied personal trajectories throw up all sorts of religious personality: the pious Catholic genius, the evolution-denying religious huckster, the repressed priest, the Islamic scholar, the Al Qaeda suicide bomber, the Jewish Messianists, the worshipful self-mutilators, the monks, the crusaders, the missionaries, and all manner of literary talents, brilliant theologians, cult-founders and propagandists.

Ultimately, the way we perceive God and present ourselves to the world is shaped by a number of essential qualities; the depth of our intellectual and emotional engagement, the honesty and integrity we bring in to our relationship, our willingness to seek truth over comfort, our openness to correction and growth, our humility in recognising the limits of our own understanding, and our willingness to put Christ first and make Him Lord of our life.

EDIT TO ADD: On this subject, I wrote this in reply to an antagonist, this week: 

“I invite you to think about it more carefully – surely you have enough confidence in yourself to at least conceive of how Christians might disagree about all manner of things – especially as many of these matters are highly complex, connected to complex ranges of subjective experience, and shaped by human flaws, incentives, biases and limitations. Given the state of humanity, I’d no more expect Christians to agree on everything than I would mathematicians to agree about politics, or opera singers to agree about economics. But, I do wish they would – and as I often argue – Christians SHOULD agree more, especially on objective things – and two Christians of any sex, ethnicity, denomination, should converge on more and more consensus if they were to sit by the fire, Aumann’s Agreement-style, and honestly, rigorously seek the truth together, like people who care about what is true."

 

The Best Christianity Gets Everything Right

The reason Christianity defeats every other competing explanation for realty is because at its purest (by which I mean what we’d have if it was in accordance with God’s will) Christianity gets everything right. This is the distinction between Christians, who get a lot wrong, and Christianity as God would intend as ideal, which gets everything right. It takes a lot of thinking and experience to be so assured that Christianity gets everything right, but I’m confident that it’s the right conclusion.

What Christianity has over, let’s call it non-Christianity (naturalism, other religions, or anything that departs from Christian truths), is that Christianity always has a better explanation for everything than non-Christianity -  the biggest philosophical questions, the physical world, love, goodness, morality, metaphysical qualities, the psychology of human nature, the purpose of life, overcoming suffering, what’s wrong with society, you name it. 

Any proposition that includes “Christianity is the truth” explains the true depths and complexities of the proposition all the way to the top and bottom better than any competing or alternative “non-Christianity is the truth” hypothesis. And this is similarly true in reverse – no supreme act of God’s love, goodness, grace, justice or mercy in the world is enhanced by either tying to remove “Christianity is the truth” from the argument, or by trying to add “non-Christianity is the truth” to it either. Non-Christianity gets defeated and undermined every time it comes up against “Christianity gets everything right” – and any apparent cases where that doesn’t seem to hold just means that we haven’t gone to either the very top or the very bottom (or both) of the proposition, and tapped in to both its full complexity and full extended gravitas and ultimate goodness.

 

My Four Favourite Easy Ways To Spend Money

 

1) Avoiding unpleasant tasks like dirty household chores and time-zapping manual labour - anything that robs you of time to do better things. Pay someone else to do these things - it spreads the wealth and is a great example of utilising comparative advantage.

2) Buying some pleasant travel experiences - go on holiday and make some fantastic memories.

3) Paying to avoid extraneous travelling time. 45 minute walks, waiting for buses, etc are costly - you pay for it through lost time, and sometimes lost energy and less sleep. Get taxis or pay friends for lifts wherever possible.

4) Buying some enriching social interactions. Spending quality time with other quality people adds riches to your life. Pub nights, meals out, days to the coast are all great ways to spend money, because the social interactions add so many colours and flavours to your life. And bearing in mind number 3, it's probably a good idea to spend lots of time hosting stimulating events at your place.

The Dirty Cost of Cleaner Energy

In a perfectly competitive market, the price is typically set equal to marginal cost. This is the cost to the producer of producing one more unit of the good. When price equals marginal cost, economic efficiency is maximised. Consumer surplus is the difference between what consumers are willing to pay and what they actually pay. Producer surplus is the difference between what producers receive for a good and their cost of producing it. At a price equal to marginal cost, the sum of consumer and producer surplus is maximised, and the total gains from trade (economic surplus) are at their peak.

Any price above marginal cost reduces the consumer’s benefit from the transaction by more than it increases the producer’s benefit. This is because of how surplus is distributed between consumers and producers in a market. When the price is set above marginal cost, the producer is charging more than what it costs to produce the additional unit, which means consumer surplus decreases (consumers pay a higher price and fewer units are sold, reducing total surplus). When this happens, consumers derive less benefit from the transaction because they are paying a price higher than what would have been necessary to cover the production cost of the good. This extra price they pay above the marginal cost reduces their surplus. When the price of a toaster is set above marginal cost, such as £15 instead of £10, consumers experience a reduction in consumer surplus by paying more per unit, and the market experiences a deadweight loss because fewer toasters are sold than would be at the efficient price, resulting in a net loss of total surplus, and a misallocation of resources that could have otherwise increased economic utility.

