Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Quote Of The Day: The Dalai Lama On Secular Ethics



Who would suspect that the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism himself, the Dalai Lama, would be in favor of secular ethics, but he appears to get it like most of us atheists do. This is probably why I'm much more sympathetic to Buddhism than most other religions. He's absolutely right: secular ethics is foundational for having a thriving world community where multicultural societies exist.

For all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, religion is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. Many people no longer follow any religion. In addition, in today’s secular and multicultural societies, any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values could not be universal, and so would be inadequate. We need an approach to ethics that can be equally acceptable to those with religious faith and those without. We need a secular ethics.
 

Monday, September 12, 2016

Aquinas On Free Will


The metaphysical foundation of the traditional Catholic worldview is self refuting. It both requires and denies libertarian free will. This inconsistency becomes much more apparent to those who've came to see that libertarian free will itself is an inconsistent idea. However, most Catholics, or philosophical Thomists deny this charge, and the most prominent philosopher in the Catholic tradition, Thomas Aquinas, addressed this.

Article 1. Whether man has free-will?
...
Objection 3. Further, what is "free is cause of itself," as the Philosopher says (Metaph. i, 2). Therefore what is moved by another is not free. But God moves the will, for it is written (Proverbs 21:1): "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; whithersoever He will He shall turn it" and (Philippians 2:13): "It is God Who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish." Therefore man has not free-will.
...
Reply to Objection 3. Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.[1]

A Catholic mentioned this to me as an argument to show it demonstrates Thomism is compatible with libertarian free will. I'm going to argue now that this in no way demonstrates that.

The 50 year old virgin
First, the problem is obvious: If god is the first cause of everything because he sustains everything in the universe at all times, then he is ultimately the cause of your will, and therefore you have no free will.

Aquinas' objection states that man's will moves him to act. This is technically in fact wrong. The will doesn't move a person to act, that is actually done by a physical process, which determines the will. So it's technically the other way around. He also states that what is free shouldn't be the first cause itself. I disagree. "Free" in this sense would have to be uncaused. Then he just states that man's voluntary actions aren't involuntary just because god really caused them. That makes no sense. It's like saying a puppet being controlled by a ventriloquist is still free, even though the puppet's every action is caused by the puppeteer. Saying god operates each thing according to its own nature doesn't negate this. The nature is caused by god and controlled by god, as everything else is. Basically, if the causal chain terminates in god, and each and every step in the chain is caused by god, at no point does libertarian free will enter the picture, which logically requires the will be uncaused. The Aristotelian principle, that "Whatever is changed is changed by another" negates the metaphysical possibility of a first cause that isn't god, which of course negates libertarian free will itself.

So, Aquinas hasn't made a logical case for libertarian free will being compatible from within the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysic.


[1] Source: Summa Theologica (Prima Part, Q83) (Emphasis mine)

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Causality Is A Useful Word But It Doesn't Really Exist


One of the problems with human language is that it sometimes doesn't capture the true nature of reality, and one word where this is the case is the word cause. Fundamentally speaking, there are no causes in the way we traditionally speak of them. There are simply just worldtubes or particles in spacetime and one point on the worldtube doesn't really "cause" a later point on the worldtube to exist. What causality really is would seem to have to be the relationships of intersecting worldtubes as they precede or intertwine with one another in spacetime; they're a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions. At the fundamental level, the word "cause" really should be replaced by the word "explanation" or "relationship."

For example, asking "why do I exist now?" would be explained by the fact that at an earlier event in spacetime my parents had sex. That was the "cause" that resulted in my birth and existence now – but only in the sense that if you trace my worldtube back in spacetime to its origin it’s preceded by my parent’s worldtubes and thus that establishes the "causal" relationship. But even the terms "earlier" and "preceded" here are a bit misleading because they imply that there's an intrinsic directionality of time. However, no good data backs that up. Instead, the data strongly suggests the directionality of time is dependent on the increase in entropy. These are profound insights that radically changes our notion of causality.

So when it comes to our language, what should we do? Well, I'm not saying we jettison the word "cause" anymore than we jettison the word "solid," even though solidity is not found in the fundamental nature of reality either. It's an emergent phenomenon that exists at higher (non-fundamental) levels. Causality exists in much the same way: "cause" is a useful word to describe an emergent phenomenon that makes sense when talking about our human-level experience, but we shouldn't confuse language with reality. Human language is far better at capturing human experience than at expressing deep physical laws. We need to be aware of what causality really is, apart from its everyday usage. This of course is much easier said than done.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

The Rise And The (Ostensible) Fall Of The Religious Conservatives In The U.S.


In 2014, Pew showed that 72% of Americans think religion is losing its influence in public life and that there's been a recent slight uptick of Americans who say religious institutions should express views on political matters (49%). It further showed that a growing minority (32%) say religious institutions should come out and support political candidates, and 59% think it's important for members of Congress to have religious beliefs.  As expected, Republicans lean more towards wanting more religion in public life.


Furthermore, 56% of Americans who think religion is losing its influence think it's a bad thing, and only 12% think it's a good thing. I'm definitely one of those 12 percenters who think it's a bad thing. I think religion needs to recede from American cultural and political influence and the faster that happens the better the nation will be as a whole.