Producers benefit from the higher price, as they receive more revenue per unit than the marginal cost. However, the gain for producers is typically smaller than the loss faced by consumers, because the producer's surplus increases by the price difference (£15 - £10 in our example) for each unit sold, but the number of units sold will likely decrease because consumers will buy less at the higher price. The producer’s surplus increases only on the remaining units sold (but the quantity sold likely decreases). This reduction in quantity sold reduces the potential for additional producer surplus that could have been earned if the price was lower (that is, closer to marginal cost). The portion of the total surplus (consumer plus producer) that disappears due to the higher price is called a deadweight loss.

The higher price discourages consumption, as fewer consumers are willing to pay the inflated price. Those consumers who would have bought the good at a price closer to the marginal cost do not get to purchase it, resulting in a loss of both consumer and producer surplus. The producer does not gain enough from the higher price to compensate for this loss, since fewer units are sold overall. Consumers lose more than producers gain because the reduction in consumer surplus (from paying the higher price and from fewer units being purchased) is greater than the increase in producer surplus from the higher price. Deadweight loss results from transactions that no longer occur due to the higher price, representing inefficiency, and amounting to a net loss to society.

What we’ve seen so far is that the economy as a whole would be better off if the price is equal to marginal cost, ensuring maximum benefit from trade for both consumers and producers. It should be clear at this point that when governments implement climate policies that artificially increase energy costs (e.g., through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade systems, or regulations that mandate the use of more expensive, cleaner energy sources), these policies create many economic inefficiencies similar to the ones caused by pricing above marginal cost. We can see why by applying the same economic reasoning as above. By introducing measures that increase the price of energy above its market-determined marginal cost, consumers end up paying more for energy than they would have in a free market. This leads to a reduction in consumer surplus because consumers have to pay a higher price for the same quantity of energy, reducing the benefit they derive from each unit of energy they consume. When energy costs rise, lower-income households and businesses with tight budgets may reduce their energy consumption or cut back on other spending to compensate, and some smaller businesses (and ultimately consumers) may be priced out of the market altogether.

Just as before with toasters, suppose the marginal cost of energy from fossil fuels is £50 per megawatt-hour, but due to carbon taxes or regulations requiring renewable energy usage, the price consumers pay rises to £70. This £20 price increase represents a loss of consumer surplus, as they are forced to pay more than the true cost of production. While most consumers and small businesses lose, producers of renewable energy benefit in what has become a rigged crony capitalist system, where more expensive cleaner technologies gain because the higher price of energy artificially incentivises their production methods, even though their marginal costs are typically higher than fossil fuels, and less efficient for the UK economy. 

These producers receive producer surplus because they are able to charge higher prices that reflect the environmental cost embedded in climate policies – but, alas, the net benefit for these producers is almost always not larger than the consumer losses, because the increase in energy prices causes a deadweight loss, similar to what happens when prices are set above marginal cost. Consumers purchase less energy due to the higher price, leading to a reduction in energy consumption that exceeds the socially optimal level if we ignore environmental externalities. As well as inflated prices harming business and consumers, some energy needs will remain unmet, or consumers may resort to less efficient alternatives (such as cutting down on important activities that rely on energy, like heating or transportation), reducing overall welfare. This deadweight loss represents a loss in total economic efficiency: the difference between the energy that would have been consumed at a price closer to marginal cost and what is actually consumed at the artificially higher price due to policy interventions.

They get away with this assault on our economy by peddling the lie that these artificially higher prices are necessary to internalise externalities by reflecting the cost of fossil fuel-based energy production, including its environmental harm. But this is one of the greatest sleight of hand tricks ever played by politicians on the electorate. This disgraceful crony capitalist arrangement results in a redistribution of wealth from consumers to producers (particularly clean energy producers) and the government (through taxes), while at the same time putting the UK industry at a disadvantage from other more competitive nations. 

It is disgraceful that politicians have the power to artificially increase energy costs energy and make production more expensive for businesses, leading to reduced output, job losses, and higher prices for goods and services, which get passed on disproportionately to the poorest people in society. Climate policies are pushed hardest by socialists, when they are actually (as is so often the case with socialism) worst of all for the poor. The reality is - as is surely plain for all to see in these awful economic times - energy prices have increased above marginal cost far too quickly, aimlessly and recklessly, and far too precipitously for alternative energy technologies to become competitive in price and efficiency, causing energy prices to rise significantly above the true marginal cost of clean energy production, and creating larger inefficiencies and more severe deadweight loss than necessary.