But the main question I want to address is whether or not opinion of the majority of Americans is correct: Is religion losing its influence in cultural and political matters?

To answer that we have to look at the recent presidential election as well as demographic data and polls on social issues. The largest and most powerful religious influence in the US has without a doubt been that of white evangelical Christians. Almost all US presidents have been Protestant with just a few exceptions. Even so, and despite a recent uptick of those who think religious institutions should get more political, data indicates that the influence of this large and mostly Republican demographic is shrinking and losing influence.

When it comes to demographics, the first and most important factor in the decline of white evangelical Christians is that the country is getting less white. The US is only 63% white, down from 69% in 2000, and 80% in 1980. As the white population shrinks, the white evangelical population shrinks. Second, the country is getting less Christian. The US is only 70% Christian, down from 78% in 2007, and 90% in 1963. In just the past 20 years the percentage of both Christians and the religiously affiliated began to rapidly decline. And just like with the white population, as the Christian population shrinks, the white evangelical population shrinks—along with their influence. Protestants now make up less than half (46%) the US population. Thirdly, there is a large generational gap with respect to Christian religiosity indicating what's to come. Only 56% of millennials are Christian, whereas 70% of generation X, and 78% of baby boomers are Christian.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Little "g"


A few years ago I started spelling god with a little g instead of the traditional "God" with a capital G. I was inspired by Christopher Hitches who spelled god with a little g in his book god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everythingwhich even used the lower case g on its cover.  "I don't capitalize my concepts," Hitch wrote.

Like Hitch, I never really thought of "God" as a proper name, but more like a noun, like "man" or "lion." It always seemed to be more of a type of being. That's why I don't like capitalizing the word "god." However, when I refer to a specific god by name, like Yahweh, or Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus, I will capitalize it as I capitalize all names.

Speaking of capitalizing the names of gods, it reminds me of that one god who did sign his name with a capital G:

Monday, September 5, 2016

The Minimal Jesus Myth Theory - What Is It?


Minimal mythcism, sometimes called the minimal mythicist theory or the minimal Jesus myth theory, that people like Richard Carrier argue for goes as follows [1]:

  1. At the origin on Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other.
  2. Like many other celestial deities, this Jesus 'communicated' with his subjects only through dreams, visions and other forms of divine inspiration (such as prophesy, past and present).
  3. Like some other celestial deities, the Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in a supernatural realm.
  4. As for many other celestial deities, an allegorical story of this same Jesus was then composed and told within the sacred community, which then placed him on earth, in history, as a divine man, with an earthly family, companions, and enemies, complete with deeds and sayings, and an earthly depiction of his ordeals.
  5. Subsequent communities of worshipers believed (or at least taught) that this invented sacred story was real (and either not allegorical or only 'additionally' allegorical).

As such, it's important to know what minimal Jesus mythicism is and is not because there's a lot of kooks out there, especially on the internet, proposing preposterous ideas that are backed up by no evidence or horrible scholarship, and it tends to drown out the legitimate arguments like Carrier's. 


Sunday, September 4, 2016

My 1 Year Anniversary As A Vegetarian


This past August I reached my one year anniversary of becoming a vegetarian. I've only broken my vow not to eat any meat a few times: once on Thanksgiving, twice when I was at a restaurant that only served meat and I had a tuna melt, and one other time when I was starving and was offered beef dumplings and I just ate it. Other than that it's been no meat or fish for over a year.

I'm often asked why I'm a vegetarian by people I know and I always relish in the opportunity to explain why. There are two main reasons why I've given up eating meat and fish.

First is the moral argument. I do not want to support an industry, whether it's at the industrial scale or not, that kills animals and often tortures them in horrible living conditions. By not eating meat and encouraging others to do so, I will help reduce demand and that will hopefully shrink the industry as a whole, with the goal of putting it out of business entirely. A moral society simply cannot support the systematic torture and death of sentient animals for our pleasure.

The second reason is the sustainability argument. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of the amazon rain forest destruction, 51% of global greenhouse emissions are due to livestock and their byproducts, three out of four of the world's fisheries are exploited, and for every one pound of fish caught five pounds of marine animals are unintentionally caught and killed as by-kill. In short, an ever increasing population of humans eating meat is environmentally unsustainable. A vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is necessary.

So for these two primary reasons I have given up eating meat and fish, and I can tell you, I definitely feel better and more ethical as a person after doing so. I'm am trying to walk the walk on ethics, and not just talk the talk, but I'd be a liar if I said it was easy.

Unfortunately, I read recently that about 86% of vegetarians eventually go back to eating meat. That means I'm statistically likely to go back to eating meat at some point in my future. Maintaining a vegetarian lifestyle is really hard. There are synthetic meats that are on the horizon, that may be economically viable in the next 10 years. If they can take off, I will certainly consider eating their meat. I'm not a vegetarian because I don't like the taste of meat. I love the taste of meat. If I could eat meat without animals being tortured and killed and without the negative environmental impact, I would. Synthetic meat could make this possible. It could also put the existing animal agricultural industry out of business through market competition. But we'll have to see what happens.


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