 

A Quick Back Of The Envelope Argument For The Christian God’s Existence

P1: Before creation, God, possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, would have an infinite number of possible creation stories available to Him.

P2: Given God’s omni-properties, He would necessarily create the best of all possible creation stories.

P3: Our current earthly existence, taken in isolation, does not appear to be the best of all possible creation stories (e.g., it includes suffering, evil, and imperfection).

C1: Therefore, the best of all possible creation stories must encompass more than our earthly existence - it must include the entire story, including the eternal narrative.

P4: A necessary component of the best possible creation story is the opportunity for creatures to experience the best of God within the context of their creation.

P5: The best way for creatures to experience God is to be in relationship with Him, as relationship reflects His nature (truth, love, grace, etc.).

P6: A relationship between finite, imperfect creatures and an infinite, perfect God requires that God initiate and provide the means for that relationship.

P7: Christianity teaches that God made relationship possible through Christ’s incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and the provision of the Holy Spirit.

C2: Therefore, Christianity uniquely offers the conditions for the best possible creation story, providing both the means to relate to God and the opportunity to live a virtuous, God-centred life.

P8: The best life a person can live is one where they prioritise God and His qualities and virtues (truth, love, grace, humility, kindness, generosity, etc.).

C3: Christianity provides the best evidence for God and the best framework for living a truthful, meaningful, virtuous life.

Romance and Divine Love

I was thinking about how God is love, and how human love is the greatest quality in the world because it both simulates Divine love, and is part of it. Like our Christian walk with God, love is both a blessing and a responsibility. It’s a blessing because it is a gift from God, and a responsibility because love involves the daily commitment to act in a manner worthy of God; seeking the truth, putting others before ourselves, making a continuous choice to act with kindness, patience, and forgiveness, and mirroring Christ’s sacrificial love in doing so.

And when you consider it, that is a lot like what happens in romantic love. In the beginning, what we call ‘falling in love’ seems to be bestowed upon us rather than being a conscious choice - it finds us before we can choose it (although our choices clearly enable it). It starts as a blessing that falls upon us, rather like a free gift of grace, but then comes the responsibility to work in relationship to turn it into something Divine, amazing and long-lasting. To that end, love between creature and Creator, and love between beloveds, reflect each other, in that both begin as gifts of grace but find their fullness in the daily choice to nurture, sacrifice, and reflect the Divine.

An Interpretation Of My Dreams

 

I have two recurring psychological motifs in my dreams. One is that when I’m trying to physically get to a place, the journey is slowed down by something, and I never get there. Either physically moving to a destination feels like wading through thick treacle, or there is some other impediment that thwarts the journey. And two is that when there is a specific, clear goal required – either having to speak to someone about something, solve a problem, put something away in a cupboard, or whatever – I become engaged in numerous tangential activities, never getting to the clear goal.

Now, I know what the initial psychoanalytic diagnosis would offer – that these dreams reflect struggles with progress in waking life, feeling held back from achieving my goals, anxiety about whether I will fulfil my potential, and so forth - but none of that consciously manifests in my thinking. I’m very satisfied with my life, while equally excited for the growth that is to come. I’m pleased with my achievements so far, but at the same time I’m exhilarated by the potential that is to come. And I’m thoroughly enjoying every step of the journey (even the suffering), knowing that each new destination offers further horizons I will aspire to reach.

So, it’s hard to reconcile the nature of the dreams with struggles related to progress, feeling held back from achieving my goals, and anxiety about whether I will fulfil my potential, because I’m genuinely enthralled and gratified with the journey I’m on. It’s possible – and perhaps probable, to some extent – that there are forces at work in my unconscious and subconscious that haven’t been brought to bear on the peaceful nature of my conscious experiences, but I might have an interpretation below that’s a more reasonable approximation to the truth.

If I had a stab at an interpretation of dreams, I’d discern it not a symbol of frustration, but rather a deep subconscious immersion in the nature of progress itself, wholly embracing the idea from Camus that the struggles are part of the heights. The complexity and richness of the journey is never going to be a straight, uncomplicated path. But part of the thrill of the journey is in recognising how progress often meanders, how it encounters resistance, and how it unfolds in unexpectedly exhilarating ways because of this.

That said, when I’m in the state of dreaming, the feeling of wading through treacle does not seem to represent a joyous acknowledgement of the sheer depth and viscosity of experience – it genuinely feels inhibiting. But perhaps that is exactly what we should expect, and even hope for, because mindful engagement with the process of ‘becoming’ ought to be demanding, as overcoming challenges is one of the fundamental rewards of the journey. In most cases, I don’t think the impediments are inhibitors, at least not in the medium to long-term – they are a key part of our immersive experiences, forcing deeper engagement with the reality of our past, present and future, and become fuller human beings on this daily adventure.